Discovering Miss Dalrymple

by Emily Larkin

  “Miranda has a Faerie godmother,” the viscount said. He glanced up at his wife. A slight smile curved his mouth. “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

  Vickery looked back at Lady Dalrymple, floating in front of the mantelpiece. His lips parted as if he wanted to agree, but no words came from his mouth.

  Lady Dalrymple descended in a few quick steps. She took her seat on the sofa alongside Vickery and patted his cheek kindly. “Poor boy. I didn’t mean to shock you so. Do you have any questions?”

  If Vickery had questions, it appeared that he was unable to articulate them.

  Dimples showed briefly in Lady Dalrymple’s cheeks. She picked up her teacup and sipped again. Her eyes were bright with merriment. Her earlier nervousness had evaporated. So had Georgie’s. What she felt most was relief. Vickery looked dumbstruck, not outraged. He wasn’t panic-stricken, wasn’t shouting wild accusations about evil and witchcraft and abominations.

  “The women in Miranda’s family have a Faerie godmother,” Lord Dalrymple said. His voice was quiet, but it drew Vickery’s attention. “She visits each girl on her twenty-third birthday and grants her a wish. For some that wish has been a blessing, for others, a curse.”

  Vickery’s gaze shifted to Georgie.

  “Miranda asked to be able to walk on air. Georgiana . . .” Lord Dalrymple’s arm came around Georgie’s shoulders. “Georgiana chose to be able to find things. People, places, objects.”

  Vickery said nothing. His eyes were intent on Georgie’s face.

  “That’s how she knew where Hubert was buried.”

  “It wasn’t a dream, like I told you,” Georgie said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  Vickery’s expression didn’t change. After a moment he gave a short nod.

  “You asked my daughter a question this morning,” Lord Dalrymple said.

  Emotions flickered across Vickery’s face: shock, dismay.

  “I’m sorry,” Georgie said. “I know you spoke to me in confidence, but I needed to ask their advice, Vic. It’s important.”

  Vickery’s gaze came back to her. He became very still.

  Georgie took a deep breath. “Your father was right. You’re not his son.”

  Vickery looked at her for a long moment and then turned his head away. He closed his eyes and raised one hand to his face, as if trying to hide his expression from them, but Georgie saw his distress clearly.

  “It’s all right,” she said urgently. “Father says you’re still the Duke of Vickery. No one can take that from you.”

  “Leonard acknowledged you publicly as his heir,” Lord Dalrymple said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “You’ve taken your seat in the House of Lords. Legally you’re the Duke of Vickery. No one can challenge that.”

  Vickery lowered his hand and looked at them. He was pale, tense. He swallowed, and spoke for the first time since Lady Dalrymple had displayed her gift. “The real duke? Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Georgie said. “He drowned in a creek in Kent.”

  Vickery closed his eyes again. “Oh, God.”

  Georgie looked at her mother. Lady Dalrymple was uncharacteristically grave. She met Georgie’s eyes. She didn’t say I told you not to tell him, but the words rang in Georgie’s ears anyway.

  Georgiana turned her attention back to Vickery. “You were born in Cornwall,” she told him. “In a farmhouse by the sea.”

  Vickery’s eyes opened. He stared across at her.

  “Your parents are both dead. They’re buried in a churchyard.”

  Vickery squeezed his eyes shut again. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. Georgie saw tension in his bowed head, tension in his shoulders.

  Lady Dalrymple sat alongside him, but she didn’t attempt to reach out and touch him. They could all see, quite clearly, that Vickery didn’t want to be touched.

  Georgie felt sick. She gripped her hands tightly in her lap. I made the wrong choice. I should have lied to him. She looked at her father helplessly.

  Her father had no Faerie godmother, but he had a way of understanding her thoughts that was close to magic. “When Georgiana came to us this morning and told us what she’d discovered, we advised her not to tell you the truth,” he said. “The dead are dead. The past can’t be altered.” His words hung quietly in the room. “But my daughter didn’t want to lie to you, and after some consideration we decided she was correct.”

  Several seconds passed, and then Vickery lifted his head slightly and looked across at the viscount.

  “I think you deserve to know the truth, Alexander, even though it’s painful. But if you feel that we chose wrongly, then I apologize.”

  After a moment Vickery shook his head. “No. The truth is always best.” He rubbed his face roughly and pushed to his feet, the toe of one boot catching his broken teacup, sending it spinning.

  Vickery didn’t notice. He crossed to the tall French windows and stood looking out, his face turned from them.

  No one spoke. Her mother made no move to pick up the teacup. They sat quietly, giving Vickery silence, giving him time, giving him space.

  Georgie gripped her hands together and watched him anxiously. He looked brittle, taut, tense, and even though he was in the same room as them he seemed impossibly distant, as if he were miles away.

  She tried to imagine what he must be feeling right now. Everything he’d grown up believing was suddenly not true. The foundations of his life had crumbled into nothing. His past had been wiped out. Did he feel lost? Alone? Did he feel that he stood in a void, with emptiness all around him, that he had nothing firm to hold onto anymore?

  “Vic?” Georgie rose to her feet, but didn’t quite dare to approach him. “Vic, if you’d like to go to Cornwall and see where you were born, I’ll take you there.” She made the offer tentatively. “You don’t have to. Only . . . if you want to?” If it would give him solid ground to stand on again, a chance to start filling his life with truths.

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Vickery’s head turned. She tried to read his expression, and failed.

  “Yes,” he said. “I would like to go to Cornwall.”

  “We can go as soon as you like. Tomorrow, if you wish.” And then she remembered that even though she was an adult, she couldn’t travel alone with a man. “Mother will come with us, won’t you, Mama?” She turned to her mother and beseeched her silently, urgently.

  Lady Dalrymple hesitated, and exchanged a glance with her husband, and Georgie suddenly remembered that her mother was due to go to Derbyshire tomorrow.

  “I’ll come with you,” Lord Dalrymple said.

  Chapter Five

  September 13th, 1814

  Devonshire

  Alexander had barely slept the night he’d found his father’s diaries. He hadn’t slept at all the following night. If his father’s doubts had been bad enough, Georgiana’s certainties were a hundred times worse. He’d lain awake, exhausted, wrestling with the truth—I am not Alexander St. Clare—while his heart beat steadily and calmly, as if his whole life hadn’t been ripped to shreds.

  He fell asleep the next morning, though, within ten minutes of the carriage departing Eype, and woke not knowing where he was. He jolted to consciousness, alarmed, wondering where in the devil he was—and realized that he was in his traveling chaise, slumped into a corner like a drunk man, the vibration of the wheels juddering along his bones and rattling inside his skull.

  For a moment he had absolutely no idea why he was in the carriage or where he was going—and then memory came flooding back. I’m not Alexander St. Clare. His brain ran through its gamut of emotions again: the instinctive denial, the shock, the dismay, the disbelief. Grief was buried in there, too, and a strange unsteady feeling, as if he’d been shoved sideways and lost his balance and was falling but had yet to hit the ground.

  He turned his head. Georgiana and her father were seated opposite. Georgiana was looking out the window, her expression
pensive, but the viscount was watching him.

  Alexander slowly levered himself to sit upright. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  Georgiana turned her head and smiled at him. It was one of her small, faintly sad smiles. The sort of smile she’d worn often in the years following Hubert’s disappearance but that he’d not seen at all these past eight months.

  He should have worried about that smile, should have been embarrassed that he’d fallen asleep in front of her, but there was no space in his head for either of those things. I’m not Alexander St. Clare. The words were so big that they squeezed out everything else.

  Alexander rubbed his eyes, wishing he could erase the last two days, and then touched his cheek where Lady Dalrymple had kissed him goodbye that morning. Kissed him and hugged him, folding him in her arms as if he were family. And then she’d told him, quite sternly, “Look after my daughter and husband, young man, or I’ll turn you into a caterpillar.”

  A tiny sliver of curiosity nudged its way into his brain. Alexander fastened on it with relief. Curiosity was a thousand times better than the awful helplessness of knowing that his life was collapsing around him and being unable to do anything about it. He fingered the spot on his cheek where the viscountess had kissed him, and asked, “Can Lady Dalrymple really turn people into caterpillars?”

  “No,” Georgiana said. “It’s her way of a joke. She can only walk on air.”

  Only. Only walk on air.

  His curiosity became stronger. Questions piled on his tongue. Alexander kneaded the back of his neck, trying to decide which question to ask first. He glanced out the window briefly, and then a second time in astonishment. “Where are we?”

  “We’ve just crossed over the Exe.”

  Crossed over the River Exe? He’d slept for forty miles? No wonder his neck was so stiff.

  Abruptly he was ravenously hungry. And thirsty. And in urgent need of a piss. “How far to the next stage?”

  They halted briefly at Topsham and then pushed on, heading south and west, towards Cornwall. Alexander wished he could fall asleep again and shut out the world, silence the voice in his head that told him he wasn’t Alexander St. Clare, but he was wide awake now. He let his curiosity worm its way forward again. “Can you explain to me about the walking on air, please? I mean, how is it possible? How can anyone have a Faerie godmother?”

  Georgiana explained, and it sounded wholly unbelievable—an act of courage performed centuries ago, a Faerie wish granted in return, a bloodline of women receiving magical gifts. Alexander listened, instinctively rejecting everything she said as impossible. When Georgiana had finished, he looked mutely at Lord Dalrymple. Tell me it’s a joke, sir? But Lord Dalrymple, who was without doubt the most intelligent person Alexander knew, gave one of his gentle smiles and said, “It’s the truth.”

  Alexander wrestled with this for several minutes, while the carriage rattled its way towards Cornwall. Questions swarmed in his brain. He selected one. “Daughters only?”

  “Yes,” Georgiana said.

  “And only one wish?”

  She nodded. “On our twenty-third birthdays.”

  “And a Faerie actually visited you to grant you this wish?” He heard the disbelief in his voice.

  Georgiana nodded again.

  “And you chose to be able to find things?”

  She nodded a third time.

  Alexander stared at her. Georgiana Dalrymple, whom he’d known most of his life, with her soft brown hair and wise brown eyes and sweet, sad smile. Georgiana Dalrymple, who had a Faerie godmother and a mother who could walk on air. Georgiana, who could find things.

  It was a very odd gift to have chosen, but he understood why she had. If she’d wanted to move forward with her life it was the only gift she could have chosen.

  Alexander looked out the window for a moment, watching the fields flash past, and thought about Hubert. Curly-headed, laughing Hubert. Hubert, who should have married Georgiana years ago.

  He looked back at Georgiana. She and her father were watching him silently.

  Alexander groped for another of his questions. “What’s it like?” he asked. “I mean, how does it work? Your ability.”

  “I ask myself where something is, and the answer is suddenly inside my head. I can see where it is as clearly as if I’ve been there, and I can find it exactly on a map. It’s . . . it’s as if someone asked you where your celestial globe is.”

  A picture flashed into Alexander’s mind: the globe in its mahogany stand in the far corner of the library at Thornycombe.

  “You see it in your head, don’t you?” Georgiana asked. “You know it’s there, and you could go to it without hesitation, and if someone showed you a map of England you’d be able to put your finger right on Thornycombe and say, ‘The globe is here, in the library’.”

  Alexander nodded.

  “It’s just like that, except that these are places I’ve never been to before.”

  “Hubert . . .” Alexander said, and then stopped.

  There was silence for a long moment, apart from the creaking and rattling of the carriage.

  “I saw his grave,” Georgiana said. “A headstone with no name on it. At first I thought that’s all I’d ever know—where he was buried—but then I realized there was a lot more I could find out.”

  Alexander frowned. “Such as?”

  “Where’s the man who was with him when he died? Where’s the man who killed him?”

  “What?” Alexander leaned forward. “Who? Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Georgiana said. “Hanged on the gallows.”

  “You know that?” He looked from Georgiana to her father and back.

  Georgiana nodded.

  “But why?” he burst out. “Why would anyone kill Hubert? He was the nicest of fellows! And what was he doing in the middle of nowhere when he should have been in Perth?” He caught himself, sat back on the seat, ran a hand roughly through his hair, tried to calm down. “I beg your pardon. I know there’s no way of knowing. It’s just . . .” It’s just that he was like a brother to me.

  “We do know those things,” Lord Dalrymple said quietly.

  Alexander’s gaze jerked to him.

  “It’s surprising what you can learn by asking Where? For example, where was Hubert headed that day?”

  “Perth,” Alexander said.

  Lord Dalrymple shook his head. “Craigruie.”

  Craigruie? Alexander had never heard of a place called Craigruie. “Where’s that? Why on earth would he go there?”

  “What’s in Craigruie?” Dalrymple asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The cave where Robert the Bruce saw the spider.”

  Alexander opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He had a flash of memory—he and Hubert and Oliver halfway up a cliff, Hubert gritting his teeth, saying, I’m not giving up. The spider didn’t, and I’m not either!

  “Hubert was headed to Perth. Where did he change his mind? At Kinross. Where did he stop for refreshments? Kinross. Where did he learn about the cave in Craigruie? Kinross.” Dalrymple paused. “Where did he die? On the road to Craigruie.”

  Alexander closed his eyes. “Oh, God.”

  “And as for why he died . . .”

  Alexander opened his eyes and stared across at the viscount.

  “Where is the man who met Hubert on the road to Craigruie? Where is the man who stole his horse, his money, his clothes? Where is the man who killed him?”

  Alexander’s mouth was dry. He swallowed. “He died on a gallows.”

  Lord Dalrymple nodded.

  Alexander glanced at Georgiana. She was pale-faced. He saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. He reached out to take her hand, caught himself just in time, and sat back. You can’t touch her, you fool; you’re not betrothed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought this subject up. Forgive me, Georgie.”

  He turned his head and looked out the window blindly, not seeing the fields and
the hedgerows; what he saw was Hubert getting murdered on a lonely road in Scotland. Helpless, futile rage rose in his chest. It was as well Hubert’s murderer was dead or he’d kill the man himself, hunt him down and rip his head right off his shoulders.

  Alexander clenched his hands, unclenched them, and looked at Georgiana and her father again. “The gypsies who abducted Alexander St. Clare . . . where are they?”

  Georgiana shook her head. “No one abducted him.”

  Alexander’s rage faltered. “What?”

  “There were no gypsies in the woods that day. The nurserymaids were lying.”

  “What?” he said again. His rage folded inwards and became confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “No one was with him when he drowned.”

  Alexander thought about this for a moment, and then said, “The nurserymaids lost him? And then lied about it?”

  Georgiana nodded.

  Alexander rubbed his face roughly. He looked out the window, and then back at Georgiana. “Where are they now? The nurserymaids?” And then he said, “No, don’t answer that. There’s no point.” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his face again. Fuck. He tried to organize his thoughts. What did he want to know? He looked across at Georgiana. “Were they playing hide-and-seek? Is that why they lost him?” He rephrased it as a question she could answer: “Where are the nurserymaids who were playing hide-and-seek with Alexander St. Clare when he drowned?”

  Her brow creased for a moment. She shook her head. “They weren’t playing hide-and-seek.”

  Alexander frowned. Why else would the nurserymaids have lost sight of their charge? He tried to imagine the scene: a warm summer’s day, a picnic in a sunny glade, two nurserymaids and a four-and-a-half-year-old boy. “They fell asleep. Didn’t they?” He found the right question: “Where are the nurserymaids who were napping while Alexander St. Clare drowned?”

  A flicker of surprise crossed Georgiana’s face. “Oh,” she said. “That’s it. They were asleep.” And then she said, uncertainly, “You don’t want to know where they are, do you?”