by Abigail Agar
Was someone ill? Or a poisoner? The rumours Helen had laughed at – of the body being used to hide the murders committed by Lord Stanley came back to her. For a moment it seemed possible; he was prone to the kind of anxieties one might expect of a man haunted by his sins. And he was behind the wing being shut up like that.
Who else in the house would trouble to sneak around keeping such matters hidden here? Vera wondered. Only Caruthers and Lord Stanley kept the keys –
For a moment, in the shadowy isolation of the East Wing, she almost believed in Lord Stanley as the murderous villain of The Monk or Udolpho. Then she tried to picture Lord Stanley sneaking about covering up his murders, and she laughed. The kind and open face of her Lord made no sense as a medieval sinner.
After all, Vera’s own presence here in the East Wing was proof that anyone could find their way into the locked corridors and use it as their own hidden world. This was proof of nothing more than someone in the household having an old-fashioned belief in the cures of the old wives and nothing more.
No doubt they were selling cures to local villagers and so kept their wares secret for fear of Caruthers ejecting them from the house. Cook certainly had the air of an old Mother Hubbard to whom a ravished village girl might go to receive something to restore her menses.
On a whim, she seized the bottle of laudanum which was front and centre of the whole array, carefully turning it to make the circular print in the dust as clear and unmissable as possible; she then slipped the bottle into her coat pocket and closed up the cabinet.
Perhaps I can find this mysterious apothecary out when they discover their tools have been tampered with.
She wandered the corridors of the East Wing for a while longer walking backwards in the dust in places and retracing her steps again and again to make her route as difficult to follow as possible. In the process she hoped to find something of the real reason for the rooms all being shut up, but nothing presented itself: no ancient ruins, no imprisoned maidens, no bodies mummified upon a bed. In fact, the only truly distinctive rooms were the nursery and the bathroom in which the medical cabinet was kept. These were the only places that showed signs of having been visited any time in recent years.
Disappointed, Vera returned to the main house, slipping back through the door to the corridor of suits of armour and returning to the servants’ quarters.
In place of answers she had found only more questions.
Chapter 15
Vera slept better that night than she had in weeks and weeks. Having followed the instructions on the label and mixed three drops of the laudanum into a glass of water, she found that time had amplified the strength of the drug considerably, and she sank into dizzying and unpleasant dreams.
She was still running with the wolf pack, but now her disguise was snatched from her, and the wolves closed in to tear at her flesh ravenously. She woke with the uneasy feeling that her dreams were betraying desires that she had not yet acknowledged.
The feelings she experienced towards her Lord were becoming a strain. She still assisted him with dressing and tending to his well-being. Increasingly, though, she wished she could tear her disguise away, and that he would do the same.
Her feelings towards him were growing with each passing day.
It was the realisation that there was so much more to what drove them together, not just two beautiful people pushed together by chance, but something deeper, rooted in the old magic that made plants grow and wombs quicken …
Or perhaps the laudanum’s effects are lingering. She shook her head and tried to clear the fuzziness, but it clung on. Strong stuff.
Feeling rather groggy, and with pinpricks of pain behind her eyes, she dug around in her drawer and pulled the bottle out, returning it to her coat pocket and resolving to discard the unpleasant mixture as soon as she found some convenient quiet place to do so.
Her trap was set after all; she hardly needed to keep hold of the bottle so long as its absence was clear when the mysterious wanderer of the East Wing returned to the cabinet.
Once she was dressed, she followed her usual routine, taking Lord Stanley his breakfast. The tray felt heavier than normal and her mind fuzzy as if the laudanum’s effects were still with her. I will not be partaking of that vice again in a hurry, she thought for what she realised was the fifth or sixth time.
She put out Lord Stanley’s clothes and woke him up.
He turned around, and his face showed that same simple contentment it did every morning now. His smile sat on his face as he drew himself up from his own slumbers to join her in the land of the living. By the time he had done that, Vera was feeling herself falling asleep.
There was something infectious about his smile, though, and she realised her own face was locked in a sleepy grin. Good Lord, I must look drunk, she thought.
‘You look like you’ve been at the claret this morning.’ Lord Stanley laughed.
‘No, My Lord. I just feel as if I am still dreaming.’ He looked so beautiful stretched out on his bed, one strong arm tucked behind his head and his chest lean and supple to where it slid below the covers.
‘You seem exhausted, come to bed.’
How I long to, she thought. But innocence resisted.
***
She awoke later to the sound of Lord Stanley snoring. Huge Falstaffian rattles shook his bed. She had to stifle a laugh.
The great and mysterious Lord Stanley snores like a fat drunk derelict.
The roaring cacophony that would have been insufferable in anyone else was such a contrast to his dignified mien by day that it was quite delightful.
Her stifled chuckle broke free of her and rang out through the room far louder than she meant it to.
Lord Stanley, with a final snorting guffaw, came to. Woken by her peals of laughter.
He kissed her gently on the forehead and rose from the bed, dressing himself in the clothes she had put out for him earlier. Every now and again, he looked over at her and smiled.
‘What is it, My Lord?’
‘Your hair is growing back. It looks beautiful down like that.’
‘You prefer Vera then to Fidel.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ He smiled. ‘Fidel serves me most diligently, while Vera lollygags in my bed and yet resists all my charms and efforts to make a fallen woman of her.’
‘When the time is right, I will be just as wild as you wish me to be.’
‘Perhaps after such a long wait I will have become the holy man I am required to be to keep from seducing you, my love.’
With Lord Stanley fully dressed, and the last of the laudanum completely out of her system, Vera climbed out from under the covers, pleased to confirm that Lord Stanley had not made even a cursory assault on the fortifications of her britches and shirt.
She straightened out her jacket and pulled her hair back into the ponytail she had taken to wearing it in now that she was allowing it to grow out a little, a small gesture towards her old femininity that would not give her away among the current fashions worn by the men around her.
Once Lord Stanley was up, and they had eaten together the cold breakfast she had brought to him, they went for a ride with the hounds. Lord Stanley carried a blunderbuss; although the season was late for grouse shooting, he hoped there might still be a stray snipe or pheasant on the grounds. Vera carried his powder and shot in a heavy bag which banged against her side as they rode. It clicked against the bottle in her pocket.
The horse she rode, the ornery old nag that had given her such trouble on her trip to Bathcombe, was now a more sedate presence beneath her than on previous rides.
A couple of thickets they passed seemed ideal for tossing the laudanum away, but a fear of being seen or caught and having to explain her snooping kept her from lobbing the evidence of her trespass into the greenery.
Why should I be afraid? she wondered. It was a breach of his implicit commands regarding the East Wing, but he had never forbidden her outright. Perhaps, it was some
thing weighing in his mind, and he was longing for her to ask. And perhaps she was creating reasons to ask out of selfish curiosity.
She argued and argued in silence on her horse, building up the courage to ask about the East Wing with the new knowledge she had. Why does he keep his childhood so carefully preserved there? Or is it his? If not then who else’s infancy would matter so much to him?
It was after they had seen a snipe that she finally felt strong enough to make her sally against his secrecy.
The snipe shot out of the long grass by a low stone wall as soon as the two riders emerged from the small copse and into a large fallow field with a track down the side. Somewhere nearby, Vera could hear running water, but the douit through which it ran was completely hidden by the grass.
Lord Stanley swung the blunderbuss up to his shoulder and turned in the saddle. His face grimaced as he did so.
His shoulder still pains him, thought Vera. Then there was the sharp crack of the powder exploding, the heavy and bitter smell of powder smoke, and both horses started throwing their owners off balance.
Lord Stanley’s horse had nickered a moment earlier than Vera’s and had disrupted its rider’s aim.
The bird would live another day. Not that it stopped the overexcited hounds dashing off to collect a quarry that would never fall from the sky.
‘A shame, My Lord. Perhaps I should break that horse for you too?’
‘Are you mocking my horsemanship, Fi–’ He glanced around to check no one was within earshot. They were completely alone. ‘Vera.’
He looked at her mount and grinned, ‘You have managed that horse rather better than could be expected, maybe you should.’
‘All it takes is tact, My Lord. Which is what the following matter requires of me too.’
‘I too have a matter of tact to deal with.’
‘You go first by honour of your birth, m’Lord. Perhaps my response will require greater candour of you in the matter I have to raise if I can give you that in yours.’
‘Caruthers came to me today with a most troubling series of questions about you, my love,’ said Lord Stanley. ‘He talked of gambling debts and hinted at criminal misdeeds.’
His voice was light, and he laughed as he spoke, clearly unaware of how close his mocking hyperbole came to truth.
‘His foolishness notwithstanding, it perhaps prompted an acceleration of what follows. You see, Vera. Despite the many mysteries that surround you, and despite your deception, however ineffectual it was in my case, I wish more than anything else to make your troubles my own, and to extend not just the protection of my finances which, whatever your answer and whatever your reasons, I extend freely to you on whatever matter you made petition to Caruthers for, but also the protection of my name.’
Vera took a few moments to try and unravel the tangled syntax and oddly brittle tone of this address. Feeling she had more or less made sense of it, she tried: ‘Your Lordship is most kind, but I could not use your name to guarantee my claims in the matter I must handle now.’
‘You misunderstand me, or perhaps I am unclear.’
‘Perhaps both, My Lord? But I suspect the fault is yours,’ she teased.
‘Quite. Vera, my love. I am offering not my name as guarantee, but as a name to be shared between us. I am – in a rather roundabout way, I suppose – asking for, well, for your hand in marriage.’
Vera thrilled, happiness flooding her; however, it was fleeting.
How could she marry him without taking care of matters with the law first? Any marriage must surely involve her exposure to the magistrates that were hunting her as a candidate for Bedlam or the noose.
Perhaps both, My Lady, she thought ironically.
‘I must beg leave to let that question pend,’ she said eventually. ‘I cannot answer in the affirmative now,’ she told him. His face fell, and she kicked her horse, moving up until their stirrups were pressed together. ‘I cannot answer in the affirmative, now,’ she repeated. ‘Therefore, I cannot answer now.’
He smiled as he took her meaning, and he leaned in to kiss her gently on the lips.
‘I need you to understand that whatever you are running from: debtors, family obligations, an unhappy marriage – please Lord, do not let it be that last, I cannot bear to think of you with another man – whatever it is I can protect you from it. Money and a title go a long way in this world.’
‘I cannot bear to think of you with another man.’ The lots of men and women are truly different. As Fidel I can be unfaithful and expect forgiveness, expect Vera to love on. But as Vera I am unbearable if not pure?
She wanted to accuse him, to fight. But she simply felt tired. ‘And if you cannot protect your feelings for me from the accusations I run from?’
‘Mere accusations? Why should I believe a word of them?’
‘What if there was evidence so compelling, no one, not even one as biased in my favour could acquit?’
‘Are you guilty of what you say?’
‘My word can mean nothing against the facts. Fabricated or not, they are proof enough that I must run and hide rather than challenge them for now.’
‘But are you guilty?’
‘I am not. But until I have such proof as I can convince both you and the world of my innocence, I beg that you do not ask any further. I shall allow you your secret of the East Wing; you must allow me this. Until that is resolved, I cannot accept your protection or be your wife. We both have our reasons to hide; let us hide here together.’
‘That would be the most wonderful thing in the world, my love. But we cannot marry until you are a woman once more, and you will not submit to my considerable power of seduction until I can make honest the pair of us.’
‘I fear when I succumb, you will lose interest.’ She felt the lightness gone from the banter in her voice.
‘“When”, not “if”? That gives me hope. I will renew my assault on your innocence,’ he must have sensed that something had changed in her attitude for his voice sounded more cautious, less flippant, even as he played the same verbal games with her.
She felt a very long way away from him, even as they sat with her left leg squeezed against his right by the proximity of their horses. ‘Be content to be with me for now,’ she said. ‘I have hope of uncovering the truth to the law’s satisfaction. But I must pay for the costs of investigation. That is why I am petitioning Caruthers for an advance on my wages.’
‘Take as much as you need; take it as a gift if it clears this barrier between us once and for all, then it would be cheap at five thousand pounds.’
He looked up, and the look of childish gratitude on his face was so endearing she couldn’t help kissing him. They stayed there for what seemed like an age, lips pressed to lips. The huge patient beasts beneath them standing side by side oblivious to the lives lived on their backs.
When they finally broke away from each other, Vera could feel the flush in her face and the smile.
He wants to marry me. This changes everything. What mattered now was no longer staying hidden, staying Fidel. She must find the murderer so that she could be with this man properly.
‘Now to my matter,’ she said. ‘Firstly, I must apologise. For I have done you two great injustices, My Lord,’ she said.
The amused smile crossed Lord Stanley’s face, the one she loved and hated at the same time, it always suggested that nothing could be taken too seriously. ‘Only two, Vera. And only great? I am a lucky man indeed who is done so little injustice by his beloved.’
‘Do not laugh at me, Sir. I will have my say, and then we will see where your good humour takes you.’ She took a deep breath and began: ‘The first of the injustices was to break your trust. I have been into the East Wing and found it less uninhabited than I was persuaded of on my arrival.’