Mrs Rackstile takes my arm and drags me downstairs, handling me like a child. She has made it her business to acquaint herself with every aspect of Winterbourne, and accordingly will have seen pictures of Laura; she will know my purpose. How I detest her! If she weren’t here, I could go to Jonathan myself and remind him how it is to gaze upon a woman he loves. Instead, I am released at the door to his office.
‘Captain, forgive the interruption,’ she begins, ‘but you should be aware…’
On Jonathan’s desk is a collection of glasses, coated in amber hue. He turns to us, his eyes rheumy and shot with blood. For a moment, he believes I am Laura. He reaches for me, stumbles, then realises I am not she. His expression is one of such intensity, such loathing and bewilderment and downright desire that I have to grip the edge of the table to stop myself fainting. He, too, is in the grip of a lethal spell.
‘I found her like this,’ says Mrs Rackstile. ‘Dressed up like Mrs de Grey. Surely, Captain, you see now that she needs help! I will telephone the doctor right away.’
Jonathan cannot tear his gaze from mine. I stand transfixed, awaiting my fate; I half fear it, I half fear it will not be delivered. But I do not look away. I am not ashamed. I am beautiful. He comes to me and gently touches my face.
I resist the urge to put his hand on my stomach and tell him, I am yours.
‘Go downstairs,’ he tells the housekeeper. ‘Fetch every item of Laura’s that remains in the cellar and bring it here to me. Bring me everything. Now.’
Mrs Rackstile does as she’s told. When she has gone, he says:
‘Strip.’
I assume I have not heard correctly.
‘Strip,’ he says again. ‘I will not ask you a third time.’
There is thrill in my disrobing. Rain spits against the windowpanes like glitter thrown from an endless night. I remove the high collar. I step out of the skirt. I let down my hair. Standing before him in my undergarments I must remind myself that he has seen me naked before. Here, though, it feels like the first time. He surveys my body. I reach to unfasten my brassiere. Jonathan stops me. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Alice… Oh, Alice.’ He covers me with a blanket, wrapping me tight.
‘Tell me, Jonathan,’ I say, his lips close enough to mine now that we could kiss. ‘Tell me what it is.’
He closes his eyes. ‘You are not safe here. At Winterbourne.’
‘Yes, I am. I’m safe with you.’
‘Mrs Rackstile is right. You should leave. Tomorrow. Tonight.’
‘I cannot! Captain, you must listen to the truth!’
‘Oh, Alice, not you.’ His eyes open. ‘I prayed this would not happen to you.’
‘Nothing has happened to me,’ I cry. ‘Nothing has happened to me but you! Don’t you see? It’s you I live for, Jonathan. I have ever since I met you.’
His voice breaks. ‘It’s too late,’ he says. ‘Look at you.’
I glance down at my body. My skin is mottled with thumb-sized bruises, criss-crossed scratches and brittle pinch marks that scatter from my shins to my neck.
‘Do they hurt?’ he asks.
‘No. They’ll clear. It’s a sensitivity, the sea air, nothing to fret about.’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s my fault. I should never have brought you here.’
‘Yes, you should! You have shown me love, Jonathan, you and the twins, and Winterbourne, all of you. It’s all I want. I can be happy here, with you—’
I touch his cheek but in a flare his aggression is back and he strikes me away.
‘I am not what you think I am,’ he says bitterly.
‘Then what are you?’
‘Not a man you would want in your life.’
‘I will decide that for myself!’
‘There isn’t a decision to make.’ He turns to the window, drink loosening his tongue, his head bowed in confession. ‘I’ve never been good for anyone. My mother told me so and she was right. She used to tell me, Boy, you’re a demon; everything you touch rots and dies. She was a cruel woman, a difficult woman I’ve since been told, but as I said, she was right. After all, I drove her from Winterbourne; she left in the night without a word and never came back. Then I married the girl I loved and I lost her too. Then the governess before you, Christine: she came to me for help and I turned her away. Now you, Alice, now you… It’s been proven. My mother was right. I’m no good. I’m dangerous. You should stay away from me, far, far away.’
I step towards him and touch his shoulder. ‘You mustn’t believe it,’ I whisper. ‘I promise only good things will happen to us.’
‘It isn’t your decision,’ he rages, ‘don’t you understand? Aren’t you listening? It’s me, it’s this house; it’s bigger than you, or us, or any of it! I’ve tried protecting the people I care for. I stay away from the children. I stay away from Tom, and the doctor, and from Mrs Yarrow when she was here. God knows I tried to stay away from you, but…’ His voice breaks. ‘I ought to let the children away from Winterbourne, send them to board in the city, but I’m fearful of what will become of them. I’m afraid they will meet with some terrible fate, that Winterbourne will wreak vengeance on them for trying to escape! One thing is certain: they will hear dreadful talk about their mother and me, about what I did to her.’
‘You tried to protect Laura.’
‘And I failed.’
‘She would always have died, whatever you did. She wished to die.’
‘How could she have? We were happy. We had two beautiful children. We had a home and a future and we were in love.’
It is on the tip of my tongue to say it: Marlin’s dreadful vision. Winterbourne plays with its mistresses, lets them believe in joy for the pleasure of stealing it away.
‘Jonathan, you must stop blaming yourself.’ But he is far beyond my reach. There is only one thing left, the quiet miracle that might bring him back to me.
‘I have news,’ I say. I take his hand. ‘You see—’
Mrs Rackstile returns, clutching the residue of Laura’s possessions, which she holds out to him. The spell of our confidence is broken. Jonathan seizes Laura’s clothes and stalks out to the courtyard, through the storm, where he heaps them up in a pile. In the dark, in the wet, they resemble spilled blood, a dark smudge against glistening earth. Rain tears in. The deep howl of a winter gale flips across the cliffs. Jonathan is untiring, limping without his cane, his inky hair plastered across his forehead and his clothes sodden. Box after box he seizes from the housekeeper – the jewels, the fragrances, the photograph of Laura and he on their wedding day.
I am amazed that the furnace catches in the downpour but it does, as if these things have all these years been waiting to burn, the mere switch of a match enough to ignite them. Smoke billows into the night and Jonathan looks on, drenched and dripping to the bone, as the final relics of his lost wife blaze up to meet the stars.
*
I can still smell smoke on Mrs Rackstile as she escorts me back to my room. ‘The captain instructed me to keep you safe,’ she says. ‘I am sorry, Alice, but this is for your own good. We cannot have you doing damage to yourself or to others.’
‘Damage? What kind of damage?’
‘You are not well.’
‘You know nothing about me. You have hated me since you arrived.’
The housekeeper is surprised. ‘I rather think it is you who have hated me, my dear. I have only tried to ease your burden at Winterbourne and to help the captain. It is you who have let your illusions get the better of you. Why, I mean you no harm.’
‘You mean to take this family away from me.’
‘It is not your family, Miss Miller. You ought never to cross that line. That is the first rule of housekeeping. We are workers, nothing more.’
‘I must speak with the captain privately. It is important. Please—’
‘You must do no such thing. All you must do is rest.’
‘But he has to know, he has to be told!’
Mrs Rackstile draws me to a stop at the head of the stairs. ‘Told what?’ she asks.
I have the urge to push her back. She is close to the descent – one push and I could end it here. Jonathan and I. Alice and Jonathan. Only us.
‘Speak, child,’ says Mrs Rackstile. ‘What is this urgent message of yours?’
I could push her, or I could tell her the truth. Maybe they are both the same.
‘I am carrying his baby.’
There follows a sliver of a moment in which she believes me – and then her face sags with pity. ‘My dear girl,’ she says, and all at once I am back at that Sunday table telling my father and hearing his contempt. ‘You are even more deluded than I feared. Can you expect me to give such a claim any kind of credence after what I witnessed tonight? Dressing up as his dead wife then purporting to be having his baby?’ She shakes her head. ‘They should have warned you about this when you accepted employment. You are not used to residing in houses such as Winterbourne. You need a stronger constitution. The remoteness and isolation, it has addled your brain. Next you’ll be telling me you’re in the midst of a love affair with him!’
‘He does love me.’
Mrs Rackstile deposits me in my room. I drop to the floor. I feel weak, defeated, inexorably tired. What few possessions I own she scrapes from their ledges and bundles into a sack, before she checks the wardrobe. She is leaving no trace of me here. Just Laura’s mirror with me inside it, crouched on the floor, eyes wide and full of fear. The blanket covering me slips from my shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘I am keeping you safe from yourself, Miss Miller,’ she says, taking in my scars. ‘You cannot be trusted. I will organise a permanent solution in the morning.’
‘You haven’t been listening to me.’
‘I have, child, and that is why this is necessary. Look at yourself.’
‘I’m telling the truth.’
She looks sorry for me. She, for me!
‘It might be your truth,’ she says softly, ‘but it is nobody else’s.’
‘I wanted to see how it felt,’ I cry, ‘to wear her for a while. That was all, Mrs Rackstile!’ The housekeeper stands in front of the forest mural. I imagine the creepers reaching out and drawing her in until only her outstretched hand is left for me to hold on to. I will it to do this, its creepers starting to slip and writhe – but then she moves.
‘I will check on you after breakfast.’ She removes a key from her pocket.
‘Do you mean to lock me in?’
‘If you are a danger to yourself then you are a danger to the children.’
‘The children?’ I cry. ‘You could not possibly think—’
‘Couldn’t I? Edmund and Constance are afraid of you. They told me as much. They said you had lost your mind and were no longer capable of caring for them. They said you had become obsessed with the captain to the detriment of all else.’
‘They’re lying.’
‘Liars, the twins?’ She baulks. ‘I think not.’
‘Just as I didn’t when I first came here, but I soon learned.’
‘And to what a place that learning has brought you.’ Mrs Rackstile surveys my bruised, shaking limbs. She speaks to me sympathetically, and there is horror in her sympathy because it makes me doubt myself, what I think is true. ‘You are not made for this life, Alice,’ she says gently. ‘You have ideas above your station and they are causing you pain. Tell me, what is wrong with being the help? Is it not good enough for you?’
‘Please,’ I beg, ‘please don’t leave me here.’
‘It is all I can do,’ Mrs Rackstile says, closing the door. The heavy key switches in the lock and I hear her footsteps march purposefully away.