With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (21 page)

“Very good, sir.” The reply was grudging, but the footsteps receded with alacrity.

I came to myself. Before Atticus had time to close the door and turn back to me, I had darted through the dressing room and back into my own bedchamber. I slammed the connecting door and turned the key in the lock just as I heard his footsteps in pursuit.

“Clara—”

“Go away,” I said childishly. “Your father needs you.”

A moment’s silence. Then, heavily, “We’ll talk later, when he’s out of danger.”

I made no reply. After a second more, his footsteps slowly retreated. In another few moments I heard the door that led from his chamber to the hallway close, and I went limp in sudden reaction, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor.

My mind could scarcely hold the realization that Atlas had betrayed me all those years ago. I had trusted him—with my body as well as my heart—and he had let me believe it was Richard I was trusting, that it was Richard whose love for me held his desire in check. That single perfect afternoon, my talisman for all my life after, my absolute proof that no matter how others might slander him, Richard was a true and tender and honorable lover… shattered, stolen from me.

Now the beliefs that I had cherished for so many years were thrown into uncertainty. Had Richard truly loved me as I had him? That afternoon in the folly I had felt so enfolded by his love, lifted and buoyed on it as by the ocean, yet that love had been a charade. The house had already stolen Richard from me; now Atlas, with his devastating confession, had stolen my certainty of Richard’s love. I’d thought I had nothing left to give Gravesend, but the curse, greedy for more of my suffering, had found something that remained to rob me of.

Could Atticus have spoken the truth about Richard having deserted me that day for another woman? I winced away from the thought, but it wouldn’t stop eating at me. It would have been preferable to believe that Atticus had lied, that he had invented the whole story to exorcise his brother from my mind and heart… and if Genevieve had spoken truly and Atticus had come to care for me, this might have been a way of freeing me from Richard’s hold on my heart so that I might be able to love Atticus. But that was calculating in a way that I had never seen in him—and foolish, too, if he had expected the story to make me think more fondly of him. And Atticus, whatever else he might be, was not a fool.

If only I had someone to talk to, a confidant, but Atticus—fittingly—was the only person who truly knew me and my secrets. I needed a friend who could listen and give me comfort, even guidance…

There was only one possible person, though she was scarcely a neutral party. But I quickly dressed in one of my day dresses—something simple enough that I needed no other pair of hands to assist me—and slipped from my room.

My route took me past Lord Telford’s chambers, and I could see light at the bottom of the door. I thought I heard male voices, but I walked all the faster to put the room and its occupants behind me.

When I reached my destination I had to knock a few times before a response came. Then there came a drowsy
“Qui est-ce?”
and Genevieve opened the door, sleepily pulling a dressing gown on over her lacy nightdress.

Her appearance struck me as if for the first time, and I stood frozen, staring dumbly at her. The reddish tint of her hair… the blue eyes and high forehead… the wide mouth, mobile and expressive… all so familiar.

Atticus had not lied. She was Richard’s daughter.

“Aunt Clara,” she exclaimed. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” I said through dry lips.

“What is it? Come in, tell me how I may help.”

This girl might have been my daughter.
If I had been less vigilant, or Richard more persuasive… or perhaps even that was a pretty lie I was telling myself, and maybe I had never held for him the attraction of the woman who became Genevieve’s mother. I stared at her with hot eyes, and the girl, concerned, touched my arm.

That shook me out of my stupor. “Lord Telford has taken a turn for the worse,” I said flatly. “The doctor has been sent for.”

“Oh, I am so sorry. What can I do?”

“There’s nothing. I just…” With her guileless blue eyes gazing at me with such concern I couldn’t think of a plausible explanation for my presence. “Has anyone told you Gravesend is cursed?” I asked abruptly.

“Cursed?” She was perplexed, the poor innocent. “No, I do not believe so.”

“A curse was laid on it that anyone who lives here will lose what they most treasure. And it’s true. It has stolen what was most precious to me—and it stole him twice.”

“Why, Aunt Clara, you’re crying.” She reached out to take my hand, but I backed away.

“You should run,” I said. My voice was almost unrecognizable as my own. “Leave Gravesend. Go back to France, marry, do what you must but get away from here—before the house ruins your life as well.”

Questions were hovering on her lips, but I could not bear to be with her any longer, this living reminder that Richard had been untrue, that the vile things Lord Veridian had said were more real than my own memories. I turned and almost ran back to my own room.

I huddled sleepless in a chair until Henriette arrived sometime after dawn to prepare me for another day at Gravesend… another day as Mrs. Blackwood.

I had scarcely finished dressing, with Henriette’s help, when there was a knock at the door. To my surprise it was Mrs. Threll who entered at my invitation. Her face was marked by its usual impassivity, so I was unprepared for the news she had come to divulge.

“Lord Telford has passed away,” she told me. “The doctor arrived too late.”

My first thought was of Atticus. Later I would wonder why my mind had not flown at once to the fact that I was now free, that this sham marriage needed to be continued no longer than strictly necessary for form’s sake. But in that first moment I thought only of how difficult this would be for him. Despite the conflict and lack of real kinship that existed between him and his father, this loss would no doubt awaken sadness and regret in him.

My mind was so occupied with him that it took me a moment to register what Mrs. Threll had said next. “If you could let Mr. Blackwood know when you see him, the doctor would like to speak to him in private.”

“When
I
see him? He was with his father all night, surely. As soon as he sent Brutus for the doctor, he went to his father’s room.”

A tiny change seemed to take place in the careful neutrality of her face, but I could not pinpoint what it was. “Brutus tells me that when he returned with the doctor, no one was with Lord Telford. He doesn’t know where Mr. Atticus was.”

“No more do I,” I said, a bit shortly. It was exasperating to be assumed to be in my husband’s full confidence when in fact he seemed quite adept at keeping vital information from me. “If I see him before you do, I’ll tell him to go talk to the doctor.”

“Very good, ma’am. I shall direct the servants to begin setting the house to rights.”

It had been a very long time since I had been in a house where a death had taken place, but at a house as grand as Gravesend, and with the deceased so prominent in society, there would no doubt be elaborate measures—crape over the mirrors, the drapes drawn, a wreath on the front door, stopped clocks… “I’ll ask my husband to speak to you if he has particular preferences as far as that goes,” I said. “I’ll need to have some of my dresses dyed black, if any of the maids can be spared for the task.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

The guests would almost certainly depart without my having to ask them; it was a pity for their sakes that their visit would be shortened, but it could not be helped. The house would no doubt be in upheaval all day. The very thought made me weary, after my distressing and unrestful night.

For my father-in-law—although it was still difficult to think of Lord Telford in that capacity—I did not feel the need for sorrow. His poor health had so obviously been a frustration and a burden to him that I could not imagine that he was anything but relieved to have been plucked from the terrestrial sphere. To be reunited with his beloved Richard was probably the happiest fate he could have desired… and, sadly, I suspected that his absence would not be an occasion of grief to many.

There had been a time, I recalled, when I had been so distraught over Richard’s death that I had wished I might join him. I flinched now to think of it. That I had been so devastated by the loss of a man who had not been true to me, had not, perhaps, even loved me, woke the humiliation to burn anew in my heart. And facing Atticus again, knowing that he was fully aware of my ignorance and had known of it all these years—had heard me insist upon Richard’s goodness when he knew I had been fooled—would have smarted even worse, had there not been the serious matter of his father’s death at the forefront of our minds.

I elected to break my fast in my sitting room, knowing that the guests were probably too busy with preparations for departure to assemble for what would have been an uncomfortable meal together. News like this, as I knew of old, spread like wildfire in even the most distinguished of houses: the servants’ network would be passing word to every corner, and the guests’ valets and ladies’ maids would be telling their masters and mistresses. Soon enough I could descend to the morning room in case any guests wished or needed to see me. But it would be Atticus they would wish to convey their condolences to, and I wondered how I would go about finding him. Where could he have gone that none of the servants had been able to tell Mrs. Threll?

There came a knock at the door, and when I called out a welcome, it was the man himself. But so changed. He was still in his evening clothes from the night before, which startled me, and he was unshaven, but the real change was in his manner. He moved like a man under water, as if at every step he were fighting against a force that tried to immobilize him. Every gesture seemed hard won, and the weariness in the slope of his shoulders and the heaviness of his eyelids squeezed at my heart despite my conflicted emotions about him. His hair was disheveled, his tie undone. Most shocking of all, though, were his eyes. Always they had held a tendency toward the contemplative, even toward sadness, but now they were the eyes of a man who had been dealt a shock that rattled him down to his soul.

Do my eyes look like that?
I wondered.
After he told me about his deception and Richard’s faithlessness, was this what he saw in my face?

It was but a passing thought. One look at Atticus thrust my own grief and shock to the back of my mind. I had not imagined that this loss would jar him so severely. He had stopped by the fire as if uncertain what to do; I rose and gently steered him to a chair, then rang for a maid. She could bring him breakfast, more tea, whatever he needed. In the meantime I brought him my own teacup, since it was the only one at hand. “Drink this,” I said, and he did. I wished I had brandy or some other stimulant at hand. “You’ve heard, then?” I asked, as gently as I could.

“Heard?” His voice seemed to come from far away. “Heard what?”

My eyes widened. What could have left him looking so shattered except the news of his father’s death? “I’m afraid it’s your father,” I said hesitantly. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but he has passed away, Atticus.”

He was still for a long moment. Then he gave a long sigh as if his own life were leaving his body. “When?” he said dully, without looking at me.

“Before Dr. Brandt arrived. You—you weren’t there, Mrs. Threll said.”

“My father told me things that….” He shook his head. “I had to get away. He was still conscious when I left.” His voice rasped as if he had been talking a great deal, or shouting. Or perhaps his throat was parched. I refilled the cup and brought it back to him.

“You need rest,” I said. “That’s the first thing. Later your valet can shave you and make you tidy.”

He shook his head again. Not once had he looked me in the face. “There are arrangements to be made, too many things to attend to.”

“Let Birch and Mrs. Threll and me see to all that. You must take care of yourself.”

With a suddenness that made me start, he bounded up from the chair and began to pace. He buried his hands in his hair, and at once I realized why it looked so unkempt. He must have made that despairing gesture more than once in the night that had just ended. Now the strange paralyzed weariness was gone, replaced with a restless energy that had him prowling the room. The hitch in his gait told me that his bad leg was paining him still… or that he was in too much mental distress to control it.

“The things he told me,” he said. “Clara, my God, the burden he laid on me…”

“Is there a way I can help?”

“I can’t tell you what it is. He made me swear.” His hand was actually shaking when he curled it into a fist. “He knew I couldn’t break an oath I made to my dying father. He counted on it.”

“There’s no need for you to break your oath,” I said to soothe him. “It’s right that your father would entrust you with his final wishes. I’m sure everything will be all right.”

For some reason those words caught his attention, and he halted in his restless circuit of the room and turned his haggard face toward me. “Clara,” he said, as if newly conscious of my presence. “You’re still speaking to me.”

I could not prevent a tired smile from rising to my lips. “So it would seem.”

“I’m sorry about that day in the folly. How different things might have been if…”

“Please don’t let’s begin tormenting ourselves with what-ifs. The past is done, and there is no good to be had from dwelling on it.” I needed to believe it at least as much as he.

He regarded me with so much sorrow that doubt crept into my mind. Nor was it merely sorrow, but something else as well—compassion? “You have no idea,” he said in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper. “But how could you? He kept his secret well.”

“You needn’t speak of your father if it distresses you so.” Going to him, I took one of the clenched fists in my hands and gently coaxed the curled fingers open until I could hold his hand in mine. “Just tell me, does this change things for us?”

“Not at all,” he said slowly, laying his free hand against my face. “Nothing can change what’s between you and me—I’m determined on that.”

I realized that he must have misconstrued my words, or perhaps the fact that we were on speaking terms made him think that we were again united in that sweet intimacy we had experienced so briefly the night before. But that, too, was in the past, and not to be recaptured.

This was not the moment to make that plain, however. Not with him reeling already. “Well, then,” I said, keeping my voice calm and matter-of-fact, “what is there to worry about?”

His hand dropped, and he turned away. “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.”

My words had brought him no comfort. I realized that he was drunk—not on spirits, but on exhaustion and sadness and confusion. He had little idea what he was saying, and in this state he might let slip something he would later regret having said. If he blurted out his dead father’s secrets to me, I didn’t want either of us to have to live with the bitter regret that would ensue.

I wondered what the old man had told Atticus that could have devastated him so. A secret child, perhaps—a rival heir, even? Some underhanded business dealings that might place Atticus’s legacy in jeopardy? Either of these might have come as a terrible shock to his son, especially if they meant financial ruin. If that disaster fell, the servants would be dismissed, all of Atticus’s dependents—like me and Genevieve—would be forced to fend for themselves, and perhaps Atticus himself would even be compelled to find an occupation. But from the little he had said, despite its incoherence, that did not seem to be the case. He had said the secret changed nothing, so my imaginings must have been wide of the mark.

Now was not the time, however, for such speculation. “You’ve had a terrible blow, and you are worn to a thread,” I said gently. “Everything looks darker when viewed through the lens of exhaustion. Rest, eat, and then see how you feel. Rest won’t conquer sorrow, but it can make it a tiny bit easier to bear up under it.”

I think he was about to accede when a peremptory knock sounded and Dr. Brandt entered the room without waiting to be invited. Perhaps he felt that his position made him immune to usual courtesies, and no doubt he was accustomed to having business too urgent to permit any delay. “Mrs. Blackwood, how do you do,” he said crisply. “A very sad business, this.”

“Indeed, Dr. Brandt. Thank you for all your efforts.” I saw that the maid Jane had entered the room silently behind him and stood awaiting her orders. “I imagine you’re in need of refreshment after your long night—”

To my astonishment, he cut me off. “I haven’t time for such inessentials. There is something of the utmost gravity I must discuss with your husband. Blackwood, where can we speak in private?”

“Here,” said Atticus shortly. “I have no secrets from Clara. That is to say,” he amended, no doubt realizing that this was not the strict truth, “you may speak freely before my wife. What concerns me concerns her also.”

“Very well,” said the doctor. “Pray dismiss your servant, Mrs. Blackwood, so that we may talk in confidence.”

I was not particularly pleased at being ordered about in my own sitting room, but I asked Jane to bring a fresh tea tray and leave it outside the door. When she had closed the door behind her I locked it, more to reassure the doctor than out of any real fear of being intruded upon.

“That other door,” he said, jerking his head toward it. “Where does it lead?”

“To my bedchamber. I’ll lock it if you wish, although no one would have cause to use it except perhaps Henriette, my maid.”

“French, is she? Yes, do lock it. Are there any other places where someone might eavesdrop?”

“None,” said Atticus. A certain amount of nervous energy had returned to him with the doctor’s appearance, and although I took a seat on a divan and indicated the place next to me, he remained standing. “What is it you have to divulge that is so deadly secret, Dr. Brandt?”

The doctor gave a short bark of a laugh. He was a stocky man with a round balding head and eyes notable more for their intelligent expression than their beauty. His suit was of serviceable brown wool, and his waistcoat plain. Clearly he did not care greatly about his appearance, but that gave me more confidence in his priorities.

“Deadly it is indeed,” he said. “I am sorry to tell you this, Mr. Blackwood, but there is something very sinister about the manner of your father’s passing.”

“Sinister?” Atticus repeated. “What do you mean?”