Spider Light(24)
As if she had heard this last thought, Thomasina said, ‘My poor child, of course people would believe you were disturbed. I would only have to tell them how I found you huddled in a dank wash-house, when all the time there’s a warm comfortable room for you at Quire House, and people there who love you and want you back. You’re not displaying much sanity at the moment, are you, Maud?’ She paused, and then said, in a soft, pitying voice, ‘You do know what happens to people who aren’t sane, don’t you?’
Latchkill…The place of locked doors and barred windows…The place you must always avoid when it’s spider light…
Maud said, ‘Yes, I do know. But I’m not mad.’
‘Of course not. But perhaps confused. And so you’d better come back with me and be properly looked after,’ said Thomasina. Incredibly there was a note of affection in her voice. She held Maud’s arm very firmly, and took her outside, pushing the door closed with her foot as she did so. Maud tried to resist but Thomasina’s hands were too strong. As they went back across the park Thomasina talked soothingly–something about soon being home and how no one needed to know about this absurd flight through the darkness.
Maud, by this time sobbing with despair, scarcely heard her, but when Thomasina said, ‘Where on earth were you going anyway?’ she replied, ‘I was escaping from you. And Simon. I was running away because of what he did to me.’
‘Then you’re definitely a little mad,’ said Thomasina lightly. ‘Half the girls in the county would like my cousin to make love to them. He’s greatly admired. In fact he’s considered quite a matrimonial catch. I was even thinking we might arrange for the two of you to be married. Wouldn’t you like that? Simon would, I know. Oh do stop crying, Maud, and don’t shudder like that. It would be a wonderful marriage; your father would be delighted. But we’ll talk about it properly in the morning.’
As they went inside Quire House, Thomasina said, ‘Don’t try shouting to the servants, will you? We don’t want them knowing you’re a little disturbed. In a small place like this people do love to gossip, and gossip is never particularly kind anywhere. Within twenty-four hours the whole of Amberwood would be convinced you were a raving lunatic.’
Maud thought: that’s quite true, but the real truth is that she’s afraid of people knowing what she and Simon did to me. She glanced at Thomasina; in the dim light of the passageway off the main hall, Thomasina’s eyes were wild, and she was frowning, as if she was making plans in her head. Her grip loosened slightly and Maud wondered if she dared attempt to get away. She could run back along the hall and out through the garden door again. But when she tried to remember if Thomasina had locked or bolted the door when they came in, she could not. And even if she ran as fast as she could, Thomasina would stride across the park again, as she had done earlier, and catch her.
She thought Thomasina would take her back to the big bedroom overlooking the park, but when they reached the first floor, Thomasina hesitated.
‘The real worry now, Maud, is that for the moment I don’t think I can trust you not to run away again. And I don’t want you to do that, my dear. So not this room, I don’t think. It’s too near the main part of the house and there’s no lock on the door. So I’m afraid–yes, I really am afraid it will have to be the next floor.’ She glanced at the narrower stairs leading to the second floor. ‘But you’ll be perfectly comfortable up there.’ Again the smile. ‘I wouldn’t let you be uncomfortable,’ said Thomasina. ‘I think too much of you.’
‘Do you?’ said Maud, staring at her.
‘My dear girl,’ said Thomasina, ‘don’t you know I’m absolutely devoted to you?’
CHAPTER TEN
Donna and Don Robards had been absolutely devoted to each other. They had been all in all to one another and had not needed anyone else. Donna and Don, a single entity against the world. It had always pleased Donna to think of them in that way, and it pleased her now, even with Don dead.
Within the family they had been Domina and Don. ‘So pretty,’ their half-Spanish mother had said when they were small. ‘The old names for lord and lady.’
Their father, with his permanent round of meetings and reports and too much to do, had liked the names as well. He said they were echoes of almost defunct academic terms for a fellow of Oxford or Cambridge. Not that Domina and Don would need university careers; there would always be more than sufficient money for them to live comfortably without having to work at all. Trust funds were being set up, investments made…Domina and Don, fortune’s darlings.
‘And Domina is so good with her little brother,’ their mother told everyone, delighted with the timing of her children’s birth, perhaps even slightly smug at having managed a three-year gap between them. It was exactly right: it was wide enough for Domina to look after Don while they were small, but narrow enough for it to dwindle to nothing when they were grown up; to allow them to be friends.
To the nearly four-year-old Donna, Don’s arrival in her world had been the most wonderful thing she had ever known. He was perfect, this small brother. She spent hours staring into his cot or his pram, sometimes stroking his face. From the very start she had fought his battles and flown into a rage if anyone criticized him. ‘Sweet,’ said their mother indulgently. ‘Domina is so protective of Don.’