Time Squared, page 4
The housemaid must have told Mrs. Crosby. Quick footsteps soon brought her aunt to her room. Feeling Eleanor’s forehead, she turned to her housekeeper and cried, “Fever! Send for Mr. Blythe immediately!”
“It’s only an ague,” Eleanor said. But her Uncle Crosby had ignored an ague and died within a fortnight, leaving her aunt with a terror of fever. Eleanor was afraid the physician wouldn’t offer her any reassurance. Mr. Blythe had a tendency to take minor illnesses too seriously, as if to compensate for his name.
It was true Eleanor couldn’t help throwing off her covers and pulling them back up, one moment too hot, the next moment shivering. She seemed to be as restless as Mr. Denholm, but it was only an ague. Eleanor didn’t need the doctor, although it wasn’t long before he stalked into the room in his black coat. Taking her pulse, he frowned and told her aunt, “I’m afraid she’s shockingly ill.”
“I’m really not, sir,” Eleanor insisted, although the doctor shook his head and bled her copiously, her terrified aunt calling for a milksop that Eleanor couldn’t eat.
“Perhaps some chocolate, dear?” Mrs. Crosby asked, and Eleanor suspected she was a little more ill than she wanted to believe when she didn’t care for chocolate, either.
Mr. Blythe settled himself into a chair, although Eleanor wanted him to leave. Her throat was sore, her limbs ached and soon enough her cough had burrowed so deeply into her chest that each hack hurt her ribs. Outside, the day seemed to be waning. Eleanor couldn’t get comfortable, not while being watched like this. She tossed and turned, her joints aching, her legs not quite itching but unable to stay still.
Even worse was the fact that Kitty didn’t come. As night passed to day, Eleanor grew certain she was being rebuked for her behaviour at the dinner party, God frowning down at her foolishness. Usually the two of them either suffered through each other’s illnesses or shared them. Now her aunt said that Lady Anne had heard about two maids falling ill downstairs—“although mildly, my dear”—and forbidden Kitty to visit, claiming there was contagion in the house.
“There isn’t any contagion,” the doctor claimed.
“Far too blithely,” Eleanor could hear Lady Anne say, and laughed heartily.
“Is something amusing, dear?” her aunt asked.
If Eleanor hadn’t mentioned Mr. Denholm’s compliment, Kitty would have been allowed to stay at Goodwood. She was being kept at home to pursue ten thousand pounds per annum instead of coming over to keep Eleanor company, and Mrs. Crosby was a poor substitute. As another day waned, her aunt fretted Eleanor with cold cloths and warm flannels, leaving Eleanor to silently, deeply long for her father, who had always breathed calm into a sickroom.
“Now, Mrs. Mugwumps, we’re not so bad, are we?” he would say, sitting down beside her with a book, and only glancing up occasionally over his spectacles.
He was sitting there now, and Eleanor’s heart leapt to see him.
“Papa,” she whispered.
A child’s voice came out, and it frightened her. So did the way her father raised his eyebrows humorously at being dead.
“Auntie!” she wailed.
“I’m here, darling.”
“Poor Papa,” she said. “When he was a priest of Bacchus.”
Her aunt’s account book fell to the floor. As Mrs. Crosby bent to retrieve it, Eleanor realized her aunt was hiding a sob. Why, she loves me, she thought, and her aunt came into minute focus as she picked up her book. A network of fine lines spread out from the corners of her aunt’s eyes, looking like cracks in paint. The skin of her neck was beginning to sag and her lips were thinner than they had been. Book in hand, she picked at its cover until, in the nervous pick-pick-picking of her thin fingers, Eleanor recognized her aunt’s terror. She also understood that her aunt was her mother, even though she felt Mrs. Crosby’s anxiety as a weight on her shoulders, which were already exhausted from carrying the burden of her illness.
That night, Eleanor dreamed a rook flew in the window. When she awoke, Mr. Blythe was beside her and the room was dark, and she heard a hoarse cawing and a sobbing as she fell into—into—Eleanor hardly knew what. It had depth and stars but no end, although as she fell through darkness, she knew she was going to fall through—what on earth was a television?—and exercised every inch of her will to pull herself back to Goodwood.
* * *
Eleanor awoke to see the doctor bending over her in sunlight, his soft hand on her forehead. “The crisis passed at four in the morning, my dear,” he said. “As so often it does.”
Turning to Mrs. Crosby. “A healthy young girl. She’ll recover quite quickly.”
Eleanor didn’t think so. She felt confused by strange words she only half remembered, and had an idea that most young ladies didn’t have to suffer so greatly when taking up Eve’s Burden. Nor could she manage to shuffle off its weight. As one long day followed another, Eleanor continued to feel weak and tired, increasingly bored but unable to feel any interest in books, or in Kitty’s stream of letters, or even in Mrs. Cook’s delicate meals.
Then she did. Eleanor woke up one morning feeling perfectly well. Entirely healthy. Absolutely herself. She asked the little maid making her fire to call for bread and butter, jam, boiled eggs, even cheese, although Mrs. Crosby said bread and cheese was vulgar, a servant’s food (which never stopped her from tucking into a plate of it herself).
The little maid ran out of the room as if she’d seen a ghost—Eleanor couldn’t believe she’d been that ill—leaving her to stumble out of bed on her own. Her legs felt absurdly weak but she managed to make it to the window. Looking outside, she felt a stab of joy to see the sun playing on the daffodil lawn. Eleanor wondered how long flowers had been out, and opened the window to breathe in their strong astringent scent, not quite cardamom, maybe a spice from a newly discovered country. She imagined it baked into a biscuit. Her mouth watered.
“Whatever are you doing?” her aunt asked, walking in briskly. “And in bare feet!”
“Don’t worry, dear,” Eleanor said, going over to her aunt. “I’m better now.”
“Then let’s keep it that way,” her aunt said, and half carried her back to bed.
When Mr. Blythe arrived, he ordered Eleanor to rest for another week. Nor would Lady Anne permit Kitty to visit. From the maids, Eleanor learned that fever had swatted its way through the servant’s hall while she’d been ill, although fortunately no one had died. When Mr. Blythe finally used the word “contagion,” Eleanor realized it was selfish to plead for Kitty, no matter how badly she wanted to see her friend.
She also wanted to know what was going on with the Denholms, and called for Kitty’s letters, which she’d only skimmed before. Mr. Blythe had allowed her the sofa, at least. Now she lay beneath a warm throw, reading Kitty’s description of card games and musical evenings, teas, a dance, even a ride to the ruins of St. Alkeld’s Abbey.
Yet despite Kitty’s bright prose, she sounded lonely.
“At least you would have appreciated . . .”
“I had no one to confide that . . .”
“I know my darling will join me in believing . . .”
Eleanor remembered Mr. Denholm telling her they’d been lucky to find each other in such a provincial society. He thought a little too highly of his own penetration, but she had to admit he was right. She also found herself worrying that she’d lose her friend and be left here alone. Kitty had been spending so much time with the Denholms that she couldn’t help picturing the captain down on one knee. (Unlikely.) Mr. Denholm down on one knee. (Even less likely.) Pictured both of them spurning her. (Most likely, but not inevitable.)
Eleanor had no idea what was going to happen, especially to her. So many odd things had occurred lately. A woman’s voice calling her to a party. The memory of a London street she couldn’t possibly have seen. And a tell-, telly—certainly a vision. Eleanor wondered if she’d been sick for several days before the fever had announced itself. It seemed possible. Seemed wise to remain on the sofa as the doctor advised until she regained her strength.
Except that it wasn’t. Two hours of restless boredom were enough to teach Eleanor that lying down sapped her strength instead of helping her regain it. In sudden irritation, she threw off her wrap and padded across the floor in stocking feet, kicking a chair aside like a child.
That was a mistake. Goodwood House was a giant ear, everyone monitoring everyone else and all of them whispering about everything, the whispers echoing around the walls and up and down the stairways until it was impossible to sneeze without three dozen people knowing how hard. They’d lock her inside if they knew what she was planning.
Eleanor stood still for long enough to make sure that no one had heard the chair fall, then picked it up gingerly. Opened her wardrobe silently. Made a quiet concession to her aunt by choosing a warm woollen dress over a prettier more springlike one. She found she didn’t need stays (she’d lost a shocking amount of weight), but put on a pair of thicker stockings and took her clogs in hand, tiptoeing down the back hall, tripping the switch on Goodwood’s hidden staircase, padding down to the ground floor, and putting on her pattens to steal outside.
* * *
The cold rain had made for a late spring, but during Eleanor’s illness, flowers had burst out like fireworks. Reaching the garden, she hurried down the gravel path between the formal beds of tulips, her skirts raised as she breathed the scent of violets. Ahead was her favourite path up the dale, grassy and blooming with daffodils. She refused to acknowledge any weakness as she opened the gate and continued through the apple orchard, blossoms drifting like pink snow onto her bare head.
As she pushed through a stile, Eleanor felt renewed. A lapwing’s high squeezy call sounded at a distance. At the top of the path was a bench looking out at the craggy green hills. Sitting there, she might figure out what was happening to her, and decide what to do about Mr. Denholm, whom she would see again any day.
Her aunt’s sheep cropped the new grass around her, their lambs dancing on stick legs. Halfway up, Eleanor paused to catch her breath, hand going to a stitch in her side. The nearest sheep looked up, profoundly uninterested. Eleanor clapped her hands, but even the lambs did little more than glance at her. Walking more slowly now, feeling suddenly and stupidly tired, Eleanor followed the path around an outcrop—and stopped, seeing someone on the bench.
A gentleman sat with his back to her, looking like an angel bent in contemplation. It was an oddly formal pose, and one of eternal sorrow. Eleanor didn’t recognize the man and was about to leave when he sensed her and turned. It was Captain Denholm, unfamiliar in a brown wool jacket, and he was weeping.
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said, feeling an intruder. She had a very concrete sense that she wasn’t supposed to be here. Wasn’t meant to be here. Yet something terrible had happened and Eleanor couldn’t leave before finding out what.
“Miss Crosby,” the captain said, getting to his feet. “Forgive me. You’re well. I heard.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and couldn’t help half a smile. “Although perhaps not for being well. I hope that everyone else is. They wouldn’t have told me, you see.”
The captain looked adrift and distracted. He crumpled a letter he’d been holding into his pocket, fumbling in vain for a handkerchief before wiping his eyes with the back of one hand.
“They wouldn’t have told you there’s been a great battle,” he said, and Eleanor noticed the newspaper lying on the bench. “It was fought outside a village in Spain called Albuera, and my regiment faced Napoleon’s Polish hussars. It appears”—glancing at the newspaper—“it appears there’s scarcely one officer in ten left standing. And dashed few of the men.”
“I’m so terribly sorry,” Eleanor said, although she couldn’t have been more relieved that no one she knew had died. Unworthy of her, she realized. “There’s been a great defeat, then.”
“Victory,” Captain Denholm said. “They’re calling it a victory, since the French seem to have lost even more men than we did, and then run away.”
He glanced at the newspaper again but didn’t seem to see it.
“Five thousand lost in a day,” he said. “A meaningless battle, with Lord Wellington chasing Bonaparte’s main army further to the north. But my poor friend Burke . . . Burke fell. He’d been home nursing a fever and was only just back in Spain. I saw him not a month ago. And Herbert. Poor Ensign Chadwick. My good friend Latham, you know. Latham is written up a hero for protecting the regimental colours. His nose and arm cut off by the Poles.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” Eleanor said, looking deep into the void that opened at her feet.
“Stupid of me.” The captain strode around the bench, grasping her arm as if she might faint. “Boneheaded, when you’ve been so ill.”
“Your friends must be glad you’re still in England,” she said, looking into his reddened eyes. “Unlike poor Mr. Burke.”
“No,” he said, dropping her arm. “If I’d been there, my general would have been there. And if he’d been in charge, this wouldn’t have happened. The idiot left in command . . .”
He stopped abruptly. “Forgive me.”
“Only the lapwings heard.” Another cry, the trilling whistle. “And the curlews. They’re terrible gossips, of course. But very few people speak curlew.”
“It’s good of you to try to cheer me up, Miss Crosby.”
“Boneheaded of me. When my father died, people said the most horrid empty things. And now I’m one of them. At least I understand how inadequate they felt.”
Eleanor looked down into the void, the spiralling darkness that had always been there, even though she’d only recently seen it.
“I don’t mean to compare the death of one man to such a dreadful calamity,” she said. “Even the loss of my father.”
“But that’s just it, you see,” the captain replied. Robert. He’d been called Robin as a boy, and looked half a boy now, a great strapping boy with a mottled tear-streaked face. “Each loss is such a terrible blow. And losing all of them makes it far more difficult to defend Britain. Defend ladies like yourself, you see. Two blows at the same time.” A painful half smile. “And scant comfort anywhere.”
“I wish I could provide some,” she said.
“It’s a comfort speaking with you,” he replied gently, and Eleanor met his eyes—grey and deep and wounded—and didn’t understand what else he said in the warm confusion that overtook her. Oh, it’s him, she thought, not knowing what she meant.
Yes, she did: it was the man she was going to marry.
Not that Eleanor knew how this could possibly be true, or what Kitty would think about it, or her aunt think about it, or his brother Mr. Denholm think about it. More to the point, what he thought of it. Eleanor couldn’t tell, especially since Captain Denholm seemed to be making his excuses—perfectly civilized—and striding back down the dale, his curls catching the breeze. He probably thought nothing of any of this, nothing of her, entirely concerned with the death of his friends, as of course he ought to be.
However, he’d forgotten his newspaper, leaving Eleanor to sit down on the bench and glance at the dense columns of losses broken down by regiment and company. She had no idea which regiment the captain served in. Artillery, infantry, cavalry. Very little idea of anything.
But feelings. Yes, suddenly she had a great many of those.
1840
Yorkshire and Kent
4
The train clattered and swayed toward London, taking them by stages to Kent. Eleanor felt uneasy, not quite over the odd moment at the station this morning when she’d woken from a reverie to find the locomotive rumbling toward her and had no idea what it was.
A huge metal Trojan Horse breathing smoke and cinders.
Eleanor had shrieked like a booby who had never seen a train, and felt strangely certain that she hadn’t. Instead she found herself on a deserted street in London with no idea how she’d got there. Found herself in Goodwood House during the long-gone war against Napoleon, Aunt Clara sitting by the fire in one of the dresses now stored in the attic, except that it was new. Found herself most mysteriously in the American state of Connecticut, aware that she was jumping through time and space, and wondering who was doing this to her. A box flickered with moving images, and as she watched a pale hand reached out to do what she knew was called “changing the channel.”
Then Eleanor was back in the station where she’d always been, living the life that—surely—she’d always lived, and felt foolish for having shrieked at a train.
“What on earth was that?” her aunt asked, and Eleanor was glad the station was so noisy that she didn’t have to answer.
Nerves, she supposed, as she settled into their compartment. A case of nerves, Eleanor’s world having tumbled off its axis when she’d met Captain Denholm not a month before on the heights near Goodwood. It had been one of the most important days of her life, despite her odd feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be there, not when Robert Denholm was mourning the loss of his friend—and what was his name?—in a meaningless skirmish in northern India. And in brutal fact, it would have been better if she hadn’t been, not with her aunt preparing to launch a determined pursuit of the captain’s brother.
In some ways, it had been easier to be ill, lying innocently on her sofa. The moment Mr. Blythe had felt sufficiently certain of Eleanor’s recovery to end his lucrative visits to Goodwood (or her aunt had), the campaign for Mr. Denholm had begun. The first step had been a party in the Goodwood gardens, which Mrs. Crosby had held to celebrate Eleanor’s return to health. Captain Denholm was gone by then, having returned to his regiment almost as soon as he’d left Eleanor on the heights. But Edward Denholm remained in Middleford, and almost immediately, Eleanor had to reproach herself for the way she mishandled his attentions.
