by Issy Brooke
“It’s what you need,” Adelia said in complete admiration.
“Yes, it is.” Mary grinned and even Sibyl was grinning back at her. “Now, shall we go in to eat? Sibyl, what awaits us...?”
“I’ve never favoured the way the cook prepares the asparagus,” Sibyl was saying as she walked into the dining room alongside Mary. “So today I had a word and...”
Their voices faded. Grace went in on Cecil’s arm. Adelia turned to Theodore. He offered his arm to her, and she was happy to lean against him and follow the rest into the dining room at last.
Twenty-seven
The first few days back home at Thringley House were busy. Adelia liked to be hands-on with her staff although she was pleased to find everything had run perfectly smoothly in her absence. Still, she made it her business to check that everyone was happy and nothing had been neglected. Smith had spent the first day tutting and complaining about “the state of things” but that was mostly in her imagination. She was simply affronted that she was not as indispensable as she had hoped. Theodore, likewise, had roamed the gardens and grown annoyed about the hedges which were not as neat as the ones back at the Grey House.
He was out in the gardens several days later while Adelia sat in her day room and read her letters.
There was nothing more from Jane Pegsworth, though she would surely have known about the money for Wilson’s education by now. There was a note from her brother Alfred, and there was an undercurrent of perfectly predicatable bitterness and hurt in it. As head of his own household, he would have preferred, he wrote, to be allowed to manage his own business and while he recognised Adelia as older than him, yet he felt sure that he was the best judge of his own son’s future and what if that particular school was not entirely right? There were lots of underlined words and angry scratchings-out. She read it through, sighed, and put it aside. He had not even managed to scrawl out “thank you” without following it with “but...”
At least she had done what she had set out to do, with Harriet and Reverend Newbolt’s help. It was for Wilson’s own good, in the end.
There was a letter from Felicia who had left Dido alone “in much better health and with a positive regard for the future.” That news delighted Adelia, though there was another vein in the letter which caused her concern. She read it twice and sat in thought for a little while.
Then she turned to an unfamiliar handwriting and found that she had a message from Elizabeth, of all people. This one was even more confusing than the letter from Felicia.
It opened with Elizabeth’s effusive thanks for all that they had done for her, especially in the matter of Francis Rowlandson, and though “society may look down its noses at us, yet I can hold my head high as a married woman.” Adelia paused. So she had got married in the end? So soon after her father’s death? And to Rowlandson, after all? Adelia shook her head and hoped, fervently, that the marriage would work out, while suspecting that five years’ time might see a less rosy picture. Elizabeth went on to tell her that Sir Arthur’s trial had been quick, short and unequivocal – he confessed publicly and went to the gallows like an honourable man. As honourable as a murderer could be, anyway. He had said that the death was an accident, a drunken brawl, but did not deny that a man had lost his life and that he was ultimately responsible. “It was as if all the fight had gone out of him,” Elizabeth wrote. “He confessed, he accepted, and he went to his fate as if he welcomed it. One could almost admire his dignity.”
No, Adelia thought. He was a coward through and through and that passive acceptance was just one more example of it.
Elizabeth had also included some cuttings from the local press which had run many pages on the trial and the murder, and the events that led to Sir Arthur’s arrest. Adelia glanced over them and smiled at the ludicrous embellishments each newspaper had given to the matter. One of them was particularly complimentary about Theodore and she set it aside to give to him. According to this account, Theodore as the “daring Lord Calaway, gentleman-detective” had “cornered the furious and murderous Sir Arthur at his stables of vice, and relentless pursued the evildoer through the fields, willing to risk his very life for justice.”
Well, he had certainly risked his hat.
The door opened and Theodore came in, mostly hidden behind a large bunch of flowers he had picked for her. He laid them on a table and she said, “the servants will not thank you for that! Water marks the wood terribly.”
He rang a bell and someone came to take them away and make them presentable in a vase. “But thank you – they are beautiful,” she told him. “Listen to this! I have had a letter from Miss Parr.” Miss Parr no longer – she was Mrs Rowlandson now. “Apparently, her mother has sailed for India.”
“India!”
“Indeed. The irrepressible Lady Beaconberg has joined the empire’s fishing fleet in hunting for a new husband overseas. God help the officers out there. They won’t know what’s about to hit them.”
“Good luck to her,” Theodore said.
“Miss Parr says something else,” Adelia said, laying the letter down and fixing her husband with a hard stare. “She is no longer Miss Parr at all. She is married, and she is keen to convey her thanks to us.”
“Ah yes.”
“Did you already know about this?”
“I, er, did. The poor lass was without a father and I had been impressed by Sir Arthur’s magnanimity in naming Mackie as his own heir. I thought, regardless of what else that man did, that particular act was a good one and an inspiration. So I stepped in, as a father to Miss Parr, if you like. I’ve had the practice, after all. We don’t lack for money and it was the very least I could do.”
“So you paid for her wedding?”
“Yes. It was not much. It was small and simple, and done in haste and a certain amount of secrecy. Her mother knew. The gossips will gossip. But I hope I’ve done the right thing? Have I?”
“Elizabeth will drive Rowlandson to drink unless he is a stronger man than I give him credit for. You might not have blessed either of them with a particularly happy future,” Adelia said. “But you did not force them. It was their choice and I can hope that they will be happy even if I think that they won’t be. It is in the hands of God, now.” Well, it was in their hands, really. But she didn’t trust Elizabeth to make the best of things.
“It might turn out well,” Theodore said, now looking worried about what he’d encouraged.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Did you think I’d object?” she asked.
He kicked at the rug. “Oh, I don’t know. No, I didn’t think you’d object, but it felt like a slightly strange thing to be doing and I wondered if it were right and I worried you might be worried and honestly, I can’t really explain why I kept it to myself. And that annoys me. I had no real reason to keep silent, and yet I did it.”
“And would you have told me if Elizabeth had not written to me?”
He kicked again and said, “I don’t know” which mean no, he would not have told her.
And she thought about what she was keeping from him about her brother and his family, and changed the subject. “Here,” she said. “Elizabeth also sent us some stories from the papers in York. You’ll like this one, daring Lord Calaway.”
He took it and laughed with pure delight. “I’ve been getting dozens of letters myself – now I see why! People are reading these reports and they think I can do anything from finding their lost kitten to sorting out their wills or rude neighbours or mysterious thefts of cream from the kitchen.”
“Are you replying to them?”
“Yes, but mostly to turn them down.”
“Mostly?” she asked with a sudden suspicion.
“One or two I’ve put aside to consider more fully,” he said awkwardly.
“That’s good.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. It is. You are a gentleman-detective. Embrace it. This is the future that has fallen into your lap now. Take a risk just like our Mary has shown
us to do.”
“Very well. I will. But after a little rest here, ought we not go to visit Felicia and Percy?”
“We should, yes. And I’ve had a letter from her. All is not well in their world. Tell me, Theodore, what do you know about lapis lazuli?”
“Nothing at all,” he replied. “But I fear I am about to learn.” He took the letter from her hands, sat down on a chair that he pulled so close to her side that she could feel his warmth, and they read it together.
A new adventure was already calling.
The End
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The End
