Cast in Shadows

by Laura Landon

  “And have you learned why Lord Sheffield suffers those terrible attacks?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it. That’s why we’ve come. To ask you what you remember about the seizures Lord Sheffield’s mother suffered from.”

  “Come in. And tell that young man hanging back in the shadows to come sit in the shade. I just took some pastries out of the oven and we can enjoy some sweets with a cup of tea.”

  “That sounds delightful,” Eve said. She motioned for Matthew to come forward, then followed Lettie into the house.

  The cottage on the inside was exactly how she pictured it would be. Neat, and filled with all the decorations a person who loved flowers and plants as much as Lettie obviously did could squeeze into her home.

  “Please, sit at the table.”

  There were four chairs around an oblong wooden table, and Eve and Lord Sheffield sat in two of them.

  Lettie put the kettle on to boil, then dished up the pastries and set a plate in front of each of them. While they waited for the tea, Lettie joined them around the table. “What is it you want to know?”

  Eve pulled out the paper and pencil she’d brought with her and placed it on the table. “It’s important that we understand as much as possible about Her Grace’s seizures so we can make a comparison to the episodes Lord Sheffield suffers. We need to know how they are similar and how they differ.”

  Lettie nodded, and Eve asked her first question. “When did the Duchess of Townsend suffer her first seizure?”

  Lettie didn’t need time to think. She spoke as if Lord Sheffield’s mother’s illness was yesterday instead of more than a decade earlier. “Her first seizure was when his lordship was just one year old. But that was not when Her Grace’s illness started.”

  “When did you notice Her Grace was ill?” Eve asked.

  “Soon after his lordship was born.”

  “Had she been ill before that?”

  Lettie shook her head. “No. There wasn’t a happier couple in all of England than His Grace and his duchess. Their marriage was truly a love match, and they both looked forward to the arrival of their babe with more joy than anyone could imagine.”

  Lettie pushed the plate of pastries to the side, then pushed her spoon beside it. “I know it’s not the thing to speak of such personal matters in front of you, my lord, but if there’s anything in what I have to say that might help you, your sensibilities will have to suffer.”

  He smiled. It was a warm, open smile that deepened the creases on either side of his mouth. “I doubt I’ll be offended, Lettie,” Lord Sheffield assured his nurse. “I look forward to hearing as much about my mother as possible. There’s not much I know about her.”

  “I’ve always regretted that, my lord. Your mother was a very special person. I loved her as my own daughter, and I grieved for her as much as a mother would have when the good Lord took her from us. Except maybe your father. No one grieved more. I was afraid he might not recover from her death, but I thank God he had you. You were the reason he couldn’t give in to his despair.”

  Eve saw how the woman’s words affected Lord Sheffield, and was glad when the water was ready and Lettie had to get up to prepare the tea. When she’d poured each of them a cup, then taken a cup along with a plate of pastry outside to Matthew, she returned and sat.

  “Everything had been perfect with Her Grace. She hadn’t been sick even one day while carrying his lordship, and when the time came for him to make an appearance into the world, the birthing was one of the easiest I’d ever witnessed. If you can call any birthing easy.”

  Lettie smiled, and Eve returned her smile.

  “But soon after, things changed.”

  “How so?” Eve picked up her pen to start taking notes.

  “Her Grace became quiet and was a pale comparison of the happy woman she’d been before Lord Sheffield was born. She was sad all the time, and I’d enter her room to find her crying nearly every day.

  “His Grace tried everything he could think of to get her over her melancholy disposition, but nothing helped.” Lettie focused her gaze on Lord Sheffield. “She used to love going for carriage rides through the countryside, but after the babe was born, His Grace couldn’t convince his wife to leave the house. And most startling was how she reacted to the babe.”

  “How so?” Eve asked.

  “She’d anticipated the arrival of the babe more than any woman alive, yet after his lordship was born, she didn’t want anything to do with him. The only time she paid attention to the babe was when His Grace brought him to her and sat with her while he held him. Your father even enlisted the help of your mother’s dearest friend, your stepmother, to come to stay with your mother. He was sure that having her childhood friend as a companion would help. The whole household prayed that your mother’s despair would go away and the duchess they knew and loved would return, but that didn’t happen.”

  Lord Sheffield sat forward in his chair. “Was I that horrible of a babe?” he asked.

  Lettie shook her head. “You were the happiest babe I’d ever seen. The most content. It was your mother, lad. She was at fault. Not you.”

  “I’ve heard of women who suffer from a certain malady after childbirth,” Eve said. “Perfectly normal women who go into a deep decline. I’ve even heard of an instance where one mother went as far as to kill her child. It’s as if they aren’t in their minds any longer.”

  “That’s what Her Grace was like. There were times when I feared for his lordship.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I convinced His Grace that the duchess needed to be watched. He’d had the same thought, and assigned someone to sit with his wife at night.” Lettie reached out and patted Lord Sheffield’s hand. “And I put a cot in front of your cradle so I could sleep beside you.”

  “Did my mother enter the nursery when she wasn’t expected?”

  “Once. But I was there to stop her from hurting you. Then your father came and carried her back to her rooms.”

  “Is that when her seizures started?” Eve asked.

  “It was shortly after. When his lordship was almost one year old.”

  The marquess pushed back his chair and walked to the other side of the room. His cold tea sat untouched on the table. He kept his back to them and braced his hands on either side of the window that looked out onto Lettie’s herb garden. “Do you think my mother was insane, Lettie?”

  He turned when she didn’t answer right away.

  “No, my lord. Your mother wasn’t insane. She’d been one of the happiest people alive. That’s why your father loved her so dearly. She loved life. She loved everyone she met, and they loved her.”

  “Except she couldn’t love me.”

  “She changed after you were born. But you didn’t cause the change. It was something in her mind. She refused to accept the love everyone had for her. Even the love your father tried to show her.”

  Eve took notes as quickly as she could. She needed to gather every bit of information Lettie could give her. “How long was His Grace able to keep Her Grace at Townsend Manor?”

  “He could have kept Her Grace there forever, but…”

  “Yes?” Eve prompted. Whatever Lettie knew, it was something she didn’t want Lord Sheffield to hear.

  “What is it, Lettie?” he asked. “Nothing can hurt Mother now. We need to know everything.”

  Lettie nodded, then continued. “Her seizures started. Then shortly after the duchess’s first seizure, other things started happening.”

  “What sort of things?” Sheffield asked.

  “Your mother began imagining things. She insisted that someone was trying to harm her. She claimed that her grandmother had come to see her.”

  “And she hadn’t?” Eve asked.

  “Her grandmother had been dead for years, yet Her Grace insisted that she’d been there and that she wanted Her Grace to come with her.”

  “Where?” Eve asked.

  “To heaven.” Lettie absent
ly moved her cup of tea from one spot to the other. “His Grace assigned a guard to watch Her Grace. But one night she became violent and struck the footman watching her with a brass candlestick. By the time the footman regained consciousness, Her Grace was gone. His Grace found her floating face down in the pond at Townsend Manor.”

  Lord Sheffield clasped his hands behind his back and stared out of the window. His knuckles turned white from how tightly he held them together.

  “Your father rescued her in time, but from that moment on, we were ordered to lock Her Grace in her room and not let her out.”

  Sheffield turned. “Is that when Father built Shadowdown?”

  Lettie nodded. “Her Grace had always loved the outdoors, especially the gardens and the flowers. The duke couldn’t stand to see his wife locked up when she was so desperate to be free. So he built the cottage where you live now.” She looked at Lord Sheffield. “He fenced in a large area so she could go out whenever she wanted. She had a staff to care for her, and he visited her every day when he wasn’t in London.”

  “I remember coming to visit,” Lord Sheffield said in a whisper. “I remember sitting on Mother’s lap and her holding me.”

  “She did.” Lettie smiled. “She looked forward to you coming. I tried to bring you every day, and I told His Grace his wife was getting better. That she was more loving, more her old self. When His Grace came, she begged him to take her home, to allow her to live at Townsend Manor. But the seizures hadn’t stopped. And His Grace was afraid that she’d do someone harm. Or herself.”

  Lettie hesitated, and she swallowed several times before she could continue. It was obvious how difficult this was for her. “Then the seizures got worse. At first the attacks came once a month, perhaps twice. Later they occurred nearly every week.”

  “Were the attacks similar to mine?”

  Lettie nodded. “She had the same complaints. Her heart would beat so fast and hard I often feared it would jump out of her chest. And she would always clutch at her head as if she couldn’t stand the pain. Then, she would become extremely violent. More violent than one thought someone of her size and temperament could become. And then the tragedy struck.”

  Eve looked up from the page where she was taking notes. “What tragedy was that?”

  “The murder.”

  “What murder?” Lord Sheffield asked. He came to sit at the table, then leaned forward in his chair and rested his forearms on the table.

  “Dr. Songster’s murder.”

  “Wasn’t he the doctor in charge of Shadowdown before my father came?”

  Lettie nodded. “Shortly after Her Grace came here to live, an acquaintance of His Grace asked if there was room at Shadowdown for a relative who suffered from diseases of the mind. The Earl of Burrows was the first because they needed someone to look after his father all the time, and rather than have him locked away, they wanted him to live out his life where he could go out in the sunshine, yet where someone would watch over him. Then Lord Carmichael inquired because of his wife. Then…” Lettie took a deep breath. “That’s when His Grace built the asylum. No one thought it would get as large as it is today, but there was a need, and His Grace filled it.”

  Lettie twisted her hands in her lap. “I think he knew how helpless he’d felt when Her Grace became ill, and he saw the benefit of companionship for the nobility who came here where they could live among their peers.”

  “What happened to Dr. Songster?” Lord Sheffield asked.

  “He was found murdered inside your mother’s cottage.”

  “How?”

  “He’d been stabbed.”

  “Where was my mother?”

  “The staff found her standing over the doctor’s body with a knife in her hands. She’d had one of her seizures and she didn’t remember anything.”

  Sheffield shoved his chair back from the table and crossed to the other side of the room. His fingers were knotted into tight fists as he looked out the window onto the scene outside. But Eve doubted he was looking at the flowers. She doubted he saw anything at all.

  She stared at him. She knew he was trying to cope with information he was hearing for the first time today. She fought the urge to go to him. To hold his hand. Or wrap her arms around him. But she couldn’t. Even though she ached to, she couldn’t show him how he affected her. Instead, she turned to Lettie and asked the remainder of the questions that needed answering.

  “How long after Dr. Songster’s death did the duchess die?”

  “Only months later. Her Grace’s seizures turned worse, and came so much more often. Her heart gave out during one of the seizures and…” Lettie dabbed at the tears that ran down her cheeks. “Her Grace is finally at peace.”

  Eve closed her notebook and placed her hand over Lettie’s. “Thank you for your help, Lettie. I know this was difficult for you, but the information you provided was invaluable.

  Eve rose from the table and turned to face Lord Sheffield, but the place where he’d been was empty and the door to Lettie’s cottage stood open.

  “Give him a few minutes, Miss Cornwell. He has a great deal to come to terms with. It wasn’t easy for him to hear that his mother had committed murder. I wish His Grace had not kept that fact from him, but with all Lord Sheffield’s other problems, His Grace didn’t want him burdened with what his mother had done.”

  Eve sat at the table a few more minutes while Lettie told her a little more about the Duke and Duchess of Townsend and their son Gideon, Lord Sheffield. Eve opened her notebook again and took notes of anything Lettie said that might be important later, but her mind couldn’t concentrate on the words Lettie spoke. She was more concerned with going after Lord Sheffield and offering him her strength, even though he was one of the strongest men she’d ever met. Anyone with less courage and resilience would have crumbled long ago.

  Anyone with an iota less of determination would have given up long before now. Before his youth and his life had been taken from him. Before he’d lost his mother and his family.

  Before he was forced to admit that he may not have a very long future ahead of him.

  Suddenly Eve realized that no matter how long a future lay ahead of Gideon Wayland, she wanted to be a part of it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Gideon closed one of the ledger books and reached for the next. He’d spent the last three days keeping meticulous track of every person with whom he came into contact, every bite of food he’d eaten, every drop of liquid he’d consumed, then he’d worked tirelessly on the estate books his father had sent to him.

  He needed to keep busy. He not only needed to do as much as he could to help Miss Cornwell discover if there was the slightest possibility that there might be a physical reason for his seizures. But more importantly, he needed to occupy his mind so he didn’t have time to dwell on the information Lettie had shared concerning his mother. Information that only confirmed the hell she’d suffered because of the same seizures that plagued him.

  He tried to imagine how his life would change if a miracle happened and he was free of the sickness that plagued him. Tried to envision the difference it would make to his family if he were whole again. But a nagging voice in the back of his mind yelled out that fantasizing that he could be cured of his seizures was wishful thinking.

  He tried to push that defeatist attitude aside, but was only able to succeed because Eve Cornwell demanded that he not give in to despair.

  She came each day to talk to him, and every time she visited she had a new set of questions to ask him.

  He knew she’d spent countless hours investigating different causes for his violence, different foods or medications that could cause such severe headaches, but so far she hadn’t found anything.

  He pushed himself from the desk in his study and rose. Even that small movement gave him a sense of freedom, in contrast to how he felt every time he woke after a seizure with his arms and legs confined.

  He knew her failure to find a possible cure wasn’t because of a l
ack of searching. He knew she’d researched every book in her father’s extensive library, and for the first time in his life, he tried to allow himself to feel hopeful. He felt as though it were only a matter of time until she would come to him with a possibility for why he suffered from such violent seizures. He only prayed it was soon, because the seizures were becoming more severe, and the time it took him to recover was longer.

  Gideon walked across the room and looked out the window that held a view of the lane that led to his cottage, although to call it a cottage was a gross understatement. The home his father had built for his mother twenty-three years ago was as grand as several of the country manor homes of their neighbors. The three story structure consisted of a circular drive that surrounded a massive park, complete with shrubs and bushes of every kind, and a variety of blooming flowers. His father had told him that the duchess had loved flowers.

  Three steps led to a columned portico, and beyond the doorway there was a small yet welcoming foyer. Located in the center of the entrance hall, a wide staircase rose to the upper floor. The bedrooms were up the stairs, but not the room where Gideon slept. In fact, he seldom went upstairs, but preferred to live on the ground floor.

  Shadowdown cottage, as it was known, consisted of two matching wings that ran parallel on either side of the foyer. One of the wings contained his private suite of rooms: his bedroom, a sitting room, a dressing room, and a private reading room. The other wing contained the public rooms: two drawing rooms where he could entertain guests, (as if guests ever came to Shadowdown), his study, a library, and a small, secluded room that could be securely locked. The room hadn’t been used yet, but he’d had it built in anticipation of the day when his seizures became so severe no one could control him.

  He broke out in a cold sweat thinking of the day when that would happen. When his attacks were so violent, when he became so dangerous that no one was safe around him.