Sherry Thomas - His At Night

She half pulled, half carried Aunt Rachel out of the water closet. In her arms the older woman weighed little more than a bundle of sticks—with about as much mobility and coordination. It was her uncle’s specialty to discover what displeased his dependents and to inflict it upon them. For that reason Aunt Rachel’s nightdress smelled strongly of cloves, which she disliked.

Which she had disliked. For years now, Aunt Rachel had been in a near-perpetual laudanum haze and noticed little else, as long as she had her next dose of the tincture on time. But Elissande still cared—she’d brought an unscented nightdress from her own room.

She gently deposited her drowsy aunt on her bed, washed her own hands, then changed her aunt’s nightdress, and made sure Aunt Rachel slept on her right side. She kept careful record of the hours Aunt Rachel lay on each of her sides: Bedsores came easily to someone who spent the overwhelming majority of her time in bed.

She tucked the coverlet about the older woman’s shoulders and retrieved the guidebook that had fallen on the floor in her haste to catch Aunt Rachel. She’d lost her place in the book. But that wasn’t important. She was just as happy to read about lovely Manfredonia on the Adriatic coast, founded by a hero of the Trojan War.

The book flew out of her hand, crashed against the painting that hung on the wall opposite her aunt’s bed—the painting Elissande did her best never to look at—and plunged to the floor with a resounding thud. Her hand went to her mouth. Her head swiveled toward Aunt Rachel. But Aunt Rachel barely twitched.

Elissande quickly picked up the book again and checked it for damage. Of course there was damage: The endsheet had torn from the back cover.

She closed the book and clutched it hard. Three days ago she had taken her hairbrush and smashed her hand mirror. Two weeks before that she’d stared a long time at a box of white arsenic—rat poison—that she’d found in a broom closet.

She feared she was slowly losing her sanity.

She had not wanted to become her aunt’s nursemaid. She’d meant to leave as soon as she was old enough to find a post somewhere, anywhere.

But her uncle had known it. He had brought in the nurses, so that she’d see Aunt Rachel cower and cry from their maniacal “medical” treatments, so that she’d be forced to step in, so that loyalty and gratitude, otherwise lovely things, turned into ugly, rattling chains that bound her to this house, to this existence under his thumb.

Until all she had for escape were a few books. Until her days revolved around her aunt’s regularity or lack thereof. Until she threw her precious guide to Southern Italy against a wall, because her control over herself, the one thing she’d been able to count on, was eroding under the weight of her imprisonment.

The sound of a carriage coming up the drive had her gathering her skirts and rushing out of Aunt Rachel’s room. Her uncle enjoyed giving her false dates for his returns: Returning early cut short the reprieve of his absence; arriving late dashed her hope that he’d perhaps met with a most deserving end while away. And he had done this before: making up a trip only to take a drive in the country and come home in a mere few hours, claiming that he’d changed his mind because he missed his family too much.

In her own room, she hurriedly shoved the travel guide in the drawer that held her undergarments. Three years ago her uncle had purged his house of all books written in the English language, except the Bible and a dozen tomes of fiercely fire-and-brimstone sermons. She’d since found a few books that had accidentally escaped the eradication and guarded them with the fearful care of a mother bird who had built her nest in a menagerie of cats.

The book secured, she went to the nearest window overlooking the driveway. Oddly enough, parked before the house was not her uncle’s brougham, but an open victoria with seats upholstered in jewel blue.

A gentle knock came at the door. She turned around. Mrs. Ramsay, Highgate Court’s housekeeper, stood in the open doorway. “Miss, there is a Lady Kingsley calling for you.”

Squires and local clergy occasionally called on her uncle. But Highgate Court almost never had women callers, as her aunt was well-known in the surrounding area for her exceptionally delicate health and Elissande’s was equally well-known—thanks to her uncle’s strategic public comments—as unspareable from the former’s sickbed.

“Who is Lady Kingsley?”

“She has taken Woodley Manor, miss.”

Elissande vaguely recalled that Woodley Manor, two miles northwest of Highgate Court, had been let some time ago. So Lady Kingsley was their new neighbor. But ought not a new neighbor leave a card first, before calling in person?

“She says there is an emergency at Woodley Manor and begs that you will receive her,” said Mrs. Ramsay.

Lady Kingsley had come to precisely the wrong person then. If Elissande could do anything for anyone, she’d have absconded with her aunt years ago. Besides, her uncle would not appreciate her receiving guests without his permission.

“Tell her that I’m busy caring for my aunt.”

“But, miss, she is distraught, Lady Kingsley.”

Mrs. Ramsay was a decent woman who, in her entire fifteen years at Highgate Court, had yet to notice that both of the ladies of the house were quite distraught too—her uncle had a knack for hiring servants who were loyally unobservant. Instead of holding her head high and conducting herself with a modicum of dignity, perhaps Elissande too should have succumbed to vapors once in a while.

She took a deep breath. “In that case, you may show her into the drawing room.”

It was not her habit to run from distraught women.

Lady Kingsley was almost beside herself as she recounted her faintly biblical tale of a plague of rats. After her recital, she needed an entire cup of hot, black tea before the greenish pallor faded from her cheeks.

“I am very sorry to hear of your trial,” said Elissande.

“I don’t think you’ve heard quite the worst part of it yet,” answered Lady Kingsley. “My niece and nephew have come to visit and brought seven of their friends. Now none of us have a place to stay. Squire Lewis has twenty-five of his own guests. And the inn in the village is full—apparently, there is to be a wedding in two days.”

In other words, she wanted Elissande to take in nine—no, ten strangers. Elissande tamped down a burble of hysterical laughter. It was a great deal to ask of any neighbor of minimal acquaintance. And Lady Kingsley didn’t know the first thing of how much she was asking from this particular neighbor.

“How long will your house remain unusable, Lady Kingsley?” It seemed only polite to inquire.

“I hope to make it suitable for human habitation again in three days.”

Her uncle was supposed to be gone for three days.

“I would not even think of putting forward such a request to you, Miss Edgerton, except we are in a bind,” said Lady Kingsley, with great sincerity. “I have heard much of your admirable devotion to Mrs. Douglas. But surely it must be lonely at times, without the companionship of people of your own age—and I’ve on hand four amicable young ladies and five handsome young gentlemen.”

Elissande did not need playmates; she needed funds. By herself she had a variety of paths open to her—she could become a governess, a typist, a shop woman. But with an invalid to feed, house, and care for, she needed ready money for any chance at a successful escape. Would that Lady Kingsley offered her a hundred pounds instead!

“Five handsome, unmarried young men.”

The desire to laugh hysterically returned. A husband . Lady Kingsley thought Elissande wanted a husband, when marriage had been Aunt Rachel’s curse in life.