Chapter Ten
Ellis maintained a cool, silent façade through dinner, and excused himself immediately after. When I rose to go with him, he told me firmly to stay and enjoy my sherry.
I didn’t want to stay, and there was certainly no enjoying to be done—all I could think about was what we’d do if we were given the boot for lying—but I knew he wanted me to remain behind and try to save face. I lasted only a quarter of an hour. When I left, Hank was grinding his teeth and white-knuckling his whiskey.
I knocked on Ellis’s door.
“Go away!”
“It’s me,” I said, speaking into the crack. “Please let me in.”
He barked something about not being fit for human company.
I went to my own room, hoping he’d change his mind and come to me. When the rest of the house had shut down and my candle had burned to a nub, I gave up and went to bed.
I lay on my back in the dark under a mountain of blankets listening to the rain pound the roof. I was wearing my two heaviest nightgowns but was still so cold I was dabbing my nose nonstop.
I had never heard the words strìopaichean or houghmagandy before but deduced from the context that the former was what my mother-in-law believed my mother to be, and the latter was the activity that defined her as such.
I’d long thought of the Colonel as an irritating blowhard, but it had never occurred to me that he might also be a lecher. The mere thought of the Colonel making overtures to hapless young girls was horrifying. The pasty skin, the jiggling belly, the mustache yellowed by tobacco—
I hadn’t noticed it before, but if Ellis were bald, forty years older, sixty pounds heavier, and had an alcoholic nose, he would look very much like the Colonel.
No wonder Ellis hadn’t felt fit for human company. Learning that he was going to age like the Colonel must have been a terrible blow, yet there was no denying it, since Old Donnie had identified him as the Colonel’s son the first time he laid eyes on him. But there were ways of delaying the transformation with diet and exercise—even hairpieces, if necessary—and there was time to worry about that later. We had a more immediate problem to address.
I flipped back the covers and fumbled in the dark for the matches, lighting my last inch of candle.
A moment later, I was in the hallway, standing outside his door. As I raised my hand to knock, the door to Meg’s room clicked open and a heavy-shouldered figure slipped out.
I jumped backward, muffling a gasp.
The man was tall and had prominent ears, but by candlelight I couldn’t see much else. He glanced at me, turned up his coat collar, and slipped into the inky black of the stairwell. I rapped quickly on Ellis’s door.
“Ellis! Ellis!” I said urgently, looking down the hallway. “Let me in!”
A moment later the door opened and his face appeared in the crack. “What’s the matter? Is it your heart? Do you need a pill?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, irritated that he’d automatically jumped to that conclusion.
“You didn’t sound fine.”
I glanced one last time down the hall and decided not to say anything about the man leaving Meg’s room.
“I am. I’m fine,” I said, “but we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“You know what. Can I please come in? I’d rather not do this in the hallway.”
After a flicker of hesitation, he held the door open. By the light of my candle, I saw that his room was in roughly the same condition as mine, with his belongings strewn all over the floor.
“Watch your step,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the mess.
I made my way to the bed and set the candle on the table. When I climbed under the covers, Ellis said, “What are you doing?”
I felt like he’d kicked me in the stomach. “I’m just getting warm. Don’t worry. I won’t stay.”
He exhaled through puffed cheeks and ran a hand through his hair. Finally, he closed the door and walked to the far side of the bed. He lay on top of the covers with his arms over his chest, stiff as a slab of marble.
“You could at least have brought me a pill,” he said.
“I can go get one.”
“Never mind,” he said.
A few minutes later, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to address the issue at hand, or any other, I asked, “What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where are we going to go? We can’t stay here.”
“Of course we can. Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because we checked in under a fake name.”
Ellis exploded, sitting bolt upright and slamming his fists on the quilt so hard I recoiled. “It’s not a fake name. It’s your maiden name, as I explained to you earlier, so what, exactly, is your point?”
“My point is that I’m terrified we’re going to be tossed out onto the street!” I said in a harsh whisper. “And I’m sorry you’re upset, but you have no right to take it out on me. None of this is my fault.”
“So it’s my fault, is it?”
“Well, I certainly didn’t do anything.”
The wind howled down the chimney. The window rattled in its pane.
“I’m sorry about the old man tonight,” I said. “The whole thing was dreadful.”
Ellis was suddenly yelling again: “I’ve half a mind to have him arrested! It’s slander and libel and God only knows what else, making ridiculous, groundless accusations against someone who’s not even here to defend himself. My father would never, ever—”
“I know!” I said, interrupting him in a whisper, hoping that it would encourage him to lower his tone. I laid a hand on his arm. “I know.”
In fact I did not know. Was he incensed about the accusations of womanizing, or the accusations of fakery? Or because he, himself, had been caught in a lie?
The rain picked up and changed direction, battering the glass like someone was flinging buckets of nails against it. Water dripped sporadically down the chimney and onto the grate, an occasional heavy plonk.
Ellis lay back down.
I was infinitely sorry I’d come and was about to climb from the bed when he suddenly rolled to face me, catching me off guard.
“Well,” he said, “to answer your question, I certainly hope we can stay. There isn’t anywhere else to go.”
“Maybe we can move to the estate? I’m a little surprised we didn’t go there in the first place.”
“I rather suspect they got their fill of Hydes back in ’thirty-four, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Your father is hardly the first man to try it on with a servant. Anyway, you’re family.”
He laughed wryly. “I’m a second cousin once removed. And no, even if they would have had us, which is highly unlikely, the point is moot. Apparently the house and grounds are crawling with soldiers.”
“It was requisitioned? Where’s the family?”