Rebecca—
“I want you to shove me. Hard. I want you to be so angry you want to tear me apart.”
You know that won’t do anything.
“It would make me feel better.”
I heard a disembodied sigh.
It’s not worth it. You love him. You can’t control it. No one can control love.
“It’s different with him,” I repeated. “It’s almost a different sort of love. This love is maddening, all-consuming, terrifying.”
And we’re not.
“No. We’re not,” I said. “You and I are something entirely different. We’re safe, constant, reliable, even with you as you are.”
I guess neither of us can fully have you.
“You know I’m yours,” I said, and I was met with silence.
It was stupid, but something about that conversation with Henley seemed to make me throw myself further into my relationship with Richard.
Now there was a part of me who spent time with him out of desperation. I knew it was the wrong reason to spend time with him, but I didn’t care.
The feeling in my stomach was incessant. I knew I had to leave as soon as the clock was finished—and the clock should be ready any day now—and that only made me throw myself toward Richard even more. I didn’t know why I thought my relationship with Richard would be any different from my relationship with Henley. Maybe I was making a huge mistake. I didn’t know anymore.
Richard had this normalcy around him. When I was near him, I became “normal” too. I knew that when I left, I would never see him again. He would grow old and die. It was the same as when I thought I’d left Henley for good in 1904.
So why did I do it? Why was I hurting myself even more? With the murderer still out there, it wasn’t as if I could stay even without this immortality business. I wished I could be like Miss Hatfield—don’t get close to people any more than needed, don’t make friends you know you need to leave, and certainly don’t love anyone. It would be easier. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know if I was constitutionally weaker than Miss Hatfield had been, but I just couldn’t not love. It was as if I was built this way.
So I became more proactive in planning outings with Richard, rather than leaving it up to chance and hoping to bump into him. Richard didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed rather pleased when I asked him when I would see him again.
Since showing me the alchemy lab, Richard hadn’t tried to kiss me again. I didn’t know if this was odd; it probably wasn’t something a man was supposed to do when courting a woman in this time period. I also didn’t know if I wanted him to kiss me again.
My eagerness did loosen Richard up more. He seemed to take it as a sign that it was okay to occasionally put his arm around me. He would brush a hair from my face. He sat closer to me—close enough that I could smell him on my skin when I retired to my room for the night.
Even now, Richard did it again, sitting down with his back to the fountain, drawing me close.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m just enjoying the company I have.”
“You mean to tell me that for once, that pretty little head of yours is completely blank?” He played with my fingers. “You’re not cooking up some plan or other to take over some foreign country?”
He narrowed his eyes, and I giggled at the face he made.
“You expect too much of me!”
“Never.” Richard wove his fingers through mine, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. “I’d give anything to see a glimpse into that mind of yours.”
“I don’t think you’d want to, if you knew what actually went on in there.” I meant it too.
“You underestimate me.”
Suddenly, Richard had a coughing fit. He withdrew his hand from mine to turn and cover his mouth.
“Richard, are you all right?” I raised a hand to put on his back, but he shuffled away from me.
As the coughing fit elongated, I grew increasingly more worried. He wheezed, and it sounded as if he couldn’t get a breath in. I had half a mind to yell for help, but slowly I heard him start to regain his breath as the coughing eased up.
“Are you all right?” I asked again.
“Yes, yes. That was nothing. Just a little cough. My throat felt a bit irritated.”
I raised my brows. “A little cough? That wasn’t a little cough at all. Come here—”
As I pulled him toward me, I froze. There was blood on his hand.
“My God . . .”
“That’s nothing,” Richard said, following my gaze.
He tried to pull his hand away and wipe it on his tights, but I firmly held his wrist.
“That’s not nothing, Richard. You just coughed up blood.”
“That, I’m aware of,” Richard said slowly.
“You have to go see a physician. This really can’t be—”
“I already have.” Richard looked more tired than he ever had in the midafternoon sun.
“And?”
“And it didn’t help.”
“Did he prescribe anything?” I asked. I thought about what I knew about the medicine of the time period. “Did he leech you?”
“Nothing helps. The physician himself told me that.”
My body grew cold with how callous he sounded. “What do you mean nothing helps?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? I’m dying.”
His words dangled in the air between us.
“Dying?”
“Dying.”
I sat back and put my hands to either side of me to steady myself.
“Consumption,” he said.
I almost couldn’t hear him through the ringing in my ears.
TWENTY-ONE
“LADY SUTTON WOULD like to invite you to dine with her this evening.”
Those were the dreaded words spoken by Helen the next morning. The invitation came out of nowhere, and though I wondered what had prompted it, I almost declined before rethinking.
I spent a particularly difficult day trying to ignore the pressing feeling of discomfort in my body. I didn’t know how much more of it I could take.
“Do you have a specific dress you would like to wear for tonight, my lady?” Helen asked that evening.
Maybe Lady Sutton would serve as a welcome distraction.
“Something bright,” I said. I was sure Lady Sutton would approve.
Helen pulled out a lapis lazuli dress I didn’t even know I had. I nodded, and she began dressing me.
“Did Lady Sutton say that she wanted to see me for a particular reason?”
“Not that I know of, my lady.”
This made me more nervous for some reason, and I hurried to get dressed.
“Would you like me to come with you?” Helen asked, seeing me start for the door.
“It’s all right,” I said. I didn’t need more to add to my plate, but at least Lady Sutton would keep my mind off the uncomfortable feeling growing in my stomach.
When I knocked on Lady Sutton’s door, one of her servants greeted me. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could Lady Sutton yelled, “Bring her in!” from within. I felt like I was about to be fed to the dogs.
When I walked in, Lady Sutton was lounging on the bright pink bench, fanning herself. In an equally pink gown, she almost blended in with the lumpy bench.
“Lady Sutton.” I curtseyed.
“Now, now. Sit by me, Lady Eleanor. And come talk to me.”
I looked around for a seat near the bench, since Lady Sutton was taking up all of it. One of the servants, the same one who had let me in, moved a chair close to Lady Sutton for me.
“Thank you,” I said, sitting down.
But if it was gossip she was after, I wanted no part of it.
“I’ve been noticing that you’ve been spending more time with my Richard,” she began.
I didn’t know if she meant “noticing” or “hearing,” but something told
me it was more of the latter.
“Yes, I’ve been enjoying Richard’s company.”
As I said that, Lady Sutton’s eyebrows shot up. I really did need to remember to call him Lord Holdings when I wasn’t talking to him directly.
“So I’ve heard . . .”
“Would you prefer it if I didn’t spend time with him?” I asked.
I hadn’t the slightest intention of following through with not seeing Richard if she asked me to. I just wanted to sense where this conversation was going.
“Not at all! I think you’re quite good for him,” she said, and I relaxed into my seat. “I haven’t seen him this excited in months, since . . . You see, he’s in a fragile state.”
“I know,” I said.
Lady Sutton sighed. “So he told you?”
“Yes, he did.”
“I suppose it’s better that he told you himself, rather than me accidentally bursting out with it. You know I have a big mouth.” I wasn’t going to deny that.
“I’m glad he told you,” she went on. “It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.”
It did still hurt me when I realized how long Richard had kept such a big secret from me. He wanted me to know him and understand him to the point that he smuggled me into the alchemy lab, and yet he had tried to hide the fact that he was sick. I couldn’t help wondering when, or maybe even if, Richard would have told me he had consumption if I hadn’t caught him coughing up blood.
“How long has he known?” I had to ask.
“That he was ill? A while.”
My chest tightened.
“There, there. I know it’s horrible to think of someone so bright and vibrant being ill, but he’s learning to live with it.”
He’s learning to live with it until it kills him. That was the part Lady Sutton was avoiding saying.
“He’s strong,” Lady Sutton said. “Stronger than you or I give him credit for sometimes. When the physician first told me that he was ill, I cried for hours. And you know who consoled me? Richard. He came into my room with a glass of sack and brandy, telling me everything was going to be all right. Imagine that! I was the one comforted by him!”
Lady Sutton clapped her hands together and laughed.
I didn’t know whether that was supposed to make me feel better.
“I know he’s strong, but—”
“No buts. He doesn’t want anyone to worry about him.”
“I can’t help but worry about him,” I admitted.
“That’s because you’re a good person.” She patted my arm. “That’s what he likes about you. I can hear it in his voice when he talks about you. We all worry about him. It’s what people who care do.”
“He talks about me?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. How can a boy in love not talk about his girl?”
I didn’t realize it until then, but my eyes were brimming with tears.
“There, there. Aren’t you glad that you two found each other before . . .”
She trailed off, but I knew what she was going to say. Before he died. Richard was going to die. And I had to sit here and do nothing about it.
“I’m so sorry. That was insensitive of me.” Lady Sutton fanned her face more furiously than before.
It was insensitive, but that was just Lady Sutton.
“Were you ever married?” I asked.
“Of course I was. I still am!”
I was about to apologize for not knowing, but Lady Sutton cut me off.
“My Lord, the old idiot’s still alive!” “Excuse me?”
“With the kind of lifestyle he maintains, I thought he would have died years ago, but he keeps on surviving.”
“He doesn’t live with you?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t be able to do a thing with that man breathing over my shoulder,” she said. “It’s better when we leave each other to our own devices. He has his life and I have mine. That’s how happy marriages are kept happy.”
This seemed to me to be as far from a happy marriage as there was.
“And you don’t ever wish to see him?”
“My dear young Lady Eleanor, the last I saw of him was about three years ago for a wedding. That was enough of him for a lifetime,” she said. “I’ll be frank with you, Lady Eleanor, because I value frankness above all else—even loyalty. My husband is a good-for-nothing scoundrel. Simple as that.”
She said it so much like a matter-of-fact statement that I didn’t know how to respond. I was about to try to change the topic of conversation, but Lady Sutton went on.
“Even at that wedding, or was it an engagement celebration? No matter, even at that event, do you know what he did?”
Lady Sutton looked at me expectantly. It was a few beats before I realized she was waiting for an answer.
“Umm, no?”
“Of course you don’t, you sweet girl. You haven’t been exposed to the horrors of this world. And I hope you never will be. Anyway, at this feast celebrating the engagement of the son of some dear friend or other of mine, he had the nerve to gamble.”
I tried to think quickly of a response I could give her to make it at least sound as if I was interested in her story. “My Lord, I can’t believe he gambled!”
“It wasn’t the fact that he gambled—that’s fine, since I occasionally gamble too. But the difference is that I win.” Lady Sutton sat up abruptly. “Do you understand that?”
After reassuring her that I did know the difference, Lady Sutton rolled over onto her back again.
“Thank goodness somebody does!”
As she cackled, I wondered how much she’d had to drink before I arrived. I had noticed that the wine seemed to be free flowing practically from morning here at court. I wanted to blame Lady Sutton’s behavior on alcohol, to give her the slightest benefit of the doubt.
“He lost so much money during the course of that one wedding that I could have bought a hundred dresses, not to mention a house to match them. And best of all . . . Do you know what was best of all?”
I shook my head.
“He didn’t even show up to the actual ceremony itself.” Lady Sutton roared with laughter, slapping the bench arm. “He was too sick from the night before, since he drank so much! Can you believe it?”
I told her I couldn’t.
“What a man . . . ,” she said.
We continued this same conversation as I ate her food, but eventually the dessert pastries came and went, so I felt I could excuse myself. I told her I had to get going, since the countess was probably expecting me.
When I was backing out of the room, Lady Sutton was still muttering to herself.
“What a man, what a stupid man.”
TWENTY-TWO
RICHARD AND I often walked together through the court gardens.
There were rows upon rows of all sorts of hedges, varying in shades of green only, laid out in geometric patterns. There were also fragrant herbs and flowers in perfect garden plots that Richard would point out to me as we walked.
“Isn’t that a beautiful carnation?” Richard pointed to a white flower growing by my side.
I remembered the white carnations Miss Hatfield used to buy from the farmer’s market.
“What’s this flower called?” I cupped a blossom in my hands.
“That’s a gillyflower.” He sounded patient with me, as if teaching a child the names of objects.
I pointed to his side. “What about that one?” I said, as we walked on.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
I screwed up my face in mock horror. “I thought you knew all the flowers here! Every single one of them—in fact, every single one in all of England!”
He laughed.
I would do anything for that laugh.
“Aren’t the gardens wonderful?” he said quietly. “The gardens are as natural as court will ever get with its fake people.”
Of course, I took that moment to remind him that every plant here wa
s meticulously chosen, not to mention trimmed to an exact shape and kept a certain way.
“It’s like you enjoy ruining my small pleasures,” he said, at which I wrinkled my nose.
Across the green of the garden, I could see there was another couple.
Richard looked in the direction of my gaze. “Another pair enjoying the gardens on a beautiful day?”
The way the light slanted down through the mosaic of trees in the gardens obscured their faces from me. All I could tell was that the woman wore a black dress, contrasting with the white flowers that surrounded that section of the garden, and the man wore a dark crimson cloak with gold trim that caught the light as he moved to every beck and call of his lady.
“I suppose it’s days like this that people are brought together,” I said.
“But some people are meant to find each other, no matter what the situation. Sometimes it’s just meant to be. You can’t argue with meant to be.”
He chuckled, and I tried not to cringe as his chuckling turned to wheezing.
There wasn’t anything I could say or do but pat his back. Luckily, it didn’t take long for him to recover.
“Are you sure you want to spend time with this invalid?” he asked.
“I do! Especially when this invalid needs me to even breathe.”
That brought a smile to his face, and I felt warm, as if staring into the face of the sun itself.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said.
That was the Richard I had come to love.
We walked once around a statue Richard claimed was of the Roman goddess Diana.
“But couldn’t it be of any Roman woman?” I pointed out. “There’s nothing there that says it has to be Diana.”
“She’s the goddess of the hunt, and there are arrows at her feet.”
“That still doesn’t say anything.”
“You wouldn’t be satisfied unless there was a plaque with her name,” Richard teased, but his teasing sounded halfhearted.
I looked up from the statue to see that Richard looked a bit pale.
“Do you feel all right?” I asked.
“Just because you know I’m ill now, it doesn’t mean you have to ask how I’m feeling every two seconds.”
I felt bad and didn’t want to push him, but his face looked a bit gray. “Are you sure?”
The Time of the Clockmaker Page 20