Chapter 23
THE GUNSHOT BLAST ECHOED THROUGH THE MORNING AIR AND woke Annabel with a start.
She was folded awkwardly in the chair by Cassie’s bed, the book of poetry open on her lap.
She leaned forward to feel Cassie’s forehead—cool as can be.
When the second gunshot sounded, she stood suddenly, letting the book fall to the ground.
The hunt! She’d forgotten all about it. Now her mind was racing.
She assumed Billy had never come back; he would’ve told her so.
Maybe he’d intercepted the Lackingtons, after all, which might at least buy them more time and would spare him from whatever hunting expedition was now in progress.
Poor Billy, who didn’t like guns at all and had ridden a horse only once.
She couldn’t help looking out the window, in case the Lackingtons were on their way.
But Ellesmere and its environs were peaceful as far as she could see.
Annabel picked up the fallen Cowper from the floor.
It was open to the poem she and D’Evercy had recited to each other, about the sailor who falls overboard in a storm and drowns.
She read it fast, rushing the words under her breath. A whole new understanding.
Cassie stirred behind her, coming back to life. “I really, really need to brush my teeth.”
Annabel’s breath fluttered, the weight of one worry lifting. She sat on the edge of the bed, a hand on her sister’s knee. “Oh, Cassie. You can have anything you want.”
***
As soon as her sister was sitting up and asking for food, Annabel made sure breakfast was on its way, reached for the shawl, and ran for the stables to wait for D’Evercy’s return from the hunt.
She’d decided to intercept him whether the Lackingtons were coming or not.
Maybe the poem was a way to tell him, a way she could make him understand.
She paced in front of the fence, worrying the elbows of her dress, trying out the words to say with each deliberate step.
“So, a sailor falls overboard, through no fault of his own. His friends want to help, they try, but the sea’s too powerful and they can’t save him.
The sailor knows he’ll drown, and he does, but I think the poem’s about hopelessness, despair, the way it can shipwreck us—the sea that pulls us down and swallows us whole.
” She paused to look for D’Evercy in the distance, or the Lackingtons, but saw nothing.
“And last night I realized that’s what happened to us, my sister and cousin and me.
We’re like the sailor who fell overboard, really through no fault of our own . . .”
She didn’t know what came next and leaned back on the fence to think, when the old gray horse nudged her from behind. She turned and stroked his nose, talking half to the horse, half to herself, slower now, but clearer too.
“I think the poem’s telling us that hope is the thing. Whatever happens, however stranded we feel, however lost—and we are lost—we can overcome it. And must.”
That was as far as she got when D’Evercy burst over a hillock on his steed, wind in his hair, devastatingly handsome. Her breath caught at the sight of him, but she felt ready, emboldened, no matter what. She had found a way to tell him. The poem had shown her how.
But then she saw Billy, slung lifeless across the saddle behind him. “Oh god.” She ran toward them. “Billy!”
Annabel reached them as D’Evercy dismounted. “Is he—?”
“He’s fine,” D’Evercy assured her.
Billy raised his head slightly, face smudged with gunpowder, and gave a tiny wave of his fingers.
“Bit of a misfire with the gun, that’s all.” D’Evercy pulled Billy from the horse, slung him over his shoulder, and set him on a large flat boulder. “It seems he’ll live.” He leaned down and looked intently into Billy’s eyes. “Are you still seeing stars?”
“I am, but I kind of like it.”
D’Evercy gave him a pat on the shoulder, then led his horse to a stable hand who took the reins. He excused himself to check on the new foal. Annabel sat down beside Billy. “Are you really okay?”
Billy looked at her, defeated. “I’m sorry, Annabel. I didn’t get there in time.”
She nodded, absorbing the implications. “Well. Thank you for trying.”
“Mary was so sorry. She didn’t remember how they got her to start talking, but once she did, she couldn’t stop. I actually felt bad for her. Anyway, when I got back, late, you were asleep in Cassie’s room, and I couldn’t bear to wake you, just to tell you bad news.”
“But why did you go on the hunt?”
“I don’t know, I thought maybe if D’Evercy, you know, sort of got me, in a way, or at least got you, what a good person you are, maybe the whole Lackington thing wouldn’t turn out as bad as you thought. Maybe we’d still have a chance here.”
Annabel put a hand on his shoulder, touched by the thought, and the effort.
“But he’s like, galloping ahead of me on his fantastic horse, while my horse is stopped, head down, eating grass.
And I’m like, ‘Giddyup?’ So that’s how it started, but he was nice about it, and then we got off the horses, and he took out his gun—he’s a great shot, by the way—and he starts asking me about my plans. And my intentions!”
“Intentions?”
“With Fanny. He said, since her father died, he felt responsible for her, and asked that I not ‘trifle with her affections’ unless I was serious. And I said, ‘How serious?’ And he said, ‘Quite.’ And then he said, ‘The shot is yours, Doofus.’ And, well, let’s just say I think a commission in the regiment probably isn’t in the cards for me. ”
Annabel had to laugh. The stress of it all desperately wanted a light note, and Billy never failed to find it.
When D’Evercy walked out of the stable toward them, pulling off his riding gloves, they both looked his way.
“He’s a good guy, Annabel. I get why you like him. And why he likes you.”
Their attention was broken by the commotion of a carriage barreling up the long drive to the main house. Two horses, thundering hooves.
“Ah. That will be the Lackingtons with your things,” said D’Evercy.
Annabel stood abruptly as D’Evercy started off to greet them.
“Henry!” she called, surprised to hear his first name spill from her mouth.
He turned, surprised too. “Yes?”
She watched the carriage closing in. This was it, her very last chance.
“I wanted you to know . . . I came to tell you . . .”
“Tell me what?”
She looked between him and the carriage, as it pulled to a stop in front of the house. She opened her mouth, but she’d lost the words she wanted to say.
“What is it, Annabel?”
As the driver climbed down, she knew she’d missed the chance to preempt them. Defeated, she shook her head. “Only that Cassie’s much better. So, really, we should be going.”
“Oh?” said D’Evercy, unable to hide his disappointment. “Well, I’ll be sorry to see you go, but what good news about your sister. I’ll just thank the Lackingtons for their trouble.”
“Of course.” Annabel watched him stride toward the carriage.
Billy stood and brushed himself off. “We’re just gonna let them win?”
Annabel squinted into the morning sun; D’Evercy was farther away with each step. “You’re right,” she said, starting after him, with Billy on her heel.
D’Evercy reached the carriage in time to see Mrs. Lackington and Harriet handed down, a matched set in their stovepipe bonnets spouting ostrich feathers that quaked when either spoke.
“Mrs. Lackington, Miss Lackington.”
“But my sister is much improved!” Annabel was there, breathlessly interrupting. “We’ll be returning to Kidlington this morning. Right, William?”
“Outta here. As soon as possible,” said Billy, beside her.
Mrs. Lackington looked at them with what now seemed a permanently flexed eyebrow.
“I’m so sorry,” D’Evercy said. “It seems we’ve troubled you needlessly.”
“Why, it was no trouble at all,” said Harriet. “We found Kidlington quite interesting.”
“In fact,” said her mother, “I believe what we found at Kidlington House would interest a great number of people, but you in particular, Mr. D’Evercy.”
D’Evercy looked between them. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Annabel stepped forward, wringing her hands. He waited, expectantly, but when she opened her mouth, she wasn’t prepared to say it now, in front of everyone. Mrs. Lackington was happy to fill the empty space.
“Perhaps Miss Blake wanted to tell you, for instance, that there are no Doofuses in Derbyshire.”
D’Evercy looked at Billy, still not following. “No Doofuses in Derbyshire?”
Billy opened his arms, a shrug.
“Or perhaps she wanted to tell you that Bloomingdale’s is lost,” said Harriet.
“Bloomingdale’s, lost?” He looked between Harriet and Annabel.
Again, Annabel opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“That is, if Bloomingdale’s isn’t simply a figment of the Misses Blake’s rather vivid imagination altogether!” Mrs. Lackington harrumphed. “Six floors, indeed!”
Annabel finally found her voice. “No! Bloomingdale’s does exist. It is real. And it does have six floors!” She looked at D’Evercy. “It’s just not ours . . . anymore.”
It was D’Evercy’s turn to be tongue-tied.
“I think you begin to see, Mr. D’Evercy, that the whole family is a sham .
. .” Mrs. Lackington was just winding up.
She pointed a gloved finger at Annabel. “. . . This young lady, a fabricator; her sister, a voluptuary; and this one . . .” She vaguely wagged her finger toward Billy.
“. . . Nothing but a feckless young man!”
Annabel had never seen Billy mad, but suddenly his upper lip disappeared and his cheeks got cherry red.
“I’m not feckless. I’m—I’m full of feck! In fact, I’ve never felt more feckful in my whole life! Actually.”
“Are you even a Doofus?” Harriet asked.
“Totally! I am!”
Mrs. Lackington trained her evil eye on Annabel. “Do you deny the charges, Miss Blake?”
D’Evercy turned to her, anticipating some explanation.
She met his gaze but dropped her shoulders. “No.”
“I am at a loss for words,” he said.
“But she is not.” Mrs. Lackington snapped open her reticule with a flourish, pulled out a folded piece of wrinkled paper, unfolded it with quick flicks of her wrist, and offered it to D’Evercy. “This, I think is the coup de grace.”
It was the ink-stained page—the one she’d crumpled and given to Mary, who’d kept it as a memento. Annabel looked at her feet. The coup de grace, indeed.
“What You Wish For, A Novel in Parts . . . by Elliot Price-Bennet . . . ?” D’Evercy looked up from the page at the faces staring back at him. “I don’t know how this concerns me. Or who Elliot Price-Bennet is.”
Annabel looked up. “I am.”
He searched her face with a look of disbelief and held out the page clenched in his hand. “You are the author? Of this?”
Annabel nodded, sheepish, and took it from him. Of course he’d be angry. Why shouldn’t he be?
“How could you not have told me?”
“I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I believe Miss Blake is well aware of the consequences of being found to be a . . . woman novelist,” said Mrs. Lackington.
“It’s not a dirty word,” said Annabel, creasing the page in her hand.
“Oh, but in fact it is, exactly that, and ruinous to a reputation,” said Harriet. “Everyone knows it.”
Annabel looked at Harriet, whose clever scheme had now come full circle. She turned to Henry, searching his stormy eyes for some sympathy with her position, but he’d become inscrutable again, a sudden wall between them where before were open fields.
He shook his head and turned to go inside. Annabel’s whole being went under, like the drowning sailor who surrenders to the sea.