Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

of delirium she’d seen in her little brother when he had scarlet fever. He’d talked ofall sorts of things he had never seen and never would see, ships and castles. Emily gripped her hand. “Look in the glasshouse,” she hissed. “Find it.”
    “All right,” Mary promised.
    Emily seemed to relax. “He gave it to me,” she whispered. “You get it. You have it.”
    “A box?” Mary asked. She wondered what she wanted with a box; what Emily wanted with it, come to that. Nevertheless, she agreed. “Don’t you worry; I’ll get it,” she said.
    Emily put her head back on the pillow. “What time is it?”
    “It’s two o’clock.”
    “I ought to get up.”
    “Nay, you can’t do that.”
    But Emily was upright again, grimacing, her gaze oblique, unfocused, her mouth set; she began to try to swing her legs off the bed, shuffling forward.
    “Don’t,” Mary begged. “Oh, don’t do that.”
    “I’ve got to walk,” Emily told her. There was a sudden panic in her tone. “I must get up.” She got one foot to the floor; she gripped Mary’s arm. “Help me.”
    “Em, I can’t. You must stay.”
    For a second, Emily stared at her; then her eyes slipped away to that distant point at which she seemed to have been looking just a few seconds before. It was as if she were listening to something that Mary could not hear. Then, “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God.” Her eyes rolled back in her head; she fell sideways, half on and half off the daybed. The hand clutching Mary’s arm relaxed, and two high spots of color, jagged circles, flushed Emily’s cheeks. Her deadweight fell back, her head brushing the wall and the upper half of her body pressing down until, despite Mary’s efforts, she slitheredto the floor. As she fell, she took the blanket with her, and on the bed Mary suddenly saw a trail of blood.
    She jumped to her feet, aghast.
    “Mrs. Jocelyn!” she cried out. “Mrs. Jocelyn!”
    * * *
    W hile he stood in William’s bedroom, for the first time Harry felt truly cold. Snow that had adhered to the hem of his coat was dripping now onto the Indian carpet; he looked down and saw the wet, dark patches among the flourishes of knotted flowers, the blue medallions of silk and wool. William paced backwards and forwards, and then stood with his back to the fire. Above him, the Landseer with its pathetic dog on some Scottish hillside cast a sickly sentiment over the room.
    “For God’s sake, take off your coat,” William ordered. “Don’t stand there like a fool.”
    Harry did as he was told; he looked around for somewhere to hang it, and finally took it to a chair by the door. He felt his father’s eyes boring into his back, and was infinitely colder, though he recognized that the room must be warm. He longed to shove his hands into his pockets; they felt too large for him. He turned to face William.
    “Suppose you tell me how you came by that swollen lip.”
    Harry opened his mouth to speak, but was not quick enough.
    “And no lies about a horse. I am not Louisa.”
    Harry stared at him, trying to determine what his father knew. He felt a crawling sensation of pressure, the need to blurt out everything. He wanted to say that he would marry Emily, absurd as it was, and despite all his thoughts that day. For a second this seemed paramount; he thought of people like Featherstonehaugh, the baronet, marrying his dairymaid eighty years ago—those Regencyscandals that boys had talked about at school, the butt of jokes. But jokes that had always had a thread of envy in them; to buck the system would be a delight, wouldn’t it? He heard his own thirteen-year-old voice in his head. “One in the eye!” To marry a dairymaid, a housemaid, what did it matter? A sort of crazed idea rattled in his brain, pressed down on his tongue as if it were going to leap out of his mouth. He realized that he was shaking not from cold now, but from the sensation of standing on the edge of a precipice where everything