The Changeling Bride

by Lisa Cach

“Do you think he’s ever rowed a boat?” Elle asked.

  “What makes you wonder? The fact that he is facing the bow and rowing backwards?”

  They both giggled.

  After much trouble, he at long last he came abreast of the hat, now almost at the center of the lake. He left the oars dangling in their locks and stood, stepping to port. The little rowboat wobbled.

  “Frederick!” Elle shouted. “Stay low! You’re going to tip over!”

  He glanced up at her words and gave a jaunty wave, ignoring—or perhaps not hearing—her advice. The hat skimmed farther from the boat, Frederick reached out to get it, and in the blink of an eye the boat heeled over and dumped him.

  Elle slapped her hand to her mouth, laughing. She and Louise were both bent double, their stomachs aching with hilarity.

  Seconds passed and no head bobbed to the surface, and Elle’s laughter died down. Frederick could swim, couldn’t he?

  Louise gripped her arm. “Why does he not come up?”

  Elle looked at the oar dangling in the water. He could easily have hit his head going in and knocked himself out. How long had passed, half a minute? Longer? She scanned the shores of the lake. They were alone out here.

  “Run to the house, Louise. Get help. Go!”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just go! I’ll get Frederick.” She yanked free of Louise’s grip, shucked off her shoes, and plunged through the reeds into the frigid water of the lake. Her dress dragged at the water, but not so badly that she couldn’t swim. Thank God for light material. “Go!” she screamed once more, and Louise finally obeyed.

  The cold water was nothing compared with the fear that grew in her with every second that Frederick stayed beneath the surface of the water. She swam her efficient crawl, her strong arms doing most of the work, her feet kicking just enough to keep her legs high in the water. Fragments of rescue procedures, learned but never utilized, spun through her head.

  She reached the rowboat and hung on its edge for a moment. Where had he gone down? She released the boat and dived, searching blindly through the water, opening her eyes but seeing only greenish brown murk. She went down until her ears hurt, then rushed to the surface for air.

  She repeated the dive, and again, and on her fourth dive her fingers brushed his jacket. She dug her hand into the material and dragged him to the surface, her lungs bursting for air.

  At the surface she wrapped her arm around his neck from behind and clung to the boat, then shouted his name at him. He didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Her muscles were feeling the cold, and she knew she would not be able to lift him into the boat.

  She took a breath, then struck out for the nearest shore in a sidestroke. She shifted her hold to his hair, grabbing a thick handful on the crown of his head and towing him along, careful to keep his face above water.

  She was only ten or fifteen feet from shore when someone suddenly splashed into the water and waded out to her, taking Frederick from her and dragging him up onto the bank. Other hands helped her out, but she was too intent on Frederick to pay attention to whose they were.

  She saw it was Henry who had taken Frederick from her. He flipped his brother onto his stomach, and began to push at his back, trying to force out the water.

  “Get him on his back!” Elle ordered. She crawled over to the prone figure and tried to shove Henry away.

  “Get back, Elle. You are in the way.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said, pushing at him. When he still didn’t move, she took his face between her palms and forced him to look her in the eye. She could see the desperation in those black depths, and the love he had for his brother. “Henry, trust me.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she saw when he gave himself over to her. At long last he moved and rolled Frederick onto his back.

  Elle tilted back Frederick’s head, clearing the airway. High school health classes and CPR practice were far away in time and memory. How many breaths? How many compressions of the heart? She pinched shut his nose, opened his mouth, and gave him a breath. It took more force than she would have thought to make his chest rise, and her own chest muscles protested the effort.

  She felt for his pulse along his neck. Her fingers were so cold she didn’t know if she would feel one even if it was there. She moved down to his chest, pulling at his clothes, estimating as best she could where his sternum was. Palm over back of hand, heel of palm on his chest, elbows locked, she put her weight into the thrust, and repeated it four more times.

  Back to the breathing, two times. Then the heart again. The breathing. The heart. The breathing. She was only dimly aware of the people gathered around them, watching silently. Her world was the rhythm she was setting. Breathe twice, pump five times.

  Her muscles were shaking when Frederick finally convulsed. She tilted his head to the side, and he vomited up lake water and whatever was left of his lunch. He took a gasping breath, and then was breathing on his own. His eyes fluttered open.

  “It’s okay, Freddie,” Elle said, her hand brushing his wet hair back from his forehead. “You’re going to be all right.”

  He was too dazed to answer.

  “She saved your life, you little fool,” Henry said softly.

  She took the blanket one of the men handed to her and wrapped it around Frederick.

  “Take him back to the house,” she directed. “Get him warm, put him to bed.”

  Someone draped another blanket over her own shoulders. They lifted Frederick, then Henry helped her stand. It was only when Frederick was safely in the charge of others that Elle began to shake, whether from the cold or the fright of it all, she could not tell. She was dimly aware of Louise, keeping a distance from them all, looking pale and frightened. She couldn’t find the energy to care.

  Henry suddenly swept her up into his arms, blanket and all, and she felt his lips on her forehead. He was warm and solid, and she shut her eyes and let him carry her. She had been strong enough for one day.

  Back at the house, she was left in Marianne’s care as he went to check on Frederick. Marianne arranged for bathwater to be brought up, and fussed and clucked over her, building up the fire and peeling off her soaking clothes, and muttering about colds and pneumonia and stupid young men.

  The water was not too hot, yet it burned her chilled flesh when she sank into the tub. She huddled, content for once to let Marianne wash her, her mind centered only on the warmth that was slowly reviving her body. She was halfway back to being human when Louise slipped into the dressing room.

  “Do you mind if I come in?” Louise asked.

  “No, not at all.” She was too tired to care about anything.

  “I was scared for you, swimming in after him like that. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, now that I’m warm again.”

  Louise was silent, watching her bathe. “ ’Tis a lucky thing,” she said after several minutes had passed, “your knowing how to swim. If Tommy Jenkins had not taught you that summer, Frederick would probably have drowned.”

  Elle shrugged.

  “And remember how afraid I was, sitting on the bank, too frightened to try it myself? You must have thought me such a coward.”

  “No, I was afraid too.”

  Elle wiped rinse water from her eyes and stood, wrapping herself in the toweling Marianne held out. Louise was standing, staring at her. She was white as a sheet, and her eyes were wide. Before Elle could ask what was the matter, she turned and ran from the room.

  “Poor thing,” Marianne cooed, “She must have been scared for your very life.”

  Elle made a noncomittal sound. She hoped that was all it was, but she had the sinking feeling she had just failed an important test.

  Marianne warmed her sheets with a lidded pan full of hot coals, sliding it back and forth under the covers with the long handle.

  “Thank you, Marianne. You have no idea how inviting that bed looks.”

  “
Would you like chocolate? Something warm to drink?”

  “No need,” Henry said, coming through the door. “I have something right here.” He was carrying a lidded mug.

  Marianne dipped in curtsy and withdrew, leaving the two of them alone.

  “Do not just stand there and let your sheets grow cold,” Henry said. “Go on, into bed.”

  She obeyed, her toes curling in the delicious warmth. She stacked the pillows behind her back so she could sit upright. “What is that in the cup?”

  “Abigail’s secret recipe for warming the heart.” He handed it to her, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed.

  The ceramic was warm in her hand. She pressed the lever to raise the pewter lid, and sniffed at the contents. Spices and something alcoholic. She dared a sip. “More like something to burn a hole in your stomach.” She let the lid close with a clank and set the cup on the table by the bed.

  “Frederick was much more appreciative of the brew.”

  “I’ll bet he was. Is he doing all right?”

  “Yes, thanks to you. I will never be able to repay you for what you did today. If it had not been for your bravery and your skill, I would have lost my brother today.”

  Elle squeezed his hand. “I would do anything to save you from that kind of pain.”

  He looked into her eyes as if searching for the truth. “You mean that.”

  She didn’t answer. She had not realized until she said it that it was true.

  He lifted her hand, her fingers bending naturally over his, and gently kissed her knuckles. He remained with his head bent, his warm lips on her skin, until she reached forward with her other hand and brushed his hair behind his ear. He looked up at her, his eyes dark and vulnerable in a way she had never seen them, no hiding, no mask of cool composure. In that moment she allowed herself to want him with her heart, not just her body.

  “Make love to me, Henry.”

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly. “Is it safe?”

  It took her a moment to grasp his meaning, and she wanted to kiss him again for remembering her concerns. “I’ll only be a moment.”

  She slipped out of bed and into the dressing room, where she kept her supplies. When she returned, Henry was already undressed and waiting for her.

  “Take that off. I want to see you naked in the daylight, as I did in the forest.”

  She hesitated, then remembered the way he had kissed her tummy and forbidden her to lose weight. With the same crossed-hand grip she had used on her chemise in the forest, she lifted the garment over her head and flung it onto a chair. She stood on her toes and raised her arms into the air in imitation of a ballerina and did a slow pirouette to give him the complete view.

  “Now come here, before I come and get you myself.”

  She gave him a huge grin and ran to the bed. He wrestled her under the covers, until he had her pinned beneath his leg, half his body over hers. She could see nothing but him, leaning over her. Could feel nothing but the heat of his skin and the teasing brush of his chest hair on her breasts. She slid her arms up and ran her fingers through the hair behind his ears.

  “Make love to me, Henry.”

  And this time there were no exotic tricks meant to prove the value of experience. It was a union that expressed something more than physical desire, and Elle felt that Henry was in as much need of tenderness as she. If their joining did not reach quite the erotic heights of their previous encounter, they more than made up for it in depth.

  Dinner was a subdued affair. Frederick and Elle were both absent, sleeping off the exertions of the day, but Henry had felt it incumbent upon himself to fulfill his role as host, and so presided at table. Louise was uncharacteristically quiet, picking at her food. Henry felt no more appetite than his sister-in-law, his mind preoccupied, and was almost grateful to Lawrence, who had missed the day’s events and was for once guiding the conversation, plying them both with questions about the accident.

  Elle’s rescue of Frederick was taking on mythical proportions as the tale spread throughout the household. It was a remarkable enough story even when kept to the bare bones.

  It was easy to imagine Freddie playing hero to Louise’s hat and getting himself dumped in the lake: The boy was a poet, not an athlete. It was Elle’s part in the drama that confounded him the more he thought about it. He had arrived at the lake in time to see her swimming towards shore, a sure hand in Freddie’s hair. She was confident in the water, swimming a stroke he had never seen. Come to think of it, she was the first woman he had seen swim at all.

  And then, on the shore, she had stunned them all by breathing life back into Freddy’s body and forcing his heart to beat with her own hands. He did not know how she had known what to do. He himself would not have thought of it. No one there would have.

  His wife, with her peculiar accent, her strange pockets of ignorance, and her even stranger and more disturbing pockets of knowledge. He had once foolishly thought he could understand and mold her, but the truth was the more he learned of her, the less he knew.

  As Richard had pointed out, she was not who he would have chosen for himself if money had not been an issue. And yet, he could not now think of anyone who would have been a better choice for wife. He felt more alive than he had in a decade. God did indeed work in mysterious ways.

  After a short time in the drawing room, Lawrence retired early, excusing himself with pleas of work unfinished for tomorrow. To Henry’s surprise, Louise showed no signs of moving.

  He studied her as she stared at her lap. There was a resemblence there to Elle, in the shape of the nose and mouth. In all other ways, he would never have thought them sisters. Louise spoke with an unremarkable accent and had shown no signs of unconventionality, or the odd beliefs that characterized her sister. She was passionate and flighty, but those were traits not uncommon in young women of her age.

  “I have always found it fascinating, the disparate characters that develop among siblings,” Henry said, breaking the silence. “You and Eleanor, although by all appearances very close to one another, are as different from each other as are Freddie and I.”

  She looked up from her lap, her expression troubled. “I have been wanting to talk to you about Ellie.”

  This was exactly why he had invited her to Brookhaven, but he was no longer in a mood to hear whatever she had to say. He had reached his own conclusions and was happy with them. “Go on.”

  She took a breath, as if gathering her thoughts. “Ellie was not always easy to be with. Maybe she was even a bit selfish.” She looked at him as if asking forgiveness for this bit of disloyalty. “I loved her, even so. I knew her weaknesses. She was a good person, under the rest, if you had the time to see it.”

  “And what concerns you now?”

  Louise bit her lip and turned her eyes away. “She has . . . changed.”

  “How so?” He silently implored her to stop.

  “A lot of little things, things that I suppose could be explained by her new life. A lack of interest in friends and family, which surprised me. I would have thought she would be eager to hear the news of home.”

  Henry expelled a breath. Was that all?

  “And a sense that . . . it sounds incredible, I know, but a sense that she does not know of whom I speak. She listens but rarely comments. And those dresses she has taken to wearing. The Ellie I knew would not be caught dead in anything but silk. And then there is that dog that follows her everywhere.”

  “Tatiana?”

  “If that is what she calls it. I never saw that dog before the wedding.” She clenched her hands tightly together. “I would not normally tell you any of this. As I said, I loved my sister, and I would not have been disloyal. But your wife . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Louise finally looked at him, her eyes flat and dead. “She is not my sister.”

  “What?” He could not have heard her right.

  “That woman is not Eleanor Moore. She looks like her, but she is a
stranger to me.”

  “That is preposterous!” He could not help himself. Was the girl out of her mind? “How could she not be Eleanor? There are other more reasonable explanations, if she is not how you remember her. Her illness before the wedding, the stress of a new life for which she was not prepared, even a mental disorder, they are all more plausible than that she is not your sister.”

  Louise’s eyes filmed with tears, and her voice grew angry. “Do you think I have not thought of that? Do you think I have not explored every alternative in my own mind? How could she have swum out and saved Frederick, when the Eleanor I know is terrified to do more than dangle her feet in the water? She has never been past her knees in a lake, and then only when a child. I made up a story about a boy teaching her to swim, and she confirmed it, when none of it had ever happened.”

  “It was an emergency: People are capable of incredible acts when faced with danger. I have heard many such stories from men who have been in the Army.”

  “Then why did she confirm the story I made up?”

  “You say she shows no interest in people she knew at home. Do you not suppose it possible the fever she had before the wedding damaged her memory? Maybe she has been afraid to admit there are things she does not remember.” It would explain a great deal. He liked the idea the more he thought about it.

  “Do you really think so?” Louise asked, sniffing, her handkerchief to her face. Her eyes were full of hope.

  “It is the most logical explanation.”

  And he would confirm it tomorrow.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Elle spent the morning engrossed in her projects, her mood buoyant. First there was a long discussion with the Italian chef she had asked Cyril Tey to hire, and who had arrived the day before along with the supplies he found necessary for his craft. There would be decent food at luncheon today, and nary a slice of cold roast beef.

  Next on the agenda was a meeting with Lawrence in her dressing room. He had arrived while she was with the new chef and was directing two workmen in the placement of a large crate. Other workmen were laying out tools or helping the servants empty both this room and Henry’s dressing room. She and Henry would have to use other rooms for dressing and bathing while the construction was under way. Of course, he didn’t know that yet.