Page 71 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
“Gilly?” she whispered, but received no answer. The room appeared undisturbed, Armande’s scant belongings untouched, even down to the small locked chest upon the dressing table. Still, Phaedra did not quite trust her wily cousin not to be hiding somewhere, merely waiting for her to leave.
She tiptoed into the room, peering into the dressing chamber, behind the draperies and the wardrobe, beginning to feel rather foolish. Perhaps she had once more leapt to conclusions. Perhaps Gilly was not in the house at all, but still somewhere upon the grounds, waiting for his opportunity. She had better hasten out of here, before Armande caught her prowling.
She left the room, softly closing the door behind her. Should she linger here to see if Gilly did attempt to make good his threat?
Uneasily, she glanced down the hallway. She hated being alone here. It was as if the Heath itself brooded, watching her with unseen eyes. Adjuring herself to stop being ridiculous, she made her way toward the backstairs. Knowing her cousin, she thought it likely that he might be trying to slip in through the servants’ passageway.
At the bend of the servants’ stairway she paused, trying to decide whether to go up or down. If Gilly’s object was to search Armande’s room, it was not likely he would have gone to the Heath’s uppermost floor. But when she glanced up the stairs, she was startled to see the door to her garret flung wide.
She supposed Gilly might have hidden up there if he thought he heard someone coming, but she doubted it. As she mounted the steps slowly, her heart thudded in a disquieting rhythm. She craned her neck, trying to peer inside the room without actually entering. She could not even bring herself to breathe Gilly’sname this time. Why had she never noticed before how gloom-ridden her precious garret was, even in the daytime?
At last she took a cautious step inside, telling herself she was being even sillier than she had been in Armande’s room. Her garret appeared much as it had this morning when she had bolted inside to gather up the papers to show Armande. Of course, she had been in a tearing hurry then.
Her gaze flew to the desk, the carved gargoyle heads on the legs grimacing back at her, seeming as ever to guard her secrets. Then why was she beset by this eerie feeling of something being not quite right about the garret, something different or out of place?
She studied each feature of the room, trying to determine what it was that bothered her. Her glance skimmed past the window, the desk, the daybed, the jumbled assortment of three-legged stools, the little table that held her supply of candles, the bookshelf tucked away in its dark corner.
The bookshelf which should have been empty.
Phaedra stared, uncertain whether what she saw was reality or some startling phantom image. The shelves, which had stood vacant for so long were now crowded with books.
Stumbling across the room, she reached for the leather-bound volumes of every size and thickness, half-afraid they would crumble and disappear at her touch. Smollett, Johnson, Goldsmith, Fielding, even her Shakespeare and Aristotle, they were all there, like old friends miraculously restored to life, resurrected from the ashes of Ewan’s fire. Only the bindings were newer, as yet unworn by her loving hands. Nearly every book Ewan had robbed her of had been returned, along with a few new ones. For a moment all she could do was caress the fine-tooled leather, too stunned to do anything else. Then she reached for one-rose-bound book on the top shelf which stood a little out from the others, as though beckoning her.
The first volume ofGulliver’s Travels.
Phaedra carried it over to the light streaming through the garret window in order to see it more clearly. She opened the book to its flyleaf, half-expecting she might see the inscription her mother had written so long ago, somehow knowing what she would really find.
The words were not in Lady Siobhan’s delicate, spidery hand, but a bold, elegant scrawl. To Phaedra, the inscription read,From your fellow voyager on the sea of dreams.
He hadn’t written his name, but she needed no signature to identify the writer. She thought back to the time she and Armande had spent together these past weeks, those precious stolen moments of making love and those other, equally precious moments when he had encouraged her to talk. She realized now he had been drawing her out, carefully gleaning the title of every treasured volume she had lost, committing the names to memory. What hours he must have spent combing the bookseller’s stalls until he found them all.
She snapped the book closed. And this was the man she regretted having trusted with her secret, the man she feared might do some harm to her beloved cousin. Armande had been right to accuse her of a lack of trust. How quick she always was to doubt him, to lose her faith in his love.
Even as bitterly betrayed as he was feeling, he had done this for her, gifted her with the return of all her childhood fantasies, that and so much more. Yet she knew he would turn away, not even permitting her to thank him.
Her lips quivered with a determined smile. She would find him and force him to accept her gratitude, and her love as well. She leaned out the garret window, allowing a soft breeze to caress her face. Suddenly the world that had seemed so dark this morning was bright with promise, as shining as the sun over herhead. She started to pull back in when she glimpsed something below that brought her to an abrupt halt.
Frowning, she stretched out as far as she dared, peering downward at the cobbled pavement. How strange! It looked as though someone had dropped a bundle of black rags. She strained for a closer look and saw that the rags appeared to be sopping up a pool of something red. Blood.
A strangled sound escaped Phaedra, and she lost her grip on the book. Frozen with horror, she watched the book fall as though time itself had slowed. The volume spun end over end until it landed with a dull thud, only yards from where Hester Searle’s lifeless form lay crushed upon the cobblestones.
Sixteen
Phaedra watched the footman drawing the heavy curtains across the Green Salon’s windows as Sawyer Weylin had commanded. It was as though her grandfather thought by shutting out the darkness of night, he could shut out the specter of death as well, although the broken form of Hester Searle had been laid out in the housekeeper’s room only hours ago.
Phaedra huddled against the sofa cushions and shivered.It seemed all she would ever remember about this day-the crumpled black silk, Hester lying twisted like a marionette whose strings had been cut, the blood staining the cobblestones. The rest would be a montage of faces-the hysterical housemaids, the ghoulish curiosity of the apprentice boys, Jonathan turning away to be sick, Gilly’s grim shock, her grandfather’s angry disbelief. And Armande-the only one who had not answered her cries, the only one not there.
She glanced across the room to where Armande now stood, pouring a small quantity of brandy into a crystal goblet. Except for the fact that he had discarded his frock coat and was garbed in only his breeches, ruffled shirt, and waistcoat, he appeared the image of the elegant nobleman. But the lines of his face were grave, etched with a weariness no gentleman of leisure hadever known. Phaedra studied him, trying to recall exactly when Armande had slipped up to join the rest of them. Had it been when Jonathan had left, bearing the last of the apprentice boys away in his carriage? Or later than that, just before she, Gilly, and her grandfather had retired to the Green Salon?
She didn’t know. She supposed she should simply be grateful he was here now. Armande crossed the room to her side, the glass of brandy cupped in his hand. He carefully avoided Gilly, who paced before the empty hearth like a caged beast, sidestepping the sprawled legs of her grandfather. Weylin had ensconced himself in a wing-back chair opposite Phaedra, where he sat drinking brandy, a soured expression twisting his lips.
Armande bent over her, holding out the glass he had just filled.
“Here. Drink this,” he commanded gently.
She shook her head, having already refused Lucy’s offers of sal volatile, burnt feathers, and whatever other restorative the girl could think of. Armande was more insistent than her maid had been. He raised Phaedra’s hand, curling her fingers about the goblet’s stem.
“You need it, love,” he said softly. “It is stifling in here, and yet you look half-frozen to death.”
