Seacliff (25 page)

“N
ot a muscle moves, Mr. Flint, as you can well see.”

“A woman so lovely shouldn’t be in such a condition, Sir Oliver.”

“A noble sentiment, but wasted, I’m afraid. She neither sees nor hears us, Mr. Flint. She keeps her color because that Thomas bitch keeps the air on her, washes her like she was a baby, and feeds her with a spoon. Caitlin swallows readily enough, though I suspect she doesn’t keep it all down.”

“It isn’t very good color.”

“It isn’t the color of death, either, Mr. Flint.”

“It may as well be.”

“It shan’t be, Mr. Flint. It shan’t be.”

“When will she recover?”

“Soon. Soon.”

“Radnor is back.”

“Ah?”

“He was in London, doing a bit of snooping around.”

“I see.”

“He’s not like the cobbler and his gold, Oliver. We have to be careful.”

“Later, Mr. Flint. This is neither the time nor especially the place. “Later. In my study.”

H
ad she the wealth she would have ordered a cathedral built to rival Canterbury’s the day she was able to discern shadows in her vision. A subtle separation of dark and light increased as time passed, sharpened as the sun strengthened, and burst into full, glorious color on an afternoon that tinged the room a curious gold.

And it was the same again when Gwen noticed her blinking. This time, however, Caitlin heeded the instructions given her, swallowed her water slowly, her food in small portions, and ordered Gwen not to tell anyone that she had regained her awareness.

Contrary to Oliver’s belief and Gwen’s fears, Caitlin did not attribute the conversations she had overheard to the fancies of bitter dreams. She recalled every word, every nuance, every sneered and sworn phrase, until she was ready to sort it out into meaning.

“Danger?” Gwen said, leaning away from the word Caitlin had uttered moments before as if it were an asp coiling to strike.

Caitlin nodded as she nibbled on a freshly cooked slice of mutton. “Danger. I am a healthy woman, Gwen, and don’t you dare look at me as if I’ve gone ’round the bend. I am fully aware of what I’m saying. So mark me, Gwen, and mark me well: I am a healthy woman. If I fall ill, whether it be from tainted fruit or too much excitement, I do not fall abed like old Les with his ailments. I sleep, I heal, and I am myself again.

“This”—and she pounded a fist on the mattress—”is not natural. It is not right.”

Gwen shook her head in confusion. She knew very well what Caitlin was implying, but the enormity of it threatened to engulf her in terror. Nevertheless, she listened carefully, and with increasing horror, as Caitlin related her husband’s mutterings and gave her the interpretations.

“Now tell me this,” she said, an impatient hand raised to keep Gwen from interrupting. “You brought me food and drink?”

Gwen nodded, frowning perplexedly. “Mrs. Courder prepared it?”

Gwen nodded again.

“All of it? All the time? And you brought it directly here, right from the kitchen?”

Gwen started to nod a third time and caught herself. Her eyes narrowed, then widened as she touched her fingers to her lips thoughtfully.

“Well?”

“Well, I couldn’t really bring it up all the time, Cat. I had to attend to my other duties as well.” She scowled. “Sometimes Mary would do it for me, not that she really wanted to. But she did. She always made a hell of a mess giving you the broth. ’Twas all you’d swallow, but she managed to get more than half down your front, sure as I’m standing here.”

Caitlin sank back against the pillows with a sigh. There’d always been that one glimmer of hope she was wrong, that what she feared was merely a figment of her dreams. But all it took was a few sips of broth, just a few drops, and Oliver would have his invalid right where he wanted her.

She would have wept had she not been so furious.

“But what could something like that be?” Gwen protested, still refusing to believe it.

“Oh, Lord, Gwen,” she said wearily, “a bit of this and a bit of that. Powdered hawthorn, hollyhock, mistletoe… so many things to keep me alive and dead at the same time.” She went on, but by the time she was finished and Gwen convinced, the sun had slipped below the horizon, and a chill had crept into the shadowy room. Gwen, trembling, set the fire and lit the tapers nearest the bed. When warmth returned, Caitlin plumped the pillows and folded her arms over her chest.

“He doesn’t want to kill me, of course,” she said, wondering how she could make it all sound so ordinary, “but as long as I’m stuck up here, he can do what he wishes and tell others his decisions are made with my concurrence. Just as he claimed that everything before the illness was done with my father’s consent. And if he’s lying about this, then he lied fully about that.”

She closed her eyes briefly. It had to be said, and Gwen had to hear it.

“My father…” She swallowed, and ordered herself not to lose courage now. Once articulated, the accusation could be dealt with; kept inside her, it would eat through her system like a worm through soil. “Gwen, I’ve no proof of what I’m about to say, but I am as sure of its truth as I am of being in this room. He was murdered, Gwen. My father was murdered that night in the storm!”

Gwen denied the words with a violent gesture that had her halfway across the room before Caitlin’s harsh command stopped her and brought her reluctantly back. Then she explained about the storm’s direction, the probable direction of the wind, and the height of the outer wall. The suspicion had taken root the day after she’d arrived back from Eton, but until now too much had interfered with the realization that her father had been murdered.

“But Cat,” Gwen protested weakly, “you’ve been ill! Your mind … you said yourself that your mind hasn’t been right for a long time. For a while you weren’t sure what was real and what wasn’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my thinking now, Gwen. There’s nothing wrong with it at all. Look… I came here on the last day of June. Before a month passed, and just before the first hearing was scheduled, I was taken so ill I could not function until it was over. And just before another hearing came a-calling, I was back in bed again. Gwen, for God’s sake, it’s well into October! You can smell the season changing; you can smell the snow on the mountaintops. The harvesting has begun, and before long the valley will close down for the winter. I guarantee you I will not suffer again until spring. Until the land is ready to bring us gold and silver again.”

“I…” Gwen covered her face with her hands, then dropped them and looked helplessly about the room. “I… but it’s monstrous!”

“Yes,” Caitlin said, with more restraint than she’d thought she could summon. “Yes, my dear, it’s quite monstrous.”

“But we must do something!”

“And so I think, too. But what? What can we do?”

It was a question she’d been thinking—dreaming—for months, tossing and turning in both her worst and her best dreams. But she still had no answers. There were scores of factors to consider, even—and she bridled each time the thought came to her unbidden—the possibility that she was entirely wrong, that she was permitting Oliver’s emotional indifference to her to affect her reason. What she required was what she’d found in Gwen—a devil’s advocate. Gwen was incapable of comprehending a nebulous scheme in which the stakes were so high they would endanger the life of her mistress; and in attempting to grapple with it, she laid at Caitlin’s feet any number of frivolous, cogent, and penetrating objections. One by one Caitlin dealt with them, either through outright recall of specific conversations, or with her instincts.

The debate ebbed, surged, at times became teary and at times sent them into gales of weary laughter until, at last, Caitlin’s physical debility proved greater than her determination.

It seemed like hours before sleep found her after Gwen had left, hours more for the turmoil to subside in her mind; it took virtually all her strength—and more courage than she thought she possessed—to endure Oliver’s daily visits, all the while studying his glances, his words, the tilt of his head for a clue to his real purpose; and by the end of the month she realized that unless something happened— unless she made something happen—her very sanity would retreat in the belief that it had all been a horrid dream.

S
he was walking outside again.

She had discovered early on that the residual effects of her illness proved immensely effective in getting for herself the privacy she craved. Oliver maintained a respectful, wary distance, seeing her only at meals and perhaps for a few minutes before she retired for the evening. He was solicitous and kind, but he diverted her queries about the running of the estate with a promise to keep her informed and to review with her all his actions “as soon as she was her old self again.” At the same time she saw James Flint only at brief intervals and from afar. She sensed some small friction between the appointed steward and her husband, but she could learn nothing about it and wondered if her suspicions were beginning to affect her judgment. Not once did Flint attempt to approach her; not once did he offer her his sympathies, such as they were.

It was just as well.

Because as each day passed and the end of the month grew nearer, her self-doubts increased and Flint’s mocking, cold presence might spark her into a rage.

Griffin Radnor did not come to her. Though she’d finally received word through Davy via the Stag’s Head that lights once again burned at Falconrest, she’d heard that no one had approached the hillside mansion and no one had been seen leaving its gates. The massive black dogs Griffin kept as guardians frightened most potential visitors away, and those who persisted were politely but firmly turned aside by the cadaverous Richard Jones, Griffin’s steward.

Three times since she had gathered her wits she had sent written messages to Griffin, but she had received no response whatsoever, though Davy had seen Jones slip the notes into his pocket. Worry had become feigned indifference, which in turn churned into righteous anger. The last time she had seen Griffin, he had pried from her an unspoken admission that her feelings toward him had not changed; but what of his feelings for her? If he was in love with her, if he cared a whit for her well-being, why hadn’t he tried to contact her? At one point she’d riled herself into such a state that she’d ordered the roan saddled, but long before she reached the village she realized that her recovery had not yet extended to journeying on horseback. She felt humiliated, and that feeling fueled her anger further. And finally she decided that if this was the way he treated women, then Morag Burton was welcome to him for all she cared. She would carry on alone, and the hell with such damned arrogance.

A pricking sense of betrayal darkened her mood and made her temper volatile.

She took to avoiding even Gwen. Often she would throw on a heavy woolen cloak of deep blue and storm out to the cliff wall where she paced above the shore and ranted at the wind, then suffered silently as the tears welled in her eyes. Straightening up, she reminded herself she was no longer a child.

And so the last day of the month finally arrived.

She had eaten the largest breakfast served her in several weeks, and she knew as she faced the rolling surf that she was finally healthy once more. The taste of the salty air, the feel of Seacliff’s stone beneath her hands… it all felt as it should, and it gave her a sense of power she’d forgotten she possessed. A sense of power and of justice.

In this strange, elated mood she was not dismayed when she saw Oliver striding hurriedly toward her, one hand holding his elegant military cape close to him, the other adjusting a plumed tricorne over his wig. He called to her, and she turned, pulling up her hood to keep the wind from her neck.

“My dear,” he said, puffing as if he’d just run from the village, “I’ve just had word from friends in London. It seems those damned fools in the colonies have…” He blustered meaninglessly on for several seconds, until she laid a placating hand on his chest, frowning because she’d never seen him quite so solemn and excited at the same time.

“What?” she asked. “There’ve been some troubles, so you’ve told me, but it was nothing to worry about, you said.”

“I was wrong,” he admitted, pulling himself up. “Those idiots have actually fired upon the king’s infantry again—near that Boston seaport place this time. Generals Howe and Burgoyne have been instructed to put the matter to rights immediately, but that means troops have to be raised. I have been asked to assist in preparing them, and to make ready in case the idiot French decide to commit suicide again.”

She must have blanched, because he took her arms and smiled to reassure her.

“You’re not to concern yourself, Caitlin, about such things. We will most certainly not be invaded, and I expect that it will all be over and done before next summer. Once the winter storms have cleared the seas, those fools will face the full might of His Majesty’s battalions. They cannot win. And they will not win.”

“But you—”

“As I’ve already said, if you’d only listen, I’ve got to see that men are recruited for the army. To that end, I shall be gone for some little while, though I expect to return before year’s end. In my absence, James has been given my full consent and authority. You will see to it, please, that his wishes are as my own.”

He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, and she had already offered it in some confusion before the import of his declaration reached home. Then she pushed herself away sharply. “You said what to Mr. Flint?”

“My dear,” Oliver said impatiently, “I have no intention of arguing with you. I have neither the time nor the inclination. You will do as you are told, and I
will
be kept informed of it. Make no mistake about that.”

A stiff and swift bow followed, a half-salute with gloved hand, and then he marched across the lawn toward the stables, bellowing for Bradford, for Davy, and not turning once to wave her a farewell.

She stared after him, taking a single step in pursuit before in helplessness she stopped and wrung her hands anxiously. It wasn’t possible things had progressed this far. Surely she hadn’t abdicated. As boldly as a harlot in Petticoat Lane, Oliver had simply taken control, using first her grief and then her illness as a cover for his actions. And now… now all her plans to make Seacliff hers once again were dashed at her feet, shattered like a crystal chalice and ground to dust beneath his heel. With James in control, and without Griffin for support, it was hopeless. Entirely, completely, desperately hopeless.