The Changeling Bride (30 page)

Henry grimaced. “Lord save us from poets.”

There was no point in delaying any longer. He went up to his own room and was surprised to see Elle asleep in his bed, one of the new beeswax candles burning low on the bedside table. It looked like she had tried to wait up for him, judging by the book lying open on the covers.

He left his clothes in his dressing room, and came back to the bed, standing and watching her. She looked both vulnerable and strong, a Greek goddess caught sleeping. An ancient sculptor could have used her as his model, for there was something timeless about her. He smiled, looking at her hair spread wildly about her head. She never wore a sleeping cap.

She stirred when he climbed in beside her and woke completely when he pulled her to him. To his dismay she looked vividly awake. He did not want to talk about what had happened the other day, if that was what she was here for. He would like to forget all about it and go on as if there were nothing wrong between them.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with you all day,” she said. “What with Louise, and all.”

“We can talk in the morning,” he murmured, burying his face in her hair and trying to look tired.

“Don’t be so wary. I’m not going to bring up
the issue
. I wanted to tell you about Lady Annalise.”

He raised his head at that.

“I went to go see her today, and she was a hundred times more alert than the last time I spoke with her. She told me the most remarkable story, the one that follows the tapestries in her room.”

Lady Annalise could not have. “She used to tell me that story as a boy. Refresh my memory, will you?” He wanted to hear what details she had. If Elle were making it up from her own very fertile imagination, he would know.

He listened to her retelling and to the accurate details that she added to the tapestry illustrations. The longer
she went on, the clearer it became that Lady Annalise had indeed been speaking to her. Elle had not lied.

He felt a wash of relief, accompanied by a twist of confusion. What was Lady Annalise up to, ignoring him when he came to visit? When Elle finished he dropped his head back onto the pillow and made an explosive sound with his mouth. “I do not understand what that old woman is doing. I went to see her, and she would not speak a word to me. But she tells you her favorite story!”

“Well, you’ve already heard it.”

“Very funny.”

“Don’t be cross about it. She might have her own logic for what she does, and there’s no reason not to humor her. She has little enough to amuse herself.”

Women, he reflected, could never be counted upon to be reasonable. “Do you know, when I was very little I used to believe that Lady Annalise was the fairy child left with Bartholomew’s wife?”

Elle’s eyes grew big, and her lips parted.

He laughed, genuinely amused, and blew out the candle. He slid down under the covers and drew her close, enjoying the scent and softness of her, too tired to wonder if even that pleasure was one he should forgo if he could not accept her warped sense of morality. “Perhaps she still has her boon and will pass it on in her will.”

He was almost asleep when he heard her answer, spoken softly in the dark.

“No, I think she used it.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“Ellie, is everything all right?” Louise asked.

“Everything’s just fine. Why do you ask?”

They were walking along the shore of the lake, the house in the distance. The late spring air gave warm hints of the coming summer, the sun shining brightly overhead, and the wind pulled and billowed their skirts. Louise stopped and turned to Elle and grasped her hands.

“You do not seem yourself. I have been here nearly a week, and I have yet to see a sign of the old Ellie. You are so quiet with me, and so engrossed with domestic details. Are you trying to hide something? Are you unhappy here?”

Poor Louise. She truly loved her sister. How would she feel if she knew Eleanor was dead? “Henry is a good man. He may not always see things my way, but he is never unkind. If I seem different, it’s because life is different for me now. I have new responsibilities, and I’m
not yet so accustomed to them that I feel capable of frivolity.”

“Are you in financial difficulty?” Louise almost whispered the question.

“Whatever makes you ask that?”

Louise gestured to the dress Elle wore. “These gowns. They are not what one would expect to see on a countess. What happened to your others?”

“They were horribly uncomfortable. I should have Charlotte make you up one of these. You’ll see. They’ll be all the rage in a few years,” she said, doing a little pirouette to show off the gown. It had a high waist, short sleeves, and a skirt just full enough to make walking easy. The material was a lightweight white cotton, printed with small light green and gold flowers in narrow vertical stripes.

“You would tell me if all was not well?”

The woman would not give up. Elle squeezed her hands, then released them. “Of course I would. You’re my sister, aren’t you? Come, don’t you have better things to do than worry about me? There’s your charming Mr. Peabody to discuss.”

Louise smiled, distracted. “If you could just find a way to persuade his lordship to pack Frederick back to school, perhaps I could make some progress. How can I win Lawrence, with that puppy chasing me from room to room, spouting bad poetry? Lawrence will think I have encouraged him.”

If it hadn’t been for Louise’s romantic fascination with the shy engineer, Elle didn’t know what she would have done this past week. Each day that went by had Louise casting her more and more puzzled, worried looks, as Elle behaved in a manner inconsistent with Louise’s memories of her sister. At least with Lawrence around, Louise paid less attention to her.

Louise’s hat suddenly disappeared from her head. She screeched in surprise, and Elle gaped at Frederick, prancing
about in front of them, his prize dangling from its ribands in his hands.

“Give that back,” Louise demanded, swiping at her hat.

Frederick skipped beyond her reach, pleased with his attack, his hair ruffled by the wind and making him look even more boyish. “What reward will you give me, if I do?”

Elle rolled her eyes. The last time she had seen such a courting gesture had been in junior high.

“Do not tell me,” Louise snapped. “You want a kiss.” He had messed her hair while yanking off her hat, and the wind was finishing the job.

Frederick’s face lit up. “Mademoiselle, it would be an honor.” He stepped forward, his hold on the hat ribands loosening. Louise made a grab for her hat, Frederick jerked away, and the wind won the debate, catching the wide flat brim of the hat in a sudden gust and sending it sailing out over the lake.

Louise turned on her suitor. “You idiot! Look what you have done! My favorite hat, and you have sunk it.” She looked like she wanted to hit him.

They all three watched the hat settle upside down on the surface of the lake, skimming along like a boat under sail. Frederick’s face was scarlet with humiliation. “Look, ‘tis not sinking. I can retrieve it for you.” There was a pathetic begging tone to his voice.

“See that you do.”

He turned and ran along the edge of the lake to the small wooden dock. Elle watched in some amusement as Frederick set about his frantic hat rescue mission.

Louise herself regained some of her humor at his obvious distress. “I do not think I have ever seen skin turn quite that shade of red,” Louise giggled from behind her hand.

Frederick obviously lacked a certain degree of skill with a pair of oars. One oar escaped the oarlock and fell
into the water as they watched. Frederick spun in circles, retrieved the oar, and promptly lost the other.

“Do you think he’s ever rowed a boat?” Elle asked.

“What makes you wonder? The fact that he is facing the bow and rowing backwards?”

They both giggled.

After much trouble, he at long last he came abreast of the hat, now almost at the center of the lake. He left the oars dangling in their locks and stood, stepping to port. The little rowboat wobbled.

“Frederick!” Elle shouted. “Stay low! You’re going to tip over!”

He glanced up at her words and gave a jaunty wave, ignoring—or perhaps not hearing—her advice. The hat skimmed farther from the boat, Frederick reached out to get it, and in the blink of an eye the boat heeled over and dumped him.

Elle slapped her hand to her mouth, laughing. She and Louise were both bent double, their stomachs aching with hilarity.

Seconds passed and no head bobbed to the surface, and Elle’s laughter died down. Frederick could swim, couldn’t he?

Louise gripped her arm. “Why does he not come up?”

Elle looked at the oar dangling in the water. He could easily have hit his head going in and knocked himself out. How long had passed, half a minute? Longer? She scanned the shores of the lake. They were alone out here.

“Run to the house, Louise. Get help. Go!”

“What are you going to do?”

“Just go! I’ll get Frederick.” She yanked free of Louise’s grip, shucked off her shoes, and plunged through the reeds into the frigid water of the lake. Her dress dragged at the water, but not so badly that she couldn’t swim. Thank God for light material. “Go!” she screamed once more, and Louise finally obeyed.

The cold water was nothing compared with the fear
that grew in her with every second that Frederick stayed beneath the surface of the water. She swam her efficient crawl, her strong arms doing most of the work, her feet kicking just enough to keep her legs high in the water. Fragments of rescue procedures, learned but never utilized, spun through her head.

She reached the rowboat and hung on its edge for a moment. Where had he gone down? She released the boat and dived, searching blindly through the water, opening her eyes but seeing only greenish brown murk. She went down until her ears hurt, then rushed to the surface for air.

She repeated the dive, and again, and on her fourth dive her fingers brushed his jacket. She dug her hand into the material and dragged him to the surface, her lungs bursting for air.

At the surface she wrapped her arm around his neck from behind and clung to the boat, then shouted his name at him. He didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Her muscles were feeling the cold, and she knew she would not be able to lift him into the boat.

She took a breath, then struck out for the nearest shore in a sidestroke. She shifted her hold to his hair, grabbing a thick handful on the crown of his head and towing him along, careful to keep his face above water.

She was only ten or fifteen feet from shore when someone suddenly splashed into the water and waded out to her, taking Frederick from her and dragging him up onto the bank. Other hands helped her out, but she was too intent on Frederick to pay attention to whose they were.

She saw it was Henry who had taken Frederick from her. He flipped his brother onto his stomach, and began to push at his back, trying to force out the water.

“Get him on his back!” Elle ordered. She crawled over to the prone figure and tried to shove Henry away.

“Get back, Elle. You are in the way.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she said, pushing at him.
When he still didn’t move, she took his face between her palms and forced him to look her in the eye. She could see the desperation in those black depths, and the love he had for his brother. “Henry, trust me.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and she saw when he gave himself over to her. At long last he moved and rolled Frederick onto his back.

Elle tilted back Frederick’s head, clearing the airway. High school health classes and CPR practice were far away in time and memory. How many breaths? How many compressions of the heart? She pinched shut his nose, opened his mouth, and gave him a breath. It took more force than she would have thought to make his chest rise, and her own chest muscles protested the effort.

She felt for his pulse along his neck. Her fingers were so cold she didn’t know if she would feel one even if it was there. She moved down to his chest, pulling at his clothes, estimating as best she could where his sternum was. Palm over back of hand, heel of palm on his chest, elbows locked, she put her weight into the thrust, and repeated it four more times.

Back to the breathing, two times. Then the heart again. The breathing. The heart. The breathing. She was only dimly aware of the people gathered around them, watching silently. Her world was the rhythm she was setting. Breathe twice, pump five times.

Her muscles were shaking when Frederick finally convulsed. She tilted his head to the side, and he vomited up lake water and whatever was left of his lunch. He took a gasping breath, and then was breathing on his own. His eyes fluttered open.

“It’s okay, Freddie,” Elle said, her hand brushing his wet hair back from his forehead. “You’re going to be all right.”

He was too dazed to answer.

“She saved your life, you little fool,” Henry said softly.

She took the blanket one of the men handed to her and wrapped it around Frederick.

“Take him back to the house,” she directed. “Get him warm, put him to bed.”

Someone draped another blanket over her own shoulders. They lifted Frederick, then Henry helped her stand. It was only when Frederick was safely in the charge of others that Elle began to shake, whether from the cold or the fright of it all, she could not tell. She was dimly aware of Louise, keeping a distance from them all, looking pale and frightened. She couldn’t find the energy to care.

Henry suddenly swept her up into his arms, blanket and all, and she felt his lips on her forehead. He was warm and solid, and she shut her eyes and let him carry her. She had been strong enough for one day.

Back at the house, she was left in Marianne’s care as he went to check on Frederick. Marianne arranged for bathwater to be brought up, and fussed and clucked over her, building up the fire and peeling off her soaking clothes, and muttering about colds and pneumonia and stupid young men.

The water was not too hot, yet it burned her chilled flesh when she sank into the tub. She huddled, content for once to let Marianne wash her, her mind centered only on the warmth that was slowly reviving her body. She was halfway back to being human when Louise slipped into the dressing room.