CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Another coughing fit afflicts Oliver when I return to the school room. This one is as bad as the one from the day before. I cancel the rest of school and once more declare that he shall spend the day resting and drinking tea and broth. I can’t keep pushing his schoolwork back, but his health is more important right now, and it seems his medicine isn’t enough to address his illness.

Lady Cordelia joins us in his room, and Theresa brings lunch and tea for all four of us. We talk with Oliver for a while, assuring him by our presence that he is loved and cared for. He drinks and eats heartily, and when he is able to rest, he looks far better than he does an hour ago.

Theresa leaves to manage the chores. I stand to allow Lady Cordelia some time alone with her nephew, but before I can leave, she says, “May I talk to you alone, Mary?”

“Of course, Lady Cordelia,” I say.

She stands and once more seems to float across the room. She looks so thin, so wasted. There’s nothing to her. My father used to remark when Annie was younger that a stiff breeze could have blown her away. That is the thought that occurs to me now.

She leads me into her bedroom, and I get my first good look at it. The last time I was here, I was only in the room long enough to see Lady Cordelia in hysterics and pull Oliver out so he didn’t have to witness the same thing.

The room is large, but smaller than I expected for a lord’s bedroom. It is smaller than the bedrooms of all of my previous employers save my most recent, an artist named Victor Holloway who lived in a spacious but hardly palatial oceanfront home on the California coast.

The décor here is at least somewhat more sensible than elsewhere in that it covers up the cold gray stone. The walls are hung with silk tapestries, and a thick Persian rug dominates the floor. The bed has a plush mattress and thick quilted comforters with down pillows. The furniture is all of dark mahogany and polished to an incredible shine, and a large, ornately carved mirror stands atop the dresser. The bathroom beyond is only barely visible through a crack in the door, but a large office is visible through another door on the right side. The room is thoroughly modern, with late-model computers, a television, a stainless-steel refrigerator and chairs that would look right at home in any office building.

“That’s Edmund’s study,” Lady Cordelia informs me. "Though between you and me, it's more of a man cave than a study. He uses it to watch the Manchester City matches."

I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t figure his Lordship for a football fan.”

“Can you be English without being a football fan?” she asks, smiling slightly. That smile vanishes an instant later. “I fear you have received a very poor impression of us, Mary.”

It hurts to know that I am lying to her when I say, “Oh, no, my lady. That’s not true at all.”

She smiles again, a knowing smirk that tells me she’s caught the lie. She sighs and crosses her arms. “Edmund hasn’t always been like this. It’s only recently that he’s…” She bites her lip. “Well, he’s been under so much pressure. The Conservatives in the House of Lords are relying on him to stir up support from the Labour Party moderates in the House of Commons. I’m not sure how familiar you are with British politics, but getting those two parties to work together is like asking a starving lion to pull a cart with an ox.”

“It's much the same in America, my lady.”

She hugs her chest more tightly. “And Oliver… He loves Oliver, I swear he does. But… I think seeing him reminds him of Alivia.”

“Did the two of them not get along?”

“Edmund and Alivia? Hardly. Alivia was a drug addict. Edmund has no patience for addicts.”

“I see.”

My feelings must be evident in my face, because she quickly says, “Don’t take that to mean that he didn’t love her. He loved her very much. He gave her a place to stay when she got pregnant and needed help.”

“And Oliver’s father? He was never in the picture?”

Lady Cordelia sighs. “Alivia didn’t even know who he was. He was conceived during a drug-fueled orgy.”

“How awful.”

She shrugs. “It gave us Oliver. And Oliver is wonderful.” Her lip trembles, but she controls herself before she weeps. “I’ve called for a doctor. He’ll arrive within an hour.”

“That’s wonderful! Thank you, my lady.”

She shivers. “Edmund will be unhappy.”

I stifle the response I would like to make. Instead, I say, “Are you sure he will? If he loves Oliver, he would be happy to know he’s being cared for, wouldn’t he?”

She begins to pace back and forth around the room. “Edmund is a very mistrustful person. He has reason to be considering his mother and sister were both given to drugs. His father was very cold and distant. You’ve seen Edmund behave the same way, but it’s not his fault. He’s known no other way. And he wasn’t so angry until the trouble in Parliament. And now poor Sarah.”

She shivers and looks over her shoulder toward the bathroom. No doubt, she is remembering the fright she took earlier.

She stalks to the bathroom and shuts the door firmly. I watch her shoulders rise and fall as she takes several deep breaths before returning to me. She takes another deep breath before meeting my eyes. “Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Wilcox?”

I hesitate. The simple answer is no, but things are never simple, are they?

“I believe that memory is powerful,” I reply. “When a person is taken from us, especially cruelly, unfairly or violently, their memory lingers. That memory can affect people for years, decades even. Sometimes, it can affect someone for the rest of their life. To those who suffer the most from that memory, it can even manifest as an apparition or a voice.”

Help me, Mary!

I shiver and finish, “So, do I believe in an actual spirit that haunts places and targets people maliciously? No. But I believe that a memory can fester until it becomes as malignant as any disease.”

Lady Cordelia purses her lips. Clearly, this wasn't what she hoped to hear. She looks away from me and says, "I believe in ghosts. I know you must think me insane, but they are as real as you and I. I've seen them."

I must be careful. Lady Cordelia may unknowingly have information that I can use to find the answer to this mystery. However, she is fragile right now. If I push too hard, she may spiral into hysteria again. I will have to let her lead and guide her gently in the direction that will be of most use to me.

“What have you seen?” I ask.

“I saw that woman, Sarah, in the bathroom mirror the other day. She was… she was…” Lady Cordelia shudders and starts pacing again. “She looked as Inspector Hargreaves described. Exactly as he described: swollen with water and her head shattered and deformed from where it landed on the rocks. One eye was hanging down over her cheek, but the other one was staring right at me.”

I have made a terrible mistake. Lady Cordelia is suffering. She has no information that can help me, only a vivid nightmare that has invaded her conscious mind and poisoned her reality.

I take her hands firmly in mine. “My lady, this is the power of memory I spoke of. It has created an apparition in your mind. You feel guilty for Sarah’s death, and perhaps afraid that you might suffer the same fate. So your mind has conjured an image of the worst thing that you can possibly imagine and left it there to torment you. But it is not real.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she snaps. She takes her hands from mine and paces again. “You haven’t seen them. You haven’t heard them.”

“I have,” I insist. “When the storm came, I heard them. But it was only the wind. My mind told me it was something else.”

“Do you really think it was the wind?” she scoffs. “Come, Mary. We are reasonable women, you and I. Can you honestly tell me that the wind screamed for help and begged for mercy?”

I consider my response again. I am concerned for her mental health, but perhaps it is her physical health I should be more concerned with. “No,” I admit. “I think… My lady, it might be best for you to spend some time away. Perhaps you and Oliver could visit your family for a while. At least until there’s a satisfactory explanation for Sarah’s murder.”

“Not just Sarah,” she said. “Lady Evelyn too. And Alivia. All three of them follow me everywhere and accuse me. They accuse me of being at fault somehow, but I’m not. What could I have done?”

“My lady…”

“Edmund will protect me.” She hugs her arms tightly across her chest again. “Edmund will care for me. He always has. He will make sure that we are all right.”

I press my lips together and look away. I am nearly certain that Edmund is the danger.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. I look back at her and see her sitting on the edge of her bed. “I think I’d like to be alone for a while,” she says. “Thank you for talking to me.”

I fear she is not long for this world. Even if she is, her mind will not much longer be able to see the world. I wonder was I the same way when I lost Annie? I can’t remember, or rather, I remember myself being as sensible and logical as ever. Clearly, I wasn’t, though, because I was committed shortly after her disappearance. The worst thing about insanity is that it so easily disguises itself as sanity.

I’m not sure if it’s wise to leave her alone, but I’ve been of far less help than I hoped to be, and someone must stay with Oliver.

So, I bow, then leave Lady Cordelia to her ghosts.