Chapter 7 #3
“Oh no, please, don’t leave!” She rushed in front of Audrey to block her retreat.
“You are family, and I shan’t give a whit what anyone says.
It’s absurd for you to hide away as though you’ve done something wrong.
Now, put it out of your mind, and let’s take our stroll.
” She gave a tight nod as if making a firm decision and left the sitting room to call for her butler.
Within minutes they were seated within Lady Herrick’s town coach and moving toward the expanse of green park a few blocks away.
Audrey felt a modicum of guilt at tricking Genie into taking the stroll, but once they had been let out and were walking along the gravel path toward the Serpentine, she chose to commend herself instead.
Scores of ladies were taking their strolls, with many more men and women riding past slowly in curricles or on horseback.
A fair amount of sun seekers lounged at picnics, enjoying the warm, early spring afternoon.
Ladies had set up their easels and watercolors here and there, attracting lookers on and, most importantly, men.
“You see, all is well,” Genie said in a sprightly voice as they walked, perhaps just a little too swiftly. Audrey had caught a few curious glances but from no acquaintances just yet.
She kept her eyes sharp for Lady Wimbly’s shapely figure.
The marchioness was in her mid-forties and had a penchant for hats with so much plumage one might suspect a whole pheasant roosted upon her head.
She also favored the colors of autumn—shocking orange and yellow, and all too often, bronze and gold.
If she were here, there would be no missing her.
“It’s kind of you to walk with me,” Audrey said, feeling as though she ought to acknowledge it.
She and Genie had little in common. In truth, she had little in common with most women she met.
As much as she despised admitting it, her conversation generally leaned toward the realm of dull.
She couldn’t count the number of times she’d either been taking tea at a lady’s home, or moving through Almack’s, or standing in a circle of peers at a soiree and found that her tongue felt like it weighed ten stone.
She’d question what difference it would make if she spoke at all.
Listening in to the conversation around her, it seemed to always be as substantial as morning mist. Expected and easily forgotten.
Philip often accused her of being melancholy. Perhaps she was. Or perhaps it was just the circles she moved in that made her feel dull and heavy…and extraordinarily different.
“Another creature resides within you, my dear. I can see it whenever you blink.” Lady Beatrice Gladdington had startled Audrey with this observation.
They were the first words the older lady had spoken to Audrey during her stay at Shadewell Sanatorium in Northumberland.
All up and down the long table inside the dining room at Shadewell, eyes had lifted, and spoons had lowered—the patients were never given forks.
Prongs were a possible hazard to self and others.
“My lady?” Audrey had asked.
“It sees what others cannot,” the woman went on in her sing-song voice. “It is extraordinary, wouldn’t you agree?”
The attendant had approached then, settling a hand onto Lady Gladdington’s shoulder and asking if all was well. The older woman had growled, nipping at the attendant’s fingers. Then, she’d laughed uproariously at the attendant’s shocked expression.
It sees what others cannot. It is extraordinary, wouldn’t you agree?
Yes. Audrey would agree that her sight fell into the appropriate definition of extraordinary. While Lady Gladdington had said the word with marked awe and admiration, Audrey felt only contempt for the ‘creature’ living inside her.
She often wished the doctors and nurses at Shadewell had been able to do as they claimed they would—to eradicate it from her mind.
To make her well and normal. Unfortunately, two years inside the spartan and austere walls of Northumberland’s convalescent hospital had only taught Audrey the incalculable value of pretending. Of saying as little as possible.
Looking back, it was no wonder that once she’d returned from Shadewell, she’d been afraid to speak.
The anger she harbored toward her mother and uncle, the two people who had committed her to the sanatorium and then failed to visit or write for the next two interminable years, had lived on the very tip of her tongue.
Whenever she parted her lips, she feared vitriol would spew out in place of tolerable words.
She could hear them in her mind—unintelligible phrases and maniacal screeches that reminded her of the other patients at Shadewell.
The ones that would scream out their lungs and drag their fingernails along the walls until they tore and bled.
Audrey had never been like them, and thankfully, she had been able to find a few others who were in similar positions—shoved off to a stark place where they could be forgotten by their families.
Audrey spent most of her time in the library with a small group of others, though she couldn’t truly count them as friends, not when she’d tried to forget them as fervently as she had.
She’d returned home desperate and furious and on the edge of a dark precipice.
So, rather than risk her mother and uncle concluding that she had not been cured of her affliction and needed to return to Shadewell for another, indefinite stay, Audrey had stayed quite silent.
She had nodded and smiled and made airy conversation with words that her mind could easily reach for, phrases and replies she heard ladies frequently saying.
They might have sounded cold and hollow, but at least they wouldn’t accidentally set the world aflame.
Genie moved off the gravel path and toward the placid edge of Hyde Park’s pond, a long, curving body of water that tended to put off a stagnant odor in the height of summer. At the moment, Audrey could only trace a mineral-like whiff of it in the air.
“I wasn’t being kind to walk with you,” Genie said, finally replying after a few moments of silence as they walked. “I was attempting to be brave. Good heavens, Michael would spit fire if he knew,” she said with a mischievous giggle.
He most definitely would. Audrey’s brother-in-law’s temper was well known and stood in stark contrast to his older and much more collected brother.
“He only wishes to spare you humiliation,” she told Genie as they reached the water’s edge. Their reflections rippled into view—Audrey’s shorter, more voluptuous figure, and Genie’s taller, lither one.
“Undoubtedly,” Genie replied. “But I’m afraid I am more concerned with the state of my own conscience.
Now, tell me the truth.” She faced Audrey fully.
“You are not what I would call a bold or brash woman, who enjoys laughing in the face of accepted societal norms. Taking a stroll through Hyde Park not forty-eight hours after your husband’s arrest isn’t just bold—it’s purposeful. Why are we here?”
Audrey fairly gaped at her sister-in-law. She hadn’t thought she was being exceptionally heavy handed and obvious in her approach, as Mr. Marsden had already accused her of being. Or perhaps Genie had been masking a keen intellect behind her bubbly and sociable exterior.
She sealed her lips and settled on a direct answer. “I am hoping to encounter Lady Wimbly.”
Genie’s pale brown furrowed. “Why would you wish to see her?”
“I have reason to believe Miss Lovejoy had a connection to Lord Wimbly.”
There was no danger in parting with that much. Audrey didn’t have to expose how she had reached such a suspicion, after all.
“Miss Lovejoy...she was the actress?” Genie asked.
“Opera singer.” Audrey nodded. “And as many do, she had a patron. The Bow Street officer believes it was Philip, but I suspect it was the marquess.”
The sun reflected off the surface of the Serpentine and despite the bonnet she wore, Genie squinted.
“And what could you possibly plan to say to the marchioness if you do see her? If she will even stop to speak with you. I don’t mean to be cruel, but you must know that there are many ladies who will refuse to so much as acknowledge you now. ”
It wasn’t cruel. It was simple truth.
“I’m not sure yet,” Audrey admitted. She’d been considering several different topics to ease into her questioning, though none of them felt genuine.
Genie sighed, and hooking her arm with Audrey’s, she spurred them on along the edge of the water.
“Everyone knows the Marquess of Wimbly is a notorious reprobate with a habit of mixing with the demimonde. Lady Wimbly can’t possibly be ignorant to her husband’s tendencies, but she would never discuss them with you, even if Philip were not sitting in prison for doing a murder. ”
Her sister-in-law was correct. Audrey’s best scheme had included bringing up the opera singer’s name and hunting the marchioness’s expression for any kind of reaction.
Should she have seen one, she would have continued to dig, manners be damned.
However, she couldn’t chase the lady through the park shouting questions if she chose to snub Audrey altogether.
A bark of laughter echoed over the Serpentine.
Audrey lifted her eyes toward a group of young men and women, sprawled upon a large blanket by the water’s edge.
They lounged in the shade of a willow tree, baskets of food and glasses of wine surrounding them.
A stroke of envy surprised her. How wonderful it would be to have no worries or cares, and simply be free to gather for a picnic with friends.