But any further words were cut short by the noise from outside. A door opened and closed. The sound of footsteps descended stone steps and moved onto the lawn. Winston looked towards the window, frowning. Then a sudden realization seemed tostrike him. He leaped from the chase and vaulted it to reach the window.
Adeline sat up.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I cannot see. There is no moon!” Winston snarled.
He tore from the room. Adeline scrambled to her feet, picked up her skirts and ran after him. It did not take long to realize that Winston was running for Louisa’s room. That knowledge left a chill in Adeline’s veins. It turned to ice when she saw that the door to Louisa’s room was wide open. Winston had disappeared inside but now he came out.
“She is not there.”
“Where could she be?” Adeline said incredulously.
“Anywhere. When she was young, she was a sleepwalker. I fear the ailment has returned.”
“She must have gone outside!” Adeline exclaimed, remembering the sounds of the door and the footsteps they had heard outside.
They both ran. Along the way, Adeline paused to remove her shoes. Then she continued running in stockinged feet towards the nearest door that would lead them to the gardens. To Louisa.
Chapter Eighteen
“Louisa!”
Winston was already running before the name had left his throat. His heart leapt to his mouth, the breath in his chest burning as he took the stairs in two strides and cut along the corridor like a bull through hedgerows.
Adeline was ahead of him; he did not know how she had got there so swiftly, barefoot, her hair unbound, a shawl snatched about her shoulders. A candle guttered in her hand and threw the long sweep of her shadow along the wainscot as she flew. Later, he would remember the pale flash of her ankle and the soft thud of her small feet on the runner. Now there was only his child, the open door, and the night.
He crashed into the vestibule at the same instant Adeline flung the outer door wide. Wind pressed the house as if it meant to push the walls inward. The flame went out at once, and darkness cloaked them.
“Hold,” Adeline said sharply, turning to shove the candlestick at the footman who had stumbled after them with a tinderbox.
“No light. And no shouting.”
Winston’s fists clenched. “She is in the grounds…”
“She is asleep,” Adeline answered, already down the steps, her voice low and quick as a physician’s. “If we startle her, if you call to her, she could run. Or wake in terror and fall.”
He did not understand anything except the shape ahead, small and white as a dropped handkerchief against the darker night. Louisa moved with her arms loose at her sides, her head tilted as though listening to a distant voice.
She should never be barefoot; the gravel will bruise. The cold will bite.
Adeline glanced once at him. Whatever she saw in his face steadied her.
“We will flank. I will go nearer. You keep to her right. Not too close. Let us turn her very gently.”
He swallowed the roar that wanted to tear free and followed. The wind was a living thing, flinging his hair into his eyes. The clipped yews on the front lawn hunched like watchful sentries, and beyond them the first trees gathered, beech, ash and blackthorn. Louisa stepped between the gateposts withoutlooking, the white of her nightgown a dim moth’s wing as it slipped under branches. He heard the soft hiss of her hem through fallen leaves.
His every sense strained forward. He remembered a different night, a different white gown. The long reeds lean in. The mist. The hush when the water took her.
No. Not again.
“Louisa,” Adeline murmured, as if to the air rather than the girl, “my darling, you are very clever. We must turn here. Yes…this way. The path is kinder.”
Her hands did not touch, not quite. With each word, she edged herself between Louisa and the deeper dark where the trees thickened. Winston matched her on the other side, a wall if need be. They moved in this fragile formation beneath interlaced branches. The wood smelled of damp bark and soil. Small noises were very loud. Somewhere a fox barked, a short, rude note. The leaves rasped a little with each step. Louisa’s breath sighed in and out, no faster than if she lay upon her pillow. Adeline’s voice poured like warm milk.
“There you are, dear. Always where you mean to be, that is what I have noticed. You go exactly where you intend. And now you intend to turn to the right, see? Because that's where I am…”
Even in his terror, something in Winston’s chest eased at the calm absurdity of it.
