The Silver Touch (43 page)

At that moment Bill rushed across to Hester, exclaiming about the soldiers, and William hurriedly turned the woman away with him, his arm across her shoulders. Yet as they began to be lost in the mingling crowd, he could not resist one last fleeting glance up at his mother. Then they were gone.

Behind Hester there came a rising wail, thin and piercing. ‘That was William!’

Hester sprang up from her chair, but she was too late. Sarah had rushed for the door. ‘Wait!’ Then as she disappeared from the room to go pounding down the stairs, Hester turned in appeal. ‘Stop her, for mercy’s sake!’

It was Alice who moved first. There was a hubbub with the children, one of them crying, and neither she nor the other two women had heard or seen what had taken place. She simply supposed that Sarah, in one of her quirks of eccentricity, had taken it into her head to follow the Lord Mayor’s coach with every chance of getting lost in streets she did not know. Outside there was no sign of her. Alice began to dart this way and that. Surely Sarah, bare-headed and capeless in a crimson gown, should be easy to sight. The trouble was that with the extra number of people about it was not easy to see far in any direction.

Ten minutes later Alice returned, having searched in vain. Hester sat sideways on a chair, her arm resting on the back of it, and upon seeing Alice on her own she let her forehead sink wearily on to her hand. Letticia and Anne-Olympe looked grave. With the need for secrecy gone, Hester had told them of William’s return and her wish that Sarah should never know of it since she was now Peter’s wife. What she had not disclosed was her own private fear about the situation with regards to Anne-Olympe, but even that danger had been averted now it was apparent that William had married the widow whose workshop he had taken over. After all the trouble he had caused her, Hester knew he would never have flaunted a bastard. William was well and truly wed.

‘Sit down, Alice,’ Letticia advised, releasing a sigh. ‘There’s much for you to hear.’

They all took turns in the next hour to look for Sarah, taking her cape with them in hope. The children, tired from the excitement and increasingly bored at being confined to the room, began to get restless and quarrelsome. Just as Anne-Olympe was thinking she must take them home before any damage was done, Bill having made a lord mayor’s coach out of chairs on the floor, the door reopened and Sarah entered. She was ashen, her eyes huge and staring and her hair, which had become loosened from its pins as she had pushed and shoved to get through the crowd, hung in disarray down her back. She fixed her eyes on Hester as she crossed the floor, her movements agitated and unsure.

‘I couldn’t reach him!’ she exclaimed frantically. ‘I glimpsed him once in the crowd and lost him again.’

Hester’s voice was husky with sadness. ‘It was for the best.’

‘How can you say that?’ Sarah drove the fingers of both hands into her dishevelled hair and shook her head wildly. ‘Tell me how long William has been back in this country! I demand to know.’

‘Long enough to have finished his disrupted apprenticeship and to shoulder the responsibility of a thriving goldsmithing business outside London.’

Sarah’s cheeks hollowed and then she made an unsteady gesture of accusation. ‘You have kept us apart because of Peter, haven’t you?’

‘It was William’s own decision made a long time ago. Have you forgotten why you married Peter? Everything was over with William then.’

‘It was never over for me!’ She threw her arms over her head and rocked with despair. ‘And it never will be.’

Her abject misery touched everyone, the children standing silent, the younger ones frightened. Bill, who was attached to her, went forward and hugged her. He did not understand the situation, but he knew it was something bad. ‘Don’t cry, Aunt Sarah. Please!’

She lowered her arms and took his head between her hands, looking down at him. ‘You’re like my William. Did anyone ever tell you that?’ Gently she put him to one side and raised her voice at his grandmother on a curiously hysterical note. ‘I want William’s address. I must find him and tell him everything. Then he and I will never be parted again!’

Hester’s pity suffused her whole face. ‘It’s too late. William is married with a child.’

Sarah’s pallor became sickly white and her colourless lips began to quiver uncontrollably. Although she swayed she did not faint as the others expected, Alice and Letticia having drawn near. Her blurred eyes gazed beseechingly at Hester as if wanting what she had been told to be denied. Since her own vocal chords had apparently ceased to function, she made several small helpless movements with her hands. Hester caught them in her clasp.

‘You can make a new start to your life with all of us to help you. We are your family. Think how Peter has become your mainstay. He will always be there.’

She did not appear to grasp what she was hearing, simply closing her eyes and nodding as if to ward off anything more being said to her. She was still nodding without meaning when Letticia put her cape about her shoulders and her hat was given to her.

‘You should go home now and rest.’ Letticia patted her comfortingly.

Sarah put out a hand to Bill. ‘Take me down to the coach. I don’t remember where it is.’

He looked questioningly at his mother and grandmother. They both indicated he should do as she wished, Hester adding: ‘Tell the servant in the entrance hall to summon the coaches for all of us and wait with Aunt Sarah there.’

It took a little time to get the children into their outdoor clothes as well as to accomplish their last-minute trips to the closed stool in the adjoining anteroom. They were about to leave, Hester fastening the cape of the youngest child, when Bill reappeared, looking puzzled and put out.

‘Aunt Sarah took the first of our two coaches and told the coachman to take her home. She wouldn’t let me go with her.’

Immediately there was consternation. A glance from the window showed she was already out of sight. Letticia tried to calm her mother’s fears about Sarah going off alone.

‘She wanted to be on her own for a little while, that’s all. And when she gets home the housekeeper will look after her.’

‘That’s just it,’ Hester exclaimed over her shoulder as she led everyone downstairs. ‘Sarah and Peter were going to dine with me this evening to allow the housekeeper and the servants to have a whole day off. It’s so rare for Sarah to be out of the house. Peter will still be at work and there’ll be nobody there!’

Hester had never known a longer or more crowded journey; she and Anne-Olympe with seven children in one coach. They came to Peter’s house before reaching either of their own homes and she and Anne-Olympe alighted there. Instructions were given to the coachman to see all the children into the care of their nursemaid and to get a message to Peter at the workshop to come at once.

Hester hastened up into the porched entrance and hammered the brass knocker. She could not bring herself to voice the terrible fear that was in her, but she supposed her daughter-in-law guessed. There was no reply to her knocking and she tried to call through the door, pressing herself against it. ‘Sarah! Let me in!’

‘I’ll see if there’s a window open at the back.’ Anne-Olympe had already examined those at the front of the house. She did not find an opening anywhere. Without hesitation she took up a stone from the garden and smashed a pane. Putting in her hand, she released the latch and, after gathering up her skirt and petticoats, she climbed in. She ran first to admit her mother-in-law into the house and then had time to see that a kitchen knife lay where it had been dropped on the black and white chequered tiles of the hall. Nearby was Sarah’s hat, its bright blue ribbons forming a pattern of their own. On the stairs was her discarded cape.

‘Pray God we’re in time!’ Hester gasped, following her up the flight.

It did not take them long to find her. She was curled up in the darkest corner of a large linen cupboard, her face buried in her arms. Hester dropped to her knees and spoke softly to her.

‘Let me help you to bed, my dear. You’ve had a great shock today. A little sleep will bring you comfort.’ There was no response. Gently she slid a hand under her daughter-in-law’s chin and tilted her face. Sarah blinked, her gaze empty and totally vacant. A shiver of horror ran down Hester’s spine. ‘Oh, no! Oh, my dear girl! Have we failed you after all?’

Anne-Olympe, helping Hester to bring Sarah to her feet, realized that oblivion must have come to her sister-in-law’s mind in time to save her from the wrist-slashing that the knife downstairs had indicated. Sarah stood motionless to be undressed and put in a night-gown as if she were a life-size doll. Hester, to whom tears were rare, wept uncontrollably as she brushed the beautiful hair while Anne-Olympe tidied up and put everything away. They were just drawing the covers up over Sarah in the bed when there came a knocking on the front door.

‘That can’t be Peter,’ Anne-Olympe observed, ‘because I’m sure I left the bolt drawn.’

‘I had better go down anyway.’ Hester dried the wetness of her eyes as she descended into the hall. She opened the door to the coachman.

‘Mr Peter wasn’t there, ma’am. He had to go and see a client earlier today, but Mr Jonathan will tell him to come straight here when he returns.’

She closed the door and leaned against it, reaction setting in to the twists and turns of the tragedy that had occurred. Her usual abundant energy had deserted her and her legs felt ready to give way. Determinedly she straightened her back and went slowly across to remount the stairs. That dreadful knife had been cleared away with all else. Although she wanted to hope that Sarah would come out of that deep shock to resume normal living, her common sense told her that it would never be. Something had snapped in Sarah’s mind. It would have been easy to give way again to tears of pity and sadness, but she must be strong as she had always been in times of crisis. She was in John’s place as head of the family and must carry her duty well.

Anne-Olympe was sitting at the bedside. ‘Sarah has gone to sleep.’

‘That’s good.’ Hester sat down herself more wearily than she had intended. She was aware of her daughter-in-law’s understanding gaze. Unexpectedly it touched her. She and this young woman had come through a terrible time together in the past hour. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without your help, Anne-Olympe.’

‘Alice or Letticia would have returned with you if I had not been there.’

‘That’s not the point. Today no daughter could have been closer to me than you were and still are as we sit here together. There have been barriers between us in the past and angry words exchanged. I hope they are forgotten.’

Anne-Olympe looked at her linked hands in her lap as if pondering her answer and then raised her head again. ‘I have known you feared Peter’s love for me and its possible consequences. My anger has been a passing thing.’

Hester drew in her breath. ‘I thought I had hidden that particular anxiety as I believed Peter had disguised his feelings for you.’

‘He did for a long time, probably because Jonathan still held me with the charm that had made me fall in love with him. As that illusion cleared I began to see Peter in another light. No man in love can guard his glances forever.’

‘Does he realize that you know how he feels?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve tried to be as astute in concealing my own emotions from him as he was in keeping knowledge from me for a time.’

There was a long pause. ‘Are you telling me you’re in love with him?’

‘I am.’ It was said openly and honestly. ‘But I’m married to another man to whom I gave a promise of fidelity at the altar and such is my nature that I must abide by that vow, no matter that he has betrayed me since the early days of our marriage.’

‘You know that too?’ Hester’s voice was imbued with sympathy.

Anne-Olympe gave a heavy nod, unwittingly revealing the burden it had been to her. ‘Jonathan is a good father.’ It was as if she wanted to cement her reassurance by showing that her marriage still retained an unassailable bastion. ‘My children are everything to me.’

Suddenly Sarah stirred, sitting bolt upright to stare about her blankly. With gentleness, Anne-Olympe pressed her back into the pillows and she slept again almost immediately. Hester rose to her feet, relieved immeasurably that the way had been cleared between her and Jonathan’s wife. She had long held Anne-Olympe in respect and this had now reached new bounds.

‘I think I should go downstairs in readiness for when Peter comes. He has to be prepared for what has happened. You realize that Sarah must not be left?’

‘I’ll stay with her, Hester.’

In the drawing-room Hester, heartened by Anne-Olympe’s use of her Christian name, used a poker on the damped-down fire to bring forth a cheerful spurt of flame. Then she lighted a few candles to lift the early dusk as had been done already in the bedchamber upstairs. She had barely set down the tinderbox when the front door was thrown open and Peter burst into the house, his face racked, his greatcoat flying out around him. He tossed his tricorn hat aside as she hurried to meet him.

‘What’s happened to Sarah?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Has she — ?’

‘No!’ She put her hands on his arms, guessing the dread that never left him. ‘Come and sit with me by the fire before you go upstairs. You should know everything that has happened first.’

He threw off his greatcoat and followed her. When he had heard her out about William and Sarah he sat sombrely silent for a little while, his arms resting across his knees, his face deeply troubled. ‘My poor Sarah,’ he said at last. ‘There were times when I hoped she and I would mend each other’s shattered lives, but whenever a glimmer of that change appeared there were always setbacks and reversals, never more than in recent months.’ He did not elaborate, getting up to stand briefly with his back to the firelight, looking down at his mother. ‘When I have seen her I’ll come down again and take you home. I know one should never tell a woman she looks tired, but you do now and I think my remark excusable in the circumstances.’