by Liz Carlyle
Grace had begun to tug off her gloves. “I have missed you all terribly,” she said. “How is Miss Crane? Will you tell her I’ve come to call?”
“My pleasure, miss,” he said, but he looked a little pained. “Will you wait in the small parlor?”
“Certainly,” she said, turning to follow.
It was then that she noticed the faint smell of solvent. Inside the small parlor, the gold jacquard wallpaper had been stripped away, and the walls were now painted ivory. Above, the gold medallion had been removed from the ceiling and the gilt pier glasses taken down, giving the entire room an almost restrained look.
“Fenella is fitting out the room all afresh, I see,” she said, handing her cloak and gloves to Trenton. “I confess, I like it rather better.”
“Miss Crane thought it ostentatious,” Trenton confessed. “I don’t believe she ever liked it.”
“And Tess cannot have mourned the passing of those mirrors,” said Grace, smiling. “It seemed she spent half the morning polishing them.”
Trenton’s face fell. “I regret to say Tess is no longer with us, miss,” he replied. “Indeed, much of the staff has been let go.”
“Let go?” Grace was shocked.
“I fear so. Miss Crane said that as she did not mean to entertain, and the children were now gone, the new staff weren’t needed.”
“The new staff?” Grace paced farther into the room. “What new staff?
“The staff hired since Mrs. Crane’s time,” said Trenton behind her. “The last Mrs. Crane, I should say.”
Grace spun around, still holding her gloves. “Do you mean Ethan’s mother?” She looked at him curiously. “But that was eons ago. Who would be left?”
“Just three of us, miss,” said Trenton a little mournfully. “Indeed, I think that more recently Miss Crane has decided to let the house go and remove entirely.”
“Remove? Remove to where?” But Grace knew the answer to that question as soon as it left her lips.
“Back to Rotherhithe,” said Trenton. “I am not sure precisely where. She says she misses it, and—oh, but there! One mustn’t carry gossip. Let me see if Miss Crane is in. I am not…perfectly sure.”
On a rising swell of panic, Grace realized she had very nearly come too late. Fenella must mean to marry and move into Josiah Crane’s house. It was the only thing that made sense.
Grace hastened after him. “Trenton.” She settled a hand on his frail arm. “I must see Fenella. I cannot tell you how important it is. Do not let her suppose things that…well, that simply are not true. Do not let her turn me away, please. I beg you. Tell her—why, tell her I said I shan’t leave until she sees me.”
“Yes, miss.” But he looked unconvinced.
Grace felt suddenly unwell again. It was the smell, she thought. “Trenton,” she said before he left the room, “might I wait in the sitting room? I think the smell of paint is turning my stomach.”
For an instant, he hesitated. Then a hint of sympathy passed over his face. “Certainly, miss.” He gave a little bow. “Just show yourself up.”
As the elderly butler vanished into the nether regions of the house, Grace crossed the grand marble foyer and went up the broad, semicircular staircase to the upper landing. Here she paused to look around, one hand sliding along on the balustrade as she paced from one end to the other.
It felt positively eerie. The last time she had been up here, Ethan had lain dead in his study across the corridor, and she had stood weak-kneed against the sitting-room wall, oblivious to the policemen and servants surging around her. But that awful night, thank God, now seemed a lifetime away.
Grace turned and paced back toward the sitting room, suddenly wishing she had the gift of sensing emotion as Anisha and Adrian did. Surely this house surged with unseen anger—all of it directed at Fenella now. And the poor woman was walking into the teeth of it, unawares.
The sitting-room door stood open as it always did. Grace strolled inside only to find that it, too, was in disarray. All the paintings were down, and a set of scaffolding stood in one corner, as if this room was soon to be painted, too. Mr. Holding’s favorite chair was gone, along with the glass cabinet containing his display of stuffed game birds—a thing Grace had always found vaguely loathsome.
Too restless to sit, Grace removed her hat and laid it on the tea table with her gloves, then began to wander the room. How foreign it all seemed to her now, with the landscapes down and everything seemingly upturned. And though she could not disagree with the changes Fenella was making, it struck her as odd that such a thing should be done so shortly after Mr. Holding’s death. It seemed…a little disrespectful, perhaps.
In the back of the room, the scaffolding stood like a bare tree against a wintry sky, but not quite against the wall, as if it were in the process of being moved. Curious, Grace peeked round it.
The large gilt-framed portrait that had hung over the fireplace was tucked behind it, propped against the wall in the shadows. But it looked strange, somehow. Absently, Grace tipped it forward with one finger, and was instantly horrified. The sitter’s face had been slashed by two long strokes down the middle, and a third cutting all the way across, leaving pieces of canvas to flop impotently. On a gasp, Grace tipped it back again.
But now the cuts were obvious to her. What in God’s name could have possessed someone? What depth of hatred could drive someone to do such damage to an inanimate object?
The portrait, she recalled, was of Ethan’s mother in her youth. Mrs. Crane had been a lovely young widow when she had married into the Crane dynasty, and never had Grace heard an ill word spoken of her. Indeed, by all accounts she had been a fine woman, proud of her family and her domestic accomplishments.
But someone had clearly hated her.
Someone had hated Mrs. Holding enough to slice her face nearly to ribbons. Grace caught her hands together and tried not to wring them. Something just was not right. The work being done in the house went beyond renovation or removal. And why renovate at all if one meant to go? And why slash an old and meaningless portrait to bits?
Unless it held some meaning that others could not so readily see.
On impulse, Grace went to the mahogany secretary opposite the hearth and slid open the top drawer, her hand suddenly shaking. The wooden tray that had always held a supply of Ethan’s personal stationery was empty now. But the left-hand tray still held a thick, creamy pile of Fenella’s monogrammed letter paper.
Grace pushed the drawer shut with her fingertips, a cold, ugly suspicion running like a shiver up her spine. Good Lord. How many evenings, she wondered, had they all sat here together, quietly reading or playing whist after dinner: Ethan, Fenella, Josiah, and she? And how many letters had Fenella written, seated at that very desk?
Ethan’s study was just across the passageway. Grace had spent little time there, but she knew without looking that had she ever pulled open his top drawer, she would have seen a tidy stack of Crane and Holding letterhead to one side and Ethan’s personal stationery on the other, the latter lightly used.
The second stack—this stack—had always been kept here for Fenella’s convenience. Because Ethan both craved society’s approval and yet feared its disdain. Because he felt awkward and unpolished, and left the handling of all things social to his sister. The sister who wasn’t his sister at all, but his stepfather’s daughter.
For reasons she could not explain, Grace went back to Mrs. Holding’s portrait and knelt to one side to better look at it. Ethan’s laughing gray eyes looked steadily back at her—albeit from separate bits of canvas now. Nausea churned in her stomach, and she set her bloodless fingertips to her lips.
Just then, there was a faint sound. Grace rose and turned to see Fenella on the threshold, still attired in deepest mourning, a jet brooch at her throat and tiny jet earbobs quivering upon her earlobes.
Fenella’s hands, too, were caught before her. But she looked oddly bloated—almost matronly—and her heavy auburn hair was in d
isarray, which was most unlike her.
“Grace,” she said, little warmth in her tone. “This is most unexpected. I am not at all sure you ought to be here.”
Something like anger swelled in Grace’s chest. “Why, Fenella?” she asked. “Why may I not call upon someone I once accounted a dear friend? Is it because the police still call me a murderess? Or is there another reason?”
“I cannot like your tone,” said Fenella, stepping fully into the room. “I think it best we let the police do their jobs and reserve our opinions—and our friendship—until then.”
Grace thrust out a hand. “What happened to Ethan’s mother’s portrait?” she demanded, stabbing her finger at it.
Fenella flinched as if struck. “It was damaged by the workmen,” she replied. “We had no further use for it anyway.”
Quivering with indignation, Grace paced toward her. “Mon Dieu, Fenella!” she whispered. “That is his mother! What are you doing to this house? What is in your mind?”
“Better to ask yourself what it is I have undone,” Fenella retorted. “Ethan is dead, Grace. He is not coming back. And this—all this ostentation!” Here, she lifted both hands heavenward. “The gilt and the marble, and even this very house!”
“Fenella, what are you saying?”
“That I am a Crane!” Fenella gritted. “We are not Holdings. We never were. We dragged ourselves up from nothing—and on the way, yes, mayhap we stooped to drag the Holdings from bankruptcy—but always, always Cranes knew who and what we were. They did not need a monstrous mansion in Westminster or a page in Debrett’s.”
“But this makes no sense!” Grace bit out. “How could you be so ungrateful? Ethan made all of you rich!”
“And at what cost?” Fenella’s eyes were afire now. “Oh, Ethan knew how to sell things, but he never troubled himself to learn anything of shipbuilding. And Josiah, like his father, has his cards and his dice to occupy him. So we all flit round to our dinner parties whilst the soul of Crane Shipbuilding is hired out to draughtsmen and carpenters, and the money spent on monstrosities like this.”
“So you are undoing it all, are you?” Grace backed toward the door a step. “You begin by turning off Mrs. Holding’s old servants and tearing Ethan’s house down around your ears. And then what, Fenella? Do you rename the business Crane Shipping?”
“It was Crane Shipping, you little fool!” Fenella hissed. “The word Holding was just an appeasement—to her and to Ethan!” She thrust a tremulous finger at her stepmother’s portrait.
“And who is going to run it?” Grace cried. “You? Mon Dieu, have you any notion how ludicrous that sounds?”
It was the one thing Grace should not have said.
“Do you think for one moment I cannot?” Fenella’s visage blazed with hatred. “By God, I can keep a set of books in my sleep, but Papa and Ethan thought me good for nothing save marrying off—or worse, hosting dinner parties and writing his prattling letters to people I could not have given a damn about.”
She lurched almost threateningly nearer, and realization struck Grace like a hurtling knife. Fenella was insane—perhaps had been so for a long while. “I did not say you weren’t capable.” She held one hand out almost defensively. “Fenella, calm yourself. I am your friend, remember? I never said you were incapable.”
“No, but like everyone else, you thought it,” Fenella raged. “Papa would rather have had another man’s get at the helm than to hand the family jewels to his own daughter.”
“Fenella, Ethan was your brother,” Grace whispered. “He gave you everything. He loved you.”
“He was not my brother!” she cried. “And Mrs. Holding—my dear stepmamma with her knitting and tatting and ‘a-woman’s-place-is-in-the-home’ nonsense! After she came round, I wasn’t allowed to put so much as a toe over the threshold of Swan Lane. And look what has come of it!”
“Swan Lane,” Grace muttered. “That’s where you were last week.”
“That’s where I’ve been every week, for God’s sake,” said Fenella. “Someone has to be at the head of this business! Between Josiah gaming it away and Ethan draining the coffers on tomfoolery, the company hasn’t two sous to rub together. And you have the audacity to suggest I cannot manage my own family’s business? That I should stand idly by while I am passed over again and again, and one man after another allowed to run it to ruin?”
Grace was beginning to feel genuine fear. She cut a glance over one shoulder, hoping to see Trenton in the corridor. She realized a little sickly that she was backing her way out the door.
“Fenella,” she said. “You are very bright. Have I not always said so? I am perfectly sure you could manage on your own.”
“Oh, don’t you patronize me, you fancy French broodmare!” Fenella’s eyes blazed. “That’s all you ever were to Ethan, Grace—just a means to an end. He wanted an heir off you—a male heir—because a female would be worthless. Well, I shan’t have it, do you hear? Another man without an ounce of Crane blood, sitting in my grandfather’s chair and leaving me with nothing but cast-off scraps and platitudes? Just as Ethan did these last ten years. Just as my father did when he married that woman. Well, I have had enough of it.”
Grace felt her knees sag. Good God, it was true. Fenella had killed Ethan. She had killed him to prevent him from marrying. To keep them from having children.
She set her hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. “Fenella, you should think of Josiah,” she said. “He can help you. He is a Crane.”
“Yes, but he’s weak,” she spat. “Just like his father before him.”
Grace had backed into the corridor now, almost onto the balcony. A horrific thought struck her. “Fenella, where is Josiah?” she asked, almost tripping over her hems. “Tell me. What have you done to him?”
Fenella’s full mouth turned up into an almost beatific smile. “Poor Josiah is ill,” she said. “So ill. Too ill to be out gaming—or even to be in the office. But someone must go, mustn’t they? I think the staff will grow accustomed to me. After all, I own the controlling interest.”
Grace could not get her breath. She felt the balustrade strike the small of her back. “You put that note under my door!” she whispered. “You wrote that letter and hid it in my things!”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword, Grace!” Fenella laughed richly. “Ethan should have written his own bloody letters, shouldn’t he? Well, I have sent his regrets to his last little tea party ever.”
Grace cut a glance to her left. The stairs were but twenty paces away. “Mon Dieu, Fenella, why now?” she whispered.
Fenella seized her by the shoulders. “Because this time I wasn’t going to wait and risk it,” she hissed, giving Grace a vicious shake. “You’d have been with child soon enough, by the look of you. No, this time I could not wait.”
“You…oh, Lord.” Grace’s hand came up to cover her mouth. “You killed her! You pushed Ethan’s wife down those stairs.”
“It was a terrible, terrible accident.” Fenella’s face was so close Grace could see the spittle hanging off her lip as she rasped out the words. “But she had to go. The silly cow was with child. It was to be a surprise for Ethan. Well, I surprised her!”
With that, Grace found herself shoved hard. She fought for balance. “Stop, Fenella!” She grabbed Fenella by the arm with all her strength. But the black bombazine tore, and Grace’s hand struck a cracking blow across Fenella’s jaw.
“You little bitch!” Fenella’s mouth twisted with hatred. “You were never my friend! You weren’t even Ethan’s—”
“Stop!” shouted a voice from below. “Miss Crane, unhand her now! This is the Metropolitan Police.”
Fenella’s eyes narrowed to inky slits. “You bitch!” she hissed, seizing Grace’s throat.
“Fenella Crane!” The booming voice was Royden Napier’s. Grace could hear his feet starting up the staircase. “You are under arrest. Release her and step away. I am armed.”
“No!” cried Fenella, tighte
ning her grip and shaking Grace like a rag doll.
Just then, from one corner of her eye, Grace saw movement in the shadows. Someone creeping up the back stairs. Trenton?
Grace clawed back, one hand finding Fenella’s jet brooch and ripping it away. The second caught at the front of her gown, tearing it again. Frantically Grace fought, but the black was edging round her vision.
Fenella’s strength was driven by madness. She was pushing Grace, the balustrade like a fulcrum at the base of her spine. She felt herself tipping backward and flailed out with one arm, finding nothing but empty air.
Grace could see nothing but the white of the ceiling above. She forced down the panic. She was not going over. She was not. Not without a bloody fight, by God.
Ruthlessly, Grace seized a fistful of Fenella’s hair and dragged her face back until they were nose to nose again. “If I go,” she gritted, “then by God, you go, too, Fenella!”
With that, she lashed one arm about Fenella’s waist. Suddenly, there was a mighty crack of wood. Something snatched Grace, dragging her back from nothingness. The balcony gave way, and Grace let Fenella go. Grace hit the floor, landing with an arm and a leg dangling in thin air.
“Hold tight, I’ve got you,” a voice rasped against her ear.
“Nooo!” screamed Fenella. It was a cry wrenched straight from hell.
Grace blinked away the blackness. Fenella hung two feet below the splintered rails, dangling from Adrian’s arm, her feet flailing like some crazed marionette.
“Hold still, damn it!” Adrian grunted, clutching Grace round the waist and Fenella by the wrist.
But Fenella did not hold still, and it was an impossible predicament anyway. She jerked again, her eyes wide with fear, or perhaps with hate. And then her hand slipped from Adrian’s. She sailed down to the marble foyer in a voluminous cloud of black bombazine, her head landing with a crack, then bouncing to strike again.
Grace screamed. Adrian’s other arm came round her, dragging her back from the edge. Somehow, she got to her feet, shivering, and threw herself into his arms.