Leona bit her lip and turned her face from his, her fingers gripping his hand. “He can’t know, Nadir. He just can’t! We have always kept each other’s secrets. Please don’t tell him.”
“What am I supposed to say instead? You swooning and bleeding through your dress is hard to explain away.”
“I don’t know. Tell him it was a bad month.”
“There will be talk. I’m sure Dr. Sturgis will tell someone. The whole village will now by the end of the week.”
“You know him. He will believe anything you or I tell him.”
“Lee, what are you not telling me?”
When she turned back to him, the whites of her eyes burned pink and glistened with tears. “I can’t say, but look in my sewing box.”
Nadir followed her gaze to a tapestried box tucked under the chair in the corner. He crossed the room, averting his gaze at the waste basket stuffed with bloody sheets and her soiled gown, and knelt before the sewing box. Flipping open the lid, he held his breath, unsure of what he would find inside. At first he only found embroidery hoops, thread, and her half-finished pillow case, but as he moved them aside, bits of green poked through. Carefully untangling it from the myriad of threads, he drew out a long bundle. The plant had been cut into pieces with the roots, stalk, and heads in separate pieces but tied together with twine. It had been beheaded; its flowers had been cut off and all that remained of the top was a neck. The roots were missing in patches, and the once long stalk had been chipped away at both ends. He stared at the dissected plant for a long moment. Where had it come from? His brown eyes widened at the realization.
“You didn’t?” he cried, looking from the stalk to his cousin. “Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”
“You aren’t going to tell her, are you?”
His hands shook as he reburied it beneath her projects and shut the lid. “No, I wouldn’t want Lady Dorset to know my cousin is a thief. I can’t believe you would do this. What would possess you? Are you trying to get us all in trouble? You better have a very good reason, Leona.”
“Don’t be mad at me, Nadir. I had no other choice.”
He returned to her side and found her still facing the wall, unable to meet his gaze. All he could picture was the look on Nash’s face when she fell. The cold gravity of understanding in his gaze.
“Tell me this: what does Mr. Nash have to do with all of this? I know he is playing some part in it.”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t tell you.”
“You expect me to keep your secrets, but you won’t tell me any of them. I don’t understand what is going on with you or why you would do something so foolish.”
She clenched her eyes shut against a numb wave rippling through the muscles of her abdomen. “And you never will.”
Chapter Nineteen
Histories
Tying his manuscript in twine, Nadir frowned. It was far from perfect, but he longed to be rid of it and enjoy the last few weeks of his holiday without kings and harem girls hanging over his head. He had jotted a few corrections and notations in the margins of what he might consider fixing later, but Rogers would have to take it as is. After he returned to London, he would put the final polish on it. His publishers had made enough money off him to give him a little leeway for once. Dropping it into its casket, he slid on the lid and pushed it out of sight. Now that Leona was recovering from her illness, he would be heading home before the summer crowded descended upon Dorset in droves.
He stared out the window at the coast in the distance. He would miss the clean air and the stab of rocky sand beneath his feet. It wasn’t quite the holiday he had expected, but even with the odd circumstances, he enjoyed seeing his cousin for the first time in several years and spending time with Lady Dorset. At least he might see her again in town. Leona he might not see again for another five years. He would have to figure out how to prevent that.
In the hall below, the doorbell twilled. The door down the hall creaked open and his cousin’s head peaked out. Her skin was still pale and the shadow of dark circles ringed her eyes, but at least, she could walk again without stooping or rushing to the lavatory. Spotting Nadir coming out of his room, relief eased her tight features.
“Stay put, Leona. I got it.”
From the afternoon after Lady Dorset’s party, a parade of women had made the pilgrimage down the hill to the house to deliver pies and baskets of food as if they feared he and Argus would starve to death with Leona bedridden. At first, she appreciated the company, but after the fifth visitor in one day, she willingly took her medicine and fell asleep to escape their gossip-mongering under the guise of well-meaning questions. As he walked down the steps past the old paintings and photographs, the bell trilled again.
“I’m coming!”
At the bottom, he straightened and put on his best company smile. When the door opened and he saw the Randall Nash standing before him with his expensive suit and ebony walking stick, the smile fell from his face. The man’s quick eyes twitched at Nadir’s change in expression.
“What business do you have here?”
“Is Mrs. Rhodes home?” Nash asked coolly.
“She is indisposed. As you know, Mr. Nash, she has recently been unwell and is still recovering. Is there a message you would like me to relay to her?”
His rough voice hardened. “I would prefer to speak to the lady myself.”
“And I would prefer it if you left our property.”
Nash narrowed his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“I said get off our property. Whatever you have to say to my cousin, you will have to say to me.”
“This isn’t your business, boy,” he spat, his hand shooting toward the door. “Out of my way.”
Nadir flattened against the doorway as the older man tried to weasel past him, using his walking stick to whack at his ankles. Reaching behind him, Nadir slammed the door shut and rammed his shoulder into the older man. Nash stumbled back, tripping over the cracked cobbles of the path and landing in the grass. He stared up in fury and alarm as he raised his cane to fend the writer off.
As Nadir stepped closer, Nash held it back as if to swing. “Stay back, or I will crack your skull!”
The cane jutted toward Nadir’s abdomen, but he caught the shaft and pulled Nash forward onto his knees. The old man looked up, his gaze wavering before hardening once more. Despite his fear and age, Nash clung to the cane with all his strength, causing Nadir to have to tighten his hold.
Leaning close, Nadir growled, “Stay away from my cousin, old man. I don’t know exactly what is going on between you two, but if you come near her again, you will be the one with the cracked skull.”
With a shove, he released the cane and stormed back to the door. Constable Lyall and his wife lingered at the edge of the pavement, watching to see what either man would do next. Before he could see Nash rise and dust himself off or hear the slur slip from his lips, Nadir marched inside and slammed the bolt on the lock. At the top of the steps, Leona watched her cousin kick the umbrella stand before storming into the parlor.
“Who was it, Nadir?”
“No one of consequence.”
***
Eilian lingered in the portrait hall, his eyes locked on the painting of his great-grandfather. He seemed so different from the young man who leaned uncomfortably against a rock while forcibly having his portrait painted. Now his hair had grayed to match his eyes and lines had sprouted from the edges of his eyes and the corners of his mouth. In the four decades between the two paintings, the discomfort had disappeared, but what he had originally taken for an air of snobbery, he now recognized for what it was: contempt. He smiled to himself. Even after forty years of playing the earl, old Laurence still hated the pomp of it all. In the whole house, Eilian had only found three portraits: the hidden one of him as a young man, the official hall portrait, and the one hanging above the dining room fireplace where he posed with his wife and three children. While preparing for the party,
they had found dozens of miniatures and paintings of men in powdered wigs and women in fancy gowns, yet his great-grandfather was nowhere to be found, leaving his legacy in ink instead of oil.
At the bottom of the portrait, a slip of painted paper stated that the subject was the Seventh Earl of Dorset. Eilian stared at it for a long moment. He had read it over and over in the covers of the journals, but something nagged at his mind. Had there been a mistake? He was the ninth earl, his father was the eighth. What had happened to his grandfather? His mouth twisted into a lopsided frown as he wracked his brain for any stories his father told of his grandfather. The tales he had been told during dinners where his friends from his club had come to smoke and talk were always of their exploits as young men. Courtships gone awry, secret dalliances behind parents’ backs, near robberies by backwater bandits, but the man who came to retrieve the Harland Sorrell Eilian never knew was always called the Colonel. The Colonel dragged him home by the ear. The Colonel taught him everything he knew and kept him on the straight and narrow. Somehow he had always assumed the Colonel was his father.
Leaving behind the line of earls and countesses, he ducked into the library. His eyes trailed along the shelves until they came to rest on a massive tome bound centuries ago in filigreed leather. Eilian unlocked the cabinet and carefully laid the old Bible on the desk. Despite its age, it was better preserved than half of the books on ancient philosophers. It appeared as if it hadn’t been cracked more than a dozen times in two hundred years. With the tip of his finger, he slowly opened the front cover to reveal a family tree drawn in spider writing before becoming bolder, then turning to his great-grandfather’s thin and cramped hand as the tree spread across the page. His eyes ran across the minute names of Sorrells he had never heard of with birth and death dates he could scarcely imagine before coming to rest on William Sorrell, the earl who never was.
It read, William Sorrell. Born 1811. Died 1845., and nothing more.
Eilian tapped the page over the name thoughtfully. His father had only been ten years old when his father died. No wonder he heard little of the man; his father barely knew him. To the left of William’s name was an older brother, Alexander Sorrell, who had been born a year earlier and died nine years before him, and a sister, Beatrice Sorrell, whose name connected to a Fitzwilliam Nash and trailed to Randall Nash. He shared his birth year with her death year.
Returning to William, he traced the dangling branch Harland Sorrell hung from before it entangled with Millicent Holland. Eilian frowned. No one had added his name or Dylan’s to the family tree or his father’s death year. His stomach churned as he reached across the desk for a pen and carefully transcribed 1891 in his unsteady wrong-handed script. It only seemed right to close that chapter.
Eilian shut the book, raking a hand through his hair and staring through the fogged window into the orangery. What had he hoped to find in the family bible? He had gotten halfway through his great-grandfather’s journals, but as they dissolved into short-hand ledgers of expenses and remarks about men he could only imagine had been his friends or neighbors, his interest waned. There was little advice or thought as to how he rose from soldier to earl. It seemed he took it as his new charge and simply did what he had to. Eilian spun the signet ring sitting heavily on his finger. That was of little consolation.
Eilian checked the death date for Great-uncle Alexander one more time before walking back to his little nook in the drawing room. On the top of the desk, the decades of journals sat in a neat row. Sinking into the chair, he pulled out one of the middle volumes to check the date and found that it was only a year before his grandfather’s death. He thumbed through the pages, slowing as he reached his father’s birthday. Between doodles of plants and a half-fallen stone wall, the squished, puffy face of an infant stared back at him.
March 18th, 1835
My second grandchild was born today. William and Jenny have named him Harland after her father. While I would never want another child to be cursed with Laurence, I do wonder why no one thought to name a child after me. Maybe Alexander will when he finally settles down, though he doesn’t seem interested in anything other than books, botany, and riding through the grounds. Anna would have me convince him that now is the time to find a wife and leave off his “childish nonsense,” but I know first-hand that the wanderlust will abate eventually. Even if it doesn’t, women and children are remarkably portable.
March 30th, 1835
Little Randall is besotted with Harland. The child is without siblings or parents, and Harland will probably be his only chance at having a brother. Spending most of his day with a governess and a choleric old man is no way for a child to be raised. Jenny likes him. Maybe she and William will take him in, though Alexander would happily keep him as his own.
Eilian sighed. Alexander would never go on to have a child. His place on the family tree was barren, wedged between Beatrice and William’s families. What had killed the young nobleman? A twinge of pain flashed through Eilian’s arm at the thought of Alexander being killed by wanderlust. Flipping to the end of the journal, he watched his great-grandfather’s handwriting falter. For more than a week, he had transcribed the date and nothing more. Ink splotches had dripped onto the page, leaked by a lingering pen. Finally on August 8th, 1836, he wrote:
My Alexander is dead.
I have avoided this task. Committing it to paper makes it real, and I still am not certain I won’t wake and find him up to his elbows in dirt in the garden. No parent should live long enough to see their children die, and I have seen two. First, my daughter. Now, my son. Anna has taken to her bed and has not left since the accident. I can’t bear to lose her, too. All I can hope is that our grandchildren will give her reason enough to live. Little Randall will not leave her side. Whether he understands death yet, I do not know, but he understands sadness and has spent the day trying to revive her spirits with stories and puppet shows.
We held the funeral without her. Despite my reservations, I know it was for the best. I could barely stand to see another coffin loaded into the family crypt, and I do not know what it would have done to her in her fragile state. Harland cried through the entire service while the vicar glared at him and me. How could he expect me to tell Jenny to hand her babe over to the nurse on a day when all of us felt the sting of a young life lost? Any woman would hold tighter to their child. She looked to me with panic in her eyes as she tried to soothe him, so I took him and we walked around the gardens Alexander loved so much. I did not tell anyone, but I doubt I could have sat through the service. With Beatrice, I was able to say my good-byes and keep a parting gift in little Randall, but I have nothing left of Alexander. He was gone before I could reach him.
Unlike Jenny, William was senseless to the proceedings. Showed up stinking drunk again. If he hadn’t arrived before me, I would have sent him home on the end of my boot. At least his mother was not there to see it.
Hopefully grief is clouding his judgment because if this continues, I will be cutting him off. I do not care that he is to inherit now. My last living child will not kill himself with drink. I must think of a way to do this without causing Jenny or Harland to suffer by my hand. It is not their fault that William can’t resist the bottle. I weep for my family’s future.
It suddenly made sense now, why his father rarely drank even when his guests were rowdy and filled with red-nosed mirth. He couldn’t remember him ever becoming drunk at one of his mother’s parties when he merely could have stumbled up to bed. The habit had inadvertently passed to Eilian. When he did attempt to drink, it was usually under duress or to suppress the little voice in his head from telling him no. Luckily, that voice rarely spoke out of turn.
He was about to set the book aside when he spotted a familiar form peeking through the last few pages of thin parchment. On the back cover, a cage of metal and glass extended from the side of Brasshurst Hall. It was smaller than the monstrosity that existed now, but it was clearly the orangery with its tiny sprouting plants an
d clusters of trees.
August 31st, 1836
I have decided what I will do to honor my boy. Alexander did not leave me with grandchildren, but he left behind many children in his garden. He tended his plants faithfully, cultivating and breeding them with care. I can’t bear to see them die this winter, so the garden will be encapsulated. Upon surveying the grounds, we discovered that the garden really does abut the ruins of a Roman bath. Alexander had told me about the marble tiles and broken columns, but I had never bothered to look. The builder suggested connecting a new engine and water supply to the old piping running beneath the tiles. If it is done correctly, the orchids and other exotics will never need smoke pots or protection from the chill. I hope to add to his collection, so his legacy can live on.
I also decided to buy one of those steamer contraptions. Lord Newbury and Sir Lisle are resistant to the idea of mechanical coaches, citing that they are unreliable and will surely go out of fashion in a few years. While all that may be true, I can no longer trust horses after what happened to my boy.
A pang of guilt rang through Eilian’s mind. The orangery—the monstrosity—had been a memorial to a young man who was nearly his age when he died. Looking over his shoulder, he stared at the French doors leading out into the murky greenery. His feet carried him out the doors and down the path to the pool. The engine’s pulse thrummed and somewhere beyond bees hummed, drifting from flower to flower. Pulling off his shoes and stockings, he dipped his feet into the water of the pool and closed his eyes. All around him flowers sprang a new. What had begun as a Taj Mahal for a dead boy became a palace of perpetual life.
Chapter Twenty
Unnatural
Hadley rumbled down the cobbled pavement, her hair whipping from her bun as she rounded the corner and narrowly avoided careening into Argus Rhodes. He smiled softly, tipping his hat to her as he continued on toward the market with an empty basket. At the edge of the property, she wedged her heavy bicycle between the stone fence and oak tree before peering through the curtains from across the yard. If she turned her head the right way, she could just make out the edge of Leona Rhodes’s sleeve as she sat on the sofa in the parlor. Tidying her hair and squaring her shoulders, Hadley feigned an amiable smile and rang the bell. When the door opened, she had expected to see Leona or Barnes but was pleasantly surprised to find Nadir Talbot staring back at her.
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 70
