The Gilded Cage (25 page)
Authors: Lucinda Gray
My body is low over the horse, my hands tangled in its mane and my legs starting to quiver, when I hear a long, terrible scream. The sound rakes my skin with chilly fingers, and for a moment I cannot tell whether it's come from Henry's horse or its rider. We're racing now along the weed-covered track that wends its way alongside the quarry. Following the sound of the cry, I bring the panting horse carefully through the trees leading to the quarry's edge.
There I find Henry's mount, riderless and stamping. Its sides are streaked with froth, but it looks to be unhurt. I whip my head wildly from side to side, searching for Henry, for the trampled bushes that might mark his path on foot. There's nothing to see, and finally I slip from my horse's back.
Carefully, I advance toward the agitated animal, looking over my shoulder to be sure that Henry is not at my back, waiting to push me onto the rocks below. From far away, I hear the sounds of Mr. Dowling's men, crashing through the woods on foot. Their dogs are baying. I pick my way barefoot over the gravelly ground at the quarry's edge, where the earth gives way to a sheer stone wall. I peek over it into the jagged valley, and gasp.
Henry is stretched across two boulders far below. His head lies lower than his chest, frozen at a queer, gut-wrenching angle. He's perfectly still. On instinct, I look up; already two crows circle above us, scenting fresh death on the air.
I grip my arms with cold fingers, crouching in bare feet so numb and raw I can only dimly sense them. What made him fall? The horse is uninjured, and the approaching men are still too distant. As I lean forward, barely able to wrench my gaze from the broken body below, a near-subliminal sound raises the fine hairs on my neck. I turn slowly, my heart pumping with dread.
A little ways from me, a pile of boulders rises from the earth, stacked like a cairn. Atop it, black as nightmares and breathing in fast, hot spurts, is an impossibly large, yellow-eyed cat. Staring back at the thing, I forget to breathe, until my chest starts to ache and I tip forward in the grass. It glares at me, panting on my knees in the damp morning, then turns and pads silently away, disappearing with a leap into the dark space between two trunks.
Mr. Dowling's men finally break through the trees. They call out for Henry, their dogs straining toward the quarry. Mr. Simpson, his face flushed and smeared with dirt from the chase, rushes to my side, guiding me to my feet and into his arms. I hear the breath catch in his throat as he spots Henry's corpse below.
“It's over, Katherine,” he murmurs. “It's over now.” His heart pounds against my ear, and I think for a moment of telling him what I've seen. I squint at the place where the animal disappeared, and wonder if I imagined its presence. But the spooked horse, and the man lying on the rocks below, tell me it was real.
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G
RACE'S CARRIAGE CRESTS
the rise and is gone, my cousin just a faint outline inside it. Only the birds calling from the menagerie herald her leaving. I watch the carriage disappear, carrying her to the home of an elderly aunt, and then continue on my way into the woods. The air around me feels brighter, just knowing Grace won't be at the estate when I return.
There have been three days of comings and goings. Mr. Dowling did what he could to keep Henry's name out of the mud, but servants will talk. I didn't even watch them load Henry's coffin and take it away. Crowne & Crowne are handling his burial, somewhere far from Walthingham. Of course, the house is not the same without him, and without his sister. Few of the best families will look at the Randolphs in the same way after everything that's happened, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I can't imagine I'll be hosting many balls here.
I never had the chance to ask Grace why she deserted me the night Henry dragged me away to Temperley's, and she never came to me to offer any excuse. Whatever brittle relationship we had is shattered and irreparable with her brother's death. Even if I could bring myself to interrogate her, I doubt I could discover the truth. She might claim it was a sisterly concernâthat she in fact believed me hysterical and in need of medical helpâand I would not swear that she was lying. Or if she was, even she herself did not realize it. Grace lived a strange, sheltered life until the stark reality of the present. I see now that she's formed an existence based on the certainties of class and the rules of decorum, but without those supports, her delicate world is nothing but confection. I do not doubt she loved her brother, and the true horror of his deeds will have shaken her to her core. I hope she finds some peace, somewhere.
“You look troubled, Lady Walthingham. Do you regret Miss Campion's departure?” Mr. Simpson is wearing a lightweight coat and his customary serious expression, but I know now the gentleness and good humor that lie beneath that exterior. I can still see the raised scar over his left brow, where Henry struck him, but it's softening with the passing days.
“I can't say that I do,” I reply, smiling. I've set our course toward the bridge. I may never like that spot in wintertime, but today the light is soft, and warm on our faces. “I'm only thinking of the women still left at Temperley's.”
“Not Temperley's anymore,” he reminds me softly. “Soon it will officially be the George Randolph Hospital and Children's Home. Some of the former inmates have returned to their families, for better or worse. But many of them truly have no place to go.”
“We'll keep them under the new staff,” I say. “Anyone who wants to stay.”
“I never have seen someone give way to a sale so quickly as Mr. Temperley,” says William, smiling. “I'd like to think it was my legal skill that did it, but perhaps we should credit the influence of the magistrate.”
Among Temperley's women with a home to go to is Dorothy. She's still weak from her imprisonment, but reuniting with Elsie makes her stronger every day.
“You are still trying to find Dorothy's baby, aren't you?” I ask quietly.
“We've reached only dead ends,” he says with regret. “But she will have many opportunities to work with children at the hospital.”
I smile at him and try to let that be enough. I'm certain, at least, that my brother would approve of the way I'm spending our family fortune. We have enough of it, after allâthere was no need, in the end, for me to sell the estate.
“Soon we'll have few opportunities to meet like this.” Mr. Simpson doesn't look at me as he speaks. “Your hospital will be open, and you will, I hope, have no further need for a lawyer.”
“You hope?”
We walk to the middle of the bridge and pause. Our reflections in the water are backed by a sea of open sky. My hand still lies on his arm.
“I didn't meanâit's just that, I hope you can live a life with no need of legal help.”
I speak impulsively, my heart in my throat. “I'm grateful for what you've done for me. But do you think I walk out with you daily because of the legal advice you can give?”
In the lapping water below, his expression is too blurred to read. I dare not turn to look at his face.
“And do you think,” he says softly, “that I make the trip from Bath each day because I so love the countryside? But, Katherine⦔ He pauses a moment. “I should not even call you that. You are a lady, Lady Walthingham now. I'm not even a partner at Crowne & Crowne.”
I can't help it: I slap my palm in frustration against the rail of the bridge. “If titles and riches were what determined the decency of a man, then I would be standing here in love with my cousin, Henry Campion, not you.”
In the moment of dense, shimmering silence that follows, I'm struck by the import of what I've just said. Mr. Simpson turns to me and seizes my hand, his voice taut with excitement. “Say that again, Katherine.”
I take a deep breath. “William Simpson, I don't care what you are, I care
who
you are. And I love you.”
I dare look into his eyes at last. And as he leans his face toward mine, I think with joy of just how little Grace would approve of my kissing the family lawyer. But I am the sole remaining Randolph of Walthingham Hall, and I think I will keep my business my own.
I turn my face upward to meet his.
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Lucinda Gray
is the pseudonym of an American novelist living in New York. You can sign up for email updates
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CONTENTS
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Copyright © 2016 by Working Partners
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gray, Lucinda (Novelist), author.
Title: The gilded cage / Lucinda Gray.
Description: First edition.|New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016.|Summary: “An American farm girl discovers that she's an English heiress but claiming her fortune leads to danger and intrigue” âProvided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015022320|ISBN 9781627791816 (hardback)|ISBN 9781627791823 (trade paperback)|ISBN 9781627796538 (e-book)
Subjects:|CYAC: Inheritance and successionâFiction.|Social classesâFiction.|LoveâFiction.|Great BritainâHistoryâ1800-1837âFiction.|BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.|JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Europe.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G735 Gi 2016|DDC [Fic]âdc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015022320
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First hardcover edition 2016
eBook edition August 2016
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eISBN 9781627796538
