“It must have seemed magical to a young girl,” Isabella spoke with quiet care; she did not want to interrupt him.
“I would come here with her when she was little. Mama did not like her out on her own in case she came to injury somehow. If I did not come, Kitty would.” He stared off into the distance as he drew it all to memory. “Her nurse would never come down with her. She liked Eleanor to stay clean and tidy in the main grounds, not scampering through wild woodland.” He laughed almost to himself.
“My own nurse was very similar.” Isabella smiled at him, but he did not see her.
“Oh, and her governess, when Eleanor was old enough to have one, was much the same. But Eleanor would have spent all day every day here in this place. She would have taken her morning lessons in this room if her governess had allowed it.”
“But your sister still managed to spend a lot of her time here?”
“Yes. She had me, Kitty, and Mama wrapped around her little finger. Mama, in particular, would spend many hours out here. So long, in fact, that they would bring a picnic lunch with them some days.”
“That sounds idyllic.”
“It was a very different place then. Eleanor had persuaded me to carry all sorts of comforts over from the Hall.” He laughed and became distant again. “I remember carrying the ruined old armchair you see here.” He pointed at the chair. “It was in a very fine state of repair back then. And there was a chaise-longue and two more chairs downstairs, along with a little side table. I carried it all across bit by bit, whenever Eleanor decided upon some other scheme.”
“You must have been very close.”
“We were.” He smiled. “She was only five or six years old when I carried these things here. I was but fourteen years myself. And she was very precious to me. She was like a little doll herself.”
“No doubt she had the room beneath all set out so that she could host afternoon teas.” Isabella could imagine it all.
A little girl with her mother and an old teapot and cups as she poured nothing more fortifying than cold water out for her doll and her mama to drink. She had played such games herself when she had been a girl.
But when Isabella had been a girl of six, Lady Eleanor had already been dead some four years. Had she lived, she would have been an adult in comparison. The idea gave Isabella a little shiver. She was silently mourning the loss of a girl who would never grow up; would never become the woman of thirty years who ought to have been there now, befriending her new sister-in-law.
The timing of it all was not lost on her. Neither was the fact that Elliot had suffered the disfigurement which had ruined her life when Isabella was just two years. It was a lifetime. She had known that already, of course, but something about imagining herself back then had put it all into some sort of cruel perspective. He had suffered for almost her entire lifetime.
“Yes, there was an old tea service. Well, bits and pieces.” He shrugged. “Just enough cups and saucers and a teapot, I think. And it was all still here as the years went on. Even as she began to grow up, Eleanora kept everything just as it was here.”
“And she still visited?”
“Every day.” He shook his head indulgently. “Every day. Although she had taken to coming here on her own more. Mama was less anxious about her coming to harm or having an accident.” He stopped suddenly and stared at the walls at what was obviously the evidence of that one, final accident. “She still thought this an enchanted place, a place she still thought of as an entire castle. But she didn’t have her tea parties anymore. She used to read her books on the chaise-longue downstairs, or sit in her armchair up here and gaze out of the thin windows.”
“It was a place of peace for her?”
“Yes, it was certainly that. And after my father died, I always thought she came here to think about him and to weep just a little in private. She was that sort of girl.”
“Did your father ever visit her here?”
“Not really. He might have popped his head in when he was out and about on the grounds. Nothing more than a cheery hello.”
“That was nice.”
“Yes, he knew it was Eleanor’s little domain, a place she shared with our mother, and he respected it.”
“How old was Eleanor when your father passed away?” Isabella felt as if they were somehow on more stable ground than they had been.
Elliot was becoming comfortable enough to talk about things he might never have said out loud.
“She was just eleven, and I was nineteen years. It hit her very hard indeed. I daresay it hit all three of us very hard. He was young to have passed, and it came as a shock.”
“You must have been a very close family.”
“We were. You know, I was never excited by the prospect of becoming Duke. At least not since I was old enough to realise that it would only come to pass when my father had died. I would have gladly never taken my title.”
“It is a painful gift, a title. Or, at least, it can be.” Isabella thought of her own family.
Would Anthony ever wish that his title would never come so that his father could live forever? She doubted it. Anthony was too much like their father to suffer the finer feelings or to even care about anyone besides himself. Their family, she thought miserably, had never been close.
How sad it was that Elliot, a man who had clearly been a part of such a close family, had lost them all within a year and found himself alone in the world by the age of twenty. The loneliest Duke in all of England. The thought of it made her want to cry.
Elliot’s retreat from the world was so much more complex than a disfigurement and the cruel taunts of others. There was nobody left to love and be loved by. His world had ended so suddenly.
“It should have occurred to me that Eleanor would one day try to do something to stay warm in here.” He resumed his tale with the same suddenness as he had begun it. “Her visits here were so much longer when she did not have our mother with her, or Kitty, coaxing her home again into the warmth of the Hall.”
Isabella felt her mouth go dry. Had Eleanor started the fire that eventually took her life? What an awful thought.
“She was not the most practical of girls, and I should think she understood very little about the need for a fireplace when a fire is to be lit.”
“You mean…?”
“It is the only explanation. There was a pile of kindling up here too,” he said and kicked at some grey, dry twigs. Isabella could hardly believe what she was looking at. Sticks gathered up by the young girl who ought now to be a woman of thirty. “But the damage was so fierce downstairs that it is clear she chose it to be the site of her little fire in the end. No doubt she had decided to light a little fire on the stone floor and stay warm as she laid on her chaise-longue and read her book. A smaller imitation of our beloved mother in her own little drawing room.”
“Oh no.” Isabella felt suddenly so sad and horrified all at once. It was almost overwhelming.
“I can only think that the little fire got suddenly out of control, maybe catching light to the chaise-longue itself or one of the armchairs. There is nothing left but debris down there now, so I suppose I shall never know the absolute truth of it. But it is the only thing that makes sense. And, instead of running out of the tower, she ran up in a bid to escape the flames.” He paused and cleared his dry, hoarse throat. “I will never know if she was so afraid she just panicked and ran up the stairs, or if the fire had barred her way. The old door is blackened, but it was not burned completely, so I cannot say definitely.”
Isabella could think of nothing to say. Her eyes had welled with tears of pity, and she dared not blink or speak for fear they would fall.
“I knew nothing of it until I heard the shouts coming from the stables. I was in my study and looked out to see a horrible, thick black plume of smoke drifting towards the house from the woodland. I knew, of course, that it must surely be coming from the tower.”
Isabella stood as still as a statue hardly daring to l
isten to the rest.
“As I ran out through the grounds, one of the stable hands said he had seen the Duchess run past him. I realised then that she had seen the smoke and had run towards her daughter with that unspoken motherly instinct of protection. As I ran, I knew they were both in there, and I felt helpless as if I was running through wet sand to get there, getting ever slower as I went.”
He had turned his back to her, staring out of the slit of a window that the young Lady Eleanor had gazed out of so many times in her young life. Isabella felt the doll slip a little in its fold of woollen shawl and hastened to secure it.
“When I got here, the ground floor was aflame. The door was opened wide, and I knew my mother must surely have left it so as she tore in to rescue her child. I could do no other than run in through the flames.” He held a protective arm up to the unmarked side of his face, and Isabella knew that he must surely have done exactly that on that awful day. “I could see that nothing would have survived the inferno on the ground floor and ran up the stairs. I had to feel my way, the air was so thick with smoke. And it was the same in here. No flames, nothing on fire, just thick, black smoke. I could see nothing at all, and it felt hot and thick in my lungs.”
“Oh, Elliot.” Finally, Isabella spoke.
“I dropped to my knees and searched, finding my mother first. I could not rouse her and knew she was not breathing. I felt so torn. I could not leave her there, but I could not stop looking for Eleanor either.” He paused for several moments and was still staring out of the window and away from her. “And I found her just a few feet away. I did not stop to see if she was breathing; I just lifted her up and ran blindly down the stairs. I left her on the ground in the care of the stable hands who had arrived just after me. I then ran back in for my mother. But as I ran through, my arm over my face, there came a great rumbling noise and something like a ball of flame, perhaps from the chaise-longue or the armchairs, I could not say, seemed to roll towards me. I felt it tearing into my flesh as if it were a knife rather than flames. I had never known such pain. I cried out, and I could hear shouts at the door. One of the stable hands reached in, and I felt him grasp my arm. I knew he meant to pull me free, but I could not leave my mother there alone. I tugged hard to free myself and set off for the stairs once more. The pain had all but gone in my determination, and I was back down with my mother in no time. The pathway to the door was clearer, the worst of the flames having burned themselves out.”
Isabella knew the worst was to come.
“When I made my way outside, and the men took my mother from my arms, I knew she was dead. I knew that the smoke had filled her lungs and choked the life out of her. I had known it all along. I turned to my sister and could see Kitty on her knees by her side, her head resting on my sister’s chest and her thin, bird-like frame wracked with sobs. I walked over, knowing all the while that my sister was gone also.”
“I am so sorry.” The image in her mind of Kitty, bent double with grief over the young girl, finally tipped Isabella’s tears over, and they ran down her face.
“I dropped also, looking down at my sister’s beautiful face. She was untouched by fire, the same as my mother. They had both been choked by the smoke, but the vicious flames had never reached them. It was a relief of sorts that they had not known the searing pain of burned flesh. But the fact they had suffocated was no real consolation. And, apart from the smoke and the dirt, my mother and sister looked as if they were unharmed. Like there was no true reason for them to be dead. I wanted to shake them both and shout at them until they woke up and started breathing again.”
Isabella took a step towards him, not knowing if she really should.
“And then Kitty, my dear Kitty, looked up at me, and her anguish turned to horror. Her eyes were glued to my face, and I knew then that the searing pain of the flames must have wrought some dreadful damage. But I did not care then, you see, for I wanted to lay down at the side of my mother and sister and stop breathing; to be dead also.”
Isabella took another step and laid a hand squarely in the middle of his back. He started a little at her touch but did not turn around.
“You came back with the doll, did you not? You came to return it to the very spot in which it had lain these eighteen years?” He spoke quietly, but she could hear the catch in his voice and knew that he was crying his own tears.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“You need not do that. I won’t leave Eleanor’s doll here any longer. I won’t leave this place a shrine anymore. It is time to clear it up or knock it down; I do not know which.”
“And what should I do with the doll?”
“I will take it. I shall keep the doll in memory of my sister.” His voice was breaking. “And thank you for restoring it so carefully. I am truly grateful, even if I must have seemed anything but these last days.”
Chapter 19
For two more days following their meeting in the tower, Isabella had not seen Elliot anywhere. But she had not looked for him this time, knowing that he would send for her when he was ready.
Isabella had caught his strained, exhausted expression when he had finally turned back from the window to reveal the good side of his face once more. But it was enough for her to see how the retelling of it all had almost brought him to his knees; it had taken so great a toll on him.
And when he had reached out to take the doll from her, holding the lifeless thing for the first time in many years, Isabella could almost feel how overwhelmed he was.
When she had offered to walk back along the woodland pathway with him, she had not been at all surprised when he had declined. And she had not been hurt or offended either, knowing that she would have relished her privacy had she been in his place.
All in all, Isabella had begun to feel that an important corner had been turned. Elliot was in pain, she had no doubt of that, but perhaps Crawford had been right. Perhaps Elliot had needed to move along in the mode of his grieving.
And Isabella could not help thinking that if there was an end in sight to his fierce pain, that the two of them might really be able to concentrate their efforts on spending more time in each other’s company. Perhaps even truly find that familiarity which would make her as comfortable to look at Elliot as Crawford and Kitty were.
On the second night without any sign of him, Isabella felt reasonably content. The worry she had suffered that she would never see Elliot again, that she would see out her life miserably alone in Coldwell Hall with an unseen husband, had all but vanished. They had come to a better understanding out there in the tower, and she knew it.
Isabella had made it clear that she had been working without knowledge because he had never given her such knowledge. And he had provided it almost immediately.
Isabella had settled down very quickly that night, turning off her small gas lamp early as she felt sleep begin to take her.
In no time at all, she was sleeping peacefully. That was until she heard a noise on the other side of her chamber door. She knew she had certainly heard something, for it had ripped her from her slumber and forced her to sit upright in her bed almost immediately she had heard it.
Surely there was somebody outside the room. Almost frozen to the spot, Isabella stared out through the darkness, willing her eyes to see. Would the door handle move slowly as the person on the other side of the door sought to gain entry at last?
As Isabella began to grow more conscious of her senses and surroundings, she tried to rationalize her fear away. After all, who could it be apart from one of the servants, Kitty, Crawford Maguire, or her husband? Surely an intruder would have been discovered before getting so deep into the house. And how would such an intruder ever make his way into the grounds in the first place? The hawthorns and leylandii were, she knew for certain, utterly impenetrable from the outside. Being designed to be just that, the perimeter was carefully maintained, she knew.
And so, it must be Kitty. But why would Kitty hover outside? Surely, she would just quietly
make her way in.
Common sense told her it could not be Crawford Maguire either. There would be no sense in him coming to her room at that hour, and she knew in her heart that he did not hold any inappropriately romantic inclinations towards her, his friend’s wife.
It had to be Elliot, there was no other explanation. But the idea suddenly made her feel unsettled. As hopeful as she had begun to feel for thoughts of her own future with Elliot, she was not yet ready for him to appear in her own quarters, day or night.
Dukes to Fall in Love With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection Page 15