Household by Florence Stevenson Page A

perpetrator, for then she would remind him of her subsequent actions when she had behaved as shamelessly as any Covent Garden drab.
    “You were drugged,” was always his response.
    “I was possessed and could not have been possessed were not there evil in my own soul,” she had answered on more than one occasion. As she interpreted it, the evil had been in her wanting and welcoming his caresses, she, a virgin and a good Catholic girl. There were times in these last years when he wondered how their life would have been had he not fallen in with Sir Francis’ plans and instead had followed her to Ireland. Would he have wanted her as much once he got to know her? He was not being fair, and he knew it. Until her banshee-augmented depression had settled on her, she had been delightful.
    “Lud, man, what’s happened to my sister of late?”
    Richard winced. That was the voice of Catlin’s brother Mahon on his last visit, shortly after the death of his namesake. “She had such a sense of fun, and now she’s as grave as a nun.” Mahon had eyed Richard suspiciously. Though the Irish were known to be poetical, Mahon had not been speaking in rhymes; he had been shocked and depressed by the appearance and mental attitude of his sister. He had not visited them again, and Catlin rarely mentioned him. She was not given to saying very much on subjects other than sin, sorrow and fate. Richard winced. Of late, she had been constantly adjuring him to remember his immortal soul, something that appeared to trouble her greatly. Much as such references annoyed him, he did not argue with her on matters spiritual or ecclesiastical. Her voice had grown in proportion to her size, and she could shriek like her apochryphal banshee when aroused.
    Operating on the theory that “soft answers turneth away wrath,” his conversations with his wife were more often than not, a series of nods. He used an emphatic nod for agreement, a hesitant nod for disagreement and a medium nod for almost everything else. It was amazing and gratifying how well that worked. He was quite sure that Catlin, who of late talked enough for them both, was quite unaware of his silences. It did not make for a particularly felicitous relationship, but he had ceased to expect felicity. Most men he knew never sought for it in the confines of marriage. They had mistresses to warm their beds and wives to bear their brats.
    He did not have a mistress. If the truth were to be told, his desire for sexual adventures had been largely quelled on the night of the orgy, aspects of which could still bring a flush to his cheeks, amazing in a man who had just recently celebrated his forty-first birthday and was consequently in the “the yellow leaf of his life.” That melancholy reflection brought forth a groan, one he regretted immediately, for with a gargantuan wheeze, Catlin, who was evidently also awake, heaved herself closer to him and placed a heavy hand on his stomach.
    “Richard...” she moaned.
    He produced a yawn almost as prodigious as her wheeze, hoping it would quell her enthusiasm for chatter in the night. “Yes, my love,” he burbled through a second yawn.
    Neither proved effective for she said fearfully, “Do you hear the cat?”
    “No, my love,” he said soothingly.
    “I do. I hear Molly also.”
    “You’ve been having another one of your bad dreams.”
    A pillow, dislodged by Catlin’s vigorous shaking of her head, slammed against Richard’s face. “’Tis no dream. There’s evil all around us. I feel it,” she intoned. Edging closer to him, she added, “Hold me, Richard, my dearest, for I am sore afraid.”
    It was no small task to perform but Richard, thinking it was high time they had separate rooms, dutifully made the effort, while his wife sobbed noisily in the semicircle of his straining arms.
    ❖
    On a higher floor in another wing of the Hold, Juliet Veringer awakened from a deep sleep, her ears alerted to the keening of the banshee and the howl of