The Dark Unwinding (20 page)

I
was trapped in a box, weighed down so I could not move or see or hear, only think, and even my thoughts were vague and disordered. The weight pressed on my chest, there was no air, though there was pain in my very center, both burning and sharp, and I could do nothing against it, not even groan or curl up my knees. I could only know that it was, and endure. When the silent hurting became more than could be borne, the heavy box around me flipped and was turned back again by forces that were not my own. I thought maybe I was vomiting, but that, too, was beyond my control. And my pain ebbed, the weight in my chest eased, and there was quiet, a deep, tired quiet, where nothing existed but darkness, myself, and my box. I lay still inside it.

After a time I heard things, noises creeping to me: the squeak of a floorboard, a door latch, water in a glass. I heard the rough sound of Mrs. Brown, and the answering voice of a man I did not know. And I heard my name, many times, said low and soft to my ear. My breath came deep and content, and very slowly, I slipped away.

When I woke, Marianna’s room was full of gray daylight, the kind that only comes from an afternoon soaked in heavy cloud. There were one or two candles lit against the dim, but the rest of the room was in gloom. I studied this for a few moments, then the pink fabric canopy draped far over my head. When I had examined it thoroughly, I moved my gaze again and discovered Mary, her round eyes red-rimmed.

“What happened?” I asked, but I was weaker than I realized. Mary frowned and scooted forward, leaning close. I tried to speak louder. “What happened to me?”

“You had a fit, Miss,” she whispered, “in the library, while the magistrate and the solicitor was here. They would’ve been taking you away right then, only you fell on the floor and shook so, and then the rabbit had a fit, too. Then you went still and we thought you was dead, but he poured black stuff in you and made you puke and … you was lying there so still….” She took my hand and patted it. “We’ve sent to Milton, but the rain is so bad the doctor ain’t come yet.”

I tried to piece together Mary’s story with the incoherent pictures that I thought were memories, but I was so tired. I shut my eyes.

“Don’t go to sleep again, Miss! Can’t you speak a bit more? Can you take some water?”

Mary’s distress made me instantly guilty. I opened my eyes again and with much effort asked, “Who is ‘he’?”

“What, Miss?” Her freckles were screwed up in concentration as she strained to listen.

“You said he made me … made me …” I was hoping she would understand, because the words were almost all I could manage.

“Oh!” Mary’s face brightened with understanding. “Him is him, Miss,” she said confusingly.

I sighed, and went to sleep.

When I woke again the windows were dark, there was fire and candle, and I realized that it must have been raining before only because the sound was now gone from the room. Mary’s mother sat asleep in my chair, mouth hanging open unceremoniously as she snored, but other than that and the hearth crackle, the room was very quiet. Experimentally I moved my arms, relieved to feel a little life in me, sat up, waited for my head to clear, and swung my feet over the edge of the mattress. I padded unsteadily to the bathing room, noting that I was still in my grandmother’s dress, now thoroughly crumpled, shut the door, and when I returned Lane was in the shadows, sitting on the far edge of Marianna’s bed.

I did not wait to notice whether Mrs. Brown was still asleep or to think of more proper clothing. I was not sure how much longer I could stay on my feet. I climbed into the bed in the blue silk and snuggled down beneath the portion of the coverlet that Lane was not pinning down with his weight.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“A little tired,” I whispered. I was exhausted.

We stayed that way for several minutes, Mrs. Brown snoring, Lane utterly still, me settled deep into the pillows. But it was my body that was weary, not my mind. My mind was adding and subtracting, trying to order a set of jumbled events into a logical row. Lane. Party. Marrying Ben and saving my uncle. Magistrate, a man with a twisting face, fire in my insides, and flame from a pistol. Pain and then stillness. Words in my ear, and, I think, a hand in mine. How I wished I knew what had been real.

“Am I ill?” I asked finally.

“You were poisoned,” Lane replied.

I frowned, trying to understand this idea.

“Mr. Cooper agrees,” he continued. “But we’re waiting for Dr. Metcalfe from Milton. And we’ve sent for Mr. Babcock. The rain has swollen the river, and some of the moor road is washed out. But it’s stopped now.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure he could see that in the flickering dark and with the blankets pulled up to my chin. I thought of what Mary had said. “Did you make me …” I struggled for a more genteel word. “… make me get rid of it?”

“I gave you ipecac and made you vomit.”

“What sort of poison was it?”

“Mr. Cooper doesn’t know.”

“But how did I … Where was it?”

“Bertram ate the cucumbers, and he got sick, too.”

I remembered the world shaking, and the explosive sound that had been so long in coming to my ears. “Did someone shoot Bertram?”

“Yes. Mr. Lockwood thought he was rabid.”

I closed my eyes. “Where is Davy?”

“Aunt Bit can’t find him.”

“Does she know where to look?”

“Yes, I told her.”

“He’ll come back,” I said, though I was not sure it was true. I could hear Lane’s breathing, hard and fast, and then I understood that all his calm words had belied the fact that he was angry, very angry, in a fury only just held in check. I took my arm from the blankets, reached across the bedclothes, and found his hand. He let me take it, letting out a long, pent-up sigh. The familiar warmth made me think that some of my dreams had been real. “Where is my uncle?” I asked him.

“Hidden. Purdue left, bad roads or no, but Mr. Lockwood is still here. We’re putting him in the Upper Village until he can leave safely, but I don’t think he’ll go even then. We told him Mr. Tully was upset by what happened and is ill as a result, and that you were ill and still are, but the man’s not an idiot. The rain has kept him indoors, but that’s over now. He’ll be about tomorrow, asking questions. Ben is with Mr. Tully at the workshop, and we’ve men looking out. He’ll get Mr. Tully into the tunnels if Mr. Lockwood comes around. Mr. Tully doesn’t … Aunt Bit told him you were tired from your birthday, and that the bad men were gone away. He doesn’t know.”

Ben was keeping my uncle hidden. If I married Ben Aldridge, he would help me continue that process, I was certain of it. I looked to the dark shadow sitting on the edge of my bed. I had to do it. I would do it. For Uncle Tully, and for him. I felt empty inside. Lane swung his feet onto the bed and lay back against the pillows, one arm behind his head, our hands still between us.

“You lied for us,” he said.

“Yes.” I shut my eyes again, to better feel his closeness.

“And what will happen to you now?”

“I will be cut off when my aunt finds out.”

“Can you come back here, if that happens?”

“There will be no ‘here’ if that happens.” I listened to the fire spitting sparks at the hearth.

“You weren’t drunk at the party.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Have you … ever been drunk?”

I thought carefully before answering. If I spoke honestly, then there would be nothing left for him to know but the truth, that Mr. Lockwood had good reason to take me away. I took a deep breath. “No. I never have.”

He did not speak for a time, and when he did, the low voice was very quiet. “How often does it happen?”

“I don’t know.” My stomach was writhing, having to admit these things. “Sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Better to be drunk, than … than …” I left the thought unfinished. “But they still have to think it. That I was drunk. They can’t know, I don’t want any of them to know.”

Lane sat quiet, thoughtful, the tightness of his hand unchanging in mine. “Someone sent those men here to take you,” he said. “And someone poisoned you. Why both of these things?”

I opened my eyes again. “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it.” Strangely, I’d accepted all the facts presented to me without once considering that someone, someone who knew me, must be responsible for them. “Do you know … who?” I asked.

“I was hoping you did.”

And then, like fitted cogs that intermesh, my thoughts came together, and I did know who. There was only one person who hated me so thoroughly, and would have done anything, I believed, to keep me from ruining Stranwyne. “It was Mrs. Jefferies,” I said. I felt Lane stiffen.

“What do you mean?”

I remembered the sheer spite in her eyes the night before my birthday, when she had said I would not want to go on living. And she had known I would eat those cucumbers. “It was her. She poisoned me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Who else, then? You? My uncle? Ben Aldridge?”

“We need to talk about Ben Aldridge.”

“Yes,” I said. “We do.”

He caught my tone, and turned on his side to better look at me, brows down, the gray eyes level with our interlocked hands. “Why?”

“Because …” I looked away. “Because I’ve thought of a way … to fix this.”

“Have you now? Took you long enough.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that Ben Aldridge would marry my aunt Bit if he thought it would get him closer to Mr. Tully.”

And I would marry Ben Aldridge in the blink of an eye to keep Lane and my uncle safe at Stranwyne. The thought made me glad and sick at the same time. Someone, at least, could be saved, even if it wasn’t myself. When I found the courage to look up again it was to an expression I knew well: dark, brooding, and with a thunderstorm brewing, a look I’d seen many times in my first days at Stranwyne. I tensed, as if anticipating a blow.

“Do you really think,” he said to me, “that you can run off to London and be Ben Aldridge’s wife, and that somehow, in some miraculous way, that everything will come out right in the end?”

I did not answer.

“Ben Aldridge might protect Mr. Tully for the sake of his toys, but do you honestly think that he will take that much care of you? Do you truly think …” His words were rising like the wind. “… that you can leave here now, and that nothing will change? That everything will just go on being the same as it ever was?”

I had nothing to say. Keeping Stranwyne unchanged was the very best I could hope for. I could feel his clouds growing thicker, churning.

“Well, it will not be the same, Katharine. Not for all of us … Not for me.”

I lay very still. His words made tiny fractures run all through my insides, like the minute cracks on the parson’s face. My uncle would be free, and Lane, and the people of the villages would have their homes. This I could give them, and whether Lane knew it or not, it was an infinitely better gift than my shattered self. He sat up suddenly. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I felt ashamed, though it was all for him and Uncle Tully. But I had not been prepared for how fast or how violently his storm would break. Lane had flung away my hand and was on his feet before I had drawn breath. He leaned over the bed, his fists sinking down into the mattress.

“Well, go on and do it, then, Miss Tulman. I won’t be stopping you. As you told me once yourself, there’s nothing here at Stranwyne that actually belongs to me. Enjoy that fine new house in London, down to your last miserable bloody breath!”

I was hurt, exhausted, heartbroken, and poisoned, and all at once, in a flaming temper. I spat out the words. “If you are so eager for my misery and death, Mr. Moreau, why don’t you consult your aunt? She could offer you some excellent advice on the subject, I’m sure!”

The look that was his response to this made me wish I was dead already. He straightened into a shadow I could only just see, melting away, and then the door to Marianna’s bedchamber slammed, shaking the room and the pictures on the walls. I buried my face in the pillow.

“Well. It’s been nothing but smooth sailing around here since you walked through the door, Miss, that’s certain. But a hot temper is a good thing, in my book. People don’t die when their blood’s up.”

I turned my tear-streaked face toward the hearth, where Mrs. Brown’s eyes were bright and snapping, not a trace of sleep in them. I tried to remember the last time I’d heard her snore, and couldn’t.

“A piece of advice to you, Miss. One and one don’t always add up to two, and you can’t be making it do so. And if I was you, I wouldn’t be eating the first cucumber, or anything else for that matter, ’less it comes from my Mary. There. That’s two bits for you, and all for the price of one.”

I turned my head back into the pillow, right into the wet spot my tears had left. Mrs. Brown spoke from close beside the bed.

“Here, Miss. Have some soup, then. You’re as pale as the linens.”

I looked up at her in surprise, then at the bowl in her hand, and shook my head. She smiled.

“And that’s the first sign of sense I’ve seen from you, Miss, if you don’t mind me saying.” She sat on the edge of the mattress, a bowl and spoon in her hand. “But I can swear that there ain’t been a touch on this but my girl’s own hand, and it came straight from my cottage, every bit. Been keeping it warm for you, too.” She offered up the bowl. “You will have to eat, Miss.”

I looked into her round, plain face and decided that if Mrs. Brown was an assassin, then the world was no fit place to live in anyway. I sat up, and let her feed me.