Soon enough they were at Ariel’s home. She stepped down from the carriage with some reluctance. Mrs. Merriweather patted her arm soothingly. “Seeing your father’s body,” she said, “will not make his death any more or less real.”
“But it will feel more real,” Ariel replied.
Mrs. Merriweather did not dispute the truth of that observation. Instead, she said, “The colonel tells me that you will like Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn. He said you will be able to tell them your wishes, with regard to your father’s and Tom’s funeral, and they will be able to arrange everything for you.” She paused, then added more gently, “Come, my dear. It’s best to get it over with.” Still, Ariel hesitated, and the words caught in her throat as she said, “Until now, it is as if I have been able to tell myself I had dreamed Papa’s death. As if, in my heart, I could pretend that tomorrow I would wake up and he would be there.”
“I know,” Mrs. Merriweather said softly. “But you still must face the truth sometime.”
Ariel took a deep breath and mounted the steps to her front door. Mrs. Dearborn let them in, and Ariel discovered that Colonel Merriweather was quite right in thinking she would like the couple. Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn were a kindly pair, and the man had a distinctly military bearing to his person. They fussed over Ariel, sitting her down, holding her hand when she went into the parlor to see her father’s body, and handing her a cup of tea when she came out.
Mr. Dearborn cleared his throat. “I sent around a note to the parish church to let the rector know about your father’s death. Colonel Merriweather thought that was where you would wish him buried. And there’s been those what came to pay their respects. I told ’em all you was away, but no more’n that. I hope that were all right?”
Ariel nodded. “Thank you,” she said, the depths of her emotion making it impossible to say anything more. “We shall need to send around another note to the rector. There is another body being brought here, another person who will need to be buried. He was a friend of ours, Tom was, and I thought that perhaps they could share a funeral.”
That set the couple to clucking over her again. “The rector, he came around to the house,” Mrs. Dearborn told Ariel. “He said he could settle the funeral for any day you wanted. The sooner the better, he thought, particularly with the spell of warm weather we’ve been having. I’m sure he’ll be able to handle this other fellow as well.”
Ariel nodded again. She tried to tell herself that none of this mattered. That it was not her father in the parlor, and it would not be Tom keeping him company in a short while. It was, it would be, only the shells of the two men she had once known. What did it matter what was done with that shell? Except, of course, that it did.
Mrs. Merriweather spoke now to the Dearborns. “Miss Hawthorne would be grateful if you could arrange it for as soon as possible. There is no one who needs to be notified, no family coming any distance after all.”
“Of course we will,” Mrs. Dearborn said soothingly.
“I’ll go over to the church now,” Mr. Dearborn said, and left his wife pouring Ariel another cup of tea.
In another part of town, Stanfield stared across the desk at Thornsby. “Two deaths,” he said. “Two deaths in two days. I don’t like it, and I’m worried there might be more.”
“Any ideas yet?” Thornsby replied.
“Yes. I want to include the colonel.”
Thornsby shook his head. “No. Not unless it becomes
absolutely necessary. I won’t risk a careless word spoken by the wrong person at the wrong moment.”
“I do not think Colonel Merriweather would make such a mistake,” William countered.
“Perhaps not. But he has a wife, and if he tells her, she might. It’s too great a risk.”
For a long moment, the two men stared at each other, and then Stanfield gave way, but not gracefully. “Very well. But you do understand that it may not be possible to keep him from discovering the truth?”
“It is your job to do so,” Thornsby told him flatly. He paused and frowned. “You’ve changed. Care to tell me how or why?”
Stanfield stared back. “Perhaps I’ve begun to wonder if this is enough, if this is really what I wish to do.” Thornsby nodded. “It happens. Usually sooner rather than later. Well, after this one is done, you can have as much time as you need to figure it out. But for now, until it is done, I want your full attention on your work. It’s too dangerous if it isn’t, and I should hate to see you caught because you were distracted.”
William drew himself up to his full height then, and his voice was brisk as he replied, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. And Stanfield?” His voice halted the younger man at the door. In what could have almost been mistaken for paternal tones, Thornsby said, “Have a care for your own safety, as well as the work at hand.”
8
The day of her father’s and Tom’s funeral dawned gray and dreary. A perfect match to Ariel’s lowered spirits. But she forced herself to swallow some tea and toast, knowing that it was going to be a very long day. As she did so, the sun began to peek out from behind the clouds. Ariel was not certain whether to be grateful or to feel angry that the weather was not showing a proper respect for her grief.
But that was sufficiently nonsensical to draw a tiny, wistful smile from her. How she would have adored hearing her father just once more telling her what a foolish creature she was! It still seemed impossible that Papa was dead. Each time she went to the house, it was a shock to see his body lying there so still and lifeless. It was as if, as much as her mind knew he was gone, a part of her heart still hoped it was all a mistake, and that the next time she went to see him, he would suddenly sit up and chide her laughingly for having been foolish enough to believe he was dead. It was no easier to believe that Tom was dead, either.
With a sigh, Ariel set aside the breakfast tray the maid had been kind enough to bring her, Mrs. Merriweather having understood that she would not wish to come downstairs on this morning of all mornings. Now she rose to dress, and the maid waited to help her.
“It’s a beautiful black silk, it is,” the woman said respectfully.
Ariel nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The dress had been her mother's and she had altered it to fit herself. It was the only black dress she owned, because Papa had not ever wished her to wear mourning, not for anyone. Barbaric, he had called it. But in doing so he had ignored the knowledge he so highly prized. The knowledge that in every culture there were traditions to help one through times of grief, and that the very universality of such traditions argued for both their necessity and their efficacy.
On every other day, Ariel would honor her father’s wishes, but today, on the day he and Tom were to be buried, Ariel would honor them both by wearing the black her father so despised. Because in her heart Ariel knew it would matter to her.
She stood still, unnaturally so, as the maid did up the hooks and eyes of her dress. Nor did she move as the maid dressed her hair and settled a black bonnet on her head and handed her gloves to wear.
“They will be waiting for you downstairs by now,” the maid said softly, respectfully, when she was done.
Ariel nodded. Her own voice was soft and gentle as she replied, “Thank you. I do not know what I would have done without your help this morning.”
The young woman flushed with pleasure, curtsied, and held the door open. Ariel took a deep breath, then went out of the room and down the stairs to where, indeed, Colonel and Mrs. Merriweather, and even Captain Stanfield were waiting for her. The stairs seemed endless, and the time it took to descend forever, but at last she stood among them and could see the approval in their eyes. They understood, even if her father would not have done so, why she needed to wear full mourning today.
Without another word, the front door was opened and Ariel was gently shepherded down the steps and to the waiting carriage. She found herself seated beside Captain Stanfield, and more than once she felt his troubled eyes upon her face. Opposite, Mrs. Me
rriweather also regarded her with more than a little concern. So much so that Ariel found herself wishing to cry out that she was not made of porcelain and would not shatter. But her manners were too good for that and so she stayed silent on the ride to the church.
Her father’s and Tom’s coffins were already there. The service was mercifully short. Her father had given short shrift to religion, calling it rampant superstition, but today, as it often had before, it brought Ariel comfort. Then it was time for the bodies to be taken to the grave site.
“Come, my dear. The colonel and Captain Stanfield will accompany your father and Tom to their final resting places. We shall go to your house where arrangements have been made to provide some refreshments, in the event there are some who wish to call upon you to extend their sympathies.”
But Ariel pulled her arm free of Mrs. Merriweather’s gentle grip. “No!” she said. “I wish to, I must, go with Papa and Tom to see them laid to rest!”
“But my dear, it is not done!” Mrs. Merriweather protested.
“Not done at all,” the colonel concurred. “Go along with m’wife, Miss Hawthorne.”
Ariel continued to back away from them, shaking her head. “No, I will, I must, at the least, go with my father’s body. I don’t care what is or is not done! He would want me there and I wish to be there.”
The colonel started to argue again, but Captain Stanfield forestalled him. “No,” he said quietly. “Miss Hawthorne shall do as she chooses. I shall escort her, if she wishes, and see that she is never alone.”
Ariel felt tears trembling at the corners of her eyes, and she wiped them away with the back of her gloved hand. Her voice trembled as she replied, “Thank you, Captain Stanfield.”
He only bowed and held out an arm to her. The colonel and Mrs. Merriweather looked at each other doubtfully, but ceased to argue. Instead they hastily conferred in whispers, and then Mrs. Merriweather went off to the
waiting carriage to, as the colonel explained, oversee matters at the Hawthorne household. Ariel, Captain Stanfield, and Colonel Merriweather took their places with the other mourners behind the two caskets and followed the funeral procession to the cemetery.
Ariel scarcely noticed what was said or who was there. What mattered was that she was there to see her father’s casket laid in the ground, and then Tom’s. She was conscious that Captain Stanfield stood guard by her side. He alone seemed to understand her need to be there, and for that she was profoundly grateful to him.
Whispers around and behind her, warned Ariel that the news of her unorthodox behavior would be all over London by the morrow. But she did not care. What was gossip to her, who had never moved in fashionable circles anyway? What was gossip to her who never would?
Tears ran down Ariel’s cheeks, unnoticed by her but not by Captain Stanfield. He pressed his own handkerchief into her hands and she was grateful, for it was of far more use than her own tiny scrap of one made of lace.
A number of the men tried to speak to her, but the apparent unorthodoxy of her presence at the grave sites seemed to render them all but inarticulate. Ariel wished them all to the devil, but she managed to be civil anyway. Still, she was grateful when she and Captain Stanfield finally stood alone beside her father’s grave again, even Colonel Merriweather having retreated a short distance away to give them privacy.
And then Ariel began to talk, the words tumbling out. All the things she had been unable to say these past few days.
“I miss him so much, already! How shall I ever bear having him gone? How shall I go on without him? What am I to do without him to turn to? Why? Why did he have to die? And in such a horrible way?”
Captain Stanfield was silent, letting Ariel go on until the words slowly sputtered to a stop and she turned to him and stared wordlessly into his face, grief plain upon her face. Then, and only then, did he take her hand and speak.
“You will go on because you must. You will go on because it is what your father would have wished you to do,” Stanfield said with great gentleness. “You will learn to study on your own. You will find your own path to what you are meant to do. You will never cease to miss your father, but you will learn to bear the pain. And you will find, I think, that you need not bear it alone.”
Ariel stared up at him, desperately wanting to believe that his words were true. But before she could press him to say that he knew they were, Colonel Merriweather moved closer and cleared his throat ostentatiously.
“We had best be going,” he said. “Mrs. Merriweather will be expecting us, and by now there will be those who have come to pay their respects to you, Miss Hawthorne. You ought to be there.”
Ariel nodded, and with a visible effort she drew herself together. “Yes, of course you are right. Let us be going. I will need to thank my father’s friends who care enough to come and say good-bye.”
9
The next morning Ariel rose, ready to go to work again.
‘"My dear, you must be joking,” Colonel Merri- weather protested.
“You are going to the museum, aren’t you?” Ariel asked.
“Well, yes, but it is not my father who died.”
“Papa would have wanted me to go,” she replied, undeterred.
“Perhaps it would be best if Ariel kept busy,” Mrs. Merriweather pointed out to the colonel. “You must admit that it is the sort of thing he would tell her she ought to do, if he were here.”
Reluctantly, the colonel conceded the point. Captain Stanfield, when he saw Ariel, was just as vocal in his objections, with no more success than the colonel had had. And yet, when she saw the room with all the artifacts, she found she could not stay there.
“I shall go and speak to Papa’s colleagues,” Ariel said, her voice thick with emotion.
“I shall go with you,” Mrs. Merriweather said with sympathy.
“But who will take notes if you both go?” Colonel Merriweather demanded indignantly.
“You could, my dear,” Mrs. Merriweather replied.
As he started to sputter, Ariel said soothingly, “I shall ask one of the clerks to come help you, sir.”
He grumbled but allowed that it would be a tolerable solution. Together Ariel and Mrs. Merriweather left the room. When they were alone, the former governess said, “I am glad you wish to speak with your father’s colleagues. I have some questions I should like to ask of them.”
“Questions?” Ariel echoed uncertainly.
Mrs. Merriweather nodded briskly. “Questions,” she confirmed. “The colonel does not like me to investigate, but I wish to find out, if I can, what happened to Tom. To your father as well, but the Bow' Street Runner, Mr. Collins, is already trying to find the answers to his death. No one, on the other hand, seems to care very much what happened to Tom. But I do.”
“Why?”
“Because no one seems to care about Tom. No one seems to think his life of any great value. And that makes me angry. Because for so many years of my life, when I was a mere governess, far too many people would have said just the same about mine.”
Ariel smiled. Indeed, she grinned in a most impertinent manner. “I cannot think, Mrs. Merriweather, that you have ever been a mere anything! I daresay you terrorized your charges, brought them straightaway into pattern cards of propriety, and generally managed everyone’s life precisely as it ought to have been managed. And I would strongly suspect that you were considered invaluable to every family in whose home you stayed.”
Mrs. Merriweather seemed more pleased than otherwise at these words, but she shook her head and said grimly, “I wish it were so, but it was not. Oh, I will allow that I was indeed a formidable presence. And I did succeed with every girl whose care and education I undertook. But valued? Not by most of the ton. Just as you and your father considered Tom invaluable, and yet he is considered unimportant by almost everyone else. So, too, was it for me.”
“Well I value you, and so does the colonel, and so, I daresay would my father, if he were here to see what you were about,” Ari
el replied stoutly. “But I take your point, and I will do everything I can to help you. But how are we to learn what happened to Tom, if even the Bow Street Runner and the colonel cannot do so?”
Mrs. Merriweather frowned. “That I cannot yet answer. All we can do is keep our wits about us as we look around and speak to anyone who might have been about. Was there anyone who rightfully would have been in the museum the night Tom was killed?”
“Only Tom. There is a porter, but he would be outside, not in the museum itself.”
“Who, besides your father and you would have been first to arrive in the morning?”
Ariel rattled off several names. Mrs. Merriweather nodded briskly. “Very well, let us go talk with them and see what, if anything, we may learn, either about Tom or about that morning. Perhaps someone saw something they do not even realize is important. Now, where do we find these people?”
“This way.”
They found everyone easily enough. Unfortunately, none of the scholars or their assistants would admit to having seen anything out of the ordinary, either the morning of Mr. Hawthorne’s death or the next morning when Tom’s body was discovered. Except, of course, for the colonel and the Bow Street Runner moving about the museum and asking the most impertinent of questions. Indeed, they seemed rather annoyed at having their work interrupted yet again, and Ariel and Mrs. Merriweather wisely chose to gracefully retreat before anyone started to wonder why the two women were so curious.
“What do we do now? Go back to the hall and help the colonel?” Ariel asked.
Miss Tibbles Interferes Page 7