The Gilded Cage by Lucinda Gray

Author:Lucinda Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627796538
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER 15

MR. SIMPSON IS ON his feet before I am. “Wait here, Lady Katherine,” he says urgently, striding from the room. I ignore him and follow close on his heels, pressing my hands to my thumping heart. We join the small stream of startled staff, rushing to the house’s front lawn.

There we find the source of the screaming: Elsie, her head flopped down between her shoulders, flanked on either side by whispering maids. They’re half carrying her limp body back into the house, though they look close to swooning themselves. “It was the Beast, I know it!” one shrills. As they pass me, I hear Elsie whimpering something, broken words coming out of her in a stream. “I thought it was Matt, oh God! I thought it was him, oh thank you God.…”

I look down at my hands, chilled with a premonition, a touch of second sight: They will soon be covered in blood. My eyes go, unwilling, to the two men laboring up the lawn. Matt and Henry, carrying something between them. The arrogant man with the black mustache walks alongside, twisting his hands together. “There’s been an accident!” he yells, then repeats it twice more. Mr. Dowling is beside him, clapping a comforting arm about his shoulder in an effort to quiet his panic.

As I continue across the lawn, frightened but unable to stop, all I can see clearly are the men’s broad black backs and bowed heads, but not their cargo. Then one of them stumbles a bit, and I see what I couldn’t before, the thing held sagging between them. John, fighting against their arms. His body is rigid, pitching upward with pain, and his chest dark with blood.

“What’s happened?” I cry. Mr. Simpson takes my elbow before I can run.

“Stand back, Katherine. Let them carry him.”

I slump into him, and he circles his arm about me, his face stony and pale. We follow the group of men toward the house—poor Matt at John’s feet, looking as though he could cry; Henry, cool and terse, supporting his shoulders. Again I see the mark of authority on his brow, the sharp efficiency of his soldiering days. “Not through that door!” he barks. “Carry him around to the servants’ entrance.”

“Are you mad? You’re wasting time!” I say.

“Take her into the house, Mr. Simpson,” Henry replies. “Don’t look, Katherine.”

To Mr. Simpson’s credit, he does not listen. We follow the men into a scullery, where Mr. Dowling moves an aproned cook aside and quickly sweeps the large central table clear of the things set out for baking. John is laid across its floury surface. Several servants and men from the hunt press themselves against the far wall, watching, and Mr. Simpson pulls the curtains back from the windows as far as they’ll go. Henry takes out a pocketknife and begins cutting John’s shirt away from his chest.

The blood flows free and fast, obscuring the wound. “Katherine, move back,” Henry says. Ignoring him, I grab a pile of clean washcloths from a sideboard.

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