Page 86 of A Devilish Element
The servants had covered Linfield with a sheet, which Jem turned down, mostly to prove to himself it was his former employer and tormenter lying still on the doctor’s slab. Someone had balanced pennies on his eyelids and cleaned the blood splatter away, for which he muttered a silent thanks, uncertain he could have borne the sight of an empty stare and blood-ringed lips. His shoulders cramped as he stood gazing down at the still and silent form. It hardly seemed possible that a face that had been so animated only a short time ago was now frozen never to laugh or scowl or demand again. Jem determined to leave once Bell set about his work. He couldn’t stay for that. To see a man who he’d made love to rendered into a piece of meat and carved open so that his viscera could be inspected. Much as he’d curse him, and it would put him right back into the early pickle in which he’d existed, he longed for Linfield’s brows to crease, a clownish smile to stretch his cheeks and for him to sit and laugh at Jem for being fooled by his theatrics.
Alas, this was no make-believe. Two people he trusted in this matter had both confirmed it, and he knew it in his soul too. There was a stillness, an absence that came with death, a sort of primal revulsion for the thing that was no more even while enduring the pain of their loss and desiring to cling to what had been. He’d been too young when his parents had died to experience death in such proximity. He’d despaired over the inability to say goodbye. Now… now he was pleased he hadn’t been given the opportunity to witness their silence.
Anon he retreated to the corner and the confines of the saggy wingback chair. “I wish I could say you didn’t deserve this and truly mean it,” he said into the palms of his hands before peering over his fingertips at the corpse as if in expectation of a reply. “You were rarely kind, and you’ve been a bastard since the day we came to Cedarton. Not just to me. To your wife, to George, to all of us. Watching Bell assault you with his leeches was one of the few highlights of being here. I realise that makes me sound horrid, but… it’s the truth. You were an arse. I hated you more frequently than I liked you.” Especially after all the business with Eliza.
Eliza whom he’d now lost for good, and for no good reason, since the whole bedding debacle was irrelevant now.
Then again, perhaps, much as it hurt, that was for the best. She’d have learned what manner of man he was eventually. Better now than later.
“We had some fun though, didn’t we?” He addressed Linfield again. “I wish I knew what you’d done to make someone… Who was it? Who’s done this? I keep thinking you must have done something really foul, because you never pushed me that far, even at your worst, and you did some deplorable things. Then again, I suppose we all have different limits.
“Whoever it was, I’m not condoning what they’ve done. I’m just pointing out that you probably provoked them. That’s if you were the intended target. You must have been. There’s no reason for anyone to attack Lady Linfield.” She was a sweetling. Then again, someone had been attempting to scare her witless. “I thought that was you. Doesn’t make sense, now for that to be the case. None of this does. Were you trying to murder her and accidentally killed yourself?”
Was one supposed to laugh or cry over such a notion?
The door creaked in the room beyond. “Mrs Honeyfield…” he heard Bell say. “What is it? Ah, this isn’t a good moment for a consultation, I’m rather—”
The housekeeper’s replies were too quiet to discern, her voice reaching him only as a higher-pitched susurration.
“Very well, I agree. Now isn’t the moment to be absent from your duties.”
Had she finally consented to having her troublesome tooth pulled? Bell’s voice continued to drift to him in snatches. She’d presumably come to him because Linfield’s valet was currently riding south to Bellingbrook.
There’d be no merry making in that great house this Christmastide.
A sudden draft curled around Jem’s knees, tugging his attention away from the surgery to the door he and Eliza had found onto the secret stairwell, and it was she who peeped around the jamb of that camouflaged portal now.
“I know you are there, so you may as well step in.”
Never one to prevaricate, Eliza emerged from the darkness shielding a candle flame. She set the candleholder on the nearest bare surface, before taking in his pensive squat position on the chair, then Linfield’s draped body.
Jem regarded her over the fingers that covered his lower face even though it wrenched his heart to do so. So much loss and for so little gain. Her hair, simply knotted at the back of her neck, was coming unwound from its coil. He recalled the floral smell of it, the tickle of those strands against his body earlier, and it caused a cry to wriggle free of his throat. “Why’ve you come?” he asked.
“Hm.” The vocalisation was accompanied by the tilting of her head towards one shoulder, which didn’t provide any enlightenment. Her tongue ticked against her eye-tooth. Perhaps she was determined not to speak to him. Had probably only spoken to him earlier due to the shock of the events.
Then, “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, upending that theory. She crossed to gaze at Linfield’s frozen face.
“Mine? He wasn’t mine to lose.” Never had been and never would be, and more importantly he hadn’t desired him to be. Linfield was not the love of his life snatched away from him too young, leaving him behind to suffer the devastation. This tragedy was not that. Truth told; Linfield’s death had delivered Jem’s freedom.
To think, it’d all started as merrymaking. A lark to take his mind off other matters…
He held Eliza’s elegant form fast in his field of vision.
…to make him forget what he couldn’t have.
Oh, the hilarity, that those actions were now the thing that had torn her from him.
“Eliza, whatever you imagine you know about…” His voice cracked, preventing him from saying Linfield’s name. “About me and him, it’s wrong… It’s more complicated… thornier.”
She drifted closer to the corpse in a purposeful sort of way that compelled him onto his feet.
“You were lovers,” she said. It was not a question.
He gave her a nod. There was no sense in denying it. Yes, he and Linfield had been lovers. Yes, despite everything he was hurt by Linfield’s death. An ongoing relationship with Linfield might not have been something he wanted, but this was not the way it ought to have ended. The fool was too young to have been snuffed out of existence. “I ought to have told you the truth, though I imagine you can deduce for yourself why I didn’t.”
Her head whipped towards him. “I’m not sure that I can, Jem. I feel you’ve led me a merry dance, but then if one doesn’t offer forever, one cannot expect to receive it, and I guess I did not demand your fidelity either.”
“Eliza.” It tore at the cavity inside his chest to hear her so choked. “I’d gladly commit to you forever. What you saw between Linfield and me earlier, it was not something I sought.”
