Chapter 3 #2
“When?” Henry interjected, his tone sharp.
“Four years ago.”
“When exactly?” Henry pressed, patience wearing thin. “I was told nothing about an accident, I suspect you kept it from me deliberately, but you will be honest with me now.”
Gibbs chewed his lip in consternation, looking anywhere but at Henry: a sure sign of residual guilt. “She… attempted to run away, shortly before your wedding. I was not careful when I told her of the union, so it was a shock to her and, in all her girlish foolishness, she acted rashly.”
In the four years that Henry had known Thalia, though he had, admittedly, not spent all that much time with her, he had never thought of her as girlish or foolish. Perhaps, both their lives might have been easier if she had succeeded in escaping when she attempted it.
Still, he doubted Gibbs’ explanation; the wretched man was still lying to him.
“What happened?” Henry barked.
The older man started at the sound, as jittery as a cornered rabbit.
“She took the carriage. I did not know about it until she had already departed. You see, I was in the middle of a party, to celebrate the coming nuptials.” He cleared his throat, a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow.
“It was raining that night, I believe, and the carriage veered off the road. A wheel snapped and the carriage overturned, with Thalia inside it.”
“She struck her head?” Henry thought of what the physician had mentioned about an old injury, now overlapped with a new one.
Gibbs shrugged in a manner that made Henry want to shake him rather hard.
“I do not know about that. The driver brought her straight back to the manor on one of the horses, and the maids tended to her there.” He paused.
“She had some bruises and whatnot, here and there, but she was up and about the following morning. No harm done.”
“You did not summon a physician?” Henry’s voice dripped contempt.
“I did not see any need,” Gibbs replied. “She was fine. Perhaps, there was a bruise on her head, but if it was there, her hair must have covered it.”
Suspicion thrummed in Henry’s nerves like the shiver of a bad violinist scraping the strings, though he did not know where to begin with his discontent.
Did he berate Gibbs for not fetching a physician immediately, those four years ago?
Did he reprimand Gibbs for not checking on his daughter himself?
Did he yell at the man for not mentioning all of this sooner, so that greater care could have been taken to avoid a second accident?
I might have been more cautious, had I known.
“How long before the wedding did this occur?” he asked, the thought suddenly coming to him.
Gibbs’ throat bobbed. “It was the night your letter arrived, declaring you had acquired a special license. I cannot quite remember, but it was… maybe four days before?”
“Four days!” Henry erupted, conjuring a vision of the wedding day in his mind. “You still brought her to the church after an accident like that, four days before?”
He could not recall any bruising, but then she had been wearing a rather elaborate bonnet which would have hidden such a thing rather well. And it was not as if he had paid very close attention to her, ensuring that he kept his gaze trained as far away from her as possible.
“The date was set,” Gibbs said feebly. “What else was I supposed to do? And, as I said, she seemed fine. She was not pleased about the wedding, but… otherwise, she was herself.”
“Just when I thought you could not possibly stoop any lower,” Henry muttered, eyeing the decanter of brandy on a nearby shelf and deciding it was far too early to quieten his nerves with such hard liquor.
“You brought her to the church for yourself, for your debts; you would have brought her even if she had suffered two broken legs. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.”
The older man huffed and puffed, sticking his nose in the air in indignation. “I did what was best for my daughter and for our household. Anyone would have done the same. And, as I have said and shall keep saying, she seemed fine!”
“And now, she has no memory of me and is at risk of deteriorating to such an extent that the physician suggested an asylum!” Henry snapped.
“Do you think I want a madwoman for a wife? Do you not think I deserved to know about this other accident? If she worsens, you will discover how ungenerous I can be, Gibbs.”
The Viscount Farhampton, as weaselly a man as any Henry had met, suddenly recoiled as if he had been brushed by something white-hot. The threat of no longer being ‘supported’ would do that to a man. Evidently, Gibbs had forgotten his place and had just remembered.
“Perhaps, Your Grace, it would be for the best if I were to take Thalia back to Farhampton with me,” he said, after a moment.
“Her sister will take care of her exceedingly well, and I think, maybe, she was right when she said she needed to be in familiar surroundings. Yes, I think I should take her home with me and send her back when she progresses.”
The sudden shift came as no surprise to Henry.
Of course, Gibbs would try to hold onto his advantage, and that ace was Thalia.
Indeed, Henry suspected that if his wife were to return to Farhampton with her father, Gibbs would not hesitate to try and fill his daughter’s head with false memories, to ensure that his ‘allowance’ was not taken away from him.
“She stays with me,” Henry said flatly, brooking no argument.
“But you have so many other things to occupy yourself with.” Gibbs tried to argue anyway. “Let me take care of my daughter. Let me—”
“She stays here!” Henry hissed. “And I shall stay with her until she recovers.”
If she recovers, his mind corrected.
After all, there was every chance that his wife would not remember anything whatsoever of the last four years, just as the physician had said.
Either way, he needed to be near to her, to be the first to know if she had regained those memories or not.
Particularly the most recent memories. The night she fell down the stairs, to be exact.
Gibbs dipped his chin to his chest, tension showing in the veins that wormed up the side of his neck. “Of course, Your Grace. She is your wife; naturally, she should stay with you.”
He excused himself and hurried out of the room, his position inside the doorway swiftly replaced by the thin bodied and sharp-eyed figure of Baxter: Henry’s butler and trusted manservant.
The man had swept in soundlessly, yet Henry had known he would be lingering nearby somewhere; Baxter had an astounding knack for predicting when his presence would be required.
“Keep a close eye on him,” Henry instructed in a grave voice. “And I believe it would be prudent for us to employ some men to guard the estate at night. I do not want anyone coming or going without my knowing about it.”
The butler bowed his head. “Yes, Your Grace.”
He left as abruptly as he had arrived, leaving Henry alone in the study, wondering if it was not too early for a small nip of brandy after all.
Darkness and quiet had fallen across the grounds and hallways of Holdridge Court, even the noisy rooks roosting in the Gothic Revival towers slumbering peacefully.
It seemed to Henry as if he were the only person in the world still awake as he yawned and rose from his desk, where he had done his best to distract himself with endless correspondence: letters to inform his business associates that he would be absent from London for a while.
Indeed, it was no easy feat to explain in a believable fashion that his wife had suddenly lost all of her memories and, for the first time in four years, required her husband’s consistent presence.
Padding wearily through the gloomy halls, past oil paintings of his predecessors and the art that they had favored, blowing out lanterns and torches on his way so that he left a trail of deep shadow behind him, he headed for his bedchamber.
It was only as he was about to mount the stairs to the tower where he slept that he paused, turned around, and headed for his wife’s chambers instead.
I shall just take a peek, ensure that all is well.
He had no doubt that Baxter had fulfilled his task, and that the maids would also be keeping a watchful eye on their mistress, but he knew he would not sleep unless he had seen Thalia for himself. In her bed, where she ought to be.
He could not afford for her to run away. Not now.
Upon arriving at the hallway where he would find her bedchamber, he immediately noticed that there was no one positioned outside. There should have been one maid, at least. The housekeeper, Mrs. Ardern, would have insisted on it.
Maybe, the maid is inside.
Encouraged by the thought, Henry slowly opened the door to his wife’s room and poked his head inside.
His eyes snapped toward the wild flap of a curtain, a cold wind whistling through an open casement window. Although, the chill that beetled down his spine had nothing to do with the temperature of that icy gust and everything to do with the woman poised on the windowsill.
“What do you think you are doing, wife?” he asked in a low growl.
Thalia’s head whipped around, wide-eyed as she noticed him at last.
A moment later, her gaze flitted back to the open window, her thoughts as loud as if she were screaming them.
Henry walked toward her with his hands up, before she had herself a third, altogether more fatal accident.
After all, what would people think if, in the span of a few days, his wife fell down the stairs and survived, only to then tumble out of an upper-story window?
Then again, maybe they would just think she was mad, taking crazed matters into her own hands.