“I’ll take you in,” said Aubrey.
“Thank you,” said Amelia, ‘but I want the exercise. I’ll be just right for the walk in as long as they bring me back. Are you feeling all right, Susanna? “
“I feel a little sick.”
“Go and lie down. It will pass.”
Aubrey came up to our room with me. He looked anxious.
“Don’t fuss,” I said.
“It’s normal.”
I lay down and felt better immediately. I read one of the fascinating books which Stephen had given me and the morning slipped away. It must have been about midday when they brought Amelia home.
I heard the commotion and going to the window saw the doctor’s carriage and Amelia being brought into the house on a stretcher.
I dashed downstairs.
“There’s been an accident,” said the doctor.
“Let’s get Mrs. St. Clare into the house at once.”
“An accident …”
“Your husband’s all right. He’s bringing his carriage back, so you see there is not much damage there.”
I was bewildered. I wanted to ask what had happened but the first thing to do was attend to Amelia.
She half smiled at me and I was thankful that she was alive.
I turned fearfully to the doctor.
“She’s not badly hurt,” he said.
Amelia’s expression was full of fear and I knew why. She was thinking of her baby.
“She should rest now,” said the doctor.
“I’ll wait and see your husband. He insisted on bringing the carriage back himself.”
“I don’t understand …” I began.
Aubrey was driving his mulberry-coloured carriage up the drive. I ran out to him.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Nothing to worry about. We had a spill, that’s all. The greys suddenly took fright and ran amok. I could handle them, though.”
“Amelia …”
“She’ll be all right. It was nothing, really …”
“But… in her condition.”
“This sort of thing’s happened before. It could have been a nasty accident, but I prevented that. They’ll have to do some work on the carriage. We went right over. The side is badly scraped and the paint is scratched.”
“The carriage is not important,” I said sharply.
“It is Amelia.” Again I was reminded of that night. It was the expression in his eyes.
“I thought one of the grooms was going to take the trap to meet her after she had seen the doctor.”
“Yes, that was arranged. Then I said I would take the carriage and pick her up.”
“Oh!” I said blankly.
“Don’t look so worried. It’s all right. It was nothing, really. Just a little spill. We soon got the carriage up again, and I calmed down the greys.”
He was wrong.
Amelia lost her baby.
I sat beside her. There was little I could do to console her. She just lay there not caring whether she lived or died.
She said: “I expected one of them to bring the pony trap. I should never have got into that carriage.”
“Aubrey is a very skilful driver. I think he prevented a worse accident.”
“There could not have been a worse accident. I have lost my baby.”
“Oh Amelia … my dear Amelia … how can I comfort you?”
“There is no comfort.”
“Except that I feel for you, that I understand completely. No one could understand more.”
“I know. But nothing can help. It is the end of all my hopes. I have lost Stephen. I have lost my baby. There is nothing left for me.”
I just sat beside her in silence.
When I was alone with Aubrey he could not conceal his feelings.
“Think what this means to us.”
I looked at him in horror.
“How can you talk like that? Do you realize what Amelia is suffering?”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Aubrey, she has lost her child. The child meant everything to her.”
“She always lost children. It was to be expected.”
“But for that accident …”
“There would have been something else. The child is dead. It is no longer a menace.”
“A menace?”
“Dearest, don’t be such an innocent. That child was standing between my and your child’s inheritance. Well, that obstacle is removed.”
“I don’t want to think about it like that.”
“There are times when you can be very unworldly, darling.”
“I expect there are, and if this is one of them, then I am glad. I wish with all my heart that this had not happened.”
He took me by the shoulders and shook me, half playfully, but I saw something else in his eyes.
“Of course I’m sorry for Amelia. It’s a blow for the poor girl. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it has made it easier for us. You must see that. Now I can make plans. I don’t think you realize what this place entails. I can no longer be displaced by someone who has not yet been born. This is what was intended, what I came home for. “
“All the same, when you think of what it means to poor Amelia …”
“She’ll get over it. She’ll probably marry again and have a brood of children, then the loss of this one won’t be so important to her. I know she won’t get over it easily. She wanted this place. Of course she did. But it does seem wrong that when it was St. Clare property for so long, it should go to someone outside the family. After all, she is not a St. Clare … except by marriage. And the child … Well, it is hard to grieve because an unborn child has lost an inheritance simply because it is never going to be in a position to claim it.”
“You seem jubilant.”
Again he shook me with a kind of tender exasperation, and again I felt that shiver of fear. Would this go on? Would I always be watchful, waiting for the man I had seen emerge on that night?
“I am not jubilant, but I am not a hypocrite, and I should be if I told you that I hardly enjoyed seeing my inheritance snatched from under my nose. I would not be telling the truth if I said I was not glad it is coming back to me. I am sorry it had to happen this way, that’s all.”
He was smiling at me gently, but the glitter in his eyes continued to alarm me. And a suspicion had come into my mind. He had gone to pick her up in the town. Why had he not let one of the men go with the trap? He was not all that eager for Amelia’s company. But he had gone himself, and there had been an accident. I remembered how proud he was of his skilful handling of his horses and yet. there had been an accident . when Amelia was driving with him; and he knew, as we all did, that Amelia carried her children precariously and that the doctor had warned her of exerting herself in the slightest way.
No, I thought. I must not allow my thoughts to take that line . just because that night I had seen another side of him. He had had a blow on his head and he was not himself. on that night. I must not think the worst . if only for my own sake. But how can one prevent thoughts from coming into one’s head?
In less than two weeks Amelia decided to pay a visit to Jack and Dorothy St. Clare in Somerset. She told me that she felt the need to get away and I told her that I understood.
Sometimes I saw her looking rather oddly at Aubrey and I wondered whether the same thought which had come into my mind had occurred to her.
She was glad to get away and I think Aubrey was relieved to see her go. Perhaps I was, too. Her presence was a constant reminder of my suspicions, and I was trying hard to thrust them from my mind, to live normally, even to convince myself that I had imagined a good deal of what had happened on that night.
I did not want anything to intrude on my thoughts of the child I was carrying.
I went up to London to stay for a week with my father. He was delighted to see me and thrilled at the prospect of becoming a grandfather.