“Oh! It is only you.”
“Yes. Who did you expect? Percy?”
“Percy?”
“Your husband.”
“Why would he come in?”
“Because he is your husband.”
“But he’s not here.”
“Felicia,” said Adelia, her alarm growing. “He returned from his travels yesterday. Don’t you remember?”
Felicia blinked at her. She seemed to be shivering, almost twitching, her mouth working as if she were chewing something. “He did, he did! I remember. Oh mama, I have not slept and my head hurts so very much.”
“I am going to get your father to come and see you. Wait here.”
Adelia fled to fetch Theodore. She could not bear to see her daughter in such a state. As soon as she told him, he ran ahead of her, and she fell back, letting him go in to deal with her.
Something was very, very wrong with Felicia. Was it originating in her body or her mind? Adelia cast her memories back to Felicia’s girlhood. Yes, she’d been an overly sensitive girl; but had they missed the signs of this current madness?
Had they raised her wrongly?
Adelia wanted to cry. But she set her jaw, stood up straight, and walked briskly downstairs as if nothing was wrong, leaving Theodore to hopefully do something. She walked confidently back into the breakfast room, where Percy was still reading the newspapers, and sat down very noisily alongside him.
He looked up in surprise. She stared fixedly at him until he closed the paper and said, “She’s not well again, is she?”
“She is not. When did all this start? When was the first – attack?”
“It’s hard to say. I’m not here very often...”
“Well,” Adelia snapped, “Perhaps you ought to be.”
Percy stared at her in shock. Clearly no one ever spoke to him like that. He wanted to be angry at her, she could see that; but he could hardly begin to shout at his mother-in-law.
Adelia began to see how her own mother-in-law, the Dowager Countess Grace Calaway, wielded her power. She pressed home the advantage given to her by her gender and her age. “You have responsibilities as a husband now and I am telling you this out of love for both my daughter and for you. Don’t waste these years with your wife. And she needs you. She needs certain things from you that only you can give her. She wants you here.”
“She doesn’t really want me. You saw how she reacted to me yesterday.”
“Now, you listen to me! She is unwell and struggling but she will feel better if you are here – just give her a chance to get used to you being around again. One of you needs to be strong in this relationship. It has to be you.”
“Because I am the man, I know.”
“Actually, no. Sometimes she will be strong for you. But only if you can be there for her – right now. A marriage is a matter of sharing the burden and sometimes you take turns at it. Stop hiding down here pretending that you need to look at the latest news. You should go upstairs when Theodore has finished and be there. Just sit there. If she is asleep, keep her company anyway. Step up to the challenge, man!”
“What is Lord Calaway doing?”
“I hope that he is helping to ease her fevered mind.”
“God, I hope so too. I do want the old Felicia back, you know,” he said, turning around on his chair so he could face her. “I really do. I miss her so much.”
“I know.” She allowed him a small smile. After a pause, she asked another question that had been bothering her. “Are you actually glad to be home?”
“Everything seems a bit strange,” he confessed to her, idly folding one corner of the newspaper over and pressing the crease firmly with his fingers. “I suppose that’s what happens. I say, I just want to ask you, as we are speaking together so frankly... I heard that your husband is rather concerned about the unfortunate death of Knight. He was talking about it to me yesterday. He ought to leave it all to the police, you know. I don’t want him to be bothered by unpleasantness like that.”
“The police have closed the case,” she told him.
“Quite, quite. So there really is no need for him to be worried.”
“He’s not worried, but I think he has a few unanswered questions. Do you have any idea why Knight had been in the ice house?”
“He has always been in charge of – everything. I suppose he took it as part of his duty.”
“Took what?”
Percy shrugged helplessly. “Supervision? I don’t know. The household has always run on its own, if I’m honest. I don’t get involved.”
“Maybe you should?” Adelia felt her tone sharpen again but really, this man deserved it, she thought. Felicia and Percy were well-matched in some ways – both were as passive as the other. Neither seemed willing to take charge of the castle and its staff. It had been so easy, over the years, to mistake their energy for something active. But energy without focus was just meaningless noise.
“Yes,” he said idly. “Perhaps I should but ... well, like I say, it all runs perfectly well without me.”
“A man died in your ice house. I would hardly call that an example of things running ‘perfectly well’. Would you?”
“Ah, well, no. Perhaps not.”
There were far too many instances of “perhaps” and not nearly enough actual action coming from Percy. Adelia was going to have to sit on her hands to prevent herself from shaking him. Luckily Percy saved himself from that by suddenly leaping to his feet, staring out of the window. The breakfast room looked out onto the nicest parts of the lawns. From here, you wouldn’t know you were in a half-neglected castle at all.
“What’s wrong?” she said in alarm, following him to the
