Her keen look, however, was more motherly than anything else.
Georgina scowled. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“You know she is ailing and miserable and still very much suffering from the loss of—”
“This is hardly about Mrs. Fancourt and her grievances.” With a determined look, Agnes opened the carriage door. “Indeed, it is much more about yours.”
“That is unfair.” Georgina waited until the footman had handed down Agnes before she descended herself. The chill of the morning fog whipped through her red cloak, scented of smoke fumes and yesterday’s rain. “You cannot fathom I still think of her son.”
“I have never fathomed anything else.”
“Agnes—”
“Please, dear.” With a softening if not wearied smile, Agnes placed Georgina’s arm in her own. They approached the house in stride. “Let us not quarrel. I shall speak of it no more, and if you wish to visit Mrs. Fancourt every day, I shall accompany you. There. Are you happy?”
Happy?The question speared her as the butler ushered them inside, removed their cloaks in the plaster-ceilinged anteroom, and led them to the drawing room in wait of a woman who had almost become her mother.
She tried not to think of such a thing.
She tried not to remember.
But the familiar vases, the floral scents, the look, the touch, the feel of everything in this house brought her back.
She had almost loved him.
As much as she longed to convince Agnes she had forgotten Simon Fancourt, she could not convince herself.
The cellar door thudded shut like a trap. The air was cold and heavy, tasting of moist earth, and the feeble rays of candlelight stretched into the blackness.
Simon hunkered over the body.
Friedrich Neale must have awoken sometime in the night. The cravat was ripped from his neck. Baskets were upset. Eggs smashed. Vegetables and fruits littered across the floor and partly ravished, as if the man had been torn between eating what he found and destroying it.
Now, he was curled in the fetal position, shirt agape enough that the distinct bones of his skeletal chest were visible.
“She shall pay.” With his eyes closed, he thrashed his head to one side in unconscious hysteria. “I swear…she shall pay any price. Get me out of here.”
Simon swiped his hand across the forehead. Clammy skin burned his fingertips. Fever. “Come. Wake up.”
“No…get Mother.” In a wild motion, he groped for Simon’s coat. “She shall pay. Anything you wish. I swear it. Get me out of here. Mother, I did not mean to…I did not mean to kill them…I swear…”
Them?Simon ripped the hand away. He hoisted the man to a sitting position, pressed his back against a barrel. “I want to know what you are doing here.”
“I am starving.”
“Now—”
“I am cold. I am tired. I am tormented by the screams…why do they never cease to scream—”
“Stop it!” Simon seized the oily hair, pinned the man’s head upright against the barrel. The foul breath, the urine-reeked clothes, surged vomit to the base of Simon’s throat. “You killed my wife.”
“I did not mean to.”
“Why?”
“I did not mean to kill any of them…Mother…”
