The Fifth Kiss by Elizabeth Mansfield

Author:Elizabeth Mansfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497697706
Publisher: Open Road Media

chapter twelve

When Olivia was finally able to extract from the weeping governess a passably intelligible account of the happenings at Langley Park (her efforts at communication with Miss Elspeth considerably hampered not only by the girl’s natural incoherence but by Charles’ repeated and irritating warnings to “stop badgering the poor chit”), she knew she had to leave for Langley at once. But all sorts of impediments, both natural and man-made, seemed to loom up to bar her way.

The situation was very much like a nightmare—the sort of nocturnal adventure in which the dreamer has an urgent errand at a particular and distant place and is prevented from getting there by all kinds of phantasmagorical obstructions. In this case, her eagerness to take herself to her nephew’s side seemed to grow more urgent as one obstruction after another appeared to block her way. First, there was Charles. He refused to let her question Miss Elspeth until the governess had been taken to the drawing room, installed in the wing chair near the fire, given a sip of brandy and permitted to overcome her bout of tears. Miss Elspeth’s tears gave Olivia the first indication that she was about to become involved in a nightmare. Charles insisted that she should not question the governess until Miss Elspeth’s crying had ceased, but since the young governess would burst into fresh lachrymal outpourings each time Charles said or did something kind (and Charles was behaving more kindly to the young woman than Olivia could bear), Olivia despaired of ever seeing Miss Elspeth dry her eyes.

The second obstacle was her own reluctance to return to Langley Park. According to the disjointed report Miss Elspeth gave, his lordship was still in residence at Langley and showed no inclination to return to London. Olivia didn’t know if she had the courage to face him again. Her feelings of guilt for having withheld from him the truth of her sister’s illness had not abated, but her dislike of his arrogance, his arbitrary domination of the lives of those around him and his Tory views of the world had not abated either. Although she could not forget her sister’s entirely different view of his character, and the tenderness and pain in his face when he’d come to her bedside, she still clung to her habitual, unchanging revulsion toward him. Yet sometimes she found herself thinking of him with a dawning, if reluctant, admiration. This confusing conflict of feelings was complicated by her memory of a shattering, illicit and completely disturbing embrace which she could not manage to erase from her mind. To have to face him again was not a pleasing prospect.

But this obstacle would have to be overcome. Her sister’s last words to her had been a plea to watch over the family. If Perry needed her, she had no choice but to go to his side. As the picture Miss Elspeth painted of the unhappy boy pierced her consciousness, Olivia’s determination to return to Langley hardened. There was no question but that she must leave at once.

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