The Heir - Catherine Coulter [81]
The earl rose abruptly and tossed his napkin over his plate. “Paul, if you would care to join me in the library to make final preparations? The coffin maker will be here shortly.” He nodded to Lady Ann and Arabella and strode without a backward glance from the dining room.
It was late in the afternoon when the coffin maker left bearing Josette’s body. Though Arabella could not explain it, she felt compelled to watch his departure. The earl emerged from the great front doors to stand quietly beside her on the steps.
“God, how I hate death,” she said, her voice raw and hoarse. “But look—” she pointed after the lumbering black coach that carried Josette’s body—“it’s like the very harbinger of death, with those black plumes on the horses’ bridles and the ghastly black-looped curtains in the windows.” She added bitterly, “And look at me, all swathed in the trappings of death. I am a daily reminder that death’s power is supreme. We are as nothing, all of us. Oh, God, why do those we love have to disappear from our lives?”
The earl brought his eyes to rest upon her pale wstrained face and said gently, “Your question is the plaything of our philosophers. Even they can only propose answers, all of them absurd. Unfortunately, it must always be the living who suffer, for those we loved are beyond pain.” He paused a moment to gaze out at the immaculate perfection of nature’s making. “It is a depressing thought that we are set in the midst of this enduring nature for but a moment in time, but it is true.
“Now it is I who am talking nonsense. Bella, why don’t you donate all your black gowns to the curate? Your love and memories of your father are within you, after all. Why submit yourself to the ridiculous restrictions of society?”
“You know,” she said slowly, “Father always hated black.” As she turned to walk away, she remembered Josette’s strange visit to the earl’s bedchamber the day before, and looked back. “Justin, perhaps it is nonsense and means nothing at all, but Josette was sneaking about The Dance of Death panel yesterday afternoon. She did not see me, for I was dozing in that large chair in the corner of the room. She seemed frightfully upset when I spoke to her. She said nothing that made any sense. When I kept asking her what she wanted, she scampered out as if the devil himself were on her heels.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“Only some vague phrase about her being forced to be in the room. She really made no sense at all, as I said. Her behavior has become quite strange, you know. Perhaps her wits were so addled she believed Magdalaine still to be alive and in the earl’s bedchamber.” She paused and shook her head.
“There is something else?”
“I was just wondering why Josette was wandering about in the middle of the night without a candle to guide her.”
For an incredible moment Justin felt himself drawn to a long-ago sweltering night in Portugal. He and several other soldiers were scouting the perimeter of a scrubby wooded area on the outskirts of a small village in search of the elusive guerrillas. There was an almost discernible odor of danger that reached his nostrils. He jerked his companions to their bellies against the rocky ground just as shots rang out above their heads. Now, as then, he scented danger—certainly not in the form of cutthroats lurking about—but danger nonetheless. He felt he could say nothing of his vague feelings to Arabella, and thus turned to her and said lightly, without thought, “Perhaps old Josette was off to meet a secret lover. A candle would surely find her out.”
She withdrew from him as if she had suddenly been whisked to another county. Guilt and shame filled her eyes. And bitterness. His belief that she had betrayed him reduced her to dull silence.
“Arabella, wait, I did not mean—Well, damnation.” He stopped, angry with himself, but she was gone.
“Would you believe it, Bella? Our chinless viscount just happened, mind you, to be in the neighborhood on his way to Brighton. Mama cooed and made a great fuss over him. Bless Papa, for he treated him most vilely. Of