by Anne Perry
Edith sighed and bent her head, putting her hands over her face as if she could shut out not only the light but some of what her mind could see as well.
“I suppose so,” she said very quietly. “Poor little soul—I feel so totally helpless. I think that is the worst part of all this—there is nothing whatever we can do.”
“We will just have to hope.” Major Tiplady reached out a hand as if to touch Edith’s arm, then suddenly realized what he was doing and withdrew it. “Until something occurs to us,” he finished quietly.
But nearly a week later, on June 4, nothing had occurred. Monk was nowhere to be seen. Oliver Rathbone was working silently in his office in Vere Street, and Major Tiplady was almost recovered, although loth to admit it.
Hester received a message from Clarence Gardens in Edith’s rather sprawling script asking her to come to luncheon the following day. She was to come, not as a formal guest so much as Edith’s friend, with a view to persuading her parents that it would not be unseemly for Edith to become a librarian to some discreet gentleman of unspotted reputation, should such a position be found.
“I cannot endure this idleness any longer,” she had written. “Merely to sit here day after day, waiting for the trial and unable to lift a finger to assist anyone, is more than I can bear, and keep a reasonable temper or frame of mind.”
Hester was also concerned about where she herself would find her next position. She had hoped Major Tiplady might know of some other soldier recently wounded or in frail health who would need her services, but he had been extremely unforthcoming. In fact all his attention lately seemed to be on the Carlyons and the case of the general’s death.
However, he made no demur at all when she asked him if he would be agreeable to her taking luncheon with Edith the following day; in fact he seemed quite eager that she should.
Accordingly noon on the fifth saw her in Edith’s sitting room discussing with her the possibilities of employment, not only as librarian but as companion if a lady of suitable occupation and temperament could be found. Even teaching foreign languages was not beyond consideration if the worse came to the worst.
They were still arguing the possibilities and seeking for more when luncheon was announced and they went downstairs to find Dr. Charles Hargrave in the withdrawing room. He was lean, very tall, and even more elegant than Hester had imagined from Edith’s brief description of him. Introductions were performed by Felicia, and a moment later Randolf came in with a fair, handsome boy with a face still soft with the bloom of childhood, his hair curling back from his brow, his blue eyes wary and a careful, closed expression. He was introduced, although Hester knew he was Cassian Carlyon, Alexandra’s son.
“Good morning, Cassian,” Hargrave said courteously, smiling at the boy.
Cassian dropped his shoulder and wriggled his left foot up his right ankle. He smiled back. “Good morning, sir.”
Hargrave looked directly at him, ignoring the adults in the room and speaking as if they were alone, man to man.
“How are you getting on? Are you quite well? I hear your grandfather has given you a fine set of lead soldiers.”
“Yes sir, Wellington’s army at Waterloo,” the boy answered with a flicker of enthusiasm at last touching his pale face. “Grandpapa was at Waterloo, you know? He actually saw it, isn’t that tremendous?”
“Absolutely,” Hargrave agreed quickly. “I should think he has some splendid stories he can tell you.”
“Oh yes sir! He saw the emperor of the French, you know. And he was a funny little man with a cocked hat, and quite short when he wasn’t on his white horse. He said the Iron Duke was magnificent. I would love to have been there.” He dropped his shoulder again and smiled tentatively, his eyes never leaving Hargrave’s face. “Wouldn’t you, sir?”
“Indeed I would,” Hargrave agreed. “But I daresay there will be other battles in the future, marvelous ones where you can fight, and see great events that turn history, and great men who win or lose nations in a day.”
“Do you think so, sir?” For a moment his eyes were wide and full of unclouded excitement as the vision spread before his mind.
“Why not?” Hargrave said casually. “The whole world lies in front of us, and the Empire gets bigger and more exciting every year. There’s all of Australia, New Zealand, Canada. And in Africa there’s Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, South Africa; and in India there’s the Northwest Province, Bengal, Oudh, Assam, Arakan, Mysore, and all the south, including Ceylon and islands in every ocean on earth.”
“I’m not sure I even know where all those places are, sir,” Cassian said with wonderment.
“Well then I had better show you, hadn’t I?” Hargrave said, smiling broadly. He looked at Felicia. “Do you still have a schoolroom here?”
“It has been closed a long time, but we intend to open it again for Cassian’s use, as soon as this unsettled time is over. We will engage a suitable tutor for him of course. I think a complete change is advisable, don’t you?”
“A good idea,” Hargrave agreed. “Nothing to remind him of things best put away.” He turned back to Cassian. “Then this afternoon I shall take you up to the old schoolroom and we shall find a globe, and you shall show me all those places in the Empire that you know, and I shall show you all the ones you don’t. Does that appeal to you?”
“Yes sir—thank you sir,” Cassian accepted quickly. Then he glanced at his grandmother, saw the approval in her eyes, and moved around so that his back was to his grandfather, studiously avoiding looking at him.
Hester found herself smiling and a little prickle of warmth coming into her for the first time on behalf of the child. It seemed he had at least one friend who was going to treat him as a person and give him the uncritical, undemanding companionship he so desperately needed. And from what he said, his grandfather too was offering him some thoughts and tales that bore no relationship to his own tragedy. It was a generosity she would not have expected from Randolf, and she was obliged to view him with a greater liking than before. From Peverell she had expected it anyway, but he was out on business most of the day, when Cassian had his long hours alone.
They were about to go into the dining room when Peverell himself came in, apologized for being late and said he hoped he had not delayed them. He greeted Hester and Hargrave, then looked around for Damaris.
“Late again,” Felicia said with tight lips. “Well we certainly cannot wait for her. She will have to join us wherever we are at the time she gets here. If she misses her meal it is her own doing.” She turned around and without looking at any of them led the way into the dining room.
They were seated and the maid had come with soup when Damaris opened the door and stood on the threshold. She was dressed in a very slender gown, almost without hoops they were so small, the whole outfit in black and dove-gray, her hair pulled back from her long, thoughtful face with its lovely bones and emotional mouth.
For a moment there was silence, and the maid stopped with the soup ladle in the air.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said with a tiny smile curling her lips, her eyes going first to Peverell, then to Edith and Hester, finally to her mother. She was leaning against the lintel.
“Your apologies are wearing a little thin!” Felicia said tartly. “This is the fifth time this fortnight that you have been late for a meal. Please continue to serve, Marigold.”
The maid resumed her duty.
Damaris straightened up and was about to move forward and take her seat when she noticed Charles Hargrave for the first time. He had been partly shielded by Randolf. Her whole body froze and the blood drained from her skin. She swayed as if dizzy, and put both hands onto the door lintel to save herself.
Peverell rose to his feet immediately, scraping his chair back.
“What is it, Ris? Are you ill? Here, sit down, my dear.” He half dragged her to his own abandoned chair and eased her into it. “What has happened? Are you faint?”
Edith pushed ac
ross her glass of water and he seized it and held it up to Damaris’s lips.
Hargrave rose and came forward to kneel beside her, looking at her with a professional calm.
“Oh really,” Randolf said irritably, and continued with his soup.
“Did you have any breakfast?” Hargrave asked, frowning at Damaris. “Or were you late for that also? Fasting can be dangerous, you know, make you light-headed.”
She lifted her face and met his eyes slowly. For seconds they stared at each other in a strange, frozen immobility, he with concern, she with a look of bewilderment as if she barely knew where she was.
“Yes,” she said at last, her voice husky. “That must be what it is. I apologize for making such a nuisance of myself.” She swallowed awkwardly. “Thank you for the water Pev—Edith. I am sure I shall be perfectly all right now.”
“Ridiculous!” Felicia said furiously, glaring at her daughter. “Not only are you late, but you come in here making an entrance like an operatic diva and then half swoon all over the place. Really, Damaris, your sense of the melodramatic is both absurd and offensive, and it is time you stopped drawing attention to yourself by any and every means you can think of!”
Hester was acutely uncomfortable; it was the sort of scene an outsider should not be privy to.
Peverell looked up, his face suddenly filled with anger.
“You are being unjust, Mama-in-law. Damaris had no intention of making herself ill. And I think if you have some criticism to make, it would be more fitting if you were to do it in private, when neither Miss Latterly nor Dr. Hargrave would be embarrassed by our family differences.”
It was a speech delivered in a gentle tone of voice, but it contained the most cutting criticism that could be imagined. He accused her of behaving without dignity, without loyalty to her family’s honor, and perhaps worst of all, of embarrassing her guests, sins which were socially and morally unforgivable.
She blushed scarlet, and then the blood fled, leaving her ashen. She opened her mouth to retaliate with something equally vicious, and was lost to find it.
Peverell turned from his mother-in-law to his wife. “I think it would be better if you were to lie down, my dear. I will have Gertrude bring you up a tray.”
“I …” Damaris sat upright again, turning away from Hargrave. “I really …”
“You will feel better if you do,” Peverell assured her, but there was a steel in his voice that brooked no argument. “I will see you to the stairs. Come!”
Obediently, leaning a little on his arm, she left, muttering “Excuse me” over her shoulder.
Edith began eating again and gradually the table returned to normal. A few moments later Peverell came back and made no comment as to Damaris, and the episode was not referred to again.
They were beginning dessert of baked apple and caramel sauce when Edith caused the second violent disruption.
“I am going to find a position as a librarian, or possibly a companion to someone,” she announced, looking ahead at the centerpiece of the table. It was an elaborate arrangement of irises, full-blown lupins from some sheltered area of the garden, and half-open white lilac.
Felicia choked on her apple.
“You are what?” Randolf demanded.
Hargrave stared at her, his face puckered, his eyes curious.
“I am going to seek a position as a librarian,” Edith said again. “Or as a companion, or even a teacher of French, if all else fails.”
“You always had an unreliable sense of humor,” Felicia said coldly. “As if it were not enough that Damaris has to make a fool of herself, you have to follow her with idiotic remarks. What is the matter with you? Your brother’s death seems to have deprived all of you of your wits. Not to mention your sense of what is fitting. I forbid you to mention it again. We are in a house of mourning, and you will remember that, and behave accordingly.” Her face was bleak and a wave of misery passed over it, leaving her suddenly older and more vulnerable, the brave aspect that she showed to the world patently a veneer. “Your brother was a fine man, a brilliant man, robbed of the prime of his life by a wife who lost her reason. Our nation is the poorer for his loss. You will not make our suffering worse by behaving in an irresponsible manner and making wild and extremely trying remarks. Do I make myself clear?”
Edith opened her mouth to protest, but the argument died out of her. She saw the grief in her mother’s face, and pity and guilt overrode her own wishes, and all the reasons she had been so certain of an hour ago talking to Hester in her own sitting room.
“Yes, Mama, I …” She let out her breath in a sigh.
“Good!” Felicia resumed eating, forcing herself to swallow with difficulty.
“I apologize, Hargrave,” Randolf said with a frown. “Family’s hit hard, you know. Grief does funny things to women—at least most women. Felicia’s different—remarkable strength—a most outstanding woman, if I do say so.”
“Most remarkable.” Hargrave nodded towards Felicia and smiled. “You have my greatest respect, ma’am; you always have had.”
Felicia colored very slightly and accepted the compliment with an inclination of her head.
The meal continued in silence, except for the most trivial and contrived of small talk.
When it was over and they had left the table and Hester had thanked Felicia and bidden them farewell, she and Edith went upstairs to the sitting room. Edith was thoroughly dejected; her shoulders were hunched and her feet heavy on the stairs.
Hester was extremely sorry for her. She understood why she had offered no argument. The sight of her mother’s face so stripped, for an instant, of all its armor, had left her feeling brutal, and she was unable to strike another blow, least of all in front of others who had already seen her wounded once.
But it was no comfort to Edith, and offered only a long, bleak prospect ahead of endless meals the same, filled with little more than duty. The world of endeavor and reward was closed off as if it were a view through a window, and someone had drawn the curtains.
They were on the first landing when they were passed, almost at a run, by an elderly woman with crackling black skirts. She was very lean, almost gaunt, at least as tall as Hester. Her hair had once been auburn but now was almost white; only the tone of her skin gave away her original coloring. Her dark gray eyes were intent and her brows drawn down. Her thin face, highly individual, was creased with temper.
“Hallo, Buckie,” Edith said cheerfully. “Where are you off to in such a rush? Been fighting with Cook again?”
“I don’t fight with Cook, Miss Edith,” she said briskly. “I simply tell her what she ought to know already. She takes it ill, even though I am right, and loses her temper. I cannot abide a woman who cannot control her temper—especially when she’s in service.”
Edith hid a smile. “Buckie, you don’t know my friend, Hester Latterly. Miss Latterly was in the Crimea, with Florence Nightingale. Hester, this is Miss Buchan, my governess, long ago.”
“How do you do, Miss Buchan,” Hester said with interest.
“How do you do, Miss Latterly,” Miss Buchan replied, screwing up her face and staring at Hester. “The Crimea, eh? Well, well. I’ll have to have Edith tell me all about it. Right now I’m off up to see Master Cassian in the schoolroom.”
“You’re not going to teach him, are you, Buckie?” Edith said in surprise. “I thought you gave up that sort of thing years ago!”
“Of course I did,” Miss Buchan said tartly. “Think I’m going to take up lessons again at my age? I’m sixty-six, as you well know. I taught you to count, myself, and your brother and sister before you!”
“Didn’t Dr. Hargrave go up with him, to show him the globe?”
Miss Buchan’s face hardened, a curious look of anger in her eyes and around her mouth.
“Indeed he did. I’ll go and find out if he’s there, and make sure nothing gets broken. Now if you will excuse me, Miss Edith, I’ll be on my way. Miss Latterly.” And without waiting
to hear anything further she almost pushed past them, and walked very briskly, her heels clicking on the floor, and took the second flight of stairs to the schoolroom at something inelegantly close to a dash.
7
Monk was finding the Carlyon case, as Rathbone had said, a thankless one. But he had given his word that he would do all he could for as long as it was asked of him. There were over two weeks yet until the trial, and so far he had found nothing that could be of use in helping even to mitigate the case against Alexandra, let alone answer it. It was a matter of pride not to give up now, and his own curiosity was piqued. He did not like to be beaten. He had not been beaten on a serious case since the accident, and he thought seldom before it.
And there was also the perfectly practical fact that Rathbone was still paying him, and he had no other case pending.
In the afternoon Monk went again to see Charles Hargrave. He had been the Carlyon family doctor for many years. If anyone knew the truth, or the elements from which the truth could be deduced, it would be he.
He was received courteously, and as soon as he explained why he believed Hargrave could help, he was led through into the same pleasing room as before. Hargrave instructed the servants he was not to be interrupted except for an emergency, and then offered Monk a seat and made himself available to answer any questions he was free to.
“I cannot tell you any personal facts about Mrs. Carlyon, you understand,” he said with an apologetic smile. “She is still my patient, and I have to assume that she is innocent until the law says otherwise, in spite of that being patently ridiculous. But I admit, if I thought there was anything at all that would be of help in your case, I should break that confidence and give you all the information I had.” He lifted his shoulders a trifle. “But there is nothing. She has had only the very ordinary ailments that most women have. Her confinements were without incident. Her children were born normally, and thrived. She herself recovered her health as soon and as happily as most women do. There is really nothing to tell.”
