The Countess (17 page)

Judith took the far wall.

“You're looking for a hollow sound,” I said as I tapped.

We both began knocking on the walls.

We hadn't been at it all that long when there was a knock on the door.

I immediately climbed down from the chair I'd been standing on. It was Amelia; she stepped into my bedchamber and placed her hand on my arm. “Listen, Andy, I remember more now about what happened yesterday. I was lying on my bed just a little while ago, taking a nap just as Thomas begged me to do. When I closed my eyes, I remembered that door slamming shut in your face. I remember you shouting at me.” She came to an abrupt halt. “Oh, goodness, it's you, Judith. Whatever are you doing here? Why are you standing on that chair?”

Judith looked scared. “I'm sorry, Amelia, I found Andy and she— ”

“I wanted to hang a painting,” I said easily. “Judith was checking the height I wanted.” I didn't want Amelia to know we were sounding the walls for a hollow space. My new tale would certainly he hoisted on a petard, then.

Judith said nothing, smart girl.

“Judith also wanted to see George. She is second only to John in George's affections,” I added. “He just went to sleep again. Judith, don't you have to go back to your lessons now?”

“Yes, Andy. May I come back perhaps early this
evening? To play with George and to help hang your painting?”

“Certainly, I would like that very much.”

Amelia didn't say another word until Judith had quietly closed the bedchamber door after her.

“Yes, what else do you remember, Amelia?” I led her to a chair in front of the fireplace. George cocked open an eye, looked at her for a moment, then went back to a sleep.

She sat down, fretting all the while with a loose thread on her sleeve. “I remember you calling to me. I remember standing there, just looking at that closed door, and doing absolutely nothing. I didn't want to do anything. Then I set the candle branch on the floor and lay down on my side, my cheek pillowed against my hands.

“I remember that I felt so very tired, just all of a sudden, I couldn't keep my eyes open. Then—”

“For God's sake, Amelia, spit it out.”

“I'm not mad. I know I'm not mad.”

“Tell me.”

“I felt something very warm, something thickening the air above my head. But it wasn't scary, Andy. Then there was this very soft voice, not really a voice, but I felt her voice deep inside my head, and she said something about how she was sorry, but I wasn't the right one. Then I woke up a bit to see Thomas and John over me.”

I didn't say a word. I'd never been so afraid in my entire life, even last night and that dreadful old woman with that knife coming at me, wasn't as scary as this.

Because the old woman had been flesh and blood,
and this wasn't. Whatever this was, it wanted me, not Amelia. I had no doubt of that at all.

“I didn't want anyone to think me mad, but when Thomas admitted seeing a young lady here in The Blue Room, I knew it would be all right to tell you. You won't tell anyone else, will you? Promise me, Andy. Thomas worries so. I don't want him to become ill because he is distressed about me.”

“All right.” I thought a moment, then said very slowly, very precisely, “Amelia, did you know that the empty room was Caroline's music room?”

“I suppose so. She died so long ago, there was no reason for me to remember. You believe she wanted you in that room, don't you? Not me. You believe her ghost was there yesterday.”

“It makes sense, does it not?”

Amelia rose, that very soft jaw of hers set in hard lines. “I don't care that Thomas doesn't want me to, I am going to write my father now, Andy, right now.”

“Good.”

She marched out of my bedchamber before I could say another word. George raised his head and wuffed.

I spent the next hour knocking on the walls, but there was no hollow sound. Then I heard something. I quickly turned to look at the door. I saw the doorknob slowly turn. I nearly fell off my stool.

Then there came a quiet knock.

I had to get hold of myself. I had locked the damned door. I went to open it.

It wasn't Caroline or that old woman. It was Belinda.

She gave me a bright smile. “His lordship said you
were napping, a good thing, I say. Did it clean all the ghostly webs out of your mind, my lady?”

“There's not a single web left.”

“Good. Wicked dreams are like some men, my ma used to tell me. Sometimes they can just burrow in, and it takes the devil himself to yank them out.” She continued talking while she pulled out the gown she deemed appropriate for me to wear to dinner. She didn't ask me, simply nodded when she smoothed out the lovely skirt of a pale peach silk gown, with a crepe overskirt of a darker shade.

“Now, ribbons,” Belinda continued to herself. “Yes, here they are, all tangled up. Now, how did that happen?”

She turned to see me still standing there, staring at nothing at all.

“It is being in a new house as well,” she said, sounding like a comforting nanny with a new charge. “New houses can make a body as nervous as a canary drinking a cat's milk. Now, a bath will help you.”

And so it was that an hour later, my hair finally dry, I knocked on Miss Crislock's bedchamber door and let her worry herself over me for a good five minutes. When she'd finally exhausted all of her concerns, given me all her advice, patted my arm at least six times, she said, “Now, don't you fret, Andy, about me. I am just fine. Everyone is quite helpful, Mrs. Redbreast especially. I do not believe I will join the family this evening. I am a bit on the bilious side, not a charming thing for a new family to see. You enjoy yourself, my dear, and try to forget the strange things that have happened, or that haven't happened, as the case may be.” And I kissed her, hugged her
tightly, wishing she weren't bilious, then walked down the main staircase, my shoulders back.

Belinda had assured me that I looked such a sweet lovely lady. I would rather have looked ill-tempered, ugly, and had a gun in my pocket. A gun, I thought. Now, where would I get a gun? Just the thought of being able to protect myself made me slough off a good portion of the grinding fear.

“My lady,” Brantley said. “May I say that you are looking no worse for all your adventures?”

“You certainly may, Brantley. Thank you.”

He came closer, and to my astonishment, he appeared confiding. He said in a lowered voice, “It is a very fortunate thing that Lord and Lady Appleby just left and you were spared their onerous company.”

“Are they so very dreadful, Brantley?”

“They are more dreadful than that Cockly boy in the village, who painted all the ducks that swim in the pond in the middle of the green.”

“Painted them? Goodness, what color?”

Brantley actually shuddered. “Pink. The little booby painted them pink.”

“However,” my husband said, coming out of the drawing room to join us, “her ladyship will be pleased to hear that we are going to have a ball in her honor, three weeks from now, on Friday night.”

“That will be two weeks before Christmas, Uncle Lawrence.”

“Indeed, it will, Amelia. Ours will be the first party of the season, and with Andy arranging for it, it will also be the finest. What do you think of that, Andy?”

“A Christmas party. I should love that. Grandfather always held a huge affair at Deerfield Hall every Christmas. It is very nice of you, Lawrence. I
hope that everyone involves themselves.” Actually, I wasn't at all certain what I felt about a Christmas party at all. So much had happened so quickly, and now I was to arrange a ball?

Amelia said, “Oh, yes, you are not to worry, Andy. Unfortunately, I fear that we are now in for it. Lord and Lady Appleby were just here. Their daughter, Lucinda, was gushing all over John. Her predatory mama has set her eyes on John. He should be prepared to go to ground, for she's got him in her sights.” Then she giggled.

I smiled as well when John and Thomas came into the Old Hall. Both of them were frowning, but for very different reasons.

“You have already attached a local girl, John?”

“What? Oh, you mean Miss Appleby.” I do believe he shuddered, just like Brantley had when he spoke of the Cockly boy painting the ducks. “She's a child.”

“What is this, John?” Amelia said. “She is only two years younger than Andy. Ah, the soulful looks she was casting in your direction. I thought one of her lesser efforts looked like a painful squint. I was just telling Uncle Lawrence that Mama Appleby wants to snag you for her little darling.”

Amelia stopped cold. She was by her husband's side in the next instant, touching her white fingers to his cheeks, his forehead. “Oh, Thomas, my dearest, whatever is the matter? Are you ill? What pains you? Tell me what isn't right so that I may fix it.”

“It is nothing,” Thomas said, and shook his head at something that only he knew about. Without another word, he marched back into the drawing room. Amelia stared after him, her mouth gaped open.

“I don't believe this,” Lawrence said slowly,
staring after his retreating nephew. “He had a chance to establish a new illness or injury or pain, and he didn't. What is going on with your husband, Amelia?”

She said quietly, staring after Thomas, “I don't know. It worries me.”

Miss Gillbank again joined us for dinner. She was wearing one of my gowns that Belinda had altered for her, a charming pale blue muslin confection that was simple and elegant, perfectly suited to her classic features. She asked about Miss Crislock, whom she and Judith had met this afternoon in the east garden.

No one mentioned the old woman. No one mentioned anything else that had happened the day before.

As for Thomas and John, they were both distracted, very bad company, as a matter of fact.

When Lawrence left me at my bedchamber door, I didn't want to go inside. I just didn't. It wasn't the middle of the day now, and I wasn't knocking on the walls in the clear light of day. It was dark, very dark, with scarce a sliver of moon to shine in the windows. Jasper was walking George. I wanted to be walking with Jasper myself.

I waited in the corridor until I heard Jasper coming. He was speaking to George. “A fine selection you made, Mr. George. That old yew bush needed some attention even though it was a rather noxious sort of liquid attention you bestowed on it. Yes, you did well.”

I still didn't want to go inside my bedchamber. I thanked Jasper, took George in my arms, and forced myself to open the door.

T
here were three branches of candles lit against the darkness. A healthy fire burned in the fireplace. The room was warm. I stood there, holding George too tightly, feeling as if my blood had frozen in my veins. I stared at the shadowed corners, unable to see clearly, knowing that there could be things in those shadows, hiding from me.

George wuffed and strained to get away from me. He didn't see anything amiss. Still, I just stood there, looking now toward the windows. Belinda had pulled the draperies closed. I'd told her to leave them open. She had forgotten, or perhaps she was trying to break me of what she considered a very unhealthy habit.

I locked the door, turned the knob one way, then the other, did everything I could think of to pry it open, but it held. Yes, it was well locked. I walked to the windows and jerked back the draperies. I opened the windows. Cold dry air washed over me. I breathed in deeply.

There was nothing and no one here. It was very
possible, if I had indeed locked my door last night, that the person had come through my open windows. I shut and locked them. I looked down at the empty bar holes on the casement and wondered if Caroline was still here, if the violence of her death was somehow holding her here. Poor, poor girl. I couldn't imagine such an illness, but I knew it existed. One of grandfather's oldest friends had even forgotten his own wife and his children. The day he no longer recognized Grandfather, I saw my grandfather cry. He would die alone, my grandfather had said, alone, because there was no one he knew and loved to be there with him.

I took off my clothes and pulled my nightgown over my head. I tied the pale blue satin ribbons into pretty bows. I suppose it had been my mother who taught me that. So long ago. I couldn't call up her face anymore. I picked up George, and together we settled ourselves under the mountain of warm covers. I didn't wake up once.

The next morning I rode Small Bess into Devbridge-on-Aston, a small village clustered around a central square that held an old church, a vast graveyard whose oldest stone was dated 1311, and a meandering stream. I looked closely at all the now-white ducks swimming in the stream, at the clumps of skinny oak and lime trees. Stone houses lined up on either side of a very old inn called The Queen's Arms. There was an almshouse, a blacksmith, his hammer ringing loud in the morning air, and a good half dozen other small shops that carried everything from tobacco to leather to barrels. Many villagers were out and about, and I smiled and met a good thirty of them. Everyone was friendly, which I
certainly appreciated. It had been a long time since there had been a mistress at Devbridge Manor. I began memorizing names, something, I knew, that would hold me in good stead. I also spent money at every store I visited. My last stop was the gunsmith, housed in a ground-floor narrow little room just off High Street. The owner was Mr. Forrester, a very short smiling individual, with freckles covering his face and his bald head, who looked to be about my husband's age. His grandchildren were playing in a corner. Near the guns. That surprised me, but didn't seem to faze him at all. He knew who I was, and was voluble in welcoming me to Devbridge-on-Ashton. I was from the Big House, the new mistress, and I knew that every word I spoke, every look that could possibly convey any opinion at all, would be remembered and then shared with everyone in the village. If Grandfather had seen me going through the village, he would have just patted my cheek and told me that I was behaving exactly as I should. I was treating people with the respect that some of them might even deserve. Everyone would believe me a nice proper young lady, just so long as they didn't notice the wickedness in my eyes. Then Grandfather would laugh.

“Ashton is the name of that stingy little meander-ing stream that used to be much larger,” Mr. Forrester told me, “back when Cromwell wandered the land. Cromwell had a lot of hair, you know. Unfortunately, even the small rapids disappeared during my grandfather's time. I have read that many of the Roundheads had more hair than they deserved.”

“That is a pity,” I told him. “Not about all that hair given out unjustly. No, I am very fond of rapids.”

After ten more minutes of observations on my part, I simply couldn't help myself, I said, “Whatever happened to the Cockly boy, Mr. Forrester, the one who painted the ducks pink?”

I must say that the question took him aback. Then he gave me the biggest grin. Mr. Forrester was missing quite a few of his back teeth. “He was whipped by the vicar himself, a dozen times with the vicar's cane, then forced to clean the paint off the poor ducks. They bit him hard, many times, the little devil.”

Then, and only then, after he was laughing and distracted by the duck story did I tell Mr. Forrester that I wanted him to find me the very smallest gun he could. It was a Christmas present for my cousin, I told him, who traveled a lot and needed something very small that would go everywhere with him. Mr. Forrester told me that would be a derringer, small enough for a lady's reticule, but naturally, no lady would ever want to touch one of the nasty little things. He didn't carry something like that in his small shop. He beamed at me when I ordered the most expensive derringer he described to me, and assured me he would have it here in under a week. I paid him for the derringer, and as a result received three very deep bows from Mr. Forrester, and little bobs from all four of his grandchildren, all lined up to see me safely out of their territory.

I visited the butcher's shop, ordered the pork the butcher specifically recommended, purchased some crockery from the small dry goods store, and finally searched out the local seamstress from whom I immediately ordered three chemises in the very finest lawn she had on the premises. My last stop was the
ancient stone church in the square. I met the curate, Mr. Bourne. The vicar, I was told, was visiting his bishop in York.

When I returned to Devbridge Manor, I rode into the stable yard to see Tempest trying his best to trample one of the stable lads.

I didn't really think about it, just climbed off Small Bess's back and ran to the lad. “Give me the reins,” I said, and he was so surprised that he obeyed me instantly.

I didn't pull or jerk on the reins, just held them loosely, giving Tempest even more slack. He reared and snorted and kicked out with his front hooves. He was very angry. I stayed as far out of his way as I could. I spoke to him as I'd been taught by Grandfather, softly, my voice pitched low, nonsense, most of it, just repeating over and over that everything would be all right, that I thought he was magnificent, and I would be angry if someone was jerking me around like the stable lad had been doing to him. But everything was fine now, I would get him an apple, and so he could calm himself down.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to ease. As he did, I tightened my hold on the reins, coming closer and closer to him until he was blowing hard against my palm. His great body shuddered. “It's all right, boy.” I let him punch his nose against my shoulder. He very nearly knocked me over. I spoke to him for another five minutes before he simply dropped his head and blew softly. I called out to the stable lad, who was standing there, pale, sweaty, wringing his hands, “It's all right now. Bring me an apple, and hurry.”

I fed that beautiful animal a huge apple, felt him
lip my fingers, then chew some carrots that Rucker, the head stable lad, handed me silently.

I said nothing to any of them, simply wrapped my hands in Tempest's thick mane and pulled myself onto his bare back, something I could never do in London. But this was Yorkshire, and I was mistress here. He twisted his head about to look at me.

“Just you and me, Tempest. Let's just walk about for a while, until you're all calm and happy again.”

And so we did. Tempest walked until he was bored, then cantered a bit. I didn't let him gallop all out. If there was still anger in him, I didn't know if I could control him. I guided him down to the stream and slid off his back. “I'll teach that lad what's what, Tempest. He won't ever jerk and pull on your reins again. If he tries it, I'll smash him into the ground. Then you can kick him. No, you won't have to get yourself upset anymore.”

I heard a laugh. Of course it was John.

When I turned, he was standing not six feet away, just walking around one of the huge willow trees that hung over the stream. He was dressed in riding clothes, a riding crop in his right hand. He looked big and dangerous, and instinctively, without thought, I stepped back, bumping into Tempest, who merely butted me gently with his big head.

The laugh fell off his face. He was wearing Hessians, polished to a mirror finish, buckskin britches, a tan riding coat. I wouldn't want to have him coming up to me like this on a battlefield. I could easily see a sword in his hand. He was very angry indeed. Well, what could I expect? I had taken his horse.

“What the hell have you done?”

Of course his anger at me wasn't entirely because
of Tempest. He was furious because I had stepped away from him.

“Didn't Rucker tell you that I merely took Tempest for a walk to calm him down?”

“I told you never to ride him. He could crush you under those hooves of his.” Then he looked at Tempest and slapped his forehead with his palm. “Evidently Rucker did not believe it important enough to tell me that you rode him bareback. Are you mad, woman?”

“I don't think so,” I said, “particularly since I changed my story about the old woman so no one will believe I am another Caroline. I didn't hurt your bloody horse, and I didn't hurt my bloody self, either. Now, how is your knife, John? Safe and snug on its red velvet cushion?”

“Don't,” he said, and walked to me. I wanted to swing up on Tempest's back, but I knew I wouldn't make it. He couldn't very well hurt me with Tempest playfully hitting the back of my head every so often with his nose. “Damn you, don't goad me. It isn't to your benefit.”

“Stop acting like a soldier in a battle facing an enemy. Listen to me. I don't deserve your anger. He would have crushed the stable lad if I had not taken the reins from him. He is perfectly fine. He hasn't a thought to hurt me.”

At that point Tempest began chewing on my hair.

John looked from his horse to me, and laughed again, something I knew he didn't want to do. “You deserve to be beaten,” he said, and began to detach a long curly hunk of hair from his horse's mouth.

And because I didn't have a brain in my head, I
said without hesitation, “Just who do you think would be stupid enough to try that?”

He said slowly, looking down at me, “You barely come to my chin. It's true you're strong, since you evidently pulled yourself up onto Tempest's back—no mean feat for a female. But that makes no difference at all. I could do anything I pleased to you. Lower your arrogance, madam.” He stopped then, looking away from me, out over the stream. He didn't look back at me, just said low, violence in his voice, “Damn you for being here. Oh, yes, I would be stupid enough to thrash you,” and he grabbed me. Tempest whinnied, I dropped the reins and tried to pull free, swamped with complete and utter terror. I must have looked suddenly different, because John let me go. I saw white, all blank nothingness, then red, violent, and flowing, and I simply cried out and fell to my knees.

I heard someone screaming, agony screams, death screams. I saw my mother's face, so clearly, right in front of me. She was pale, tears oozing out of her eyes, and she looked utterly bereft. Then there was a man there amid the screaming. He looked around, and then he just shrugged and walked away. The screaming didn't stop, just went on and on until once again, there was the blessed empty whiteness.

Suddenly, John was on his knees, facing me. His hands were on me, and he pulled me against him. I felt the hardness of him, the strength, and for just a moment, I wanted every ounce of strength he had, but I knew I couldn't have it. His hands were stroking up and down my back. He was saying things in my ear. What, I don't know. My riding hat was on the ground beside me. Then I felt his hands in my
hair, pulling the braids free, pulling out the pins Belinda had so carefully placed. His hands were in my hair then, his fingers touching my scalp, then suddenly, he stopped. He pulled back. I didn't want to, but I looked up at him. We were on our knees, facing each other. It was odd, but I knew this was wrong, since I was married to his uncle, and I felt that more than I felt the fear of being near him, a man who could hurt me so easily, humiliate me, make me scream and scream until I died. I drew a deep breath and slowly, so very slowly, I began to pull away from him. He dropped his hands to his sides and quickly got to his feet. He walked away from me, to his horse. He swung up on Tempest's back.