Chapter Twelve
Andrew was quickly growing restless. He’d tried not to pace the floor of the overly spacious room he’d been placed in, as he thought it was uncivilized, but he’d given up on that mission nearly an hour ago, because he’d run out of other things to do.
Something about this didn’t feel right. He didn’t begrudge Della her privacy, of course, but the notion that she was so afraid of repercussions from a simple doctor’s visit concerned him.
The situation nagged at a specific corner of his mind.
It was one he considered a part of his instinct.
He didn’t know why yet, but he trusted that piece of himself.
If it told him something was wrong, then it was.
There were three quick, consecutive raps on his closed door.
He briefly considered whether he was authorized to open it, but he assumed anyone knocking meant the doctor had left.
He turned the knob, and Clara stood there, poised to knock again.
Andrew thought he’d answered the door in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps she was just impatient.
“Good news,” she said, dropping her fist and settling her hands in a clasp in front of her. “We’ve been freed.”
Clara took two steps back into the hallway and turned toward the grand staircase. Andrew guessed he was expected to follow, so he did.
“Does this always happen when the doctor comes?” he asked her. “The hiding, I mean.” She descended the stairs at a rapid pace. He was getting used to her whirlwind speed, but she did still unsettle him just a bit.
“Oh, yes.” She reached the first floor ahead of him and kept walking toward the sitting room. “Besides the fact that Della does not like him, we cannot trust the doctor. He reports back whatever he discovers here to the viscountess, whether it is related to Della’s health or not.”
He stopped in his tracks, but Clara continued on.
That instinct that told him something was wrong sparkled again.
It was just a tiny twinge in the back of his mind.
It pinched something just enough to make him uncomfortable.
He had to sit with that discomfort for a second.
Eventually, he followed, deciding against speaking to the back of her head.
They entered the sitting room, and there was Della. He was still not accustomed to this, walking into rooms and just . . . seeing her there. He was truly taken aback each and every time.
She looked downtrodden. Somehow defeated and angry and sad all at once. He wasn’t even sure he could identify all of the emotions he saw in her eyes, but he was certain he hated all of them.
“How bad was it?” Clara asked. She sat next to Gwendoline on a long cream-colored sofa. She tucked her bare feet underneath her. Andrew felt a little ashamed he hadn’t even noticed Gwendoline was in the room.
“It was . . . what it was.” Della sighed. “The same as every year, I suppose.”
Andrew thought he should say something, instead of simply standing alone in the corner, but he was silent in the face of all of those feelings of hers. Anything he had to say felt woefully incomplete.
She noticed him then. It was just a raise of her eyes, a shift from where she’d been discussing something so intently with Clara. She smiled, and there was nothing he could say that was better than that.
“Thank you for making yourself scarce,” she told him with that smile still in place. “I am sorry to ask that of you.”
“Of course.” He returned her grin with one of his own, though he knew his could not compete. “You know I do enjoy a bit of hiding.”
Her gaze broke away from his, but he caught the pleased twitch of her lips.
“I thought I might go out for a walk, since I’ve yet to see much of the estate. Would anyone care to join me?” This was not an invitation to Della specifically, he assured himself. He looked at each of them as he spoke. His eyes did not linger on her. Not even for a moment.
Clara jumped up off of the sofa, and she pulled Gwendoline with her. Gwendoline bobbled the slightest bit, as if she were dizzy, and Clara took hold of her more firmly, supporting her with an arm around her shoulders.
“Oh, we would love to, but Gwennie and I are so very busy. Another time, I’m sure.” Clara began to move, still dragging Gwendoline bodily with her.
“Busy with what?” Gwendoline asked. She seemed so utterly confused by this turn of events. So was Andrew.
“Making trousers!” Clara huffed. They left the room abruptly, and Andrew and Della both stared after them.
“I suppose it will be just us, then.” Della stood, getting her balance with the help of her walking stick. Her face, which was still displaying that myriad of emotions, was now tensed in pain.
“Are you well enough to take a walk?” Andrew couldn’t help but ask.
“Yes, of course.” She waved a hand at him, as if in dismissal. When she reached his side, he extended an arm, and she rested her free hand in the crook of his elbow. “I have been sitting for far too long. I need to walk, anyway.”
They headed out the front door, and they took the few stone steps slowly to the ground. He turned right, heading out toward the overgrown gardens he’d only seen from afar. He hadn’t had a destination in mind, and with Della clinging to his arm, he didn’t care if it took them forever to get there.
“Walking helps your pain?” he asked her. There was a stone path through the middle of the courtyard, but it too had been overtaken with weeds. It was hardly visible anymore. As he asked the question, he found he didn’t know all that much about Della’s illness, and he wanted to learn.
“Very much.” She nodded. Her footsteps had started out unsure, as if her gait was restricted. Now, she seemed to have loosened up some. “Much of my pain comes from stiffness. If I sit or stand for too long, all of my joints start to freeze. My hips, especially.”
“And the doctor, is he able to help you?” Andrew side-stepped a missing stone along the path.
They reached the end of what used to be a nicely manicured courtyard at the side of the manor house, and Della tugged on his arm as she started down a large hill toward the lake he saw glistening in the distance.
Where she led, he followed. She seemed to be considering her answer as she took small, gentle steps down the hill.
His other hand came to hold hers, where it rested at the crook of his arm.
He was afraid she’d fall, he told himself.
It was not a baseless excuse to touch her. It was a matter of her ultimate safety.
“When I first arrived here, I dove into reading. I must’ve kept the town bookseller in business with all I bought.
So many of those purchases were medical books, because my illness still seemed like such a mystery to me.
I thought I would make peace with it if I could just understand.
” Della looked out at the water, her face a murky mixture of expressions.
Andrew had no idea how this was an answer to his question, but he was still unwilling to interrupt. They reached the lake’s edge, and she stood there for a moment. Her gaze focused on the toes of her boots, just inches away from the gently lapping waves.
“I learned so much, but I never really came to understand. It’s an illness with no cure, and that is difficult to fathom. But I learned something important about medicine, about doctors.”
Della shifted, letting her walking stick fall to the ground beside her.
She raised one foot and fiddled with the laces on her half-boots while she still held onto Andrew with the other hand.
He had no idea how she balanced like that.
She wiggled out of one shoe, and Andrew nearly choked when he caught sight of her stocking slipping down her leg.
Once again, he had no understanding of what was going on, but no desire at all to stop it.
“They all take an oath. It is supposed to be sacred, this promise they make. To do no harm.” She wrestled her other boot off and tossed her stockings aside, presumably so they wouldn’t get wet.
“Of course, I can only speak to my own experience with this one doctor, but he has no respect for that oath. At least when it comes to me, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Andrew finally asked. He held onto her as she dipped her toes in the water.
Della hissed, as if in pain, and Andrew’s arm reflexively tightened. He expected her to take a step back, free her feet from what had to be bone-chillingly cold water. She didn’t. She stayed right where she was.
“He has done me harm, whether he intended to or not. He continues to do so, every time that I see him. Just because he has this strange . . . loyalty to my mother. They think they can fix me at all costs, no matter what I want.”
He watched as she wiggled her toes in the mud, turning the clear water a dirty brown.
“And what is it you want?” he asked, finally.
The wind blew the hair around her face into frizz, and he suddenly worried that she’d come out here without a cloak on. She stepped back out of the water, twiddling her toes again in the grass in an attempt to dry them off.
“I wanted to dip my feet in the water. So, I did. Even though it hurt.”
“All right, then.” It was a simple enough wish, and he was glad to have been here to support it.
“You asked about my parents yesterday. If they kept any important documents here. I didn’t think so, but it occurred to me that my mother always prefers rooms in the west wing of the house.
I’d always thought that she wanted to be as far away from the rest of us as possible, and that very well may be, but do you think she could be hiding something there? ”
Andrew gathered up her boots and stockings, then handed her the fallen walking stick. He turned around and headed back toward the house with her still on his arm.
“I suppose we could find out.”