Widow in White

Chapter Nine: Silver Lining

Laura sat at the window in the garret and stared down at the white square of snow-buried garden, caged in by the black pines surrounding. She hadn't slept all night for worrying, futilely, about Richard. What people would think of him if it got around. What he would think of her when he found out what she had said. Now, late afternoon, the snow had finally stopped, leaving deep white drifts banked up against the house, and Laura was aching with tiredness. Her eyes kept slipping closed of their own accord, and there was a strange giddy liquidness to her spine.

She wasn't hungry though, which was a small mercy. Since her father had locked her in yesterday afternoon, she hadn't had anything to eat. She wasn't naive enough to assume he'd forgotten to tell the servants to send food to her; it was a deliberate punishment. There had been water enough in the wash-jug for her to drink, however, so she wasn't thirsty.

Leaning drearily against the windowsill, she stared at the snow-bleached sky and thought of Richard. She needed to talk to him again. She needed to apologise for exposing their affair. The burden of that thought rested heavily upon her. A small voice whispered to her that perhaps, just perhaps, he would never forgive her. No, probably, very probably. And she needed him to forgive her. Somehow, she could not bear the thought of him hating her. With a pang of sorrow, she realized she liked Richard. His clumsy kindness, his inelegant good manners, his awkward well-meaning. They had once seemed laughable, even irritating, but now they endeared her.

Laura was disturbed from her reverie by footsteps in the hall. A moment later, the key turned in the lock and the door slammed open. She turned her head listlessly towards it. Her father stood in the doorway, two bright red spots burning in his pale cheeks. He looked, she realized with a tinge of unease, triumphant.

"Richard Armiger is dead."

For a moment, all Laura could do was stare at him. Her hands tightened on the windowsill until splinters of wood bit into her palms. The bright spots on her father's cheeks deepened.

"It's in The Morning Chronicle. You're in it too. Back page, or I'd have read it this morning. Fordham murdered him outside his club last night."

The hard, cold sill beneath Laura seemed to drop away beneath her.

"No. No. It cannot be true."

"It is."

"No! I don't believe it!" She squeezed her eyes shut. "You're lying!"

Her father spoke calmly, rapidly: "Blood and Horror in the West End. Body of a peer found in a London street by a member of his own class. Murderer seen running away, the prodigal son of the last Lord Farncote. Investigations elicit an altercation in his club. Members talk of a scurrilous accusation about a lady. That's you, I suppose. The end of it is, in two days, the entirety of London will be talking about how Albroke's mistress, you, got him killed."

Laura stared at her father, shocked more than anything to see the thin smile on his face. Then slowly, the smile became real to her, and the words he had said.

"I don't believe it," she whispered. "It can't be true. He— he can't be— stop smiling!"

Her father ran his finger over his lips, smoothing out the curve. But his cheek was still twitching after, as though he could barely keep from laughing.

"You're right, it's a shame, really. A shame," her father repeated, "because once your name gets into it, there won't be a man in London who'll marry you. You've ruined all my plans. Albroke would have at least been a compromise, after that. But he's dead now and I'm stuck with you."

Whatever instinct of self-preservation Laura might have had was buried under shock. She only stared at her father through a blur of tears and realized it must be true or her father would never have admitted defeat.