Fiercombe Manor (40 page)

“What does it signify what we eat on a day like this?” her father had said affably, completely unaware how irritating his son-in-law would find it. “I'd be content with an apple and a slice of cheese if the sun was on my back as it is now.”

It was during the same stay that her mother had fallen prey to an attack of the nerves Edward had just alluded to. One of the reasons she didn't see her parents in their final years as much as she would have liked was her mother's fear of travelling long distances by carriage (another was Edward's reluctance to let his wife go and stay with them).

The evening before they were due to depart for Bristol, her mother grew agitated, unable to touch a morsel of her dinner and clutching Elizabeth as if she would never see her again before she retired to bed. Elizabeth could sense Edward's barely contained impatience with this behaviour as though it were another person in the room, but her father remained oblivious, more concerned with reassuring his wife.

“How am I ever to live up to such a paragon?” Edward asked the next day as he and Elizabeth stood on the carriage sweep, waving at her parents' carriage as it disappeared out of sight. They
had just watched the old man place his wife in the carriage as if she were made of glass.

“It's not that he is a saint,” Elizabeth said calmly, though the sarcasm in his voice made her want to strike him. “He likes to protect her.”

It was true. To her father, her mother's delicate temperament was part of her femininity. It wasn't frightening to him, or irritating. A broken thing was something to be mended, not tossed away. In her bedroom, her eyes on the clock, Elizabeth put a hand to her swollen abdomen in a bid to calm herself. How quickly the calm hope she had found on her walk to the manor had dissipated. Her heart was palpitating now, a rippling of uncertainty in her chest as the rhythm of the beat was briefly lost. She could not lose this child. She could not be ill again either; she wouldn't survive it again, she was sure of it—despite whatever Dr. Logan had persuaded Edward about her basic resilience. Her heart's rhythm faltered again as she remembered what Edward had said last night: that she was even more afraid of the insanity returning than the death of her baby. She wondered if it were true.

Her mind rushed on. If the child was a girl, there was a strong possibility that she would succumb to the darkness as she had after Isabel's birth. And of course, with the birth of a second girl, there would also be Edward's terrible disappointment to contend with. If he got his wish and she managed to bear him a healthy boy, a sturdy little heir in his father's image who would grow up to inherit the Fiercombe estate, things might be different. The madness would leave her in peace if she managed that, surely it would?
But what if it did not?
a small voice in her head muttered. What if this boy died too? And what if this time she descended so far into the blackness that she couldn't find her way out again?

I
n the mirror the morning after Tom and I had fallen out, I poked at my unruly hair, which had curled defiantly into thick, tangled ringlets at the ends. My eyes were dark with shadows. I tried to pin all my hair up again, but I couldn't do it, and so I tried to tie it back with the ribbon instead. My fingers were thickened and clumsy, though, and I yanked it out in a sudden fury, dropping it on the floor and stamping on it like a child. It lay there after I'd finished my foolish tantrum, quite undamaged, a lemon-yellow snake of satin on the polished boards. Without washing, I put on some clothes and crept down the stairs silently, my shoes in my hand.

I needn't have bothered being so stealthy. When I got outside, Tom's car had already gone. The gravel was flung up where the tyres had turned too fast, revealing scored mud beneath. In a concentrated repeat of an earlier morning, I felt bereft and relieved at once.

For the rest of the day, I found my thoughts drifting between the mystery of the little girl, Henry's death at the mysterious lake, the photograph of Elizabeth, and the tension that suddenly existed between Tom and me—a narrow, tensile cord like the one I also felt connecting me to Elizabeth. In both cases they now pulled harder than ever.

The fact that I had only a month to wait for the baby's arrival was not something I chose to dwell on, an avoidance made easier by the fact that he wasn't yet huge, but tucked neatly inside the depths of me instead. The gladness I'd felt when I realised I hadn't lost him after all had confused me more than I dared think about. The chain of events that would swing into motion after his arrival were also too much for me to calmly contemplate. I knew I had to give him up, but I simply could not bring my mind to light on this bald fact for more than a stomach-lurching second. Instead, my thoughts were like those tiny insects that flit and dart so haphazardly through the air, apparently without purpose.

Tom was the easiest to think of. There was something haunting and melancholy about Elizabeth and the little girl, whose fates I had now come to think of as linked in some way, so it was thoughts of Tom I indulged myself with for the next day or so, looking at the manor with new eyes, seeing it not just as a house brimming with centuries of secrets—secrets sewn into the faded tapestries and slipped down the cracks in the floorboards—but as his childhood home. The top of the forbidding newel post in the hallway was now shiny from his small hand turning on it as he reached the bottom of the stairs on summer mornings, chasing after Henry into each new day. The lovely views of the becalmed valley through every window were now views he had stopped short at the sight of too.

That feeling of being lit from inside again was disconcerting, an excitement I'd almost forgotten the sensation of. It was also frightening, as it had been with James, but I was surer of myself this time. I had absolutely no reason to be so, and yet a warm coal of certainty had settled inside me. In short, I didn't believe he simply wanted the novelty of seducing an expectant mother. When he came back, I vowed, I would be the one to extend an olive branch.
After all, he had trusted me with so much the last evening we had spent together.

When he didn't come back that first night, or the second, I had to tell the wounded part of myself that he had dozens of friends who would entreat him to stay, and that he would agree with that unthinking, well-bred courtesy his type had. I also knew, though, that I'd hurt his pride and that he stayed away also because of that, the proof of his minding something of a comfort.

A night or two later, after Mrs. Jelphs had gone to bed, I returned to Tom's cardboard box, ostensibly to see if I'd missed anything intriguing the other times, but more to touch his things in silly schoolgirl fashion. On top was a sheet of creamy writing paper, folded in two.

I opened it with trembling hands. The top was embossed with the Stanton coat of arms, and beneath it were a couple of lines written with a fountain pen whose scratchy nib must have been worn in by another hand.

I smiled to myself and read it a few more times. I hadn't offended him too badly after all; my instincts had been right. I was nervous at the thought of seeing him, and I couldn't imagine what he was thinking about me, but my overwhelming feeling was gladness. The baby turned and wheeled, and it felt to me, in my rather giddy mood, as though he approved.

The next morning was so hot that I woke already in a sweat. The sheets were tangled around me and damp to the touch, and at some point I had kicked the blankets to the floor. In the bathroom I ran the cold tap on the insides of my wrists, hoping to take some of the heat out of my blood, but it was a couple of minutes before the water became cooler than tepid. I sponged myself all over, but by the time I was dry, new beads of sweat were already forming at my hairline and under my arms. A runnel of it had trickled down between my breasts, which were heavier now, before I'd even finished dressing.

Downstairs, Nan looked as though she might pass out from the heat in the kitchen. Her cheeks were crimson, and strands of hair dark with perspiration had escaped her bun and plastered themselves to her neck.

“Oh Alice, I'm miserable in this heat,” she cried. “I've opened the door as wide as it will go, and there's not a breath of wind to be had.”

I poured myself a glass of milk, but it was warm and tasted off, so I tipped it away down the sink. The sour, cloying taste lingered in my mouth.

“Nothing'll keep in this weather.” Nan sighed, fanning herself with a cloth. “That milk was fresh this morning.”

I went out to look at the thermometer. Stepping out of the shade of the kitchen felt like walking into a wall of heat. The mercury said the temperature was already up in the mid-eighties, and yet it was only just past nine. I wandered back inside.

“Do you think it's ever going to break?” I asked Nan, who had collapsed into a chair.

“I hope so. I'm going to have to go and jump in the stream if it carries on.”

I laughed. “Why don't we? It'll be lovely. Where's Mrs. Jelphs got to?”

Nan looked at me mischievously. “She's gone to Painswick—she said she'd be awhile. Can we?”

“Yes, come on!” I held out my hand, and we set off across the gravel.

“Where's you two off to, then?” Ruck had appeared out of nowhere, as was his wont. Despite the heat he was in his usual cap and thick wool trousers, his only concession to the weather his rolled-up shirtsleeves. His arms were burned a dark, brick-red brown.

I glanced at Nan, and saw she was too close to laughing to speak.

“Good morning, Ruck,” I said. “We're just off to put our feet in the stream and cool down. It was my idea. We'll be back to work soon.”

He said nothing to that, but as we went on our way, I looked back and saw that he was still watching us. Watching me, I thought.

“He has this habit of popping up when I least expect it,” said Nan. “He always gives me a turn.” She giggled.

The water was shockingly, deliciously cold as it swirled around our bare feet. Within a minute we felt normal again. I lifted my hair off my neck in the hope of finding a breeze, but there was none.

“Come here,” said Nan. “I'll do it.”

I shifted up the bank towards her, and she got hold of my hair.

“You've got enough hair for both of us here,” she said admiringly. She twisted it round and fastened it with pins from her own hair. She blew on the back of my neck, giggling as she did. It was blissful.

“So,” she said when we were both lying back in the grass, our feet still dangling in the water, my hands resting on the hot dome of my stomach. “Are you going to tell me then?”

“Tell you what?” I said, not understanding.

“About Thomas Stanton.”

I turned my head to look at her. “What about him?”

“Do you think he's handsome?”

I pretended to consider it, looking up at the flawless blue sky as if an answer might materialise there. Nan poked my nearest foot with hers.

“Yes, all right, he's quite nice,” I said.

“Quite nice? He's a bit more than nice.”

I laughed. “I think he'll be back tomorrow night. Perhaps you'll catch a glimpse of him the morning after.”

She sighed. “I don't come in on Saturdays, do I? How do you know, anyway? He's hopeless about arrangements—never tells anyone where he's going and when he'll be back.”

I couldn't help myself; I smiled. “He mentioned it in a note he left me.”

She sat up at that. “A note! What, like a love letter?”

“No, of course not. We're friends, nothing more.”

I remembered how he had kissed my hand and knew Nan wouldn't think that the behaviour of a friend. But friend was what he had called me in his note. And surely that's all we could be; even without the matter of my baby, we came from different worlds, he and I. There might not have been a huge amount of money left in the family, but it was still an old, distinguished one. I had to remember that.

“I wouldn't be surprised if it
was
a love letter,” continued Nan in a dreamy tone. “He's ever such a flirt. All the girls round here are in love with him, of course. He's the most eligible man in Gloucestershire.”

I realised my feet were cold right through to the marrow and pushed myself up and back away from the water.

“I expect Lady Stanton has someone waiting in the wings for when he's ready to settle down,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual.

“Oh, yes, a few of them, I shouldn't wonder. There was a distant cousin from Bath for a while, but Thomas wasn't interested. Pots of money, but not pretty enough for his liking, I reckon. Then there's Caroline Summerhill, and she's pretty enough for anyone. Well, pretty's not really the word for her. She's more beautiful, I would say.”

“Have you seen her then?”

I realised I wanted the conversation to be over, and cursed myself for being such a fool about a man who was not only unsuitable but intended elsewhere.

“Yes,” said Nan brightly. “She came here just before Christmas last year. Sir Charles and Lady Stanton were here for once, and Miss Summerhill and her family came for tea on Christmas Eve. You should have seen the amount of dusting and sprucing we had to do, and they were only here for a couple of hours.” She rolled her eyes dramatically.

“What did she look like, this Caroline?”

Nan screwed her nose up to think. “Everything about her was pale. She looked like she'd never seen the sun. There wasn't a mark on her skin, not a single freckle. It was like they say in old books, like porcelain. A porcelain complexion. She had blond hair that had been waved, but it hadn't been coloured, you could tell that by the roots. She was a real lady, the way she held her cup and sat up so straight in her chair.”