A Fatal Waltz

by Tasha Alexander

  She tossed aside the handkerchief. “My favorite kind. What is it?”

  “Why did Lord Fortescue propose to Mary Sanburne?”

  “It does seem an unlikely match, doesn’t it?” she asked. “She brought him no money, and she’s certainly no beauty.”

  “And it does not appear there was much affection between them.”

  “There was enough to make the arrangement palatable to both of them.”

  “But he adored you,” I said.

  “In his way, yes.” Her smile was thin.

  “Why did he choose her?”

  “It was odd, really. Quite unlike his usual decisions. Basil told me in no uncertain terms that he’d always felt bad about what had happened to her family, especially after the queen gave him her father’s title and estate.”

  “So he married her in an attempt to make up for all that?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “Did she know that?”

  “I believe he told her when he proposed.”

  I rested my hand on my chin and bit my lip. “I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to watch the man you love marry someone else.”

  “Marriages are just a form of doing business,” she said. “It never troubled me.”

  “I can’t believe that. You love him.”

  “Loved him. He’s gone now, and I can’t even mourn him openly.” She closed her eyes, one hand clutching at her knee, the other clenched in a fist brought to her mouth.

  “He shouldn’t have married her,” I said. “He should have waited until…until he could have had you.”

  “Yes, well, Basil was never the sort of man to bow to anyone else’s wishes. We got along well precisely because I could accept that.”

  “But it’s so sad.”

  “Yet much better than nothing.” She folded her hands in her lap and straightened her back. “It was the right thing to do, marrying her. How could I fault him for it? It was the only thing I’ve ever known him to do that was completely selfless.”

  Chapter 25

  Two more days passed without a word from Colin. Without knowing even the name of the town where he had gone, there was no way I could reach him, or even send an inquiry to the authorities. The kaiser would arrive in Vienna tomorrow and attend the court choirboys’ performance the following day. I should have told him everything I’d learned from the empress, not just skeletal facts. Withholding the information hadn’t accomplished anything positive, only put innocent people at risk. But surely he’d figured it out.

  If he were still alive.

  A sentence that I couldn’t bear to say aloud. Not to Margaret, or Ivy, or Cécile, or even to myself. I tried to focus on Robert in Newgate, hoping that would push thoughts of Colin from my mind. This was futile, of course, but also unnecessary. I should have realized that my mother’s presence would serve as its own monumental distraction.

  “I’m not sure what to think of this don of Miss Seward’s,” she said, accosting me in my bedroom as I was dressing for dinner. “He’s well-mannered and decent enough looking. A bit old for her, perhaps, but she’s the sort of girl who could stand a firm guiding force in her life.”

  I raised my eyebrows and looked in the mirror, watching Meg expertly win another struggle to force my hair into submission. “They are very well suited to one another, but I’m not sure that Margaret has any intention of getting married.”

  “You talk such nonsense, Emily. The girl needs to be married. Mr. Michaels has a decent income. Not spectacular—I certainly wouldn’t want you to settle for such a thing—but she is American, after all, and she does have a fortune of her own. It’s a pity she and the Duke of Bainbridge were never able to work out their differences, but really, she may be better off where she is.”

  “Can it be, Mother, that you’re contemplating the arrangement of a love match?”

  “Love’s all well and good, so long as it doesn’t distract from what’s really important. You never did tell me why you object to Henry Elliott for her.”

  “Well…” I watched her in the mirror. “It’s not so much that I’ve an objection to Henry. But I’ve heard that there is a certain young woman with an impeccable background and egregious fortune who’s set her cap for him.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal a confidence.” Particularly when it was entirely fictional.

  “Does Henry know this?”

  “If he doesn’t, he will soon.”

  “How interesting. I shall tell Lady Elliott to keep her ear to the ground. Perhaps I should speak with Mr. Michaels this evening.”

  Already I felt sorry for Mr. Michaels. He did not stand a chance.

  I missed Ivy that night. Cowed by my mother, she was keeping to her bed, but I was beginning to think she was enjoying herself. I’d slipped her my copy of Lost and Saved, Caroline Norton’s sensational novel of Beatrice Brooke, who is tricked into believing that her lover has married her after she falls ill while they’re on an illicit trip to Egypt. Melodrama at its best.

  I paid only the slightest attention to my friends that evening. After dinner, when we’d retired to the library, I sat at my desk and started to write a letter to Colin, balling up the paper before I’d finished three sentences and beginning again.

  “That’s your fifth fresh start,” Margaret said half an hour later, carrying the decanter with her and refilling my port. “What are you writing?”

  “Apparently nothing,” I said.

  “I wish someone would spend half that time crafting a letter for me,” Jeremy said.

  “You’d have to be less of a cad to earn such treatment,” I said.

  “You needn’t be so cruel.” He sipped his port.

  “Emily’s horribly cruel,” Margaret said and then lowered her voice. “But I’m having more fun than I would’ve thought possible playing with her mother. She’s unexpectedly amusing.”

  “You say that now,” I said. “I wonder if you’ll still believe it next week when she’s started planning your wedding.”

  “It will never happen. Besides, I’d have to get married in New York. I’m safe.”

  “No one is safe from Lady Bromley,” Jeremy said. “I’ve known that since before I could walk.”

  Margaret circled the room, filling everyone’s glasses and only briefly joining Cécile and Mr. Michaels in an animated conversation before stopping in front of my mother. “Now, Lady Bromley, you must humor me and try some port.”

  “I categorically refuse,” my mother said. “It’s unseemly.”

  “Do you really think so?” Margaret asked, her face a mask of mock sincerity.

  “There’s no question.” She dropped her voice to her favorite and overly loud stage whisper. “What would Mr. Michaels say?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. He thinks it’s an excellent vintage.” She pressed a glass into my mother’s hand. For a moment it appeared as if she would drink it, and I prepared myself to be overwhelmed with awe for Margaret. But alas, it was too much to hope. My mother deposited the glass on a table and asked for sherry. I was about to ring for Davis when he entered the room.

  “This was just delivered,” he said, handing me a wire. I tore it open at once, hoping it was from Colin. It was not.

  Meeting soon with someone who may be persuaded to help me stop H. No sign of C. which means he’s hard at work. No cause to worry.

  —Kristiana von Lange

  THE COUNTESS’S SUGGESTION that I ought not worry had precisely the opposite effect on me. I had an appointment with Sir Julian the following morning, the first day he was back from a brief jaunt into the country. I felt so lethargic that I sent for my carriage instead of walking to his office and spent the entire drive pulling at my gloves, wondering what was happening in Vienna.

  “I do hope you’ll make a regular habit of calling, Lady Ashton,” Sir Julian said as soon as I’d arrived at his office. “Your charm is devastating, and it gives the boys a lift to see you.” />
  “I’m not sure that’s an appropriate compliment, but I shall accept it with grace nonetheless.”

  “You are too kind, Lady Ashton, too kind.” He slammed his hand down on his desk. “Now! What can I do for you? Do you need more information about the debauched failings of your peers?”

  “No. Do you remember, at Beaumont Towers one evening before dinner you were talking to Lady Fortescue, and she excused herself rather suddenly?”

  “Yes, I think I do. It was a bit strange, but she’s an odd sort of woman. An exceedingly poor conversationalist.”

  “What were you talking about when she ran out?” I asked. “I heard you say something about scandals delighting us.”

  “Yes, let’s see…I was telling her about her husband’s penchant for controlling the newspapers.”

  “Did you tell her about Albert Sanburne?”

  “Of course not. Though I suppose I did make an oblique sort of reference to his case and said that her husband had paid to keep the story out of the paper.”

  “She might have known to whom you were referring.”

  “Impossible. Only someone with a very close connection would have caught the reference.”

  “You don’t know who she is, then?” I asked. “Albert Sanburne was her brother.”

  “Yes, yes, but I can’t imagine anyone would have told her the details of the affair. She was just a girl. She couldn’t possibly have known.”

  I knew at once that Sir Julian couldn’t have been more wrong.

  I RACED BACK to Berkeley Square to collect my friends, but Margaret and Cécile were out, and my mother was reading to Ivy from the Bible; there was no chance I could steal her away and take her to Yorkshire with me. I just made the train I needed, and as I sat in my compartment, I felt nothing but anxious dread. Ordinarily, a book would have served as a welcome distraction, but instead of a novel, I’d brought with me the Greek grammar that Colin had given me more than a year ago; the volume he’d used in school. I paged through it idly, not really reading, certainly not studying, simply taking slim comfort in the fact that he had held the book himself.

  I’d wired Lady Fortescue to alert her of my arrival, and she had a carriage waiting for me at the station. The drive along the moors was shorter than I remembered it. All too soon I was looking up at the edifice of Beaumont Towers. I’d never liked the house—it was an architectural nightmare—but now it had been imbued with a feeling of piercing sadness that prevented me from casting upon it a critical eye.

  Inside, the clocks were all stopped, the windows covered with heavy drapes. The household was in deep mourning. Lady Fortescue received me in a small chamber, the same one where I’d found her worrying about dinner with the prime minister on my previous visit.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you,” I said. “This is a lovely room.”

  “It’s where my mother did all her work,” she said. “I loved coming in here when I was a girl.”

  “I can see why.”

  “You said it was urgent that you see me.” Her face was strained, but she looked as if she had more strength than when I’d last seen her.

  “Yes. I wanted to speak to you about your brother and your husband.”

  She blanched. “Why?”

  “I know what happened.”

  “What could you possibly mean?” she asked.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” I said. “I pieced it all together.”

  “How?” She clutched at her chair. Her eyes clouded, and blotches of color stained her cheeks as her arms began to shake.

  “The other pistol is in Vienna.”

  “Where? I’ve tried to find it but couldn’t.”

  “The guns were used in a duel. The brother of the man who was killed kept the other one.”

  “He can have it. I understand the need for bloody prizes. I knew that Albert bought the set in Vienna—he’d mentioned in a letter having them engraved—but I’d no idea they’d been used.”

  “When did you learn of your husband’s involvement with your brother?”

  “At the party that weekend you were here.” She hugged herself as if trying to stop the shaking. “And I couldn’t believe it. That this man who had offered me kindness, who had brought me home, that he was the person responsible for all the misfortune in my life. And my dear brother”—she started to weep—“he was so hopeless. His letter broke my heart.”

  “He sent you a letter?”

  “Yes, from Vienna before he killed himself.”

  “But how old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “He told you what he was going to do?”

  “Not specifically. Just that he’d met with certain ruin and wouldn’t be coming home. He said that one man had destroyed him.”

  “But he didn’t say who?” I asked.

  “Not by name. Only that the man who’d bought his freedom turned on him.” She took the handkerchief I offered her. “When Sir Julian told me Albert’s story—I recognized it, of course—I knew at once that my husband was responsible.”

  “Did you confront him about it?”

  “I did. He laughed at me, Lady Ashton. Laughed. Told me not to worry about the past now that I’m so comfortably settled. Had I the means, I would have killed him on the spot.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I got Albert’s gun.” She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth, making her words difficult to understand. “One of his friends in Vienna sent his possessions to me, including the gun and its case.”

  “I—I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “I’m not. Only exhausted. Do you know what it is like to have everything taken from you? Your house, your possessions, your very position? To be passed around, never welcome anywhere? To know that your best hope for happiness is to be little more than a servant? For ten years I’ve lived in grief. There’s nothing left for me to suffer.”

  “How did you…”

  “Shoot him? It was simple. I’d always excelled at archery, so Albert decided to teach me to shoot after my parents died.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got the gun out of the library—I wanted to use the same pistol that had ended my brother’s life. I walked out to where the gentlemen were, hid in some brush a short distance away, and fired when I knew the sound would be muffled by their own rifles.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “It was. But I could not let him live.”

  I reached for her hand. “And you can’t let Mr. Brandon be hanged for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “I can’t…I just can’t…I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t face it.”

  “You have to, Mary,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I know what happened. I’m going to tell the police. Please understand that I have no choice.”

  “No.” She shook her head, over and over.

  “I must. But surely there’s some way to gain mercy for you. Anyone could understand what you’ve been through. Your circumstances, the fact that your own husband betrayed you in such a way…There must be some way for me to help you.”

  She rose from her chair, and for a moment I was scared. Not that she could have overpowered me, but suddenly I imagined that she had the dueling pistol in her hand. Ridiculous, of course. She hadn’t known what to expect when I arrived. But emotions play funny tricks.

  “Think of Mrs. Brandon. She’s expecting a baby, Mary. Don’t take away its father.”

  “A baby?”

  I nodded.

  “Another child with a ruined life,” she said, her voice flat.

  “I will help you, I promise. There are very few gentlemen in Britain who haven’t feared being destroyed by Lord Fortescue. Could you tell me exactly what your brother’s letter said? I think that so long as we can prove you were certain your husband was instrumental in Albert’s downfall, we may be able…” I didn’t want to make false promises. She would spend the rest of her life in prison, but that would be bett
er than facing execution. I would visit her, bring her books, do whatever I could to ease her pain. “Well, we may be able to make things easier for you.”

  “I’ve never shown anyone his letter.”

  “Please, please, Mary.” I took her hand. “Let me help you.”

  “You really think it will make a difference?”

  “I do,” I said, hoping that I was right.

  “I’ll let you read it. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Of course.”

  Almost as soon as she’d left, I realized what she was doing. I ran out of the room, calling for her, desperately rushing down hallway after hallway as quickly as possible, hoping that I could find her. I was too late.

  A single shot rang out before I reached the door of the library.

  Chapter 26

  It took all of my will to force my hand to open the door. Mary was sprawled on the floor, her brother’s dueling pistol less than a foot from her hand, a star-shaped wound in her forehead, a thin line of blood running down her face. I forced myself to go to her, to see if she was still alive, but of course she was not. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I reached out and closed her eyes, unable to bear the vacant sadness in them.

  Servants burst into the room, and someone pulled me up from the floor, but I did not require assistance. I maintained my composure, feeling detached, almost as if I were watching the scene through a window, but at the same time knowing that when I found myself alone, I would be overwhelmed with what I’d seen. On the table next to where Mary had fallen was the mahogany box that had contained the pistol. It was closed, and placed on top of it was a letter. I unfolded it, expecting it to be Albert’s. Instead, it was written in his sister’s shaky hand:

  I, Mary Fortescue, confess to the murder of my husband, Lord Basil Fortescue.

  DATED THIS 5 JANUARY 1892.

  There was no sign of Albert’s letter. I pulled out the velvet interior, hoping there was something else in the box, but there was nothing. I looked back at Mary and fell to my knees next to her. I hesitated to touch her, but forced myself, and gently opened her clutched hand. She was holding the charred bits of paper I’d seen the first time I’d looked in the case.