The Wild Dark Flowers: A Novel of Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke

Author:Elizabeth Cooke [Cooke, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

For a moment, Octavia could only stare at William as he lay inert on the floor. Then, she rushed to him, got down on her knees, and put her hands on his shoulders.

“William,” she said. “William—what is it?”

There was no reply. Her husband’s face was slowly draining of the heightened color that it had worn while he had been arguing with her.

“Amelie!” she cried. “Amelie, come here!”

Her maid must have been listening at the door all the while, for she rushed immediately into the room, and gave a gasp when she saw William on the floor.

“Tell them downstairs to call a doctor immediately,” Octavia said. She was trying to loosen William’s collar. “And come back here with whoever you can find. We must get him onto the bed.”

Amelie said not a word. She ran straight out of the door, and Octavia could hear her footsteps running down the stairs—then raised voices. “William, William,” she whispered. She put her fingers on his neck and felt a pulse. It was thready and faint. “Oh my God,” she murmured. Seeing him there, all her previous pictures of him flew out of the window—he was no longer the rigid, slightly overbearing figure she had known, but something faded, helpless, grey.

Amelie came rushing back into the bedroom, pursued by a footman. Together they manhandled William’s body to the bed. “Get me some water,” Octavia instructed. “Let us try to see if he can drink a little.”

“Ma’am, there is the smelling salts—” ventured Amelie.

The little bottle that Amelie found in the dressing room was administered to William. His eyes fluttered once or twice, and then his head jerked violently to one side.

“For God’s sake take that away,” he said.

Each of them let out a sigh. He opened his eyes fully and stared about him. Then, in an instant, he was struggling to get up.

“No, no,” Octavia said. She gave him a firm push back against the pillows. “You must stay quiet, you have had a seizure. The doctor is coming.”

“I can’t stay here,” he protested. “I must go to Harry. I must go to Folkestone.”

“You are going nowhere at all,” she replied, and took his hand.

* * *

Boulogne-sur-Mer. Evening.

What a nice-sounding name it was, Harry Cavendish thought. Sur-Mer, Sur-Mer. On the sea. A nice little seaside town, much like those on the other side of the Channel. A straight, sparsely furnished promenade. A great hotel called the Casino, with a vast blue roof near the harbor wall, now converted to a hospital; it reminded him of places like Scarborough. Flat sands, music halls, hotels. The lights reflected on the incoming tide. Mud flats invaded and wrinkled by currents.

He’d played in such places as Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast when he was a boy. Happy times of sand between the toes, his mother somewhere far behind, smothered in a pale summer dress beneath a parasol, in an ornate chair brought by a servant to the sands. He had run about, a little king, while his mother bore

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