I caught a spark of temper in Eliza’s gaze, and then she smiled brightly and said, “That is so very kind of you! But do not trouble yourself in the least. I shall be absolutely delighted to come. It looks as though Mrs. Brandon’s carriage will be quite full already. I will just join you and Mr. Willoughby, if I may?”
Without waiting for an answer, she swung herself nimbly up into the phaeton and settled on the red leather seat.
I may not especially like John Willoughby, but at that moment, I did feel almost sorry for him. It would be difficult to imagine a more awkward combination than that of himself, his wife, and the mother of his illegitimate child all alone together in a small carriage for a drive of nearly an hour. Well, I suppose that if Marianne had been riding in the carriage, as well, that would have been more awkward still.
I could not tell what Marianne herself thought of the situation. Glancing at her, I saw her watching the Willoughbys with an odd expression on her face. But then she smiled and said—as calmly and equably as Eliza—“Very good. Shall we be off, then? I am quite longing to see if we can find this tomb.”
We arrived close to an hour later at Rosford Abbey—which is low-built and rambling, its origins as a monastery still plain, though it has been rebuilt and remodelled in the succeeding years. Other guests had already arrived. Mr. Chalmers was not there—apparently he had expressed horror at the very idea of exposing his delicate lungs to anything so insalubrious as the air in an underground tunnel. But the Rushworths were there, as well as a few people whom I had not yet met.
Eliza and I were walking together, following the rest of the group towards the small chapel, which sits a little detached from the main house, when abruptly Eliza froze. A moment later, following her gaze, I saw the cause: striding towards us was M. de Courtenay.
It had not even occurred to me that he might make up another member of the party, since he was not present when the idea was proposed.
Willoughby, at the sight of him, strode forward with one hand outstretched. “M. de Courtenay,” he said heartily. “I am delighted that you were able to join us. And look—I have brought you a pleasant surprise.” He clapped M. de Courtenay on the shoulder and then drew him towards Eliza and me. “Your fiance was good enough to—”
I saw M. de Courtenay’s dark eyebrows rise as he looked from Eliza to me—no doubt wondering which of us Willoughby had meant in referring to his fiance. I do not know what Eliza felt. She was still standing frozen beside me. But my own blood seemed to run cold in sympathy for her.
M. de Courtenay was standing on my other side. And before Willoughby could finish the sentence, I stamped hard on the Frenchman’s foot and in the same moment contrived to slump against him, putting my hand to my forehead. “Oh dear—I think … I believe I feel a little dizzy. It must be the heat. M. de Courtenay, do you think you might help me into the chapel? The air must be cooler inside.”
The Rosford Abbey chapel is very nearly in ruins. The roof still stands, and the walls—but the windows are now mere empty arches, the glass long gone, as are the pews and other furnishings of the church. We passed by a handsome stone monument inscribed with Latin and from there into the nave, where the monks would have gathered to worship. I had small attention, though, to spare for our surroundings. I had been leaning heavily on M. de Courtenay’s arm—keeping up with my pretence of faintness—but I straightened and drew back as we moved towards the stone slab where the altar would once have stood.
“M. de Courtenay?” I took a breath. “There is a rather … a somewhat delicate situation about which I must speak with you.”
M. de Courtenay looked more piratical then ever as he scowled at me. “Do you know, Miss Dashwood, I believe that I would have surmised something of the kind myself—without your breaking nearly every bone in my foot.” He winced as he flexed his ankle, the scowl deepening. “I presume you are about to offer me some explanation of why we are suddenly betrothed?”
I would have quailed—save that compared with Jamie’s disappearance, and Colonel Brandon’s expected arrival, I could not find it within myself to care whether M. de Courtenay was angry with me. But I did not want him to be angry with Eliza—especially considering how thoroughly he might humiliate her if he denied their betrothal to the Willoughbys.
I said, “No, it was not me whom Mr. Willoughby meant in speaking of your fiance. He—”
But I had not the chance to finish. Quick, light footsteps sounded on the stone floor behind us, and turning I saw Eliza coming towards us. Beneath the brim of her plain straw bonnet, Eliza’s face looked very pale—strained and taut, but determined, as well. She flashed me a look and said, “It’s all right, Margaret. I know you offered to speak with M. de Courtenay on my behalf—and I am grateful. But this preposterous situation is entirely of my own making, and I ought to be the one to explain. You will—I suppose you will probably have heard already that Joanna, my daughter, was not born within the bonds of wedlock.”
She took a deep breath, and in a few brief, bald sentences outlined her relationship to Willoughby, his desertion—followed by his wife’s recent offer to buy Joanna and then Willoughby’s own offer of money, which had led her to claim M. de Courtenay as her fiance.
“I realise that you have no reason to believe me,” she finished. “But I am not actually a madwoman—I am not in the habit of claiming betrothal to men whom I have never met. I just … I wished to show Willoughby once and for all that Joanna and I are more than … roadside rubbish, to be carelessly kicked aside and left behind. That I have my own life—a good, happy, independent life—which does not include him.”
Eliza pressed her eyes briefly shut as she exhaled shakily, then looked up to once more meet M. de Courtenay’s dark gaze, plainly bracing herself. “However, I do not mean to make excuses. My behaviour was still unconscionable, and I will entirely understand if you wish to denounce me for a liar and a fraud. You need not scruple; it will likely do me very little harm.” She gave a brief, bitter twist of a smile. “After all, it is not as though I have any reputation left to lose.”
M. de Courtenay had listened to her account with his brows drawn together, frowning. I could not judge whether he was sympathetic or no to Eliza’s account—and my own muscles felt tense with anticipation of what he would say.
But then he smiled—one of his quick, sudden smiles that entirely changed the look of his forbiddingly handsome face. “Denounce you? No. But if I am to convincingly play the part of your fiance, Miss Williams, I believe I ought to know more about you.” He flashed another smile. “At a minimum, your first name.” He bowed and then offered Eliza his arm. “Would you allow me to be your partner in today’s explorations, so that we may become better acquainted?”
I heard Eliza’s breath go out in a rush of relief, and then she smiled—she, too, looks very different when she smiles; younger and less severe. “It is Eliza,” she said. A touch of colour crept into her cheeks, warming their pallor. “My Christian name, I mean. And yes, thank you. I should be delighted to accompany you.”
I murmured an excuse and went swiftly out of the chapel again to rejoin Marianne and the others. Is it silly and too much like a sentimental novel to hope that Eliza and M. de Courtenay’s false engagement may actually develop into something more? I cannot help it; sentimental or no, I do hope so. I want Eliza to find love and happiness with a man who is actually worthy of her regard.
I am tempted—in light of how my own day turned out—to add, someone might as well. But that would be unkind—as well as whingeing and self-pitying enough to make me wish that I actually had been crushed by falling rock.
A short while later, the party assembled at the rear of the chapel nave, where a heavy oaken door opened onto the stair down to the crypt. Charlotte of course could not accompany us on account of her ankle; she remained outside, where the Willoughbys’ servants had set out a spread of fruits and cakes and cold meats. And Mrs. Rushworth, declaring that the very thought of exploring an ancient crypt ma
de her come out in goose-flesh, offered to stay behind to keep Charlotte company. But everyone else accepted one of the candles that the Willoughbys’ footman handed out and descended the curving stone staircase.
Actually, the crypt was not frightening or gothic in the least; at least I did not find it so, not even with the light of the candles casting wild, leaping shadows about the stone walls. Mr. Palmer tried to organise everyone’s explorations into regular patterns—the better to find his crusader’s tomb. But everyone largely ignored him and simply wandered off into the branching tunnels that spread out under the apse and nave of the chapel.
I did not see a crusader knight’s tomb—but there were others, I suppose of the family that had taken over the abbey after it ceased to be a monastery: heavy sarcophagi with carved effigies resting on top, hands crossed over their breasts and eyes closed. But oddly, they were not frightening, either—only quiet and peaceful. Perhaps all Mr. Palmer’s talk of legends was correct; at any rate, I could believe that any spirits who did haunt this place were benevolent ones.
I would have been quite happy to wander about and explore—trying to puzzle out Latin inscriptions and listening to the rest of the party calling out to one another to test the echoes in the various chambers. But then I realised that I had not seen Marianne—or Willoughby—in quite some time. Something cold lodged itself under my ribcage, and I tried to persuade myself that surely Marianne—even if she were blind enough to be infatuated with Willoughby again—would not misbehave here, under the very noses of so many of their neighbours. Not to mention Willoughby’s wife. Any scandal uncovered here would instantly race all over the county through the channels of neighbourhood gossip—and I could not believe that she would allow Colonel Brandon to be so grieved.
But I could not shake my uneasiness. I moved rapidly along the twisting passageways, holding my candle up to better light my way, but I did not find either Willoughby or Marianne.
I did run into Sophia Willoughby—literally ran into her, I mean. She was emerging from a dark alcove containing another old family tomb, and I cannoned straight into her, hard enough that I dropped my candle and had it sputter out. Sophia had her own candle, so that I could still see her face, which was flushed, the elaborate coils of her pale blonde hair coming undone.
“Really, Miss Dashwood.” She drew herself up and spoke in such tones that I would not have been surprised to see frost forming in the air before her lips. “You ought to watch where you are going.”
And with that she swept away, leaving me alone, and—since my candle had gone out—entirely in the dark. Even then I was not frightened. Not at first. I could still hear the distant voices of other members of the exploring party, and when I put out my hand, my fingers brushed against the stone wall. Logic dictated that if I kept my hand on the wall and turned back the way I had come, I could find my way out of the passage once more and back to where I could ask someone—someone who was not Sophia Willoughby—to re-light my candle with theirs.
I stooped down, groping on the floor until I had my own candle once more in hand. And that was when I heard it: the sound of breathing from somewhere quite close by. Furtive and irregular, as though whoever it was was trying to avoid detection by holding his breath for as long as possible and then letting it out again.
I felt an involuntary chill prickle across my skin, and swallowed. “Who is there?”
There was no answer. Only the continued sound of soft breathing, and a rustle, as of clothing brushing on stone. Ghosts, of course, do not breathe—nor, come to think of it, wear clothes, as far as I know. But in a way, the knowledge that I shared the passageway with a living person—one who did not wish to be seen or identified was worse.
I felt frightened—and then all at once angry. I suppose it was simply the accumulation of everything that has occurred in these last days: Aubrey’s sudden appearance, Jamie’s leaving, poor young Tom Harmon’s death … But all of a sudden, I was thoroughly out of temper with everyone and everything: with Marianne, for being such a cake-head as to take up with John Willoughby again; with myself, for being careless enough to have got trapped this way in the dark; and still more with the unknown person who was making my skin crawl by breathing in the darkness a few feet away and yet refusing to speak.
Soft, furtive footfalls sounded, moving away from me—plainly, whoever it was was trying to make an escape. Without pausing to think, I followed, moving as quickly as I dared over the uneven stone floor, with one hand on the wall and with the other clutching my useless candle. The footsteps ahead of me quickened to a run. I started to run, as well. The passageway twisted and turned, and crossed paths with several other passageways—which I avoided, continuing to follow the sounds from up ahead.
And then I stopped, as the hand that I had kept on the tunnel wall suddenly met with only empty air.
Groping blindly in the dark, I realised that I had come to another fork in the passageway. But I realised something else, as well: that the sound of footsteps from up ahead had entirely disappeared, leaving me without any idea of which path to follow. And moreover, I could no longer hear any sounds or voices from the rest of the group.
Cold fingers seemed to tighten around my heart, and I had to draw a breath, forcing fear back. Even if I felt isolated and utterly alone, with the utter blackness pressing like a physical force against my eyes, and a sudden awareness of the weight and stone over my head making it difficult to breathe, I was in no real danger. Even if I could not find my way back along the various twists and turns I had taken, it was not as though Marianne would allow her coachman to drive off and leave without me.
Steadying my breathing, I turned from one branch of the fork to the other, trying to decide which to follow—or whether to turn around entirely—when I realised that the air of the lefthand branch seemed slightly fresher than that of the right. In the darkness, such distinctions were easier to sense, and I thought I could detect a very faint stirring of air against my palm when I held my hand out to the left.
I could—vaguely—recall Mr. Palmer saying that the monastery plans he unearthed in some mouldering chronicle suggest that the crypt had more entrances than only the chapel one. I turned to the left, and after some twenty paces, the air became fresher still. A turn in the passage and a hundred paces or so more, and I saw chinks of faint light gleaming in the darkness. With hands outstretched, I moved towards the light. It was another wooden door—so heavy and hardened with age that it felt almost like more stone. It did not quite fit its aperture; the light I had seen filtered through narrow gaps at the top and bottom.
The door did not budge when I pushed against it, and for a moment I thought that finding this second exit had been for nothing. The light filtering in around the edges, though, allowed me to make out a heavy iron bolt near the top of the door. If the bolt were as old as the door, I would have expected it to have long since rusted into place. But to my surprise, it moved easily and silently under my fingers—and the next moment, the door swung open, allowing me to step out into sunlight so dazzling it hurt my eyes.
“Look out!”
Temporarily blinded, I did not see who shouted the words, only heard the warning, and the next moment, felt a hard, solid body connect with mine, knocking me aside and pinning me against the wall. Something heavy hit the ground with a crash, landing directly where I must have been standing only a moment before, and sending up a spray of dust and gravel that stung my skin.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision, and saw that it was a heavy stone urn—the sort that might sit atop a pillar or monument—that had hit the ground mere inches away. And that it was Jamie who had prevented me from being crushed; he stood pressed tight against me, his body shielding mine.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded shakily, feeling my heart drumming against my ribs. It was a moment before I could trust my voice to be steady enough for words. “Where—“ I looked at the battered stone urn now lying on the ground. “Where did that thing come fro
m?”
The building in which we stood was not the chapel at all, nor Rosford Abbey itself; it was a tiny, stone-built place—little more than a hut, really, surrounded entirely by trees. The place was in far more ruined condition than the chapel, with the roof and one of the four walls long since gone, leaving it open to the air and sky. It was through the door in one of the remaining walls that I had just come.
The urn— I supposed that it must have been balanced somewhere along the broken wall above the tunnel exit, and that I must have dislodged it when I opened the door.
“It seems a strange place to find something like that,” I added with a shiver. “Strange that it hasn’t fallen before now, too.”
Jamie bent to examine the urn, then looked up at the doorway. “Maybe. Or maybe not so strange. Not if someone only put it up there in the last day or two.” He seemed to speak more to himself than to me.
“Someone put it up there recently?” I stared. “But why should you think so? And why on earth should anyone do that?”
Jamie seemed to recollect himself. He straightened, and said, “Never mind. I’m probably wrong.” He glanced around at the crumbling stone walls. “This whole place looks about ready to fall to pieces.”
Now that my initial fright was beginning to wear off, I had time to take in the shock of Jamie being here at all. “What are you doing here? I thought for a moment there that this place really was haunted after all—that you were the saintly crusader, come to my rescue.”
One of Jamie’s eyebrows quirked upwards at that. “Right. Me and the saints—so much alike that people are always getting us confused.”
He was wearing worn brown trousers and a shirt of plain grey wool—but no neckerchief, as though he were avoiding all traces of colour, to better blend in with the woods and trees all around.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Jamie shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. Hermitage, maybe? Someplace the extra-holy monks could come to pray if they wanted to?”
Margaret Dashwood's Diary Page 17
