Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(85)

She tried to tell him that she would go anywhere with him, do anything he said, but he was covering her mouth too tightly for her to speak. His grip became hurtful, clamping on her jaw. She couldn’t breathe.

Catherine’s eyes opened. The nightmare fell away, revealing a far worse reality. She struggled beneath a crushing weight, and tried to cry out against the callused hand that covered her mouth.

“Your aunt wants to see you,” came a voice in the darkness. “I ’as to do this, miss. I ’as no choice.”

In the space of just a few minutes, it was done.

William gagged her with a tight cloth that bit into her mouth, a large knot pressing hard against her tongue. After binding her hands and feet, he went to light a lamp. Even without the aid of her spectacles, Catherine perceived that he wore the dark blue coat of a Rutledge Hotel employee.

If only she could get a few words out, plead or bargain with him, but the knotted lump of cloth made coherent sound impossible. Her saliva spiked unpleasantly at the intensely acrid flavor of the gag. There was something on it, she realized, and at that same moment she felt her consciousness breaking into pieces, scattered like an unfinished puzzle. Her heart turned sluggish, pumping poisoned blood through her collapsing limbs, and there was a ballooning, thumping sensation in her head as if her brain had suddenly become too large for her skull.

William came to her with a hotel laundry bag. He began to pull it over her, starting at her feet. He didn’t look at her face, only kept his gaze on his task. She watched passively, seeing that he took care to keep the hem of her nightgown primly down at her ankles. Some distant part of her brain wondered at the small kindness of preserving her modesty.

The bedclothes rustled near her feet, and Dodger streaked out with a furious chatter. With quicksilver speed he attacked William’s arm and hand, inflicting a series of deep, gouging bites. Catherine had never seen the little animal behave in such a manner. William grunted in surprise and flung out his arm with a low curse. The ferret went flying, slamming hard against the wall and falling limply to the floor.

Catherine moaned behind the gag, her eyes burning with acid tears.

Breathing heavily, William examined his bleeding hand, found a cloth at the washstand to wrap around it, and returned to Catherine. The laundry bag was pulled higher and higher until it went over her head.

She understood that Althea didn’t really want to see her. Althea wanted to destroy her. Perhaps William didn’t know. Or perhaps he thought it was kinder to lie. It didn’t matter. She felt nothing, no fear, no anguish, although tears leaked steadily from the outward corners of her eyes. What a terrible fate to leave the world feeling nothing at all. She was nothing more than a tangle of limbs in a sack, a headless doll, all memories receding, all sensation falling away.

A few thoughts needled through the blanket of nothingness, pinpricks of light in the dark.

Leo would never know that she had loved him.

She thought of his eyes, all those colors of blue. Her mind was filled with a constellation of high summer, stars in a lion’s shape. The brightest star marks his heart.

He would grieve. If only she could spare him that.

Oh, what they could have had. A life together, such a simple thing. To watch that handsome face weather with age. She had to admit now that she had never been happier than in the moments with him.

Her heart beat faintly beneath her ribs. It was heavy, aching with contained feeling, a hard knot within the numbness.

I didn’t want to need you, Leo, I fought so hard to stay standing at the edge of my own life … when I should have had the courage to walk into yours.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Late in the morning Leo returned from a visit with his old mentor, Rowland Temple. The architect, now a professor at University College, had recently been awarded the Royal Gold Medal for his work in advancing the academic study of architecture. Leo had been amused but hardly surprised to discover that Temple was as imperious and irascible as ever. The old man viewed the aristocracy as a source of patronage to keep him financially solvent, but he had contempt for their traditional and unimaginative sense of style.

“You’re not one of those parasitical dunderheads,” Temple had told him emphatically, which Leo gathered had been a compliment. And later, “My influence on you cannot be eradicated, can it?” And of course Leo had assured him that it could not, that he remembered and valued everything he had learned from Temple. He hadn’t dared to mention the far greater influence of the elderly professor in Provence.

“Architecture is how we reconcile to the difficulties of life,” Joseph had once told Leo at his atelier. The old professor had been repotting some herbs at a long wooden table, while Leo tried to help. “Non, don’t touch these, mon fils, you pack the roots too tightly, they need more air than you allow them.” He took a pot away from Leo and resumed the lecture. “To be an architect, you have to accept the environment around you, no matter what its conditions. Then, in full awareness, you take your ideals and form them into structure.”

“Can I do it without ideals?” Leo had asked, only half joking. “I’ve learned I can’t live up to them.”

Professor Joseph had smiled at him. “Neither can you reach the stars. But you still need their light. You need them to navigate, n’est-ce pas?”

Take your ideals and form them into structure. Only in that way could a good house, a good building, be designed.