Victoria and the Nightingale Read Online Free Page B

livid bruise over her left cheekbone was acquiring some frightening hues. As for her hair—and she was proud of her soft, spun-silk, corn-gold hair—she had never seen it look so drab, and there were one or two burrs adhering to it that she had collected on her passage through the wood the night before.
    She picked them out with unsteady fingers, and then decided that before she could eat she must have a bath. And she was actually in her bath when Mrs. Grainge returned with her breakfast tray.
    The bathroom adjoined the bedroom, and the housekeeper waited with the white silk robe in her hands until she was ready to slip into it again. She shook her head at her and clucked at her as she sat down at last behind the breakfast tray, but even then she wasn’t really surprised when Victoria looked with horror at the scrambled egg, although she greedily drank three cups of tea.
    The doctor arrived before Victoria had had a chance to dress, and after one long and careful look at her he insisted that she go straight back to bed. Under the influence of more sedatives she slept for the greater part of that day, and the next morning she woke feeling almost like herself, and was horrified because she had allowed herself to lie drugged and supine while Johnny was in another part of the house and possibly needing her.
    But before the doctor called that morning Johnny himself arrived in her room, looking so normal that she experienced a tremendous surge of gratitude for his normality.
    He climbed on to her bed in a freshly washed and mended T-shirt, and the short shorts that he had been wearing at the time of the accident, and told her that he had been having a wonderful time in the charge of one of the under-house maids, and the big bedroom in which he was sleeping was full of toys and books and everything that could possibly delight his heart. Victoria later discovered that it was part of the at present unused nursery quarters of the house, and many of the boxes of soldiers and the toy forts and train sets had been played with by Sir Peter Wycherley when he was young.
    Victoria and Johnny breakfasted together on that second morning of their stay at Wycherley Park, and afterward the doctor came and looked at them both again, and Victoria was permitted to get up. She dressed herself in a selection of the garments Miss Islesworth had so generously made over to her, and afterward she consigned Johnny to the care of the under-housemaid once more and made her way downstairs to the library.
    Sir Peter had sent up a message to the effect that, if she felt up to it, he would see her in the library; and perhaps because she had suddenly become hypersensitive and, indeed, a trifle clairvoyant, she knew before she reached the library that he had unpleasant tidings to convey to her.
    From Mrs. Grainge she had learned nothing about Johnny’s father, or the fate of the other victims of the accident. Dr. Brown had refused to discuss the subject with her, and now it was left to Sir Peter to, put her in possession of some highly disturbing facts.
    She was so sure of this that she stopped outside the library door when she reached it, having been directed to it by no less a person than Forster, the butler, himself, and drew a deep breath—a very deep breath—before knocking hesitantly on the panels of the door and waiting for a voice to call out to her to enter.
    But Sir Peter didn’t call out to her to enter. He whipped open the door himself, and stood looking at her with a mixture of conflicting expressions on his face as he indicated the chair she had occupied when she first entered the library.
    “You are feeling better?” She was wearing a slim little dress in navy and white, and it was deceptively simple and smelled delicately of exclusive French perfume. He made the same observation that the housekeeper had made. “You are certainly looking better.” Victoria answered in a small, awkward voice, by no means certain how she looked the night she