Cora snapped out of her freeze, probably at the mention of biscuits, and gave Mrs. Bennett one of her smiles. “You bet!” she said, and turned to me. “Let’s go, Mrs. Manders.”
She was surprisingly sisterly when we got upstairs, drawing me a bath and fetching extra towels from the linen closet. Our corridor was temporarily deserted, and no one saw me hobble to the bathroom, damp and muddy, wrapped in a bathrobe. When I had lowered myself into the water, blessing Wych Elm House’s modern, immaculate plumbing, I realized Cora was still in the hallway, on the other side of the closed door.
“I hope your camera can be repaired,” she said. “It looked rather wet.”
“Wet?” It had been out in the rain with me, but I had thought it came through all right.
“Sure it is!” Cora replied. “There’s water coming out of it and everything! It looks a mess to me, and I think your photographs will be ruined. It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
There had not been water running out of it when I carried it. The word came to me unbidden: Frances. There would be no photograph of her dog, not if she could help it. The pictures of the ocean would be ruined as well. I pressed my hands to my eyes and tried to calm down.
“Mama wants a Christmas wedding.” Cora chattered nervously through the door. “But that’s barely six weeks away. What do you think, Mrs. Manders?”
I dropped my hands and doused my muddy hair in the water. Keep it together, Jo. “I hear Christmas weddings are nice,” I replied in a shaky voice.
“Was your own wedding very large?”
The words were automatic. “We married by ourselves in Crete.”
“An elopement!” I heard her clap her hands. “That’s so scandalous, like something a movie actress would do.” There was a thumping, shifting sound, and I realized she had sat down on the floor of the corridor, her back against the door. I wondered how nervous she must be, or how badly she wanted to avoid starting her day, to sit on the floor in her dressing gown and talk to me. “Mama says my dress should be satin, but I look so terrible in satin! It never sits right on me. I wonder if Mama will let me wear rouge.”
I looked down at my hands, which were still shaking. Her prattle was actually soothing me, bringing me back from the nightmare I had just experienced and was only beginning to understand. “Will your other relatives be here tonight?” I asked.
“I don’t have many,” Cora replied. “I’m an only child. I wish I had cousins my own age, but I don’t, just an older cousin who’s a doctor on Harley Street. He said he’d come.”
“That’s very nice,” I said, using the sponge on my face and neck.
“He is nice,” Cora said. “Mama asked him if the madness in Martin’s sister could run in the family, but he said he didn’t think it could.”
I sank down in the water, soaping my hair and rinsing it again. Oh, Frances, Frances. What do you want? But already I knew. Even through the fog of my terror, I knew. She wanted me to see. That’s why Princer didn’t harm me. She wanted me to see. “Cora,” I said, “don’t listen to any rumors about Frances. And Martin is not mad.”
“Oh, I know!” she said with an awkward laugh. “He’s a gentleman, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I closed my eyes, trying not to see Princer’s hideous stomach leaping over me. I prayed she wasn’t going to ask for a lesson about wedding nights. “He is.”
“He’s kind to me, and he makes me laugh. Everything is going to go swimmingly, I just know it! I just wish he could eat something and rest more. It makes him moody—have you noticed that? He’s a little frightening sometimes. Last night I found him in his room, burning his sister’s letters in the fire.”
I was wringing out my hair, but I stopped. “What do you mean, burning his sister’s letters?”
“From the war,” Cora said. “All the letters she wrote him at the Front. I don’t know what they said, because he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why did he burn them?”
“I don’t know.” The brassy confidence had left her voice, and for the first time since I’d met her, she sounded unsure. “He never talks about the war, at least not to me. He won’t talk about his health, either, and he won’t let the doctors answer my questions. He just goes quiet and tells me everything will be fine.”
I stood from the bath and pulled a towel around myself. Damn you, Martin. Just tell her about the morphine. “Men don’t talk about the war,” I said.
“I just want to help,” she said. “We’re going to be married by Christmas. Mrs. Manders, you’ve been married before. How do you get your husband to tell you everything?”
“You don’t,” I said, and I reached into the tub and pulled the plug, watching the water spiral down the drain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX