“She has broken your heart, has she not?”
He paused, his entire body stiffening like a pointer’s. Then he collapsed into the chair with a groan, burying his face in his hands. It was some minutes before he dropped them, and when he did, I saw they shook a little.
“Did you hear the story of how we met, Lucy and me?” he began. I shook my head, concealing my surprise at the turn of events. Instead of being rather sternly lectured, it seemed I was to be treated to a story. “It was Ludlow’s doing. His side of the family put great stock in education, refinement. My father thought solely of money. We lived in the poorest slums, not because my father could not afford better, but because he would not spend a tuppence more than he must for anything. He was a grim, miserly man who lived by one creed—if it could not put a penny in his pocket, he cared nothing for it. But I was a smart lad, and when Father put me to work as a bootmaker’s apprentice, I learned the trade faster than any other boy in East London. I could cut a sole as quick and pretty as you please, and not one of the other lads could touch me for the stitches I used to make, so small you would need a magnifying glass just to see them.”
Sir Cedric paused, his tawny eyes glazing slightly out of focus as he looked beyond me into his past. “One day the bootmaker’s son was sick abed, and he shouted to me to come and help him fit a gentleman who had called at the shop. I had never seen a person of quality before, not like that. He was straight as a ramrod, a spine of steel and a nose like a whippet’s. He looked down at me with that nose, and why not? I was scruffy and ill-fed. I slept with the beetles under the stairs, and I washed only when forced to it. But I forgot myself, my worn clothes and ill-kempt hair. I made so bold as to stare at the gentleman, and when he took a book from his pocket and began to read, it was like he was doing magic in front of my very eyes. I was eight years old and I had never seen anyone read a book, can you imagine that?”
I could not, but I knew to comment at this point might be disastrous. He was lost in his reminiscences, and I dared not call him back.
“The gentleman noticed my interest, my obsession, and as he left, he gave me the book. I have read a thousand books since, but not one of them ever taught me a word to describe the feeling I had in that moment. Joy, euphoria, ecstasy, they are pale and feeble ghosts of the word I want. I thought the feeling would consume me. I might have gone up in a pillar of flame in that moment, and done so happily. The feeling lasted until I opened the book and realised I could not understand a letter of it,” he added with a wry smile. “But I did not let that stop me. I begged the bootmaker’s daughter to teach me my letters, and she did, a to zed, right the way through, and by the end of that autumn, I could read the first line of the book the gentleman had given me. ‘If music be the food of love, play on’.”
“Twelfth Night!” I exclaimed, forgetting myself. But Sir Cedric merely smiled indulgently.
“Indeed it was. I thought it was the most magical thing I had ever heard, a shipwreck, false identities, love that could not be satisfied. My contentment never waned, no matter how many times I read it. Until I went home on Christmas Day, and my father threw it into the fireplace and burnt it before my eyes.”
I drew in a sharp breath, expelling it slowly. Sir Cedric curled a lip in derision.
“Do not pity me, lady. He burnt it because he thought I had wasted my wages on it instead of handing them over as I ought. But I got my own back, I did,” he said, his eyes snapping with a hellish mischief. “I burnt his only suit of clothes. The house stank of charred cloth for weeks—as long as I carried bruises on my back from the beating he gave me—but I did not care. He took ill that winter and was buried by Easter. I came home to live with my mother, and I promised her I would care for her. I did. By the time I was fourteen I had earned enough, coupled with what my father left us, to start my own business, selling cheap shoes out of a cart for four times what they cost to make. They fell apart the first time they got wet, but no matter. By the time I was sixteen I had enough money to buy a pub. My mother signed the papers as I was not old enough, and I hired a rough-looking fellow to water the gin and look the other way when the doxies brought clients upstairs. Ah, you are shocked at that, I think. Not many know I made a tidy profit from the whores in Whitechapel, turning a blind eye to their doings, taking a share of their earnings in exchange for a private room and a bed. And with that profit, I bought my first factory, a textile mill in the Midlands, where I made my first millions on the backs of women and children.”
I did not speak. His story had clearly been told to offend me, and I refused to give him the satisfaction. I had thought him capable of real tenderness, but as he related the events of his youth, I began to doubt it.
“Now I owned copper mines and steamships, paper mills and even a small railway in Scotland. But still I lacked something. It was Ludlow who told me what it was. Civility, he said, education, polish. I had not read a book since the one my father burnt. No time for such foolishness, but Ludlow convinced me it was foolish not to. He said no lady of quality would marry a ruffian like me. So I hired a teacher of etiquette to smooth out my edges. I bought the entire library of a country house at auction and read every book in it. I attended plays and operas and exhibitions of the greatest paintings. And I went to lectures, everything from Darwin to the Dolomites, and it was at a lecture I met Lucy. Your father spoke two hours that night, and I heard not a word of it. I could not take my eyes from her.”
Sir Cedric seemed to recollect my presence then. He slanted me a look from under his thick brows. “Doubtless you think me a fool, but I tell you I looked at her and I understood every poem I had ever read about love. It was that quick, that irrevocable. One minute, I was myself, as I had ever been. The next, I was consumed with her. I decided then that I must have her, and the rest you know. I wooed and won her in a fortnight. I care not for the particulars of how it happens. I left the planning of the wedding entirely to Lucy.” His features, so changeable and so reflective of his mood, altered then. His lips thinned, his brows drew together, and the colour of his complexion rose. “And now she has done this, ruined it all with her foolishness,” he said, spitting out the words as if they lay bitter on his tongue.
“Then you do not mean to marry her?” I ventured softly.
He raised his chin, curling his lip in scorn. “I made a promise to wed her and I am a man of my word. But do not think I am unaware of what it will mean. She has made us a laughingstock, figures of fun for all the world to jeer at. I shall be mocked for it, but I will marry her.”
And make her pay for it the rest of her life, I imagined. Poor Lucy. Whatever part she had played in the aftermath of the murder, she did not deserve Sir Cedric’s resentful affections. He did not appear to be a man who easily relinquished his grudges, and I felt certain Lucy would bear the lash of his grievances the whole of their marriage.
“I am sure there are those who will think it laudable you stood beside her when she most needed your support,” I commented. Sir Cedric blasted me with a look.
“Surely you must understand what it means to be ridiculous in the eyes of society,” he said. “There is not a month goes by some fresh gossip about the Marches doesn’t find its way into the newspapers. I thought Lucy was far enough removed from that. She assured me after that business with your father—”
“My father? What of him?” To my knowledge, Father had been remarkably well-behaved of late. I had credited it to Hortense’s influence, but perhaps I had been too generous.
Sir Cedric shifted in his chair. He was the sort of man who liked always to be in the right, I suspected. If he knew something of Father’s exploits and had been instructed to keep his counsel, breaking that trust would put him squarely in the wrong. But I had not anticipated the streak of malice running like an ugly flaw through the fabric of his character.
“Your father was very nearly arrested a fortnight ago,” he told me, his eyes sharp with spite.
Thoughts spun past and I snatched at one.
“The riot in Trafalgar Square?”
“That’s right. He went to support his friend, that treacherous Irish bastard.”
“You mean William O’Brien.” An Irish member of Parliament, he was at present languishing in prison, where his ill-treatment had been cause for the outrage in Trafalgar Square.
“I do indeed,” he spat.
“What happened?”
Sir Cedric shrugged. “March very nearly got shot for his troubles. If it had not been for that Brisbane fellow watching his back, your father would be lying next to Snow in the game larder.” He chuckled at his own joke and reached into his pocket for another vile cigar. I could not make sense of this. I had suspected Brisbane had been in Trafalgar Square on the fateful day and sustained his injury in the process. But that Father had been there as well was something I could not entirely take in.
“I am sorry, Sir Cedric, but I do not follow you. Do you mean to say that Lord Wargrave went to Trafalgar Square to protect my father?”
He clipped the end of his cigar, lit the tip, and pulled deeply from it, the end glowing like a ruby.
“I do not know how he came to be there. I only know that someone in that square fired a shot at your father, and Wargrave,” he said, spreading the title thickly with sarcasm, “stepped in front of the bullet. He and his man hurried your father out of the square before he was recognised, and them with a bullet wound and a broken leg between them.” He drew in a great lungful of smoke, then expelled it slowly through his nose. “If it were not for your friend, your father’s name would have been all over the newspapers, and he would have likely been accountable to Parliament for his treasonous actions.”
I bristled. “Father is no traitor. He merely has unconventional friends.”
Sir Cedric waved his cigar. “His friends are traitors, and as far as I am concerned, he is cut from the same cloth.”
“Then I must wonder that you are so willing to marry into his family,” I retorted.
Sir Cedric paused, puffing away at his cigar, clouding the atmosphere of the room with its poisonous aroma. Grim made a sound in his throat and rose to the top of the bust of Caesar where the air was clearer.
“I want the girl,” he said simply. “I want her, and what I want, I have. But she is soiled goods to me now, and I do not think I will ever look on her without thinking I have been got the better of.”
I stared at him, scarcely believing he was serious, but his countenance betrayed no sign of levity, and I knew he spoke the truth.
“Lucy is not responsible for the actions of her family,” I said, rising from my chair. He did not offer me the courtesy of rising as well, but merely sat, drawing deeply from his cigar and watching me with his tawny predator’s eyes. “Any more than we are responsible for her choice of husband,” I concluded with a fatuous smile.
I whistled for Grim and took my leave, my raven bobbing along in my wake. I had much to think on.
THE TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
He gave you such a mastery report For art and exercise in your defense, And for your rapier most especially.
—Hamlet
I returned Grim to his cage in Father’s study, pleased to find the room deserted. He had likely gone elsewhere to sulk, and he was welcome to it. I took the chance to sit a moment, deeply occupied with the thoughts that were tumbling through my head like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. The difficulty was none of these bits seemed to make any nice, pretty patterns. There were dozens of snippets of conversation, impressions, facts, theories, all whirling madly, none pausing long enough for me to make sense of them. This would never do, I told myself severely. The only way to fit the pieces together was to first make them orderly.
With a brisk step I went to my room, banishing Morag and the dog as I retrieved paper and pen. I arranged them on the blotter, remembering the maxim one of my governesses had always chanted, “A tidy desk is the reflection of a tidy mind.” Of course, this particular governess had been discharged when Aunt Hermia discovered her dancing naked on the front lawn in celebration of the summer solstice. Perhaps it was best not to put much confidence in her little philosophies, but I had nothing to lose.
Writing swiftly, I put down everything I could think of pertaining to the murder, the theft of the pearls, and any other curious behaviours I had witnessed—the drugging of Lucy and Emma, the flirtation between Plum and Charlotte, the antipathy Snow held toward the Gypsies, the ghosts—I noted it all. And written down in a neat and orderly fashion, it was as tremendous a mess as it had been in my head.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, thinking hard. Nothing made any sense at all; the pieces were too tenuous, the connections between them too vague and shadowy as yet. I groaned and threw the paper into the fire, deriving a very little satisfaction in watching it burn. “How Brisbane does this every day I shall never know,” I grumbled.
But if I were to be entirely honest, I must admit I felt more alive, more necessary, than I had in half a year. My wanderings around Italy had been pleasant beyond description, but pleasant is a very little word. And I realised, as I sat watching my efforts at deduction smoulder to ash, I wanted a larger life than the one I had led. I wanted adventure and passion and romance, and all the other things I had scorned. More than seven hundred years of wild March blood had told at last, I thought with a smile. I had done a mighty job of suppressing it for the first thirty years of my life, but it simply would not do anymore.
With a newfound vigour, I left my room and made my way downstairs. Just as I reached the bottom of the staircase, Hortense appeared, coaxing a moody Violante along. My sister-in-law was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and Hortense looked at me over the girl’s head, her eyes warm with sympathy and perhaps a touch of relief.
“Ah, Julia. Just the friendly face we hoped to find. Violante is a trifle upset, and perhaps you can cheer her better than I. I think she grows weary of me,” Hortense said, hugging Violante close to her side and giving her a wink.
Violante hugged her back, watering the silk of her gown with her tears.
I put out my hand. “Come, walk with me, Violante. We will be very naughty and steal cakes from Cook and eat them on the stairs as Portia and I used to do as children.”
Violante pulled a face and put a hand to her stomach. “I do not think the cakes I would like very much.”
“Perhaps not, but you will like being with me. I am far nicer than Lysander and much prettier than Plum.”
She laughed at this and took my hand, giving Hortense a quick kiss in farewell. I was astonished at how quickly they had become intimate, but it ought not to have surprised me. I knew only too well how kind Hortense could be. Compassion was the brightest treasure in her jewel box of virtues.
Violante and I strolled down the corridor, arm in arm. I felt a little ashamed of myself. The poor child was in a foreign country, with an imperfect grasp of the language, struggling to accommodate herself to her new family, and had endured a murder in her home, as well. And one could only imagine how the knowledge of her pregnancy had affected her. Doubtless she was pleased, but she had not had an easy time of it thus far, and I noticed her mouth was drawn down with sadness.
Impulsively I patted her hand, sorry I had not remembered earlier how affectionate she was. She must have missed the easy intimacies of her sisters and cousins in Italy. I brushed the hair back from her brow. “You are a little homesick, I think.”
She nodded. “Si. I miss the sunshine, the flowers, the good foods of Napoli.” I raised my brows and she hurried on. “England is very nice, of course. But it is not my home. There are no dead people at home.”
I blinked at her. “Of course there are dead people in Italy, Violante. Some of them are still lying out in the churches for people to look at. I have seen the guidebooks.” They were gruesome too, those decaying old saints, preserved under glass like so many specimens in a museum of natural history. I had made a point of visiting as many as possible during my travels.
“They
are not in my house,” she corrected, and I had to concede the point. To my understanding, her upbringing had been a conventional one. Her family might be passionately Italian, but at least murder had never broken out at one of their house parties.
“Please believe me when I tell you that they are not usually in this house either. This is a very strange turn of events, my dear, and not at all the welcome we had planned for you,” I said consolingly.
She smiled at me, but doubtfully so. I changed the subject.
“What do you think of Father?”
Her smile deepened. “He is very nice.” Verra nice. “His Italian, it is not so good as my English, but we understand each other.”
“Good,” I told her. “It is good when family understand one another.”
She leaned toward me conspiratorially. “I am making him a waistcoat—it is a surprise, tell no one.”
I blinked at her. “Of course not. What a charming idea. Father will be delighted.”
She smiled, clearly pleased with herself. “It was Lysander’s idea. He thought if I made something for Papa with my own hands, it would show how much I est—est—”
“Esteem?” I suggested.
“Esteem him,” she finished happily. “I want to be the good daughter to him.”
I resisted the little dart of annoyance I felt when she said that. Father had five daughters, he scarcely needed another. But I reminded myself that Violante was a stranger in our country, and that we were her family now.
I patted her hand. “That is a noble idea, Violante. I am sure he will be very pleased.”
She brightened and tucked her handkerchief into her pocket. “I will go and work on it now. Tell me, does he like best the purples or the oranges?”
I tipped my head, considering carefully. Father’s wardrobe was usually an excellent barometer of his mental state. When he was feeling melancholy and sulky, he wore his decaying old tweeds and shirts made for him in Savile Row thirty years ago. When he was in fine fettle, he dressed like a maharajah with just a dash of circus performer, all colour and light. It had not escaped my attention that he had worn his threadbare tweeds with a pair of disgusting old gaiters since our arrival at the Abbey. Perhaps a fine new waistcoat would be just the thing to raise his spirits.
Silent in the Sanctuary Page 27
