The Stress of Her Regard Read Online Free PDF Page B

the mud again he was running, racing the tumbling echoes back toward the inn, and it seemed to him that he got inside and slammed the door against the night just as the thunder crashed over the inn like a wave over a rock.
     
    * * *
     
    When Crawford awoke, several hours later, it was with the certainty that horrible things had happened and that strenuous activity would soon be required of him to prevent things from getting even worse; his head was throbbing too solidly for him to remember what the catastrophe was, or even
where
he was, but perhaps, as he told himself blurrily, that was something to be grateful for. More sleep was what he wanted most in the world, but when he opened his eyes he saw a smear of nearly dried mud on the sheet . . . and when he threw back the covers he saw that his feet and ankles were caked with it.
    With a gasp of real alarm he bounded out of bed. What on earth had he been doing last night? Sleepwalking? And where was Caroline? Had she thrown him out? Perhaps this place was some kind of madhouse.
    Then he saw the portmanteau under the window, and he remembered that he was in a village called Warnham, in Sussex, on his way to Bexhill-on-Sea to get married again. Caroline had died in that fire nearly six years ago. Oddly, this was the first time since her death that he had even momentarily forgotten that she was gone.
    So how had his feet got so dirty? Had he walked to this inn? Surely not barefoot. No, he thought, I remember now, I took the stagecoach here to meet Appleton and Boyd—Boyd is to be my groomsman, and Appleton is letting me pretend to Julia's father that his elegant landau carriage is mine.
    Crawford let himself relax a little, and he tried to conjure some cheer in himself, to see his recent fright and present sickness as just the consequences of old friends out carousing.
    If I was in the company of those two last night, he thought with a nervous and self-consciously rueful smile, God knows there are any number of ways I might have got so dirty; I suppose mayhem is assured—I only hope we didn't commit any
murders
or
rapes
. As a matter of fact I do seem to recall seeing a nude woman . . . no, that was only a statue . . .
    And then he remembered it all, and his fragile cheer was gone.
    His face went cold and he sat down. Surely that must have been a dream, that closed stone fist; or maybe the statue's hand never had been open, maybe
that
was what he had imagined, and he had really just drunkenly pushed the ring at the hand and then not noticed it fall when he had let go of it. And then there must have been something else, a bit of wire or something, around the stone finger when he saw it later.
    With the blue sky glowing now in the swirls of the window's bull's-eye panes, it was not too difficult to believe that it had all been a dream or a drunken mistake. It
had
to be, after all.
    In the meantime he had lost the ring.
    Feeling very old and frail, he unstrapped the portmanteau and pulled on his spare set of travelling clothes. Now he wanted hot coffee—brandy and water would be more restoring, but he had to go find the ring with as clear a head as possible.
    Appleton and Boyd weren't up yet, which Crawford was glad of, and after choking down a cup of hot tea—the only drink available in the kitchen—he spent an hour walking around the inn's muddy back yard; he was tense but hopeful when he started, but by the time the sun had climbed high enough to silhouette the branches of the oaks across the road he was in a fury of despair. The landlord came out after a while, and though he expressed sympathy, and even offered to sell Crawford a ring to replace the one he'd lost, he was unable to remember ever having seen any statue of a nude woman in the area.
    Finally at about ten Crawford's two companions came tottering down for breakfast. Crawford sat with them, but nobody had much to say, and he ordered only brandy.
     
     
CHAPTER 2
     
     
    I set her on my pacing