Page 25 of A Devilish Element
“Whatever she saw, there’s no sign of it here,” Bell remarked. “Perhaps it is that Lady Linfield is simply highly strung and prone to fanciful imaginings.”
Jem refused to accept that explanation. Jane had struck him as meek, but hardly of a flighty nature, and certainly not one of the preposterous wailing sirens that society liked to pander to, who absolutely thrived on discord and the attention even the slightest upset could provide them. She was not the type to declare an attack of the nerves and the necessity of a quiet moment with the most amenable of young men to attend her. Still, there seemed little point in arguing the case with Bell, who for all he knew held a similar opinion. He was beginning to think the doctor cultivated a persona, which was not entirely in accord with his inner being. “Let’s turn in, there doesn’t seem to be anything to be gained by lingering.” Except perhaps the prospect of a spider landing on his head, or a mouse scurrying up his leg.
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Eliza
Eliza couldn’t settle after the men left. She watched the uneasy rise and fall of Jane’s chest, wishing that Jem had lingered. She wanted to ask him what he thought of the Linfield’s marriage. He was apparently as well acquainted with his lordship as she was with Jane, and hence was the obvious source of insight. She was not one for idle gossip or poking into other’s business, but the marriage was clearly ill conceived and had been arranged so swiftly with little to no communication between the two parties that she couldn’t fail to wonder how it had ever come about. Everything about it spoke to the notion that it never ought to have been. One only had to look at this room to see that. It was masculine in every detail, and Jane’s scattered possessions could not disguise that. This tired room, with its dark wood furniture and domineering bed was clearly intended to be the master’s suite, and the adjoining room the mistress’s boudoir. Why therefore was Jane occupying it, and Linfield quartered in some far-flung area of the castle? Had the events of their wedding night truly afflicted him so much that he was determined to put as much space between them as possible to prevent a repeat? What sort of marriage did he intend it to be if they were never to bed together?
Linfield did not strike one as the sort to eschew pleasures. And even a man ambivalent to his wife surely entered into the arrangement with the intention of siring offspring. Her mind turned to Jane’s recollection of the wedding night and Linfield’s curious demands. They made not a ha’porth of sense. Also, whatever had Jane meant when she said she had some experience of such matters? Had her friend engaged in some unfortunate liaison? Was that the reason for the hasty and unexpected marriage?
How foolish of her to have arrived expecting a love match.
Still, it concerned her more that Linfield had been so ready to dismiss Jane’s terror as the frailties of a female mind. Jane was no society miss, versed in the art of a theatrical swoon. Nor was she a devotee of Monk Lewis or Mrs Carver that delighted in reading intrigue into the ordinary and concocting macabre flights of fancy. Her faint had been genuine. Her terror equally so.
If Jane persisted in saying that she’d seen a ghost when she woke, what would Linfield do? Throw her into one of the castle dungeons and mislay the key, thrilled to be so easily rid of a wife he apparently didn’t wish for.
Only a beast would contemplate such a thing, though of course it was every husband’s right.
Was that then, what she thought of him after such a small acquaintance? That he was a monster?
Where was her evidence?
A sneer at dinner, a sullenness of disposition when engaged with his wife, his somewhat combative reaction to her. None of these things constituted evidence of maliciousness.
Perhaps she ought to avoid giving in to flights of fancy herself.
But returning to the heart of the matter, what—if the notion of it being a genuine apparition were discounted—had Jane seen?
A play of light? A reflection? She had heard tell of a special lantern, that when pointed at a silk screen could create the appearance of an apparition. Had one of the gentlemen come by such a device?
Was this then, a prank?
Were they even now huddled together somewhere, laughing over glasses of port and brandy about the glorious jape they’d played? Oh, she would have their very guts for garters. Why did men have to be such inhuman creatures?
No…no, she could not believe it, not of Jem, or Doctor Bell, or even jovial Mr Cluett. Linfield… Well, truthfully, he struck her as exactly the type to engage in such behaviour and show not an iota of remorse. Wasn’t the very reason he was mouldering at Cedarton because of some unpleasantness in town? She would have to remember to ask Jem about that. See if he could shed any light on things.
Eliza was half out of her chair, ready to track him down at once before she recalled her charge. Bell had administered a dose large enough to render a full-grown man comatose and Jane was but a wisp of a person, elfin, delicate, half the size of a man. It would be a miracle if she stirred before halfway through tomorrow. And opiates left one with such a ghastly sense of disconnectedness.
She settled back down and rested her head against the chair’s leather wing. The room was stuffy and overly warm, making her lids grow increasingly heavy. She would write home tomorrow, explain that she needed to stay longer than anticipated. Maria would protest, but only because her natural inclination was to embroil herself in mischief, rather than shun it. She would have to take care not to allude to the ‘ghost’ or her youngest sibling would be here in a trice.
I’m sure you’re all enjoying having one less body in the place,she’d write, and maybe that would remind Freddy to apply himself to the matter of finding them a new home. As beloved as their cottage on Bluebell Lane remained, they had quite outgrown it.
She thought of the acres of mattress she had all to herself next door and tried to elbow the armchair into a more comfortable support. It remained rigidly unyielding. “You’d laugh, Jo,” she said to her absent elder sister. “Here I am in a castle with a bed fit for a queen next door, sleeping in a chair, and you having never left the comfort of home, have a bed entirely to yourself.”
She must have drifted off, for Eliza woke to a soft knock upon the door and found the fire burned down to nothing but embers. “Come,” she bade.
The young maid who’d delivered the tea tray earlier entered and bobbed her a curtsy. “Begging your pardon, Miss, but Mrs Honeyfield said I was t’ come and sit with t’ mistress so that you can get ya bed.”
How topsy-turvy the world was, that her rest should be of concern when she had nothing at all to do, whereas this maid would be up before the sun setting fires, and exterminating intruders of the creepy crawly kind.
“I’m sure you would equally enjoy yours.”
The girl cocked her head like Eliza’s neighbour’s spaniel, listening, but not quite comprehending. “Aw, that’s kind a ya, but I’ll be fine here. I reckon that chair’s less lumpy than me bed, and Lady Linfield a lot less twiney than Betsy Cooper who I normally top to toe with.”
“Are Cedarton’s servant’s quarters that cramped? Surely there must have been a staff of dozens upon dozens in the past.”
“I don’t reet know about that, Miss. It’s not that there ain’t beds, only…” She screwed her pretty, freckled nose up clearly seeking the right descriptor, “They’re not all that nice, and what with it being so nitherin’ out….”
