by Anne Perry
"No expression of our sympathy could possibly meet such distress as you must feel," she said quietly. "But do be assured we grieve for you, and in time if there is anything we may do to be of comfort, we would be only too willing."
"Thank you," Eloise replied without expression. "That is generous of you." It was as if she were hardly aware of them, only of the need to reply or at least to acknowledge each time someone spoke. Her sentences were formal, things she had prepared herself to say.
Charlotte searched her mind for anything at all that did not sound idiotic.
"Perhaps presently you would care for a little company," she suggested. "Or if you have somewhere to go, perhaps you would prefer not to go alone?'' It was a suggestion for Emily or Caroline rather than herself, since she had neither frequent oppor shy;tunity to visit Rutland Place nor a carriage available.
Eloise's eyes met hers for a moment, then slid away into something frighteningly like complete vacancy, as if all the world she knew was inside her head.
"Thank you. Yes, I expect that may be. Although I fear I shall hardly be pleasant company."
"My dear, that is not at all true," Caroline said. She lifted her hands as if to reach forward, but there was some barrier around Eloise, an almost tangible remoteness, and she let them fall again without touching her. "I have never known you anything but sympathetic," she finished helplessly.
"Sympathetic!" Eloise repeated the word, and for the first time there was emotion in her voice, but it was hard, stained with irony. "Do you think so?"
Caroline could do nothing but nod.
Silence closed in on them again, stretching as long as they would suffer it to exist.
Again Charlotte racked her mind to think of something to say, just for the sake of sound. But it would be offensive, almost prurient, to inquire how Tormod was faring, or what the doctor might have said. And yet to speak of anything else was unthinkable.
The moments ticked on. The room seemed to grow enormous and the rain outside far away; even the sound of it was removed. The nightmare horses galloped through all their minds, the wheels crashed.
Eventually, when Charlotte was just about to say something, however absurd, to break the pressure, the maid returned to announce Amaryllis Denbigh. Much as Charlotte disliked Amaryllis, she felt a rush of gratitude merely to be relieved of the burden.
Amaryllis came a few steps behind the maid. She stood in the doorway and stared from one to the other of them aghast, although surely she must have seen the carriage outside.
Her eyes fastened on Charlotte accusingly. She was white-faced, and her usually lush hair was awry and the pink salve on her lips smudged.
"Mrs. Pitt! I had not expected to find you here!"
There was no civil reply to this, so Charlotte attributed it to natural distress and ignored it altogether.
"I am sure you have called in sympathy, as we have," she said level ly. She waited a second or two for Eloise to say something; then, as she did not, Charlotte added, "Please do sit down. This sofa is most comfortable."
"How can you talk of comfort at such a time?" Amaryllis demanded in a sudden gust of fury. "Tormod will get better, of course! But he is in agony." She shut her eyes and hot tears ran down her cheeks. "Absolute agony! And you sit there as if you were at a soiree and talk about comfort!"
Charlotte felt anger and pain well up inside her, because Amaryllis spoke out of her own passion, without thought for the pain she must be causing Eloise.
"Then stand, if you prefer to," she said tartly. "If you imagine it will be of some conceivable service, I'm sure no one will mind."
Amaryllis seized a chair and sat down, her silk skirts everywhere.
"At least if he will get better, then that is hope," Emily said, trying to ease the electric harshness a little.
Amaryllis swung round, opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Eloise was sitting perfectly motionless, her face blank, her hands lifeless in her lap.
"He will not," she said without a shadow of expression, as if she had faced death itself and grown accustomed to it and ac shy;cepted it without hope. "He will never stand again."
"That's not true!" Amaryllis' voice rose almost to a shriek. "How dare you say anything so dreadful? That is a lie! A lie! He will stand, and in time he will walk. He will! I know it." She stood up, went over to Eloise, and stopped in front of her, shaking with emotion, but Eloise neither looked up nor flinched.
"You are dreaming," Eloise said very quietly. "One day you will know the truth. However long it takes, it is always there, and it will come to you."
"You're wrong! You're wrong!" The color flamed up Amaryllis' face. "I don't know why you're saying all this. You have your own reasons-God in heaven knows what they are!"
There was accusation in her voice, shrill and ugly-frightened. "He will get better. I refuse to give in, to surrender!"
Eloise looked at her as if she were transparent or of no importance, as if she were unreal, as inconsequential as a magic-lantern slide.
"If that is what you wish to believe," she said quietly, "then do so. It really makes no difference to anyone, except I would ask you not to keep repeating it, especially if the time should come when Tormod is well enough to receive you."
Amaryllis' body became rigid, her arms like wood, her bosom high.
"You want him to lie there!" she cried, almost gulping the words. "You evil woman! You want to keep him a prisoner here! Just you and he, all the rest of his life! You're mad! You're never going to let him go-you-''
Suddenly Charlotte woke into action. She jumped to her feet and slapped Amaryllis sharply across the face.
"Don't be idiotic!" she said furiously. "And so utterly selfish! Who on earth do you imagine you are helping, standing there shrieking like a servant girl? Pull yourself together and remem shy;ber that it is Eloise and not you who has to bear the hardship of this! It is she who has cared about him all her life! Can you possibly believe that poor Mr. Lagarde wishes to have his sister subjected to abuse on top of everything else? The doctor is the only one who can say whether he will recover or not, and false hope is more painful than learning to accept with patience the truth, whatever it may be, and await the outcome!"
Amaryllis stared at her. Quite possibly it was the first time in her life anyone had struck her, and she was too appalled to react. And the insult that she had behaved like a servant was a mortal one!
Emily stood up also and took Charlotte aside, then guided Amaryllis back to her seat. Eloise sat through it all as if she had neither seen nor heard them, absorbed in her own thoughts. They could have been shadows passing across the lawn for any mark they made upon her mind.
"It is natural you should be shocked," Emily said to Amaryl shy;lis with a supreme effort at calmness. "But these dreadful things affect people in different ways. And you must remember that Eloise has spoken with the doctor and knows what he has said. It would be best if we were all to await his advice. I daresay Mr. Lagarde needs as little disturbance as can be." She turned to Eloise. "Is that not so?"
Eloise was still looking at the floor.
"Yes." She raised her eyebrows a little, almost with surprise. "Yes, we should not distress him with our feelings. Rest-that is what Dr. Mulgrew said. Time. Time will tell."
"Is he to call again soon?" Caroline inquired. "Would you care to have someone with you when he does, my dear?"
For the first time Eloise smiled very faintly, as if at last she had heard not only the words, but their meaning.
"That is most kind of you. If it is not a trouble? I am expecting him momentarily."
"Of course not. We shall be happy to stay," Caroline assured her, her voice rising with pleasure that there was something they could do.
Amaryllis hesitated when they all turned to look at her, then changed her mind.
"I think there are other calls it would be courteous for us to make while I am in the neighborhood," Emily said. "Charlotte can remain here. Perhaps Mrs. Denbi
gh would care to come with me?" She spoke with exquisite ease. "I should be most happy for your company."
Amaryllis' eyes widened; obviously it was a contingency she had not foreseen, and she was about to protest, but Caroline grasped the opportunity.
"What an excellent idea." She rose, straightening her skirts to make them fall elegantly behind her. "Charlotte will be delighted to remain here, and I shall accompany you so we may continue with our visiting. I am sure Ambrosine would be pleased to see us. You would be happy to do that, wouldn't you, my dear?" She looked to Charlotte nervously.
"Of course," Charlotte agreed quite sincerely. For once, Mina and the mystery surrounding her death were banished from her mind and she was aware only of Eloise. "I think that is most certainly what you should do. And it is only a step. I can quite easily walk back when it is time."
Amaryllis stood a few moments longer, still trying to think of some acceptable excuse to stay, but nothing came to her and she was obliged to follow Emily out into the hallway as Caroline took her arm and walked with her, and the maid closed the door behind them.
"Don't let her distress you," Charlotte said to Eloise after a moment. She would not be fatuous enough to suggest that what was said was not meant. It was blindingly obvious that it had been fully intended. "I daresay the shock has affected her judgment."
Eloise's face shadowed with a ghost of humor, wraithlike and bitter.
"Her judgment, perhaps," she answered. "But only insofar as previously she would have thought the same, whereas good manners would have prevented her from saying it."
Charlotte slid more comfortably into her seat. Dr. Mulgrew might-yet be some time. '
"She is not the pleasantest of persons," she observed.
Eloise met her eyes; for the first time she appeared actually to see her, not some inward scene of her own.
"You do not care for her." It was a statement.
"Not a great deal," Charlotte admitted. "Perhaps if I knew her better-" She left the suggestion as a polite fiction.
Eloise stood up and walked slowly over toward the French windows and stood facing the rain.
"I think a great deal of what we like about people is what we do not know but imagine to be there. That way we can believe the unknown is anything we wish."
"Can we?" Charlotte looked at her back, very slender, with shoulders square. "Surely to continue to believe what is not true is impossible, unless you leave reality altogether and sink into madness?"
"Perhaps." Eloise suddenly lost interest again and her voice was weary. "It hardly matters."
Charlotte considered arguing, purely as a principle, but she was overwhelmed by the grief and futility that drowned the room. While she was still struggling to think of anything to say that had meaning, the parlormaid returned to announce that Dr. Mulgrew had arrived.
Shortly afterward, when the doctor was upstairs with Tormod and Eloise was waiting on the landing, the maid returned to ask Charlotte if she would receive Monsieur Alaric until Eloise should reappear.
"Oh." She caught her breath. Of course it would be impossi shy;ble to refuse. "Yes, please-ask him to come in. I am sure Miss Lagarde would wish it." J
"Yes, ma'am." The girl withdrew, and after a moment Paul' Alaric appeared, soberly dressed, his face grave. j
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt." He showed no surprise, so he f must have been forewarned of her presence. "I hope you are well?"
"Quite, thank you, Monsieur. Miss Lagarde is upstairs with the doctor, as I imagine you already know."
"Yes, indeed. How is she?"!
"Most terribly distressed," she answered frankly. "I cannot remember having seen anyone look so shocked. I wish there was something we could say or do to comfort-it is frightening to be so helpless."
She had been afraid, almost angry in anticipation of it, that he might say something trite, but he did not.
"I know." His voice was very quiet, his mind seeking to understand the pain. "I really don't feel I can be of any use, but not to call seems so indifferent, as if I did not care."
"Are you a great friend of Mr. Lagarde's?" she inquired with surprise. She had not considered a realm of his life where he might find company with a man as much younger and as rela shy;tively slight in his pursuits as Tormod Lagarde. "Please do sit down," she offered as composedly as she could. "I daresay they will be a little while as yet."
"Thank you," he said, moving the skirts of his coat so he did not sit on them. "No, I cannot say that I found much in common with him. But then tragedies of this sort override all trivial differences, don't they?"
She looked up to find his eyes on her, curious and quite devoid of the impersonal glaze she was accustomed to in social conversation. She smiled slightly to show she was calm and grave and composed; then, as an afterthought, she smiled again, to show that she agreed with him.
"I see it has not kept you away," he continued. "It would have have been quite excusable for you to have found other business and avoided what can only be painful. You do not know the Lagardes well, 1 believe? And yet you felt a desire to come?"
"I fear to little enough good," she said with sudden unhap-piness. "Except perhaps that Mama and Emily removed Mrs. Denbigh."
He smiled, and the irony inside him went all the way to his eyes.
"Ah, Amaryllis! Yes, I imagine that was something of a kindness in itself. I don't know why, but there seems to be little love lost between her and Eloise. It would have been a source of considerable pain had they become sisters-in-law."
"You don't know why?" Charlotte was surprised. Surely he could not be so blind! Amaryllis was intensely possessive and her feeling for Tormod.was almost devouring in its heat.-The thought of living in a household with Eloise would be unbearable to her. When two women shared a house, there was always one who became superior; that it should be Eloise was unlikely, and for Amaryllis intolerable, but if Eloise were driven, however subtly, into a subordinate position, then Tormod would feel a sense of obligation, even of pity, toward her, and that might be worse. No, if Paul Alaric could not see why Amaryllis felt as she did, he was disappointingly lacking in imagination.
Then she looked at his face and realized he had not understood that Eloise would remain with them. But Tormod could hardly leave her alone! She was young and desperately vulnerable- even if it would be socially acceptable, which it was not.
"I had formed the impression that Mrs. Denbigh was ex shy;tremely fond of Mr. Lagarde," she began. What a ridiculously inadequate use of words for the violence of feeling she had seen in Amaryllis, the appetite of mind and body that boiled so close below the surface.
Slowly he smiled, without pleasure. He had seen it too.
"Perhaps I have too little insight, but a wife and a sister do not seem mutually exclusive."
"Really, Monsieur." Suddenly she was impatient with him. "If you were totally in love with someone, if you can conceive of such a feeling"-the acid of her rage for Caroline dripped through her voice-"would you care to share your daily life with somebody who knew that person infinitely better than you did? Who had a lifetime of memories in common, all the laughter and secrets, the friends, the childhood echoes-"
"All right, Charlotte-I understand." Suddenly he reverted to the moment of friendship they had shared in those terrible days in Paragon Walk when other jealousies and hatreds had seethed into murder. "I have been insensitive, even stupid. I can see that to someone like Amaryllis it would be unendurable. However, if Tormod is as badly injured as I have heard, then the question of marriage will never arise."
It was a statement of a truth that must have been obvious, yet the words fell like ice into the room. They were still silent, each wrapped in his own conception of its enormity, when Eloise returned.
She regarded Alaric without interest, as if she did not recog shy;nize him except as a shape, another figure that required acknowledgment.
"Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric. It is kind of you to call."
The sight of her face,
stiff, eyes sunken with shock, affected
him more than anything Charlotte could have said. He forgot his
manners, a lifetime of polite expressions. There was nothing in
him but untutored emotion.
He put out his hand and grasped hers, his other hand touching her arm very gently, as if her skin might bruise.
"Eloise, I'm so sorry. Don't give up hope, my dear. One cannot know what may be possible, with time."
She stood quite still, not moving away from him, although it was not plain whether she was comforted by his closeness or simply oblivious to it.
"I don't know what to hope for," she said simply. "Perhaps that is very wrong of me?"
"No, not wrong," Charlotte said quickly. "You would have to be omniscient to know what is best. You cannot blame yourself, and please do not even think of it."
Eloise shut her eyes and turned away, pulling her arm from Alaric, leaving him standing confused, aware he was on the outside of some tremendous grief and unable to reach it or share it.
Charlotte felt a certain compassion for him, but her first feeling was for Eloise. She stood up and went to her, putting her arms around her and holding her tightly. Eloise's body was yielding, lifeless, but Charlotte held on to her just the same. Out of the comer of her eye she saw Alaric's face, tight with pity, and then silently he turned and left, closing the door behind him with a tiny click as the latch went home.
Eloise did not move, nor did she weep; it was as if Charlotte were holding a sleepwalker whose nightmare imprisoned her mind and soul elsewhere. Yet Charlotte felt that her presence, the contact of her warmth, was worth something.
Minutes went by. Someone clattered up the back stairs. Rain drove in a gust against the windows. Still neither of them spoke. At last the door opened and the maid spoke, then was over shy;come with embarrassment. "Mr. Inigo Charringtoni ma'am. Shall I tell him you are not at home?"
"If you would inform Mr. Charrington that Miss Lagarde is not well," Charlotte said quietly. "Ask him to wait in the withdrawing room, and I shall go to him in a few moments."
