by Lois Greiman
The girl’s eyes grew wide and she seemed to pale a bit, but she said nothing for a moment. He filled the silence.
“And who might you be?”
“My name is Julia, sir.”
“Might your mistress be about, Julia?” he asked, carefully keeping his tone light, his face smiling. “I’ve been abroad for some months and only just returned last night. Hence I thought I might pop round and give my regards to Miss—”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she interrupted, and indeed, she did look unhappy. “You mustn’t have heard.”
He dropped the jovial expression gratefully. “Heard what?”
“Me mistress she’s…well, she died, sir, some six weeks back.”
“Died!” he hissed, and perhaps his performance was more accomplished than he realized, because she winced as if struck.
“I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t realize you were…That is to say, we thought all her friends knowed…knew. And…” She paused, seeming to assess the situation. “P’raps you should come in for a spell. Sit down. Have a bit of tea.”
He nodded and followed her inside. She led him past a marble bust of Mozart. It had been one of his father’s most treasured possessions. Sarah had become an accomplished pianist, he’d been told. At the same age Drake had learned to avoid the captain’s fists.
He passed the parlor to his right. He had sat there a lifetime ago while his father had displayed his wealth. Had sat there and silently damned the old man for a hundred offenses: his blustery arrogance, his wife’s untimely death, the forced exile of his only son while he gloated over his spindly daughter like a pedigreed pet. But Sarah had never seemed to share his animosity. Bright-eyed and soft-smiled, she had, from the first moment he saw her at three years of age, seemed to adore him inexplicably. He had resented even that.
The pert-nosed maid indicated an upholstered divan, then clasped her hands nervously. “If you’ll but sit tight I shall fetch some tea and biscuits. Or would you prefer something stronger? ’Tis a bit early, I know, but you look a mite…well, a mite winded.”
“Please don’t bother yourself,” he said. “But if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, perhaps you could sit.” He indicated the ornate silver-shot chair across from him. His father had purchased it while on a tour of the continent. Drake had been battling a storm in the Caspian Sea at the same time. They had lost two men and most of their supplies. Monkey had proven to be indispensable as a rodent catcher, and cooked rat had become a mainstay. “Tell me what happened.”
She glanced toward the kitchen, as if wishing to be elsewhere, but she finally acquiesced, perching on the edge of the cushion and staring at him with sad, limpid eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir, but what was your name again?”
“William,” he said. Lying did not come easily to him, but Sarah was dead and he would know why. That much he owed her for kinship alone. And perhaps far more for the childish animosity he had maintained despite her adoration. “William Tye.”
“And…I don’t mean to be presumptuous, good sir. But how did you know my mistress?”
How much did this girl know of his sister? Enough to realize Sarah had known no one by the name of William Tye? Enough to know he was lying? “We were friends,” he said, and almost wished it had been true, for regardless of his own aloof detachment, she had shown him nothing but kindness. “In truth, I was something of an admirer.” Another lie, of course. He had resented her from the moment he’d learned of her existence. She had killed his mother, after all, and still hadn’t had the good grace to be anything like her. Where Kiara Donovan had been bright and earthy and lively, Sarah had been shy and soft-spoken. Yet she had been the apple of their father’s eye. He’d shown her off like so much newly acquired furniture, even though she had looked reedy and pale the last time he’d seen her, barely eight years of age, eyes wide as moons above her ridiculously frilly frock. “She always seemed so kind.”
The trace of a watery smile touched the maid’s lips. “She was that,” she said. “Always thoughtful. Until…” But she stopped, glanced toward the kitchen again. “Are you certain I can’t get you no tea?”
“Until what?” he pressed, careful to keep his voice even.
“Until recent,” she said, and worried at her lower lip.
What the hell did that mean? “Might I ask how she died?”
“In a fire. At…at a friend’s house. ’Twas a terrible tragedy.”
“A fire?” He allowed himself to scowl.
She did the same. “I’m sorry.”
“What friend?”
She hesitated just a moment before she spoke. “Mr. Grey.” Her voice was small, her mouth pursed with something. Disapproval? Sadness? Had she and Sarah been friends? Or as good of friends as their social circumstances allowed? “Mr. Timothy Grey.”
“You don’t like him?” he asked.
She clasped her hands carefully in her lap. “It would be wrong of me to say as much, sir. ’Specially since he passed on too.”
“In the fire?”
“Yes, sir.”
Something about her tone intrigued him. “You didn’t approve of him.”
She glanced up, eyes wide. He tried another smile, reminded himself to relax.
“I was her friend,” he said, voice quiet, inviting trust. “As were you, I think.”
Her eyes brightened again, fat tears threatening to spill over the precipice of her lids. “Miss Sarah, she was teaching me to talk proper. The master, he didn’t want to hire me on ’cuz…because I hadn’t been trained as no chambermaid.”
He waited, letting her talk.
“I was only a housemaid before I come here and that don’t pay near so well, but Miss Sarah asked her father to take me on. Said I was bright and I could learn.”
“And he listened to her?” Even though he hadn’t so much as considered allowing Drake a few more months at home, even at half her age.
“The master…” She shook her head and sniffled a little. “He was terrible proud of Miss Sarah. Said she could find herself a peer of the realm if she set her cap for one.”
Emotion burned Drake’s soul. He refused to believe it was jealousy. For surely he was well past that foolishness. Good God, he was a grown man.
“Perhaps I have no right to ask,” he said. “But I would appreciate any information you can give me. This Grey…what kind of man was he?”
“Truth to tell…” She paused, scowled. “I never did meet him.”
“He didn’t call at the house?”
She shook her head.
“Then how did you know of him?”
“She spoke of him some. In private like.”
Why in private? “She didn’t tell the others?”
She shook her head. “She thought Finny would disapprove.”
“Finny?”
“The head woman. The master hired her some years back, and she took it upon herself to look after Miss Sarah, ’specially after the master’s death. Maybe I should have told her of Grey. Maybe…” Another shake. “But Miss Sarah, she seemed so happy.”
He contained a wince. “He made her happy?”
Her expression was troubled. “At the outset leastways.”
“But something changed?”
“She just…She just faded like. Slow. Bit by bit, so to speak. I worried. We all did, but there didn’t seem to be nothing we could do. Then when she said she was going to live with her cousins in the country, I thought sure that would be the best thing for her. Get her away.”
Perhaps their father’s distant “cousin” Hannah and her well-mannered brood could have given Sarah the sense of kinship she needed, that Drake had neglected to supply. And perhaps that kinship would have set her straight. But she had never arrived at the sprawling estate just outside Huntingdon. That much he knew. He glanced out the window, wishing for second chances that were never to be.
“Had her brother been attending her as he should this would never have happened,” she said.
&nbs
p; Guilt spurred Drake, raking his soul. He turned back toward her. “And perhaps you should have informed the others of this Grey.”
The girl’s face seemed to crumple in on itself. Her eyes filled with tears, and her slim hands shook.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and let the guilt claw his viscera at will. She was right, of course. If he had been a decent guardian…a decent brother…she would yet be alive. Still smiling her shy smile. Still sending him gifts and notes and pressed wildflowers. Just before the battle of Grand Port, he had received her last package. She worried for his well-being, she said, and kept him in her prayers. He wished to God now that he could have said the same. “That was cruel of me.” Enough pain had been caused. Enough time wasted. “It was not your place to care for her.”
“No.” Her voice was soft. Her lips trembled a little. “’Tis true. I should not have kept secrets. I should have told Finny everything.”
He felt a cool draft of premonition whisper over his skin. “Everything?”
She twisted her hands. “There was a lady too.”
The house felt rather airless suddenly. “What’s that?”
“Miss Sarah, she had herself a female friend she called Lady L.”
Ella’s face flashed unbidden in his mind. He waited, not breathing.
“Miss Sarah would oft visit Lady Harting for the day, but I’m—”
“Harting?”
“An elderly acquaintance. They become friends some time back.” She worried at her lip again. “But I suspect now that Miss Sarah never stayed long after the old lady’s nap.”
“What did she do after her departure?”
She scowled a little, as if she might have already said too much. “I’m not certain.”
“Do you think this lady was somehow connected to Mr. Grey?”
“Lady Harting?”
“No, Lady L.”
“Oh. I don’t know,” she said, but her expression suggested that she had suspicions that made her cringe.
“Yet you think so. Why?”
For a moment he thought she would deny it, but she didn’t. “Just a feeling, I suspect. After seeing Lady L, Miss Sarah sometimes acted…” She paused, shrugged.
“What?”
“Kind of sly like about it.”
“Sly?”
“Like she was doing something she oughtn’t.”
He’d been holding his breath, he realized, and let it out slowly. “This lady, how did she look?”
“She never come here to Hawkspur, but once I went along with Teeter to fetch her from Lady Harting’s.”
“And?”
“She was just saying good-bye to a lady on a horse. Someone I hadn’t never seen before.”
He wanted to hurry her along, demand answers to questions that were, as of yet, unformed, but he nodded instead. “And what was the significance of that, do you think?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there wasn’t none.”
He held his hand open in his lap, but his heart rapped urgently against the book of poems still kept in his pocket. “But you believe differently.”
“Well, I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later I got to thinking that it was almost as if the lady didn’t want to let herself be seen.”
“But you did see her,” he prompted.
“Well, that’s the funny part. I did…” She scowled, thinking back. “But I didn’t.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“It was like there weren’t nothing…wasn’t anything…to notice about her.”
He relaxed a bit. The stranger was certainly not Ella then. The mystery woman was someone else. Someone unknown. For no one could forget the sunshine that was Lady Lanshire. Still, he persisted, for he would learn all he could.
“Can you tell me anything about her? Outstanding features? The color of her hair?”
She shook her head. “Brownish, I guess,” she said, making a face.
Not chestnut. Not the color of living flame. Of life itself. “Did Sarah ever say Grey and this Lady L were friends?”
She shook her head. “She didn’t much talk of her at all.”
“Were Grey and the lady ever together?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you know where she lived? Why she spent time with my—” He stopped himself, a word from giving himself away. “Sarah.”
“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Tye,” she murmured, and he realized in that instant that she thought he had referred to the deceased as “my Sarah.” There was pity in her eyes. Pity for a love lost. When in truth he had never loved his sister at all. Had never forgiven her for being the child his father had cared about. The child his mother had died for. “But there ain’t much I can tell you.”
He nodded. “No.” He forced a smile. “’Tis I who should apologize. I did not mean to press you.”
“We all miss her something fierce,” she said, voice still softened by a Cockney accent.
“I’m glad she had you to befriend her,” he said, and that much was true. Perhaps life here at Hawkspur had not been everything he thought it to be. At least Drake had had his mother’s soft burr to sing him to sleep each night for nine years. That, and the tears in her eyes when she’d hugged him at the pier. Him standing in his scratchy suit, unable to say good-bye lest he burst into tears and shame himself beyond redemption. But he would never forget her face, her magical Irish eyes, her love, which would be his, she promised, to the grave and beyond.
But did she still love him? Or did she blame him for coming so late to Sarah’s defense? Was she ashamed? Or did she understand his weaknesses. His childish jealousy?
“Miss Sarah had many a good friend,” Julia said.
But one of them had killed her, Drake thought. He was sure of it, felt it instinctually…in his deep, as his mother had said. Listen to the deep of you, laddie. For that be where the truth lives. “Are you certain there is nothing more you can tell me of this mystery lady?” he asked, forcing out the words.
She shook her head. “My apologies.”
He nodded, rose to his feet, and took her hand in his. “Thank you,” he said, and bowing, turned to leave, but she stopped him in an instant.
“She was tall,” she said.
He swiveled slowly back, heart performing a dirge in his chest. “What?”
“The lady,” she said, scowling at her thoughts. “She looked fair tall. And slim. Not plump like me.”
He felt the world go pale, but it was foolishness. Ella was blameless in Sarah’s death. ’Twas what “the deep of him” said. Surely London was filled to brimming with tall, slight women.
“And she had her a fine mare,” Julia added.
The world slowed. “Oh?”
The girl nodded. “Miss Sarah, she had her an eye for horses. Taught me a bit. The lady’s steed looked to have some barb breeding. Refined like, with a dish to the face, and dark all over, but for four long, matching stockings.”
Chapter 22
Ella was gifted. Just as Sarah had been. Drake was certain of it, though he wasn’t sure how or why. Perhaps he had enough of his mother in him to sense what others didn’t.
Wandering the darkened streets of London, Drake pored over his agony. Maybe he had always felt a strangeness in Sarah, and maybe it had made her existence more difficult. Maybe she had felt alone, isolated. Just as he had been.
Or perhaps he was entirely wrong. Either way, he would learn the truth of her death.
Why had she died? Was it an accident as all said, or was it more heinous than that? And how was Lady Lanshire involved?
It was well past noon when he sat in a wooden straight-backed chair in the public offices of Southwark.
“Sir Drake.” Constable Redding entered the room. His dark blue coat was secured with gold buttons, and his cone-shaped hat sat low above no-nonsense eyes. “What can I do for you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me more about my sister’s death,” Drake said.
Redd
ing seated himself behind a battered oaken desk. “As I told you before, there was little to determine. I fear your sister succumbed to an unfortunate fire.”
“You said the residence was owned by a Mr. Grey.”
“That is correct.”
“When did the fire start?”
The constable shuffled his feet, leaned back in his chair. “Sometime during the night. I would have to consult my records to ascertain the date.”
“What time did the fire brigade arrive?”
Redding shifted his gaze toward the door, much as the chambermaid had only hours before. “As close as I can figure it was shortly before dawn. As you know, a gaffer from across the lane saw the flames and sent his grandson running in—”
“So you’re saying my sister had spent the night with this Grey.” Drake saw no reason to soften his tone as he had earlier in the day.
Redding glanced uncomfortably toward the floor. “I don’t mean to make any trouble for you, sir. I’m certain your sister was a fine young woman.”
Drake ignored the implication. Sarah was dead. It was his fault. Her reputation was the least of his worries. “But that’s what you suspect. That she had spent the night, maybe several nights, with Grey.”
The constable caught Drake’s gaze and gave a single nod.
Anger rippled through him, hot and searing, but he kept it at bay. “Have you asked yourself why?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Have you asked yourself why she was there?”
Redding pursed his lips. “I know her death came as a shock to you, sir. A young woman like that, and from a good family. But fires aren’t unusual in Bermondsey. What with the docks and the shoddy housing and—”
“So as long as the death happens in a poor part of town, you’re willing to look the other way.”
Redding’s face turned ruddy beneath the conical cap. “I’m sorry for your loss, but your sister…” His voice trailed away.
“My sister what?” Drake asked.
Their gazes caught and ground. “Well, she made her own choices, didn’t she?”
