The Sweet Far Thing

Page 211

Felicity splays across the bed, choking on her tears. Her body shudders with sobs. I reach out a nervous hand and touch her, letting my palm rest on her back. I should say something, but I am at a loss. So I say the only words that come to mind.
“You will love again, Fee.”
Felicity’s face is pressed to her pillow, but she rolls her head back and forth. “No. No, I won’t. Not like this.”
“Shhh—”
“Never like this.” She is lost to her sobbing now. It comes over her in violent waves. There’s nothing to do but let her be lost. At last, the tide recedes. She lies beside me, limp and damp, wholly spent. Long shadows of evening creep up the walls, inching closer. Gradually, they reach fully across us, holding us in the stillness that only night can bring. In the hazy gloom of dusk, we are silhouettes of ourselves, reduced to our very essence. I lie down beside her. She takes my fingers in her moist palm. She holds and I do not break away, and that is something after all. We lie there, tethered to each other by the fragile promise of our fingers while the night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
THE TRAIN STEAMS ACROSS THE COUNTRYSIDE TOWARD London. I’ve left the cloth in the ivy, along with a note for Kartik explaining about my father and promising I will return as soon as I can. I’ve left notes for Felicity and Ann as well. Heartsick, I pass from carriage to train to carriage until at last our street is in view.
The house in Belgravia is gloomy and quiet. Dr. Hamilton is in attendance. He and Tom stand in hushed conference in the foyer while Grandmama and I sit in the parlor, staring into a fire we do not need. The house is already uncomfortably warm, but Grandmama insists. In her hand, Father’s handkerchief bursts open like an angry flower. There on the field of pristine white is a small red stain of blood.
Tom enters silently, his shoulders slumped. He closes the door behind him, and the silence is more than I can bear.
“Tom?” I say.
He sits by the fire. “Consumption. Months now.”
“Months?” I ask.
“Yes,” Tom says.
It wasn’t my doing. It is the drink and the laudanum and the opium and that bloody refusal to live. That selfish grief. I thought I could change it with magic, but I can’t. People will be who they are, and there is not enough magic in any world to change that.
Grandmama folds Father’s handkerchief over and over, making neat squares that hide the stain. “That infernal climate in India.”
“It isn’t the climate. Let’s not pretend,” I say. Tom glares a warning.
Grandmama prattles on. “I told him he should return to England. India’s no place for an Englishman. Far too hot…”
I’m out of my chair. “It isn’t the bloody weather!”
I’ve shocked them into silence. I should stop. Apologize for my outburst. Make amends. Blame the climate. But I cannot. Something in me has given way and it cannot be put back again. “Did you know that he had returned to the laudanum? That he couldn’t give it up? That our good intentions were not nearly so powerful as his will to die?”
“Gemma, please,” Tom snaps.
“No, Thomas. Is this the life you want for me? To be like you? To wear blinders and talk of nothing that matters and drink weak tea with other people who would do anything to hide the truth, especially from themselves? Well, I won’t do it! And I won’t lie for you anymore.”
Grandmama presses her thumb across the white plain of the folded handkerchief, forcing it to lie down. She is suddenly small and frail. I’m ashamed to have treated her so shabbily and more ashamed that I hate her for her frailty. As I storm from the room, I hear her voice, faint and unsure. “It’s the climate.”
Tom catches me on the stairs and pulls me into the library. Father’s books stare down at us from their shelves. “Gemma, that was unkind.”
My blood has settled and my anger is now tamed by remorse, but I’ll not give Thomas the satisfaction of knowing it. I take a book from Father’s shelves, and perching in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair, I open to its title page. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.
“Father’s health isn’t the sole reason I sent for you. Your behavior at the ball was…” He trails off. “Frightening.”
You’ve no idea, Tom. I turn the page, feigning passionate interest.
“Since the moment we arrived in England, you’ve been rebellious and difficult. It only takes one infraction, one whiff of scandal, to ruin your reputation and your chances forever.”