Brisbane shook his head, and I thought I detected a new silver hair in the inky depths. “I ought to lock you in your room,” he commented finally.
“But then you would never have learned all that I had discovered yesterday,” I reminded him. I tried very hard to keep the note of triumph from my voice, but I fear I failed.
“Very true,” he agreed. “Of course, I am not the only one who knows what you were about,” he added, tossing the London Illustrated Daily News onto my lap.
I skimmed through the newspaper, and several pages in and below the fold but still quite prominent, I found it—a sketch of me dashing from my carriage to a town house. I looked positively hoydenish, skirts flying, hairpins rattling to the ground, as keen as any hound on the scent of a hare. Ahead of me, a cadaverous Swan rapped on the front door, and behind me, a distraught and rather slatternly looking Morag bent to gather my pins.
I swore softly, and Brisbane did not correct me. “But how—” I began, and broke off as I saw the byline.
“Our ginger-haired American friend.” I swore again, and Brisbane nodded towards the newspaper.
“Sullivan was very thorough. He followed you from here to Portia’s house and then to your first two calls. I don’t suppose it occurred to you to look to take precautions to see if you were being followed?”
“Of course not!” I snapped. “Would it have occurred to you? Do not answer that. If it had, you would have warned me. You cannot fault me here.”
“No,” he acknowledged. “That would be unjust. But I find it curious just the same.”
“What?”
“Sullivan took great pains to follow you, and yet I left the house before you. I am the enquiry agent. Why did he choose to pursue you?”
My mouth felt suddenly dry as I skimmed the blurry text. “He does not connect my calls with Madame, but he makes it quite clear I called upon each of those men in the course of an investigation.”
“The implication is rather nasty,” Brisbane agreed.
We fell to silence then, a terrible silence and the weight of it nearly crushed me. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer, I heard a faint ringing sound, shrill and accusing for all its faintness. After a long moment, Aquinas appeared in the doorway, his expression apologetic.
“The telephone for you, my lady. It is the Earl March.”
I swore yet again and Aquinas pretended not to hear. I rose slowly and made my way around the table, wondering when Father had managed to have a telephone installed at March House. Just as I passed Brisbane, his hand shot out to clamp hard upon my wrist. He turned his head slowly, piercing me with that implacable black gaze. “Do not think this is finished,” he said, and the awful calm in his voice was worse than any anger might have been.
I walked to the telephone with the lagging steps of a doomed queen making her way to the block. I could hear Father raging before I even picked up the earpiece.
“Father,” I said brightly. “I did not realise you had installed a telephone.”
“Of course I have! If it is good enough for that damned upstart the Duke of Marlborough, it’s bloody good enough for the Earl March,” he shouted.
It required a great deal of hubris to refer to a duke with a title of some two hundred years’ duration as an upstart, but I had no chance to raise the point. He launched himself into a tirade against my appearance in the newspaper, permitting me not the slightest word. I let him continue, for there was no possible way of stemming the tide of his ire, and after a quarter of an hour, he ended with an order. I was to come to March House immediately.
“Yes, Father,” I murmured. He ranted again for another half an hour before cutting the connection abruptly. I collected Morag and called for the coach, and to my astonishment, Brisbane was already seated inside, waiting for me.
“You are coming with me to March House?” I asked, my throat tight with gratitude that I should not have to face the ordeal alone.
“Only to make sure there is something left of you for my turn,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“I do not see why you should be so angry. We did agree to work together,” I reminded him.
“We did not agree that you should expose yourself unnecessarily to public speculation and physical danger,” he riposted.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. “We will discuss this after his lordship has had a turn at you.”
He said nothing more for the duration of the trip, and I sulked in the corner, sniffing occasionally into my handkerchief. It was not a strategem. Tears did not work upon Brisbane any more than they did my Father. But it gave me something to do while we rode along in our speaking silence.
We arrived far too quickly at March House, and there seemed to be a pall over the place. The butler, Hoots, opened the door and shook his head mournfully at me. “Oh, my lady,” he murmured, and I felt my temper beginning to rise.
“Yes, I know,” I snapped. “Where is he?”
“In the garden,” he said, gesturing beyond the staircase to the garden door as if I had not lived in that house for the whole of my life before marrying Edward. I stormed past him, flinging open the garden doors. I had hoped to catch Father off guard, throw him a little from his planned attack, but my diversion had no effect whatsoever. Father was already engaged in a battle with his hermit. I reached them just as Auld Lachy was brandishing an enormous seashell. With his green robes and long white beard and hair, he looked like Neptune’s slightly mad brother. It was the tea cosy upon his head that rather spoilt the effect.
“Hello, Lachy. That’s a pretty shell you have there,” I said politely.
“Do not take his side,” Father ordered. “I will deal with you in a minute.”
“Aye, you would tell the poor lass to hold her tongue!” Lachy shouted. “You know she would agree with me. A seashell grotto is much to be preferred to a fernery. A fernery! Have you ever heard a thing so ridiculous?” He turned to me, and I spread my hands and gave him a bland smile as I found a place to sit. It looked as though matters might drag on for a bit.
Brisbane discreetly seated himself some little distance away on a painted toadstool. Lachy fashioned garden furniture out of stumps, and this one was one of his best. He shaped and painted them in fanciful designs. My own seat was a great snail with a curiously stern expression.
Lachy looked from me to Brisbane. “Are we to have a tea party then? I am a hermit. That means I want solitude, not a mess of people trailing through my garden as if it were Victoria Station!”
“Your garden!” Father started towards him, his complexion reddening by the moment. “This garden, and everything in it, belongs to me. And if choose to put a fernery in it, I will bloody well do so.”
Lachy crossed his arms over his chest. “The hermitage falls within my purview. It is in the contract.”
“Don’t you even think about lecturing me upon the contract, you impossible Scottish insect. I wrote it,” Father raged.
“And all improvements must be approved by me,” Lachy returned coolly.
Father snapped his jaw shut, which I knew meant—as did Lachy—that the hermit had carried the day. I was rather happy for Lachy; after all, a fernery is usually an exercise in boredom, but I was keenly aware that Father’s ire would be fully directed at me as a result. Triumphant, Lachy tactfully withdrew to his hut, cradling his seashell like an infant.
As if on cue, Father swung around and began to lecture, fluently and with one or two obscure Shakespearean references thrown in for good measure. I heard about the proud name of the Marches being dragged through the mud, the unspeakable constructions that could be put on my actions, the infamy I had called down upon my ancestors. This last was a bit much considering what infamy my ancestors had accomplished in their own time.
“You forgot about the sharpness of a serpent’s tooth,” I put in sulkily.
“Do not speak!” my father thundered, setting off on another round of vituperation.
I hazarded a
look round at Brisbane. “Are you going to say anything?”
Brisbane crossed one leg lazily over the other, flicking an imaginary piece of lint from his trousers. “I think he is doing quite well without me.”
“I did not mean for you to help him, I meant to defend me,” I said, huffing slightly in my indignation.
“Do not turn around,” my father ordered. “I am not finished with you.”
The curious thing about Father was that he had two types of tempers. The first was quick to catch, like very dry kindling held to a flame. It burst, burnt itself out and was finished with very little to show for it. It also happened so frequently that most of us children had learned to ignore it entirely. We had discovered that by waiting a quarter of an hour, we could avoid engaging at all when he was in such a mood because it would have passed, quick as a summer storm.
But the second variety was altogether different. It required every mite of his innate theatricality, causing him to pace and rage, holding forth upon our shortcomings like some sort of tragic actor soliloquising the doom of all mankind. These rages were epic, lasting hours if he was not diverted, and occasionally ending with disinheritance. The only consolation was that he always felt so wretched for losing his temper that within hours he would repent and reinstate our allowance and usually send along a nice present.
I had little hope of that this time. He carried on for so long I began to get a little hungry. I had not had much breakfast, and he really had gone on an unconscionable period of time. Just as I pondered the wisdom of ringing for Hoots to bring sandwiches, Father recalled himself.
“And that is why you really are the most shockingly misbehaved March in seven generations,” he concluded, drawing himself up with all the nobility of his position. My only consolation was that in his rage, he had not thought to ask precisely why I was engaged upon those calls. I had already made up my mind to shield Bellmont if the situation demanded, but I was immensely relieved it had not come to that.
I tried to look suitably contrite. “I do apologise, Father. I had no idea there was a reporter following me. I was only trying to assist Brisbane.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it as soon as the words came out of my mouth. I nearly bit my own tongue with wishing to call them back, but there was no help for it.
Father swung round to Brisbane, “And as for you—”
Brisbane rose with his customary indolent grace. “With all due respect, your lordship, this interview is finished. Julia is your daughter, and you have a father’s care for her, and that is why I permitted you to have your say. I am under no such obligation for myself. Come, Julia.”
“If it were not for you, my daughter would not be the subject of scandal!” he roared.
“Father, really, Brisbane didn’t mean—”
“No,” Brisbane cut in smoothly, “you were content for her to moulder away in a marriage to a man who contemplated violence against her.”
Father went suddenly quite white, and then burst out. “How dare you throw Edward Grey at my feet! I did not know what he truly was.”
“Brisbane, that’s quite enough. Father did not mean—”
I turned from one to the other, watching helplessly as they advanced towards each other, these two men whom I had loved better than any in all the world, tearing at each other like animals.
Father raised a hand, and his finger shook as he pointed to the garden door. “Get out. Leave my house and do not ever come back. You have already cost me three of my children. I will give you no more.”
Brisbane turned on his heel and walked to the garden door, departing in perfect silence. He never once turned to see if I would follow him, but then there was never a question that I would.
I looked at my father and spread my hands helplessly. “I do not know if I can mend this.”
He said nothing, and I did not wait for him to do so.
Just then, Auld Lachy poked his head out of his hut. “You are a singularly histrionic family,” he pronounced. “I blame aristocratic inbreeding. Only an inbred would want a fernery.”
Father turned to blast him as I ran after Brisbane. I caught up to him just as he reached the front door, grabbing his hand. He did not look at me, but when he took mine, he crushed it so hard that I felt the marks of my rings for some days after.
* * *
“You ought not to have said such things,” I told him when we had gained the relative privacy of the carriage. Morag turned her face to the window and pretended not to listen, but I could see she had her ears out on stalks, collecting every word.
“He ought to have protected you from that marriage,” Brisbane said tightly.
“Father did not know. None of us did. Do you think I would have married Edward had I known what he would become?” I demanded. “It was his illness made him so.”
“And the minute he so much as looked at you with violence in his mind, your father should have taken you home. It was his duty.”
“I never told him,” I confessed.
Brisbane swung his head round to pin me with a glance. “Never?”
“Not in so many words. I was ashamed. I did not know how to speak of it, to anyone. Father knew there was trouble between us, but he did not know the nature of it.”
“He should have made it his business to discover it,” Brisbane said savagely, and I realised how shatteringly angry he was still.
I ventured an unspeakable question. “Are you so angry with Father for not protecting me then because you feel you have failed to protect me now?”
The gaze he settled upon me was so baleful that I felt an instant sympathy with the victims of Medusa. Being turned to stone would have been a relief in that moment, but I knew I had struck a nerve, and so did Brisbane.
“Do not ask me that again,” he warned. “Besides, you will have no more chances to be unprotected. From this moment on, you do not stir a foot outside our house but that I am with you.”
I stared at him. “Brisbane, you cannot mean that.”
“Try me.”
The Thirteenth Chapter
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee my dear one, thee my daughter.
—The Tempest
That evening, Brisbane took me to Portia’s, and I counted myself fortunate for even that small concession. He had business to attend to, but he was magnanimous enough to agree that I might dine at my sister’s provided he accompany me there and I promised not to leave the house until he collected me.
“What if the house catches fire?” I demanded. “I shall have to leave it then.”
The grinding of his teeth was the only response, and I could not blame him. It was a childish remark and unworthy of me, but I put it down to the distress of being at odds with Father with whom I had seldom, if ever, seriously quarrelled. I was deeply upset that he had not only taken my own peccadillo so much to heart but that he blamed Brisbane for it. The question of how to reconcile two such stubborn and proud men occupied me for the better part of the day, and when I was not pondering that, I was wondering why Brisbane’s temper had not fully erupted. The answer finally occurred to me when we were in the carriage on the way to Portia’s.
“I know you spared me a lecture because you know how wretched I feel after that scene with Father. It was very kind of you. I will be better tomorrow,” I promised. “You can rail at me then.”
He handed me his handkerchief and—to my astonishment—gathered me close. “Your chin is wobbling. It was a nice effort, though.”
“I really am trying to be very strong, but Father and I have never fought like that.” I gave a hard sniff, dabbing at my eyes.
“It will come right in the end.”
“Will you scold me then?” I asked in a still, small voice. Beneath my cheek, I felt his chest rise and fall in a deep sigh.
“No. It was my own fault for not keeping a better eye upon you. You are curious as a monkey and brave as a lancer and the combination may well be the death of
me.”
I punched him lightly upon the thigh. “I cannot like being compared to a monkey. But a lancer is rather flattering. Thank you.”
I reached up to press a kiss to his cheek. “Do not be too angry with Father. He did not mean it, not really.”
“Angry? I feel rather sorry for him. We are kindred spirits,” he observed with a wry twist of his mouth. “How so?”
“We both of us suffer because you will not understand how utterly essential you are to our happiness.”
I stared at him, but he was looking out the carriage window to the darkened streets. “You take risks,” he went on in a tight voice, “unacceptable risks, and threats and warnings will not dissuade you. We cannot protect you from yourself, and that is the greatest danger.”
“I do not mean to be difficult,” I protested.
He gave a short, dry laugh. “I think you honestly believe that. But you have battered down the last of my defences, my dear. I have nothing left to hold you at bay. So you must prepare yourself. In the coming days, you will learn things you would rather not, things from which I cannot shield you any longer.”
“Brisbane, you’re frightening me.”
“Good,” he responded grimly. “It is the fear that will keep you alive.” There was no time to ask more. We had arrived.
* * *
Brisbane declined to eat with us, pleading an engagement related to the ending of the Richmond case, but Plum appeared just in time for the fish course and I fixed him with a suspicious eye.
“Oughtn’t you to be with Brisbane, tying up the loose ends in Richmond?”
“Brisbane said he could settle Richmond alone,” he said, his expression a study in blandness.
The Dark Enquiry Page 17