He broke off suddenly and I looked up to find the duchess rustling into the room on her husband’s arm. She wore a morning dress of pale gold silk that looked like a trapped sunbeam. I could not restrain a slight sigh. Even in my beautiful new gown, I could never hope to hold anyone’s eye if she was in the room. Her husband’s adoration was printed plain in his face as he seated her across from me.
Charles rose at once to bid her good morning—and perhaps to distract her from what she might have heard.
“How lovely you look, my dear!” she exclaimed, beaming at me. She fairly bubbled with happiness, and with diamonds glinting at her ears and throat, she looked more than ever like an earthbound sunbeam. (“Ladies never wear diamonds in the morning,” I remembered one of my governesses proclaiming; another convention reduced to shambles by the duchess.) “I knew that color would be perfect on you. Claude, love, would you ring for Jenkins? Herron wants a tray brought up to him."
Charles froze, and I stared. I had scolded Charles for his concerns, but it was true that Herron never seemed to remember to take any food. Sending for breakfast was something of a landmark event.
Lord Claude, whose thoughts were evidently similar to mine, said in a moment, “Herron has asked for breakfast?”
Fully aware of the sensation she had caused, the duchess bobbed her head. “Why, yes, is it not heartening? When I stopped by his room he was still in bed—I’m sure he hasn’t slept so late in months! I was so glad not to find him out wandering like a lost sheep, and to say he would eat something as well. I cannot say how much he has relieved my mind.”
Lord Claude reached over to pat her hand, meeting her bright gaze with a sympathetic smile. His face did not quite light up like his wife’s, but his tone was brighter when he said, “I’m heartily glad of it if the boy’s improving. I’ll stop in and see if he’d like to ride around to see the tenants with me today.”
“Oh, do, darling. I’d love for the two of you to spend some time together.”
Jenkins moved to her side and she embarked on elaborate instructions regarding kippers and toast. Under cover of this, Charles murmured, “I’ll be surprised if he accepts.”
His father’s face settled into resigned, weary lines. “So will I,” he said.
* * *
The morning passed without any sign of Herron. Lord Claude was unsuccessful in his efforts to run him to earth and finally set out with Charles to visit the tenants. I knew I should not expect Herron to seek me out, but the suspense was making me fidgety. Even though I believed in my sudden new happiness, I needed to speak to him. After a struggle with myself I set out for the shore. It was, after all, where I had first seen him; but whether he was there or not, I felt the need to escape the placid confines of the house.
The sea was the color of metal under the blank sky. There was no color, no brightness in this world; only sound, and I stood for a long time there, letting myself be buffeted by the roar. It did not overwhelm me as it had once done; I found its energy and motion a mirror of what I was feeling. Its vastness and sheer power still reduced me to the status of a molecule, but I felt as if my small frame encompassed emotions as turbulent and powerful as the ocean itself, too big to be contained. In a strange way we were in sympathy. I waited for what may have been a long time in that peculiar communion, but Herron did not appear.
After tea I set out again, but this time with a new destination in mind. When Felicity started for the drawing room to practice on the pianoforte, I followed, waiting until we were well away from the others before asking my question.
She looked at me blankly. “Why, in the churchyard. Didn’t you see the monument on Sunday?”
“I must not have been paying attention.” Another question struck me. “You say the duke is buried in the churchyard? Why is he not in the church, in a vault?”
“The duchess wished him to have his own monument, apart from the rest of the family.” Her expression indicated that she found my curiosity morbid at the very least; at most—perhaps I was, after all, a member of some eccentric religious sect, and wished to perform obscure rites over this stranger’s grave. I forced down a grin at the thoughts that flitted across her face.
“Thank you,” I said, and was unable to resist adding, “I believe I’ll just walk over and pay my respects.”
She was still staring after me as I went to fetch my cloak. I imagine Chopin had a difficult time holding her attention that afternoon.
The church was less than two miles distant, and I covered the distance quickly on foot; the grey chill of the day had not diminished, and frost crunched under my boots, but as yet there was no snow. My breath preceded me in misty puffs, but the cold was pleasantly invigorating. My guess as to Herron’s whereabouts did not play me false. As I emerged from the woods at the edge of the churchyard, I saw him.
Why I had not before guessed that he would keep vigil at his father’s grave I cannot tell; perhaps it was because the idea had not even occurred to those who knew him better. He stood at the foot of the grave, gloved hands clasped behind him, his dark clothes and hair blending into one black silhouette, as if he were not a presence but an absence, a hole cut out of the landscape. He was as motionless as the gravestones that stood ranked around him, but when I neared him, even though my steps were silent on the carpet of fir needles, he turned his head.
I hesitated in sudden uncertainty, wondering what my reception would be, but he turned back again to resume his study of the headstone. I came to his side and looked too.
The duke’s monument was as great a tribute as a woman of his wife’s devotion and fortune could make it. Marble of so pure a white that it hurt the eyes rose in an obelisk as tall as the trees. At the base two lightly draped women, evidently goddesses and hence impervious to the weather, crouched in attitudes of distress, and the Reginald coat of arms was set into the front surface. There was no name, no date, no verses. None were needed.
Herron’s face was expressionless as he regarded the monument to his father. I wondered how many hours he had spent in this fashion, and what he was thinking. Whether he was remembering the night before, or if that brief visitation that had transformed everything I knew, casting a bright glow over all that would come after like light through colored glass, had already dwindled into his forgotten past. I wanted badly to ask him. But it was he who spoke first.
“Yesterday was his birthday. I thought he might come then. So I waited, as I have so many times, thinking that perhaps this night… but nothing. Nothing at all.” He fell silent again, and I waited, wondering.
Finally, “His birthday?” I ventured.
He nodded. “Of course, such earthly anniversaries may cease to have any meaning after we leave this life. But I thought he might remember. I thought he might want to see me again, to leave me with—something.”
At last I realized. I gazed at him as growing understanding, not unmixed with horror, sank into me. The rooftop vigil I had interrupted leapt into sudden clarity. “You’ve been waiting for your father, these nights,” I said. “For his spirit.”
He did not bother to answer. We stood together in silence, and after a brief struggle the horror faded in me, conquered by the yearning, stronger than ever, to offer some comfort to this man who suffered so much more deeply than even he appeared to. Who missed his father so desperately that he clung to the hope of being haunted by him. My eyes misted at the thought of him, even younger than myself—barely a man—having to endure so crippling a loneliness, and I turned my face away before he could see. I dared not let him see pity. Was not his ruthless arrogance a way to fight off pity, to keep others from penetrating his solitude and recognizing the terrible extent of his grief?
I realized I was crying. I had not been able to shed tears for the parting from my father, or even for Lionel, but now some constraint in me had broken. One more shackle of my father’s forging was falling away, and even in the midst of my feeling for Herron I felt a kind of wonder at it. The frozen winter of my soul was
at an end; the thaw had come.
I raised a hand to brush away my tears, and it was met by his. His fingers tipped my face up so that we regarded each other.
“I watched you, asleep,” he said. His hand lingered on my cheek, but his voice was detached, incurious; he seemed to still be gazing somewhere beyond me. “You looked so peaceful. I felt that I’d sell my soul to be possessed of such peace.”
He had watched me as I slept. The intimacy of it brought heat creeping into my face, and I dropped my eyes in something like shame. But I had done the same—had devoured the sight of him as he lay unconscious, vulnerable, open to my gaze.
“Not so peaceful as you may think,” I said, unsure of how to reply. “I, too, have lost someone inexpressibly dear. I think that is why I believe I know something of what you suffer.”
His fingers moved over my face, softly, touching my chin, my mouth. He seemed not to have heard me speak. “And I wondered if you had it in your gift, this serenity.” His eyes at last met mine, and their darkness was startling, like a physical jolt: in them I saw sorrow ages older than he. “The only moments of Lethe I’ve known since he died, I found last night.”
I reached up to take his face in my hands. “If I can give you that much, I am glad.”
His lips were cold at first. But at their touch warmth flooded through me, beating in waves in my throat, my fingertips. If he sought comfort from my arms and mouth, then I took something from him too; perhaps not what I wished for, but close enough for now.
We stood for a long time together, not speaking. I wondered how his arms around my waist could fill me with a joy that made me want to shout even as I hurt for his grief. I could not tell if the painful constriction in my chest was sorrow or happiness, but I rested my head against his shoulder and did not try to decide.
As the white sky dimmed to lavender in the twilight, a soft cold touch on my face startled me into looking up. It was snowing. Within moments we stood in the midst of a silent, swift, insubstantial storm. The snow muffled the stillness further, and the landscape vanished gently into eerie white shadows that shone with the glow of dusk.
Herron, too, tipped his head back, letting snowflakes settle on his hair and eyelashes, starring their darkness. His face had relaxed and he looked young, peaceful. I felt a swell of triumph that I had brought this to him.
“Herron,” I said, taking a childish pleasure in saying his name, “why did you come to me last night?”
He closed his eyes to the snow. There was time for me to hope a dozen things, or the same thing a dozen times.
“Because I knew I could trust you,” he said at last.
“Trust me? How do you mean?” For a brief, terrible moment I doubted him.
“I knew I could trust your silence, confide in you. You won’t tell anyone what I know—that Claude killed my father.”
I stared at him, but he still stood with his face tipped up to the falling snow as if receiving benediction. His words hung frozen in the air, like smoke.
“No,” I said quietly. “I won’t tell.”
My mind emptied itself of all hopes, all feelings or questions. This was too great, too much. There was no sound at all.
As if he felt my gaze he opened his eyes and drew me closer. Under the light, insistent fingertips of the snow we took warmth from each other’s lips, and at our feet the mortal shell of his father slept on.
* * *
There were guests for dinner, so we were a large party when we adjourned to the drawing room after the men had finished their port. The duchess, of course, had a group gathered around her near the fire, and Felicity, at the pianoforte, had not one but two young men to turn pages for her. The duchess beckoned to Herron when she saw him come in. He still wore his mourning band, but his mother had evidently decided to overlook it since he was wearing the conventional evening dress.
“Herron, dear, come and sit by me.” She patted the place beside her on the divan and smiled welcomingly.
He stopped short, then half bowed. “Thank you, but I believe I see a place more inviting.” He dropped onto the rug beside the chair I had chosen, half in shadow, and I saw a look of surprise and disappointment on the duchess’s face, quickly suppressed. Lord Claude took the empty place she had offered, however, and soon the flaxen head and the tawny one were bent close together, shining silver and gold in the firelight. I could not see Herron’s face, but his fingers drummed silently on the carpet.
“He takes that place very quickly,” he muttered.
Even I could not help but think this unreasonable. “He is her husband,” I ventured.
“He took that place very quickly as well,” was the reply.
I fell silent. Herron stretched out at my feet, lounging on his elbows, and I watched his face as he watched the others. Felicity was playing a duet now with one of the young men, and the lively music and the warm light of the gas lamps seemed to create a cheerful sphere we two were excluded from. I had deliberately wished to separate myself, uncomfortable at the thought of abandoning my customary position of obscure observer to put myself in the middle of company, but having a companion in isolation was new to me. It was pleasant to feel that, although apart from the noisy revelry, I was no longer alone. Herron’s desire to remain apart seemed to draw him closer to me.
The duchess, as always, was a gay, vivacious hostess. Her earrings bobbing in sympathy with her laughter, she drew the guests into a friendly circle of company. Her husband, no less engaging but less energetic, sometimes fell silent to watch her with a smile. It was almost impossible for me to believe of him what Herron had said. How could this composed, courteous, gentle man have deliberately murdered his own brother? I could not imagine that kindly, humorous face ever contorted in a murderous rage, could not see the hands that offered cigars to his friends gripping a knife or measuring poison into a glass. At this thought I bent toward Herron.
“I am afraid I know nothing of the circumstances of your father’s death,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t know; it was all too suspicious. My mother hushed it up so that the newspapers wouldn’t raise a scandal.” He was watching his stepfather with a level intensity. “The two of them went hunting. There was no one else, no hunting party—there had been a great deal of rain. Just my father and him.”
“Charles was not back from the Crimea, then?”
“He had just returned. He was still practically an invalid, and kept to the house.”
“And you do not hunt?”
“Not a great deal, no. I was riding in a different part of the grounds. I could hear the guns sometimes.”
I began to have an idea of what he was going to tell me, but I let him continue without interrupting again.
“It was nearly midday when I started back and heard the shouts. I rode toward them, and it was Claude”—he gave the name a vicious emphasis—“who met me. ‘Go back to the house, Herron,’ he said. As if I needed him to shield me. I could see past him to where my father lay. He was in a clearing, stretched out on the ground as if he were resting. I knew he was dead even then. There was blood everywhere; his eyes were…”
He sat up abruptly, folding his legs up. With his hands clasped around his knees he stared at his mother and stepfather, but I do not believe he saw them.
“He said my father’s gun must have misfired, that he was some yards behind him and didn’t see what happened. When he got to him it was too late. He found no heartbeat.” His voice was matter-of-fact now, as if he were reciting racing odds. “My uncle went back to tell Mother, and sent two of the servants to help me with the—the body.” That cost him some effort.
“And the gun?”
“I never saw it again. My uncle said he had it destroyed. I don’t doubt it”—bitterly.
I reached out to touch his hand, so tightly gripping the other. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. Then, knowing I had to ask, “Why do you believe your uncle killed him? Could it not
have been an accident, as he said?”
“An accident!” Several heads turned at this, and he lowered his voice. “Has ever an accident been so fortuitous, so beneficial as this has been to my uncle? Was he not the only one with my father in the woods, and wasn’t he with him when I arrived? Did he not marry my mother before the flowers in the funeral wreaths had wilted? But there is another reason,” he added, as I opened my mouth to speak. “It isn’t mere suspicion on my part, or childish resentment of him for taking my father’s place. No, I have another reason.”
“What is it?”
At first I thought he was not going to reply. When he did at last speak, his voice was so low I had to bend to catch the words.
“The day of the funeral we were coming back from the church. It was foggy, difficult to see, but as we approached the house I could see a figure standing on the roof. It was as if he was waiting for me. In the fog I could just see him before he was gone, but—it was him. I’m certain of it.”
All I could say was, “Did anyone else see him?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was ahead of the others; I wanted to be apart from them. You understand?”
I nodded.
“I knew then that he had appeared to me for a reason, and that it could only be because he had died unnaturally. It can only have been my uncle. He killed my father.” His voice trembled with intensity.
Troubled, I looked again at the group by the fire. I tried to visualize Lord Claude approaching his own brother with a gun. Aiming it coolly, pulling the trigger, taking a moment to ascertain that the bullet had done its work; then shouting out in pretended shock and alarm. Now, as he sat so relaxed at his wife’s side, smiling at some witticism, was he playing a part? Was every expression calculated to disguise what he really felt? The thought made me hunch my shoulders in sudden chill. I could not bear to think that this man who, on such short acquaintance, had already won my respect and affection, could be so cruelly deceptive.
Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense Page 11
