“You made enquiries?” Lord Rothborough said.
“Yes. I have done, over the years. Discreetly. I did not wish my husband to know. He knew nothing of my former life, and I did not want to disillusion him. He had such faith and trust in me.”
“And yet you lied to him, as you did to me.”
“A different sort of lie. One big one, instead of a lot of silly ones. I treated you better, I suppose, or perhaps you were better at getting the truth out of me. I tried to lie to you, and play the game, but you got it out of me. You read me right every time, Will, and you are reading me now.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Your behaviour – I can’t begin to comprehend it. You have puzzled me for a very long time. And what is this nonsense about wishing to see him from a distance?”
“Not nonsense,” she said, with a shake of her head. “What if one of your girls had been whisked away, Will, and you never saw her again? Would you not be wondering, thinking that you might –”
“Whisked away!” exclaimed Rothborough getting up, and leaning across the table. “Ah, now we are getting to it. Whisked away? How dare you imply such a thing! You left this apparently precious object, that you have been having all these fancies about, playing at the feet of half a dozen of the most expensive whores in Paris, remember! You left him, without a word to tell me what had happened or why, in that appalling place while you galloped away with that fat German prince who you told me, only three days before, was the most repulsive man alive!”
“I surrendered him because I wanted him to have a decent life!” she said, jumping up. “I knew that you would do the best for him, that you loved him and with you he stood a chance of something better. I pretended I did not care. I always fancied myself as an actress – I think it was the best performance I ever gave in my life. I nearly convinced myself. And I knew you wouldn’t stay with us forever, despite everything you said. You would go back and get married and that would be that. You made promises to me that were not promises, in truth.”
“I meant every word!”
“But it would not have been possible. I think you knew that even as you told me you would never leave: that your leaving would one day be inevitable. So I thought I would get it all over with as soon as I could. I would move on, find another protector while I still had my looks and my charm. I had my future to think of. I knew you would do your duty by our son,. So I gave him to you. And it was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.” She turned to Felix. “There hasn’t been a day since, that I haven’t longed to see you, to know what you were doing. And your birthday – that was the hardest day of the year. And not even Juan knew, and of course he was very disappointed that I didn’t give him children, although he took care to conceal it. How could I tell him I had a son already? It would have broken his heart to know what I had once been. It’s a stain that can’t be washed out, not matter what you do. No matter how hard you try.”
Lord Rothborough sat down rather heavily.
“Then why on earth did you not leave some hint of this?” he said. “Even the those wretched women who leave their children in the Foundling Hospital try to leave a keepsake. You simply left him, like a piece of spoilt meat on the side of your plate! In a brothel, Blanche! What were you thinking?”
“I wanted him to be free of me. Not to have the burden of knowing he had a whore for a mother! What a fool I was to think that you would honour my silence!”
“What the devil was I supposed to do?” Rothborough said, getting up from his chair and striding over to where she stood. “Construct some senseless narrative about a smiling angel in heaven? Is that what I was supposed to do? Good God, Blanche! After that, how could I? A man needs to know who he is and where he is from, even when the circumstances are unfortunate ones. I was not going to lie to him about it. What precedent would that have set if I had lied about it? Mr and Mrs Carswell were in complete agreement with me. He was always to know. I have read of similar cases where the facts have been concealed and the results have been most unhappy for the individual concerned.”
“You might have been a little less harsh,” she said, “And have still been honest enough. You might have guessed at what I was about. I suppose that was too much to hope for. But to tell him I abandoned him –”
“I might have guessed?” Rothborough said. “When you had cut my heart from my breast and left me bleeding on the floor? You expected me to decipher your bizarre reasoning and speak kindly of you to him, after what you did to us both? Ma’am, I do not think there is a saint in the entire company of Heaven who could have managed that, and the Lord knows, and you certainly know, I am no saint!”
He shouted the words into her face, and she flinched and turned away. She was on the verge of tears, shaking slightly, as if she were about to crumble completely. Lord Rothborough’s cheek muscles twitched with fury and he raised his hand. Fearful for them both, Felix pushed himself between them, and forced Lord Rothborough to step aside a little. For a moment he resisted, but then, to Felix’s relief, he found his reason again, strode across the room, and threw himself down on the window seat, his face buried in his hands.
Now Dona Blanca straightened and turned to Felix.
“I am so sorry,” she managed to say. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “But what else could I do? We would not have been allowed to be... it could not have gone on. But we were so happy, for that little time, we were happy. And that was all we ever could have had. You know that as well as I do, Will, you knew it the first time you ever kissed me!” Her words came out in an anguished howl.
Felix saw Lord Rothborough straighten and look at her.
“Were you happy with your husband?” he said, at last, getting up.
“Yes,” she said. “After a fashion. But it was not the same.” He nodded, and walked back across the room to her, taking his handkerchief from his pocket. He handed it to her. “And you?”
“I have my girls, and Felix,” Rothborough said. “That has been all my joy.” He glanced at Felix. Then after a moment he swallowed and said, “You made a great sacrifice, Blanche. I did not think of it as such before today. My anger has clouded my judgement all these years. Please excuse me.”
Felix saw her bite her lip as she struggled to stem her tears.
“Please do not be kind to me, Will,” she said. “I can’t bear that. I can bear your anger better.”
Lord Rothborough reached out and caressed her her cheek.
“Please,” she said, again, but Lord Rothborough had taken a step closer and caught her chin his hand, bent over and kissed her full on the lips. She did not appear to resist. Rather she fell into the embrace with some eagerness.
Felix stared in horror, then quickly turned away. He could only think of escape, so he seized his hat and fled from the room.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Having settled matters with the house agent and the perpetually irritated Mrs Bolland, Giles dispatched Holt back to Holbroke with the rest of their luggage in a gig. He had just got to the White Hart when he met Carswell coming out at some speed.
“Is Lord Rothborough –” Giles began.
“He is there, yes, and so is she. I insisted he send for her.”
“Dona Blanca?”
“Yes, and now – now they are –” Carswell threw up his hands, lost for words. But his flushed cheeks were eloquent enough. He was in a state of confused mortification.
Old lovers reunited, Giles thought. It was not unknown for long-buried passions to come boiling up in such circumstances but he would have imagined Lord Rothborough might have been a little more circumspect, but then again Dona Blanca was clearly no ordinary woman. He had seen that for himself.
“Why on earth did I force the issue?” Carswell exclaimed. “I might have known. I should have left well alone. She herself said that that I should.”
“This is not a subject for the street,” said Giles. “Let us go up to Mr Bryce’s for a moment.” The fencing rooms were only
a few steps away on the other side of the street. Carswell consented.
“I am glad to see you, sir!” said Mr Bryce, coming out at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Very glad. I was on the pointing of writing to you. I have had a visit from that Don Luiz fellow. Very strange it was. He came with some fellow, and all the time he was talking to me, the other man, his servant or secretary, I am not sure what he was, well, he was poking about in the dressing room, as if he were looking for something. I tried to stop him, but Don Luiz would keep me talking in here, and talking a lot of nonsense, to be frank, as if he didn’t want me interfering. What on earth was all that about, sir, do you think?”
“Perhaps they were looking for something that Don Xavier may have left here,” Carswell said.
“That did cross my mind, Mr Carswell, but I had already told the gentleman that there was nothing here. I told him that at the funeral that I had already brought all his kit back to the White Horse, when he was taken bad – his foils, and jacket, and so forth. You saw the stuff for yourself, I think.”
Giles went to the dressing room door and looked into the room. His own kit was hanging where he had left it.
Bryce went on: “I was thorough when I took away Don Xavier’s outfit that day. I looked under the benches as I always do – for things do get dropped and lost, but there was nothing. What he was after, I don’t know!”
“How many times did Don Xavier come here?” said Giles.
“Twice,” said Bryce. “He booked to come five times, and paid me up front for all of it. Poor gentleman,” he added with sigh.
“He hid some documents in his room,” Giles said. “He may have hidden something here. He seems to have been a man carrying secrets with him. Where did he stow his kit?”
“Over there, in the corner,” said Bryce.
On the wall, high about the row of hooks, there was a large framed engraving showing a fencing bout of a hundred years ago. Giles went and studied it, noticing it had been knocked awry a little, revealing the darker colour of the paint below, which the sun had not bleached. He reached up, pulled one corner away from the wall, and slipped his hand behind. Just as he had hoped his finger tips discovered the edge of a folded piece of paper, which he extracted.
“I hope this is not an old bill,” he said. The document was tightly folded and rolled round itself, as if wishing to keep its secrets for as long as possible. Giles unfurled it, revealing another sheet covered with dense writing, cross-written to save space. “Spanish again,” he said, holding it out for the others to examine.
“Now, how did that get there?” said Bryce.
“I think this may be what Don Luiz was after,” said Giles. “We should check the other pictures.”
Their search yielded nothing else. Giles stood for some moments trying to see if he could extract anything of interest from the document, hoping a name might spring out, but the handwriting was a struggle. He went back into the fencing room where the light was better and went over to the window where Carswell stood. The window gave a perfect view of the entrance to the White Hart.
“Distract yourself with this,” said Giles. “Your eyesight may be better than mine.”
But Carswell did not take the letter. He was staring out of the window. Giles glanced out. An open carriage bearing a familiar coat of arms had drawn up outside the White Hart. There was a lady seated, wearing a broad brimmed hat, covered by a light veil. It was Lady Charlotte.
Carswell was already running from the room and down the stairs, clearly determined that she should not go into the White Hart. Giles followed with equal haste and got to the door to the street, only to see Carswell speaking to Lady Charlotte even as she climbed down from the carriage. In fact, he completed the act of handing her out.
He evidently persuaded her to come with him, and from the door, Giles watched them cross the road.
As they approached, he met her gaze, and she looked away from him. Even through her veil, he could see she was troubled. Her journey to Stanegate had clearly been provoked by some extraordinary circumstance.
She came inside, and at once folded back her veil, but she still avoided meeting his eyes.
“Lady Charlotte, is there something wrong? What has happened?”
He could see now her eyes were red from crying.
“Oh Major Vernon, where do ... how do I... “ she glanced away, and wiped a tear from her face, but it was a futile gesture. The sight of him seemed to reduce her to tears. She forced back the tears, straightened herself and went on, “I am sorry, I have terrible news. It is... Mrs Vernon, she is... she d... There was an accident, a horrible accident. They said I should have sent a message. But I could not bear that you should hear it from a stranger!”
“What sort of an accident?” said Carswell.
“She fell. On the back stairs in the North Pavilion. She must have tripped – it is steep and worn and she fell and broke her neck. Dr Conway came but there was nothing that could be done, it seems. She was already gone... oh, I am so sorry, so very sorry...” Her hand flashed out and touched his arm.
“What?” Carswell was saying. “I cannot believe this... no...”
Giles found he was sitting on the stairs. His legs had lost the power to support him. He stared down at the ground, his hands pressed to his mouth, breathing hard, trying to steady himself, trying to hear what was being said, but nothing made sense.
“Would you mind,” he began, “saying that again? I am sorry but I do not quite understand you.”
He looked up into Lady Charlotte’s face. She was sobbing uncontrollably and then he did understand, and he felt cold hands clawing at his own heart.
Mr Bryce was speaking now behind him, in his gentle Scottish voice.
“Will you no come upstairs, ma’am? A glass of water?”
“Thank you,” Lady Charlotte managed to say, and she slipped past him and went up the stairs, her skirts brushing against him. Carswell went after her, and he was alone, in that small hallway, sitting still at the foot of the stairs. His mind swam and then, from nowhere, conjured up the vision of her lying there, in her striped muslin dress, sprawled playfully, as if she had tripped in a silly, boisterous game, and was waiting for him to help her to her feet and kiss her on the lips.
How could she be gone? How, when she had found the will to live again? When he had seen her build herself again from nothing into something, how could she be gone? Lord Rothborough had said she had sparkled at dinner, and he had so looked forward to telling her that, and more.
How could a staircase have destroyed her? How was it possible?
But it was true. Lady Charlotte’s face had told him everything. It was not possible to doubt such testimony, no matter how much he might have wished to do so.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The weather righted itself, even when everything else was turned on its head.
Felix woke the following morning at Ardenthwaite in a room golden with sunshine filtered into beguiling softness by ancient, threadbare curtains. He looked about him – the room was vast; he had not realised the extent of it when he had been shown there last night by the housekeeper. He had simply wanted to go to bed and had not thought of quarrelling with any domestic arrangements. He had been exhausted.
He realised he was lying in a great bed that must have been hundreds of years old, the grandest bedroom in the house, which the master and mistress would traditionally occupy. By accident, he had taken up that place at Ardenthwaite, the place of master and owner. Lord Rothborough had been wanting him to do this for so long, and he had been resisting. Yet now that resistance seemed utterly irrelevant, foolish perhaps. It was simply a bed in a house: he was alive and the way the dice of fortune fell was cruel beyond measure.
For she was suddenly there. Her ghost stole up on him the moment after he had blinked open his eyes. She filled that huge and beautiful room, with her fierce tears, her ardent expression and her dry-throated, merciless admission of her love. He lay there, bracing himsel
f against the pain of it, wondering how he would manage to get through the next few days, indeed how anything was ever to be managed.
An accident. A fall down the stairs. He repeated the bare facts to himself again and again, as he lay there. These things happened. It was part of the unspeakable cruelty of life that chance took as many lives as diseases. There was no rhyme and reason to it. Just wretched ill-luck.
The door opened and a boy of about sixteen came in with a jug of hot water and towels.
“Who are you?” Felix said.
“Jacob, sir. Mr Bodley sent me over from Holbroke to see to you. Said his Lordship wanted you properly looked after.”
“When did you get here?”
“Last night, sir. I was supposed to come in the afternoon anyway, but we were all at sixes and sevens after the poor lady was found and –” He turned away and busied himself arranging towels on the washstand. “Will this be enough water, sir?”
“Yes,” Felix said getting out of bed. “Tell me, did you see Mrs Connolly?”
“Mrs Connolly, sir?” the boy said. “Yes, sir.”
“How did she seem?”
“I don’t know, sir. Mrs Hope was looking after her, I think.” That was only the slightest comfort. He wished Bodley had sent her to Ardenthwaite.
“And did you see her – Mrs Vernon, I mean?” Felix asked.
“How do mean, sir?”
“I mean, in the stairwell?”
“Oh no, sir. I saw them carry her out, though.”
“And what were they all saying about it, the other servants?” The boy looked puzzled. Felix elaborated. “I mean, had there been accidents there before? Did anyone say that? That those stairs were particularly dangerous?”
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