The Shrouded Walls by Susan Howatch

Mary’s. Perhaps she was doing lessons with her governess.
    Life perhaps would not be so unpleasant as a governess, I thought. No strange new relations to meet and satisfy, no mansion suddenly thrust into one’s control, no husband whom one was nervous of displeasing. A governess could always leave her employment to seek a better position if she were unhappy. A wife could not leave her husband and home.
    I reached the end of the corridor and paused to look back. I had a stifling feeling of being trapped then, a tremor of horror which swept over me in sickening waves. I would be here for the rest of my life at Haraldsdyke, and the future yawned before me, decade after decade of nothingness. I was only seventeen. I was still so young. Far too young to be trapped in an old house with a group of strangers who might or might not resent me, far too young to be shackled to a man I did not understand and certainly did not love.
    It was not that I was afraid of him, I told myself. Merely that I was uneasy in his presence.
    I was too frightened then to admit my fear and look it squarely in the face.
    Reaching out blindly in an attempt to break my train of thought I opened the door at the end of the corridor and went into the room beyond.
    There was a four-poster in one corner and by the window stood a huge oak desk massively carved. The room seemed quiet, unoccupied. I sat down on the chair by the window, my elbows on the desk, and stared out across the Marsh beyond.
    It would be better when Alexander came down from Harrow. Perhaps we could even journey to London together for a few days. If Axel allowed it. If I managed to escape pregnancy.
    The thought of pregnancy terrified me. I felt as if I were totally unready to face further unknown ordeals, and I had no desire to bear Axel’s children.
    I wished desperately then that I could talk to someone of my fears, but I knew as soon as the wish became a conscious thought that there was no one in whom I could confide. Even a parson would be horrified by my revulsion against pregnancy; I could almost hear the unknown rector of Haraldsford say shocked: “But marriage is for the procreation of children ...”
    But there were obviously ways of avoiding pregnancy, I thought. Otherwise my mother would have had other children besides Alexander and myself.
    Perhaps a doctor ... I almost laughed in contempt at myself for thinking of the idea. I pictured what the family doctor at Winchelsea would say if I were to ask him if there was a way in which I might avoid producing an heir for Haraldsdyke. He would go straight to Axel.
    I was aware of fear then, the sharp prickle beneath my scalp, the sudden moistness of my palms. How absurd, I thought, trying to be angry with myself. I was never afraid of Axel until ... Until I heard Ned accuse Axel of murder; until I realized later that Axel had the means, motive and opportunity to murder Robert Brandson last Christmas Eve at Haraldsdyke ...
    But Rodric had killed his father, Rodric who had apparently enjoyed life so much, yet had destroyed life in a fit of rag e ...
    “I don’t believe it,” I said aloud to the silent walls of Haraldsdyke. “I don’t believe Rodric killed his father. I don’t believe it.”
    My heart was beating very fast. I sat frozen into immobility behind the great desk, my eyes seeing not the isolated sweep of the Marsh beyond the window, but the abyss which was opening before me, the ground which was crumbling beneath my feet. And as I sat there, my whole being locked in a paralysis of panic, the immense silence was broken by the sound of footsteps in the passage and the next moment the door was opening and someone was entering the room.
    I whirled around as if the Devil himself had come in search of me, but it was only Robert Brandson’s ward, the girl Mary Moore.
    She was wearing a pink muslin gown and the color did not flatter her ungainly figure. Her hair was lank and was fast uncurling itself so that her ringlets were