A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [15]
“Nonsense,” he told her, kissing her cheek. “It will lift by noon. Frances sends her love, and I’m to convince you to come to London for a few days over Christmas.”
“How sweet of her,” Elizabeth said, leading the way to the stairs. “I may do that. I’ve grown so dull of late I’ll bore her to death. But perhaps it would be good for me. We shall see.”
The house was a comfortable Georgian manor on the outskirts of Marling, a pretty village that had enjoyed its share of wealth over the centuries and still maintained an air of quiet gentility.
Set back behind a low brick wall, the gardens bedded down for the winter, the house now seemed to wear its age more starkly, but in summer it glowed with the warmth of the sun and with the rampant colors of perennials, with annuals sprawling at their feet. Then it was timeless and beautiful.
There had always been a welcome here, as long as Rutledge could remember. But without Richard’s voice in the passages or his long legs stretched out toward the fire after a day tramping on the Downs, there was an emptiness in the rooms that lamps and Elizabeth’s lighter voice couldn’t fill.
Rutledge had known Richard Mayhew longer than Elizabeth had, long before Elizabeth had come into the picture. In his youth, he’d played tennis here with Richard, and gone for long walks over the Downs, following old tracks and pathways whose origins were lost in time. It had seemed odd, when the summer light lingered late into the evening, to think of the ghosts whose footsteps they were following. Angles, Saxons, Romans—God knew what other now nameless tribes had passed this way. Richard had called it the spell of Midsummer. “The poets are always writing about it. I daresay the ancients worshiping the sun thought this a magic time.”
And so it had been. Before the war had come and swept it all away.
Now the house seemed sad without Richard, and Rutledge found himself wondering if it wouldn’t be wiser if Elizabeth closed it for a time and took a smaller place in London. Away from the memories. But perhaps those memories were comforting. . . .
As his own were not.
She was saying, “And I must apologize—but we’ve been invited out to dine, and I couldn’t tell them no. With the Hamiltons—you remember them?—and of course Mrs. Crawford will be there. She’s coming up from Sussex, just to see you.”
Melinda Crawford was one of the most remarkable women he’d ever met. As a child she’d survived the siege of Lucknow, during the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857. An inveterate and fearless traveler, she had seen more of the world than most men. Rutledge had always been immensely fond of her. Her memory was as sharp as ever it had been, her tongue as tart, and her company as charming.
Elizabeth, reading his expression, said wryly, “Richard adored her, too. I think she took his death harder than I did.”
It would be an unexpected treat to see Mrs. Crawford again. But not tonight. He was too tired and his mood too dark for polite conversation. “It was a rather long drive—” he began, and then stopped. “Would you like to go?”
She made a face. “Not really. But Bella Masters has been having a very difficult time, and we’ve been trying to cheer her up a bit. Raleigh will come to dine, but Bella can’t get him out of the house otherwise. She hasn’t said, but I have the awful feeling that he’s dying. And nobody quite knows what to do.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A very stubborn infection. It cost him his toes, and then his foot, and now he’s about to lose his leg close to the knee. Blood poisoning. He has some sort of apparatus to wear in place of his foot, but he hates it. Bella tries to pretend all is well, which doesn’t help. It’s Lydia Hamilton’s turn to entertain them, and she couldn’t make up her numbers. I’m afraid Raleigh isn’t always very good company. We’re the martyrs thrown to the lions.”
“In that case, by all means, we’ll go,” Rutledge assured her.
She seemed relieved, but said only, “Then come into the sitting room and we’ll have our tea in comfort, before it’s time to dress. I’ve something