Fool Me Twice

by Meredith Duran

  These shards on the floor, he sees, are his ambitions, his ideals, his foolish presumptions: I will be nothing like my father when I am a man. I will not repeat his mistakes.

  The silence from the garden reverberates.

  * * *

  Olivia started her search in the library, but the very promising cabinets turned out to be filled with maps—so many, and some so ancient, that it appeared some duke had nursed an obsession for them.

  She went next to the study, which she had instructed the maids to clean first today. As she turned on the lights, she saw proof of their shoddy job in the dust lining the edge of the carpet.

  She gritted her teeth. This was not her concern. She was not really a housekeeper.

  She turned the dead bolt behind her. Most studies were humbly furnished, the better to receive tradesmen. But this chamber, with its thick Turkish carpet and oak wainscoting, spoke of loftier pastimes: the business and politicking of great men. To think that Marwick had once been known as a master statesman! A Cato for modern times, incorruptible, the champion of the poor. Ha!

  Yet amid this silent grandeur, the vacant desk and its bare blotter disturbed her. They seemed proof of tragedy, something gone horribly wrong.

  She forced herself to shrug away the thought. Yes, something had gone wrong: Marwick had married a wicked woman. What of it? He’d probably given the duchess ample reason to despise him. Perhaps, for instance, he’d thrown things at her.

  She tugged at the top drawer of the desk. Finding it locked, she plucked a hairpin from her chignon. It took a single prod to coax the latch to yield. This talent was courtesy of the typing school, where she’d sat to the left of a future viscountess, and to the right of a former pickpocket, Lilah, who had firmly believed no girl should ever be baffled by a lock. Secretaries were a very interesting bunch.

  The drawer contained several ledgers. She removed her spectacles, which did tend to blur things, and discovered that these were records of income from the duke’s estates. The notes grew illegible in August 1884; by September of that year, they ceased.

  As the significance dawned on her, she recoiled. In August, Marwick’s wife had died. And shortly thereafter, he had discovered how she’d betrayed him.

  She brought the ledger closer. Like the photographs of crime scenes printed in the newspaper, Marwick’s handwriting exerted a morbid fascination. Here, grief had made his hand shake. And here, his grief had darkened and twisted, becoming something so awful that it had finally silenced his pen completely.

  Bah. So he was human. What of it? He was a terrible human. She would not pity him.

  She moved on to the next drawer, which yielded a set of twine-bound folders. Within, she found drafts of speeches, records of parliamentary proceedings, notes on debates in the Commons and Lords.

  As she looked through them for Bertram’s name, she felt increasingly, unwillingly curious. Was this how politics got conducted? Documented here was a history of frustrated negotiations, of visions dashed by corruption and the recalcitrance of supposed allies. These papers did not tell of a puppet master, but of a man who struggled for compromises, and who employed elegant, impassioned rhetoric (here was a draft of one of Marwick’s most famous speeches, on the importance of primary education) to persuade others of the justness of his cause.

  These records belonged to an idealist.

  She shoved them away as if they burned.

  The final drawer yielded a slim stack of personal correspondence—very promising. Her heart leapt when she saw Bertram’s signature, but the next moment, she cast it down in disgust—it was only a note of thanks for a dinner party. The next sheet was a draft, much scribbled upon, concerning . . .

  A gasp escaped her. This was a love letter!

  I have wracked my brain for a way to heal this breach between us. I promise you, Margaret, that you are wrong to think I don’t care for you. When I envision my life, you are at the center of it. Without you, I see only an Eden after the fall: empty, imperfect, broken . . .

  Her own curiosity suddenly revolted her. She cast down the letter. It had nothing to do with Bertram. She was not the kind of low woman who pried into other people’s business for pleasure.

  Or was she? Sometimes, lately, it seemed she was losing pieces of herself, all her most cherished convictions: I am innocent; I am wronged; I did not deserve any of this. Instead, she was discovering new things about herself, terrible things. Just look what she had done to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth Chudderley led a fast life, treated her staff too familiarly, and offered no Christian example of temperance and virtue. But despite her life as a flibbertigibbet, she was also generous, thoughtful, and kind. She could have used the duchess’s letters to blackmail Marwick into endorsing her marriage to his brother. Instead, she had decided to do the honorable thing and hand them over to him.

  And so Olivia had stolen some and fled.

  But what choice had she had? For so long, Olivia’s only ambition had been to hide—first at the typing school, and then as a secretary to an elderly widow in Brighton, and finally, most happily, in Elizabeth’s employ.

  But at Elizabeth’s house party this summer, a guest had pulled Olivia aside to mention her resemblance to a portrait he had glimpsed in the private study of his friend Lord Bertram. Olivia had realized then that it was time to run again. For the first time, the thought had made her angry.

  She made herself retrieve the papers. But now she scanned them mechanically, her mind elsewhere.

  As a rash eighteen-year-old, she had assumed Bertram, being in his forties and somewhat wrinkled, would die soon enough. Seven years later, she knew differently. He might live for four more decades. And his mania was not fading. Her very existence was evidently an intolerable offense to him.

  Must she spend the next forty years in flight? Would she never be allowed to truly live? For the first time, this summer, she had wondered if she might not try to fight instead of flee.

  Her opponent was far above her. Bertram was an aristocrat, with the resources to match his barony. But he had made a mistake. He had connived with the Duchess of Marwick, and she had passed his letters onward. Olivia had stolen several of them—and one of particular interest, in which he had written to the duchess:

  Concerning these “dossiers,” as you call them, I can do nothing but express my disgusted astonishment. The notion that Marwick would compile secret information on those who consider him a friend—well, it fills me with such profound distaste that I cannot express the half of it.

  I cannot imagine what information he might think to hold over me. But for the sake of opposing his espionage, I will gladly support your efforts to undo him.

  Olivia did not believe for an instant that the dossier would substantiate Bertram’s virtues. He was a man too viciously devoted to his own authority. Why, when an eighteen-year-old girl had chosen to make her own way rather than live under his thumb, he had sent an assassin to crush her. Would such a man prove more virtuous in his other dealings? Whatever this dossier contained, it was likely the key to disarming him for good. She must find it.

  But it was not in this pile. As she put her glasses back on, her stomach felt twisted into knots. Thomas Moore would be combing the city for her. Meanwhile, servants talked, and she knew how they would describe their new housekeeper. A redhead who stood as tall as a man? The moment Moore caught wind of that gossip . . .

  The bookcase to her right held nothing but folders. She stared at them, debating with herself. It would take hours to comb through so many files.

  But her time, even now, was running out.

  She rose and took two folders, all she could safely conceal in her skirts. And then, steeling herself, she started for the door. Yes, she was a thief. Yes, it was wretched. But if Moore caught her, she would be dead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “That isn’t the way we do it here!” Polly snapped.

  Olivia bit her tongue lest she retort in kind. Her day had begun in exhaustion, w
hich was nothing new: for the past two weeks, she’d spent half of every night reading documents she daily secreted into her rooms. None of them, so far, had proved relevant to her cause. But she was becoming peculiarly, uneasily fascinated with Marwick’s personal records.

  Marwick wrote—or had written—prodigiously. He kept notes on every book he read, and chronicled his thoughts on all manner of subjects: diplomatic crises, agrarian issues, the nature of good and evil, the qualities of great men. He wrote like an angel, with an erudition that stirred her envy. She had studied Latin only for a year, and ancient Greek, never; she ended up in the library some nights, struggling to decipher his quotes with the aid of dictionaries, simply to prove to herself that she could.

  What she would not have given for a chance to study at Oxbridge! But she knew that even those institutions could not guarantee such insight as his writing suggested. How to square such elegant, astonishing work with the monster upstairs? She felt as though she were reading the memoirs of a ghost, someone whom she would have very much liked to meet while he still lived.

  This growing fascination was perverse and unseemly. But she had to search his study, didn’t she? She had to look at every document, lest she miss the single one she needed. And so, every night, she stayed up until half past two, at which point she forced herself to bed; and every morning, before dawn, she crept up to the study to purloin new material.

  Only two folders remained to be read. Cook, this morning, had very nearly caught her in the act of shoving them under her mattress. She had delivered to Olivia a list of mysteries from the kitchen: five pounds of truffles had gone missing. Where had they gone? And why was the crockery in need of repair? It had just been mended last month.

  Jones, whom Olivia consulted over breakfast, could not explain any of it. The truffles had particularly concerned him; he’d set about interviewing the kitchen staff. In the meantime, Olivia went to check on the maids and discovered this scene of butchery in the morning room: Polly, brushing a rose-and-cream carpet with tea leaves. The carpet already bore several telltale streaks. “Henceforth,” Olivia told her, “you will use salt.”

  “Salt!”

  Olivia was no domestic, and even she knew this. “For pale carpets, one uses salt.”

  With a sullen shrug, Polly retrieved her brush and started to sweep again.

  “Stop! You mustn’t brush the leaves in. Don’t you see? They’re leaving stains.”

  Polly hurled down the broom. “Then may I go?”

  With leaves strewn everywhere? “Certainly not. You will pick up the leaves, then apply the salt and finish brushing the carpet.”

  “Pick them up by hand?”

  “Yes, by hand. Otherwise the stain will spread.”

  Polly folded her arms and glared. Too late, Olivia realized she had done the same. They locked eyes, Olivia battling a creeping awareness of how absurd this scene would look to any passerby: a maid and housekeeper so close in age that the only way they might be told apart was by the key ring at Olivia’s waist.

  Polly’s fine upper lip twitched into a sneer. She was a pretty girl, with large brown eyes and burnished hair—and why was she not wearing her cap properly? Those curls should have been covered.

  “Are you Irish?” Polly asked.

  That was meant to be an insult, of course. It never failed to amaze Olivia how narrowly the world was designed: if you had no legitimate origins, you were scorned. If you had legitimate origins in the wrong place, you were scorned as well.

  Luckily for her, she put no stock in conventional virtues; their main supporters, in her experience, were hypocrites. She lifted her chin, knowing if she gave so much as inch, she would never regain it. “Salt,” she said tersely, “catches the dust just as well. And it does not stain the carpet.”

  Polly rolled her eyes.

  I am going to have to sack her. The knowledge formed like a ball of ice in Olivia’s gut. It seemed very wrong to destroy the livelihood of somebody—no matter how mean their behavior—to safeguard a position Olivia did not mean to keep.

  A thud came from above. Polly looked up, and Olivia sent a prayer of thanks for this timely interruption.

  The thud sounded again—and intensified. The crystal beading on a nearby lamp began to shiver.

  Had a herd of elephants invaded the house?

  Olivia turned on her heel and marched into the hallway, where she discovered the other maids, along with the valet and the cook’s assistant—what was she doing up here?—gaping at the ceiling. “What is that?” she asked.

  A strangled laugh came from behind her. Polly had followed. “It’s His Grace!”

  A fine joke. Olivia’s remonstrance was cut off by one of the other maids. “That’s his rooms right above,” said Doris. She was a lanky, rabbit-faced girl who had endeared herself to Olivia by inclining more to daydreaming than to mutiny.

  Muriel crossed herself. “Perhaps it’s the final stages.”

  “Final stages of what?” Olivia asked.

  “Muriel’s convinced he has the pox,” Polly said.

  “Polly!”

  “Well, ’tisn’t me who said it!” Polly put her hands on her hips. “Though if there’s a more likely explanation for such behavior, I’d like to hear it. First he was grievin’ his heart out, and goin’ up and down the town to make arrangements for the grandest funeral you seen since the pope. Next you know, he breaks all the mirrors, rips down the crepe, and refuses t’set foot outside. Goes the summer, and now he won’t stir from his rooms—not even should the house catch fire, I expect. And if that’s not the pox-brain, you tell me what is!”

  Olivia took a long breath. It now sounded as if Marwick was banging things against the walls. Not his head, she hoped? Or perhaps she did. No, she couldn’t wish harm to his brain. It might yet heal, and it had once been very fine.

  More of his servants, another footman and the porter, drifted into the corridor to gawp. What a fine fix this was. Nobody was going to brave the stairs to check on him—not even his valet, who was canoodling with the cook’s assistant in the corner.

  Olivia squinted up the staircase. None of the papers in the study had touched on confidential dealings. What chance was there that the last two folders would prove different? Unless he’d stashed his most private documents under a cushion somewhere, his apartment was the only place remaining to look.

  God help her. She was going to have to pry the madman from his rooms.

  On a deep breath, she gathered her skirts in her fists and started for the stairs.

  “Oh, don’t go!” Muriel spoke in a high, panicked voice. “Last time a bottle, this time a blade, ma’am!”

  How did Muriel know about that? Olivia wheeled back. “Vickers, you are a terrible gossip.”

  Vickers gave a sheepish shrug.

  “Be a man,” Polly snapped at him. “Go up there with her!”

  This unexpected support quite gratified Olivia. But it only led Vickers to duck behind the cook’s assistant. “I am—otherwise occupied,” he said.

  “Coward,” Olivia hissed at him. The other servants’ answering snickers, she did not welcome. She directed a scowl down over the gathering.

  The resulting silence was most satisfying.

  Nevertheless, as she squared her shoulders, she felt compelled to add: “If I have not returned in a quarter hour . . .”

  Summon the police, another woman might have said. But not she. The police would not suit her in the least.

  * * *

  As Olivia opened the door to the duke’s sitting room, the noise stopped. She hovered on the threshold, debating with herself. With the hubbub over, was there really any call to check on him?

  But what if he was lying injured?

  Even if he was, was that really her responsibility to determine?

  Perhaps not. But if she meant to dislodge him from his quarters long enough to search them, she would have to begin the campaign sometime—the sooner, the wiser. Right-o. She marched up to the inner door
.

  Her knock sounded rather timid for her liking. Timidity is fatal to leadership. Men desire an excuse to believe in something greater than themselves; an incompetent braggart will win them far faster than a great man who does not advertise. Marwick had written that in his meditations on Wellington.

  She bit her lip and rapped more firmly. After a long pause, Marwick said, “Come.”

  He’d answered! Stupefied, she hesitated. Then she smoothed down her skirts and entered, ready to duck.

  The room lay in its usual gloomy darkness, the curtains shuttered. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. To her bafflement, everything looked in order: all the furniture intact, no shattered bottles lying about—save the remnants of the one he had thrown at her, which still glimmered in a nearby corner.

  The stacks of paper had been gathered up and moved. One sat on the chest at the foot of the bed. Another lay on the writing desk by the window. Where were the rest? Pray God he hadn’t burned them.

  Heart quickening, she turned her attention toward the duke. He reclined on his bed, lost amid the shadows cast by his canopy. Only his eyes glittered out from the murk. “Ah,” he drawled. “My newest housekeeper.”

  How could a man who wrote so beautifully have gone so rotten? She could not think of him as the same person who had written those essays. And she had to get him out of this room. What on earth had he been doing in here? He was not slurring his words, and the air held no reek of alcohol—or smoke, either, thank goodness. All she smelled was . . . sweat. Not unpleasant. But sweat all the same.

  “Your Grace,” she said, remembering to curtsy. “I heard a disturbance. I wished to make certain you were well.”

  “I suppose that’s a matter for debate. Miss Johnson.”

  She resented the heat that came to her face. Had he no shame? Why would he wish to remind her of his abominable behavior at their last meeting? She was tempted to quote him to himself: We too often mistake as a privilege of rank that breed of low behavior which, among the poor, we readily recognize as vice.