by Sandra Byrd
Edward snorted. “When you’re dead, I’ll call for him.” He turned me toward him and looked at my face; it must have been wan from the cold, the journey, and the syrup I’d taken. “Apparently your stay at Medstone was not improving. You don’t look well.”
“It may not have been physically improving, but while there I learned much.”
Edward moved me firmly into the room and closed the door. “Some neat tricks, apparently,” he said. “Was the institution staffed with a complement of Morgan’s magicians? Someone told you how to escape. Morgan would be very pleased.”
“I came to understand, whilst there, that I’d been poisoned,” I said. “With foreign honey that you procured.”
He looked at me with contempt. “The only honey brought to this house was by your friend, Dell’Acqua. He delivered honey. Foreign honey. However, he was a clear double-dealer, and it would not surprise me if he was trying to taint you with honey. Turkish honey, for example, is well known for its aphrodisiac effect. Perhaps that is what he was after.”
I sharply inhaled, which proved that I had not known that. I did, however, know Edward well enough to know, as I searched his face, that he was truthful. He had no knowledge of any foreign honey. Could it have been Marco, after all?
I pressed on. Edward’s sense of justice, warped as it was, would insist that he address the truth once it was spoken. “My mother was properly married and was not mentally unwell. Your mother, knowing this full well, had her placed in Medstone so she could steal her fortune. The Somerfords’ priest told me that my mother was about to marry someone else. Your mother may have thought I was illegitimate, but she’d known that any child from a new marriage would most certainly not be. She acted quickly.”
Blood suffused his face. “How dare you accuse my mother of this!”
“I believe, in any case, that my parents were married.” I spoke loudly and hoped and prayed that Watts was at the speaking tube, listening, willing to call for help. “Plenty of people do. I had her wedding cap. Your mother painted the portrait while my mother wore it. Difficult to believe your mother did not know my mother had been married. Perhaps she’d even attended the ceremony. Maybe as a witness.”
“There is no cap.”
“Perhaps not any longer, but there was.” His candle had burned three-quarters of the way down. It flickered, beckoning me, hurry, hurry. But what else could I do?
“Where is that portrait, the one your mother painted?”
“In the attic, I suppose.” Edward did not appear to be dissembling. Could he not know that it had been cut from the frame and removed?
“There was her engagement necklace.”
“Who knows how that came to you?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But given time, I will find out. There were letters sent from Malta that came to the old Mr. Galpine but apparently never reached my mother. They were sent, and recorded in Lymington, to her married name—which I now know was Julianna Bellini. Wife of Alessandru Bellini. With help, I can pursue that lead and find someone who knew my father. Perhaps still knows my father. Someone who will help me prove my claim. Others, at Medstone, know now, too. So the secret is out.”
Edward’s face grew waxlike, his skin more pallid than it had been at that moment when he first saw me and believed me to be a venging apparition. “How did you learn his name? The man who fathered you?”
I flinched at his choice of words. “It was recorded at Medstone.” I did not need to tell him it was parish records.
“You’re mad. These are the ravings of a lunatic, and honestly, Annabel, if anyone had any doubts about you being mad when I first had you put away they won’t now. Escaping in a coffin in the middle of an epidemic, having word sent that you’d died of influenza. Coming back to life in the coach house.”
I did not let him change the subject. “My mother was married and I will be able to prove it. I’m certain of this.”
He said nothing for a long moment, still blocking the door, as I shivered in my dressing gown and robe that were wet with sweat and dew.
“It may be that they were married . . . in a manner of speaking,” he admitted.
A flush ran through me, and I stopped shaking.
“There are men of the sea, men of the world, who have wives in many ports and lands.”
Marco had mentioned something similar. Could it be true? Was it common in Malta? Had Marco done this? Had my father? Lied to and left wives who were not wives and baseborn children across the world? My left eye twitched.
Edward fed off my discontent and went back for second helpings. “The men are bigamists, of course, adulterers if we look at it honestly. The women, for the most part, don’t know about the others, each believing herself to be the real wife when they are nothing more than a—”
“How dare you?” I interrupted. Calling my mother a . . . something. I held my breath. Edward’s candle spluttered. We were in nearly utter darkness.
“My father was not such a man,” I said. “My mother would not have told her priest that she was married if she were not.”
“She didn’t know, Annabel. She was duped into thinking the man loved her. Just like you’ve been duped by the man who delivered the honey you say you were poisoned with. I’m sorry.”
I had nothing to say. He might have been right. I needed to think what to do next.
“How did you get out? Who helped you?”
A lick of moonlight flickered through the stained-glass window, and I earnestly prayed for a solution to present itself.
“It was that nurse, wasn’t it?” Edward continued. “That private nurse. Once I’ve taken care of you, I shall ensure she is severely dealt with.”
Oh. I had not thought what I might wreak upon Mrs. Strange.
I heard Albert crying in the distance. “Where is Lillian?”
“Dismissed,” he said.
“Why? Albert loved her so.”
“She’d been apparently working behind Clementine’s back. Refusing to carry out her duties properly. Perhaps you taught her that it was fine to mislead and deceive, with your unauthorized journeys to Galpine’s.”
Had I been responsible for Lillian’s dismissal?
“And . . . the rest of the staff?”
“Jack’s in London, and the others will apply to Highcliffe’s new owner,” he said. “After you are properly secured. If you’ll excuse me, I mean to begin to make arrangements this very night. You will remain in this room, alone. I do not want the influenza you brought with you to run rampant in my house.”
Or for others to help me. But who would help me? Who could help me at this juncture? There was no way around him.
He locked the door behind me, though five minutes later he returned with a pillow and a blanket. As he handed them over to me I glimpsed real sorrow of some kind in his eyes. The hardness softened for just a minute.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said to him. “We were like brother and sister. Things were not perfect, but I trusted you.”
He held my gaze for a moment, but didn’t answer.
I saw the truth then. I had considered him to be as a brother to me, but he had never considered me as a sister. I had placed good intentions and hopes on the only person I could consider family, choosing not to see what was plainly true; terribly, but plainly true.
What would my naivety cost me?
Edward shook his head and then left.
After he was gone, I heard a commotion downstairs and put my ear to the speaking tube.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Edward was talking with Watts. He told him he would arrange for me to be taken the very next day or night to another asylum; Clementine had made a short list of some she’d had investigated. They’d find one where the security was stringent and not one with a private nurse, and Watts should have everything prepared for a journey. Clementine, he said, would pack a trunk.
A trunk filled with my meager belongings from the asylum. For what else was left?
Clementine, I knew now, understood that I was home and isolated.
I stood there a moment longer after Edward left, and then I heard Mrs. Watts. She was apparently not close to the speaking tube; she mumbled something I could not make out, but I could hear her sniff. Had she been crying? On my behalf?
Watts sought to soothe her. She said something insistently, and he answered, “Can’t be done.”
The tube! If I could hear them, then they could hear me! “Hello!” I spoke into the tube, as loudly as possible. “Mrs. Watts? Watts? Can either of you hear me, and if so, please come to the quarantine room. For but a moment only.”
No one answered. I could hear as they pattered away. Had they heard and ignored me, or not heard at all?
With nothing left to try, I went to the bed, so familiar, in a house that seemed forebodingly quiet.
Who had purchased Highcliffe? Would they love it as I did?
I did not want to sleep away my last hours at home, and so I paged through the Bible, which didn’t hold my attention, but I prayed, mightily. I stood again and looked out at the village in the distance. Chef dwelled in a small house there; the Wattses had a little cottage as well to which they would return. I hoped Mr. Galpine would make an offer of marriage to Lillian. I looked toward the land that lies between Highcliffe and Pennington. The cottage where Oliver and Emmeline’s parents lived sat someplace in between, near the sea, near the trails that the sheep and the girl knew so well. Would she still tend them . . . or would the sheep be perhaps sold off?
The waves roiled relentlessly against the shuddering cliffs, then smoothed like a shaken blanket would farther out to sea. That water had carried Marco off. Had he learned of my confinement? Perhaps he did not care.
On the morrow, Edward would have me interred in an institution that was not likely to be as welcoming as Medstone had been.
I’d stay there forever.
I’d be buried alive.
An hour later I was nearly asleep, unable to fight off the growing drowsiness brought on by the residual effects of the medications. I heard noises. Someone was stepping on the treads up to my room. It was a light step . . . a woman.
I held my breath. The door handle turned. Then it stopped. Finally, I could wait no longer. “Who is there?”
Nothing. Slow breathing. And then, light steps leading back downstairs.
Edward himself brought my breakfast. I should have laughed if, months earlier, someone had told me that Edward would be playing housekeeper to me, bringing my bedding and delivering my food, but he was. The tea was tepid, and the eggs not quite done. Who had cooked breakfast? Certainly not Chef.
After a time, I watched Edward ride off, returning about three hours later. He brought me a late-afternoon meal, and this time, he sat down with me. His face was troubled.
“What troubles you?” I asked, not wanting to right it, of course, but thinking it might offer a clue as to what his plans were.
“I did not send you there to be poorly treated,” he said. “To the madhouse. I was assured it was a good place, that the staff were kind and that you would be well cared for. Not like the horrors I’ve heard of in other, public asylums. Screams, medications, restraints, and such.”
“Well, there were those,” I said. “Sometimes they are needed. It would be a fine establishment within which to reside if I were insane. Which I am not.”
“I wanted you treated well, Annabel. But, you must understand, I can’t leave the family fortune at odds. Especially now that things have gone wrong with your Maltese friend and he’s likely tainted Lord Somerford’s opinion of me, too.”
I tilted my head.
“I . . . I think you to be as baseborn as I always suspected you were,” he said. “As we’ve always known. But you’re clearly also unwell, and somehow strangely able to cajole or deceive people into cooperating with you. Staff. Nurses. Foreign sailors. Who knows what or who shall be next?” He ran his hand through his hair, releasing a slight scent of pomade and stale cigar smoke.
“Maybe you, Edward. You shall be next. Perhaps this madness runs in your veins, too. We’re cousins, you know.”
The blood drained from his face, and by his frightened expression I knew it was something he had considered. Then he reached his right hand into his trouser pocket and took out a roll of ginger chews.
“Have you had symptoms?”
He did not answer me, which was, in itself, an answer. Terror, then anger, flickered across his face, then he stilled it.
Ever and always acutely aware of good breeding, he offered one of the chews to me. I politely declined. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My eyes were rimmed with dark circles, my face pale. I looked unwell, perhaps physically and mentally. But who would not be given my circumstances and situation?
“The truth is, Annabel,” Edward continued, “you’ve proven to be a loose cannon. I cannot risk Albert’s future in any way.” He stood and the floorboard creaked. He reached out to brace himself on the wall and painted, peeling plaster loosened and fell to the floor.
“Albert’s future is not at risk,” I said.
He looked at me wryly. Oh, I understand. You mean to take what is mine and give it to Albert.
I recalled the conversation I’d overheard him having with Morgan and Dell’Acqua. The ends justify the means. Then, and now, too.
“And now, apparently, there is the new complication of your casting aspersions on my mother’s reputation.” He stood next to the window. He picked the old spyglass up, rubbed a bit of rust from the lens rim, and looked out. He scanned the horizon for a moment and then set it down on the window ledge once more.
“You don’t know what she lived through, who she really was, what she suffered. I simply cannot have you denigrating her name to anyone who will listen. I understand you are desperate—some would say delusional—and have a manic desire to right your own mother’s name. But it can’t be done, and I simply cannot allow it to happen at the expense of my own mother’s reputation. ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’ ”
It seemed the only portions of the Bible Edward had managed to memorize were hurled like stones at those who blocked his way.
He was planning to cut me off, then, for the sin of speaking honestly and pursuing what was rightly mine. “So you’re willing to rewrite the truth, then,” I said.
“What truth? Stamps? Post markings? Caps? Priests? It’s all hearsay, Annabel. Nothing a judge would take seriously, and yet you have somehow managed to undermine people’s sense of reason.” He barked out a laugh. “Perhaps it’s true that insanity is in the miasma. It’s certainly true it can be passed from mother to child.”
“And in your case?” I taunted, tired of this game.
He grew close to me. “I’m warning you. I shall not brook discussion of my mother in that manner.”
Suddenly, I knew.
“Then how about your wife?” I asked. “She saw the reaction I had to the green fairy—the sugar cubes she had dipped in absinthe—and how it unsettled and upset me. And the idea came to her—yes, right then. All have seen Annabel appear unstable. Unsettled. How can I ensure this continues?”
Suddenly Edward’s face was convulsed by shock and understanding, which affirmed my suspicions. He recoiled from me and shook his head. “No. That did not happen.”
I nodded. “Yes it did. When Captain Dell’Acqua escorted Clementine and me at the Exhibition, he made a great jest of the ‘crazy Greek honey’ and how it had been used for centuries as a truth serum unless it provoked madness. Clementine knew I was disoriented over the discovery of the necklace, and when she heard that, Edward, her idea began to jell. Then she brought you into it. And you bought Greek honey and made sure I took it, publicly, when my ‘madness’ would be in full view of the others.”
“I did no such thing!” He was telling the truth. I could see it in the shocked pink of his cheeks and the alarm registering in his eyes. “Clementine, why, I won’t believe she would or could do such a thing.
And I would never harm you.”
“But you’ll send me to the madhouse, where I shall die of an epidemic or a broken heart.”
“Both are risks whether one is in the madhouse or not,” he said. “At least there you’ll not be a danger to others or yourself.”
“You do not want to see the truth of your mother nor of your wife. I can understand that it would be a bitter gall to swallow. But it is the truth, Edward.”
“The truth is you’re mad—clever, but mad. And you’re illegitimate, and not fit in any way to inherit. Perhaps you’re actually French, too?” He laughed sharply. “You’d be disqualified in three of three categories, Annabel. Because we do not know who your father was. All so-called evidence is either circumstantial or missing, and the parties are either deceased or disqualified. I have had enough of this discussion.”
I was right, and I knew it. But he was right, too. It was all hearsay and anecdotal.
“Care of Highcliffe, and all the family legacy, was a responsibility left to me. I’ve let my mother down in marrying Clementine. At all cost, I shall not let my father down once more as well. I cannot risk you, Annabel.” Edward walked back to the window, picked up the spyglass once more, and nodded. “Yes. That is good.”
I did not know what he was looking for in the deepening dusk. But he’d found it. He took me by the arm and opened the door. I wriggled free and he grabbed my arm again, twisting it behind me, and shoving me forward.
“We’re leaving now.” We took the servants’ stair to the floor below, then went on to the second floor. Perhaps because the family were hidden away and would not see me. Clementine was with Albert, probably in her rooms. I did not know where the Wattses were. I shouted for help once or twice but no one came. Too, I was aware that everything about my shocking reappearance and constant crying out only made me seem more mad.
He set me in the front of the carriage, and then after the young man had hefted my trunk onto the back, Edward climbed in himself. “You’re driving?” I asked.
