Frowning, Simon glanced around the school room, noticing for the first time that everything was arranged in the same sort of precise lines. Books of the same color were grouped together on the shelves, even if they weren’t from the same set. On another table, wooden alphabet letters were lined up in rigid order. A series of handsome drawings marched around the room in a perfectly even, perfectly spaced line, each one the same size.
Simon peered over Ellen’s shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the boy’s drawing. He half expected it to be the rough, ugly work of a child. Instead, he was surprised to find Arthur drawing a landscape, as pretty as anything a girl just emerged from her finishing school might make to hang in her parents’ drawing room. Simon glanced back at the line of drawings. They had clearly all been done by the hand of the boy in front of him.
He glanced back down in time to see Arthur slide his crayon back into its place. He didn’t take out another one. Instead, he reached out and laid his palm over Ellen’s hand.
She glanced up at Simon, looking relieved. “You may ask your questions now, sir. Would you like to sit down?”
Simon felt a little awkward as he took the chair across the table from where Arthur and Ellen sat. The boy had turned in his direction but looked past him, as if uninterested in meeting his eyes. With Ellen’s encouraging nod, Simon cleared his throat. “Arthur, do you know what has happened to your father?”
The boy frowned, still looking past him. “My father,” he repeated, sounding very young. “My father. My father is gone and not coming back. He’s not coming back, like Jolly.” There was a distant quality to the words, as if he were repeating a lesson.
Simon gave Ellen an inquiring look. “Jolly was his favorite dog,” she explained, still in that same gentle voice. “She died last year. It was the best I could think to explain what happened.”
Simon nodded. “Like Jolly,” he agreed, trying to keep the gruffness out of his voice. The boy was still looking past him, but it clearly wasn’t a sign of disrespect or dismissal. “Did you see your father before he died?”
One of Arthur’s hands, the one that didn’t rest on Ellen’s, was tapping restlessly against the surface of the table. It took Simon a moment to notice that Arthur’s fingers were tapping out a careful pattern—seven, pause, four, pause, seven, pause, four, pause—over and over.
“I won’t see my father anymore,” Arthur said at last. “My father is gone. Like Jolly. He will not come read to me anymore.” The tapping began to speed up, and abruptly Arthur moved his hand away from Ellen’s and pulled a crayon back out of his precise line. Not looking at either of them, he bent his head over his drawing once again.
Ellen stood. “Thank you, Arthur. It was good of you to speak with Mr. Page.”
Simon cleared his throat again. “Yes, thank you, Arthur,” he said gently, standing as well. “Your drawings are very beautiful.”
As he turned away, he heard Arthur say, quietly but distinctly, without looking up, “Father said my drawings are very beautiful. Father said always keep drawing.”
Ellen swallowed, and Simon caught a glimpse of a tear on her cheek before she brushed it away. Simon pretended not to see, motioning her to lead the way downstairs. “Why did Mr. Wyatt say he wouldn’t speak to me?”
“Arthur speaks in his own time, as you saw,” she said. “Mr. Frank hasn’t the patience to wait for him. And sometimes Arthur just decides not to. He hadn’t spoken for a year before I figured out the signal with the hands.”
“Are you teaching him to read?” Simon asked, remembering the military-like march of those alphabets across the table.
“No one ever bothered before,” Ellen said, sounding defensive. “I’m trying to. He knows most of the letters now.”
“You deal well with him.”
Ellen nodded. “I knew a similar sort of child,” she said quietly. “Me and my brother Thomas, we both did. That’s why Sir Charles was happy to take us on, five years ago. He liked having people in the house who could deal well with Arthur.”
Her expression was sad as she spoke, and Simon didn’t press to find out more. Instead he asked, “There is quite a difference in the ages of Arthur and his brother. Did they have the same mother?”
“Yes, sir. From what I understand, there were two children born between, but neither of them lived long.” She sighed. “Mayhap that’s another reason Mr. Frank dislikes him so. He was all settled into being the only son, and the apple of his father’s eye, before Arthur came along. And then his mother died so soon after Arthur’s birth …” She shook her head. “Begging your pardon, sir. It’s not my place to speculate.”
“Your speculations are useful, Ellen,” Simon said with a small smile. “I appreciate them.” His expression grew serious once more as they continued down the stairs. “What will happen to him?”
Ellen raised her brows. “If he’s lucky? The family will continue to pretend he doesn’t exist, and I’ll continue to care for him. Otherwise …” She shivered, looking bleak. “Children like him can be sent to all kinds of horrible places if their families don’t want to care for them anymore. Or if they’re suspected of being dangerous.” She stopped on the stairs, her eyes pleading as she turned to Simon. “Do you believe me, Mr. Page? That he couldn’t have had anything to do with his father’s death?”
Simon could feel a lump of uncomfortable emotion in his chest. He will not come read to me anymore. Arthur might not quite understand what had happened, but he clearly felt it keenly. And Simon knew enough about how the loss of a parent could affect a child to have a great deal of sympathy for the boy, especially one as gentle and careful as Arthur seemed to be. “Yes, Ellen, I do.”
CHAPTER 13
Lily eyed her father warily across the dinner table. The room was not large, but they were seated at opposite ends, and the distance between them felt like a yawning chasm. She would have been happy to let that chasm remain unbridged, but she wanted to find out what her father could tell her of Sir Charles and the rest of the Wyatt family in recent years. She cast about in her mind for some way to bring up the topic without arousing his suspicions.
To her surprise and relief, she didn’t have to. Her father did it himself.
Setting down his fork and knife with a sigh, Mr. Pierce gestured for Carstairs to pour him another glass of wine. “Well, I escaped the bride visit, but I suppose I must pay a condolence call on Lady Wyatt nonetheless.”
“A condolence call?” Lily asked, her eyebrows raised. “You do remember, Father, that Sir Charles was murdered? And that the Bow Street officer investigating the matter currently suspects someone from the family?”
“One still must be polite,” Mr. Pierce said, scowling at his daughter.
“And what will you say?” she asked, unable to resist needling him. “ ‘My deepest sympathies for your loss, which was likely caused by one of you’?”
“You needn’t be vulgar.”
“He was your friend, Father. How can you go sit calmly with his family and express your polite sympathies when one of them might have been responsible for his death?”
“Because that means some of them were not,” he pointed out. “And whoever was not deserves my sympathies. And no doubt Frank will want my advice.”
“On what?”
“On dealing with his brother.” He took a sip of his wine and grimaced, gesturing at the butler. “This is an underwhelming vintage indeed, Lily. I thought you had better taste than that.”
Lily stared at her father, stunned into silence. She barely registered the complaint. “You know about Arthur?” she asked at last.
“Of course.” Mr. Pierce poked fastidiously at his dinner, apparently as underwhelmed with that as he had been with the wine. “Sir Charles was, as you continue to point out, an old friend. He often sought my council on how to best provide and care for the boy. Without being unfair to Frank, of course. Or that other one, what’s his name, Percy.”
“And what did you advise him?” Lily asked,
eyes narrowing. She could just imagine what sort of callousness her father would have displayed. “To have the boy locked up? Sent away?”
Mr. Pierce raised his brows. “Really, my dear, have those dreadful novels gone to your head? Must you always be so dramatic? Do you also think the late Lady Wyatt is locked up in an attic in Devonshire somewhere?” He laughed at his own joke. “Of course not. Sir Charles would never have stood for it, anyway. He always wanted the boy cared for at home.” He smirked a little, clearly pleased with himself. “I sent the girl who cares for Arthur now to them, you know—she was the niece of my last housekeeper. Apparently the girl had a brother who was a similar sort of child. Died young, as they often do when there’s no one to keep an eye on them. But I guessed she would know how to get along with Arthur.”
Lily couldn’t stop herself from staring. “Sir Charles cared for Arthur a great deal, then?”
Mr. Pierce scowled at the question. “Of course he did. Sir Charles took family very seriously, especially his responsibilities as a father. And a father does not take the well-being of his children lightly.”
Lily would have argued the point, but she knew from bitter experience that she and her father had very different views of what constituted a child’s well-being.
“Though I also advised him that if he was going to insist on marrying again—which he seemed determined to do—he ought to wed quickly, rather than giving his intended the chance to find out he had an odd son first,” Mr. Pierce added. “She might have been put off, knowing there was such a child in the family. It was a shame that it also meant she could not meet Frank before the marriage, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter so much. He is a man grown, after all. It isn’t as though she had to agree to raise him.”
“Well, your advice on that point may have been well meaning, Father, but I don’t know that it was conducive to family harmony,” Lily pointed out. “Had you been the one to pay the visit, you would have seen that Frank and the new Lady Wyatt quite despise one another.”
Mr. Pierce sighed, sitting back in his chair. He eyed his wineglass a little warily, then seemed to decide that the vintage wasn’t objectionable enough to keep him from drinking more. He took a long gulp. “That has proved unfortunate,” he admitted. “Sir Charles wrote that he and Frank had been thoroughly at odds since his second marriage. Which I suppose I can understand.” He shook his head. “I imagine Frank could not forgive him for moving on after his mother’s death.”
Up until that moment, Lily had been feeling almost charitable toward her father, and certainly grateful for his insight. But as he followed his last comment with a pointed, narrow-eyed stare, she realized he was talking about her as well.
“Oh?” she said, feeling her skin prickle with hot irritation.
Mr. Pierce took a final, slow sip of wine, his gaze traveling over her. “How many years has it been since Mr. Adler’s death?”
Lily gripped the edge of the table so hard that she wondered if there would be bruises on her palms. “Over two years.”
“And yet there you sit, wearing pink.” He spat the word out as though it were a vulgarity, then gestured to his own somber mourning. “It makes me ashamed of you, Lily. God knows what Sir John and your mother-in-law would say.” He shook his head. “Anyone who truly loved their spouse would never stop mourning them.”
“I beg to differ, Father,” Lily said quietly. It would have been so easy to accept the guilt he wanted to heap on her, to agree with his judgment when she herself was so uncertain about her choice. But he had erred in mentioning the Adlers. She knew that, whatever else they might feel, they would also feel joy that she had been able to take such a step forward in her life. And she was determined to feel at least some of that joy herself. “Grief may last, but mourning should not. And anyone who truly loved their spouse would not wish to see them mired in the past forever.”
They stared at each other across the table silently, the chasm yawning between them once more. Mr. Pierce’s cheeks were red with emotion, and Lily met his furious gaze with one of calm defiance. She would not be cowed in her own home.
At last her father looked away, a sneer lifting the corners of his lips. “Well, I cannot say I am surprised. Given your taste for men.”
Lily might have been less stunned at his angle of attack if she’d had any idea what he was talking about. “I beg your pardon?” she demanded. Some people loved to gossip about widows; had anyone been saying such things about her? But if they had, how would it have reached her father? “My taste for men?”
Mr. Pierce glared at her. “How many times has that navy man come by since I have been here? Twice? Yes, Lily, your taste for men. It is disgraceful, the way you carry on.”
Lily couldn’t help it. She laughed. Even when she saw that her reaction had only enraged her father more, she couldn’t make herself stop. “Captain Hartley?” she demanded. “Good God, of all the things you could have … It is too … He grew up with Freddy!” She shook her head. “Really, Father, if you can see impropriety in a simple friendship, then you must be desperate to find cause for complaint. Was insulting my cook no longer sufficient? Did you run out of novels to steal from my shelves?” She laughed again, wiping her eyes with her napkin. Across the table, Mr. Pierce was almost purple with rage. Lily smiled as if indulging an imaginative child. “If you will excuse me, I have an evening engagement to prepare for. But thank you, truly, for the entertainment.”
She managed to make her exit, still smiling and shaking her head, before her father could think of anything to say in response.
It felt like a victory, and she savored it.
* * *
Her father made it clear that he was avoiding her the next morning. When they emerged from their bedrooms at the same time, he took one look at her, sniffed in disdain, and retreated back into his room, shutting the door so firmly behind him that it was nearly a slam. Lily, after taking several deep breaths, decided to be amused rather than irritated that he was behaving as though he were the one who had been insulted and injured by the previous night’s exchange.
And it wasn’t as though she wanted to breakfast with him, in any case.
So she enjoyed the peace of a morning to herself. Two letters had arrived for her: one from her aunt, which she was able to read without also having to listen to her father criticize his sister, and another from her old friend Serena, Lady Walter, who was currently at her husband’s country house awaiting the arrival of her third child. Lily lingered over sausage and potatoes and a second cup of tea, enjoying the distraction of catching up on her friends’ news, before summoning Anna to accompany her for some exercise in Green Park.
The pasture-like space was smaller and less central than Hyde Park, and more likely to be quiet in the morning. This suited Lily perfectly, as she wanted to think without too many interruptions.
The day was hot and muggy already, without even overcast skies to promise the relief from dust and heat that rain would provide. Summers in London were rarely comfortable, which was why so many who could afford it would decamp to their country properties to wait out the season. In the fall there would be hunting parties, but in summer the entertainment was rounds of house parties and travel to the most picturesque parts of the country.
Lily didn’t have the money for travel, a fact that she was unashamed to admit to herself, and she didn’t own any property. But she was looking forward to closing her London residence while she visited her aunt and a few other friends.
Those visits would not begin for several weeks, however. And when she could leave London now depended on her father’s plans, which were still irritatingly vague. He would be outraged if she left before he did, so she was stuck in town for the present.
In the meantime, she was grateful for the reduced population of London’s western neighborhoods. Places like Green Park were emptier than they had been in the spring, which gave her more time for uninterrupted reflection. With Anna a few sedate paces behind her, Lily meandered slowl
y though the park, thinking over what she had seen and heard the day before.
Mr. Page had already suspected that Percy Wyatt was hiding something. Judging by the letters she had found in his room and the reaction of his landlady, there was a lady involved.
The letters in his desk had no direction written on them, which meant there had been a certain amount of discretion involved in their delivery. Could the sender have been an unmarried lady who didn’t want their correspondence discovered? If Sir Charles had opposed a marriage that his nephew wanted, would that have been enough to drive the young man to murder?
Or perhaps Percy Wyatt had a mistress. Someone expensive, perhaps. It could explain why his finances were so precarious that he had resorted to theft. If he had debts beyond what he had admitted, could that have turned him against the uncle he was so professedly fond of?
Love or money, Lily thought grimly as she stared at the beautiful park before her. Just as the two gossipy women in the tea shop had said. But which had it been this time?
In either case, Mr. Page certainly needed to know what she had learned. But how to tell him? He would be furious if he discovered she had sneaked into Percy’s lodgings.
Sharing her father’s information would be easier, since the Bow Street Runner had specifically asked her to find out what she could from Mr. Pierce. But how much would it influence his conclusions to know that Sir Charles had loved the son he kept hidden and wanted to provide for the boy?
Lily paused in her stroll, staring unseeing into the distance. Had he provided for the boy? Had he provided for his widow or his sons or his nephew? There had been no mention of how his estate was to be divided, aside from the property that was entailed on Frank.
If Mr. Page hadn’t already seen Sir Charles’s will, that was the thing that needed to happen next. But though the Bow Street force could ask questions, the family was under no obligation to show them the document. And the family solicitor—what was his name? The two gossipy ladies had mentioned a Mrs. Ha—something …
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