The Gilded Cage (7 page)

A man in a tweed waistcoat enters the room, carrying a black leather medical bag. He's followed by Stella and an ice-pale Jane. I wonder how long I've been unconscious, that she's been fetched already from Bath. Stella kicks about the room, pleased to see me, but Grace blocks her from jumping on the couch. I want to tell her to put Stella in my arms, but the doctor has already sat down and taken my hand.

“I'm deeply sorry, Lady Randolph,” he says, his mouth just discernible beneath a bushy gray mustache. His brows droop over whiskey-brown eyes, and I think how much George would like to paint a face like this. George, George, George. Every moment I remember it afresh, and it's another stab to my chest.

He places a careful hand to my brow. “Can you stand, my lady? I'm afraid you'll become overheated. Walk a moment, catch your breath.”

I stand on yearling's legs. Just beyond the window, the men carry something between them, unwieldy and wrapped in sodden white. I count four bowed heads around my brother's body: Henry and John, Matt and Mr. Carrick.

“Where are they taking him?” I ask, my voice cracking and hoarse.

Grace shakes her head, just barely, but the doctor ignores her. “They're taking him to the west wing. It's the coldest part of the house, you see.” He stops uncomfortably, but I take his meaning, knowing they must keep his body from the heat.

“What a terrible, terrible thing,” Grace says in a sodden voice. She sits down heavily. “We will build up the railing on the bridge immediately.” She turns her pale face to me. “Forgive me, Katherine, that this accident happened at Walthingham Hall!”

“An accident,” I parrot dumbly. “But … but George was a strong swimmer. He could swim before he could walk. Even if he slipped…”

A memory of George as a boy, diving into the ice-cold creek with Connor, threatens to overwhelm me.

Jane moves forward, silhouetted against the fire's glow. “It doesn't matter in such cold water, Kat. Nobody could swim across that lake in winter. It would stop his heart.”

I turn my face away just as Henry enters the room, trailed by John. Henry moves to my side with speed, which suits me better than the slow, skittish movements more usual to mourning. Laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, he kneels beside me with moist eyes. His skin is sickly pale.

“Oh, my sweet cousin,” he says. “You can't know how sorry I am.”

“He couldn't just drown, Henry,” I say. “He couldn't have.”

The doctor moves toward us, uneasy, and Henry looks at me sadly. “There is no other explanation, Katherine. A young man at his first ball, on unfamiliar grounds. And he'd had a bit to drink.…”

I clutch at his arm. “But he rode to Bath,” I say. “Matt said his horse was gone first thing.”

Henry shares a look with Grace.

“What is it?” I say.

Henry clears his throat. “Croxley came back to the stables an hour ago. He was cold with wandering, but Matt's seen him right.”

I fall back against the couch, shaking my head.

“He must have thrown your brother on that bridge before running off,” Henry continues. “He could be wild, that one. He damn near toppled me once.”

Grace
tsk
s her tongue at the profanity, and in the hush that follows, all eyes watch me with unspoken pity. Except John, who lowers his gaze. Dr. Ebner rattles through his medical bag before producing a small bottle of something that I can tell will be sickly sweet just by looking at it.

“I will examine your brother's body, Lady Randolph,” he says, “to determine whether it was the fall or the water that killed him. But you mustn't trouble yourself with such unsavory things. It's imperative that you take something to calm your nerves.”

My energy spent, I allow him to administer the syrupy medicine. Grace asks him in quiet tones whether the body must truly be examined, and Henry retreats to the fire, to stand close by Jane.

The room seems suddenly terribly full with people. As the medicine takes effect, my mind grows fuzzy at the edges. I sense more than see John steal toward me, and then cover me with his coat. Its familiar smell of horses and wintry air fills me with such grief I feel weak.

As I drift into sleep, I hear two servants by the fire, speaking low. “You won't catch me going outside after dark again,” one mutters. “Not now that the Beast of Walthingham has claimed another.”

*   *   *

I'm alone now even in my sleep, too drugged and exhausted for dreams. When I wake, it's still dark. Clutching for John's coat, I find the silken coverlet of my own bed. Someone's carried me upstairs and stripped me down to my smallclothes.

By the fire's dying glow, I can make out a sleeping shape on a chair next to the bed. My heart expands—then contracts like a fist when I see that it's too small to be a man. After a moment I understand that it's Jane. Stella, splayed across her lap, rouses for a moment, then twitches back into sleep.

My mind flies to my brother, lying in cold solitude at the far end of the house. Can he really be gone? It seems impossible. A cavernous loneliness yawns below me as I shift to sitting, shivering despite the closeness of the air.

I shroud myself tightly in a trailing blanket and steal from the stifling room, pinching at the ache between my eyes. Silently I make my way toward the west wing, averting my gaze from the door that leads to my brother's former chambers. I've only ever seen the damaged wing from the grounds. A hastily built temporary wall separates it from the rest of the house; when I unlock the workmen's door and step over the threshold, drafts bite at my skin.

Moonlight through uncurtained windows illuminates sheet-covered shapes and shining patches of incongruously ornate wooden floors. There's a slight scuttling sound in the walls; I pause a moment, and it fades away. After a few wrong doors, I find my way to George, laid out in a small parlor.

They've placed him on a high, spare table, so perfectly suited for his long shape that I can't imagine what use it had before this. I drop my blanket and move to his side. The house breathes around us, full of silent, sleeping life, and I can't stand the thought that George alone will never wake.

My daredevil brother thought himself invincible, it's true. He was known to ride without a saddle, to dive into shady pools without checking their depth, to wander too close to animal dens in pursuit of the perfect vantage for painting. But he was no fool. Why would he ride in bad light on an icy bridge?

Breathing in through my mouth, I peel the sheet away.

His body inspires no horror in me, just a great, bottomless pity. I've seen death many times before. I even found a body in the river once in Virginia, in high summer. The man was a drifter we never identified, bloated beyond all recognition.

I make myself look at my brother, clenching my chattering teeth. His skin looks gray in the moonlight, his features unrecognizable. I can hardly bear to see his elegant, able hands, now swollen and still. Only his hair is the same, fluffy and fine. I touch it tenderly, pushing it back from his brow—and see a livid gash, running from his temple and up along his hairline.

The wound is long and deep. When I was small, the youngest girl on the Andersen farm was found among the blackberry bushes on her father's land, nearly dead after being mauled by a bear. She survived, but her hair never grew straight along the left side of her scalp, and her forehead was permanently scarred.

George's wound looks something like hers—something like the track of an animal's claw. I lean in closer, holding my breath.
The Beast of Walthingham preys on the wicked, they say.…

Suddenly, the room dances with light. I throw the sheet back over George's face and spin around, breathing fast. John stands in the doorway, holding a lantern high. His arm is trembling, making the lamplight skitter crazily across the walls. I snatch my blanket from the floor and fold it around my shivering body.

His mouth is a heavy line, the sockets of his eyes hollowed and strange. For a moment I'm frightened, but then he lowers the lamp, and the shadows retreat. He's clad only in breeches and a loose nightshirt, his hair tousled with sleep.

“Lady Katherine. I worried when I heard someone walking about.” He looks no less troubled now, running his eyes over me in the dim light. “You should go to bed, my lady,” he says finally. “The west wing is far from secure.”

He falls silent as I step closer. “John,” I say. “Please. Please tell me what you know about the Beast of Walthingham.” My voice crackles over the words, and his face goes gentle.

“My lady,” he says, “I know nothing, because there's nothing to know. The Beast is a fairy tale.”

“But there's
something
in that forest, isn't there? Something the servants are frightened of.”

“The tales of scullery maids don't hold much water, miss.”

And yet he's hiding something, I'm sure of it.

“But if there's something to it, anything, you must tell me. This is my home. And I saw something yesterday evening, at the edge of the woods. A man, perhaps…”

John shrugs. “Big estates like this, they attract poachers. Locals looking for food. There's no point trying to drive them off; the forest's too big.”

“Then a poacher may have done this to my brother.”

“I did not mean to say … I did not try to imply that your brother was killed. It was, as your cousin said, a terrible accident.”

“I don't believe it.” As I say the words, I know they're true. The pain behind my eyes spreads.

John dips his head low and looks into my eyes. “Don't open your heart to pain that has no place there. Your brother's loss alone will hurt enough. There's nobody to blame, nobody to hate.”

“You're wrong,” I say hotly. “The pain will ease some, if there's somebody to blame. Somebody to punish.”

His eyes are startled at this, and he reaches out a careful hand, places it lightly on my shoulder. I grow still beneath the touch.

“There will always be poachers on these large estates, but few of them are murderers, too.” He drops his hand back to his side. “Poachers will exist for as long as the poor need to eat and maintain their desire to get back at the rich. That is to say, forever.” There's an edge in his voice that is new.

“Don't speak to me of vendettas now, when my brother is barely cold,” I say, angry. “If he could, he would remind you that the rules of decency extend to both rich and poor. I should know—I'm newly rich, and very recently was quite poor. But I'm the same person now that I was then.”

John reaches a hand toward mine and takes it, his fingertips gently insistent on my palm. “Are you, my lady?” His voice is husky, with a texture in it that I've never heard.

Though the room is frigid, my skin is suddenly alive with heat, running in currents from my palm all the way to my scalp.

“You're shivering,” he says. “Are you cold?”

I nod but cannot speak, watching his chest rise and fall in the half-light. His skin is ruddy with beating blood, and I long to feel the life of him in my arms. Almost without my permission, my face is moving toward his.

Then another, steadier light joins that of John's lamp, and I hear Jane's voice, tentative, from the hall. “Katherine?” she says. John has already moved away from me, slipping like a phantom through a side door, deeper into the abandoned wing.

Jane enters the room, clutching a candle and a subdued Stella. “You weren't in bed when I woke,” she says, her voice a colorless slip. “I was so worried, Kat.”

Her eyes fall on my brother's sheeted form. “Oh. Of course. I'm so sorry. I should have known you would want to see him.”

She won't look directly at me, and I wonder how much she saw of John and me before calling out my name. As she leads me back to my room, I cannot decide whether I'm grateful for the way she interrupted us, just before my mouth touched his.

 

CHAPTER 7

D
ESPITE EVERYTHING, THE
procedures must be followed. I stand in front of the mirror once more, this time dressed in black. “I'm not sure I can do this,” I say, trying to avoid my reflection. “Face all those people.”

Jane smiles wanly. She, too, is dressed for the funeral, her clothes having been brought to the house in preparation. “Would you like me to tell them you are unwell?” she says.

It would hardly be a lie. My skin is so pale, my eye sockets shrunken and bruised through troubled sleep. I want to lie on my bed and close my eyes and simply forget—to drift on a sea of unconsciousness. Perhaps I will, by some miracle, open them again and find myself back in our old house, with Aunt Lila singing in the kitchen, and the thud of Connor and George chopping wood outside.

“No,” I say. “I owe it to him to go.”

Tears are brimming again, and Jane wraps her arms around me, letting me shudder silently. After the fit has passed, she offers me a cloth to dab my eyes. “It is not the same,” she says, “but I know something of grief. It's three years since my mother passed.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“Don't be,” Jane answers. “I have only happy memories of her. She was a kind woman, with a generous spirit. Just like your brother, from what I knew of him. I cannot offer you much consolation, but know this. Time will soften your grief.”

I touch her shoulder lightly. “Thank you.” Glancing at the clock, I see it is almost eleven. “We should go downstairs.”

She takes my arm, just as George did the night before he died. We descend the stairs to the front of the house, where Grace and Henry wait with the two mourning coaches. Mr. Dowling is there also, in his own transport. Henry's face is drawn beneath his hat. There's a patch of dried blood below his ear, where he's cut himself shaving.

Only the sight of John, driving a second coach, shakes me from my dulled reverie. Though he can't bring his eyes to mine, I know he sees me. I mean to catch him alone, to tell him that our near-kiss was a foolish thing, that it mustn't be repeated.