Читать книгу Cromwell’s Blessing - Peter Ransley - Страница 19

Lord Stonehouse was as unpredictable as the weather which, cruelly, two days after the funeral, became not just spring but summer, so warm that the front doors of the house in Queen Street were wide open. I thought I had missed him, for his carriage shot out of the yard as I approached, but he was not in it. The sole occupant was a lady. Her face was veiled so I could see none of her features, except the greenish glitter of her eyes.

When Mr Cole showed me in, Lord Stonehouse’s whole stance at the window, a slight smile on his face as he stared in the direction the carriage had taken, suggested to me, improbable as it may seem, that he was in love.

Love, however, had not made him notice summer. The windows were shut and the coal fire burning as usual. It was so stifling that sweat trickled down my back as I stood on the patch of carpet. When he eventually turned to acknowledge my existence there was no smile on his face. He gave me the same cold look of distaste as he gave the flask of cordial, which had replaced the usual wine on his desk.

‘Come to your senses?’

I felt I had no senses to come to. They had been buried with Liz. I wanted to mourn, to weep, to pray, but I could not. Once, when I went up to the nursery where her crib was, and rocked it, just for a moment, I saw her turn and it was so real I found myself holding out my finger for her to grasp before she vanished. But I could not weep. Curiously, it was Anne, who had never seemed to care for her while she was alive, who wept and mourned. At least I could meet Lord Stonehouse’s gaze with a look as dead and cold as his.