by Darcy Burke
That night, Julian didn’t come to her room—but she went to him anyhow, peeling her nightgown off and crawling between the sheets. He pulled her close, holding her so tight she almost couldn’t breathe, sinking between her legs and making her climax with his mouth so intensely that she had to bite the pillow to stifle her screams.
Then he took her so slowly, so gently, that she knew he meant her to find the sensation unbearable. She clawed and thrashed, begged him to move faster and harder. She said words she’d never thought to speak aloud, and they sounded strange and awful on her tongue.
He paid no heed.
When she reached down between her legs to touch herself, he snagged both of her hands and pinned them over her head, laughing as she squirmed.
When she finally came, the relief was so strong that tears ran down her cheeks.
Afterward, limbs still twined with hers, his softening sex still inside of her, he said, “What do you want me to do? Name it, and I’ll make it happen. The patents will be easy. We’ll go to London together.”
“Nothing.” Sophie frowned into Julian’s smooth chest. “I told you, Julian. I can’t, not for a while.”
He let go of her, rolled onto his back.
Sophie curled up into a ball, holding onto her shins, chin tucked between her knees, guilty and stubborn. Why marry her, only to ask her to give up everything that she knew, everything that made her who she was? Why tell her she could keep Iron & Wine, only to make her feel horrible for doing just as she’d said she would?
“You think I’ll change my mind because I like what we do in bed?” she asked. “Is that what just happened?”
A pause.
“I can see that you won’t be persuaded,” he replied levelly.
“I’m not so easy to manipulate.”
“No,” he agreed.
She didn’t feel any better for having spoken. Worse, rather. The lingering euphoria drained out of her body, leaving resentment in its wake. The distance between them seemed to grow, though neither of them moved, each awake but painfully separate. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she peeled back the covers and returned to her own room. The sheets were cold and took time to warm, but on her own, nothing kept her from sleeping.
§
Julian sat on the hard stone floor of High Bend’s distillery, back against the wall, forearms propped loosely on his knees. He held his pocket watch in one hand, clicking it open and pushing it closed in a rhythmic, numbing way.
Closed: The past bloomed to life around him. He saw Sophie busy at the still, surrounded by a clutter of bottles and tins. He sat on the same patch of floor where he’d spent so many hours as a young man. Days and weeks of his life, though he’d never cared about ink-making beyond his ability to get close to her through it.
Open: The Iron & Wine label on the inside of the lid flashed into view, and with it the present. Sophie had married him in order to make more ink. For her, he was the tool, the business her true love.
A cruel reversal.
When he’d first arrived in London a decade ago, he’d gone to see an old family friend, a well-placed earl, and asked for help finding work.
“What are your interests?” the man had asked.
Julian hadn’t known how to reply. He’d always been more interested in people than things, in being liked and wanted and loved. His failure with Sophie, a failure he hadn’t understood, had hollowed him out. At that moment, he hadn’t cared about much of anything at all.
“I know a little about forgery,” he’d answered.
“That’s a good start,” the earl had replied.
Two months later, Julian had started work at the Foreign Office.
He had, in fact, been called in to opine on suspected forgeries now and then. But it turned out that his unique combination of good looks and extreme bitterness were more useful to his new employers. He’d still had the knack of charming and pleasing, but had lost any genuine concern for others.
That had left him caring about… nothing at all.
He couldn’t blame Sophie for what he’d become. He’d spent years choosing, again and again, to be a heartless bastard. To treat people as little more than balls on a billiard table, while imagining himself with a cue.
He couldn’t reproach her in the present, either. She had been honest, and as generous as she knew how. But he wanted more, and he was beginning to think he’d never get it.
Julian levered himself onto his feet and made his way upstairs. The sconces had been snuffed, and he had to grope his way through the dark hallways by touch. When he arrived at his bedroom, his valet had fallen asleep on a stool by the wardrobe.
A kick to his shoe startled the man awake.
Ten minutes later, he opened the connecting door to his wife’s room. The only light came from the lamps burning at his back. Sophie lay under the covers, a lump in the sheets and a few stray locks of dark hair by the pillow. He’d missed his moment—on purpose, of course. He didn’t want to hear her say no.
“Julian?” Sophie muttered sleepily.
“It’s me.”
A pause.
“It’s late,” she said warily.
“I know.” He crossed to her bed, sat down on the mattress. “Go back to sleep.”
He was tired. Exhausted, really.
“What do you want?”
I want you to love me. He couldn’t form the words, though. Knew better.
“Julian?”
He had time. That’s what he’d bought himself, when he married her. He ought to take advantage of it. This dreadful urgency that consumed him only drove her away.
“Have you never wondered where I’ve been these last ten years?” he asked.
“London.”
“That’s all?”
“I tried to put you out of my head.”
“Ah.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Sophie asked, “Where were you?”
Julian glanced back at her, to gauge her reaction. “Working. At the Foreign Office.”
Sophie slowly sat up in the bed. Her eyes were just a gleam in the darkness, her hands white as the sheets, splayed to either side. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown. Very proper.
“All this while?”
“Mmm.”
“You’re the reason the head clerk first wrote to me,” she said. “Did you make him do it?”
“No, Sophie. I’d just arrived, while he was well established. I had no influence over him.” Julian sighed. “I gave him a bottle. That’s all it took.”
“In the early years, when orders were often small and irregular, having one client who always needed so much… Iron & Wine wouldn’t have survived without the Foreign Office. I’d have given up to work as a governess or a companion.”
“I knew what you could do, Sophie. I’d seen how you tested your product. I did myself a favor, and I made a valuable friend.”
She leaned forward and reached for his hand. “Thank you.”
“I don’t need thanks.” He stood. “I’m going to go Town.”
I can’t stay in this dreary place, living on crumbs.
“Tonight?” She sounded startled.
“No. Soon. I just decided.”
He needed people. Occupation. He hadn’t been entirely honest with Vasari Jones. Not much room for it in politics, which the secretary would learn sooner or later. He hadn’t been raised to inherit, but he knew the House of Lords as well as any of its members.
“But what about—” She caught herself. “What about Clive? We still don’t know what happened.”
“Then he got what he wanted,” Julian replied. “And so have you. All’s well.”
“All right,” she said, voice soft. Then, more firmly, “Good.”
Maybe things would look different in a season. Or two. Maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, it was time to go. On that note, he slid off the bed, padded to the connecting door, and closed it silently behind him.
§
The old smelt
ing works on Littlemoor Lane were cold, bare, and full of promise. Sophie stood in the open doorway, big and square to allow machinery to be carted in and out, with Max Dawe at one side, Padley’s finest carpenter on the other. The glazier had come and gone earlier that morning.
“So you want trestle tables along each wall, up to where?”
Sophie stepped into the cavernous interior, advanced until she’d gone about two-thirds of the way into the empty space. “Here,” she said, standing still while the carpenter paced out the distance. “You’ll build a wall to close off the rear. Storage rooms on this side”—Sophie pointed—“and my workshop on the other.”
The carpenter made a mark on the back of his hand. “What furniture will you want for the workshop?”
“None, just yet. I’ll move what I have on Halftail Road to start.”
“We can have the walls up in a couple of weeks. The tables will take longer. A month or two.”
“Excellent. Please speak to Mr. Dawe about expenses and payment.” Sophie nodded to Max and rejoined him back at the door. “I’ll leave the haggling to you.”
“Rock maple for the floors and tabletops,” Max said. “Everything else is negotiable.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sophie soothed. They’d worked out the details together over the past few days. He knew what to do.
Max smiled briefly, and Sophie took her leave. Everything was shaping up exactly as planned. She ought to be delighted by such a run of good fortune. Everything she wanted had fallen into her lap, and more besides.
So why wasn’t she happy?
Because she’d been distracted, she decided, as she reached her shop. The charwoman let her in and Sophie settled down to work. She’d been so distraught about Clive, so addled by Julian, that she’d been burying her worries in mindless labor, with hardly any time to spare for the projects that gave her true satisfaction.
She just needed to focus.
Bright colors faded or washed away. The only ink that stood the test of time, the assault of weather, was black or brown. That was truth, known and understood. But she didn’t have to stop trying. Eames had sent over that liver stone—why hadn’t she started working with it? The red stone had enough iron in it that maybe, if she kept at it, she could make a red ink that would survive a rainstorm.
But instead of reaching for her mortar and pestle, Sophie unstoppered the water-soluble indigo ink that she used for her ghost letters. In a daze, almost numb, she picked up a pen and began writing in Clive’s hand on a sheet of sized paper:
Dear Miss Roe,
I stole from you. I thieved because I loved my wife, and because I could not bear the thought of going to prison again. I wronged you further by hiding my misdeeds, drawing strength from your admiration when I knew it to be founded upon a lie.
I have been human, and weak.
And yet, I gladly served as your tireless defender these last years. I fought the influence of my former friend, Malcolm Roe, who has never exhibited even the slightest symptom of guilt for his crime, who has instead endeavored to heap insult and disrespect upon his thievery.
Perhaps no efforts of mine will ever balance out the damage that originated, ultimately, in me. My love for a woman who could never heal, who I indulged out of despair. But what deeds I could do, I have done them all.
Though it may consume what’s left of your affection for me, I hope you have it in your heart to forgive me.
Clive.
Sophie waited for the letter to dry and then folded it. At the next opportunity, she would toss it into the river. She’d let her anger float away with the page, down the stream and into the past.
Yes, Sophie could forgive Clive. Had forgiven him. For once, she was grateful for her poor memory. The way her hurts faded into mist, until they seemed to belong to someone else. She wielded the power of forgetfulness, and that meant she possessed the power of forgiveness.
And if Clive hadn’t earned it, who could?
Chapter 21
Julian rolled a walnut from his palm to the tip of his thumb, pinched it against the thick pad of his thumb with his index finger. He’d gone on a sightseeing tour of High Bend’s antiquities, looking for things to break. So far: a hideous porcelain statue of an adorable girl-child clutching a basket of wildflowers; the watery bulb of a barometer; and a delicate, blown-glass bell.
He wandered down the gallery, the courtyards on either side newly festooned with potted plants, and paused in the library. It was not the sort of library that book-lovers dreamed of; far from it. Books were distributed in decorative clumps on the tiers of built-in shelving, alongside stuffed rodents, marble busts, and a host of other visual curiosities that could have kept a Flemish still-life painter occupied for several years. An avid reader, on the other hand? Not half so long.
But the sofa—ah, the sofa. Green cushions, gilt legs, the feet carved into the shape of paws. And, ghosting over it, his memories of Sophie, toes flat on the ground and heels raised up, the weight on his shoulders as she’d leaned into him, and, afterward, the boneless way she’d melted into the cushions. The meekness of her approach compared to the devilry in her eyes, as she joked.
He’d told Sophie that he wouldn’t let her shut him out when conflicts arose, as they inevitably would. That implied a promise, on his part, to make an effort. To knock on the door, or kick it open if need be. But he’d reached the compass of his knowledge. The last time he’d faced an obstacle of this kind, he’d given up.
With a sigh, Julian took aim at the first thing to catch his eye—a fluted vase filled with silk roses on wax stems. It sat on a spindly little table with curved legs, a lace doily to protect the wood. His first throw only made the vase wobble; it took a second walnut, carefully timed, to tip it. The vase fell onto the stone flagstones with a satisfying crack.
And released the secret in its belly: a spray of dark, withered berries.
“Christ,” Julian murmured, glancing back at the door and shutting it tight before he knelt in the debris. The berries were about the size of the last joint on his thumb, black as a crow’s eye and, several months ago, would have been just as shiny. They’d wrinkled and dulled with time.
He recognized the berry, but split one in half and tasted the meat—sweetish, mild—before he named it to himself.
Belladonna.
Here lay the instrument of Clive’s death. While prussic acid guaranteed a quick, brutally efficient demise, belladonna took its time. Hours, at least, to do its deadly work—and its most characteristic symptoms were ocular. Blurred vision, dilated pupils, blindness.
Just as Sophie had said.
She’d claimed Clive had been blind, unable to write his own suicide note. He’d been angry—she’d said that, too, hadn’t she? That he’d forced her to take the dictation. Irrational rage was another symptom of belladonna poisoning. And then, at the end, convulsions, dovetailing sufficiently with the final symptoms of prussic acid to allow the coroner to draw his incorrect conclusion.
Julian surveyed the room. He had a theory now. If the reality corresponded he’d find evidence nearby. Knew he’d guessed right when he saw a small cabinet closed by a simple hook-catch. Inside lay a small still.
The berries had been distilled into a more concentrated form. Added to Clive’s food or drink, probably, on the day he died. He sniffed at the glass bulb and wasn’t surprised to smell a condensate of belladonna.
So. The poison had originated inside High Bend. It had been brewed and administered by a resident.
But who? Clive himself, coming back again and again for weeks to distill his deadly fruit, to perfect a poisonous draught for himself… only to fall short in his preparations at the last moment, forcing Sophie to write a letter that he should have prepared as carefully, as meticulously as this poison?
Or had he been murdered? By his daughter, Lady Honoria—the idea still seemed ridiculous to Julian, but he couldn’t deny that she’d moved quickly after her father’s death to achieve the goal he’d kept her f
rom in life—or by his wife, the Dowager Duchess? She’d hinted to Sophie at the existence of some terrible secret.
His first impulse was to seek out Sophie. To tell her what he’d discovered and return to the simpler days of their courtship, if the word “courtship” could be applied at all. A time, in any case, when he’d concerned himself with wooing, and wouldn’t have looked beyond the privilege of taking her to bed.
But the past days had shown him that papering over the cracks in their relationship caused them to fester rather than heal. Avoidance didn’t improve a marriage. He’d already tried that tactic and ruled it out as a failure. Unless, he supposed, he wanted the cold and distant truce toward which recent events had paved the way.
First, he had to deal with this debris. But how? Where was he to put it all? No. Forget about the porcelain shards. He’d been breaking things all over the house and hadn’t stopped to fret about the other items he’d shattered, or how they’d be cleared away.
Carefully, Julian made a pocket from the hem of his shirt and collected all the berries. The rest—the fragments of ceramic and silk flowers—he’d leave for servants to deal with.
But now he faced a dilemma. He needed to confront his suspects (the Dowager Duchess and Lady Honoria) before they realized what he was about. Ordinarily he’d go hunting for more information, but the Dowager lived at High Bend. Word of his rampage could reach her quickly, and he didn’t want to give her time to prepare for his questions.
Julian deposited the berries in a small urn in his bedroom and asked after the Dowager Duchess’s location. He was directed to her rooms, bare of decoration but crammed with bodies as the Dowager supervised a troop of servants wrapping and crating her belongings.
Once Kingston had left, the Dowager Duchess had moved quickly to arrange her own departure. He’d followed her progress over the past few days as she sent her personal servants—the ones she’d take with her to London; he’d been glad she wanted so many, for Sophie’s sake—all over High Bend to appropriate valuables. The house servants eagerly reported each “theft” to the butler, who’d carried the news to Julian.
