There was an unfriendly pause after that, while both sisters angrily sipped tea looking at each other.
It’s ridiculous. Fancy sitting here, drinking here, while Papa is ill in the next room, and Louisa won’t let me see him.
The familiar, infuriating feeling of helplessness trickled through her, turning into misery. Eleanor wanted to scream or throw her teacup across the room. At Louisa, ideally, but she knew her sister well enough to know that a teacup would simply be hurled right back.
At long, long last, the door creaked open. It was Jonathan, looking even more tired than usual. He met Louisa’s eye, and they exchanged a long, meaningful look. A feeling of foreboding curled in her gut.
“Jonathan? Louisa? Will somebodypleasetell me what’s going on?”
Jonathan slowly and painfully lowered himself onto the sofa beside Louisa. His wife sat prim and upright, hands neatly folded on her lap, for all the world like a pair of parents preparing to speak to a particularly difficult child.
Eleanor curled her fingers into fists. She forced herself to wait.
“Just over a year ago,” Jonathan said, slowly and woodenly, “Charles came to me for a visit. He’d had rather a tight chest of late and kept feeling dizzy and so on. I never thought much about it, assuming it would all clear itself up.”
Eleanor blinked. “Papa never told me.”
“He didn’t want to worry you. The fact is, Eleanor, Charles is dying.”
The room swam before her eyes.
“Dying?” Eleanor managed faintly, and that was all she managed before blackness crept in at the edges of her vision, and she lost consciousness altogether.
***
Eleanor woke up lying on the chaise longue in Louisa’s parlour, the one Louisa liked to lounge on and be dramatic. There was an awful smell in her nose, and Jonathan was waving a bottle of smelling salts under her nose.
There was a cold compress on her forehead, and her legs had been propped up on cushions to elevate them.
For a delightful minute, Eleanor thought that she’d just passed out for no good reason, here in her sister’s house. And then she remembered it all.
“Papa’s dying,” Eleanor repeated, and burst into noisy tears.
Louisa pulled her into a tight hug, hanging on until Eleanor had gotten through the worst of her tears. Jonathan sank down onto the chair Eleanor had vacated, elbows on his knees and a blank look on his face.
“It’s alright, darling,” Louisa murmured into Eleanor’s hair. “I know it’s awful. I couldn’t bear it, either. But I’ve had time to come to terms with it, and I suppose you haven’t.”
“It can’t be true.”
“It’s a heart complaint,” Jonathan said quietly. “It’s hard to say exactly how long Charles has left, but my estimate is a year or two. Perhaps more, perhaps less. He accepted his fate with great equanimity, and I am quite impressed by him. He was very keen for you not to find out.”
Eleanor dragged herself into a sitting position, dragging a hand across her eyes. The tears had dried up, followed by a hot feeling of anger andinjustice.
Who was she even angry at? Not her father. She couldn’t even summon up anger at Louisa and Jonathan, who’d worked to deceive her.
No,deceivewas too harsh a word.
Who could she even be angry at? Nobody. The feelings rounded her thoughts, heavy emotions with nowhere to go.
It wasn’tfair.
“I want to talk to Papa.”
“Not just yet,” Jonathan said quietly. “He’s resting. You’ll have questions, and I don’t want him to be distressed. He needs to gather his strength.”
“It’s not just his health he didn’t want you to know about,” Louisa burst out.
“Louisa,” Jonathan said warningly. His wife ignored him.
