“Oh, I am so sorry,” he managed to say.
“For what?” she said. “It is not for you to apologise. You are not at fault. I am the one who let my fancy gallop away with me, and very embarrassing it is. But at least I know that you are discreet and honourable! And now I have seen your great distress for your dear wife – which I should not have intruded upon – please, please forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Giles said. “Please. I am glad to see you. We ought to be friends, for God knows, that’s a precious thing! Life is too short and too fragile. Please?” He put out his hand. “Will you shake on that, Lady Charlotte? ”
“With great pleasure,” she said. “And will you wish me luck in Scotland?”
“Certainly,” he said, as they shook hands. “And he may not be so ugly.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a smile. “I have read a speech of his on education for the labouring classes and it was impressive. He was quite interesting on the importance of the education of women.”
“I will go away now,” she said. “I don’t want to distress Papa any more. If he knows I have seen you then – he has been so kind, you see, so understanding.”
She said no more and left, carefully closing the door behind her.
Giles retraced his steps to Lord Rothborough’s office, under the chandeliers in their muslin drapes and past the pier glasses hung with calico veils. If Laura’s ghost were to walk anywhere, then those great rooms at Holbroke, where for a brief moment she had shone like a goddess of the moon, were as good as any.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Two days later, Lord Rothborough returned to Ardenthwaite with Woodward’s translations of the letters, and the letters themselves in their crimson dispatch case. He delivered them straight into Giles’ hands, as he sat in his bedroom.
“You have had your man working through the night on this.”
“Yes, and I have given him a gratuity for it. He is off on his holiday now – free of me for a whole month, which is probably a great relief to him! But he was glad to do it – he was worried his Spanish was getting a little rusty.”
“I feel I should contribute,” Giles said.
“Think nothing of it,” said Rothborough. “And now I shall take my leave. I am heading to Scotland myself today – by way of your country, in fact, Vernon. I believe your brother’s place is not far from Hougham?” Giles nodded. “Charlotte is going with me, and we are going to her godmother’s house there for a few days. Lady Clarkfield – doubtless, you know her?”
“Only very distantly,” Giles said, remembering how his sisters had spent much time dreaming of being taken up by that family. They were reputed to give the best balls. But it had never been managed and Sally had even got a long and rather humiliating lecture from their mother on the folly and vulgarity of attempting to over-reach one’s divinely ordained social position. He realised his mother would not have approved of his present intimacy with Lord Rothborough.
“Now, where is Mr Carswell? I should like a word with him before I go,” Rothborough said.
“He was in the servant’s hall. There was an accident earlier with a scythe in the yard – one of the farm servants, poor fellow.”
“Goodness. Well, he is fortunate to have a surgeon as his new master,” said Rothborough.
-0-
Sukey was the best dresser a surgeon could have asked for, and Felix had no doubt that she could have learnt the profession, given the chance.
The wound was a messy one: the farm servant had been astonishingly clumsy and the blade newly-honed. The man’s life was not in danger, but it had to be seen to with some care to make sure that there were no complications. Felix would not have managed such a neat job single-handed, and was grateful for someone who understood and accepted his directions without demur or question.
It was the first time he had seen her since she had appeared with the flowers before they left for Holbroke. He had sent for her at once, on first seeing the man, but hardly expected she would answer the summons. But she had come straight from the still room, where she had been making jam. Without a word she had followed his every instruction but she had not met his gaze. She was the quiet, obedient servant, nothing more.
When the man had been got comfortable she left, carrying away the dirty cloths and basins. He followed her into the scullery and they were at last alone together. She cranked the pump handle, and he washed his hands, standing by her. All the feelings he had worked so hard to push aside now came back to him, like the wiry branches of a briar bush, determined to entangle him. He did not think he had ever felt so much for her as he did in that moment.
“I hear you are away soon,” he said.
“Yes. I am taking the mail on Friday, to Leeds. Then there is a train to Manchester, and Mr Hall will meet me there. It is kind of him.”
“I thought you were going to Northminster first to spend a week or two with your sister.”
“I can’t disappoint Mr and Mrs Hall. They have said they will give me a week at Christmas. I will go then – perhaps.”
“Perhaps?”
“If I am sure you will not be there,” she said after a moment.
“You are so cruel,” he said.
“It is for the best. I am tired of discussing this.”
“Given I have not seen you for days, you can’t complain too much.” She did not reply, and went on with washing out the cloths. “And what if you do come to Northminster and I am there, and by some terrible chance we meet – by which I mean if fate determines we do?”
“It’s better that we don’t meet or even think of it! Don’t be such a fool.”
“We cannot alter what is unalterable. What must be, must be. I will not give up on this as easily as you, Sukey, and you will come to thank me for it!”
“Stop this! Stop this at once. You say you care for me! Then let it go, Felix, for heaven’s sake, no, for my sake!”
He caught her hand in his and she struggled to free herself. When she did, she cracked her hand across his face, fast and hard. It made him cry out, not so much from pain as from shock. He sat down on the stool, winded and startled, while she stood there nursing her own hand, a horrified expression on her face.
“You’re bleeding –” she said. “Oh saints above, I’ve made you bleed.” He touched his lip and found it sticky with blood. He winced.
Suddenly she was near him, crouching down by him, dabbing at his face with towel.
Her nearness and tenderness was unbearable. To feel her soft fingertips on his cheek as she pressed the towel to his lip made him dizzy with desire. He struggled to resist and to remember that the only reason she was showing him this solicitude was because she had hit him. But he did not care. He would let her hit him a hundred times if it meant she would come so close.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, unable to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her, and pulling her towards him. To his surprise she did not resist, rather she collapsed against him, and pressed herself to him. In a moment, she was on his lap, her arms garlanding his neck, her head bent and pressed against his chest. She was shaking with sobs, and he held her firm, his head feeling the strangest mixture of misery and ecstasy. He pressed his lips to her linen-capped head, leaving a bloody mark. “It doesn’t.”
She mastered herself a little and said, “It does. That’s the whole trouble.”
She did not break from him, though any moment he expected she would, and he was steeling himself against the loss, which he knew would be far more painful than any slap she gave him. But she stayed there, on his lap and in his arms.
“I wish, oh, how I wish that everything you say could be, but –” She dissolved in tears again, and he cradled her head in his hand.
Gently he lifted her chin and pressed his lips to hers. They exchanged a long, bitter-sweet, tear-drowned kiss.
“Forgive me, if I am interrupting...”
The sound of Lord Rothborough’s voice, gentle but utterly startli
ng, broke into his consciousness.
“You have nothing to worry about, my Lord,” Sukey said, at once slithering off his lap. Felix rose to stop her, but she was half way across the room before he had a chance. She turned quickly away to hide her tear-stained face. “There is nothing going on here. At least not any more!” Her voice was taught with distress. “Excuse me –” She was heading for the door, but Lord Rothborough caught her arm and made her face him. He looked her over carefully.
“You should sit down for a moment, ma’am, and compose yourself,” he said, and guided her to the stool, with a gracious gesture, as if she were a duchess being escorted across a drawing room.
Lord Rothborough then folded his arms and looked at both of them.
“I suppose I should not be entirely surprised,” he said after a moment. “The question being how we deal with this.”
“As I said, my Lord, there is nothing to be done,” said Sukey.
“We wish to marry,” Felix said, and attempted to take Sukey’s hand but she flicked it away from him.
“And that is impossible!” she exclaimed, jumping up again.
“And that is distressing to you,” said Lord Rothborough, taking her hand in both his and gazing at her. “Your feelings are engaged, yes?”
Felix wanted to push him away, disliking the liberty of this question, and the way he had taken her hands, but Sukey did not seem to object, although she looked away to avoid his gaze. But she nodded, biting her lip as she did so. Lord Rothborough patted her hand and said,
“I understand my dear, believe me I do. Very distressing.”
He guided her back to the stool and turned his attention to Felix.
“Mrs Connolly is perfectly right, Felix, you cannot marry. It is entirely out of the question. However –”
“However?” Felix said.
“There is another arrangement you might not have considered. A little establishment in Northminster – discreetly placed, but comfortable. And an allowance, yes?” He glanced at Sukey. “Forgive me, ma’am, if that idea offends you. If it does, then we will say no more about it, but I thought I would mention it at least.”
There was a silence and then Sukey said, looking up at him, “No, it does not offend me, my Lord.”
Felix found himself now even more bereft for words than he had been by Lord Rothborough’s speech.
Lord Rothborough smiled graciously at her.
“I can see,” Sukey went on, “that there might be advantages in it.”
“Since you are a widow, no-one will think it odd that you live alone,” Lord Rothborough said. “You can both enjoy each other’s company and preserve your reputations. Now, if Mrs Connolly were to meet a suitable gentleman she is still free to marry him, and you are free to marry, likewise. You are both very young.”
“I can’t think that Mr and Mrs O’Brien...” began Felix.
“They need not know, if you are discreet. There are ways these things can be managed. Perhaps some connection of your late husband has decided to give you an allowance, Mrs Connolly?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I see we understand each other,” Lord Rothborough said with a slight smile. “It is a possibility that we ought to explore. After all, excellent housekeeper though you are, ma’am, I think you would prefer not to be at the beck and call of an employer. An establishment of your own, albeit a small one –”
“And Major Vernon?” Felix said.
“He does not need to know either,” said Lord Rothborough.
“As if he will not guess!” exclaimed Felix. “He is a seer! He will take one look at me and know everything, and then he will try and put a stop to it. You know what he is like, Sukey!”
“But he is not my master! Not now!” said Sukey. “No-one is. And I will do as I choose. If I chose this, it is because it is my free will – not because you want it or he does not! It will because it is what I want. And, yes, my Lord, it does tempt me, it tempts me very much indeed. I do not really want to go to Mr and Mrs Hall. I was dreading it, to tell you the truth, absolutely dreading it –”
“I shall leave you to discuss it,” said Lord Rothborough.
“There is nothing to discuss!” Felix said. “This is a ridiculous idea!”
“Good day, ma’am,” said Lord Rothborough, taking her hand and kissing it. “Please do not hesitate to write to me if you are in any difficulty.”
He left and Felix said again, “There is nothing to discuss.”
“No, because he is suggesting something you do not want! Forget what I might want, won’t you?”
“I cannot allow this!” Felix said. “And what are you thinking, truly?”
“I am thinking that marriage is a prison that two people make for themselves before they have any idea of the other’s character. If I had been my husband’s mistress – well, who knows what misery might have been prevented! I was never so wretched as when I was married, and if I had known I could end it, just simply walk away, that would have been better. This way, if it does not work, then there is an end to it!”
“Marriage is not a prison. ”
“It can be! It can be the most wretched state. Believe me. Your father knows that! That is why he suggested this, I am sure of it. And you should be thankful he cares enough about you to make sure you are not locked up. I think he wants you to be happy,” she said.
“And so he suggests I ruin you!” Felix said.
“There is nothing to ruin, I have told you that before. I am not the virtuous girl you think I am,” she said, with a great sigh. “How is it he can see that and you can’t?”
“Because I love you?”
“And that sort of love, your sort of love, is blind.”
“Unlike his sort of love, I suppose?”
“He knows the world, and he’s had his heart broken a fair few times, I imagine. And he’s married to a woman he doesn’t love, from what I have heard. He knows what can happen between a man and a woman, how the milk can go sour!”
“I am beginning to think you would rather be his mistress than my wife!” Felix said. “Go on, run after him, why don’t you? He would take you just like that! I dare say this is why he has brought up this whole disgusting proposition, so that he can take you for himself! ‘Do not hesitate to write to me’! For the Lord’s sake! The –”
“That settles it!” said Sukey. “I am going to Cheshire and you can go to the devil, Felix Carswell! And don’t think you can write to me!”
-0-
Giles put down the last page of Woodward’s transcripts and could not help sighing slightly.
Even with a careful translation, it was not easy to make sense of it. The documents were, as they had guessed before, a collection of gossipy letters to and from individuals with strange titles and names. They covered the everyday concerns of what appeared to be the planter classes in Santa Magdalena, particularly the Martinez family and their many relations. He now knew about the state of various crops (including a disastrous tea plantation), the smuggling of slaves from the French West Indies, and who was marrying whom and the dowries involved down to the last Santa Magdalenean half gold dollar. He had learnt a little more about Dona Blanca and her charitable activities (she had founded a hospital and two orphanages) and also about President Martinez and his reforms. He had offended the clergy on occasion, it appeared, with his modernizing zeal, which was a concern for his third cousin, a pious, prosy individual called Don Almerigo whom was the author of at least half the letters. The family honour was of great importance to him and little fragments of information about the Martinez family were scattered about the letters, and also that of the Ramirez family, who were an impoverished cadet branch, regarded with great disdain by Don Almerigo. Don Luiz, the Chancellor, was painted as a thorough villain, a jumped-up peasant who was only in favour by grace of the President. “Why our cousin the president put that man in power will remain one of the great mysteries of this age,” Don Almerigo wrote to his brother in the monastery. “W
e must pray that he does not live to regret it.”
He may well have done, Giles thought, and possibly died for it. For after the assassination and the change of government there was this, written again by Don Almerigo: “I have spoken to a man, who is prepared to swear that he saw Don Luiz Ramirez in clandestine conversation with the agitator Christobal Rejados four days before the assassination of President Martinez, and that Rejados then instructed one of his men to carry out the assassination.”
Yet, Giles thought, looking through the letter again, “A man who is prepared to swear that,” was a troubling phrase for any one looking for hard evidence. Even allowing for formality of language and an element of mistranslation, those words seemed like a deliberate side-step away from the truth. Don Almerigo did not bother to specify who the man was and Giles’ supposition was that he was merely transmuting rumour into something that sounded like evidence. He wanted his brother to believe that Don Luiz was intimately associated with the assignation.
The sum of the letters were damaging to Don Luiz’s reputation. They would certainly stoke rumours, but there was so much hearsay and bias that they would not represent a real threat to his position. Any adept politician could deflect such accusations. Then why had Dona Blanca been so insistent they remain hidden? Perhaps she imagined the contents to be more explosive and more useful to her than they were, or perhaps he, as an outsider who had no knowledge of all the plots and cliques, could not possibly know of their real value. He even wondered if they might not be some elaborate fabrication by the Martinez family to discredit Ramirez. He began to doubt the very existence of Don Almerigo.
It was a mystery, and he got up from his chair, ruminating over it all. He would need an excellent pretext to talk to both Ramirez and Dona Blanca about this, and that was going to require some contrivance.
Chapter Forty
“What I propose is this,” said Major Vernon, as they drove away from Ardenthwaite to Stanegate the following morning. “We speak to Ramirez first – nothing confrontational – I shall say I want his account of Edgar merely for the sake of my enquiries, and no mention of jewellery at this stage – yes?”
The Shadowcutter Page 33
