The Unchaste

The Crisis

The night that followed the morning in the Graveyard brought wind and sleet battering down the Windsor’s lattices and glass windows, resonating a tinker of frozen rain on glass. It had been a fortnight now since Delilah had left Stormcastle, since she had last witnessed that insufferable lord and yet, he was illocally present everywhere in her life, her thoughts.

Like a souvenir of her childhood and sometimes, like a keepsake that brought her nearer to Jake. Especially after the morning, when Delilah had witnessed Faith’s memorial at Ivybrough, Delilah couldn’t keep her mind off him. Faith Winter had been Richard’s younger sister_ six, at the time Delilah had left for London and a formidably healthy girl from what she remembered. Death eats quickly.

Andrew said that though it remained latent till the last, Faith too ended a prey of Tuberculosis. She would cough blood at times and at other, she would gasp for air from dry throat. Shivering in chill now and then, sweating hot. Her body died indecisive and too young to bear the fluctuation.

It was a disheartening knowledge for Delilah, like the dire weather tonight.

“I shall wish retire to my study.” Andrew mused, staring out of the rain- sprinkled window. “But the rain must be infernally loud upstairs. I cannot focus in such din.”

Delilah was sitting on the sofa, beside the massive hearth that was roaring with animated fire, mending her torn book. Mrs. Eves had dozed off on the sofa in process of her eternal knitting. The remaining porridge from the dinner rested on the side-table, in case one of the siblings had an appetite later. Both Andrew and Delilah stayed up late at night and it was only natural for one of them to tiptoe downstairs at two in the morning, looking for milk and oatmeal or some seasonal fruit.

A sudden shockening knock battered at their door and the three started. Betsy emerged from the kitchen and made for the door but Andrew stopped the maid, saying he would verify himself.

Beside, Chester was snarling with persistence.

Andrew opened the door, only to find Zillah Matthew there. She was a young widow, same age as Delilah’s, the only other resident in the bleary uphill, besides those from Windsor and Stormcastle.

The fact that she was weeping miserably made terrible possibilities arise in the host’s head.

“Mrs. Matthew.” Andrew exclaimed concernedly. “Please stand no more in rain. What’s ailing you?”

Delilah hurriedly helped the lamenting lady inside and removed her soaked cape, making her sit by the hearth. Zillah wouldn’t stop crying though it was very much apparent she had a big ration to voice out.

Mrs. Eves’ soothing word did have a pacifying effect on the widow but for Andrew and Delilah, the wait was long and much insufferable. Especially so to the former, for Andrew wouldn’t stop pacing to the window and back, tight fisted and tensed.

“I had a presentiment that the place was an ominous arch.” Zillah sobbed of late. “Now, my little Brandon will not wake up. It is such a terrible, terrible night and he won’t wake up.”

From what Delilah knew; Brandon was Zillah’s four summers old boy.

“What happened to Brandon?” Andrew inquired in hasty constraint but was silenced by one look from Delilah. “I mean, Mrs. Matthew, I request you to be less obscure. Pray tell us everything.”

“He_ My Brandon wanted to go to the moors this morning.” Zillah fell into wretched stammer. “I wouldn’t let him but his governess insisted that the weather was not that moist and it would do Brandon good, the April bog air. I allowed but I had my fears. By the nightfall, my boy returned cold and senseless, in the arms of a local parish-man and he wouldn’t wake up. I bullied his escort into telling me the truth and she told me that he had outstripped her in a pursuit down the moor, entered the ghastly ruins of Hillhearst abbey, then one scream and by the time they found him, my Brandon was out into the blackness.”