Educating Elizabeth. Yasmine Hyde

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СКАЧАТЬ body was already septic. He'd left a large bottle of laudanum before walking out.

      "Make her comfortable," had been his last words.

      That had been five days ago. Five hellacious days of Bethany writhing and groaning in pain when she wasn't unconscious from the medication.

      There was a knock at the door as someone called out, "Your soup, ma'am."

      Wiping at her own mouth and nose, Elizabeth rose then moved to the door on unsteady legs. Turning the handle, she opened the door and stared at the boarding house owner's thirteen-year-old daughter. The girl, Mary, usually delivered the soup, bread, and fresh water for Elizabeth to tend to Bethany.

      "I need the undertaker." Elizabeth tried to keep her voice steady, but she could hear the wavering in her own ears.

      Mary's gaze shifted from Elizabeth to the bed beyond her shoulder. Sadness filled the girl's blue eyes as she pushed the tray toward Elizabeth then walked away.

      Balancing the tray, Elizabeth used her foot to kick the door closed. She moved to the table and set her burden down. Staring at the food and the pitcher of water, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. The woman going cold on the bed behind her had become a friend of sorts during their travel. Elizabeth felt horrible that someone so young had lost her life.

      Glancing over her shoulder at the ashen woman, she thought about all of Bethany's hopes and dreams. She'd talked nonstop for weeks about her proxy husband and the new life she would have in Grover Town. Once she'd gotten sick and they had settled into the room, Bethany had made her read the letters from the doctor out loud.

      Most of the letters described what he did on a regular basis in caring for the sick and broken. None of it did Elizabeth find appealing to hear or read. The man described his home and the changes to the clinic and what was going on in the town with all the new people moving in since the train had set up there.

      "Now, she will never have the life she'd hoped for." Elizabeth poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher. She drank it, not because she was thirsty, but she used it to rinse down the bitter taste of bile from her mouth.

      She couldn't think about how her companion's life had ended, without thinking about how her own life was empty. If either of them had to die, it probably would have been better for it to have been Elizabeth. "No one would have missed me."

      Her parents were dead and her relationship with her only close relative was distant at best. One day, she'd gone out into the town and had asked around about a tanner named Eileen and she'd gotten more than a few strange looks. When her brother had come home for their parents' funeral, she'd sworn he'd told her that he'd been in or around Kansas City and had said something about planning to marry some woman who worked with cow or cattle skin. She hadn't really paid much attention to the things he said, she'd been devastated and refused to leave Boston and travel west with him.

      Now, there was really no place for her to go. She was out of money. She couldn't even post a letter if she had someone to write to. She thought about her friend Margie, but officers by now would have questioned her. Margie and the entire city would know Ronald Gerner was discovered dead at the Taylor house. No, she couldn't wire Margie; it was too risky.

      She didn't even think it was best to stay in this city. If she didn't think of a plan, the law would eventually track her here. No one had to tell her that the hunt was on for Elizabeth Taylor.

      "What will I do?" She stared at the bundle of letters and papers on the nightstand. Perhaps she could give them to the owners of the boarding house and ask them to post them. "But where?"

      She had a thought about the agency that had set Bethany up with the proxy husband and sent her on her way.

      There came another knock.

      When she opened the door this time, there was the round woman with the short, capped, dirty blonde natural curls, another man with a cleric collar, and another slim man dressed all in black whose eyes were dark as coal in his pale face. The last man made a cold chill slide down Elizabeth's back.

      "I've come to give the last rites." The priest was the first to come in as he was followed by the other two.

      There was a lot of discussion happening about cleaning the body and getting it moved and the room having to be aired out, all while the priest was removing a small, clear bottle from the folds of his dark robe.

      As he uncorked it, he asked, "What's the name of the deceased?"

      "Beth…Elizabeth Taylor." Her own name came tumbling out of her mouth before she could process her actions. Numb, she watched as he tipped what she assumed was holy water on his fingertips before he touched the dead woman's forehead, making the sign of the cross.

      Another chill washed over her and made her nauseous as she listened to the man send a benediction for the end of the life of a woman known as Elizabeth Taylor on the same day that marked her birth.

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