I was already awake and waiting the next morning when a knock at the door came.
“Your ladyship,” called the voice of Mrs. Furness, “we’ve brought your breakfast. If you are thinking of trying to break out of the room when we unlock the door, I advise against it.”
It was wise of her to anticipate this, for it was exactly what I had resolved to do. Nor did her warning alter my intention. As soon as the key turned in the lock and the door began to swing inward, I yanked it open and darted through the opening to freedom.
At least, that was my intention. Instead, I collided with a huge form and found myself seized about the waist by a grip of iron. When I looked up, I saw to my astonishment the implacable bearded face of Grigore.
For an instant, I was frozen with shock. Then I seized him by the front of his smock and shook him—or tried to, for it was like trying to shake a mountain. “What did you do to my husband?” I shouted. “Did you kill him?”
The man regarded me warily and said something I did not understand. I cried out in frustration and fury and beat my fists against his chest, but he disregarded this except to hold me at arm’s length, so that I swiped at him in futile misery.
“There’s no need to take on so, I’m sure,” the housekeeper said rebukingly. Beside her stood the cook with a tray. “You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten something.”
“Does my uncle know you’re holding me here against my will?” I demanded, struggling in the burly Romanian’s grip as he carried me back into my room. It was useless to fight him; he might have been made of solid rock. Evidently growing annoyed with my struggles, he gave me a shake that practically rattled my teeth before plunking me down without ceremony on the divan. As he took a position behind me with his huge hands clamped on my upper arms, the cook placed the tray on the small table before me.
“My uncle won’t permit this,” I told Mrs. Furness, as my head spun from Grigore’s rough treatment.
“On the contrary, he feels that Mr. Lynch’s plan is the most sensible course of action.” With a jerk of her head she indicated that the cook could leave, and she did not resume speaking until the door had closed behind her. “It would do the family no good if you were to run about spreading tales of what you have seen here—or what you think you have seen.”
To my consternation she began to move about the room, fingering my belongings and placing some of them in a box. My sewing kit. A silver brooch. My husband’s razor. “What are you doing with our things?” I asked.
She scarcely glanced at me as she opened the drawer of the dressing table and poked through its contents. “The whole household knows by now that your grief for your husband has unseated your reason, and you will do yourself a mischief if anything sharp or dangerous is left in your possession.”
In other words, she was removing everything that I might be able to use as a tool—or a weapon. Even the meal on the tray before me, a meat pasty and bowl of broth, seemed to have been chosen so that it would not require implements. I had to concede that it was a wise precaution. But when she opened my mother’s trunk and began to extract items from it, I made to rise and was only stopped by Grigore, who held me forcibly in place.
“What possible harm can I do with books?” I protested. “Leave those to me, at least.”
“You might tear out the pages to write messages on them,” she replied calmly.
“How, when you have taken the pen and ink? And who on earth would I give them to? Mrs. Furness, please listen. I won’t cause any trouble for my uncle or Mr. Lynch. I only want to return home.” At that moment I felt I would promise anything if only they would set me free. “Tell my uncle that I’ll not do or say anything to throw suspicion on the family if he will only release me.”
“I’m sorry, my lady, but you’ll get no help from me.”
Her placid stubbornness baffled me. “I can believe the others being taken in by lies about my going mad from grief, but I don’t understand why you are helping my uncle hold me captive. You know how wrong this is! How is he forcing you to go along with his schemes?”
The housekeeper folded her hands at her waist, the very image of the obedient servant, even as she most strenuously defied the role. “You misunderstand, my lady,” she said. “It is young Mr. Lynch’s wishes that matter to me. Whatever he desires, I will do everything in my power to provide.”
Bewildered, I asked, “Why?”
“He is my son.”
“Your son?” I said in astonishment. I remembered her strange demeanor when we had discussed the lamb grave marker, which I had taken to mean that she had lost a child to death. But that did not seem to be the case after all. “You were my uncle’s mistress?”
A tight little smile came and went on her round face. “That’s putting a fine face on it. The fact is that many years ago I was a parlormaid in the London residence of an acquaintance of Mr. Burleigh’s. I was a comely thing in those days, and during a visit to his friend Mr. Burleigh took a fancy to me. When I resisted, he told me that he would see that I lost my position unless I was… kind to him.”
I stared at her, aghast. No wonder she had been so angered by my uncle’s scathing comments on fallen women. Disgust filled me at what my uncle had done to her. I could see in her features traces of the pretty young girl she had once been—and also I could see a resemblance to her son, now that I knew to look for it. The delicacy of her nose and chin had been blunted somewhat by the years, but I could see now that Victor took after her.
Under my scrutiny she dropped her eyes to her apron and smoothed it down before speaking again. “When I found I was going to have a child, he offered me a good deal of money to go away, but I told him that I would do nothing of the sort. Unless he gave me a position where I would be able to earn my living and also stay near my child, I would go to his mother and tell her everything. I was surprised at how quickly he agreed. Later, when I came to Thurnley Hall and met his mother, it made more sense.”
“So after you had the child he made you housekeeper here.”
“He kept that much of his bargain, yes. But he sent Victor to be raised by a farm couple on the estate until the boy was old enough to be sent to school. And once Victor left university, he was sent to a position far away. Then another, when that did not suit his temperament. And so on.” Her jaw set, and her plump, comfortable figure was suddenly infused with steel. “For nearly all of his life, I have never seen my son for more than a few weeks at a time—between school terms and the intervals between the different positions he has held. I have had to make do with those meager scraps to keep my heart whole. It is like keeping a starving man alive by feeding him a rusk twice a year.”
It was a desolate picture, and now that I was approaching motherhood myself I could not help but feel pity for her. “But he doesn’t know that you’re his mother?” I asked. “You didn’t tell him?”
She took control of herself once more, straightening her shoulders and making a visible effort to regain her composure. “No,” she said more calmly. “The knowledge would bring him no happiness, and his happiness is all I desire.” Then a great sigh escaped her. “If only he had been allowed to stay with me! He would have known love, not revulsion. I have never shrunk from him because of his defect. I would never have made him feel that he was flawed or freakish, as his foster parents and his schoolfellows did.”
She might, in fact, have prevented him from becoming what he was now. The cruel injustice that had been done to her and then to her son was now being visited upon me, and some day, unless I could prevent it, upon my child. This chain of misery had to be broken.
“He told me that before she died my grandmother taunted him with the news that he was the son of Mr. Burleigh,” I said. “How did she come to have that knowledge? Did you tell her?”
“I’m the last person who would have done that! I’d seen what malicious joy the old woman took in making those around her miserable. I knew no good would come of her learning Victor’s parentage. But she m
ust have worked it out of her son eventually.” She shook her head. “And it was the death of her.”
My eyes widened. She actually knew that her son had killed old Mrs. Burleigh—and yet her loyalty was still to him? That was possibly the most horrifying thing she had yet said, and dread tightened my breast. If she stood behind her son when he committed murder, was there any extremity in which she would not be his willing accomplice?
Apprehensively I asked, “Why are you telling me all this? Do you think that if I have pity for him, it will make me more willing to cooperate?”
“Doesn’t it?” she returned. “It can’t have escaped you that he is very like your late husband in many ways, my lady. He did not have the advantages of the late baron, but…”
“Advantages!” I burst out, outraged that she could compare the two. “My husband suffered every bit as cruelly as your son, or even more so, yet he did not let it turn him into a twisted maniac bent on exacting revenge for his wrongs. He became compassionate and selfless, not vindictive and selfish. The idea that I am to be made your son’s broodmare to create more monsters like him is so loathsome—”
Before I could finish the thought she had stepped forward and slapped me hard across the face, first with one hand, then with the other. With my arms pinioned by Grigore I could neither fend off the blows nor return them.
“Do not call my son that,” she said quietly.
My cheeks smarted with the sting of the blows, but the shock was almost sharper than the pain. “It is what he calls himself,” I flared. “What he is resolved to be.”
She was visibly breathing hard, and now she put a hand to her breast as if to quiet her agitation. “He is a better man that anyone knows him to be, even himself.”
“Then you must help him to recognize that,” I urged her. “You must help him along the way. A fine way to start would be to persuade him to release me.”
Her quick astonished glance toward me showed how far this idea was from her thoughts. “Why should he listen to anything I have to say?” she asked in surprise. “I am only the housekeeper.”
So she still did not intend that he should know he was her son. I wondered if there was a way I could turn that information to my own use. It seemed to me, however, that a man who was pleased with himself and the world would be less dangerous than a man who was greatly disappointed. Right now all he knew was that he was the natural son of a gentleman. To let him know that his mother was a servant might devastate or anger him, and in that mood he might be more of a threat to me than he already was.
As I was thinking this, the housekeeper nodded at Grigore to release me, and he did so. My arms ached as the blood flowed back into the places where he had gripped me, and I eyed him resentfully as he joined the housekeeper by the door. I knew better this time than to run at them. I must find a less obvious means of escaping.
In the very act of leaving, the housekeeper paused and turned back to me. “On behalf of the household,” she said, “allow me to say how very sorry we are about the death of Lord Telford. You have our deepest sympathies, your ladyship.”
For a moment I was unable to speak. Then I whispered, “Get out.”
She curtseyed neatly and obeyed. Then came the sound of the key turning in the lock, and I was alone once more.
This time I nearly tore the room apart in my search for something that would help me break free. I would have reduced each stick of furniture to splinters, even the gargantuan bed and the famed cradle itself, if it would have helped me. I was still more angry than frightened, and my desolation at having lost Atticus, suppress it though I might, fueled the rage and made it burn all the brighter.
I hardly noticed the passage of time, but as the dinner hour struck, there came a knock at the door and the sound of a key in the lock. Cook entered carrying a tray, followed by Victor and Grigore.
Any wild thoughts I might have had of running for the door were thwarted when Grigore stepped into my path, reminding me of the shaking he had given me earlier. He looked as if he might not stop at shaking me this time.
He could not stop my mouth, though. I demanded of Victor, “How can you let Grigore go about freely when he almost certainly killed Atticus?”
“Now, Clara,” he said, with a mildness that infuriated me. “You don’t know that he did.”
“Ask him, then! See if he can defend himself. He wouldn’t answer me, but you speak his language. Make him tell me the truth.”
He gave a slight sigh. He was dressed for dinner, and in his formal suit he struck a bizarre contrast with the burly servant in his peasant garb. In a tone of slightly strained patience, he said, “I don’t think there is anything to be gained by my doing that. I trust Grigore, and you shall simply have to trust me.”
For the moment I forgot that I was addressing a murderer and a madman, whose anger I did not want to awaken. “Trust you?” I burst out. “You have made me your prisoner. I could hardly trust you any less.”
Shutting his eyes briefly, he drew in a deep breath, evidently in an effort to keep his temper. “You aren’t my prisoner, Clara; you’re my betrothed,” he said evenly. “I fear you are working yourself into a state of nervous excitement. Please take control of yourself. I should hate to have to ask Mrs. Furness to administer laudanum to you.”
This was so clearly a threat that I took myself in hand. The prospect of being drugged into submission made me repress a shudder, and I made myself say calmly, “That won’t be necessary.”
“I thought as much,” he said, brightening. “You are a woman of sense, Clara; I admire that in you. As such, you can surely see that the best course of action is to look to the future, not the past.”
Evidently he expected me to somehow put my husband’s probable murder out of my mind and focus instead on the future that he was constructing for me. My precarious calm threatened to desert me, especially now that I noticed the cook was laying two places at the table by the fire. “Do you intend to dine with me?” I asked.
Gesturing for me to be seated, he drew a chair up for himself. “I plan to make it our habit each evening. It affords us an excellent opportunity to know each other better.” He placed a linen napkin in his lap as the cook served our plates, adding, “By the time you accept me formally as your future husband, you shall have come to feel quite comfortable in my presence.”
Comfortable! My hand itched to pick up my plate and throw it in his face. But Grigore took up a position behind him, ready, I was certain, to suppress me if I made any sudden motions. Perhaps I could learn something to my advantage if I stayed calm and minded my manners… if, in short, I became a model prisoner.
This evening was to set the pattern for all those to come. Playing the suitor, Victor was never anything but polite and considerate, except in refusing me the one thing that I desired—my freedom. Whether I tried to reason with him or sat in icy silence, he paid me compliments and made conversation about the life we would lead together. I felt like the girl in the fairy tale, held prisoner in an enchanted castle, who each night was forced to repeat her refusal to the Beast who asked her to marry him.
And behind him Grigore always stood, a looming promise that if I lost my head and attacked my captor or attempted to escape I would regret it.
The day after this memorable dinner, I grew more methodical in my search for a means of freeing myself. Carefully, slowly, I examined everything that remained in the room. Mrs. Furness’s search had been brief, and she must surely have missed something that could be of use to me. I still believed in the possibility of a hidden entrance, and I retraced my steps in search of it despite Victor’s having told me the night before, with a tolerant smile, that none existed.
Adding to my tension was the worry that soon it would become apparent that I was expecting a child. I had no idea whether my captor would find Atticus’s child a boon or a threat, and I did not want to gamble on what he might do with that knowledge.
Without any occupation for my days except my search for an esca
pe route, I began to feel as if the balance of my mind was at risk. It was a struggle to keep my grief for Atticus at bay, yet I knew that I had to do exactly that, to remain as calm and logical as possible, in order to thwart my captor’s scheme. It occurred to me that Victor might have had Mrs. Furness remove my mother’s books and all other forms of passing the time so that I would find his company more pleasing by contrast after hours of empty solitude.
On the fourth day of my captivity, as I had each previous day, I searched my room once again for anything that might be of use to me. Little enough remained; even the bed sheets had been removed after Mrs. Furness discovered that I was tying them into a rope so that I might climb down from the window. Even though I knew I had already thoroughly examined the contents of my mother’s trunk, I opened it to search again. Besides the daguerreotype portrait, it now contained nothing but the blue satin dress and a few handkerchiefs.
I regarded the dress with a bittersweet smile as I drew it from the trunk, smoothing out the creases and trying to imagine how my mother would have looked in it.
Then I noticed a strange thing. Under my fingers, the bodice crackled.
It was sensation more than sound. Something stiff lay beneath the satin, something more crisp than the interlining generally used in ladies’ clothing. When I unlaced the bodice and laid it flat so that I could examine the inside, nothing looked awry, but when I experimentally stroked my fingertips over the area, I felt the outline of something sewn between the layers of fabric. When I held it closer, I could see that in one area a seam had been ripped out and then sewn again in a slightly darker shade of thread.
Cursed Once More: The Sequel to With This Curse Page 22