My mouth falls open in a gasp, and I back away from the wall. I pinch my arm, but I don’t wake up in my bed, safe. This is real.
It doesn’t make sense. But I have to figure out what’s going on, once and for all. I grab my coat, shove on my rain boots, then hurry out the door.
I make it downstairs and sprint out into the freezing rain, rounding the house until I’m on the side the whispers came from. But there’s nothing here. Nothing but gray stone.
The roof above my room is shingled and steeply sloped and obviously clear of anything except for the December snow. Of course. Because why would there be a couple of people perched above the sixth floor of a castle? Why am I even out here?
My adrenaline fades, until all I am is tired. I’m so tired of all this. I can’t think. I can’t focus. And I can’t keep living like this.
“Are you okay?” someone asks behind me. I whirl around with a small scream.
It’s Gareth, his eyes concerned as he stares down at me. Rain streams down his face, darkening his hair and highlighting his cheekbones.
“Yes,” I say, too loudly. “Yes, I’m fine. I just thought—nothing. I thought nothing,” I finish in a mumble, looking back up at the bare wall outside my room.
“Look, Fee, I wanted to talk to you about earlier tonight,” he says finally, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. It just seemed like—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupt. “I’m sorry I, uh, attacked you.”
He almost smiles. “I didn’t mind, really. I was just worried about you.” He pauses. “Still am.”
“I’m okay. It was just—I don’t know, it was stupid. And the last thing I wanted to do was confuse you.”
It’s as if a curtain falls over his expression, closing him off from me. “Right,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat once more. It’s the only thing I can say.
“I’ll see you around, then,” he says, turning away. He turns back to face me before I can say good night. “You should get back inside. You’re freezing.”
It’s only now that I notice how I’ve wrapped my arms around my body, that my teeth have started chattering. My wet hair is plastered to my head. I must look like a drowned kitten. Or a crazy person.
“Thanks,” I say through numb lips before heading back toward the relative warmth of the castle.
Even when I’m back up in my bed, though, dried off and in fresh pajamas, I can’t stop the shivers from running through me.
I try to push down the memory of those voices, ignore it, not think about it. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.
But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.
• • •
I must have only been asleep for a couple of hours when a scream wakes me up. The sound is wild and guttural, and for one terrifying and wonderful moment, I think I am a child again, back in Austin with my mother.
The scream comes again, and I snap out of that daze. I wrench my door open and run into the hall. The scream must be coming from the floor below me, where Poppy and Charlie sleep. I rush down the stairs and head right to their hallway.
Poppy’s door flings open, and I see her running down the dark hall toward the scream. It’s coming from Charlie’s room.
I reach her just as she reaches his door, but before we can push it open, Charlie bursts through. The guttural scream is coming from behind him—from Blair.
“I’ve called an ambulance,” Charlie declares. “She’s—there’s something wrong with the baby.”
He’s wild with worry, his eyes hardly able to focus on us. I place my hands on Poppy’s shoulders and draw her back. “Let’s give them some space,” I murmur.
She lets me pull her back and walk her to her door, but once we reach it, she cranes her neck around me and gasps. I turn to see Charlie, carrying Blair, cradled like a child, her arms hanging limply around his neck. She’s wearing a fluttering white nightgown, and just before they disappear down the stairs, I see that the bottom of it is soaked red with blood.
Poppy looks up at me, wide-eyed. Her face is so pale, her hair so blond in this patch of moonlight streaming in from the window, that she looks as transparent as a ghost. “We should go to the hospital with them.” Her voice comes out strong, confident, despite the horror of what we just witnessed.
“Poppy, Charlie would want you to stay here at home. There’s nothing we can do for them at the hospital. Blair will be fine, I’m sure of it,” I say, though I shiver as I remember that red, red blood. “We should get some sleep so we’ll be rested enough to help in the morning, when they’re back safe and sound.”
“No,” Poppy says firmly, raising her chin in determination. “He’s my family. He’s my only family, besides the baby, who might be in trouble. We have to go to the hospital.”
Family. The only family I’ve ever known was my mother, and I would have never let her go to the hospital alone. I would have fought to stay with her, too. “Okay,” I say finally. “I’ll put on some clothes and meet you downstairs. Albert can drive us. Remember your coat,” I call, already hurrying for the servants’ staircase.
By the time I make it down to the front door to meet Poppy, the ambulance is pulling into the driveway, the blaring lights and wailing siren especially jarring as they cut through the night’s stillness. Charlie, Blair still limp in his arms, hurries to the back of it before the paramedics even have time to jump out and take Blair from him.
Mabel, Albert, Poppy, and I stand on the front steps as we watch the ambulance drive off with Charlie and Blair, the lights flashing through the dark hills until they finally disappear. Nodding at Poppy, I ask Albert for a ride, and he goes to get the car.
Mabel places a hand on Poppy’s shoulder. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispers, her voice softer and kinder than I ever imagined it could be. “Blair’s going to be just fine.”
How are you so sure? a nasty voice inside of me mutters. What if she dies and Charlie is finally free?
The voice chills me, sending vicious trails of goose bumps up and down my skin. That nasty, intrusive voice. It’s not my mother, and it’s not me. I would never think something as awful as that. I don’t want Blair—or anyone—to die. I close my eyes and swallow, sickened by the glee in that ugly little voice inside my head. I won’t pay any attention to it. If I ignore it, it will go away.
Albert pulls the car around and jumps out to let Poppy and me in. “I don’t think you should be taking her out of her bed at this time of night just to bring her to a frightening place like a hospital,” Mabel says to me, the usual bitterness restored to her voice. “She needs her sleep.” She glances at Poppy, her eyes full of concern.
“It’s not your decision,” I say, sliding into the car. “It’s Poppy’s.”
Albert speeds us out of there before Mabel can reply.
During the long drive to the hospital, I can’t focus on anything except Poppy’s small hand clasped in mine—and on keeping the ugly voices out of my head. The three of us are silent as Albert drives, cutting through the dark night.
CHAPTER 23
When we finally get to the tiny hospital in Beasley, we find Charlie sitting in the waiting room, his head in his hands.
“What happened?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I woke up and she was screaming, and there was all this blood—so much blood!” He buries his head back in his hands. “She didn’t want me in the hospital room. She kicked me out. No one’s talking to me. I don’t know—I don’t know what’s happening.”
He’s losing it, driven mad by worry and fear. He looks up and sees Poppy, as if noticing her for the first time, and I watch as he struggles to gain control over himself. “It’s fine,” he says to her. “It’s going to be fine. These things happen.”
Poppy nods and, letting go of my hand and
reaching for his, sits beside him. I sit down in the empty seat on his other side, Albert next to me, and the four of us wait in that blank space in silence, all of us trapped in our own thoughts.
I’ve managed to banish that ugly voice from my mind, and now all I’m left with is worry. Because despite everything I feel for Charlie, despite everything I think about Blair, he loves that baby. He’s got to be hurting so much right now, and it kills me that there’s nothing I can do to help.
Finally, a doctor comes out into the waiting room. He’s young, probably just out of school. Which may explain why he looks so nervous as Charlie springs up from his chair.
“How is she?” Charlie all but shouts.
“She’s fine,” the doctor says, but there’s a strangeness in his voice. A tone that tells me something’s off.
“And the baby?”
The doctor hesitates, as if trying to choose his words carefully. Then, instead of speaking at all, he just shakes his head.
Charlie’s expression falls, utterly and completely, and my heart breaks. I want to pull him to me, to wipe that mess of hurt and pain off his face, but I can’t move. And he doesn’t need me right now. He needs her.
“What happens now?” he asks, sounding so lost despite the courage in his tone. “What does Blair need?”
The doctor shakes his head again, clicking his pen open and closed in an erratic rhythm. “She’s perfectly fine. She can go home now.”
“Already? She has to be in shock, or pain, or . . . something.”
“She’s just fine,” the doctor repeats. “You can take her home now. In fact, that would be best for her. If you’ll excuse me,” he says, giving us an apologetic look before moving past us to the nurses’ station, where he starts filling out some paperwork.
Charlie watches the doctor for a few seconds, stunned, before he walks back to find Blair. I put my hand on Poppy’s shoulder, and she pivots to hug me tightly. She’s crying, and I feel my T-shirt soak up her tears. “What about the nursery?” she asks in sobbing gasps.
I bend down to look her in the eye. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Charlie—and Blair—we’ll get through it, okay?”
I hug her close to me again, and she nods. “I’m just so tired of having to get through things,” she whispers, and I have to blink back sudden tears.
Because Poppy’s lost yet another member of her family. And there’s nothing I can do to help her either.
• • •
Albert drives all of us home. I’m up front with him; Poppy, Charlie, and a very quiet Blair sit in the back. Charlie is in the middle, a protective arm around his fiancée. No one talks. No one wants to disturb the grief-filled silence that’s settled all around us.
When we get back to the castle, Charlie helps Blair out, handling her gingerly. She looks pale in the early morning mist, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She leans heavily on Charlie’s arm but doesn’t look at any of us. The two of them make their way up the stairs, leaving us below.
I don’t remember that it’s Christmas until my eyes land on the evergreen garlands lining the stair railing.
Mabel marches up to Poppy and me, her hair neat as always under her white cap, her eyes flashing with anger. “Poppy, go to bed at once,” she says, then turns to me. “You’ve exhausted and upset her, taking her out to the hospital in the middle of the night,” she spits.
“It was a family emergency,” I say, staring her down. “She needed to be there, whether you understand that or not.”
She lifts her chin defiantly at me. “If you think I don’t care about this family, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“Poppy, go on upstairs,” I say sweetly, ignoring Mabel. “Get some sleep.”
Hardly able to keep her eyes open, Poppy nods and trudges up the stairs. I turn back to Mabel. “Enough,” I say, my voice full of warning.
Mabel huffs, but retreats back toward the kitchen.
Soon I’m back in my room, trying to sleep that awful night and the morning away.
CHAPTER 24
Over the next week, it’s as if a shroud has fallen over the house. Poppy can hardly muster a smile. Even the chipper kitchen girls seem less chatty.
The door to Charlie’s office is closed most mornings, but I think he’s really spending most of his time in his room with Blair, who hasn’t left it since that night. Mabel sends all her meals up there.
I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child that you wanted so much, so I don’t blame Blair for becoming a recluse. But now I can’t stop thinking about that doctor. Something about his behavior was so strange. Was he just nervous because he had to tell a father that his child didn’t survive?
Or was I right all along to doubt Blair’s pregnancy? And was the doctor somehow involved in the lie? Charlie had just proposed to her. If she were going to pretend to lose the baby, of course she would have chosen that moment to do it.
She couldn’t be that cruel, could she? Then again . . . would Charlie have taken her back if she hadn’t been pregnant?
And what will he do now that she’s lost the baby, the only thing that was tying him to her?
But of course I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll marry her, just like he promised he would. He wouldn’t abandon her, especially not when she’s just lost a baby. Their baby. Like I told him, he’s not the type of guy who hurts people. Not on purpose, anyway.
He doesn’t mean to hurt me, but he does anyway.
The garbled whispers are back, keeping me awake, with my head full of thoughts. The circles beneath my eyes grow darker, and most days I feel like I’m drifting through the house in a dream. Nothing feels quite real anymore.
Then, on New Year’s Eve day, after a week of mourning, Blair reappears at breakfast, sitting at the head of the table in a peach silk dressing gown when I come in. I stop in the doorway, watching her as she butters her toast and smiles at Poppy. Poppy, clearly overjoyed to have her back, chatters about all the latest gossip from her friends and the jump she and Copperfield managed yesterday.
“Hi,” I say to Blair, and she finally looks at me. I mean to sound welcoming and kind, but I can tell my voice comes out guarded.
She smiles blandly at me as I take my seat next to Poppy. “Good morning,” she says, then turns away. “Oh, Charles, I forgot to tell you: Lady Thorne called me yesterday. It’s almost time for the charity ball for the children’s hospital in Beasley. She wanted to confirm some details. I’d almost forgotten that we’d agreed to host it, but the invitations are out. So I told her everything would be arranged.”
“Are you sure you’re up for that?” Charlie asks softly.
“Of course,” she says lightly, looking down at her plate. “It’s for charity. Besides, Mabs will help me, like she always helped your mum.”
She still doesn’t look at him, so she doesn’t see him flinch at her casual mention of his mother. Suddenly, I want to hit her, despite everything she’s just been through, and my hands shake with that wanting as I try to butter my own toast. Maybe I’m not a good person, or maybe just not when it comes to her. Not when it comes to protecting him.
“And anyway, this house could use a party,” Blair continues, still oblivious.
“Could I come?” Poppy asks, looking hopefully at Charlie.
He nods hesitantly. And then his eyes shift to mine for the first time since I entered the room. I want to tell him everything that I’m thinking, but mostly that I’m so sorry. He must see it in my eyes, because he nods slightly and then turns his attention back to Blair as she starts listing everything they’ll need to do to prepare for the ball.
• • •
That afternoon, I need fresh air and space to think. Even though it’s bitterly cold outside, I pull on my thickest coat and head out for a walk.
I’m nearly to the hedge maze when I run into Charlie coming the opposite way, back to t
he house. “Hi,” I say uncertainly. He’s wearing a heavy gray coat and a green scarf that makes his eyes almost achingly bright. It’s hard to look directly at him.
“Hello,” he says. “Are you out on a walk?”
I nod.
“It’s a good day for it,” he says, sounding almost as awkward and stilted as I feel. “It’s warmer in the woods than out in the open.”
I can’t help but shiver as I look over his shoulder at the line of tall fir trees beyond. I’m certainly not going back into the woods again. Even though I know it was just my imagination running on overdrive that day of the storm, I don’t need to face that darkness again.
I look back at him, but he’s looking past me, and I turn to see what’s caught his eye. Mabel is standing at the back door of the castle, looking out at us. Even though I can’t see them clearly, I can feel her dark eyes watching us, burning into us, like those of a wraith.
Charlie grabs my hand, and I whip my head back around to face him. He pulls me into the hedge maze, his hand as hot as fire on mine. What is he doing?
“Have you done the maze before?” he asks, dropping my hand as soon as we’re hidden from view. His tone is casual, as if nothing happened. Is he not going to mention why we just ran from Mabel? Why he acted as though she caught us doing something wrong?
“No,” I say faintly. He’s stopped, and I realize after a long moment that he wants me to pick which way to go. I go left.
“Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?” he asks as he follows me.
I can hardly focus on the maze, as I randomly turn at intersections. “I don’t usually make resolutions.”
“Why not?” he asks, sounding genuinely curious.
Because there’s only one resolution that really matters to me every year: Don’t inherit my mother’s disease. And since I can’t control that, resolutions seem pointless.
But I can’t tell him that, so instead I say, “Because most New Year’s resolutions end up abandoned by the end of January. Why put all that pressure on yourself?”
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