But neither man minded the disagreements which were always undertaken between them in a spirit of informative, challenging and politely managed discourse.
Outside, the weather had broken. Rain hammered down without cease, clearing away any final stragglers still lingering out there, hoping to see – well, what exactly did they think they’d see? Theodore didn’t understand the attraction. Adelia spent her time shuttling between Felicia’s room and Mrs Carstairs’ drawing room in Plymouth, and she looked tired and overwrought to Theodore’s eyes. Doctor Netherfield agreed that Adelia was worn out but he also suggested it was the best thing for her to be active rather than dwelling on things – “For nothing we can do for Lady Buckshaw will be half as beneficial as rest, understanding, and being surrounded by beauty. Let your good lady wife be occupied elsewhere for it will do no harm to Lady Buckshaw.”
It had to be said that perhaps Doctor Netherfield was correct. Felicia began to return to her senses again. They cut back on her medication – Doctor Netherfield was keen to withdraw all the doses that she had been taking, slowly and by careful degrees. He argued that by preventing her from feeling her own emotions, they became monsters in her head to torment her. She spent more time awake, and when she slept, it was a sound and healthy sleep. She still suffered from night terrors, sometimes waking with a scream, gibbering about being awake yet remaining frozen in sleep and unable to move as long dark figures crowded around her bed. But these attacks were becoming less frequent.
The improvement was such that Adelia felt able to concentrate more on the ball, and leave Felicia in the care of Theodore and Doctor Netherfield.
As for Percy, Theodore watched him almost as carefully as the assigned policemen did. He oscillated between passivity and furious rages, but both these extremes sprang from his feeling of utter helplessness; even Theodore could see that. He persistently refused to believe that he was in any kind of danger.
Theodore felt free to unburden himself completely to Doctor Netherfield, at least as far as his fears around Felicia went.
But he kept his other suspicions to himself. When he was not talking with the doctor, instead he spent as much time as he could in the library, trying to hunt around the family records as quietly as he could. He had been mulling over the strange relationship between the two people in the gatehouse and the rest of the inhabitants of Tavy Castle, and trying to find what might have driven them apart. He looked at the businesses and the marriages, the flow of money, the property, the deaths and the births. But the records, as he had established previously, were maddeningly incomplete. He had tried to speak to Percy again, who had shrugged and told him nothing more than he already knew. Lady Agnes had bristled and completely evaded all his probing. The Countess had shot him such a look of malice and begun to cough that he didn’t dare even begin a conversation with her.
Perhaps she reminded him too much of his own mother, who was both adorable and utterly terrifying, as all good mothers should be.
He eventually began to realise that he needed to widen his search. If there was a secret hidden in the past of the Seeley-Wood family, the ancestral Earls of Buckshaw, then that secret wouldn’t be found in the records in the castle. It wouldn’t be easily discovered by a random stranger. He would have to get out of the castle and into society.
He was going to have to go to the Floating Ball.
He had been hoping that he’d be excused from the nonsensical frivolity by saying that he needed to stay at the castle to look after Felicia. Doctor Netherfield and Percy were both claiming the same right, however, and both their claims were far weightier than Theodore’s. Adelia had clapped her hands in glee when he told her he was coming, but he informed her stiffly that it was certainly not going to be a pleasurable outing for him.
When the actual evening of the ball rolled around, he nearly backed out. The idea of spending the next six hours or so in the company of increasingly drunk people on a small ship was fast becoming unappealing in every sense. Felicia desperately wanted to go, and everyone told her that she was utterly unable to do so. Doctor Netherfield pointed out that she was getting better because she was resting and concentrating on pure, high thoughts – all of which would be completely undone by a night of raucous frivolity.
“You will be in the corrosive presence of the very worst of so-called high society,” he said with disdain.
Percy agreed with him, and in the end, it was decided that Percy, the doctor and Felicia would remain at the castle. The Countess was also remaining behind due to her age and she was to be attended to by Lady Katharine who had been persuaded to come up from the gatehouse, releasing Lady Agnes for the first ball she had attended in many decades. Lady Katharine had, of course, refused all entreaties to attend the ball.
Theodore was left alone to get ready while Adelia and Lady Agnes tittered away in an adjoining room like a couple of schoolgirls dressing themselves up as debutantes all over again. He plastered on a happy smile when they came in to parade around, and made all the right noises of appreciation.
In
