“I’ll go with you,” she said.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “All right,” he said at last. “But keep close.”
They followed Cusworth down the hall. Inside the study, a window stood open, the curtains playing in the breeze. The drawers of the desk sat ajar. A dozen books lay scattered on the carpet.
Crispin stooped to retrieve something. A flower, which he showed to her. “A white bluebell,” Jane said, startled. “Those are very rare.”
“Do we keep these?” Crispin asked the butler.
“No, sir, we never have done. It must have been dropped by the intruder. I touched nothing, sir—I did not wish to disturb the scene, lest the police want to see it as it stands.”
“Send for them,” Crispin bit out. “You should have done so at—”
“Wait,” Jane said. She had a very uneasy feeling. Why had the books been pulled out? And from only two shelves. The rest stood untouched. “Don’t send for them just yet.”
Whatever Crispin saw in her face caused a guarded look to come over his own. “Cusworth, give us a moment.”
“Certainly, sir. I’ll have one of the footmen run round to Bow Street—”
“Not yet,” Crispin said. “Wait a moment. I’ll come speak to you.”
The door closed behind the butler. Jane, conscious of Crispin’s probing look, walked over to the molested bookcase, taking care to step around the scattered books. Sixteen, twenty, twenty-two, thirty . . . She squinted at the other shelves, still full. It seemed likely that all the books from the emptied shelves were accounted for. Some of them were no doubt very valuable, but they had not been the intruder’s aim.
“What are you thinking?” he asked from behind her.
“I’m not certain,” she said slowly. “But . . .” How to put this delicately? “I would not call the police just yet. It is possible . . .”
“Your uncle,” he said tersely, “will need to account for his whereabouts this evening.”
He was a natural suspect, to be sure. But the ransacked desk . . . “Whoever was here tonight wished a look at your papers. I doubt my uncle would have required that. You worked together very closely.”
But Burke had not trusted him, had he? He had asked Jane to spy on Mason—in one matter in particular.
She wheeled back, frowning at the desk. “You went through its contents,” she said. “Didn’t you? A few days ago.”
He nodded. “I was looking for notes I might have made on the bill. But I found nothing useful. Documents from three, four years ago. Correspondence and bills and whatnot. Nothing more recent.” He grimaced. “I might have ransacked this place myself, in fact. I’ve no idea where I kept more recent files.”
The intruder, too, had found nothing useful in the desk. And so he had turned to the bookshelf . . . ?
She pivoted back. The bare shelving showed the pattern in the plaster wall, the intermittent medallions. She tucked her hands beneath her arms. She felt quite cold suddenly.
Crispin noticed, perhaps. He crossed to close the window. The lock snapped into place with a brassy clink. Footsteps creaked; she heard him curse softly.
“Unlocked. All of them.” He walked down the row of windows, fastening them one by one. “A moment, Jane. Cusworth needs to check all the others.”
“Of course.” She remained staring at the bookcase as he walked out.
Below the emptied shelves, a single book caught her attention. It sat at a slight angle apart from the others, as though someone had hooked it by the spine but not managed to tug it free.
She watched her hand move toward it, knock it out. Then the next, and the next. Spines thumping, cracking against the carpet.
One of the medallions looked different from the others. Raised a fraction higher. She laid her hand on it. Traced the scalloped patterning with her fingertips.
The medallion fell into her hand.
She recoiled, her heart drumming. The medallion had concealed a lever of some kind.
The door opened. Without thinking, she turned, placing her body in front of the bookshelf, the medallion clutched behind her back.
“It seems the maid is in hysterics,” Crispin said. “I should go speak to her. Calm her down, see if she has any information.”
“Yes.” Her voice came out hoarse. She cleared her throat. “I’ll look through the books, see if there’s anything to find.”
“Indeed not,” he said curtly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until we—”
“Crispin.” How cool she could sound! “You said it yourself: the windows were unlocked. Well, they’re locked now. And I very much doubt a prowler, even a very stupid one, would come back the same night he was caught at his work.”
“Fine logic,” he said, equally cool. “But you will come with me anyway.” He extended his arm.
Given a moment’s clear thinking, she might have wondered at this panic inside her, this desperate need to get him out of the room before she pulled that lever. “I see. When I lay down on that sofa tonight, I did not know I had surrendered the right to make decisions for myself.”
He recoiled as though she’d struck him. “Christ, Jane.” And then his mouth tightened. “Apologies,” he said stiffly. “But I—that is not, of course, what I meant. I only think of your safety.”
She wanted to apologize too. But some demon, self-serving and vicious, had seized hold of her tongue. “Then I will thank you for letting me look around a bit more. I may only be a woman, but perhaps I can spot something useful.”
He studied her a moment, looking troubled and . . . hurt? But then he etched her a precise, cutting bow and walked out.
She swallowed. Waited a moment, her ears straining, to make sure he would not return.
And then she turned back and pulled the lever.
On a groan, the bookshelf swung inward.
The passage it made was narrow. Darkness was all she could see. But she knew what she would find inside. Crispin Burke’s papers.
You will listen for a name, he’d told her. It felt so long ago. She had largely forgotten about that charge. Stupid, sloppy, unforgivable.
No. The truly unforgivable thing: she had no care for any of his papers but those that had been written in her hand. Those alone, she did not wish this Crispin to see.
Her skirts made it difficult to wedge herself through the passage. The darkness felt profoundly still and close, but the air was not stale. This was no ancient priest’s hole, no abandoned secret passage. This space had been used too recently to smell like forgotten secrets.
But forgotten secrets were precisely what it contained.
She groped along the wall until she found the valve. The gas lamps made a peculiar whomp, then hissed to life.
Another desk in here, smaller, the chair drawn back at an odd angle—as if its occupant had only just shoved back his chair to rise.
She felt frozen as she stared at it. “Hello,” she said very softly. Hello, Mr. Burke. I have not seen you in some time. His presence seemed to fill the room, cold and menacing.
This desk’s drawers also stood ajar. As did those belonging to the three tall wooden chests that stood against the wall. The intruder had found this room as well. He had known to look for it somehow.
Perhaps it had been her uncle’s man.
One of the chests had long and narrow drawers, the same type her father had kept to house plans of his factories. The other two had deeper, taller drawers, each of which was engraved with letters, sections of the alphabet.
She flew to the first one, sinking down to pull open the drawer marked L–M.
Inside, neat dividers further separated the files: Mason, J.
With trembling hands she pulled out the envelopes. Her handwriting, uncharacteristically sloppy. She had addressed these envelopes in a fever of resentment.
She slid shut the drawer and stood. Along the other wall hung a great map of the world, decorated with colored pins. A line of red pins arced out from Southampton, leading down th
e western coast of Africa, cutting across the bottom of the world to a point in the ocean. Nothing there. A spot close to the coast of Australia.
The name is Elland. That is all, Miss Mason. You see? Very simple.
But I have never heard my uncle mention a Mr. Elland. As I said, I fear I won’t be of use.
Elland is not a man, Miss Mason. It is, I believe, the name of a penal colony. A very small one. Not much known. But your uncle knows it. Of that, I feel certain.
Temptation felt dark, a slick black poison coursing through her blood. Step out. Shut the door. Replace the books. He does not need to know.
But that map, those pins the color of blood, felt like a warning. A warning from the old Mr. Burke. This is not a secret to keep. She could almost hear his mocking voice. A great passion, is it? A passion great enough to deceive and betray the man whom you claim to so value?
What had happened tonight had been . . . unbearably sweet. She had allowed herself, at last, to believe.
But she had not given herself to him entirely. She might yet tell the truth. Endure his shock, his scorn and dawning contempt. And then emerge unscathed. Whole-bodied.
But not whole. Not any longer.
She was a coward. She did not want to see his face change as she confessed the whole of it.
She would not wait to see his face change.
She turned down the valve until the room sank into blackness, then inched back into the study. The detached medallion lay discarded on the carpet. She stepped over it, feeling the maw of the passage behind her like an open mouth spilling darkness into this brightly lit room. It seemed to unfurl tendrils of cold air that wrapped around her as she walked to the door.
He would come back and find the passage. He would push inside and make his discoveries. She would be waiting. Whatever came later, whatever look on his face when he finally rejoined her upstairs, she would endure it. She had that much courage.
But not enough to leave behind her letters. Those she carried with her as she mounted the stairs. They would make fine kindling.
* * *
The parlor maid, Mary, sat curled up by the kitchen fire, huddled in a great dark blanket, the other maids and a scullery girl fussing over her. As they caught sight of Crispin, they scattered like dandelion seeds in a wind, leaving Mary to hunch into herself as she warily watched him approach.
“I’m ever so sorry,” she blurted. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble—”
“It wasn’t you who caused it,” Crispin said. “But we hoped you might say, once again, what happened tonight.”
Cusworth cleared his throat officiously. “Mary here—”
“The girl can speak for herself.” Crispin knelt beside her, causing her to shrink back. “Another Mary?” he asked gently. “That makes four of you, which seems rather unlikely. How many Marys do I employ?”
The girl’s laugh sounded forced and uneasy. “My real name is Katie.”
“Katie,” Crispin said. “A fine, lovely name. Tell me, Katie, what happened.”
A hand crept out of the woolen folds, showing her white-knuckled grip. “I had just laid the fires in the bedrooms.” She looked whey-faced, freckles livid on her cheeks and in the corners of her mouth. “As I came down the stairs, I heard a sound, a thump, from the study. I thought—why, something has fallen.” Her russet brows knitted. “Don’t reckon I gave any thought about how it would have fallen. But I walked over to check, and when I opened the door—” Her breath shook. “A man jumped out at me. Head to toe in black. I screamed, I did! Never had such a fear. I thought he would kill me—garrote me, just like they almost did you, sir!”
“Mr. Burke was not garroted,” Cusworth put in sharply. As though his master’s dignity relied on the correction of this small detail.
“Oh,” the girl said, her gaze dipping to the spot where Crispin’s cravat rose to conceal his throat. “Begging pardon, sir! The newspapers all said—”
“That’s all right.” Crispin took effort to keep his tone mild, encouraging. “Go on, Katie. What then?”
“Why . . . I shrank back, and he turned on his heel and bolted across the room. He jumped out through the window.” She swallowed. “I thought he would be kilt. But when I rushed over to look, he was running away.”
“You never saw his face?”
She shook her head forcefully. “He was wearing a dark cloth, all the way up to—” She touched the bridge of her nose.
“And he never spoke?”
“No, sir.”
“Think carefully.”
She hesitated. Her eyes widened. “Why . . . sir, I think he did. He spoke a curse when he saw me. I had forgotten.”
“And how did he sound?”
She reddened. “Like . . . like quality, sir. A proper gentleman.”
That boded ill. No common robbery, then. Crispin rose. “Thank you, Katie. You’ve been very helpful. Mr. Cusworth, Katie will require a few days to recover from this shock. I hope you will manage to keep the household running smoothly in her absence.”
“Of course.” Cusworth spoke tightly. “Sir, I do not wish to presume. But shall you send for the police now?”
It was tempting. But he thought of the look on his wife’s face as she’d spied the destruction, her curious hostility that had seemed, to him, borne more of panic than of offense.
Until he understood that reaction, discretion might serve them better. “Later, perhaps. You’ll have my instructions.”
He turned on his heel to go find his wife.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The knocking was what finally ruptured his trance. When Crispin looked up from the pages, he had the sense that it had continued for quite some time, only now pervading his awareness. He rubbed his bleary eyes. “Yes?”
“Mr. Burke?” Cusworth’s voice, nervous, high-pitched. “I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but a letter has come. Quite urgent, the man assured me.”
He rose slowly, his joints feeling rusted. When he stepped out into the study, the morning light streaming onto the carpet came as a shock. He had gone looking for Jane, and instead found the bookshelf gaping open, the room inside . . .
He had been there all night.
His majordomo had a hard time holding his eye. The man kept glancing nervously at the opening through which Crispin had emerged. But he was too well trained to ask questions. “From your brother, sir,” he said as he handed over the envelope.
The note was brief:
Caught a rumor after you left.
Third reading to begin and end today
They mean to push for a vote.
He crumpled the paper with a curse.
“Shall I—shall I summon the police, then, sir?”
Cusworth’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. And then, all at once, the remark registered, and struck Crispin as funny.
He laughed. He saw from Cusworth’s pinched expression how inappropriate that was. But he could not help himself. He sagged back against the wall, spines of books poking him, and laughed again. It was a great joke, wasn’t it? “No,” he managed. “No, I think not. That . . . will be all.”
Cusworth’s overhasty departure closed him into silence again, a silence in which his laughter seemed to linger, ugly and jagged, like broken panes of glass.
He found himself sliding down the bookshelf, accepting the bruising pain of the shelves, enjoying it in some strange way, until he sat on the carpet. A new view of the room. His staff still wanted discipline. He saw dust in the fringes of the Turkey carpet.
He’d fallen into a black trance inside that little room. Turning page after page, his own script winking up at him, smug and conspiratorial. You wrote this. No need to look shocked.
She’d said something to him after the dinner party. Some would argue that corruption is required to prove effective.
Perhaps so. Was it disappointing, somehow, to discover himself an ordinary criminal? He tested the theory, consulting his gut. Yes, he supposed he had a talent for disappoi
nted ambitions. There was no cause for pride in the back-door dealings his own documents chronicled. A novelist would have invented more dramatic sins than his. He’d murdered nobody, from what he could tell, or issued threats more alarming than social embarrassment and the withdrawal of his political support. But he’d done so in such cold, cutting, clever language. He had not known he could sound so much like Atticus until today.
His wife had left that door open for him, then fled. His amazement had, at first, been mixed with bafflement, concern. Why had she not come to find him, to share her discovery?
But after reading only a few files, he’d understood. She’d not had time, in his absence, to uncover much information from that room. So it logically followed that she had already known what he’d find there. She had done him a generous favor by not sticking nearby to witness his own discovery of himself.
She had known not to summon the police, too. She had guessed they might find the hidden room, and insist on looking through it themselves, only to uncover the kind of information that no politician could survive being learned by authorities whose discretion was not guaranteed.
So many favors she’d done him. Above all, this: she had clearly known exactly the kind of man he was. But she had protected him from it as long as she was able.
Why had she married him, really?
His spine straightened. Alertness flooded through him, sharpening his weary brain.
You don’t know me, she had said. But he knew enough. She had principles. She opposed this bill. She dreamed of using her father’s money to spread justice and hope. She was not a woman who would have wed a man such as he, even in order to get her hands on a fortune. There were too many other men in the world to settle for one such as him.
And he . . . the man who had written all those letters . . . that was not a man who would have wed a woman of such principles—a woman who, by her own admission, did not know how to mince words.
Crispin cherished her for the same reasons that his other self would have scorned her.
He rose, his breath short, though he could not say why. These were not revelations of the kind to instill dread. What was done was done; he could not change the man he had been, and if anything, he should pray to God in thanks for having been so forcibly alienated from that other self, for having been gifted a woman whom he would never otherwise have deserved or known how to love.
A Lady’s Code of Misconduct Page 21
