Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [78]
Then it came again—a high, sharp scream, ripping through the silence of the house. She sat up, clutching the bedclothes as though the room were freezing, although it was midsummer. She could hear nothing, nothing at all.
She climbed out of bed slowly, her feet touching the carpet with a chill. She bumped against a chair. She was longer than usual accustoming her sight to the denseness of the curtained room. What would she find out there on the landing? Tassie? Horrific ideas of blood and the gaslight at the head of the stairs shining on knives swarmed into her imagination, and she stopped in the middle of the floor, holding her breath.
At last there was another sound, footsteps somewhere far away, and a door opening and closing. Then more steps and the confused sounds of fumbling, of people awkward with sleep.
She pulled her wrap off the chair and put it round her shoulders, then opened the door quickly. At the end of the small passage the landing itself was aglow with light. Someone had turned up the lamps. By the time she reached the head of the stairs Great-aunt Vespasia was standing beside the jardinière with the fern in it. She looked old and very thin. Charlotte could not remember ever having seen her with her hair down before. It was like old silver scrollwork, polished too many times till it had been worn away. Now the lamplight shone through it, and it looked vaporous.
“What is it?” Charlotte’s voice cracked, her throat too dry to allow the words through. “Who screamed?”
There was another sound of feet, and Tassie appeared from the stairs to the floor above. She stared at them, her face white and frightened.
“I don’t know,” Vespasia answered them quietly. “I heard two screams. Charlotte, have you been to Emily?”
“No.” It was only a whisper. She had not even thought of Emily. She realized now that she had believed the sound came from the opposite direction, and farther away. “I don’t think—”
But before she could continue Sybilla’s bedroom door swung open and Jack Radley came out wearing nothing but a silk nightshirt.
Charlotte was sickened by a wave of disgust and disappointment, and in an instant the thought flew to her: how could she prevent Emily from knowing about this? She would feel betrayed a second time—however little she cared for him, he had still affected to care for her.
“There’s no need to be concerned,” he was saying with a slight smile, pushing his hands through his hair. “Sybilla had a nightmare.”
“Indeed?” Vespasia’s silver eyebrows rose in disbelief.
Charlotte collected herself. “What about?” she said sarcastically, concealing nothing of her contempt.
William opened his own bedroom door and came out onto the landing looking confused and embarrassed. His face was blurred with sleep and he blinked as though dragged from an oblivion he infinitely preferred.
“Is she all right?” he asked, turning to Jack Radley and ignoring the others.
“I think so,” Jack replied. “She rang for her maid.”
Vespasia walked slowly past without looking at either of them and went into Sybilla’s room, pushing the door open wider. Charlotte followed, partly from some vague idea that she might help but also from a compulsion to know. If Sybilla were ever to tell the truth of what had happened it would be now, when she was still too startled to have thought of a lie.
She followed Vespasia inside and was taken aback. All her ideas were thrown into turmoil when she saw Eustace, decorously wrapped in a blue paisley dressing gown, sitting on the end of the bed, talking.
“Now, now, my dear,” he said firmly. “Have your maid bring you a hot drink, and perhaps a little laudanum, and you’ll sleep perfectly well. You must dismiss these things from your mind, or you will make yourself ill. They are only fancies, quite unreal. You need a good rest. No more nightmares!”
Sybilla was propped up against the pillows, but the bed was in considerable disorder, sheets tangled and blankets crooked, as if she had been thrashing