“I’d rather be an idiot,” he said.
Little did he realize that as a hedonist, at least he’d have been able to express his own opinions on a range of issues. The role of the idiot permitted no such relief. And the more skillfully he played the fool, the more he isolated himself.
Lady Jane recommended that he not make a decision right away. Exactly two days later, however, he was thrown from his horse. He immediately resolved to exploit the very serious accident, and to take advantage of Needham’s presence as Lady Jane’s houseguest. Once the physician stamped the cachet of his considerable medical expertise on Vere’s condition, nobody would be able to say he didn’t suffer a severe, life-changing concussion.
The physical requirements for his sudden transition to idiocy established, he had a choice to make: What to tell Freddie?
Had Lady Jane’s slip of the tongue never happened, he might have made a very different decision. He and Freddie had always been close. While Freddie couldn’t lie, in this instance he didn’t have to: Vere’s own act was going to spread the news. Should Freddie be asked, he could simply give Needham’s diagnosis verbatim. And Freddie’s loyalty to Vere was so well-known that even if he continued to speak of his brother’s assorted cleverness, his listeners would only conclude that he had trouble accepting the new reality.
But as Freddie had seen fit to rob Vere of any chance of avenging their mother, Vere returned the favor and kept his new secret to himself.
* * *
When Vere had wholeheartedly disliked his wife, in a way it had been because she, with her thespian skills and her facile lies, reminded him too much of himself.
But those had been mere surface similarities. Underneath, he was a man who had been fractured at sixteen and never been made whole again, while she, as imperfect as she was, possessed a resilience that left him breathless.
Her hand remained in his, her fingers slack with slumber. He’d meant only to stay with her until she fell asleep, but he was still here at the break of dawn, guarding against her nightmares.
He wanted always to be a bulwark against her nightmares.
The thought didn’t surprise him as much as he imagined it would, now that he’d stopped denying that he loved her. But he wasn’t worthy of her—at least, not as he was, now with all the deceit and cowardice that still blighted his character.
He knew what he had to do. But did he have the courage and humility for it? Was his desire to walk beside her and protect her stronger than his instinct to shy away from the repercussions of truth and continue the fraud that was his life?
He felt as if he stood at the very top of a high cliff. Take a step back and all was safe and familiar. But going forward required a singular leap of faith—and he was a man of little faith, particularly when it came to himself.
But he wanted her to look at him again as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.
And for that he would do the right thing, whatever his shortcomings.
Chapter Twenty-one
A death in the family, especially a death under such strained circumstances, required much to be done in its wake.
Edmund Douglas’s body had to be claimed and buried, his solicitors consulted with regard to his will and his estate. Had things been different, Elissande would have taken care of matters. But with her battered face—the bruises had turned a cringe-inducing mélange of purple, green, and darkish yellow—Mrs. Douglas had insisted that Elissande remain home to recuperate. She would go in Elissande’s stead.
It was time she took a greater interest in matters of her own life, said Mrs. Douglas. Vere, who had anyway needed to go to London, volunteered to accompany her. They also brought along Mrs. Green, who would see to it that Mrs. Douglas was comfortably put up and meticulously looked after.
And now Mrs. Douglas dozed in their rail compartment, her weight against Vere’s arm as insubstantial as that of a blanket.
Memories surfaced of her daughter sleeping next to him on the train. He remembered his resentful bewilderment that he could have been drawn to someone of such questionable character. His intellectual self had yet to recognize what a deeper, more primal part of him already sensed at first sight: her integrity.
Not integrity in the sense of unimpeachable practice of morality, but a personal wholeness. Her trials under Douglas had not left her unmarked, but neither had they lessened her.
Whereas he had been both scarred and diminished.
He had always used the language of Justice to relate to his work. True justice was motivated by an impartial desire for fairness. What underlay his entire career had been anger and grief: anger that he could not punish his father, grief that he could not bring back his mother.
That was why he derived only negligible satisfaction from even his greatest successes: They reminded him of his impotence in his own life, of what he could never accomplish.
And that was why he had been so livid at Freddie: part of it had been envy. By the time he had spoken to Lady Jane, his father had been three months dead. And yet Vere’s obsession had only grown. He could not understand how Freddie could let go and move on, while he remained stuck between the night of his mother’s death and the night of his father’s.
Thirteen years. Thirteen years of chasing after what could never be had in the first place, while his youth fled by, his erstwhile ambitions lay forgotten, and his life grew ever more isolated.
A single snore in the compartment brought his attention back to his fellow traveler. Mrs. Douglas fidgeted, then slept on. On the way to the rail station, she had shyly confided that before she’d met him, she’d already seen him in a laudanum-fueled dream—he’d rather wondered what she’d made of his presence in her room. One day, when he had his life in order, he would tell her the truth and apologize for frightening her.
She fidgeted again. Vere studied her: the cheeks, still pale, but now with a whisper of color; the neck, still thin, but no longer sticklike. When he’d first met her, he’d assumed her permanently broken. She had instead proved herself a dormant seed that needed only a less hostile environment to come alive.
He turned to the window again. Perhaps he too was not as permanently broken as he’d believed.
* * *
This time, instead of using his own key, Vere rang Freddie’s bell.
He was shown into Freddie’s study, where Freddie was checking a book of rail schedules, his finger moving down a column, searching for what he needed. Freddie looked up and dropped the book.
“Penny! I was just coming to see you.” He rushed up to Vere and embraced him anxiously. “If you arrived fifteen minutes later I’d have left to Paddington Station already. I heard the most bizarre rumors this morning: Lady Vere’s uncle escaped jail and abducted you—and you had to fight for your life. What happened?”
The words were on Vere’s lips—Oh rubbish, don’t people know how to gossip properly anymore? I didn’t have to fight for my life. I subdued that toothpick of a man with one finger—and an expression of thick satisfaction was already rising to his face.
The temptation to fall back on the idiocy he played so expertly was enormous. Freddie didn’t expect anything else of him. Freddie had long become accustomed to the idiot. They were still brothers—loving brothers. Why change anything at all?
He crossed the study, poured himself a measure of Freddie’s cognac, and tossed it back. “What you heard was a lie I told,” he said. “Mr. Douglas had abducted Mrs. Douglas, in truth. But once we rescued Mrs. Douglas, we decided that it was better for her to go home to recuperate rather than talk to the police. So I took Mr. Douglas to the police station and made up a cock-and-bull story.”
Freddie blinked. And blinked again several times. “Ah—so, is everyone all right?”
“Lady Vere has some bruises; she won’t be able to receive callers for a few days. Mrs. Douglas had quite a fright, but she came with me today and is currently enjoying herself at the Savoy Hotel. Mr. Douglas, well, he’s d
ead. He decided that he was better off swallowing cyanide than taking his chances in court.”
Freddie listened attentively. When Vere had finished speaking, he looked at Vere for some more time, then gave his head a small shake. “Are you all right, Penny?”
“You can see I’m perfectly fine, Freddie.”
“Well, yes, you are in one piece. But you are not acting like yourself.”
Vere took a deep breath. “This is who I’ve always been. But it’s true that sometimes—most of the past thirteen years, in fact—I haven’t acted myself.”
Freddie rubbed his eyes. “Are you saying what I think you are saying?”
“What do you think I’m saying?” Vere asked. He thought he’d made himself clear, but Freddie hadn’t reacted as he’d expected.
“One moment.” Freddie reached for a small encyclopedia and opened it to a random page. “In what year was the first plebeian secession?”
“In 494 B.C.”
“Dear Lord,” Freddie muttered. He turned the encyclopedia to a different section, then looked up with an expression of such singular hope that Vere’s stomach wrenched. “Who were Henry the Eighth’s six wives?”
“Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr,” Vere said slowly. He could have recited the list much faster, but he dreaded finishing answering the question.
Freddie set down the book. “Do you support women’s suffrage, Penny?”
“New Zealand granted unrestricted voting rights to women in ’ninety-three. South Australia granted voting rights and allowed women to stand for Parliament in ’ninety-five. The sky hasn’t fallen in either place, last I checked.”
“You have recovered,” Freddie whispered, tears already coursing down his face. “My God, Penny, you have recovered.”
Vere was suddenly crushed by Freddie’s embrace.
“Oh, Penny, you have no idea. I have missed you so much.”
Tears rolled down Vere’s cheeks: Freddie’s joy, his own shame, regret for all the time they had lost.
He pulled away.
Freddie did not notice his distress. “We must tell everyone right away. Too bad the Season is finished. My goodness, won’t everyone be in for a genuine shock next year. But we can still go to our clubs and make the announcements. And you are not leaving town right away, are you? Angelica is up in Derbyshire visiting her cousin, but she should be back tomorrow. She will be thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you.” He spoke in such a rush his words were shoving one another out of the way. “Let me ring for Mrs. Charles. I think I have a bottle or two of champagne lying around. We must celebrate. We must celebrate properly.”
Freddie reached for the bellpull. Vere grabbed his arm. But what he needed to say stuck in his throat like wet cement. He’d steeled himself to face Freddie’s wrath, not this overwhelming joy. To speak more on the subject would annihilate the happiness that flushed Freddie’s face and glistened in his eyes.
But Vere had no choice. If he allowed himself to stop here, it would be another Big Lie between the two of them, where there were piled too many lies already.
He dropped his hand from Freddie’s arm and clenched it into a fist. “You misunderstood me, Freddie. I haven’t recovered from anything, because there was nothing to recover from. I never had a concussion. It has been my choice to act the idiot.”
Freddie stared at Vere. “What are you saying? You were diagnosed. I talked to Needham myself. He said you suffered a personality-altering traumatic injury to the head.”
“Ask me again about women’s suffrage.”
Some of the color drained from Freddie’s cheeks. “Do you…do you support women’s suffrage?”
For some reason, the role did not immediately come to Vere, as if he were an actor who had already left the stage, stripped off his costume, wiped clean his makeup, and fallen half-asleep, and then was suddenly asked to reprise his performance.
He had to take several deep breaths and imagine strapping a mask over his face. “Women’s suffrage? But what do they need it for? Every woman is going to vote the way her husband tells her to, and we will still end up with the exact same idiots in Parliament! Now if dogs could vote, that would make a difference. They are intelligent, they are loyal to the Crown, and they certainly deserve more of a say in the governance of this country.”
Freddie’s mouth dropped open. He flushed with embarrassment. And then, as Vere watched, his expression slowly darkened into anger. “So all these years, all these years, it was just an act?”
Vere swallowed. “I’m afraid so.”
Freddie stared at him another minute. He drew back his fist. It landed on Vere’s solar plexus with an audible thwack. Vere stumbled a step. Before he could recover, another punch landed. And another. And another. And another. Until he was pinned to the wall.
He’d had no idea Freddie was capable of violence.
“You bastard!” The words exploded in a roar. “You swine! You bloody sham!”
He’d had no idea Freddie was capable of swearing, either.
Freddie stopped, his breaths hard and heavy.
“I’m sorry, Freddie.” Vere could not meet his eyes. He stared at the desk behind Freddie’s back. “I’m sorry.”
“You are sorry? I used to cry like a frigging fountain whenever I thought of you. Did you ever think of that? Did you even care about the people who loved you?”
His words were shards of glass in Vere’s heart. He had tried to spend as much time away from Freddie as possible in the months following his accident, but there had been no mistaking Freddie’s devastation, the tentative hope at the beginning of each new meeting fracturing into splinters of despair.
And now the moment of reckoning had come. Now Freddie saw him for what he truly was.
“And I have never let anyone call you an idiot,” Freddie snarled. “I almost came to blows with Wessex over that. But my God, you are. You are such a sodding idiot.”
He was. God, he was. A sodding idiot and a selfish bastard.
“It was as if you had died. The person who was you was gone. And I had all this grief that I couldn’t even speak of, except maybe to Lady Jane or Angelica, because everyone kept telling me that I should be thankful you were still alive. And I was, and then I would look at this stranger who had your face and your voice and miss you desperately.”
Fresh tears rolled down Vere’s face.
“I’m sorry. I was fixated on Mater’s murder and Pater’s guilt and I was furious you didn’t tell me anything—”
Freddie clamped his hand on Vere’s arm. “How do you know about them?”
“I heard Pater on his deathbed, trying to bully the rector to absolve him of the murder.”
Freddie’s expression changed. He walked away, poured himself a full glass of cognac, and emptied half the glass in one gulp. “For a moment I thought Lady Jane or Angelica told you.”
“Angelica knows too?”
“I would have told only Angelica, but she was away that summer with her family.” Freddie thrust his hand into his hair. “But I don’t understand. What does your knowing what happened to Mater have to do with your act?”
“I’ve been an investigative agent for the Crown, as Lady Jane had been in her day. I thought that was how I would be able to find a measure of peace. And the idiocy was a guise, so nobody would take me seriously.”
Freddie spun around. “My God! So when you saw Mr. Hudson injecting Lady Haysleigh with the chloral, you didn’t stumble upon it by accident.”
“No.”
“And Mr. Douglas, you were investigating him too?”
“Yes.”
Freddie emptied the rest of his cognac. “You could have told me. I would have taken your secret to my grave. And I would have been so proud of you.”
“I should’ve. But I was still seething at you for not telling me—for depriving me of any chance I had to punish Pater.” Vere cringed at the rampant immaturity his words revealed—and the nar
rowness of his views. Anger and obsession had been for him the only acceptable reactions to the truth. “I seethed for weeks. Maybe months. And when I’d finally calmed down some it seemed that you’d already made your peace with the new me.”
Most of the angry red had faded from Freddie’s cheeks. He shook his head slowly. “I never completely made my peace with the not-you. And I wish you’d come to me; then I could have told you that Pater didn’t need you to punish him: He was in hell already. You should have heard him that night. He begged for three hours, cowering under his counterpane all the while. I had to sit down because I got so tired of standing.”
“But he never showed the slightest remorse.”
“It was his tragedy: He stewed in so much fear without the least understanding that he could and should repent. That he even brought this up with the rector tells me he was terrified of eternal damnation. I pity him.”
Vere braced his hand against the side of a bookcase. “Did you know that I envied you, Freddie? You were able to move on, whereas I wouldn’t and couldn’t let go. I’ve always prided myself on my cleverness—but it is an empty cleverness. How I wish I had some of your wisdom instead.”
Freddie sighed. When he looked at Vere again, there was a deep sympathy in his eyes. Vere almost had to look away; he didn’t deserve Freddie’s sympathy.
“What has it been like for you all these years, Penny?”
Vere blinked back further tears. “It’s been all right and it’s been terrible.”
Freddie was about to say something, then he started. “My God, does Lady Vere know?”
“She does now.”
“And does she still like you?”
The anxiety in Freddie’s voice made Vere’s throat tighten once more. He didn’t deserve Freddie’s concern either.
His At Night Page 28
