Authors: Elizabeth Hall
Adrienne jumped, and turned to her aunt. “Of course,” she muttered.
“And I believe my bedroom needs dusting,” Marie continued. Her eyes were locked on her niece.
“As you wish.” Adrienne let her eyes drop to the floor between them, not trusting her face or her eyes. She felt certain that they would betray her if she looked directly at Marie.
All day, she watched. She watched the clock, waiting to see when Marie would go for her nap. Marie was very structured in her day and had become even more so as Julien’s life fell apart in front of her. At three, Marie stood and placed her stitching on the chair behind her. “I’m going to lie down for a bit,” she murmured.
Adrienne nodded, without looking up, trying to keep her eyes focused on her own stitching, trying to keep her face calm and serene. She heard Marie’s shoes as they clicked up the stairs and across the floor overhead. Adrienne continued to stitch. She stabbed herself with the needle and drew her finger away to suck on the blood.
The door to Julien’s study opened, and she heard him call the dogs. They whined; they pranced around the hall, anxious to go out. She heard Julien walking down the stairs, heard the crashing and bumping and boisterousness of the dogs, heard the click of the front door and the sudden quiet after the dogs went out. It was three thirty. Julien was usually gone for thirty or forty minutes.
Adrienne heard the ticking of the clock. If she was careful, if she timed it exactly right, she would have about half an hour between the time Julien left and Marie woke up from her nap. She prayed that it would be enough time to grab her bag, find the door to the tunnel, escape to the nuns, and somehow convince them to protect her should Julien appear at Montcalme looking for her.
One more day. Twenty-four more hours. Adrienne forced herself to breathe. She forced herself to keep stitching. Just one more day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
T
hey sat in the parlor. Night had folded around the castle. The fire burned; red-orange reflections danced on the wood floor. Julien sat at the pianoforte. He took a deep breath, started the melancholy air of Schubert’s
Winterreise
. The notes rose in the air, sorrow moving across the room, pressing on Adrienne’s shoulders.
She was jittery with anxiety, her plans knocking around in her head, almost making her feel dizzy. She swallowed, and the workings of her own throat seemed impossibly loud in the quiet night. She knew she would have to find something to keep her occupied this evening: something to keep her eyes down, away from Marie’s gaze. She was certain her face would give her away if she didn’t. Adrienne stood and moved to the bookshelves across the room. She ran her fingers along the top edges of the bindings, pretending to scan titles when in truth she wasn’t quite sure what was on the shelf before her.
Adrienne reached for a book,
Les Misérables,
and moved back to her seat by the fire, carefully avoiding looking directly at Marie. She opened the book, forced her eyes to find the words. Marie moved to the sofa and held a glass of wine in front of Adrienne, the merlot like a liquid garnet in the crystal.
Adrienne reached for the glass and held it with one hand, trying to pretend absorption in her book. Marie moved across the room, placed a glass of wine on the pianoforte. Julien did not look at her. His eyes were closed; his shoulders swayed with the anguish of the piece he played.
Marie sat down in the wing chair, her black skirts swishing as she moved.
Adrienne did not look in her direction. She did not trust her eyes, did not trust her face. She willed herself to stay completely calm, tried to make her features look blank and peaceful and lost in the novel before her. For the third time, her eyes traveled over the opening sentence: “An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October, 1815, a man traveling afoot entered the little town of D—”
Julien finished the piece he was playing. He raised his hand and shuffled through the sheet music lying on top of the pianoforte. Adrienne could see his long fingers; she almost retched with the thought of those fingers brushing over the hands of the little girls. Brushing over her own hands all those years ago.
She shook her head and tried again to concentrate on the words of the book in front of her. The amber light of the fire glowed on everything: on one side of Marie’s face, on the polished wood of the floor. Marie looked up from her stitching. Her eyes caught Adrienne’s. She lifted her wineglass and sipped, her eyes never leaving the face of her niece.
Adrienne dropped her eyes back to the book. She raised her eyes and her glass of wine at the same time. She took a long, slow sip. She glanced at Julien, who had stopped playing, his hands arrested over the keys, as if he had lost his train of thought. Adrienne was acutely aware of every sound, every sensation in the room. The clock ticked. The fire crackled and popped. She could hear the thread as it pulled through the fabric of Marie’s stitching.
She turned her gaze back to the page. She took another sip of her wine, starting to feel slightly sick. Her pulse raced; her face grew warm. She felt dizzy, as if the entire world had started to spin.
“Drink, Adrienne. It is getting late.” Adrienne raised her eyes to the face of her aunt. Marie’s eyes gleamed in the firelight, a glint of triumph in their dark depths, a hint of a smile brushing the corners of her mouth.
Adrienne raised the glass to her lips and drained it. Slow liquid warmth flowed down her throat and into her chest.
Adrienne. Marie had called her Adrienne. Adrienne lowered the glass, stared at the fire. She couldn’t remember the last time Marie had called her Adrienne. For a moment, she felt as if she were at the back of some long tunnel, sound coming to her from far away, muffled and indistinct. Marie and Julien and the fire in the grate seemed a tremendous distance away.
Julien raised his head, took his own glass of wine. She watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She could hear it, a swallow that seemed inordinately loud and far too slow. This was not normal. She could almost hear the workings of his throat, could hear the swishing of the wine as it made its way down his esophagus. Nothing that she looked at or heard was normal.
Adrienne rubbed her hand against her forehead. The beginnings of a headache pinched at her temples and between her eyes. The corners of the room began to move forward and back, as if she were in the throes of fever.
The word slammed into her consciousness with the sudden bang of a drum.
Poison
. She shuddered, swallowed, sat up straighter. Her breath caught. Poison. Adrienne lowered the glass to her lap, trained her eyes on the flames of the fire. She cast a sidelong glance at Marie, her own eyes held low, trying to see Marie through her lashes.
Marie sat in the wing chair. She was stitching again, her needle poking through the fabric, her arm extending as she pulled the thread. Every now and then she stopped, raised her own glass of wine, and sipped. She appeared to be absorbed in what she was doing.
Adrienne moved her glass in a slow circle, staring at the few drops of crimson liquid that still lay in the bottom. She wrapped both hands around it. Wasn’t it normally Julien who poured the wine? Adrienne tried to pull back the memories of every other night in the parlor. One evening floated into the next, a relentless repetition. They were all alike. Marie stitched. Julien played. Adrienne read. They drank a glass of wine. They knelt on the carpet, prayed the Rosary. Marie followed her up the stairs and locked the door behind her. But she could swear that it was Julien who usually poured the wine.
She raised her eyes to Marie, who continued to stitch. She felt light-headed, queasy, as if she had already drunk far too much of whatever potion Marie had concocted. Her head pounded. She was lost in a fog, her body sitting in the parlor, her mind fuzzy. She could not begin to sift through the thoughts that pounded in her brain, the foreboding that crept up her arms and raised the hair on the back of her neck.
“I’m . . . I’m not feeling very well this evening,” Adrienne murmured. She leaned forward, and with a shaky hand, placed her wineglass on the low table before her. “I don’t think I can manage . . .” She swallowed hard and looked up at Marie again. “I feel as if I might be sick.” As if to corroborate her words, sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip. Her face went completely pale.
“Hmmm,” Marie murmured, eyeing her own wine. Her eyes flicked up to Adrienne. “You cannot manage prayers this evening?”
Adrienne felt herself flush with color. A rush of heat spread up her spine and into her face. Sweat pooled on her lip. “No, I . . . I think I had better lie down,” she whispered. She rose, swaying slightly on her feet.
“Bonne nuit.”
Adrienne bent her head slightly to Marie. She turned and ducked her head toward Julien. He didn’t look in her direction.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A
drienne lay on the narrow bed upstairs, turning first to face the wall next to the bed, and then back again, facing the wall just a few feet away. She couldn’t stop the fluttering in her stomach. Her mind raced. Too many thoughts fought for her attention, and she could not concentrate on any of them, her mind swimming with murky, surrealistic images.
Adrienne turned on her side again. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She was dizzy and dazed and could not focus. The walls of her narrow room pushed in on her, as if she were caught in a vise. It reminded her of the time when she was six years old and had the chicken pox. Her fever had gone dangerously high. She remembered the way the room receded and then grew large again, making her dizzy. Just how much poison had she ingested? She wished she knew more about it, knew of some way to counteract the effects of whatever this drug was.
Adrienne turned over again, her eyes searching the darkness of the room. The sounds of life below her had stopped. The castle was quiet. The grandfather clock in the ballroom below her pounded out twelve strokes. They reverberated through the floor. Tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. She chanted it in her head like a mantra, like a prayer. Tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. If she didn’t die tonight from the poison, if her body could fight off the effects for just a few more hours, she would be gone.
She rolled onto her back and lay staring at the ceiling. She let out one long breath, trying to quiet her racing mind and queasy stomach. Mice ran along the rafters in the roof above her. She could hear them scratching and chewing somewhere over her head. She watched as the ceiling started playing tricks on her. One corner of the room stretched away from her, as if the room had grown to ten times its normal size. Her breath caught; her stomach clenched with the flutterings of panic. She kept her eyes on the corner of the ceiling, cringed as it began to grow larger and larger, before moving back toward her as if the room were shrinking.
The sound slipped under the door and into her consciousness, as imperceptible as a feather falling. Something, someone, was outside her room, moving quietly in the dark. She strained her ears, wondering if her mind had failed her completely. Was the poison making her imagine things? She wondered if she could trust any of her own perceptions right now. But no, there was the sound again, closer. She heard footsteps, soft and deliberate, on the back stairs. The sound was on the servants’ stairs: the ones only Adrienne and the nuns from Montcalme ever used. She stared into the dark, waiting. Her body focused and tensed toward the sound. Listening.
The footsteps reached the fourth floor, moved tentatively down the hallway toward Adrienne’s door. Adrienne scanned the dark. Marie. Come to find out if the poison had worked or if she would have to use more. Or would she try something more serious? Had she, like Adrienne, been dreaming of ways to commit murder? Ways to rid herself of her troublesome niece?
She heard the door to the room push inward, just a breath of sound as it moved against the floor. Adrienne closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
The footsteps moved forward, slow, conscious, steps that skimmed carefully in the dark, barely brushing across the floor. Adrienne felt a pressure on the mattress next to her, felt the warmth of another person sitting next to her on the bed. She heard breathing. She forced herself to breathe, forced the slow, unhurried breaths of a sleeper. She felt her eyelids flutter, willed them to stay still.
Someone slipped off the mattress to the floor and knelt beside the bed. Cold fingers reached under the covers and brushed against her arm. Adrienne pictured the syringe, could almost feel the sting of the needle in her vein, poison pushing into her bloodstream, rushing its way toward her heart.
The hand moved away from her arm. Long, slender fingers lingered on her breasts, moving slowly toward her belly, and between her legs.
Adrienne’s eyes shot open; she jerked. She tried to sit up.
“Adrienne,” Julien whispered. “You’re awake.”
She gasped. He moved up from the floor and perched on the side of the bed, his hip next to hers. His hand pressed against her shoulder, pushing her back against the mattress.
“I saw you,” he murmured into the dark. “Tonight. Watching me. Staring at me.” The lids of his eyes drooped, heavy and curved. His breath smelled of wine, and beneath that, brandy. “I’ve seen you watching me, for a while now. You watch me from the windows.” His eyes held that feverish gleam that she had seen before—that same feverish gleam she had noticed when Eliza Creighton had come to visit. “The windows in my room.” He smiled, his breath a puff of amusement. “I know exactly what you’re doing. I know exactly what you want.”
He shoved her shoulder down and leaned toward her face. His breath was sour. Adrienne started to squirm, tried to tear away from the force that bore down on her. He brought his other hand up and clamped it over her mouth. His eyes glowed, fire sparkling in their dark depths. She fought as hard as she could, terrified that he was there to kill her, to silence her forever.
With one hand, he continued to hold Adrienne’s mouth shut, his arm stretching across her body with a strength that seemed far beyond his size, his infirmity. He pushed her into the thin, hard mattress. Adrienne squirmed harder. She raised her back, trying to force him up. She kicked against the mattress, the covers flying up.
Julien brought his right hand back and slapped her, hard, on the side of the head. “Hold still,” he hissed. Adrienne stopped moving. Her head throbbed with pain; for a moment, her vision blurred.
He fumbled with his pajama bottoms with one hand, the other still clamped on Adrienne’s mouth. He pulled the covers back, yanked her gown up, and pushed himself on top of her. She writhed and fought, but he held her tightly and fought harder, forcing her legs apart with his knee. When he thrust himself inside, she gasped. Her back arched. The pain shot up through her spine, straight to her eyes. They smarted and stung.
“Ah!” she gasped, her mouth growing hot and wet inside his palm. She tried to fight him with her free arm, and he drove into her harder. Her blood pulsed, her pelvis throbbed with a red-hot light, like holding a hand over the flame. She felt as if she might faint.
He gasped, moved again, his breath coming out in ragged, sour puffs right over her face. His eyes were closed; he drove into her again and again and again with an angry force.
Tears escaped, running down the sides of her face and onto the pillow. She wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but his hand held her tight, squeezed against her lips, forced her head against the pillow. His elbow trapped her hair. Every time he moved, it pulled against her scalp. She stopped moving, stopped trying to fight. Every motion sent her reeling, a throbbing, aching, burning pressure against her limbs, her back, her pelvis.
Julien moaned, fell on her, his body knocking the wind out of her. He lay there, his body heavy against her. He panted. Adrienne felt tears running from her eyes, pooling in her hair.
He took his hand away from her mouth and rolled off of her. He smiled, his teeth bright in the dim light. He stood, straightened his nightclothes, and looked down. She stared at him through her tears, this man who could be so brutal. Her thighs burned. Her insides screamed with a white-hot pain. She felt wet, sticky, and dirty, like during her monthly.
“I’ve been watching you, Adrienne. Watching you, watching me. Keeping an eye on me. You can hardly keep your hands off of me, can you?” He humphed into the air. “I knew it. I knew you wanted it. That glow . . . that stare . . .” He turned and ran his hand over her breast. He smiled again, into the dark. “Anytime, my dear. Anytime at all.” He turned and moved softly to the door.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, his hands on the door. “I won’t tell my mother what a little whore you are.”
She heard him turn the key in the lock.