by Jane Charles
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
Unable to look at him, Elaina simply shook her head, and stared out the window.
“Why haven’t you taken in the room to see if there is anything you recognize?”
She saw the bookshelves on the far wall. It was enough. “It’s not necessary.”
“Are you certain? Maybe something within will trigger a memory.”
“I’m certain it won’t,” she argued, and the anxiety grew. This library was closing in on her. She had to leave. She couldn’t be in here. “I’d like to go to my set of rooms, if you don’t mind.”
“I do.”
She gasped.
“Turn around and look at me, Elaina.”
At his demand, her chest grew tight, but she stood, slowly coming to her feet and turning, focusing only on his face. No matter what, she couldn’t look anywhere else. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to see what was in here.
It made no sense, she’d been grasping for memories, no matter how slight, from the moment she woke in Alderney, but now she was desperately trying to push them away.
“I’ll see you to your rooms.” Xavier stepped into the library.
“I’ll take care of my wife,” Tristan argued.
Oh, she was so tired of them arguing about what was best for her. Those two were likely to be the ones that drove her to Bedlam.
“Lady Hopkins, I’m Oliva Westbrook.” She came forward. “I’ll take you to your chambers.”
Elaina looked at the lovely woman, who held nothing but kindness in her blue eyes. “Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met before.”
At least it wasn’t someone who she was supposed to know.
“I must object,” Xavier insisted. “Lady Olivia has no idea the seriousness of your circumstances.”
“I should care for my wife,” Tristan argued, which made Elaina want to scream.
“Yes, you are her brother, and you are her husband,” Lady Olivia confirmed. “However, your behavior is only making Lady Hopkins more distressed. Further, your emotions for her are clouding your judgment and you cannot see beyond both your interests to see what is best for her.”
“And you suppose you know what is best for my sister?” Xavier demanded.
Lady Olivia ignored him and took Elaina’s arm. “It will come to you, eventually.”
Elaina’s mistake was looking up and behind her husband. A portrait hung above the fireplace. It was of her, and two small children.
Her heart stilled as all warmth left her body. “When was that commissioned?” she demanded.
“The portrait was completed shortly before you sailed to France.”
“Why did you add children?” she demanded.
“They are our children.”
“Hopkins…” Xavier warned.
Elaina sucked in a breath. “No. We do not have children.”
Lady Olivia clutched Elaina’s arm as the trembling began.
“We do, Elaina. We have two children.”
“No more,” barked Xavier.
Elaina was shaking her head, backing out of the room.
“She asked,” Tristan argued.
“We don’t have children.” Of that she was certain. “I can’t believe you’d add children to a painting.” Her volume rose, but Elaina couldn’t believe the audacity that Tristan would do something so, so, so improper. “Why would you do something, so horrible? Did you want children so badly?”
“Elaina. They are yours.”
No, they weren’t. She would know if she had children.
“No.” she was shaking her head, backing out of the library, backing away from him. Away from Xavier who’d lost his cold, clinical observance.
“Elaina?”
“Don’t.” Elaina held up her hand to silence her husband. “Stay away from me.”
She glanced to Lady Olivia. Her once kind eyes were now filled with concern. “Take me to my chamber.”
“Yes, Lady Hopkins.” And with a glance over her shoulder, Elaina was led into the corridor and toward the staircase, except each step her trembling increased, taking over her legs and her entire body.
She did not have children. She’d remember if she did, and Tristan was cruel to have added them to a portrait.
Elaina’s chest tightened, her breaths shallower. The stairs weren’t so steep that they should be difficult, but it felt as if she were climbing a mountain.
“Let’s get you settled,” Lady Olivia offered.
Elaina was certain that once she’d rested, her heart would calm. It had to, otherwise, she might not survive.
“A cup of chamomile and peppermint tea should help soothe you,” Lady Olivia suggested.
Elaina feared she was beyond a cup of tea but would try anything to help ease this pain. The weight on her chest, the tightness in her stomach, the tension in her neck and throat, making it difficult to swallow or breathe.
They paused at the top of the stairs, neither knowing which way to turn.
“To the left. Your chamber is directly across the stairs leading to the next level.”
Elaina glanced over her shoulder to find Tristan and Xavier stopped, halfway up the stairs, watching her with concern. At least they’d stopped arguing.
“Thank you,” she muttered and turned to the left. It was only a few steps and she was at the foot of the next flight of stairs. To the right, a door to a chamber. As soon as she was within, Elaina knew she’d be safe. She still didn’t know what she feared, but the anxiousness continued to build, reminding her of when she was a child, afraid of the dark, having to leave her bed in the middle of the night to use the necessary, but unable to see where she was going, shadows from the moon outside, against her curtains, causing monsters to dance across the room and she was certain one lay behind the changing screen, waiting for her to step behind to relieve herself.
But monsters were not real, so why was she certain that a monster lived on the next floor above.
Is that why she didn’t wish to return here?
Did monsters live in Hopkins Manor?
But monsters don’t exist.
She glanced up the stairs. Or, perhaps they do.
“Lady Hopkins?” Lady Olivia held the door to the chamber open and all Elaina had to do was step inside and her monster would be gone.
“No.” She couldn’t stay here. She had to get out of this house.
“Lady Hopkins?” Lady Olivia questioned with alarm.
Elaina looked to the left, then the right, not certain of which direction. She only knew she couldn’t go up, nor did she want to return down the main stairs since that was where her husband and brother waited
She needed to be rid of them all. She needed to be rid of this house. She needed to go somewhere safe, where nothing frightened her.
Alderney! There she’d found peace, eventually, in her ignorance because sometimes it was better never to remember.
Two maids emerged at the end of the hall. That was her escape and Elaina started forward. “Are those the kitchen stairs?”
“Yes, Lady Hopkins.”
She rushed forward, down the stairs, through the kitchens, out the back door and toward the ocean. The house sat upon a cliff, but she was certain there had to be a path to the beach. There had to be one. She had to get to the ocean. She needed to return to Alderney. She didn’t want to remember any more.
Chapter 31
Tristan rushed up the stairs and shook off Xavier’s arm when he tried to stop them.
“She shouldn’t be alone.”
“She shouldn’t be with you,” Xavier argued. “Had I known how afraid she was of this manor, of you, I would have objected to her returning.”
“She’s not afraid of him,” Lady Olivia objected from the top of the stairs.
“You saw her. Elaina is afraid to be here.” He glared at Tristan. “Afraid of him.” With a hand to Tristan’s neck, Xavier pushed him against the wall. “What did you do to my sister? I th
ought her fear was unfounded, but I’ve never seen her like this. What have you done to my sister?”
“Stop!” Lady Olivia cried. “It’s not her husband.” She yanked Xavier’s hand away from Tristan’s neck. “There is something she is afraid to remember.”
“Obviously,” Xavier jerked away from them. “I want to know exactly what Elaina doesn’t wish to remember.” At that, he turned his glare on Tristan.
“It’s not Tristan,” a reasonable voice came from the foot of the stairs.
“You didn’t see her in the library, Lucian,” Xavier argued.
“Yes, I did. You didn’t happen to notice me come in the room.” He took a step up. “Elaina denied having children.”
Tristan couldn’t understand why she refused to even consider that they had a son and a daughter. Why did she think he invented them? He’d understood not telling her earlier, when they’d been at Wyndhill Park, but Tristan had been so certain that when Elaina saw the portrait that the memories would flood back. Her reaction had been quite the opposite.
“It’s hysteria,” Xavier argued. “It’s this place. It’s him.” He directed his anger back at Tristan.
“Why do all gentlemen believe that when a woman is upset or having difficulty that it’s hysteria?” Lady Olivia picked up her skirts and stormed back up the stairs. “I am so bloody tired of the male population blaming everything on female hysteria. I wasn’t the one with my hand against the throat of my brother-in-law, yelling at him. Hysteria!”
“She’s right, you know.”
Garretson’s calm voice bled into Tristan’s mind, and must have Xavier’s as well, as his shoulders dropped, and he let out a sigh before rubbing the back of his neck. “I just wanted to protect her.”
“From me?” Tristan asked. Before Elaina had left them, none of her brothers ever showed a concern about their sister living with him, being married. They visited often and saw how happy they were.
“No. This place. The not knowing. The mind is so fragile.”
“Elaina is not our mother,” Garretson said quietly.
“Mother?” Tristan asked. “What of your mother.”
The two brothers stared at one another, not saying a word, or weighing what they should say. Tristan had never met Lady Garretson. She’d died when Elaina was only thirteen, before Tristan knew anyone in the family.
“She’s the reason our parents are dead,” Xavier said after a moment.
“She caused the accident?” Tristan asked.
“Accident?” Garretson questioned.
“Yes. Elaina always said that her parents died in a terrible accident. I never asked what had happened because I was certain it would be too difficult for her to discuss. I assumed if it was something she wished to tell me, she would have.”
“You never looked into how our parents died?” Xavier asked.
“I saw no reason.”
“He wouldn’t have learned,” Lucan offered. “It was hidden.”
Tristan’s stomach clenched. “What happened?” Did he even want to know?
“After Silas was born, Mother wasn’t the same,” Garretson began to explain. “She withdrew from him, from all of us.”
“Started disappearing into herself,” Xavier added.
“There were times that she didn’t leave her chamber for days, preferring to remain in the darkness. Other times, she ran through the gardens, laughing but sometimes screaming. She’d go from the depths of depression to an excitement beyond what was reasonable or even acceptable.”
“There was little middle ground,” Xavier added. “When it occurred, we knew it was a good day, but then she’d become anxious and excitable. And during those first weeks, she was fun, made us laugh, but then the nursery maids shielded us from her.”
“The depression was the worst,” Garretson said, looking past them, as if he was seeing his childhood. “There were times I was certain that she’d remain in the dark forever.”
“Was there no help for her?” Tristan asked.
“Father brought in physician after physician. There was nothing they could do, but all recommended Bedlam for her safety, as well as ours,” Garretson answered.
“Father refused to put her in such a place. I’d overheard a few of their arguments, but Father was steadfast and insisted that he could keep her safe.”
But he didn’t or they wouldn’t be dead.
“During our break from Eton before the Michaelmas Term, Mother and Father took us to Dover where we once had an estate that overlooked the ocean. Father thought it would be good for us to be away. Micah, Asher, Silas and Elaina remained at Wyndhill Park, and I never did learn why Xavier and I were chosen to go with them…” Garretson shook his head. “Mother and Father had a horrid row one evening. Mother yelled and threw a number of items that shattered against the walls. Father tried to calm her.”
“She screamed that she didn’t want to live anymore. Not like this,” Xavier’s voice was now distant.
“She charged out of the manor, the door banging against the wall, Father going after her. I came out of my room to see where they were going,” Garretson said. “Xavier did as well. Mother ran out of the house, Father followed and so did we. I can’t remember being so scared in my life. We’d seen her in these states of hysteria before, but it had been some time and this was the worst.”
“Or, we’d forgotten how bad they could be,” Xavier added.
“She ran for the cliffs, Father chasing. I think she meant to throw herself over, but Father reached her first. They fought. He held on to her as she tried to push him away. Back and forth, back and forth…”
By the vacant look in Garretson’s eyes, Tristan knew that he was reliving the nightmare all over.
“Father lost his footing, or maybe it was mother, but in a blink, they both fell over the side of the cliff. I can still hear their screams.” He blinked a moment later, as if he were coming out of a hypnotic state.
“No wonder Elaina never told me.”
“Elaina never knew the truth,” Xavier said. “Only Lucian and I know what happened. Everybody else thinks they fell while walking along the cliffs at night.
Such a burden for them to carry. Garretson would have been only fourteen or fifteen and Xavier twelve. “You never told anyone?”
“I’d already spent enough time at Eton to know gossip and reputations could be ruined. I’d not have my parents’ names sullied, nor that of the rest of my family. It was best that everybody believe that it had been a tragic accident. A slip over the cliff,” Garretson explained.
“That’s why you study the mind. Why you question every thesis and paper written to find the weaknesses and strengths in a belief,” Lady Oliva said quietly from the top of the stairs. “Even you hate the use of the word hysteria, as it doesn’t begin to address the intricacies of the mind. Even you said that women shouldn’t be dismissed when difficulties of the emotions arise as something so simple as a benign term as hysteria. Yet, you used it to describe your sister?”
“Because it is the generally acceptable term when a woman is not behaving as Society believes she should.”
At that explanation, Lady Olivia nodded. “I understand.”
“Why do you know so much of what I study, write and question?”
“As I told you, Dr. Sinclair, I read and study as well. You aren’t the only one with a family member who has suffered.”
Tristan knew her family, or thought he had. Then again, as with Garretson, certain matters are kept a secret from Society.
“Do you fear that Elaina’s mind may be so fragile that she could end up like your mother?” Tristan asked Xavier.
“No, at least I didn’t think so. But a three-year amnesia gives me grave concerns, coupled with her reaction to this estate”
“It’s not me,” Tristan insisted.
Xavier held his eyes. “I believe you, yet, I don’t know what has her in this state.”
“Perhaps someone should go after her,” Lady Olivia offered
. “Unless you’d like me to.”
“Isn’t she in her chamber?” Tristan asked.
“No. She ran down the servant’s stairs to get out of here and away from you.”
“And you let her?” Tristan yelled and bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Xavier right on his heels. He rushed to the window to look out and prayed that Elaina wasn’t repeating the actions of her mother.
Xavier, Garretson and Lady Olivia stopped beside him.
Garretson sucked in a breath. “She’s running along the cliff. She can’t mean to…”
“She’s looking for the path to the beach.”
Without bothering to tell them anything else, Tristian raced out of the room, down the servant stairs, and out to the back lawn, running to reach Elaina before she did accidently slip, but then she disappeared.
Elaina wasn’t certain she’d ever find a path and just as she was about to give up, she spotted it, along with the wooden railing she somehow knew would be there.
Clouds were building on the horizon, but she wasn’t going to let a storm stop her. She had to get away. She couldn’t stand to be in the manor. She could no longer stand to be in Cornwall, or even England. Returning to Wyndhill Park would do no good, as she feared she wouldn’t escape this terror now that it had found her.
She had to return to Alderney. To Rebecca. Not Clive, she was married, but she could return to her home for the past three years, where she’d had peace and her only difficulty on any given day was wondering who she was. She now knew all that she needed to know and wished to return to bliss.
“Elaina!” Tristan’s voice carried on the wind, but she ignored him. He knew the monster. He wasn’t the monster, but there was a connection.
“Elaina!”
As she reached the bottom of the path, her slippers sank into the sand and she stumbled. Righting herself. She picked up her skirts and struggled to the water’s edge, the sand becoming more compact and less fluid with each step.
Thunder boomed and she jerked at the sound as lightning flashed against the sky. The water churned and soon the waves would be slamming against the shore instead of gently blanketing the sand.
