Yet, to Wren’s growing astonishment, she did not. Instead she asked him when he thought Felix might be well (not for some weeks yet), how often he had awoken (once or twice a day but not for very long), whether he had ever asked after her (several times, according to Mr Grigsby—and while Wren had never heard it himself, he didn’t think it pertinent for Miss Flora to know that), and if he would be well enough to marry in June as they’d planned (on this point, Wren demurred).
Each question came more tepid and toothless than the last. Not once did she look at Wren whilst he answered. At first she kept her eyes on Felix’s face. Then, as the interview continued, her gaze drifted away across the room towards Tolhurst.
Tolhurst, meanwhile, had kept his attention fixed on her.
Wren wouldn’t have noticed under normal circumstances. Standing between the two of them, however, he could hardly avoid it. It seemed as if Tolhurst’s eyes burned into him in their efforts to reach her.
But her answering glances remained hard and cold.
At length, Miss Flora announced her curiosity satisfied. Wren bowed and turned to go. Then, to the surprise of Wren and Tolhurst both, she rose from her seat to follow him.
“I’m sure I do the invalid more ill than good by chattering over him,” she explained in response to their mutual curiosity. “Pray don’t trouble yourself, Mr Tolhurst—my guardian is more than capable of arranging my return to Rochester.”
Indeed, he was. And throughout the remaining weeks, Miss Flora never returned to visit her betrothed in Staple Inn.
And on the very last day of January—not a minute too soon, by Wren’s reckoning—Dr Hitchingham declared Felix had progressed from an invalid state to convalescence and could remove to his uncle’s rooms in Rochester without fear of relapse.
The first of February fell on a Saturday, which for Wren meant a half-day’s work before he could escape to Hyde Park and realms beyond. Tolhurst and Mr Grigsby waited until Felix roused himself at half-past ten, then bundled him up and piled all three gentlemen into a hired coach to bring him to Rochester.
The instant the coach pulled out of Staple Inn, Wren dropped his smile and his waving hand alike to sprint upstairs to his garret. His heart hammered as he threw himself under the bed.
The loose floorboard had fallen pried-up beside its proper place, the hollow beneath it an empty void.
~
Spring
Chapter Twenty
Wren stared into the empty void where his life’s work had once lain.
A similar void opened in his chest. Just a tear at first, a single broken thread in the weave of his soul, but rapidly unravelling into a gaping crevasse into which all certainties capsized and were lost.
Wren plunged his arm into the floor up to the elbow. His fingernails scraped against the bare wood in a desperate grab for all that wasn’t there. He probed every corner, every crack, hoping against hope the pages had somehow slipped between the floorboards and fallen out of sight.
He hoped in vain.
Wren lurched to his feet, cracking his skull against the bed-frame as he went. A glance over the garret showed him nothing. His fingers shook at his sides with a horrible prickling sensation that crept up his arms to the nape of his neck. In desperation he shoved his hands beneath the mattress and flipped it over onto the floor. No pages fluttered down alongside it. Not even when he tore the bedclothes off and tossed them. His desk likewise held nothing save what inconsequential papers he’d locked into it himself. The drawers pulled out and thrown to the floor had no manuscripts hidden behind or beneath where they’d lain. No book he opened and shook out let fall any pages that did not belong to it. He tossed them all aside as well and stood staring at the wreckage he’d made. His breath came hard, and his heart hammered at his throat and pounded in his ears fit to burst his skull.
His manuscripts were gone. All of them—gone.
And any of the five people who’d been in his garret in the last month could have taken them.
The thought that Mr Grigsby might have discovered them gave Wren a faint spark of hope at first—only for rational thought to smother it an instant after. If Mr Grigsby had at last found Wren’s body of creative work after so many years of earnest enquiry, Wren would be the first to hear of it. The brilliance of Mr Grigsby’s initial delight would be matched only by the depths of despair that would descend on him when he actually examined the contents and realized what manner of wretched creature he’d harboured all these years. As Wren had heard nothing from Mr Grigsby on the matter, it could not be Mr Grigsby who had his manuscripts.
Besides, given his rheumatism, Wren very much doubted Mr Grigsby could crawl beneath the bed to find them in the first place. Dr Hitchingham likewise lacked both the agility required to discover the manuscripts and any motive to seek them out. He hadn’t even been present when Wren had been caught out crawling under the bed with poor excuses.
Which left Felix, Tolhurst, and Miss Flora.
Felix had not left the garret since his arrival at the end of December. When his strength had returned, sheer ennui might have prompted him to search the room for something, anything, to occupy his mind. And the manuscripts beneath the floorboards would certainly have given him a great deal to think over.
Tolhurst had spent almost as much time in the garret as Felix. Miss Flora had visited the garret only once, but in that short time she—alongside Tolhurst and Mr Grigsby—had witnessed Wren himself sprawled half-under the bed in a posture which could not appear anything short of suspicious. Perhaps enough so to arouse even her curiosity.
And all three of these persons were either on their way to Rochester or waiting there already.
Wren stared at the wreckage he’d made of his garret. Then a second whirlwind ensued as he whipped it back into some passing semblance of order. The mantle-clock struck twelve as he dashed down the stairs and out of the office altogether.
~
