Charlotte and Thomas Pitt - 20 - Half Moon Street by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780449006559
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2001-01-02T06:35:16+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

The nightmare was so real that even when the old lady woke up the room around her seemed to be the one in which she had spent her married life. It was a moment before her vision cleared and she realized there was no door to the left leading to Edmund’s room. There was no need to be afraid. It would not open because it was smooth, patterned wall. She could see the light on the paper, unbroken. But it was shades of deep rose pink. It should be yellow. She was used to yellow. Where was she?

Her feet were cold. There was light coming through a crack in the curtains. She heard footsteps outside, quick and firm. A maid.

She grasped the covers and pulled them up to her chin, hiding herself. She saw the hands on the sheet, knuckles swollen and clenched, an old woman’s hands, blue veined, thin skinned with dark patches on them, the thin gold wedding ring slipping around easily. They had once been slim and smooth.

The past receded. But where was she? This was not Ashworth House.

Then she remembered. Emily and her husband were away in Paris, gadding around again. They were having the plumbing altered in Ashworth House and she was obliged to stay with Caroline. She hated being dependent. It was the worst part of being a widow. In fact, in some respects perhaps it was the only part that was really hard to bear. Now she was answerable to no one. There was a certain degree of sympathy and respect for a widow, the last one of her generation alive in her family.

Of course all that could change . . . now that Samuel Ellison had arrived from America. Who in all the green earth could have imagined that that would have happened? Alys had had a son. Edmund had never known that. He would have been . . . she stopped. She had no idea how he would have felt about it. It hardly mattered now. In fact, there was only one thing which did matter, and control over that was fast slipping away from her.

Where was Mabel? What was the use of bringing a maid all the way from Ashworth House if the woman was not there when she was needed? The old lady reached out and yanked on the bell rope at the side of the bed so hard she was fortunate it did not come away in her hand.

It seemed forever until Mabel came, but when she did she was carrying a tray with hot tea. She set it on the small table by the bed, then opened the curtains and let in the sunlight. There was a sort of sanity in it, a reassuring, pedestrian business in the very ordinary sounds of the day: footsteps, horses’ hooves in the street, someone calling out, a bucket dropped, a girl somewhere laughing.

Perhaps she would find a way to keep control of it after all?

It was eight days since Caroline had come back from the theatre saying Samuel Ellison had turned up.

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