Something was hidden in the dress.
Without my scissors, I had to bite the thread until it broke. Then I was easily able to pick the stitching out with a hairpin, and I thanked heaven that this dress had been made in the days before machine stitching. When I slipped my hand into the opening between lining and satin, I felt paper. I drew out a yellowed envelope on which Miriam was written in a hand that I knew had to be my grandmother’s.
My heart gave a little leap of amazed anticipation, and I pulled the letter out of the envelope with a hand that shook with excitement. A letter that someone had gone to such pains to hide would not be a commonplace affair telling of weather and gossip. This was a missive of huge importance.
My dear daughter, it read,
I suspect that you will soon be eloping with Rob Crofton. Despite your father’s attempts to force you to give him up, I know how determined you are, and I know how little a parent’s prohibitions matter in the face of a love as deep as yours. You are only doing what I did before you—which is why I write to you now to warn you. You need to know the terrible risk that lies before you if you follow your heart, Miriam.
So my mother had married for love, after all. The knowledge brought a sweet measure of peace to my heart even in the midst of my turmoil. Why then, I wondered, had my grandmother painted me such a different picture? Had she found it less painful to endure her daughter’s loss if she rewrote history in her mind and remembered my mother as the kind of woman who acted out of calculation instead of love?
Your father will not permit me to tell you why you are forbidden to marry, which is why I must write this letter to you in secret and hide it in the lining of your best dress on the pretext of mending it. I hope that when you run off to marry your young farmer you will take this dress with you. I think you will want it for your wedding dress, and I can only pray that I am right—and that you will find this letter in time to prevent disaster from happening.
I said that I defied my parents in making my marriage. They had arranged a match for me with a distinguished aristocrat, a worthy alliance for our ancient and venerated Romanian lineage. My father was so enraged by my choosing Percival Burleigh that he laid a curse on me and my descendants.
You may laugh, but in the country of my birth, curses are not taken lightly. My family has always claimed to have an uncanny gift, so when my father crafted this curse he did so with the full belief that powers beyond our understanding lay ready to obey his summons.
The curse was that the firstborn sons of my line shall all be monsters.
Now, at this moment you are thinking about your brother Horace, but he was not my first son. Before your birth, I was brought to bed with a son.
I caught my breath. Perhaps I was about to find an explanation for the nameless graveyard marker and the cameo of Niobe.
The delivery was difficult and I was very ill afterward, so I have no direct knowledge of what happened—and would have been powerless to stop it even so. When at last I grew strong enough to ask after my baby, my husband told me our son had been born with such severe deformities that he died of them.
My eyes squeezed shut as if I could unsee those terrible words. The poor woman. No matter what she had become later, I could not help but feel compassion for her and her child.
This threw me into a deep melancholy. Even though I do not know for certain that my husband was lying, my heart tells me that he was unwilling to rear a child so deformed and took steps to relieve himself of that burden. My unspoken fear has poisoned our marriage and has burdened me with dread that someday we may yet be charged with… I cannot bring myself to write the word.
My uncle must have shared her knowledge—and her fear. No wonder he had tried to prevent me from learning this chapter of the family history: charges of infanticide might still have been made while my grandmother lived, and even if no legal action took place, the rumor would have been sufficient to destroy their lives. Never mind that he was not culpable; the entire family would have been tainted by the shocking history once it became known.
This is our terrible secret, the reason we have insisted that you and Horace not marry—so that you will not be faced with a decision no parent should be forced to make. It has also caused us to isolate ourselves from society for fear that the world will come to know of the family curse and suspect that the most dreadful of crimes lies beneath the unmarked lamb gravestone in the burial ground.
I beg you to return home before it is too late to stop another monster from being born. Whether or not you return, I implore that you burn this letter, for it can bring nothing but notoriety and shame at best and criminal prosecution at worst, should any of what I have just related become known.
Your father and I have been strict parents, but it was so that you might have a happier life than ours. I pray that our efforts and sacrifices will not have been in vain. Leave your sweetheart before it is too late, and return home to
Your mother
How devastated my grandmother must have been that this trunk had been left behind, and with it her letter. I wondered, though, if my mother’s life would have been different in any substantial way had she found this message. I could not imagine her throwing over the man she loved for the sake of what probably would have seemed a preposterous and even unbalanced tale.
Now I faced the question of what to do with the letter, for I could not sew it back into its hiding place. After a struggle with indecision, I tucked it into the bodice of my mourning dress so that it lay against my corset. I had heard it said that knowledge was power. If only there were some way that this tragic knowledge could endow me with the power to escape from Thurnley Hall.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The jingling of keys outside my door seized my attention. I just had time to get to my feet and straighten my dress from sitting on the floor examining the paneling for the hundredth time when the key scraped in the lock and the door swung open. It was the afternoon of the fifth day of my captivity.
“Forgive the intrusion,” Victor said, as Thomas carried in one of my trunks. This was not the hour at which he usually visited me. “Plans have changed. We’re leaving Thurnley within the hour.”
“Leaving Thurnley?” I echoed, as Mrs. Furness bustled in and set about opening drawers and removing their contents. “Why?”
“Never mind why,” he said shortly. His manner was strangely agitated. For once he did not attempt to kiss my hand or make charming banter. His eyes darted about the room, and he strode restlessly about, snatching at the window curtains and bed hangings to look behind them, even prodding the bedclothes and stooping down to peer beneath the bed.
“If it concerns me, I deserve an explanation,” I said, speaking sharply to hide the uneasiness mounting within me. “Will you tell me where we are going, at least?”
“I haven’t quite determined that. Some place far away, where we can have complete solitude—that is all I know just now.” He must have seen my dismay, for he forced a smile and came to take my hand before I could prevent it. “Don’t worry, my dear. I shall take good care of you. Soon no one will be able to part us.”
That was the most horrifying thing he had yet said. At Thurnley Hall there was still some small chance that I might be found by my friends, since it was the last place I was known to be. It was still possible that George and Vivi or someone from Gravesend would seek me here. If Victor took me to some more obscure location, no one would know where to search for me. And what if it was some truly remote place, far from any village, where escape meant wandering a wasteland with no prospect of any aid at all? It was imperative to stay here.
“I must know why we are leaving,” I said, feeling my heartbeat throb in my throat.
His jaw tightened just slightly. “Clara,” he said with warning in his voice, “as your affianced husband, I do not have to explain myself to you. You must trust me to make the right decisions. Now please direct Mrs. Furness in packing whatever belongings you wish to take with you. Thomas, help me
see to the carriage.”
He bowed briefly to me and departed. Before the door shut behind him I glimpsed the inevitable Grigore in the hallway, ever keeping watch.
But despite the anxiety that the prospect of leaving Thurnley awoke in me, I had also seen something that made me take heart. Victor Lynch was frightened. That was why he was suddenly resolved to depart. And although I had no idea what had unsettled him so, anything that woke fear in my captor was almost certain to be a boon to me.
Nevertheless, in alarmingly short order Victor and Grigore arrived to escort me to the carriage. I pleaded for more time—to pack, to change my dress, to pay a final visit to my grandmother’s tomb—but to no avail. All too soon I was being hustled out of the house toward the carriage that waited in the drive. Victor relinquished his grip on me to Grigore in order to direct Thomas in strapping the trunks onto the carriage, and the Romanian ignored my protests at his holding my arm so tightly. At my other side was Horace Burleigh. It was the first time we had come face to face in days, and I took a small satisfaction in how haggard he looked.
“Isn’t it about time you put a stop to this ridiculous business?” I demanded. “You know this is wrong in the extreme. You have a duty not to allow Victor to proceed.”
He refused to look at me. “He is my son, after all.”
“No matter whose son he is, you cannot actually condone his kidnapping me and coercing me into marriage!” Despite my conviction, I hissed the words in an undertone so as not to be overheard.
My uncle rubbed his forehead with an unsteady hand. “I don’t condone his actions, niece. But I must think of his welfare. It is possible that marriage to you will settle the boy, put an end to his—er—excesses.”
“Excesses?” I repeated in disbelief. “Is murder what you call an excess?”
“Quiet!” he snapped, but Thomas and Victor seemed not to have heard; Grigore, though attached to me like a limpet, seemed to be only half aware of us at all, perhaps not understanding what we were saying. “He only needs a healthy occupation to focus his mind,” my uncle hedged. “Once he has a child to raise, he shall settle down, I know it.”
Could he possibly have convinced himself of this? Observing the man’s wobbling stance and bloodshot eyes, which shifted to evade my scrutiny, I could only conclude that he had drowned himself in drink to shut out the reality confronting him. Once Victor and I were out of sight, I suspected, he would convince himself that none of this madness had ever happened, or that it had happened for the best. Contempt for him rose to my lips in the form of blistering words, but losing my temper would not help me. I must try to appeal to the basic human decency that I had to believe lay hidden under the layers of cowardice and self-interest, which he had convinced himself were paternal loyalty.
“You out of all people stand the best chance of stopping him,” I whispered. Now Thomas had climbed to the driver’s seat of the carriage, and Victor had paused to calm the restless horses; I had very little time. “Don’t you owe it to any other innocent people who may fall victim to him? Be a real father to him at last and exercise your authority. Convince him that he must not follow this path.”
He darted a glance at his son and moistened his lips nervously. “He wouldn’t heed me. Besides, I confess it, I’m afraid to stand against him. After what he did to his own grandmother, why would he not do the same to me if I defied him?”
The rage of helpless frustration boiled in me, and I wished I could physically shake him until his wits awoke. “Can’t you think of anyone besides yourself?” I demanded. “Do you really want to be responsible for unleashing a murderer on the world?”
Victor’s reappearance at my side forestalled any reply he might have made. “It’s time we were going,” he said curtly, and my uncle released my arm with a gasp of relief, relinquishing his place to his son.
Now Victor grasped me by one arm, Grigore by the other, and they drew me across the gravel drive toward the carriage with alarming swiftness. My fierce struggles seemed not to delay us in the least. A few more paces, and they would be able to force me inside the carriage, and once inside, I knew with terrible conviction, I would find it nearly impossible to free myself.
“Help me!” I shouted over my shoulder to my uncle, twisting my body to try to break my captors’ hold on me. “If you let them do this, I’ll see you brought to trial as an accessory!”
He stood there, arms dangling ineffectually, while I writhed and fought. With a lucky blow I managed to bring one foot down hard on Grigore’s, and the man growled and gave me a shake that made my hair tumble down around my shoulders.
“Oaf!” I snarled, struggling all the harder.
“I can put you over my shoulder if you prefer, Clara,” Victor said. His polite manner seemed strained. “The more you struggle and delay us, the more you force me to be strict with you.”
“Have a care!” my uncle called uncertainly. “Be gentle with her, son, for the child’s sake.”
For the space of three heartbeats Victor went still. Then he said, “Child?”
I knew it was dangerous to let him know of my pregnancy. But Grigore was the greater threat until I was confined within the carriage, and there was the possibility that his heart might be touched if he knew of my condition. These thoughts flew through my mind in an instant, and before I could change my mind, I said clearly, “Yes. I’m carrying my husband’s child.”
To make certain Grigore understood, I gestured toward my stomach and pantomimed rocking a baby in my arms. His eyes widened under his bushy eyebrows, and his grip on my arm relaxed enough for me to pull my arm from his grasp. Success!
But a ghastly smile was spreading over Victor’s face, and he seized the arm that Grigore had let fall and held me even tighter. “A doubly monstrous child,” he exclaimed. “Clara, what a prize you are.”
“My husband,” I gritted, trying to pry his fingers from my arm, “was not a monster.”
A new determination seemed to infuse my captor, and he set off toward the carriage again. I dragged at him with my full weight, my feet churning the gravel, but I was only slowing him, not stopping him. “Grigore!” he called. “Assist me, if you please.”
The big man hesitated. I had to act quickly, before he regained his resolve. As Victor pulled me closer to the carriage, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the restless tossing of the horses’ heads, heard their pawing at the gravel. The tussle had made them uneasy, and old Thomas had dropped the reins, so absorbed was he in gaping at the scene unfolding before his eyes.
That gave me an idea. I pulled at Victor, drawing him as hard as I could toward the horses and away from the carriage door, which gaped open in menacing invitation. I needed only a foot or two, and then I was within reach. With the flat of my hand I slapped the hindquarters of the nearer horse as hard as I could, shouting, “Go!” at the top of my lungs.
There was a startled whinny, then the crunch of carriage wheels on the gravel as the horses bolted. Thomas gave a cry as he was almost unseated. The carriage went jolting down the drive and over the bridge that spanned the river, soon disappearing from sight.
“Why, Clara, you hellion,” said Victor, almost pleasantly. “I do admire your spirit, but this is not a convenient time or place to exercise it. Time is pressing. Grigore!” he shouted. “What ails you, man? Come and subdue my bride for me. Father, go after the coach and help Thomas if he needs it.”
The burly servant seemed to have overcome his scruples, for he began advancing on me with frightening resolve in his eyes. Frantic, I fought against Victor, trying to kick his shins and break his hold on me, but feeling the futility of my struggle increasing with every ponderous pace Grigore took toward us.
Then suddenly Grigore staggered, hunching over with a grunt of pain, and his hand went to his side as though he had been struck there. He caught his balance and turned, revealing a man who had advanced unseen behind him and who straightened now, drawing back his fist from the blow he had administered.
At the sight of his face, everything else seemed to fade into nothingness. All sensation and sound halted; all feeling of the earth under my feet fell away.
It could not be Atticus, of course. My dearest husband was dead. But he looked so much like him, albeit in a bedraggled state and with a week’s growth of ginger beard.
Grigore recovered quickly and advanced on him, and the man dealt him a rapid succession of blows to the midsection that made the bigger man stagger back. Then the man with the ginger beard looked toward me.
“Lynch,” he said, “I’ll thank you to let go of my wife.”
At the sound of that familiar husky voice I gasped, and at the same time I felt a shock jar Victor. It wasn’t my imagination, then. Atticus was alive. It was impossible—but there he was.
“Baron?” my uncle exclaimed, as thunderstruck as I was. “How the devil—”
But Victor’s voice, shrill with fear, cut him off. “What are you doing here?” he cried.
Atticus leveled a look at him that would have made any man quail. “I am here to stop you,” he said.
Euphoria flooded my veins, tingling like starlight, warm as sunshine. Then I cried out a warning as Grigore swung a hamlike fist at him, and Atticus ducked it neatly before moving back in to pop the giant on the jaw with a well-placed punch. It was too soon to celebrate yet.
With renewed energy I fought against Victor. Fear seemed to have stunned him, and I was able to free one arm and jab backward with my elbow, feeling a fierce satisfaction when it made contact with his face. He gave a cry and released me, and I ran for the two struggling figures as fast as I could.
Cursed Once More: The Sequel to With This Curse Page 23
