Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)

by Huber, AnnaLee

  “No. It was probably best you didn’t.”

  I wasn’t certain what that was supposed to mean, especially spoken in the quiet voice he used, but I chose to ignore it.

  Besides, I had weightier worries on my mind. I eyed Gage surreptitiously, wishing he hadn’t paid me such a compliment on my honesty, not when I was already struggling with my decision over just how much to reveal about my interaction with Will that afternoon. Part of me wished to divulge all, while another felt that would not be in Will’s best interests. After all, what if those suspicions that were nagging at me proved to be nothing?

  But that sketch of Will and the girl shed a different light on all of this, one that was far darker and more ominous. What if Will was responsible for the death of that girl in the asylum and Miss Wallace’s disappearance? I had not wanted to even contemplate it, but I could not ignore that drawing or Will’s own words to me. If I said nothing and Will harmed someone else, I wasn’t certain I could ever forgive myself.

  I inhaled deeply. “There are two other things you should know about my conversation with Will this afternoon,” I murmured solemnly.

  He listened quietly, maintaining a neutral expression as I told him about the boat stored in Banbogle’s ruins and how Will had told me he could escape from his chambers anytime he wished. When I finished, he laced his hands together over his stomach and considered the matter. “How is he making his escapes? Did he say?”

  I shook my head. “But my guess, at least after this evening, is that it’s through that door to the servants’ stairs.”

  “And no one saw him or thought to stop him?”

  I couldn’t answer that. In such a large manor house there was likely another servants’ staircase on the other side of the building; perhaps that was the set most often used.

  “Who is leaving that door unlocked and why? I’m sure you realize it must be Mac or Donovan. Or Michael,” he added as an afterthought. “Though, his anger this evening at finding it unlocked seemed genuine enough.”

  “What of the boat?” I asked, reluctant to hear his opinion, but unable to stop myself from asking.

  “You’re thinking of the boat Craggy Donald saw leaving Cramond Island, are you not?”

  I nodded.

  He tilted his head. “If it was Lord Dalmay, why was he headed out to sea instead of back toward the Dalmay estate?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” I admitted, though I didn’t add the only explanation I could think of—that he’d deserted her body farther out to sea, in hopes it would never wash ashore. Even so, I could see from the look in Gage’s eyes he had already thought of that.

  I turned away to stare unseeing at the fire, letting the bright flames sear my retinas. As if that would burn away the image of William pushing Mary Wallace’s lifeless body out of a boat and into the steely blue waves of the North Sea.

  No! I just couldn’t believe it. It made no sense. I had seen the tender look in his eyes when he spoke of her. If he had harmed her, murdered her, how could he have talked about her in such an affectionate manner? I just couldn’t believe Will could be evil enough to do such a thing. And I couldn’t believe he’d rowed over to Cramond Island, abducted and killed Miss Wallace, and then returned to Dalmay House, all without realizing what he’d done. We had to be wrong.

  “Just more questions to add to our list for tomorrow,” Gage said, sounding somewhat daunted by what was to come. “I only hope he has some answers for us.”

  I did, too. Because if he didn’t . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Have you given any thought to the identity of this girl Will supposedly killed? Or her important father?” I asked, intrigued despite myself. Was the girl’s identity the secret Dr. Sloane was so desperate to keep? Or had Sloane been hiding nothing at all, other than his barbaric treatment of his prisoners. Though, from what I understood, many lunatic asylums handled their patients similarly.

  “A little,” Gage replied.

  “Could he be a royal?”

  He considered my suggestion and then shook his head with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone from the British royal family who is unaccounted for. But the girl could be illegitimate. Or come from any of a dozen countries in Europe.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but it widened our field of potential candidates considerably. I could barely keep track of my own sovereign’s acknowledged kin, let alone those born out of wedlock or belonging to another country.

  “Kiera.”

  The solemn tone of Gage’s voice made me pause.

  “I also have something I need to tell you.”

  I sat up straighter, alarmed by the look of dread that had washed the color from his face.

  He swallowed, making the Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “You wanted to know why I doubted your intuition and refused to listen to you at Gairloch . . .”

  I leaned forward and snatched hold of his left hand, stopping his words. “Gage, no.” I shook my head. “You do not need to tell me this. It was selfish of me to keep pressing you.”

  He swallowed again and a new determination settled over his features. “I want to tell you. Please. Will you listen?”

  I studied his face and, seeing the certainty there, nodded. He offered me a faint smile and turned his hand over to squeeze mine before releasing it.

  He turned to stare at the fire, and a muscle worked in his jaw, telling me how difficult this was for him. I had wondered at the truth for so long, but, seeing the distress it caused him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it anymore. For whatever it was had affected Gage very deeply, and if he was ready to share it with me of his own free will . . .

  I thought of the words Alana had said to me before her departure. About how when Gage was ready he would tell me, and I would know then just how much he esteemed me.

  Watching him now while he wrestled with some strong emotion, I couldn’t help but feel a corresponding ache in my chest.

  When finally he turned to me, he appeared composed, but the pain in his eyes was raw and aching. “My mother was murdered,” he stated flatly.

  I drew in a sharp breath and pressed my clasped hands against my stomach.

  “She was poisoned.”

  I wanted to touch him, to hold his hand or wrap my arms around him, but I could tell that was not something Gage would welcome at the moment. It was written in the stiffness of his posture, the hard line of his jaw. So I squeezed my hands together more tightly, making the knuckles turn white, and waited for him to find the words to continue. Somehow I knew he had not shared this story with many people, and it would be a difficult one for him to tell.

  He rose from his chair and crossed the chamber toward the windows. He lifted aside the curtain to stare out at the darkness beyond. I wondered if he found it easier to speak that way. “I was in my second year at Cambridge,” he began to explain slowly. “Upon my admission to the school a year earlier, I had received special permission to live in a cottage with my mother not far from campus.” He flicked a glance at me. “My mother was sickly, you see. She always was. She would get these terrible racking coughs that seemed to last for hours, sometimes days, on end. They drained her, sucked the life out of her.” He grimaced with remembered pain. “They would send her to bed for weeks. I remember as a little boy being so frightened because she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.” His entire being seemed to tighten with emotion. “Her face would sometimes turn blue.”

  My heart ached for that little boy, terrified for his mother. “Was your father there?” I asked, standing to move closer to him.

  He shook his head, almost absently. “He was in the navy, and in those years he was sailing with Nelson, and then manning the blockade against France. At age eleven, I was supposed to join him, but my mother begged him to let me stay with her, and my father relented.” His smile was wry. “I didn’t want to
go anyway. So, in a way, she saved me from a grueling life on the seas.” His voice turned pensive, making me wonder if he thought about this often. “How different my life would have been had I joined the Royal Navy and fought against Napoleon.”

  He might have died. My heart twisted at the thought. So many young men had lost their lives in that war, and when he went off to fight he would have been merely a boy. I could sympathize with his mother.

  “When I came of age to attend Cambridge my mother insisted I go. All of the men in her family had attended, and she and my grandfather did not want me to be any different. But I refused to leave my mother alone in Plymouth, not with her so ill. So we reached a compromise, and my grandfather helped me find a suitable cottage close to the university.” He shifted his gaze and I knew he was no longer seeing the world outside my window, but a house at the edge of Cambridge. “She seemed happy in our new home, and for a while she even seemed to improve. I started to believe it was the sea air that so incapacitated her, and inland she would begin to make a full recovery.”

  Hope still rang in his voice, even after all these years. But I already knew the outcome would not be a happy one. I hugged myself tightly as a cloud crossed over his features.

  “Then in the autumn of 1815, she began to worsen. She couldn’t keep any food down; her strength began to fail. And then the cough returned. The physicians couldn’t do anything for her.” He swallowed, and his voice, which had steadily risen with remembered anxiety, was suddenly hoarse and flat. “She slipped away just before Christmas.”

  I couldn’t help it then. I stepped forward and reached out to take his hand in mine. I knew he had more to tell me, but I had to touch him in some small way, to offer some comfort. He squeezed my fingers, clinging to them, but he did not look at me.

  “There was an inquiry. My father insisted upon it. Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena; the war was over and he was home on leave. You could say it was my father’s first taste of the profession he would take up when he retired.” His smile was humorless. “I resisted the investigation, insisting Mother had simply succumbed to her illness. I believed Father was trying to make up for being absent so often. During the war, if we saw him four weeks out of the year, Mother and I counted ourselves lucky.” He did not sound bitter about such a truth, but resigned. Life in the Royal Navy was difficult in the best of times, and wartime made it almost unbearable.

  “Father and the local magistrate swiftly found evidence of foul play, and it pointed to my mother’s maid, Annie. Apparently, just before my mother fell ill that last autumn, some of the other servants had overheard her scolding Annie for her insolence and her shoddy work, and threatening to let her go. However when mother’s sickness returned, Annie was suddenly needed again to nurse her, for no one seemed able to comfort my mother so well. Father suspected Annie first poisoned her so that she could keep her position, and then continued to do so so that her services would always be required. Whether she had dosed my mother with too much of the poison that last time, or the cumulative effects of the poison combined with mother’s illness had simply became too much for her weakened body, Father didn’t know, but he felt certain the maid had some part to play in it.”

  Gage’s eyes were heavy with grief when he finally turned to look at me. “I didn’t want to believe it. I told them they were wrong, that Annie could not have done it. She was like a second mother to me. And she loved my mother. Or, at least, I thought she did.” A lump formed in my throat at the desolation in his voice. “I defended her, sheltered her, protested her innocence . . . up until the night my father caught her trying to dose us with the same poison to silence us.”

  I gasped.

  “She claimed she’d had no idea, insisted that someone had tampered with the pantry.” He shook his head. “She swore to the very last that she was innocent. And I almost believed her.” His gaze bore into mine, wretched and dejected. “I almost helped her get away with murdering my mother.”

  I slid my arms around his torso and rested my head on his chest, trying to comfort him in the same manner he had consoled me on the staircase landing after Miss Remmington made her nasty implications about Will’s service during the war. He embraced me back, holding me so tightly that I knew I had done the right thing.

  “I’m sorry you had to experience such a thing,” I rasped into the white folds of his cravat. “I’m so sorry your mother was murdered.”

  I felt the muscles in Gage’s throat work as he laid his head against my hair. “Do you understand now why I didn’t want to hear your doubts over our suspect’s guilt during our last investigation?” he murmured softly. “And why I didn’t want to tell you?”

  I nodded. It had reminded him too much of his defense of Annie after his mother’s death. And it had been too private, too painful to relive, unless absolutely necessary.

  “Regardless, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. Your concerns were not unfounded. As was proven,” he added wryly.

  I squeezed him tighter, telling him all was forgiven.

  He squeezed me back. “I understand that not every case is like my mother’s. And as an inquiry agent I certainly can’t be effective if I allow such a plank in my eye.” He brushed a hand over my hair, smoothing it back from my face. “That’s why I became so cross with you for defending Lord Dalmay’s innocence so blindly, and for trying to block my finding out from Mac if he had met Mary Wallace.”

  “I know. I’m afraid I’ve been so concerned with making certain everyone treats William fairly, that they not jump to conclusions about him because of the time he spent in the asylum, that I failed to realize I had leaned so far in the other direction that I wasn’t treating him fairly either.” I sighed. “Perhaps we should have insisted Michael let us question him about Dr. Sloane’s accusations and Miss Wallace’s disappearance from the very beginning. We’ve been so intent on protecting him from the pain of further accusations, coddling him like a baby, that we haven’t treated him like a man.” I looked up at Gage. “I think he’s stronger than we realize.”

  He lifted his hand to trail his thumb over my cheekbone. “I would agree. He survived the horrors of the Peninsular War and then a decade confined to a lunatic asylum, after all. The war alone could have ruined a man.”

  There was something in his voice, in the pale winter blue of his eyes, that told me he was speaking from experience.

  “Were you involved in the revolution in Greece?” I asked, not wanting to press him for answers, especially after tonight had already seen so many difficult revelations.

  His gaze met mine, and I could see the sting of those memories, whatever they were, shimmering below the surface. I had expected him to hide them from me, but because he was vulnerable or he’d decided to trust me, he didn’t. “For a time,” he replied. “But I would rather not discuss it. At least, not now.”

  I nodded, accepting his answer. Just the fact that he had decided to confide in me that little bit was enough.

  His expression loosened in relief and he bent his head to kiss my brow, and then my lips.

  When he pulled away several agreeable moments later, he tucked me in close to his side and turned to stare out the window. I pressed my cheek to the soft fabric of his coat, where I could smell the musk of his skin mixed with the starch of his clothes and the spicy scent of his cologne, and followed his gaze to the windowpane. But rather than trying to peer through the darkness to the forest beyond, I focused instead on our reflection. In the softly rippling surface, our images almost merged into one, but the shadowy outline was so faint that I swore if I blinked it would vanish. I clasped Gage tighter and kept my eyes open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The next morning, I was shaken awake by my maid.

  “M’lady, Mr. Gage is askin’ for ye. He says it’s urgent.”

  I pushed myself upright, rubbing the sleep from my eyes while Lucy bustled over to the window to throw back
the curtains. I shied away from the light, soft as it still was so early in the morning.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Did he say?”

  “Nay. But he’ll be waitin’ for ye oot front with the horses.”

  Ten minutes later I hurried through the front door to find Gage already mounted.

  “What is it?” I asked while a stable hand helped boost me up onto Dewdrop. Two quick adjustments to my saddle and I was following him down the drive.

  “We’ve found Miss Wallace,” he told me grimly when my horse drew abreast with his.

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice.

  “Where?”

  He directed his horse east toward the firth. He glanced over his shoulder at me, a solemn, angry look in his eyes. “On the beach.”

  * * *

  Neither of us said much on the ride over. We didn’t need to. Both of us understood what the discovery of Miss Wallace’s body on Dalmay property meant. The likelihood of William Dalmay being involved had just increased from possible to plausible. I tried not to jump to conclusions, not before I’d had a chance to see the body, but I couldn’t ignore the simple fact that this was the stretch of land where Miss Wallace and Will had met.

  Gage had set a guard over Miss Wallace’s body, and we found him standing several feet away from the corpse, trying not to look at it. The servant, a man who worked in the Dalmay stables, if I was not mistaken, looked up at us in relief as we rode out of the forest at a trot. We drew our horses to a halt and handed the man the reins.

  “He was visiting his family in Cramond,” Gage told me as we approached the beach. “Found her on his return to Dalmay House this morning.”

  I was listening to him, but all of my attention was focused on the figure lying in the sand at the edge of the water.

  “Kiera.” He stopped and turned to face me, blocking the sight of the woman. “I had to send a footman to Cramond to fetch the constable, so we haven’t much time.” I looked up into his face, understanding now the extreme urgency. “The lad was instructed to dawdle a bit, but there’s only so much dallying a man can do.”