Timepiece (24 page)

Elizabeth frowned. “No, I...I can’t say how much trouble I will be in. They might not let me see company, and they’ll certainly not let us be alone. I’d better come and meet you.”

“How will you contrive to—”

“I’ll manage,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Don’t worry over that part. Shall we meet at the tree?”

“Yes, that should do.” They were well on their way back through the orchard and to her father’s house. At some point he had pulled her arm through his, though he did not remember doing so. “Seven tomorrow evening.”

The slap snapped Elizabeth’s head around and rattled her teeth, but did not in any deep way surprise her. Her aunt’s hand had been metaphorically drawn back for some time now. It didn’t scare her, either, though that might have had more to do with the last twenty-four hours than the last seventeen years.

It would not have been quite so bad to face her parents. She had been planning on doing so, had steeled herself for her mother’s wailed predictions of imminent death by pneumonia or lingering death by spinsterhood, had expected that the wailing would be followed by an order to the servants to bundle Elizabeth up to bed. Elizabeth had been looking forward to the seclusion of her room, the warmth of dry clothes, and the decadence of a feather bolster. Even the thought of some coddling was not so very unwelcome. Ordinarily she had no patience for it, but after the last day’s events, it might have been rather nice.

Not being scolded at all would have been even nicer, and she had not quite given up hope for that outcome as she and William approached Westerfield. She could obviously not keep her ruined gown a secret forever, but there would be less wailing if her mother only heard reports of her dripping and mud-streaked condition rather than observing it first-hand. Elizabeth therefore decided that she and William should approach the kitchen door, where they would hopefully encounter no one save Mrs. Bronson. The kindly old cook was as much Elizabeth’s friend as was her husband the butler. Mrs. Bronson would keep a secret if Elizabeth asked it of her.

The plan worked well enough at first. Mrs. Bronson was alone in the kitchen, and though horrified and alarmed, did not react with hysterics. Elizabeth explained about climbing the tree, falling into the pond, and being rescued by William, and Mrs. Bronson clucked, shook her head, looked approvingly at the young man, and told Elizabeth to nip upstairs and get out of her wet things as quickly as she could.

William said, “If I can be of no further service, E—ah, Miss Barton, I’ll bid you good evening.”

Mrs. Bronson might have lifted her eyes to the ceiling as she bustled to make tea. William looked annoyed at his slip. “Sorry,” he mouthed to Elizabeth behind Mrs. Bronson’s back.

Elizabeth shook her head. “Elizabeth,” she mouthed back. He nodded, bowed slightly for Mrs. Bronson’s benefit, and squelched his way toward the outside door.

Elizabeth eased the corridor door open, noted with relief the empty passage and staircase, and only then realized she was still clutching his coat around her shoulders. Oh, that wouldn’t do. She turned, hand still on the knob. “William?” she called softly.

He looked up in the act of opening the outer door. She saw his eyes flicker as he took conscious note of the coat for the first time, then he shook his head a little at himself and came to retrieve it. Elizabeth’s hand still held the door open as William took his coat from her and bent to murmur in her ear, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Without the coat wrapped about her shoulders, there was nothing at all to conceal the fact that her waterlogged muslin clung to her as closely as had Katarina’s skin-tight blouse and breeches. Her aunt came through the drawing room door at that precise moment and saw them in just that position, and Elizabeth had to admit to herself that it did look pretty bad.

It seemed neighbors had come to call, and were currently with Mr. and Mrs. Barton in the drawing room. It further seemed that Elizabeth’s aunt was unwilling to have them know of her niece’s disgraceful behavior—overall, Elizabeth thought, a circumstance to regret, for the scene that followed would not have been nearly so bad in front of witnesses. She was later given proof to bolster this belief; the slap had not been delivered until William left the kitchen.

Up until that point, her aunt had been only cold.
Very
cold, and with eyes narrowed in a way that told Elizabeth this was not the sort of peccadillo that could be atoned for by winding yarn. William seemed to sense this too, for he shifted as though to place himself between Elizabeth and her aunt before thinking better of it and setting his feet instead.

“What is this?” Josephine Barton demanded in a low voice.

“Miss Elizabeth had a little mishap, ma’am,” William said before Elizabeth could speak. “She was reaching for a flower and slipped on the mud, went right into the pond at the edge of my father’s grounds. Fortunately I was nearby and was able to be of service.”

“I see,” Josephine Barton said.

“And I don’t think she should come to any harm, ma’am,” Mrs. Bronson put in from the other side of the room. “They only just came in this moment, and I’ll whisk her up a hot drink and—”

“Thank you.” Miss Barton turned away from her. She looked William up and down. “We are much obliged to you, sir. Please excuse us. I must care for my niece.”

It was clearly a dismissal. William had been at the point of leaving a moment ago, but now he hesitated. He was obviously aware of the undercurrents in the room, even if he did not understand them—and how could he; Elizabeth did not really comprehend them either—and seemed reluctant to leave Elizabeth to withstand them alone. His eyes sought hers, questioning.

Elizabeth shook her head. Minutely, but her aunt caught both the unspoken question and the silent answer, and Miss Barton pressed her lips tightly together.

William bowed and took his leave, and Elizabeth was just turning back from watching the door close behind him when her aunt’s open hand struck her cheek so hard her head snapped around and she almost fell.

“A flower?” Josephine Barton said. “You were up a tree, or something worse. What were you doing with that man?”

“Nothing,” Elizabeth managed. “I—I was up a tree, you’re right, and I fell into the pond, and he helped me out, that’s all—”

The second slap was even less of a surprise than the first, but it hurt more. Elizabeth grabbed hold of a nearby chair, tears starting in her eyes.

“You’ll ruin us all,” she heard her aunt saying. “You’re just like her, I always said you were, and you will finish what she started. We struck her name from the family Bible, but it didn’t matter. After she ran off to flaunt her harlot’s ways, no decent man would have me—and no decent girl would have had your father if he had not already been wed to your mother. We hushed it up for your sake, you ungrateful chit, but you’re just like her—” She caught hold of herself, with what Elizabeth recognized even through streaming eyes as a visible effort. “Mrs. Bronson. Conduct my niece to her room.”

She was in her room now, alone and in dry clothing, which was a significant improvement. Having a hot drink inside her would be more of an improvement still, and she waited with some impatience for Mrs. Bronson or one of the maids to bring it. She wondered if she might be able to charm something like a nuncheon out of the cook as well. It had been quite a long time since she had eaten a proper meal.

When the door opened, however, it was her aunt who entered. Elizabeth stood up, anger clenching her empty belly, but her aunt only deposited a cup of what turned out to be exceptionally weak tea on the bedside table, and left without saying a word. Elizabeth heard the key turn in the lock as soon as the door shut behind her, and no one else came to her room that night. Not even the servants. Not even though she rang for them.

She dropped to sleep out of exhaustion, but slept only fitfully, waking often from dreams of lightning and Katarina falling and Trevelyan facing down a copper giant, standing in the square of light it threw like a black knight on a chessboard.

The third time she woke, the room was lit by morning sun and the housemaid was just withdrawing. “Wait!” Elizabeth said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The housemaid flinched away and scurried through the door, looking back once she was safe in the hall.

“No, miss,” she said. “Miss Barton said you were ill because of something that happened yesterday, that you had to rest abed all day.”

Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at the tea tray. There was no food on it, and she suspected that cup of tea was dishwater strength as well. “Will you bring up my breakfast, then?” she said, testing the waters.

“Miss Barton said she would order special meals for you,” the maid said, looking scared, and shut the door. Elizabeth wasn’t quite quick enough to get to it before the key turned again.

There was breakfast later—but not much, more weak tea and a slice of toast. At dinner-time, there was broth. Elizabeth got the point, and it only made her angrier. This couldn’t last longer than a day—she had heard her mother’s voice keening outside, and her aunt explaining that Elizabeth needed rest, that if she was not better by morning they would call the apothecary, now come away, sister, it will only upset you to see her, I’ll care for her—so the punishment would be over by morning. But even that was too long.

We struck her name from the family Bible,
Elizabeth thought, staring at the sunlight stretched across the floor,
but no decent man would have me.
She thought she could work out what the story had been—it must have occurred before her father took the house in Hartwich, for she had never heard so much as a whisper of it from the neighbors—but she found herself disinclined to spend any time doing so. She simply didn’t care. There were too many more important things to care about.

The foremost being, how she was to get out of this room at seven o’clock to go and meet William.

She considered her options. What would Katarina do? Rush past the next maid to bring a tray? Yes, but then do what? Besides, who knew when that would be? Perhaps not until full dark, or they might not bring her supper at all. Elizabeth’s stomach rumbled, and she tried to ignore it. Get the lock open from the inside and sneak out? Undoubtedly Katarina would do just that, and Elizabeth thought she could manage the sneaking, but she had no notion as to how to pick a lock. She had very much enjoyed Katarina’s story of doing so, but that was not at all the same thing.

Memory of the alleyway hit her like her aunt’s open palm, and she breathed hard for a moment.

Madam Katherine is not dead,
she told herself.
Not yet. She hasn’t even been born yet. They’re the shadows of things that may be only, and we’ll stop it before it starts.

Elizabeth got up off the bed. The fast young ladies whose ranks her aunt assumed her to have joined—they snuck from their windows to elope to Gretna Green, did they not? They did it in Mirabelle’s novels, at least, and they did it wearing gowns. It couldn’t be that hard. Elizabeth stole to the window and opened the shutters very quietly.

If she recalled Mirabelle’s novels correctly, the fast young ladies usually employed a trellis when fleeing their bedchambers. Elizabeth thought she could probably climb down a trellis if there were one, but no ivy ran along the gray and grainy stone under her window. How else did young ladies escape? Elizabeth racked her memory for other stories, and came up with Bluebeard’s wife, locked in a tower to avoid her murderous husband’s rage, waiting for her brother to come to her rescue. No help there; Elizabeth had no brothers. Anything else? There was the maiden Rapunzel from the collection of German fairytales that had been so talked of two or three years ago—definitely a fast young lady; hadn’t it been her dress tightening about her belly that had betrayed her indiscretion to the enchantress? Rapunzel’s prince had brought her silk every night to weave into a ladder.