The Fifth Kiss (15 page)

Clara nodded, but she clutched her sister's hand even tighter. “There are so
many
things you must watch. Amy … she gets what she wants so easily—she may become quite spoiled. And Perry … sweet, unworldly Perry … he must learn to live in the real world. You mustn't let him go off to school without the proper defenses. He's so vulner—” The words died on her lips, and her eyes suddenly lit up with a glow that startled Olivia by its joyful animation. She turned quickly in the direction of her sister's gaze. Strickland stood in the doorway.

He was staring at his wife, his eyes stricken, his cheeks like chalk and his lips compressed. “Clara,
what
?”

“Miles! Oh,
Miles
!” she cried, reaching out her arms.

He strode across the room and knelt beside her bed, enveloping her in his arms. Olivia, completely unnoticed, tiptoed from the room and closed the door gently behind her.

For the next few hours, she kept a vigil outside the door, but no sound issued from inside. She lingered about the hallway, wishing to be on hand if she were needed but reluctant to interrupt the encounter within. When Mrs. Joliffe appeared with the supper tray, however, Olivia permitted her to tap on the door, but Strickland's rough voice ordered her away. Later, however, the housekeeper was permitted to enter with her ladyship's medicinal draught. When she emerged, she told Olivia that his lordship had suggested that everyone go to bed.

Olivia undressed and lay down on her bed but couldn't sleep. Somehow she knew that her sister would not last the night. Memories of Clara in their younger years floated through her mind—Clara taking her on her first outing to the Pantheon Bazaar; Clara laughing with her over the antics of a gosling in the park; Clara bent over yards of Florentine silk as she stitched the finishing touches on Olivia's first party dress. And over it all, Olivia saw Strickland's face as it had looked on his arrival, stricken with fear and agony. Did he really love his wife after all? Olivia shook her head, confounded. How ignorant she was about things that really mattered.

There was the sound of coach wheels on gravel, and she woke with a start. She'd fallen asleep. Her room was so dark that she knew the hour must be very late. A carriage was moving away from the house and down the drive. Who was leaving at this hour? She flew to the window and caught, in the faint light issuing from a downstairs window, a glimpse of the doctor's curricle just before the darkness swallowed it up. Her chest constricted in terror.

She threw a robe over her gown and tiptoed down the hall to Clara's room. There was no sound from within. With noiseless caution she turned the knob and opened the door. Inside, by the light of a single guttering candle she could see her sister's form covered by the counterpane. She stood frozen for a moment as the awareness of her sister's death sank into her heart. But when the first shock of loss ebbed sufficiently to permit her to think of others rather than herself, she became aware that someone was kneeling at the side of the bed. It was Strickland, his head lowered on the counterpane and buried by one arm, the other thrown across his wife's body in a gesture of unutterable agony. His shoulders were shaking with choked and silent sobs.

Until this moment, Olivia had not been completely convinced about Strickland's feelings for his wife. His stricken face, when he'd arrived earlier, had really moved her, but later she'd remembered a line from Macbeth:
to show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy
. But now she was ashamed of the thought. In his grief, at least, Strickland was not false. Here, without awareness of other eyes on him, his pain and despair were as nakedly revealed and as clearly apparent as a bare black tree against a field of snow. Olivia, fighting back her own surge of anguish, backed from the room and silently closed the door, leaving her brother-in-law to his bitter grief.

chapter ten

Even weeks later, when she was able to review the events after the funeral with some dispassion, Olivia blamed Strickland more than she blamed herself. She had really tried her best. She had meant well. After all, how could she have foreseen the devastating effects that a series of unexpected events would have on the family … especially on her nephew?

The fault, she told herself, was more Strickland's than hers. She had tried, after her sister died, to submerge her own grief and to care for the needs of others. When her father and brothers had returned to London after the funeral, she had remained at Langley Park. She had tried to keep the household on an even keel. She had tried to make the atmosphere cheerful, to encourage the children to play, to urge everyone to cease whispering and to speak in normal tones … even to laugh. But Strickland had interfered in every possible way, as, for example, in the matter of the draperies. He had wanted them
drawn
in every room he entered. She, on the other hand, had insisted that the servants
open
them to let the sunshine in. No sooner would Strickland leave a room when Olivia would order that the draperies be opened. No sooner would Strickland enter when he would order them shut. The situation became positively ludicrous as the servants ran about opening and shutting draperies to obey the contradictory orders they'd received—and always displeasing
somebody
, no matter what they did.

Strickland himself had been like a dark cloud hanging over the house. He made no attempt to hide the blackness of his mood even from the children. He spent most of his days in the darkened library, ignoring the children, shouting angrily at the servants, shunning all companionship, neglecting to respond to his messages from London, and drinking himself into a stupor every night. He left a trail of resentment and chaos wherever he went, and Olivia felt completely incapable of dealing with the wreckage in his wake. As a result, the servants became more and more sullen, the atmosphere more and more gloomily tense and the bewildered children more and more unhappy.

The children were confused by the absence of their mother, and Olivia had to deal with their confusion all by herself. Perry did not speak of his mother at all, nor did he cry. He seemed to close in on himself, to withdraw, showing the world only a stiff, white face and a lost, uncertain look in his eyes. The look pierced Olivia to the heart, but she didn't know what to do to dispel it. Amy wandered about in bewilderment, asking repeatedly, “But wheaw hath Mama
gone
?” Olivia tried to explain, but Heaven was, to the child, a baffling abstraction. Could her Mama
see
her from so far away? Olivia sat down with the children and gave them a long, carefully considered explanation. Amy listened intently, her large eyes wide in awe. After her aunt finished, some round, fat tears rolled down her face, and she seemed to accept—with at least
some
degree of equanimity—the idea that her mother was watching over her from somewhere in the sky and would always do so. But Perry, Olivia suspected, was not comforted.

Weeks passed in this precariously ominous climate. It was almost inevitable that a crisis would occur. And it did, one evening in mid-October. Miss Elspeth had tapped at Perry's bedroom door to tell him that his supper was ready, but she heard no response. After a moment, she went in. The room was empty. She searched through the entire third floor, even going so far as to enlist Mr. Clapham's assistance in the search, but there was no Perry to be found.

When she informed Olivia that Perry had disappeared, Olivia guessed at once where the boy had gone. Following her instinct, she ran down the hall to her sister's bedroom, with Miss Elspeth following close behind. There, standing at his mother's dressing table, her hairbrush in his hand, stood the unhappy child.

Miss Elspeth sucked in her breath (for his lordship had ordered that no one be permitted to enter the room) and made as if to snatch the boy out of there, but Olivia, with a gesture of restraint, motioned for the governess to wait. She went up to him and knelt down beside him, gently taking the brush from his hand and replacing it. “Perry, love,” she said soothingly, “your supper is waiting. Don't you want to have your soup while it's hot?”

The boy gave an almost imperceptible sigh and nodded obediently. Olivia had a sudden desire to see him cry … or shout … or stamp his foot in refusal. Why was he so compliant? What had happened to the child's spirit?

At that moment, Lord Strickland loomed up in the open doorway. His eyes, darkly forbidding, swept over the boy, the kneeling Olivia and the governess hovering anxiously over them. “What are you doing in this room?” he asked in tight-lipped anger.

“N-Nothing,” Perry stammered, his body stiffening in fright.

“
Really
, my lord,” Olivia said in some impatience, “there's no need to take that tone—” She hoped that her mild defiance would show Perry that his father was only a man—not a monster—and someone who could be reasoned with.

“I gave specific orders about this room!” Strickland said darkly. “Now get out of here at once!
All
of you!”

Perry turned ashen and backed slowly to the door, his eyes fixed on his father's face and wide with terror. Olivia was appalled. She rose and, turning to the frightened governess, told her quietly to take Perry upstairs. “I'll be up in a moment,” she assured her as Miss Elspeth took Perry's hand and scurried to the door. Olivia followed the pair to the doorway and watched them leave. Then she closed the door, put her back against it and faced Strickland furiously. “How
can
you speak to your own child in that way?” she demanded.

“I was speaking to
you
, ma'am. Evidently you didn't hear me. I asked you to go.”

“Well, obviously Perry thought you were shouting at
him.
” She boldly took a few steps forward, determined to persevere in this attack. “Don't you care
anything
about your son's feelings?”

Strickland ground his teeth wrathfully. “You are doing it
again
, ma'am. I thought I had made myself clear on an earlier occasion (when you presumed to comment upon my management of my son) that I do not wish any interference from you!”

“But I
must
interfere. Can't you see that the child is in
misery
? Are you so deeply mired in your own grief that you have no sympathy for your children's?”

His eyes flashed furiously at her for a moment, and then fell. “Perhaps I am. But they are children. They will soon forget. While I must carry this … this lodestone of guilt to my grave.” He looked up at her with eyes burning with resentment. “And, dammit, it is
you
who are to blame!”

“I?” she asked, astounded.

“Yes,
you
! You and your interfering ways. If you had
told
me that my wife was ill and had let me
prepare
myself and the children for the blow, we would all be in a better state,” he said with bitter venom.

Olivia felt her chest constrict. “But Clara
said
—”

“I don't care
what
Clara said. You had no right to withhold such news from me.”

A pulse began to beat in Olivia's throat. How could he place the blame at
her
door? She had often asked Clara
not
to keep her illness secret. Was it
her
fault if Clara had chosen to face her illness alone? “I … I
could
not refuse to respect my sister's wishes,” she argued in self-defense.

“But you
could
take it upon yourself to stand between a husband and his wife, is that it?”

She was stung with a sudden wave of anger. What sort of husband had he been anyway? Faithless, selfish, far away from home most of the time … and now, when it was too late, he chose to play the role of husband to the hilt. “How can you blame
me
for stepping between you? You were not very much of a husband to begin with, as far as I can judge,” she said in a choked voice.

“Who are you to
judge
?” he snapped back. “What do you know of the matter? You, who are nothing but a callow
spinster
… with no knowledge of marriage except what comes from the yellowed pages of your father's books.”

She winced. “You do know how to be cruel, my lord. You needn't throw my lack of experience in my face.”

“But I
must
, it seems. How else are you to learn the consequences of the actions you've taken in your damned ignorance?”

“But I … I only did what my sister
asked
me to do!” she cried.

His nostril flared in an icy sneer. “Don't hide behind that lame excuse! You could have made your
own
decision, instead of allowing yourself to be led by the pathetic urgings of a dying woman who had mistakenly convinced herself that her best course was to be unselfish.
Unselfish
! Is there anything more selfish than someone who insists on martyrdom? Why didn't you use the mind God gave you? Any
fool
would have known that a husband and wife needed to be together during such a terrible time.”

The memory of her sister's face as it had looked when Strickland arrived at her bedside flashed across Olivia's mind. Clara's joy had been unmistakable. Yet she'd said only a moment before that she didn't want Olivia to send for him. Good God, was Strickland
right
? Was Clara's unselfish sacrifice a mistaken one? And had
she
, Olivia, abetted her sister in that mistake?

Agonized tears welled up in her eyes. If she had followed her own instincts, Strickland might have been able to share in his wife's last days. He might have eased Clara's torment … and his own. Olivia's throat burned in pain and guilt. “I'm … sorry. I sh-should have thought …”

“Yes, you should have,” was the terse, cold reply.

There was a moment of silence. Strickland turned and walked to the bed, staring down at the pristine neatness of its covers, which only emphasized the terrible emptiness. Olivia stood watching him, overwhelmed with her guilt. How deeply had he been wounded by being kept in the dark about his wife's illness? And how great was her—Olivia's—responsibility for that wound?