Page 3 of The Witching Hour
No matter. She had plenty of time on her hands.
* * *
Two years had passedsince James Bentham, the Earl of Trevelyan had set foot in the village of Berry Pomeroy—four, since he’d spent any significant time here.
Now, as he made his way up the graveled drive that led to the great stone archway marking the entrance to the courtyard, he was strangely unsettled, as if he’d never before laid eyes on this dark old castle, much less lived here.
A prodigal’s husband’s return was an awkward thing at best, but that wasn’t the only reason the chasm in the pit of his stomach yawned wider with every turn of the coach’s wheels.
Everything about his return felt ominous, as if a dark cloud were hanging over him.
It had begun with the owl. If it hadn’t been for that damned owl, he would have arrived at the castle well before nightfall. It hadn’t been a particularly threatening owl—indeed, it was rather ordinary, as owls go. Small, with a gray face, big yellow eyes and a ruffle of tawny feathers.
If he’d happened upon it at another time, on another day, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but to come across it perched on a branch over a well-traveled road on a bright afternoon while his gravely-ill wife was hovering between this world and the next, well…he wasn’t a superstitious man, but that was enough to rattle even his nerves.
One injudicious jerk on the reins might not have been enough to land the carriage in the ditch, but his shout startled the owl, which in turn had startled his horses, and the next he knew, the right wheel of the coach was buried in the deep mud at the side of the road.
Three hours later, after a hike of several miles to the nearest farmhouse and a prolonged period of digging and pushing, he was back on his way to Berry Pomeroy with a decidedly cross horse, in a pair of trousers splattered liberally with mud.
It wasn’t quite the dignified homecoming he’d envisioned.
He found Silas waiting for him in the courtyard when he arrived. He was as impassive as ever, his expression giving nothing away. “Welcome home, Lord Trevelyan.”
“You needn’t have waited up, Silas. I would have arrived sooner, but I was delayed by a mishap on the road.” James didn’t mention the owl, as it seemed foolish now that such a minor incident should have so overset him. “How does Sylvie do? On the mend, I hope?”
“Nay.” Silas stepped forward to unhitch the horses from the carriage. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
An unmistakably grim note in Silas’s voice made James’s hands freeze on the reins. He turned slowly toward his caretaker, his throat moving in a rough swallow. “Has she…is she worse? Has her fever spiked?”
Silas was a man of few words, and even fewer expressions, but something about the simple shake of his head now made the breath seize in James’s throat, much as it had when he’d met that owl’s knowing yellow eyes. “You don’t mean…you can’t mean—”
“Aye, I’m afraid so, my lord. There’s naught as can be done for her.”
“Nothing to be done?” James repeated dumbly. No, Silas couldn’t mean she…he didn’t mean she was… “Do you mean to say Sylvie’s going todie?”
“Aye. Soon, from the looks of it. I’m sorry for it, my lord.”
“But, Ada…” Ada had seen Sylvie through half a dozen such fevers. She would never permit her darling girl to leave them. “Surely, there must be something Ada can do for her? Some sort of potion, or tonic?”
Silas shook his head. “Not this time, my lord.”
“But I…she can’t be going todie, Silas.” The ground underneath him shifted just as his knees started to give, and he grabbed the horse’s reins to keep himself upright.
That owl. My God, it had been an omen, a harbinger of death.
While he’d been pushing his carriage out of a ditch, she’d been struggling for her last breaths, without her husband there by her bedside? What had she thought, at that moment? That he hadn’t cared enough to come to her—
“If you’ll come upstairs my lord, I’ll take you to her.”
He stumbled after Silas, through the archway between the two towers, down the stone hallways with the low doorways and timbered ceilings to their living quarters on the right, a pathway he’d trod many times before, but never before with the hopelessness he dragged behind him with every step now.
Things hadn’t been right between him and Sylvie for some time, not since the end of the first year of his marriage, when his father had coldly reminded him his was a marriage of convenience, not a love match, and demanded James’s presence in London.
Ever the obedient son, he’d done as his father bid him, and dutifully joined the ranks of theton,as befit the future Earl of Trevelyan. He’d intended a speedy return to Berry Pomeroy, as Sylvie’s delicate health kept her away from London, but his father had died soon afterwards, and James had been obliged to take up his position in the House of Lords.
He and Sylvie had borne the separation well enough at first, but the demands on his time had increased along with his growing popularity as one of England’s most brilliant young politicians, and the months had dragged into a year, then two, until his every brief homecoming was marred by arguments, and later, by Sylvie’s bitter tears.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her—he cared for her very much, but he’d been raised in his father’s glittering political world, and the lure of the city had him in his thrall. Gradually, it became easier to forget the sorrow in Sylvie’s face, to overlook the tear tracks on her pale cheeks each time he returned to London, leaving her alone in the castle. His visits became shorter, the time between each one longer until the distance between them was no longer merely physical, but emotional. The last time he’d come home, he’d hardly recognized his pale, silent wife as the once vibrant, smiling lady he’d married.
