The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (124 page)

‘Will you be coming back?’

‘Some time tomorrow. If I can.’

She swallowed. ‘Thank you, Dr Steele.’

‘You’re a good nurse, Miss Lawe. Common sense. Good nerves. Strong stomach. You’ll muddle through.’

‘Poor Freddie,’ murmured Sibella in one of her lucid periods. ‘He really loved me, you know.’

‘I know he did, darling,’ said Belle as she sponged Sibella’s face and throat, where the skin had broken out in hundreds of tiny purple blood blisters that burned to the touch.

It was past midnight. Belle’s face felt stiff with fatigue, and she’d been clenching her jaw so hard that it ached. Dr Steele’s booklet lay unread on the rug beside the bed. She hadn’t had a moment to look at it.

She and Sibella were alone in the house. Jenny had disappeared hours ago, leaving an ill-spelt note to the effect that her mother had been taken sick, and her brothers and sisters needed her. Belle hardly noticed her absence. She had enough to do fighting her own fears without having to calm Jenny’s as well.

‘You know,’ breathed Sibella, ‘he – proposed to me. Just before I married Clyne. But it – would never have done. I couldn’t have made him happy.’

‘Hush, Sib, please . . .’

‘You see – I never knew
how
to love. Didn’t have the knack.’ She paused for breath. ‘I’m glad he died before me. Wouldn’t want him – to see me like this.’ Suddenly she frowned. ‘Good heavens, what’s Lyndon doing in my room?’

A couple of hours later, she began to breathe more freely. Hardly daring to hope, Belle gave her another sponge bath – and saw to her alarm that the blisters had spread to her back and arms. What did that mean? A quick skim through the booklet was no help at all. It didn’t even mention blisters.

‘What happened to your uncle?’ asked Sibella abruptly.

Belle was startled. ‘Ben? He’s on the Somme, darling. Do you remember? We had a letter from Sophie in the summer.’

‘Oh – yes.’ Her blistered lips parted in a smile. ‘Sophie was furious when he joined up. Why did he? He was the last man I’d have . . .’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Belle. ‘He said he owed it to his country, but perhaps he was joking. With Ben you never really know.’ She was puzzled. Sibella never talked about Ben.

‘I hated him for years,’ said Sibella. She shut her eyes. ‘But I wanted him, too.’

Belle stared at her. ‘
Ben
?’

Sibella fixed her with fever-bright blue eyes. ‘Don’t worry, darling. Sophie knows all about it. But – it’s true. I’ve never wanted any man as I wanted him. Not love. Just – the other thing.’ Her face contorted. ‘Belle, it’s not
fair
. I’m going to die, and I’ve never loved anyone.’

‘You’re not going to die,’ Belle said fiercely. ‘You’re going to—’

‘No, no. I – I shan’t get over this.’ She clutched Belle’s hand. ‘Make sure I look decent? The blue bedjacket with the Valenciennes trim? And don’t – don’t let Max see me. It’ll only frighten him—’

‘Don’t talk like that!’

By three in the morning, the blisters had spread to her entire body, and all Belle could do was dose her with whisky and quinine, and hold her down to prevent her fighting off imaginary suitors. ‘For the last – time, I will
not
marry you! I won’t – marry – anyone!’

At half-past three she became abruptly quieter, and her colour improved a little. The blood blisters began to fade, and her temperature dropped to one hundred and three. Belle swallowed tears of relief. She was getting better.

‘My father,’ Sibella said suddenly, ‘is a terrible man.’

Belle folded a napkin and set it on the bedside table. ‘I know,’ she said.

Sibella looked at her. Her eyes were clear. ‘You’re the strong one,’ she said. ‘You’re like your mamma.’

‘Hush, darling, don’t talk any more. You need to rest.’

‘Sophie once told me what Madeleine did when she was young, to keep them together. Extraordinary . . .’

‘You need to rest,’ Belle said again. She smiled. ‘You’re getting better, Sib. The fever’s coming down.’

Sibella shut her eyes. ‘Find a
good
man, Belle darling. They do exist, you know.’

Chapter Sixteen

Adam’s patience was wearing thin as he mounted the steps of number seventeen, Berkeley Square. After a frustrating two days of unanswered wires and ‘missed’ telephone calls, Osbourne was still contriving to elude him. So to hell with Osbourne. There was now no option but to have it out with Miss Lawe; and if she thought she could stonewall him yet again, she’d find that—

To his surprise, she answered the door herself.

He knew immediately that something was wrong. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up, which made her look about fifteen, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Her once sleek hair was dull and uncombed, and her haphazardly buttoned blue gown looked as if she hadn’t taken it off in days.

‘Captain Palairet,’ she said, giving him a distant stare as if she was having trouble focusing. ‘What are you doing here?’ She didn’t say it rudely; she simply didn’t understand.

He began to be worried about Sibella. ‘May I come in?’ he said.

‘No, I don’t think—’

‘Please. I need to speak to you. It won’t take long.’

She blinked. Her eyes were red-rimmed, although whether from fatigue or crying, he couldn’t tell. The last of his irritation drained away. ‘Please,’ he said again. He felt like a bully.

With a sigh she turned on her heel, leaving him to close the door after him. He followed her into the drawing room, and watched her seat herself on Sibella’s peach silk sofa by the window. She didn’t ask him to sit down, so he remained standing – then realized that he was looming over her, and took the armchair opposite.

‘Where are the servants?’ he asked.

She rearranged the cushions beside her, picked one, and placed it on her lap, as if for protection. ‘They’re gone,’ she said. ‘They had relations to nurse.’

‘Where is Sibella?’

Her hands tightened on the cushion.

‘Is she – ill?’

She took a breath. ‘Sibella died this morning.’

A light breeze stirred the curtains. From the square came the sound of a child laughing. Adam looked about him at this room which bore traces of its owner everywhere. The
Tatler
, with one of the pages turned over to mark the place. A rather daring Elinor Glyn, lying open on a side table. The little Fabergé bonbon dish – ‘my
downfall
,’ she would drawl, as she helped herself to yet another violet cream.

It wasn’t possible that she was gone.

He watched Isabelle Lawe take up the Elinor Glyn, close it, and replace it carefully on the table. He went to sit beside her and tried to take her hand, but she turned herself away, and he gave up, abashed.

‘I’m – so sorry,’ he muttered. He was uncomfortably aware that his apology could apply equally to his blunder, or to Sibella. Somehow that seemed to trivialize Sibella, although he knew that she herself would have been vastly amused at his expense. ‘Darling Adam,’ she would have chuckled, ‘what a muff you can be, for all your cleverness! And you’re simply
appalling
at showing your feelings.’

He was surprised by how deeply her death affected him. He’d seen hundreds of men die at the Front. But it shouldn’t have happened to her. Not pretty, elegant, amusing Sibella, who existed to distract from the harsh realities; not to succumb to them.

‘It was just before dawn,’ said Isabelle Lawe, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear in a gesture he found oddly moving. ‘She’d been quiet in the night. Just sometimes humming songs from her childhood, Jamaican nursery rhymes. But then – her breathing got worse again.’ She shook her head. ‘That
sound
. Like paper being crackled. I tried everything. Nothing was any use.’

‘What about doctors? Didn’t you have any help?’

Again she shook her head. ‘Dr Steele came a couple of times, but he wasn’t any use either. He said so. Nothing’s any use.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘Around four in the morning, she opened her eyes, and took a great deep breath. Then she – died.’ Sucking in her lips, she stared fiercely at the cushion, clearly willing herself not to cry.

Feeling powerless, Adam waited while she got herself under control. Then he asked if Sibella was still upstairs.

‘Yes, but you can’t see her. She wouldn’t want—’

‘I won’t be long,’ Adam said quietly, ‘but I need to see her. To say goodbye.’

The curtains were drawn and the bedroom was in half-darkness, but a lamp cast a golden glow that was not unbecoming. Poor Sibella would have been pleased.

But no amount of flattering light could conceal the ravages of the disease. Her pretty face was gaunt, and she looked older and grimmer than she had in life. Not for the first time, Adam reflected that it’s a pious myth that the faces of the dead take on an unearthly serenity. That’s asking too much of them, he thought. The dead are simply dead. They show their pain, like anyone else.

Isabelle Lawe had done a surprisingly good job of the laying out. Sibella wore a lacy pale blue bedjacket, and her golden hair was neatly combed and arranged around her shoulders in becoming curls. Her hands clasped a pink rose, obviously taken from the garden in the square. It was a heartfelt touch that he would not have expected from Isabelle Lawe. Perhaps she was capable of deeper feeling than he had supposed.

‘Goodbye, Sibella,’ he murmured. ‘Be at peace.’ Then he bent and kissed the cold brow, and left her to her rest.

In the drawing room, Isabelle Lawe was standing at the window, looking out into the square with her arms clasped about her waist. At Adam’s arrival she turned to him. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted you to see her like that,’ she said reproachfully.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adam. ‘But she wouldn’t have wanted me not to say goodbye, either.’

She made no reply.

Adam cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps I can help with – well, with arrangements? Her father is a member of my club. I could find him and break the news, if—’

‘No,’ she said with startling vehemence, ‘Don’t do that.’

‘But surely—’

‘I said no!’ She paused, still cradling herself. ‘Sibella didn’t get on with her father.’

‘I’m aware of that, but—’

‘She left instructions with her solicitors,’ said Isabelle Lawe, her voice rising. ‘I telephoned them this afternoon. They’re seeing to all the arrangements for the . . .’ she took a breath, ‘for the funeral. But she was very clear about one thing. Mr Traherne is not to be admitted either to the service or to the house in Sussex, or to this house.’

Two spots of colour had appeared on her cheeks, and her knuckles were white. For some reason, she didn’t like Cornelius Traherne any better than poor Sibella. Adam remembered her pale face staring at him from the darkened conservatory at Kyme as she had stood beside Traherne.

‘What about her mother?’ he said. ‘I don’t think her dislike extended—’

‘I’ve sent her a wire,’ she replied. Then she fixed him with her direct dark gaze. ‘What did you want to see me about?’

The change of subject took him by surprise. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘It can’t be nothing,’ she said, ‘you’ve been hounding us for days.’

‘Actually, I was hounding Osbourne. I thought it’d be better coming from him. And I still think so, which is why—’

‘Tell me what it is.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

He stood irresolute, wondering what to do. Then he sat down and put his hands on his knees. ‘Osbourne’s married,’ he said.

He’d read in novels of the blood draining from a person’s face, but until now he’d always thought it was just a literary convention. Now he watched in amazement as the vigour drained out of her. Even her lips turned pale. Without the red lipstick, her mouth looked vulnerable and raw.

He watched her move to the peach silk sofa and sit down, and put her hands together in her lap. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said.

He wondered how to begin. ‘It was last year,’ he said slowly, ‘when he was stationed in Arras. She – his wife – she’s the daughter of the woman in whose house he was billeted.’

She blinked. ‘What is she like? That is – if you know.’

He hesitated. ‘It’s a respectable family. Wine merchants. The father’s dead, the brother runs the business. Or he did, before the War.’ Why am I telling her all this? he thought savagely. What possible good does it do?

He blundered on. ‘Her name is Françoise. Eighteen years old, but seems younger. Sheltered. Shy. Quite pretty, in a conventional sort of way.’

‘You’ve seen her?’

He paused. ‘When Osbourne left, she had no money. She didn’t know where he was. She – needed help. Her brother was away fighting, still is, and her mother had recently died. Somehow she’d got hold of my name. She wrote to me. On my next leave, I went to see her.’

She stared at him without understanding. ‘You mean – Osbourne simply left her?’

Again he hesitated. ‘I imagine he thought he could get a divorce. But of course she’s a Catholic. Then, perhaps, he decided that if he just sent her money—’

‘But you said that she had no money, so he can’t have done.’

‘Perhaps he intended to,’ he said unconvincingly. Christ, he thought angrily, why am I trying to defend him? ‘I don’t know, Miss Lawe,’ he said brusquely, ‘because so far I haven’t been able to find him and have it out.’

There was a silence while she considered that. Then she said, ‘Now I understand why he wanted us to keep it secret.’ She glanced at him. ‘You see – we were engaged to be married.’

It was his turn to stare. ‘Oh. Oh, God. I – didn’t know.’

‘Of course you didn’t. No-one did. That’s what I’m telling you.’ She paused. ‘He wanted it to be a secret. He said that he needed time to square it with his people. He meant you.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Apparently,’ she said, her voice hardening, ‘you wouldn’t have approved of me.’

Adam looked blank. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you? Well. Perhaps that was a lie, too.’

Another silence.

Then she said. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

He shook his head. ‘I think you’ve had more than enough already—’