The Gilded Cage (6 page)

A gaggle of children in scarves and hats cross the road in front of us, and John has to rein in sharply to let them pass. When we're moving once more, he seems to have lost the thread of our conversation. “We'll be at the Crescent soon,” he says, nodding ahead.

“Oh, I must have misspoken. I don't wish to go to the Crescent.”

“I thought you wished to visit Miss Dowling, my lady?”

“No, I won't bother her so soon after the ball,” I say innocently. “I wish to go to the coaching house, where my brother would have departed from.”

John frowns, and I know he isn't fooled. But, tapping the horse smartly with the reins, he does as I say. I am, after all, the lady of Walthingham Hall.

 

CHAPTER 5

T
HE COACHING HOUSE
is called the King's Head, and it's a two-story half-timbered building in the center of the city, nestled among shops and stalls.

I step carefully from the carriage into ice-crusted mud.

John jumps down at my side. “I'll come in with you, my lady.”

“There's no need,” I reply.

A steward directs me to a room near the main entrance, where a portly man is filling in a ledger behind a desk. He takes off his cap as I enter.

“Can I help you, miss?” he says.

I start to explain my predicament—that I'm looking to find the whereabouts of my brother, that I, too, should have been in the midday coach—when he holds up a meaty hand to interrupt me.

“The coach couldn't go today, miss,” he says. “Not with the snow.”

“Oh,” I say. “Then perhaps my brother went by a different route.”

“No coaches today at all,” he says. “It would be madness in these conditions.”

“You're sure my brother's horse is not stabled here? His name is Croxley. The horse, that is. A mahogany stallion.”

He glares at me above his eyeglasses, causing his chins to squash together impressively. “Quite sure, young lady. Now if you'll excuse me.” He goes back to his ledger, paying me no further mind.

I leave the room, more troubled than before. If George isn't in London, where can he be? What if he went out to paint and got lost in the woods? What if his horse slipped and … I shake my head sharply. I won't let myself get carried away. He's probably back at the house already, feet up, snug and warm. He's going to laugh at me when I get home, blue with cold.
You should have left a note
, I'll tell him. That will only make him laugh more.

I'm walking back to my carriage when a man beside a piebald stallion catches my eye. His shoulders are broad beneath a crisp black coat, and the wind has ruffled his dark hair into disarray. He says something I can't hear to the steward beside him, and they both laugh.

With a start of recognition, I realize that it's William Simpson—a man I hardly imagined capable of laughter. Beneath his open coat, he wears a dark suit with a buttoned waistcoat. When our eyes meet, I raise a gloved hand to greet him. His smile falters, and he gazes at me with surprise, and something else. Disappointment? Red color rushes into his pale cheeks as I walk determinedly toward him.

“Lady Katherine,” he says, with a small bow. “What are you doing here?”

His tone is faintly accusing.

“Mr. Simpson. How lovely to see you, too. I was looking for my brother.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “That makes two of us.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mr. Simpson clutches a document case in one hand, and gestures to the coaching house with the other. “We were supposed to travel together to London,” he says.

“
You
were going with him?”

Mr. Simpson nods briskly. “He wanted someone to find him an agent in London, to arrange the sale of his paintings.”

“George never told me that,” I say, in a more accusing tone than I intended.

He bristles. “That is between you and your brother,” he says.

“And why didn't you say anything last night?” I ask him playfully. “As I recall, we were looking at a painting together at Walthingham Hall.” I want to make him smile again, the way he did for the steward.

“There was no opportunity,” he says, and judging from his pained expression, I know he is remembering his hurried exit. This isn't going well at all. “Perhaps you think I'm ill suited to the task?” he persists. “Though I may be just a lawyer, I'm not entirely unschooled in the sale of art.”

“No, of course not. That isn't what I—”

“No matter,” says Mr. Simpson. “The coach was canceled in any case, and Lord Walthingham never arrived. When you see him next, do tell him that I'll be waiting on him here until the roads clear.”

He nods to the steward, and walks back toward the coaching house.

*   *   *

The snow thickens as we make our way back through the countryside, and my unhappiness deepens with it. It's too cold to sit up beside John, and he answers my misery with a tactful silence.

My anger at George for being so inconsiderate mixes in my mind with frustration at Mr. Simpson's paranoid sensitivity. He
must
have a sense of humor, however deeply buried.

It's not long before we're cresting the final ridge before the estate's borders, and Walthingham's great facade becomes visible in the distance. Though it's beautiful, its pale stone and glass illuminated in the dying light, it looks cold. The unlit windows of the upper floors peer at me like empty eyes.

Suddenly, one of the horses whinnies and the carriage lists sharply to the left. I brace myself against the door as we clatter sideways across the road, finally bumping to a heavy halt against a copse of bare trees.

“Are you all right back there, my lady?”

“Yes, I'm fine!” I call. I fumble with the door at my back until it swings open, then climb carefully out. Were it summer, I imagine I could look straight up into an acre of green-golden leaves; as it is, the carriage rests among black brambles clustered around the sturdy trunks of ancient, snow-silvered oaks.

John's already moved toward the horses, pushing his face into theirs, crooning quiet things to keep them calm. “We've lost a wheel, my lady,” he says. “Get back inside and keep as warm as you can. I'll go to the house and get help.”

“I'll come with you,” I say.

“No,” he says firmly. Am I mistaken, or does he cast a nervous glance toward the forest? “What I mean is, His Lordship would have my guts for garters should anything happen to you. It's a cold slog up to the house from here.”

I've walked miles in worse, but that's when I was just Katherine. “Very well,” I say heavily, stepping back onto the mounting board.

I settle back into my crooked seat as John strides up the track. Sitting among my fur blankets, I'm overcome with self-pity. What a wretched end to a wretched day.

As my ears get used to the quiet, I notice the noises of the forest—faint crackles and snaps in the frigid air. The horses stamp their feet to stay warm, and I try to judge the time by the darkening sky.

Despite the furs, cold seeps into my toes and fingertips. Ten minutes pass—perhaps fifteen—before I notice that I can see my breath. How long could it take John to get to the house and back? Surely he should have returned by now.

Unless something has happened to him on the way. I peer through the window at the dark forest. The Beast is a myth, I remind myself—but what if John has stumbled and hurt himself? Or what if he came across a poacher?

Time stretches, out here in the snow. Flakes fall and vanish on the horses' backs, poor things. Their manes are tinged with white. I've learned over long Virginia winters to be wary about frostbite, and to watch for the moment when chilly wakefulness turns into dreamy fatigue. When I start to feel warm again, I know it's a bad thing. I clap my hands against my arms, stamp my feet to wake my legs. This won't do. I can't just wait to freeze.

So I climb out, lifting my heavy skirts clear of the snow's crust. I unhitch both horses and throw the blankets over their broad backs. It's been a little while since I rode bareback, and the larger of the mares stumbles a bit as I mount her, eyes rolling whitely in her head.

“Let's just take this slowly,” I mutter.

I trot her up the track toward the house, leading the other horse close beside us. I daren't risk going any faster for fear of the ice that might be hidden beneath the snow.

Finally, frustrated by our slow progress, I lead the horses off the uneven road and down toward the lake. It's a quicker route, and the ground is softer. According to Henry, the lake was dug by our great-great-grandfather, to make the most of the tributary of the River Avon, which runs through the estate. My own grandfather constructed the elegant Palladian bridge that spans its center in a gentle arch. When I first saw it, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on.

There's a cruel beauty to the landscape. I think, not for the first time, how much I wish to see my new home in summer. “Maybe I could love it then,” I whisper, not knowing I'm speaking aloud until the words are already said.

The lake is set like a geode into the snow, its icy black center lapping against the hard-set crystals at its shallow edges. The horses, for some reason, don't want to cross. I nudge the mare harder, and she gives in, taking tentative steps up onto the bridge. The house is just two hundred yards up the lawn now. Nearly there.

We're halfway across when a flapping of wings startles the horses.

A patch of the lake near its center teems with crows. Shabby in their black overcoats, they pick at its surface, like vultures scavenging for carrion. I gaze down at them, and then freeze. My eyes grow hot in my skull, and my fingers clench tighter on the reins.

Because now I can see that the crows are concealing something with their raggedy bodies. Something dark and unrecognizable, half-frozen into the ice. I dismount and, at the same time, see three figures speeding toward me from the house. It's John and Mr. Carrick and Henry. Not George. My brother isn't with them.

Horror steals over my heart as I move my gaze back to the lake.

It cannot be.

On the bank is an overturned boat, just a small thing for an oarsman and a single passenger. It's tied to a jetty by a thick rope caked in snow. I leave the horses whickering on the bridge.

John has broken into a run, away from the others, his feet kicking up snow as he descends. He's shouting something—my name, I think.

It cannot be.

I hook my fingers beneath the boat and heave it over. The rope is stiff as I unhook it from the mooring post. With a push, the boat slides from the bank and settles on the water, sending a ripple cracking through the ice.

Then John is at my side, his arm around my shoulder.

“Lady Katherine,” he says, “please.”

I point speechlessly at the water, to the thing half-submerged in the grip of the ice. The crows screech at one another, hopping and swooping in their attempts to get closer to it.

“It's just a deer, my lady,” says John. “They sometimes fall in when they try to drink.…” His voice breaks off, ragged.

And now I know for sure.

“What's happening down there?” calls Henry. He's moving more quickly now, pulling his bad leg through the snow.

I tug myself from John's side and steady myself against the boat. Icy water pools around my boots as I climb inside. John follows wordlessly. He turns out the oars tucked into the boat's sides and, with strong strokes, propels us through jellied black ice.

Henry calls to us from the shore, a single word that I don't hear. I motion for John to row on, until we're close enough to scare off the crows. He drops the oars with a clank into the rowlocks and pulls at my arm, trying to turn me around. “Don't look.”

His voice is taut, made to be obeyed, but it's too late. The body, in dark, waterlogged velvet, is facedown and still, but the hair crawls with faint, underwater currents. One hand taps noiselessly against the ice.

On its wrist is a stripe of cerulean blue.

 

CHAPTER 6

I
FEEL WONDERFULLY WARM,
and my head no longer aches. I float blissfully in the dark, my limbs loose and lazy. But as much as I try to ignore it, there's something terrible pacing at the edges of my mind, looking for a way in. I turn my head from it, again and again, but I'm waking up now, and finally it claws its way into my consciousness.…

“Let her sleep now.”

It's Grace's voice. Remembering that my brother is dead is a duller pain than I would've thought. It turns my body to wood; I can't believe that I will ever raise my head again. My eyes are sandpaper, too dry to open, until the tears start to fall. I'm doing nothing—not really crying, even—but they're coming as regularly as rain, and I let them well through my eyelids and onto my cheeks.

When a stifled sob breaks out of me, Grace and Elsie are on me in a flash, each taking a hand from either side of the couch they've laid me across. “Oh, Lady Katherine,” Elsie begins, then bursts into tears. She pulls her apron to her face. Grace dismisses her with a weary wave, and she runs from the room.

With every beat of my heart, my grief deepens. I'm alone here. My brother, my laughing brother, is dead. No more paintings. No more George. Nobody to call me Wildcat.

I pull at my clothes, gasping, suddenly unable to breathe, and Grace brings a sharp-smelling vial to my nose, followed by a short belt of brown liquid in a cut crystal tumbler. “This will help get you through until Dr. Ebner arrives,” she says, helping me to sit up.

The burning in my nose and at the back of my throat distracts me briefly from my misery. When the door shushes open a moment later, it's with an apologetic air, bringing to mind the days that followed my parents' deaths. Everyone around George and me moved in slow motion, as though we couldn't handle sharp movements. I'd felt like I was underwater.