Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Front Door
Gwen Cuyler steps into the foyer in front of eighty mourners, sobs, and names Lydia the cruel one. Lydia slaps her, is told to kneel or leave, and leaves. Kendrick follows with the boathouse key.
Gwen Cuyler stepped through our front door for the first time and burst into tears in front of eighty guests.
My father had been buried four hours earlier.
I was standing at the foot of the stairs in my black dress, holding a glass of water I hadn't touched.
Kendrick Ferrow, our butler, had opened the door for her.
He was still holding it, and his face told me nothing.
Gwen was twenty-four, the housekeeper's daughter, in a pale blue cardigan with a thin gold locket at her throat.
She had grown up two hundred yards away in the gatehouse cottage.
In all that time her mother had never let her past the kitchen step.
Gwen pressed both hands to her mouth and stared up at the chandelier.
"Oh," she said. "It's exactly how I always pictured it."
Then she sank to her knees on the marble, right in the middle of the foyer, where everyone could see.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm only a servant's girl. I know I don't belong in a house like this."
A woman by the coat table said, "That poor child."
Gwen cried harder.
She wasn't looking at the guests, or at me.
She was looking up at my father's portrait above the stairs.
I looked for her mother.
Maud Cuyler stood in the kitchen doorway with a tray of cups.
She didn't look at her daughter.
She looked at the portrait, and then she looked at me.
Preston Ames came to my elbow and put a hand on my back.
"Lyd, she's grieving too," he murmured. "Go help her up. I'll smooth the rest over, trust me."
Preston was my fiancé of fourteen months.
He said "trust me" the way other people said "um."
Gwen wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand and lifted her chin.
"The girl at the gate had always known the house would hurt her," she said softly, to nobody.
A few guests sighed.
Then she turned her wet face toward the room.
"Miss Lydia, please don't be angry. I know you said the cottage girl should stay outside. I only wanted to say goodbye to him."
I had said nothing of the kind.
I hadn't spoken to Gwen Cuyler in five years.
Eighty heads turned toward me at once.
"Lydia," my mother said from the drawing room arch.
Constance Aldercott never raised her voice, and she didn't now.
"Help her up, and apologize."
"For what?"
"Lydia."
I looked down at Gwen.
Her tears were running fast and pretty, and her eyes kept sliding to the left, toward the guests.
She was checking who was watching.
I put my glass down on the hall table.
I crossed the marble and stood over her.
"Get up," I said. "Nobody in this house is dying. Stop acting as if you are."
Gwen didn't move.
She sobbed once, perfectly, and looked up at me.
So I slapped her.
It was an open hand across her left cheek, and the sound cracked up the staircase and back.
Her locket swung out on its chain.
Somebody dropped a fork.
Gwen put her fingers to her cheek and kept her face turned away from the room.
Then she whispered, so only I could hear it, "Thank you."
I stared at her.
"Now they've all seen," she said.
"Lydia Aldercott." My mother's voice had gone flat as a plate.
Preston grabbed my wrist.
"What is wrong with you?"
"Take your hand off me."
He did, but he looked at me.
"You will kneel and apologize to Gwendolyn in front of these people," my mother said. "Or you will leave this house tonight."
Nobody in the foyer breathed.
I looked at my father's portrait.
He was smiling the way he always smiled at me when I made trouble, with one eyebrow lifted, like he wanted to see how it came out.
I took off my engagement ring, set it on the hall table beside my water, and picked up my bag.
So I stepped out.
The front door was still open.
Kendrick had never let go of it.
I walked past him, down the steps, onto the gravel, and nobody came after me except one set of footsteps, even and unhurried.
"Miss Aldercott."
I kept walking.
"Lydia."
That stopped me.
He hadn't said my first name in five years.
Kendrick held out my coat in one hand and a small brass key in the other.
"The boathouse," he said. "The stove works, and I put blankets in an hour ago."
"You knew I'd need it."
"Your mother told me at noon to bring Miss Cuyler to the front door at four o'clock."
His jaw moved.
"I should have told you. I didn't."
"Why are you telling me now?"
He looked back at the lit windows, where my mother was already turning to the guests with her hands spread.
"Because your room is being emptied for Miss Cuyler," he said. "Mrs. Aldercott gave that order before the first guest arrived."
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