by Anne Perry
“He did not fight in the Crimea, then?” she said too quickly for thought or consideration to guard her tongue. “They were all one or the other—mostly the other.”
A smile puckered his lips against his will. He knew the army’s weaknesses, but they were a closed subject, like family faults, not to be exposed or even admitted to outsiders—least of all women.
“No,” he said guardedly. “As I understand it he served most of his active time in India—and then spent a lot of years here at home, in high command, training younger officers and the like.”
“What was his personal reputation? What did people think of him?” She straightened his blanket yet again, quite unnecessarily but from habit.
“I’ve no idea.” He seemed surprised to be asked. “Never heard anything at all. I told you—he was not personally a colorful man. For heaven’s sake, do go and see Mrs. Sobell. You have to discover the truth in the matter and save poor Mrs. Carlyon—or the daughter.”
“Yes, Major. I am about to go.” And without adding anything further except a farewell, she left him alone to think and imagine until she should return.
***
Edith met her with a quick, anxious interest, rising from the chair where she had been sitting awkwardly, one leg folded under her. She looked tired and too pale for her dark mourning dress to flatter her. Her long fair hair was already pulled untidy, as if she had been running her hand over her head and had caught the strands of it absentmindedly.
“Ah, Hester. I am so glad you could come. The major did not mind? How good of him. Have you learned anything? What has Mr. Rathbone discovered? Oh, please, do come and sit down—here.” She indicated the place opposite where she had been, and resumed her own seat.
Hester obeyed, not bothering to arrange her skirts.
“I am afraid very little so far,” she answered, responding to the last question, knowing it was the only one which mattered. “And of course there will be limits to what he could tell me anyway, since I have no standing in the case.”
Edith looked momentarily confused, then quite suddenly she understood.
“Oh yes—of course.” Her face was bleak, as if the different nature of things lent a grimmer reality to it. “But he is working on it?”
“Of course. Mr. Monk is investigating. I expect he will come here in due course.”
“They won’t tell him anything.” Edith’s brows rose in surprise.
Hester smiled. “Not intentionally, I know. But he is already engaged with the possibility that it was not Alexandra who killed the general, and certainly not for the reason she said. Edith…”
Edith stared at her, waiting, her eyes intent.
“Edith, it may be that it was Sabella after all—but is that going to be an answer that Alexandra will want? Should we be doing her any service to prove it? She has chosen to give her life to save Sabella—if indeed Sabella is guilty.” She leaned forward earnestly. “But what if it was neither of them? If Alexandra simply thinks it is Sabella and she is confessing to protect her …”
“Yes,” Edith said eagerly. “That would be marvelous! Hester, do you think it could be true?”
“Perhaps—but then who? Louisa? Maxim Furnival?”
“Ah.” The light died out of Edith’s eyes. “Honestly, I wish it could be Louisa, but I doubt it. Why should she?”
“Might she really have been having an affair with the general, and he threw her over—told her it was all finished? You said she was not a woman to take rejection lightly.”
Edith’s face reflected a curious mixture of emotions: amusement in her eyes, sadness in her mouth, even a shadow of guilt.
“You never knew Thaddeus, or you wouldn’t seriously think of such a thing. He was …” She hesitated, her mind reaching for ideas and framing them into words. “He was … remote. Whatever passion there was in him was private, and chilly, not something to be shared. I never saw him deeply moved by anything.”
A quick smile touched her mouth, imagination, pity and regret in it. “Except stories of heroism, loyalty and sacrifice. I remember him reading ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ when it was first published four years ago.” She glanced at Hester and saw her incomprehension. “It’s a tragic poem by Arnold.” The smile returned, bleak and sad. “It’s a complicated story; the point is they are father and son, both great military heroes, and they kill each other without knowing who they are, because they have wound up on opposite sides in a war. It’s very moving.”
“And Thaddeus liked it?”
“And the stories of the great heroes of the past—ours and other people’s. The Spartans combing their hair before Thermopylae—they all died, you know, three hundred of them, but they saved Greece. And Horatius on the bridge …”
“I know,” Hester said quickly. “Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome.’ I begin to understand. There were the passions he could identify with: honor, duty, courage, loyalty—not bad things. I’m sorry …”
Edith gave her a look of sudden warmth. It was the first time they had spoken of Thaddeus as a person they could care about rather than merely as the center of a tragedy. “But I think he was a man of thought rather than feeling,” she went on, returning to the business of it. “Usually he was very controlled, very civilized. I suppose in some ways he was not unlike Mama. He had an absolute commitment to what is right, and I never knew him to step outside it—in his speech or his acts.”
She screwed up her face and shook her head a little. “If he had some secret passion for Louisa he hid it completely, and honestly I cannot imagine him so involved in it as to indulge himself in what he would consider a betrayal, not so much of Alexandra as of himself. You see, to him adultery would be wrong, against the sanctity of home and the values by which he lived. None of his heroes would do such a thing. It would be unimaginable.”
She lifted her shoulders high in an exaggerated shrug. “But suppose if he had, and then grown tired of her, or had an attack of conscience. I really believe that Louisa—whom I don’t much care for, but I must be honest, I think is quite clever enough to have seen it coming long before he said anything—would have preempted him by leaving him herself. She would choose to be the one to end it; she would never allow him to.”
“But if she loved him?” Hester pressed. “And some women do love the unattainable with a passion they never achieve for what is in their reach. Might she not be reluctant to believe he would never respond—and care so much she would rather kill him than …”
Edith laughed jerkily. “Oh Hester. Don’t be absurd! What a romantic you are. You live in a world of grand passions, undying love and devotion, and burning jealousy. Neither of them were remotely like that. Thaddeus was heroic, but he was also pompous, stuffy, very rigid in his views, and cold to talk to. One cannot always be reading epic poetry, you know. Most of the time he was a guarded, ungiving man. And Louisa is passionate only about herself. She likes to be loved, admired, envied—especially envied—and to be comfortable, to be the center of everyone’s attention. She would never put involvement with anyone else before her own self-image. Added to that, she dresses gorgeously, parades around and flirts with her eyes, but Maxim is very proper about morality, you know? And he has the money. If Louisa went too far he wouldn’t stand for it.” She bit her soft lower lip. “He loved Alex very much, you know, but he denied himself anything with her. He wouldn’t let Louisa play fast and loose now.”
Hester watched Edith’s face carefully; she did not wish to hurt, but the thoughts were high in her mind. “But Thaddeus had money surely? If Louisa married him, she wouldn’t need Maxim’s money?”
Edith laughed outright. “Don’t be absurd! She’d be ruined if Maxim divorced her—and Thaddeus certainly wouldn’t get involved in anything like that. The scandal would ruin him too.”
“Yes, I suppose it would,” Hester agreed sensibly. She sat silently for several minutes, thoughts churning around in her head.
“I hate even to think of this at all,” Hester said with a shudder of memory
. “But what if it were someone else altogether? Not any one of the guests, but one of the servants? Did he go to the Furnivals’ house often?”
“Yes, I believe so, but why on earth should a servant want to kill him? That’s too unlikely. I know you want to find something—but …”
“I don’t know. Something in the past? He was a general—he must have made both friends and enemies. Perhaps the motive for his death lies in his career, and is nothing to do with his personal life.”
Edith’s face lit up. “Oh Hester. That’s brilliant of you! You mean some incident on the battlefield, or in the barracks, that has at long last been revenged? We must find out all we can about the Furnivals’ servants. You must tell him—Monk, did you say? Yes, Mr. Monk. You must tell him what we have thought of, and set him about it immediately!”
Hester smiled at the thought of so instructing Monk, but she acquiesced, and before Edith could continue with her ideas, the maid came to announce that luncheon was served and they were expected at table.
Apparently Edith had already informed the family that Hester was expected. No remarks were passed on her presence, except a cool acknowledgment of her arrival and an invitation to be seated at the specified place, and a rather perfunctory wish that she should enjoy her meal.
She thanked Felicia and took her seat otherwise in silence.
“I imagine you have seen the newspapers?” Randolf said, glancing around the table. He looked even wearier today than the last time Hester had seen him, but certainly had Monk asked her now if she thought him senile, she would have denied it without doubt. There was an angry intelligence in his eyes, and any querulousness around his mouth or droop to his features was set there by character as much as the mere passage of time.
“Naturally I have seen the headlines,” Felicia said sharply. “I do not care for the rest. There is nothing we can do about it, but we do not have to discuss this with one another. It is like all evil speaking and distasteful speculation: one sets one’s mind against it and refuses to be distressed. Would you be so good as to pass me the condiments, Peverell?”
Peverell did as he was bidden, and smiled from the corner of his vision at Hester. There was the same gentleness in his eyes, a mild awareness of humor, as she had observed before. He was an ordinary man—and yet far from ordinary. She could not imagine that Damaris had entertained romantic notions about Maxim Furnival; she was not foolish enough to destroy what she had for a cheap moment of entertainment. For all her flamboyance, she was not a stupid or shallow woman.
“I have not seen the newspapers,” Edith said suddenly, looking at her mother.
“Of course you haven’t.” Felicia stared at her with wide eyes. “Nor shall you.”
“What are they saying of Alexandra?” Edith persisted, apparently deaf to the warning note in Felicia’s voice.
“Precisely what you would expect,” Felicia answered. “Ignore it.”
“You say that as if we could.” Damaris’s tone was sharp, almost an accusation. “Don’t think about it, and it is of no importance. Just like that—it is dealt with.”
“You have a great deal yet to learn, my dear,” Felicia said with chill, looking at her daughter in something close to exasperation. “Where is Cassian? He is late. A certain amount of latitude may be allowed, but one must exercise discipline as well.” She reached out her hand and rang the little silver bell.
Almost immediately a footman appeared.
“Go and fetch Master Cassian, James. Tell him he is required at luncheon.”
“Yes ma’am.” And obediently he left.
Randolf grunted, but spoke no words, and addressed himself again to his food.
“I imagine the newspapers write well of General Carlyon.” Hester heard her own voice loud in the silence, sounding clumsy and terribly contrived. But how else was she to serve any purpose here? She could not hope any of them would say or do something in which she could find meaning, simply eating their luncheon. “He had a brilliant career,” she went on. “They are bound to have written of it.”
Randolf looked at her, his heavy face puckered.
“He did,” he agreed. “He was an outstanding man, an ornament to his generation and his family. Although what you can possibly know about it, Miss Latterly, I fail to see. I daresay your remark is well meant, and intended as a kindness, and for your civility, I thank you.” He looked anything but grateful.
Hester felt as if she had trespassed by praising him, as though they felt he was their particular property and only they might speak of him.
“I have spent a considerable time in the army myself, Colonel Carlyon,” she said in defense.
“Army!” he snorted with quite open contempt. “Nonsense, young woman! You were a nurse, a skivvy to tend to the slops for the surgeons. Hardly the same thing!”
Her temper frayed raw, and she forgot Monk, Rathbone and Alexandra Carlyon.
“I don’t know how you know anything about it,” she said, mimicking his tone savagely and precisely. “You were not there. Or you would be aware that army nursing has changed a great deal. I have watched battles and walked the field afterwards. I have helped surgeons in field hospitals, and I daresay I have known as many soldiers in the space of a few years as you have.”
His face was turning a rich plum color and his eyes were bulging.
“And I did not hear General Carlyon’s name mentioned by anyone,” she added coldly. “But I now work nursing a Major Tiplady, and he knew of General Carlyon, because he had also served in India, and he spoke of him in some detail. I did not speak without some knowledge. Was I misinformed?”
Randolf was torn between the desire to be thoroughly rude to her and the need to defend his son, his family pride, and to be at least reasonably civil to a guest, even one he had not invited. Family pride won.
“Of course not,” he said grudgingly. “Thaddeus was exceptional. A man not only of military brilliance, but a man without a stain of dishonor on his name.”
Felicia kept her eyes on her plate, her jaw tight. Hester wondered what inner grief tore at her at the loss of her only son, grief she would keep hidden with that same rigid discipline which had no doubt sustained her all her life, through the loneliness of long separations, perhaps service abroad in unfamiliar places, harsh climate, fear of injury and disease; and now scandal and devastating loss. On the courage and duty of such women had the soldiers of the Empire leaned.
The door opened and a small boy with fair hair and a thin, pale face came into the room; his first glance was to Randolf, then to Felicia.
“I’m sorry, Grandmama,” he said very quietly.
“You are excused,” Felicia replied formally. “Do not make a habit of it, Cassian. It is impolite to be late to meals. Please take your place, and James will bring your luncheon.”
“Yes, Grandmama.” He skirted wide around his grand-father’s chair, around Peverell without looking at him, then sat in the empty seat next to Damaris.
Hester resumed eating her meal, but discreedy she looked at him as he kept his eyes down on his plate and without relish began his main course. Since he was too late for soup he was not to be spoiled by being permitted to catch up. He was a handsome child, with honey fair hair and fair skin with a dusting of freckles lending tone to his pallor. His brow was broad, his nose short and already beginning to show an aquiline curve. His mouth was wide and generous, still soft with childhood, but there was a sulkiness to it, an air of secrecy. Even when he looked up at Edith as she spoke to him, and to request the water or the condiments, there was something in his aspect that struck Hester as closed, more careful than she would have expected a child to be.
Then she remembered the appalling events of the last month, which must have scarred his senses with a pain too overwhelming to take in. In one evening his father was dead and his mother distraught and filled with her own terrors and griefs, and within a fortnight she was arrested and forcibly taken from him. Did he even know why yet? Had anyone told him the
full extent of the tragedy? Or did he believe it was an accident, and his mother might yet be returned to him?
Looking at his careful, wary face it was impossible to know, but he did not look terrified and there were no glances of appeal at anyone, even though he was with his family, and presumably knew all of them moderately well.
Had anyone taken him in their arms and let him weep? Had anyone explained to him what was happening? Or was he wandering in a silent confusion, full of imaginings and fears? Did they expect him to shoulder his grief like a full-grown man, be stoic and continue his new and utterly changed life as if it needed no answers and no time for emotion? Was his adult air merely an attempt to be what they expected of him?
Or had they not even thought about it at all? Were food and clothes, warmth and a room of his own, considered to be all a boy his age required?
The conversation continued desultorily and Hester learned nothing from it. They spoke of trivialities of one sort or another, acquaintances Hester did not know, society in general, government, the current events and public opinion of the scandals and tragedies of the day.
The last course had been cleared away and Felicia was taking a mint from the silver tray when Damaris at last returned to the original subject.
“I passed a newsboy this morning, shouting about Alex,” she said unhappily. “He was saying some awful things. Why are people so—so vicious? They don’t even know yet if she did anything or not!”
“Shouldn’t have been listening,” Randolf muttered grimly. “Your mother’s told you that before.”
“I didn’t know you were going out.” Felicia looked across the table at her irritably. “Where did you go?”
“To the dressmakers’,” Damaris replied with a flicker of annoyance. “I have to have another black dress. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish me to mourn in purple.”
“Purple is half mourning.” Felicia’s large, deep-set eyes rested on her daughter with disfavor. “Your brother is only just buried. You will maintain black as long as it is decent to do so. I know the funeral is over, but if I find you outside the house in lavender or purple before Michaelmas, I shall be most displeased.”