Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)

by Huber, AnnaLee

  I had heard of asylums that instituted “moral treatments” of their patients, but those were few and far between, and often derided for their methodology. I was quite certain the old Lord Dalmay, Will’s father, who was a heartless despot, had not sent his son to one of those.

  I pressed my hands into the hard wood of the table, hoping its stability would calm the swirling in my head and in my stomach. Questions flooded my mind, overwhelming me with the need for answers, and yet I was unable to speak them. Lord Keswick leaned over to ask if I was well, and somehow I managed to nod.

  “Surely this is not an appropriate conversation for the dinner table, let alone a young lady’s ears,” Lady Hollingsworth proclaimed in disgust, apparently having regained control of herself after all of her shrieking.

  It was obvious now what had upset her enough to send an urgent missive to Philip and threaten to call off the engagement. She was undoubtedly concerned with how Will’s mental state would affect her family. After all, marrying your daughter into a lineage with known madness was no small matter. I fully grasped what a blight even a hint of mental illness could be to a family. It called into question the stability of every member and made one fear for the sanity of future children.

  However, I was quite certain Lady Hollingsworth was more concerned with the ramifications to her family’s reputation than whether Will’s alleged insanity could be catching.

  I turned to glare at her, wanting to snap at her for her ridiculous comment. The tragic past of a beloved family friend is not appropriate dinner conversation, and yet the treatment of your sister’s goiter is?

  Whether or not he had seen the venomous look I sent his aunt’s way, Philip took control of the situation. “Perhaps the gentlemen should skip their port tonight, and we should all adjourn to the drawing room.”

  The others murmured their assent and began rising from their chairs. Still dazed and disoriented, it took me longer to follow. I simply could not convince my limbs to obey. I sat there, staring at the remnants of my mostly uneaten cheese and fruit, chasing the same thoughts round and round my head.

  It wasn’t until Gage bent over me and asked if I was finished that I was jolted out of my trance. The warmth of his hands at my back as he pulled out my chair and supported me by the elbow was somehow bracing and yet comforting at the same time. It was exactly what I needed. Though by no means was I returned to myself when he pulled my arm through his and escorted me from the room.

  The others were already gathered in the drawing room when we entered, seeming to have drawn up flanks. Lady Hollingsworth had settled on a pale blue and white damask settee between her two children. Damien appeared as fierce as his mother, but Caroline was plainly miserable, torn between her mother and brother and the man she loved seated across the room. Michael sat in a rather ornate golden chair between his sister and Lord Keswick on one side and Miss Remmington on the other. Obviously having chosen to play the mediator, Philip took up a position off to the side, behind where Alana rested on an indigo-patterned settee, glancing worriedly between the two opposing factions.

  Gage guided me over to them. I sat next to Alana, who promptly took hold of my hand. While the others continued to square off in silent accusation, I seemed to be the only one who noticed when Gage crossed the room to take up what I knew to be his customary position before the fireplace mantel. One arm rested negligently against the shelf of wood, somehow avoiding the delicate porcelain figurines littering its surface, as he crossed one ankle over the other and slouched against the wall. He seemed to be settling in to watch a show, which I resented. Shouldn’t he be offering his friend Michael his support, or at least helping to arbitrate matters, rather than distancing himself from the gathering as if he were a spectator?

  “Now, then,” Philip said. “Dalmay, I think we deserve an explanation.”

  Michael’s gaze shifted from the occupants of the settee across from him to look first at Philip and then at Alana and me. He sighed and reached up to rub his temples with one hand. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. But first I must apologize to Lady Darby. I did not know that you believed Will was dead. Or that no one had given you at least some idea of the matters that called your brother-in-law here.” His eyes darted toward Lady Hollingsworth and back. “Otherwise I would never have broken the news in such a thoughtless manner. Please accept my sincere regret.”

  I nodded.

  “What about the rest of us?” Lady Hollingsworth demanded. “Do we not deserve an apology? First you court my daughter under false pretenses. And then you invite us under the same roof as a madman!” She nearly shrieked the last. “I have never been so ill-treated in all my life.”

  “I apologize for not informing you of his presence immediately, but surely you can understand the matter is delicate. No one knows where William has been.” Michael made a sweeping gesture to include all of us. “No one besides those of you who are here. And I want it to remain that way.” He glared at Lady Hollingsworth. “When my brother is ready to reenter society, we will develop a fiction about his whereabouts for the last ten years.”

  The feathers in Lady Hollingsworth’s hair quivered in indignation. “Reenter society? Are you as daft as your brother? He’s a madman! No one will be safe if he’s let loose.”

  “My brother is not a madman! And he’s certainly no danger to others. He just needs more time to . . . readjust before he enters the world again.”

  “Surely if Lord Dalmay had him locked up, he deserved to be there,” Lord Damien said, trying to sound reasonable.

  “Father didn’t know what he was doing,” Laura replied heatedly, bright color staining her cheeks. “Will didn’t do anything wrong.” Her gaze dropped to her lap, where she plucked at the embroidery on her goldenrod skirts. “It’s not a crime to be sad. Or to have nightmares.”

  I wondered how much Laura remembered of her oldest brother. She had been twelve when he . . . disappeared. Had she been told the truth of William’s whereabouts? The thought horrified me. At that age Laura would never have been able to understand.

  Lady Hollingsworth sniffed. “I saw a lunatic once. And he was raving. Flailing his arms and shouting, spittle flying from his lips. He fought the men who tried to take him away. Broke one of their noses.”

  “Will wasn’t like that,” Michael declared, shaking his head. He flung his arm out toward me. “Ask Lady Darby. He acted as her drawing master during the months before his . . . detainment.”

  I gazed morosely back at the others as they turned to stare at me. I found it odd that of all the statements just made, this one should be met with the most surprise. Even Gage seemed unsettled by it, straightening from his slouch.

  “I had forgotten that,” Alana murmured beside me, concern pleating her brow.

  Philip lifted one of his hands from my sister’s shoulder to forestall further comment. “Now, hold on. Before we start collecting everyone’s testimony, there are a few things I don’t understand.” Alarm tightened his voice. “How long have you known William was locked in an asylum?”

  “Almost three years,” Michael admitted. “And as soon as our black-hearted father admitted what he had done, I worked every single day to obtain his release.” His jaw was rigid with anger.

  “Why did your father finally tell you?”

  His eyebrows arched contemptuously. “Because he’d recently been ill. And seven years had passed. He wanted us to petition the Court of Chancery to have William declared dead and assert my claim to the title.”

  I pressed my hand to my mouth in shock.

  “I insisted he tell me how he knew that William was dead, and when he finally told me the truth . . .” Michael shook his head. The muscles in his jaw jumped.

  At this display of emotion, Caroline shifted in her seat on the settee across from him, but her mother draped her arm over her daughter’s lap, preventing her from going to her betrothed. Laura reached out to touc
h her brother’s sleeve, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, gathering his composure.

  “I begged him to tell me the location of the asylum where William was being held, but he refused. He simply would not listen to reason. I pleaded with his secretary and estate manager, and our solicitors, but none of them would admit that they knew anything. Either they truly were ignorant or they were too afraid of my father to confess.”

  “And so you refused to make the petition,” Philip said.

  Michael nodded. “And threatened to tell everyone the truth if he tried to push it through without me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Miss Remmington said. “Couldn’t your father have just had your brother declared insane? Wouldn’t that have disinherited him and made you his rightful heir?”

  Philip shook his head. “A man cannot disinherit his heir. And entailments cannot be broken by cause of insanity, only a conviction of treason or murder. So the most Lord Dalmay could hope for by having his heir proved legally insane was that the guardianship of William and the Dalmay interests would be given to Michael. But even then Michael could not inherit the title or its entailed property outright until William died.”

  “But dragging William into the courts in search of a verdict of insanity would only tarnish the Dalmays,” Lord Keswick pointed out. “And the last thing Lord Dalmay wanted was to taint his own illustrious name.”

  “Is that how you were finally able to obtain his release?” Philip asked. “Lord Dalmay never attained such a verdict against his son?”

  Michael lifted his eyes from the swirled pattern of the rug. “When my father died I was able to search through his papers to uncover where he had sent my brother. Even then, I almost found nothing, just a scrap of paper tucked away in his file at our solicitor’s office, as if the foul deed had never occurred.” He pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. “And then it took me two more months to extract him from that villain Sloane’s custody. Father had signed some document giving him total authority over William’s care. I had to threaten the man with kidnapping and causing bodily harm to a peer of the realm and actually had to go so far as to petition the local magistrate before Sloane would release him to me. That was over nine months ago.”

  “And he’d been locked away all that time?” I could barely mouth the question.

  Michael’s voice was graveled with anguish. “Nine years. He spent nine years in that cesspit, while we were all blissfully unaware.”

  The room fell silent while everyone contemplated his words. I felt sick, unable to fathom being trapped in such a place for nearly a decade. Good heavens, what he must have been through. A knot formed at the back of my throat and I had to swallow hard to force it down.

  Feeling a pair of eyes on me, I looked up to find Gage watching me. His face was inscrutable, but that in and of itself was telling. Why, in this moment, was he so intent on shielding his emotions from me? Surely he could only feel empathy for the Dalmays’ plight.

  “Who is Sloane?” Philip queried, moving around to perch on the arm of the settee beside his wife.

  Michael’s face twisted. “The doctor who convinced my father that my brother was mad in the first place. He owns the Larkspur Retreat where William was detained.”

  Retreat, indeed. I had heard of asylums that misleadingly adopted such innocuous-sounding names in order to lure the public into believing that their patients were well cared for and simply having a rest.

  “Where is this . . . retreat . . . located?” Philip asked, not missing the irony in the title.

  “On Inchkeith Island.”

  My brother-in-law’s eyes widened. “Rather a harsh, isolated environment for such an institution.”

  And one that was far too close to Dalmay House for my comfort. Perhaps twenty miles away, Inchkeith Island perched in the middle of the Firth of Forth just at the point where the waterway began to open into the North Sea. It was practically on the Dalmays’ back doorstep. How had William’s father managed to not be eaten alive by guilt when he knew his son was so close?

  “That was precisely my thought,” Michael said, responding to Philip’s observation. “But apparently the matter did not concern my father.” His hands fisted in his lap. “He was more worried about the taint to our family’s good name than what was best for Will. I don’t know how the two met, or why he was asked to examine my brother in the first place, but somehow Sloane . . .” he almost snarled the name “. . . convinced my father that William could be dangerous and the best thing for him was to be put away where he could never hurt anyone.”

  “But he wasn’t mad,” I protested, unable to keep silent a moment longer. “And he certainly wasn’t dangerous.” Philip and Gage exchanged a glance that spoke volumes. “I mean, I realize he fought in the Peninsula campaign with Wellington, and at Waterloo, and later he was part of the occupation force. And I know he came back from the war changed. Or so everyone told me. But he wasn’t violent or frightening. At least, not to me. He just got lost in his memories sometimes.” Michael looked startled by this revelation. “That’s how he explained it to me.” I dropped my gaze, embarrassed to have revealed so much of what Will had told me. It felt like betraying his confidence. But how else was I to make them understand?

  “Will talked to you? About his . . . troubles, I mean.”

  I looked up at Michael, hearing more than confusion in his voice. There was hurt there as well.

  “Yes,” I replied cautiously, knowing he must be wondering why his beloved sibling would have confided in a fifteen-year-old girl rather than his grown brother. “During my drawing lessons. Sometimes . . .” I pleated the ivory lace trim of my gown between my fingers “. . . it’s . . . easier to talk . . . when your hands are distracted,” I tried to explain.

  Everyone was sitting very still in their chairs, as if afraid to voice whatever thought was in their head. It was Michael who finally gathered the courage to ask. “Did William ever . . . That is to say . . . were you romantically involved?”

  I frowned. “Of course not.” The forcefulness of my response seemed to relieve him. “Will was nearly fifteen years my senior, and I was not of age. He would never have acted in such an inappropriate manner.” Not that my fifteen-year-old self had not contemplated it. At the age of thirty, William Dalmay had been very handsome, in a dark, brooding sort of way. And there had been something in his eyes, something in the premature lines etched at their corners that called to a rather lonely and melancholy girl in a way that charming urbanities never could have. I could admit to myself now that I had been rather infatuated with Will. But I couldn’t imagine what impressionable young girl wouldn’t have been.

  “When did he become your drawing master?” Laura asked in curiosity.

  I tried to think back. “Let’s see. It would have been about April of 1820. Father had been having a difficult time finding someone to replace Signor Riotta after he quit, and Will stepped into the gap.” I didn’t need to mention that the position of drawing master to a young lady in the far reaches of Northumberland was not exactly a sought-after position. And the fact that I was talented only seemed to make matters worse. I had learned at a very young age that men did not want to be outshined by women, especially girls who had yet to reach their majority.

  “You won’t remember it,” I told Laura, “because you had already moved here to Dalmay House with your father upon its completion. And Michael was away in London.” I nodded to him before turning to indicate my sister. “Our brother Trevor was at Cambridge and Alana was in our aunt’s care for her first season in London. So it was only Father and I rambling around Blakelaw House.” I glanced at Philip. “You were in London, as well, I believe. Resisting Alana’s charms.”

  A light blush heated his cheeks, which amused me.

  “It was another year until you finally took notice of her, though it took her near engagement to Lord Felding to do it.” I suppres
sed a smile when Philip frowned in irritation. It was a common jest between him and my sister, who had been in love with him from the tender age of twelve. That it had taken her ignoring him to finally gain his favor had provided no small amount of banter in their household.

  “I was shocked to discover you had turned into such a respectable gentleman,” Gage said, joining in the good-natured teasing. “That always seemed to be more of Michael’s purview. But you surprised us by being the first to fall into the parson’s mousetrap.”

  “Well, you could hardly expect us all to have remained the same when you returned from Greece,” Philip pointed out.

  Greece? Gage had gone to Greece?

  My gaze turned to the man in question, who did not miss my sudden interest.

  “True,” he answered guardedly.

  I opened my mouth to question him further, when Lady Hollingsworth, who had been sitting quietly through Philip’s questioning, spoke up. “What does any of this have to do with the matter at hand?” She pinned Michael with a look. “No matter your protestations, the truth is your brother is . . . damaged.” That she had searched for and used such a diplomatic word told me just how much our conversation had engaged her sympathy. “If not before he was locked away, then certainly after. You cannot expect us to stay under the same roof with such a man.”

  “He is not dangerous to any of you,” Michael insisted. “And he has made a great deal of progress in the nine months since his release. In fact, he was supposed to join us for dinner tonight, except . . . he had a small relapse.”

  Lady Hollingsworth gasped.

  “It is nothing to be alarmed about. And in any case, every precaution has been made for our safety should for some reason he turn violent. He’s being housed on the floor above our bedchambers far from anyone else.”