Chapter 12 #2
And then Charlie had arrived.
Caroline had made excuses to not meet him. It was a miserable February afternoon, the trees bare and black, the parlor windows bearded in frost. She would catch a cold, she told Carys. She would muddy her new boots. She had nothing warm to wear; all her wool frocks were too short and too tight.
Carys had surveyed her with her hands on her hips. “The last time your brother came it was raining like the flood in Genesis, and you came back soaked to the bone, smiling like a crocodile. When has weather ever stopped you before?”
Caroline resisted the urge to pick at the new pink spots on her chin.
Her body, which she had never thought much of before, which had been nothing more than a vessel from which to explore the world, had turned on her.
And he would know, surely, this man whom she loved more than anything.
He would see immediately that she was not the same girl he’d left three months ago.
That something vital had shifted without her permission or understanding.
“I don’t feel well,” Caroline said. “I feel faint.”
“Shall I call for Dr. Hoffman?”
Caroline had balked at that, as Carys knew she would. “He’s come all the way up from London,” Carys continued. “You’ve done naught but mope about all week. The fresh air will do you good. Go on, now. Go.”
So Caroline had trudged to the cypress grove. Her whole body felt like a finger that had been closed in a door.
I do not want it, she screamed silently at the bare winter trees, the drowned grasses. Take it back. I do not want it.
When she saw Charlie standing with his hands in his pockets, staring up at the sky, she nearly turned back. But he’d already spotted her.
“Cat!” he called, loping over to where she’d emerged between the trunks. She held her breath as they embraced, felt herself stiffen.
When he drew back, his blue eyes were sharp on hers. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” His hands were still on her shoulders, and he held her at an arm’s distance, surveying her face. “Something’s different about you.” Caroline felt her mottled cheeks redden. “Are you still taking your medicine?”
“Of course.”
An emotion flickered across Charlie’s face. It was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced with a sunny smile.
“C’mon,” Charlie said, giving her shoulder a playful shove. “I have a surprise for you.”
Caroline scanned the ground behind him for a white bakery box or knapsack of books. “What is it?”
“It’s not a gift, I’m afraid. Are you game for a bit of an adventure?”
Caroline’s heart sank. She could not run with the bundle of rags between her legs, could not climb trees or hop fences without fear of it dislodging.
Still, she took his hand.
—
He led her through the woods, away from the orchard and gardens.
When they emerged onto the walking path and the peaked roof of the stables came into sight, Caroline froze. “Someone will see you,” she hissed, dragging at Charlie’s arm. “And I’m not supposed to be out of the house alone—”
“Shh, Cat, it’s all right. There are a dozen people in there. Just pull up your hood and keep your head down and no one will know.”
As Caroline opened her mouth to protest, two stable boys emerged from the open door, one with a stack of blankets, the other with a bucket full of water. Their faces were taut. Dread crept through her.
“A dozen people? What’s happened?”
The horses were her father’s most prized possessions. On his infrequent visits to Audley House, he spent most of his time with his head groom, walking from stall to stall, observing his investments. If one of them was ill, or lame…
“I saw all the hubbub when I was walking in,” Charlie whispered. “One of the mares is having her foal. There’s a whole crowd of stable boys and groundskeepers in there. No one will notice us, I promise. But there will be blood, and it might be a bit scary. Do you wish to stay?”
—
They had stood for an hour in the freezing stable, pressed anonymously into the little crowd that had gathered to bear witness to this commonplace miracle.
Caroline kept her hood up, but Charlie was right: No one paid them any heed.
She knew some faces, but there were plenty that were new to her, and the flash of recognition she had feared never came.
Every eye was fixed on the sweating, trembling mass that was the mare.
Caroline couldn’t feel her toes by the end of it, and her jaw ached from clenching her teeth so they would not chatter, but she did not once look away.
There was blood, Charlie had not lied. And piss and shit.
The bay mare had grunted and cried with such radiant pain that the air around Caroline fogged with her whispered prayers.
But then the foal had come—white-blazed nose, long neck, bundled legs—clad in a glistening bubble, fully formed and perfect.
As the mare licked her clean, Caroline felt, for the first time, that she understood something of the truth of what it meant to be a woman.
—
When they emerged back into the early winter twilight, Caroline had the strange sensation that it was she who had been born, who had left behind the engulfing warmth of oblivion and stepped into the world for the first time.
The air was sharp, but she inhaled it greedily, savored the smells of manure and woodsmoke laced through it.
She had looked up at Charlie, wanting to thank him, to say something that would convey the depth of her feeling.
But the expression on his face had frozen her to the spot.
Never, in all her life, had she seen her brother’s eyes so cold, his lips so humorless. She followed his gaze over the treetops into the thickening blue sky.
There was nothing there but the moon.
It was round and silver and seemed closer than usual, hovering over the ashes and spruces.
Caroline had nearly laughed, so strange and total was her relief. “Is it full?” she asked, for something to say.
“Tomorrow,” Charlie had whispered. “Tomorrow.” But he did not look away, and the blood chilled in Caroline’s veins as he said, “Arianrhod.”
“Ari…what?”
“That’s what the pagans called their moon goddess. Arianhrod. It means ‘silver wheel.’ She’s the goddess of childbirth. Goddess of the space between.”
“The space between what?”
Charlie had looked down at her then, and there had been such a sadness in the set of his mouth that her breath had caught.
“The space between life and death.”
—
A shout from across the hall brought Caroline back to herself.
“Goddamn bastard bugger bollocks!”
Caroline wheeled away from the window and faced her lamplit garret room.
The curse had been accompanied by a sound like metal pots falling to the ground, but when it had faded, the only sound was the blood singing in her ears. Without thinking, without retrieving her penknife from the desk, she drew the dead bolt and flung open her door.
The landing was empty. Thick gray smoke curled from beneath Rab’s door.
“Rab!” Caroline called, alarmed. She rushed across the carpet and tugged on the handle.
The door was locked. She looked around frantically for something to bash against the wood, but there was nothing at hand.
She was about to run down the stairs and call for help when the door opened.
Rab stood on the threshold, wreathed in smoke, coughing.
“It’s all right,” he choked. “It’s out. The fire’s out.”
Caroline craned her neck to see over his shoulder.
A metal contraption, all rings and slim bars, lay on the floor amid shards of glass.
A pile of singed papers gently steamed in a pool of water.
A blue porcelain pitcher, the twin of hers, lay empty on its side.
The singed smell in the air was both herbal and chemical.
“What happened?”
“Just an experiment gone awry. The smoke is a bit dramatic. Makes it looks worse than it is.”
“Are you hurt?”
Caroline reached for his right hand, around which a handkerchief had been hastily wrapped. Bright blood bloomed in a line across his palm.
Rab winced as she peeled the cotton back and inspected the cut. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not deep.”
But she did not release him. Halfway up his forearm, exposed by his rolled shirtsleeve, grinned a half-moon scar. It was unlike anything she had seen, almost decorative in its shocking whiteness against the warm color of his skin.
Rab drew his hand from hers and rewound the kerchief. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t. I was…” Charlie’s white face, gazing up at the moon. “Writing.”
A smile smoothed the creases from his forehead. “My apologies for disturbing you.” He nodded over her shoulder at the open door of her bedroom. “Sleep well, Miss Huxley.”
“I can help clean it up.” Caroline took half a step forward. Perhaps she might discover something, something to do with Charlie…
“Oh, no. Generous of you. But no need—”
“Rab,” Caroline said, hands on her hips in a perfect imitation of Mrs. Easton. “It’ll take you hours by yourself. It’s nearly midnight, and you have work in the morning. Besides. I’m a professional charwoman now. I have the calluses to prove it.”
Rab laughed, and fear burned through Caroline, bright and astringent. The house was asleep. Here she was: alone, at midnight, begging entry to the bedroom of a man she did not trust.
But she saw her brother’s eyes, narrowed over the twilit trees. For Charlie. She would be brave for Charlie.
“How could I decline such a generous offer?” Rab said, moving aside reluctantly and giving Caroline her first unimpeded view of his bedroom.