The Last Earl

by Lara Blunte

  Edmund gave her a canny look. "You cannot have ended up at my cousin's side in this exotic place without knowing exactly what the bad blood is about." He motioned to his leg. "If you don't mind, let us sit down. It is a strain, you see.

  Absurdly, there was tea. She sat down and Edmund motioned towards a plate full of small cakes. She shook her head

  "I know that he thinks you murdered his family," she admitted finally, looking squarely at him. She knew that intelligent people never had any patience with equivocation.

  "And yet I think you are too clever to be telling a man who has you in his power that you believe he is a murderer." Edmund continued smoothly. "Surely you know Adrian well enough to understand that he did not only lose his whole family at one blow, but his perspective too?"

  "So there is no truth to what he claims?" Catherine asked.

  "That I murdered his father, mother and brother, in cold blood?" Edmund showed the palms of his hands in a helpless gesture, as if the accusation were too absurd to even warrant avowals of innocence

  Catherine considered him. "Then why did you pretend to be dead in India? Why have you been hiding since?"

  "There is a much more logical explanation."

  "You're a deserter," she stated flatly.

  "Touché!"

  "Why did you desert? Was it because of your leg?"

  He shook his head. "That would have been an honorable discharge. The leg is just part of the thing that will kill me." He saw her surprise and smiled wryly. "Yes, Lady Catherine, I won't inconvenience my cousin for too long. But before this thing paralyzes me completely and my lungs cease to move, I want to live what's left of my life. I want it more desperately than any healthy man. That may help you understand that I am prepared to do some outrageous things, such as abducting a lady, so that I can have peace during the end of my time on earth."

  Catherine said nothing again, wrestling with distrust, and Edmund went on. "I deserted the esteemed army of the East India Company because I found many more profitable ways to make a living. That's the extent of my perfidy. They wouldn't have done much to me for the desertion itself, but meddling with their business, with their clients ─ Ah, they take that very seriously.

  "I wonder what these profitable ways of making a living were..."

  He looked blameless. "What most rich Englishmen make their fortune from: war, slaves, opium...oh, and tea. It doesn't keep me awake any more than it does many a man you may have met in a drawing room. I was an enterprising youth, but I am no murderer. Not with a knife in my hand, as my cousin would have it. I am squeamish."

  "Maybe there was someone else with you. Maybe you had the lunatic kill them."

  "When you know me better you'll realize I am far too precise a person to employ a madman to run my errands."

  "I am hoping that I won't know you that long," Catherine said firmly. "Mr. Lawson, time is a commodity I do not have, you see I ─" She stopped and blushed.

  "You are with child," he stated quietly.

  She nodded. "I forgot you had your treacherous little spy. You must see that I should be with Adrian." He said nothing and with great effort she continued. "I may have lost...some privileges through my own actions; but you ─ you ought to have mercy on my situation because your own mother..."

  "Yes," he interrupted her softly. "My mother fell in love with the wrong man. And who should understand her better than you? Look where you are ─ no well bred woman should be in this position, just as no daughter of an Earl should have had to give piano lessons as my mother did."

  Catherine had gone a little pale; the very fact that she should be alone with a stranger who might be extremely dangerous was the direct result of her having stepped outside the protection of society.

  He seemed able to read her. "Lady Catherine, I do assure you that you have nothing to fear. I am no savage! But I must ask you to see that your presence here is necessary, that it will in fact help to solve an untenable situation much to the eventual happiness of all involved. You do want my cousin to stop this mad chase too, don't you?"

  "I think he would much rather kill you than save me," Catherine said.

  Edmund stretched his bad leg with a grimace of pain. "You underestimate the guilt he feels. Adrian has spent eight years wishing that he had died that day in the place of his loved ones. What do you think he will feel if, as a direct result of his actions, an innocent girl and his unborn child are harmed?"

  "You would harm ─”

  He lifted one hand, "That's not what I said. I said that as long as he knows you are my treasured guest he will have a reason to listen to me, and to accept that I have only a little time left and that he must leave me in peace."

  She thought of what Adrian had said: that Edmund had wanted to be found because he enjoyed the chase too much. But Adrian hadn't set eyes on Edmund for almost eleven years; he might only be supposing as much.

  "What possible assurance could he give you that would allow you to let me go?" she asked.

  "His word."

  "His word? You would believe the word of a man who has been trying to kill you for years?"

  "I would believe his word. He's a very strange creature, my cousin. I know him better than anyone now living."

  What he was saying might be true: Edmund was the only remaining person to have known Adrian intimately before the tragedy, and yet he might be his worst and most cruel enemy.

  He stood up stiffly with another grimace of pain. "Lady Catherine, if you accept that this is a temporary setback, I promise that you will be restored to my cousin in the shortest amount of time possible," he said with a smile that would have been charming in a man who was not her captor. "I shall communicate with him immediately to resolve the situation. But you must be tired and hungry, and these cakes haven't tempted you. Please let my servants see to you."

  Edmund bowed and motioned politely towards the house. Catherine got up and walked ahead of him in silence.

  IV. Four. Imprisoned

  As soon as Catherine was alone that first day she started to carefully inspect the room where she had been imprisoned.

  She must find a way to escape, but the shutters were locked at night by the servant with the keys, and the wood was thick and strong.

  The walls were made of stone and she tried scratching them with a small spoon that had been left behind with her tea. She saw that the metal made no impression on it. It was only desperation that made her try; even if it was soft stone, a small spoon would hardly get her out of the house.

  The door was also made of strong wood, though the keyhole was quite big and allowed her to see people going back and forth in the corridor. Edmund must have a separate wing of the house, as she didn't see him or hear him go by all evening.

  She looked behind every painting for possible holes on the wall that would allow him to spy on her. Perhaps this precaution was a little exaggerated, but being a prisoner in Constantinople also stretched the limits of most people's imagination. She would take no chances.

  When she went to bed Catherine took the spoon with her and held it tightly in her hand, under the pillow. Should anyone try to attack her, she might manage to gouge his eyes out, at least.

  Yet she couldn't sleep for a long time, devoured by anxiety. Adrian must be in despair over the fact that she was gone: he had admitted how much it would horrify him if something happened to her and the child, and her disappearance would only bring him more pain.

  Whether or not Edmund were the creature that Adrian believed him to be, she was now in his hands. Adrian had kept a secret for years just so that others were not harmed, and now she and his unborn child were in the hands of the man that he believed to be a monster bent on tormenting him.

  Perhaps he had been right, when he had tried so hard to stay away from her; perhaps he had cared for her more than he had ever shown. The thought would have made her wildly happy at any time but now. Biting her lower lip to keep from crying, Catherine told herself that she must not wallow in useless e
motions; she must instead find her way back to him as soon as possible.

  

  Nothing happened to her that night, and the next day came up bright and sunny once more. However, she didn't see any sign of Edmund until the evening.

  It was sunset by the time she was ushered into the drawing room where he expected her. As she walked in, a Turkish man with a large black mustache was bent over Edmund's leg and seemed to be testing it with a little hammer, and then poking it with a stick. When Edmund saw her, he made a gesture for the man to stop.

  Catherine stayed on the threshold. Edmund stood up with the man's help and bowed, "Good evening Lady Catherine. Please come in. Dr. Esgin was just leaving."

  Dr. Esgin turned to her and also bowed. He collected his bag and his instruments, nodding to Edmund, "I shall return the day after tomorrow," he said in Turkish. That much Catherine understood.

  The man passed by her and bowed again, as Edmund motioned politely, inviting her to enter the room.

  Her eyes couldn't help going to the very large window to her left as she walked in. She gasped, forgetting Edmund for a second. The room, which faced the opposite way from the garden, looked out into the glory that was Istanbul at twilight.

  She walked towards the windows and was aware of Edmund following her.

  "Byzantium," he said as her eyes drank in the view. "And then Constantinople. Now we ought to be friendly to the Ottomans and call it Istanbul. They won it in a fair fight."

  Across the water, there were domes and minarets turned golden by the setting sun, as the sky became pink and orange and the Golden Horn scintillated. Birds hovered above the majestic Sulemayniye Mosque just ahead of her. Beyond it, she caught a glimpse of the Hagia Sophia, while all the way to the left there was Topkapi Palace, where the sultan lived with his secrets.

  Just then, as if to increase the wonder of the spectacle, the call to prayer and its accompanying hum rang out from several of the mosques around them.

  That city had been there over one thousand five hundred years; more, if one counted the Greek traders. It had been the pride of Christianity, the cradle of emperors, and then the center of Ottoman power. It had been so precious that Rome had never recovered from losing it.

  "I have never seen a place so beautiful," she murmured.

  "I know.”

  She remembered the reason for her presence in his house and made an impatient movement, "Have you sent word to Adrian?"

  "Ah!"

  Edmund turned around and started limping back to the center of the room.

  "What do you mean by 'ah'?"

  "'Ah' means that my cousin has vanished."

  Catherine again tried to stay calm. "I had the impression, and he did too, that you always know where he is."

  "Adrian sells himself short: he can be very good at hiding. However, I don't want you to feel discouraged, not a jot! It's a matter of days before I manage to get the message to him. All my little birds in Constantinople are singing it."

  She was ruffling a bit, and Edmund noticed it. "My dear Lady Catherine, I understand your predicament, but you have seen how little harm will come to you here. Please, be patient."

  Catherine took a deep breath and decided to change tactics as she looked around the lavish room. She ran a finger over the large piano. "It's a beautiful instrument, won't you play something?"

  "I prefer not to play. But it would be wonderful to have a little music before supper, if you would oblige."

  "I play very indifferently," she replied.

  "I doubt that," Edmund said.

  Catherine was in fact rather proud of how she played. She had frequently been praised for it, though she didn't practice enough and relied on a certain facility she had for music. She sat gracefully at the piano as Edmund watched her with his clever eyes.

  She leafed through the music, lighting upon a nocturne by Chopin. Not an easy piece, but it was one of her favorites and she played it well. Her fingers hit the keys and she was only half aware of the servants who had entered to light the candles and bring supper. She did glance at Edmund, who had limped to the window again. A partial view of his face revealed that he had closed his eyes to better absorb the music.

  The piece only lasted a few minutes and when she was done Catherine rested her fingers on the keys. It took him a moment to turn around, "Magnificent," he said quietly.

  Catherine hesitated as he walked over and offered her his arm, but then she took it. He led her towards the table where the food had been laid. There were a great many dishes and Edmund explained them all as he poured her a tiny glass of claret. He decided upon a glass of red wine for himself.

  "Has Adrian ever told you about the first time we met?" he asked pleasantly.

  "Please do," Catherine said politely.

  Edmund ignored the food and, turning sideways on his chair, he stretched his bad leg out, the glass of wine in his hand. "My mother was very fond of art, especially of music. Of course she missed the privileges she had had as a young girl, so when she discovered that I had an ear for music, she was delighted. From a very early age, she had me sitting at the piano and playing, and my playing became so good that she made all sorts of sacrifices to find me a teacher. Though she was good at it herself, I had become too good for her."

  He stopped to take a sip of his wine and Catherine tried to read his face; but he was not giving much away even when he spoke of his mother.

  "I threw myself into the study of music with all the ardor of my soul," Edmund continued. "It was everything ─ a refuge from the world, a source of pleasure to my mother, and a sense of worth to me. I was very proud of this talent. I thought music would lift me above all troubles.

  "Then one day the news came that I was invited to Halford, at the Countess' insistence. I was to be screened and then possibly helped. My mother was left out of the invitation, but she urged me in no uncertain terms to go. She truly wanted only what was best for me, she had no thought to herself, and for that reason I could not refuse.

  "I still remember walking into Halford, I can still see how the footman stared at my new suit and my old suitcase. He left me in a room and went to announce me to the Countess. As I waited, I heard the piano. Someone was playing Schubert, though I didn't know what it was at the time." He hummed some of it. She recognized the same piece that Adrian had requested from the Austrian pianist at her house. "I thought, 'Here is my advantage! I will show them how to play music. They will admire me.'

  "As the notes followed each other I felt the most contradictory sensations. With every single new note, it was as if some magic were being created. I remember thinking that the composer himself could not have known how a note had to hang in the air just so ─ and be followed just so by another note. I played with such technique, yet I had never created anything like the beauty that I was now listening to."

  Edmund stood up and started limping towards the piano as if he were being pulled by an invisible thread. "My heart was so full that I forgot where I was. I just moved towards the sound. I crossed a door and there was this boy there, a boy two years younger than me. I just froze; I thought, what can he know about such feelings? How can he make me feel them? And then I thought, how can he be so much better than me?"

  He stood still, lost in his memories. He had asked her to play, but in light of what he had just said he must have found her a performance utterly unremarkable. She remembered how surprised she had been that Adrian should play so beautifully.

  Edmund was smiling quietly. "I never played again," he said. "Not one note."

  She raised an eyebrow. "That seems...disproportionate."

  "Oh, no, Lady Catherine. It was wholly proportionate." He came back and sat down in his place, picking up his glass again. "I didn't love music, I just wanted to stand out. My motives were not pure and so I would never be as good as Adrian was. You see, that's my cousin in a nutshell: he is pure."

  Catherine frowned, "Pure?"

  "Yes," Edmund went on with conviction. "I don't
mean in some ascetic sense, I mean in his motives. He never had anything to prove or to gain, it was as if he had sprung out into the world complete. I don’t think it was easy for him to live so apart from others, yet I do believe it was his nature. He was not interested in changing anyone or anything, he was just going his own way. It's very difficult for a person to be so pure and yet be nothing like a zealot."

  Catherine remembered Adrian's long silences, which made it seem as if he had retreated into some other world. Edmund asked: "Did he ever play his own music for you?"

  "He wrote music?"

  He saw how surprised she was. "Well, I can imagine that music hasn't been uppermost in his thoughts. I am very demanding, and I can tell that what he composed was extraordinary. It had the seal of all great music, it was different, and yet universal. It made the hair rise on the back of one's neck, it even brought tears to one's eyes...

  "You can imagine what a loss it was, that a young man so full of divine fire should have had to turn into some sort of avenging angel. How often does someone with genius come along? And how awful that genius should be ignored in favor of something as mechanical and ultimately tedious as revenge ─ especially mistaken revenge!"

  Catherine listened to Edmund closely and after a moment said, "You talk as if you admire him."

  He seemed to be considering his glass for a few moments, then he said, "At the end of the first year after I had been welcomed back into the family, Adrian suddenly asked me if he could come to meet my mother and spend Christmas with us. I was very surprised and I told him of course he could, yet I dreaded what my uncle would say.

  "And surely enough, when Adrian told him he was going with me the Earl was furious; he said in my presence that it was out of the question and, Lady Catherine, you should have seen this boy standing there, not budging an inch, not frightened at all of his father. He was superb!" Edmund's eyes shone as he spoke, and he couldn't help a disbelieving shake of the head, even so many years later. "My uncle told him that the Final Judgment would come before he went to my mother's home ─ and do you know what Adrian said? He said, 'Well, father, it seems I will spend a lovely Christmas with my aunt and you'll be busy housing all the dead souls returning.'"