to sleep there, I see no reason to disturb them.”
He walked to a tall narrow door and pulled it open. It moaned each inch it moved.
There was a narrow balcony outside the door, in the form of a half-circle, a
three-foot-high stone balustrade enclosing it. I walked to the balustrade and
looked down. It was a very long way down, much farther than I would have thought.
And directly below was a stone walkway. I felt gooseflesh rise on my arms. She
had climbed up upon the balustrade and jumped. I closed my eyes. Ah, Caroline, I
thought, I am so very sorry.
“I found her.” I turned quickly. John was at my elbow. He was pointing. “There,
on that second stone, that was where she landed. There is still blood in that
stone. It simply will not be scrubbed out. I remember when I found her that I at
first thought she was asleep. Then I turned her over. There was so much blood,
so very much.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You were a young boy. It must have been very difficult.”
“More so for Caroline,” he said, and turned away.
I turned to Lord Waverleigh, who was simply staring around that circular room.
He was frowning. “I would have expected to feel the violence of her passing, but
I do not. In my experience a man or woman who chooses to take his life is
confronting an excruciating decision. There is doubt, pain, anguish, terror.
It is not easy to convince yourself that death is preferable, yet I feel nothing
of what she should have felt here. Nothing at all. It is strange. Usually I feel
these things very strongly.”
“Sir,” I said. “Caroline wasn’t well. Perhaps her mind simply did not react the
way yours would or mine. Perhaps there was no great decision for her to make. To
end her life was a compulsion.”
“Certainly that is possible,” he said, but he continued to frown. Then suddenly,
he turned to my husband, and he laughed. “I believe, Lawrence, that this lovely
old bed was used by one of your distant ancestors to entertain his neighbor
ladies. Perhaps he even kept a mistress here in this tower, hidden from his wife.
That is speculation, of course.”
“It could have been Leyland Lyndhurst,” Lawrence said, “my great-grandfather.
His reputation doesn’t bear much examination. He lived a very long life and was
said to pass to the hereafter with a smile on his lips.”
He turned to me. “I’ll show you a portrait of him, Andy. You will tell me if he
has the look of the scourge of the neighborhood.”
Lord Waverleigh turned and walked out of the tower room. I heard his footsteps
retreating down those narrow steep stairs. I looked down once more to where
Caroline had struck against the stone. I shuddered.
“Come, Andy,” Lawrence said from just behind me. “This is a place that makes my
soul wither, despite all the amusing and very wicked theories about that damned
bed.”
I knew exactly what he meant. “I’m so very sorry, sir,” I said, and took his arm.
“About Caroline.” Any opinions I had about a former earl and his use of the
tower for illicit affaires I kept behind my teeth.
John followed us down the tower stairs.
After luncheon, George and I went to the stables. Rucker saddled Small Bess even
as John strode up, and blinked when he saw me. “I thought you were with Judith
and Miss Gillbank. Or with Miss Crislock. She was looking for you, I believe.”
“I will see all of them later. First, I want to clear my head.”
He gave me a crooked smile. “What is in your head that needs to be cleared out?”
I thought of the damnable letters, of that seed of fear that had a firm hold on
me now. I shook my head.
We left Small Bess standing there in the stable yard while I went with John to
fetch Tempest from the paddock.
He saw his master, then he saw me. I would swear that he didn’t know what to do.
He stood there, looking from one of us to the other, shaking his great head.