Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [123]
“She’d decided against marrying Thomas Chambers? Had she actually told him that?”
“Oh, lord, yes, but he was there every weekend, come to call and dine with her. I heard her say to him once, ‘I’ve killed them all. George and James and Brian. I can’t bear to
see you die, and I won’t, I tell you!’ And he said, That’s nonsense, my love, you’re letting grief turn your thoughts.’ She just looked at him, her face sad. ‘I’m bad luck, Tom, I’d rather stay single than wear widow’s weeds ever again.”
“What made her think she had killed them?” He was fascinated, pretending to drink his tea and over the rim of his cup watching the old face in the lamp’s light, trying to read the eyes.
‘‘Ah, but did she? I wondered about that for the longest time. Miss Olivia, she said it was deeper than that, she thought Mr. Cormac, he was in love with Miss Rosamund. But there was no speaking of it, not to Miss Rosamund. She’d smile and say her spirits were fine, she’d just decided that marriage was not worth the grieving afterward.”
“Then how did she come to die?”
“That were odd, sir. One day she said to Miss Olivia, ‘I think I’ll ask Tom to come for the weekend. I need to speak to him. Legal matters, and perhaps after that’s done, we may find it possible to talk about other things.’ I was on the stairs, helping Mr. Cormac and Mr. Nicholas move a chest down from the attics that Mr. Cormac wanted to take back to his London rooms. You could hear their voices as you came down, talking in the drawing room. Then Miss Rosamund, she came out, she looked up at me, and her face turned that bleak I wanted to weep. I didn’t know what’d unsettled her, but it was there in her eyes. Cold as death. It was Miss Olivia who found the note she left, and burned it in the grate.”
“A note? I was never told that there was a note found when Rosamund died!” Rutledge said, appalled.
Sadie sat down, heavily and with great effort, then asked him to fetch her homemade wine, from the small cupboard by the dry sink. When she’d finished half the glass and got her breath with more comfort, she said, “No. Miss Olivia, she burned it, like I said. It was written in a scrawl you’d hardly recognize, and hidden under the pillow. Just a name. And a warning. ’Twas all Miss Olivia needed. She went whiter than she was and bent over her mother’s body in such grief I couldn’t bear it. So I walked out of the room and went
to fetch Mr. Nicholas, The note was never spoken of again. I didn’t need to be told. I’d heard the hounds myself since poor little Richard was taken. I knew who’d put the overdose in Miss Rosamund’s water. Not her, not that woman so full of life and love—she’d not have gone to her God with self-murder on her hands!” It was spoken with a vehemence that brought an angry flush to Sadie’s cheeks. In a stronger voice she added, “The twins, they were still too young to know anything about such things, only that their mother’d taken ill in the night and overdosed herself. Mr. Chambers, he was heartbroken. You’d have thought he was the grieving widower, not the family’s lawyer. It was the Gabriel hounds that whispered in her ear, bending over her as she dropped into that last sleep, and she’d known, she’d known where the danger was!”
“The danger to herself?”
“Oh, aye, that, and the danger to Miss Olivia. Because the truth of the matter was, you see, Mr. Cormac’d set his cap next for Miss Olivia. If he couldn’t become a Trevelyan in one way, he’d do it another. And Miss Rosamund, she wouldn’t marry him. Nor after begging her, how could he ask for Miss Olivia, without it all coming out? She’d have told Mr. Chambers too when he came, sure as God gave her the breath. It was what she’d decided, after all the