A Grave Matter

by Anna Lee Huber

  I was inclined to believe him, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether that was because I sympathized with him and the story he’d just told. If it were true, he certainly deserved our empathy. But if it weren’t . . .

  I glanced at Gage to see what he was thinking.

  Mr. Stuart had tried to warn us—obliquely as that had been—but he had made the effort, so that had to be a point in his favor. And he’d helped us save Gage from the body snatchers when just as easily he could have given us away.

  If for no other reason than that, I decided I should trust his story was true.

  Gage sighed and turned to me, and I could tell by the look in his eyes he was thinking the same thing. Though he wasn’t going to let Mr. Stuart down so easily.

  “What do you think, Kiera?” he asked me. “Perhaps if he returned the money? Or . . . most of it. I suppose you did pay your body snatchers something and purchased that ticket.”

  “And some clothes,” Mr. Stuart admitted.

  “Which can’t have cost much. You must have a fair amount left.”

  He nodded eagerly, a glimmer of hope entering his eyes. “It was never about the money.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “What of the finger bones? We know you kept a souvenir from each of the bodies to metaphorically point the finger at them.”

  Mr. Stuart’s jaw hardened, but he did not deny it.

  “I suppose if he were willing to return those, too, we might be able to let him board his ship to France.”

  “I suppose so,” Gage confirmed.

  Mr. Stuart stood stiffly, considering the matter. It was clear the finger bones were more important to him than the money. He liked the idea of knowing he’d gotten his revenge over the men who had so callously left his wife and child to die, and those bones were his proof. But his shoulders deflated as he plainly realized that either way they would be taken away from him.

  Much as I sympathized with him and all that he’d been through, I was not about to let him keep the finger bones of his victims. It was macabre, and unfair to the Tylers and Lady Fleming and all of the other families who worried their ancestors would have trouble rising from the grave on Judgment Day if their bodies were not made whole. Now that Dodd’s killers had been caught, allowing Mr. Stuart to flee the country to avoid a scandalous trial for all involved was in the best interest of the families, but letting Mr. Stuart keep their loved ones’ bones was not.

  Mr. Stuart reached into another pocket inside his jacket and extracted a handkerchief. Crossing the room, he pressed it into my open palm. I peeled back the pristine white cloth to examine the bones inside and make sure they were all accounted for. When I was certain, I began to remove the bones from the fabric, but he stopped me.

  “Keep it,” he told me with sad eyes. “A token to remember me by.”

  I nodded, refraining from telling him I had absolutely no intention of doing so. Not with such a gruesome connection to its contents. But if it made him feel better to believe I did, then so be it.

  I wrapped the bones carefully in the handkerchief and tucked them into the pocket sewn into the inside of my cloak.

  Gage instructed Mr. Stuart to gather his things and ride out with Trevor and Jock, who waited for him outside. One of the men would escort him to Berwick to be certain he boarded his ship.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  By the time the four of us who remained behind had closed up the farmhouse and set out on horseback toward Blakelaw House, the light of dawn had already begun to creep over the sky in the east. It appeared in a wash of pink and then yellow light spreading across the sky and tinting the few low-lying clouds shades of purple and mauve. The moorland was blanketed with frost, and as our horses crested a rise, the sun itself broke over the horizon between two ridges, scattering light over the frozen landscape. The blades of heather and bracken sparkled like a tiny ice forest. Even the branches of the beech tree standing to our right flashed and shone in the dawn light.

  I reined Figg in, pausing to marvel at the sight laid out before us as if painted on a master’s canvas. The rest of the horses, all laden down with satchels of the remaining ransom money, shuffled to a stop beside me. Even Gage’s gelding, which the Edinburgh thieves had conveniently stolen when they attacked him, and taken with them to the farm at Pawston Lake.

  We all sat in silence, awed by such a magnificent sunrise after a terrifying and exhausting night. The weariness and worry that had seemed to weigh down my bones only a moment before all but melted away. That is, until Gage suddenly decided to dismount.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in alarm, knowing how much it had hurt him to mount his steed, let alone to ride him. “Gage, are you well?”

  He grunted as his feet hit the ground. “Of course.” He passed his reins to Anderley and rounded his horse toward me.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  He stared up at me where I perched on Figg’s back and offered me his hand. “May I have this dance?”

  I blinked down at him in shock. “Gage, you can’t dance. You’ve cracked, and quite possibly broken, a few of your ribs. Not to mention the wound to your head and all of your other scrapes and bruises.”

  Ignoring me, he pulled my foot out of its stirrup and reached up toward my waist with both of his hands. I swatted them away.

  “You can’t lift me down. I’ll do it myself.” And I proceeded to do so before he hurt me or himself.

  He reached out to steady me as my feet hit the ground. I stared up into his face in concern, but he merely smiled back, unperturbed.

  “This is ridiculous,” I argued, though I allowed him to pull me out into the field, away from the horses and Anderley and Maggie, frost crunching beneath our feet. “Gage, you’re in pain . . .”

  “Hush,” he insisted, swinging me around to face him, so that our breath condensing in the cold air mingled as one. He gripped my right hand with his left, and he rested his right hand on the small of my back just above my waist. His gaze was very determined. “Every time I plan to dance with you, something gets in the way.” His voice softened with tenderness. “Not this time.”

  My heartbeat quickened. “But we don’t have any music,” I replied, a feeble attempt to prevent the inevitable.

  “Anderley,” Gage called out, never taking his eyes from me.

  “Sir?”

  “Sing.”

  “I . . . I beg your pardon.”

  “Sing,” he ordered again, but our feet were already moving.

  I glanced at Anderley and Maggie as we swung about to see what they were thinking, but Gage swiftly pulled my attention back to him by spinning me in a fast turn. Anderley’s voice washed over us, a surprisingly pleasing tenor. I couldn’t understand the words, sung in German as they were, but I recognized it as an art song by Schubert.

  I searched Gage’s face for any sign of pain or fever, but his eyes were perfectly clear, his skin free of any excess color, except for the pink in the apples of his cheeks from the wind and exertion. The sun momentarily blinded me every time we rotated so that I faced the sunrise, but then he was always there, his pale winter blue eyes smiling at me as we turned away, waiting to steady me. Just as he’d always been there if I’d taken the time to look.

  He might have left me physically behind when he departed Gairloch Castle for Edinburgh five months ago after our first meeting, but he’d never actually left. Not where it counted, in my head and in my heart. Just as I’d never left him.

  I inched closer, eager to be as near to him as possible, until nothing but a hairsbreadth of space separated us. My, how the matrons at Almack’s would be scandalized. But here there was only the two of us. And as I stared into his eyes, something inside me that had never been quite right settled into place.

  I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he beat me to it.

  “I should have told you I loved you.” His eyes were bright with that emotion I’d so longed for and yet feared only the day before. Now I could only feel joy suffus
ing every inch of my body.

  “Yesterday,” he elaborated when I failed to speak, too overcome to reply. “When I proposed.” He shook his head. “I was an utter fool.”

  My heart clenched. “No—” But he held his fingers over my lips, cutting me off. I could smell the fine leather of his gloves.

  “I never told you the most important thing. What dolt does that?” His eyes stared intensely into mine. “I love you, Kiera. Only you. I don’t care if you ever paint another portrait or investigate another inquiry. You are talented and brilliant, but that’s not why I love you. Why I want to make you my wife.”

  Tears glistened in my eyes, and I thought my heart might burst from happiness. “Oh, Gage.” I gasped. “I know that now. I’m sorry I—”

  He pressed his fingers to my lips again to hush me. “No apologies,” he urged. “Not today.”

  I nodded, realizing that at some point we’d stopped dancing and now simply stood wrapped in each other’s arms.

  “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Do you love me?”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  The corners of his mouth curled upward in an answering grin.

  “I . . . I love you,” I stammered, saying it for the first time. I dropped my gaze to the spot where my hand pressed against his chest over his heart. Its steady rhythm reassured me. “You still confuse me. Perhaps you always will.” I looked up into his eyes. “But maybe that’s a good thing.”

  He clasped my hand to his chest and leaned forward to press his forehead to mine. He inhaled deeply. “All right. Then one more question.”

  I felt a swell of excitement, anxious to hear what he would say next. But Gage wasn’t finished teasing me yet, and after my horrible reaction to his first proposal, I supposed I owed him that.

  “Now understand I’m offering you my heart this time, with the very real risk you’ll stomp on it. I’ll remind you I do have my pride.”

  I swatted him playfully. “Just ask,” I whispered, unable to speak any louder.

  He continued to smile, but I could see the uncertainty lurking behind his confidence. I’d done that to him. So I tried to show him with my eyes that there was nothing for him to fear. Not this time.

  “Kiera Anne St. Mawr Darby,” he pronounced solemnly, making the blood rush through my veins. “Will you marry me?”

  A radiant smile broke across my face. “Yes.”

  The joy that shone in Gage’s eyes could only be matched by that which was in my heart.

  “Though,” I drawled, unable to resist giving back some of his own teasing, “who I’m saying yes to, I’m not sure.”

  His eyes widened in bewilderment.

  I smiled coyly. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I don’t even know your full name.” He narrowed his eyes as I giggled, and then he proceeded to kiss away any desire I might have had to laugh at him. When finally he lifted his mouth from mine, I’d completely forgotten the train of our conversation, but he had not.

  “It’s Sebastian Alfred Henry Trevelyan Gage,” he told me with a twinkle in his eye. “And now,” he murmured huskily, “I’ll make sure you never forget it.”

  And that’s exactly what he did.

  This time I didn’t have to face the loneliness of our separation. This time I didn’t have to wonder how Gage truly felt. That mystery, at least, was finally resolved. But that didn’t mean that all of our paths ran smooth from there on out. There were still a few obstacles to be faced, a few demons to be slain. And as always, another murder to be solved.

  Had I known that accepting such a simple portrait commission only a few weeks later could turn so deadly, I might have reconsidered. Especially since this time my interference put not only Gage and me but also my entire family at risk.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Although many of the homes and manors I use in A Grave Matter are fictionalized—constructed from bits and pieces of real properties and my own imagination—Dryburgh Abbey is a very real place. I had the privilege of visiting there in 2010 and did extensive research about the property, trying to get as many facts as possible correct about its state in 1830–31. It is located much as I described it, and well worth a tour if you are ever in the Borders region of Scotland and England. The one fact I deliberately altered was the original burial place of David Stuart Erskine, the eleventh Earl of Buchan. He was not buried in the North Transept—the eventual burial place of such notables as Sir Walter Scott and Field Marshal Earl Haig—but in the former sacristy. For the purposes of my story I needed the body snatchers to have easy access to this grave, and I found it too tempting to give another explanation as to why the late earl’s body was eventually buried beneath a stone floor behind a locked gate. As for the Nun of Dryburgh, she was a real mythical figure said to haunt the grounds of the abbey, and was written about in the poem “The Eve of Saint John” by none other than the same Sir Walter Scott.

  Hogmanay is indeed an important holiday in Scotland, and for much of history it was considered more important than even Christmas Day. Falling on December 31st, the Scots still continue to celebrate the ringing in of the new year in grand style with many of the same traditions, including first footing and bonfires. They toast the new year by singing Auld Lang Syne, just as Americans do, though in the original dialect and perhaps with a bit more vigor. However, this wasn’t always the song of choice. Prior to Robert Burns writing the words to his famous poem and it being set to music, most Scots sang Goodnight and Joy Be with You All. I could not locate with certainty the date that this switch was made, but it seems reasonable to believe that by 1830 Auld Lang Syne was popular enough to usurp the other song’s position.

  Handsel Day, the Monday following Hogmanay, was the traditional day for Scots to give each other presents, particularly to children and their servants. It is similar to the English Boxing Day, which eventually superseded it. Burns Night is still celebrated throughout the world on or near the poet Robert Burns’s birthday—January 25th. It is usually commemorated with traditional Scots food and drink, namely haggis and whiskey, and readings of Burns’s poetry.

  The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was, and still is, an actual organization. It was founded in 1780 by the eleventh Earl of Buchan, and it was this connection that led me to utilize it throughout the novel. The other members of the group are fictionalized, but based on real fellows of the society. Although, to my knowledge, none of their remains were ever stolen, nor did they commit any crimes or dishonest acts against Count Roehenstart.

  Charles Edward Augustus Maximilian Stuart, Baron Korff, Count Roehenstart was in fact a real person, and the illegitimate grandson of Charles Edward Stuart—the Young Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie. I tried to stay as close to the facts of his life and the characterization of his personality as possible, with a few notable exceptions. He did not flee Russia with Evelina, the daughter of General Vladimir Romejko-Hurko, though it is believed they were in love. Instead, he traveled alone to London, where he wrote that hostile article against Britain’s Hanoverian Prince Regent. He did not then travel to Scotland, nor was he press-ganged on a ship, but left directly for America to pursue the banker who had absconded with much of his fortune.

  Roehenstart did return to Europe in 1814 and began trying to recover some of the Stuart fortune. He even traveled to Scotland and England in 1816 and renewed the Stuart’s old claim on the dowry of Queen Mary Beatrice of Modena, his great-great-grandmother. Not long after, he discovered he was being accused of high treason by the British government. Fortunately, he lived in Paris at the time and was able to appeal the charges to the British Ambassador and the French police. On closer examination, the allegations were proved to be a “ridiculous exaggeration and culpable bad faith” on the part of the accusers, and the charges were dropped. Some even speculated the entire bizarre incident was contrived by the British government to discredit him and his efforts to raise funds for a Stuart memorial.

  Roehenstart led a full and exciting life, and revisited Scotland in 18
54 at the age of 70. It was there that he suffered a fatal injury in a carriage accident and died. He is buried in the graveyard at Dunkeld Cathedral, where his gravestone reads: “Sacred to the memory of General Charles Edward Stuart Count Roehenstart who died at Dunkeld on the 28th October 1854. Sic transit gloria mundi.” (Thus passes the glory of the world.)

  Much thanks go to George Sherburn, the American scholar who uncovered the existing private papers of Roehenstart and wrote a comprehensive biography from them, and to Peter Pininski, who delved even deeper for his book The Stuarts’ Last Secret.