by P. N. Elrod
Caroline shook her head, putting on a wonderful puzzlement. “Really, Mr. Barrett, there has been an awful mistake; that, or your cousin is playing a miserable joke upon us all. My family is an old and noble line, why, we even had ancestors with Henry at Agincourt.”
“I don’t give a damn if they were with Richard at Bosworth Field, you will explain yourself.”
“But I tell you there’s nothing to be explained, ’tis your cousin who needs to . . . .” She saw my look and tried another tack. “This is ridiculous. We’ve lived with your family for months. You know us well. How can we be anything except what we are?”
And for a moment I experienced a twinge of doubt. Oliver was often a rather silly fellow, after all. He might have gotten things muddled. . . .
“This is a mistake,” she said firmly. “You must realize that.”
No. He could be an ass at times, but much of that was an affectation. He was no fool. Unlike me. Unlike all of us.
I fixed my gaze hard upon her. “You will listen to me. . . .”
She hissed as though burned and flinched. After that initial reaction she went still as stone, expression wide open and blank. Soulless. Certainly as heartless.
Sweet God, how . . . ? Why?
I broke away to pace up and down a few times, trying to calm myself. I was sick and angry and ashamed, with a thousand other similar damnable feelings crowding mind and cowing spirit, filling me with their turbulent hum, making it impossible to think clearly or do anything. No good trying to question her while I was so upset, it could kill her . . . or worse.
Sweet God, but it hurt.
And it was like this for me for many long and silent moments until it finally settled into something I could control. Only then did I dare look at her and form my first question.
“Who are you?” My voice was strangely steady.
“Caroline Norwood.
“Where are you from?”
“London.”
“Is your oldest brother the Duke of Norbury?”
“I have no brother.”
God. “Then who is James Norwood?”
“My husband.”
I fell back as though I’d been shot. I had to, to save her, to save myself from—
The sickness returned tenfold. For a time I couldn’t do anything, the awfulness of it was too great. I kept my back to her, forcibly breathing in huge gulps of air, trying to clear my mind, and after a time, succeeding. When I was calm again, I resigned myself to the fact that everything to come was going to hurt like blazes, but there was no way it could be avoided. All I could do was to get through it as quickly as possible. I had to know everything before inflicting this monstrous horror on Elizabeth. However much it injured me it would be ten thousand times worse for her.
Pulled a chair out opposite this stranger, this deceiving, hateful and so sweetly enchanting stranger, I sat clasping my hands before me on the table. I was eerily reminded of my aborted interview with the murdered Knox, and shot a swift look at the room’s one window. It was shuttered for the night for safety, the custom now despite the summer heat.
We would not be interrupted. I looked hard at the woman.
“All right, Caroline. I want you to tell me all about yourself.”
* * *
It was a wretched story, made more so by their utter lack of conscience.
They’d come across from England over a year ago with fine clothes and finer manners and posed as Lord James and Lady Caroline, complete with a duke as their elder brother along with a distinguished family history. The pair had had much contact with nobility in England, after all; she had been a music teacher, he a dancing master to scions of the peerage.
Both were natural-born actors, able to ape the speech and manners of their betters. Both were discontent with their stations in life and prepared to do anything to improve it. The assumption of titles had proved to be a clever ploy, making them predictably irresistible to certain members of Philadelphia society, and it wasn’t hard to dupe the lot.
They made shameless use of their new status to acquire goods, services and favors, and stayed as guests of the best families in the city. They borrowed money with no intention of paying back, knowing they could blame the vagarities of the war for tardiness of remuneration. For all that, they were always short of cash and on the lookout for a means of getting more.
But the trouble in that city from the approaching war made it impossible for them to fulfill such plans as they’d made; escape became necessary. Enter my innocent cousin, Anne, not clever but possessing relatives with a splendid sanctuary far from the conflict.
Possessing money . . . at least on one side of the family.
Once they arrived and got their bearings, it was determined that rather than simply borrow and abscond as before, one of them should marry into that money. Upon arrival they worked out that James would come to pay court to my sister, as there was less difficulty for a husband to control his wife’s property than the other way ’round. All he had to do was be what he essentially was, handsome, genial, naturally affable, but without a speck of real feeling or guilt for what he was doing.
Caroline was the same way. They were perfectly matched.
Then they’d found out that Elizabeth was my heir. Her money alone would be a fortune , but how much better would it be to double it. That’s when they made their first attempt on my life. During the happy confusion of a tea party, it had been easy enough to keep Anne distracted. Caroline slipped a killing dose of laudanum into my tea and watched with approval as my blameless cousin stirred in plenty of sugar, which would conveniently mask the taste.
The plan was that I should simply fall asleep, never to wake. If anybody at the party noticed me dozing in a chair, one or the other of them would prevent any attempt to rouse me. The greater likelihood was that once I felt sleepy enough, I’d go upstairs to bed, never to return.
They couldn’t know that I would not be drinking it; I’d long planted that provision into their minds as I’d done with everyone else: that they should entirely ignore the fact I never ate or drank anything.
What a shock it had been to them when Rapelji had come in and raised the alarm about Father.
Father . . . my poor father . . . he might have died in my place, all unknowing.
And Mother . . . all these months ignorantly bearing the stigma of a poisoner.
I roughly pushed my bitter rage aside and made Caroline go on.
Made cautious by this blunder, they held off for a time, until things could fall back into their usual routine. They did not for a moment believe Beldon’s story about the flying gout and noticed right away the new lock on his door. After much speculation and observation, later confirmed when Elizabeth decided to confide in Norwood, they knew it was Mother we suspected, not them. With relief they watched and waited for another opportunity, and James proceeded with his sham courtship of Elizabeth.
Caroline apparently had little objection to her husband’s conquest of another woman and none at all to his going to a prostitute for the easement of such urges as come to a man forced by circumstances to be celibate. Neither of them dared to compromise their pose. Having been servants themselves, they knew the impossibility of keeping a conjugal tryst secret in so large a household so they continued their masquerade. Norwood sought acceptable release elsewhere, the same as any other unmarried man.
After he’d finished with Molly one night, he’d gone to The Oak for a fortifying drink and had overheard the regulars joking amongst themselves about my recent departure to pay my respects to the lady.
He wasn’t aware at that time of Molly’s reputation for discretion. He knew that one careless word from her to his prospective brother-in-law could endanger his chances with Elizabeth. Besides, there was the additional gain of inheritance to consider. I had to be silenced.
And the men to do it were right there. Ash, Dr
ummond, all the others.
For they were Norwood’s men.
He’d met them and secured their services on one of his frequent trips away to see to “business.” Faster and more certain than marriage, he’d made lucrative arrangements with them, finding likely places for a raid and taking a portion of the profit. They’d been in Glenbriar that night to plan the next foray and he ordered them to kill me, saying that I’d found them out and would talk.
There were two problems with that, though: Ash had decided on his own to try for a ransom on the side . . . and I was not the ordinary man I appeared to be. No wonder Norwood had been so completely astonished to see me alive on the road the next night. I was supposed to be dead and drifting somewhere at the bottom of the Sound.
Also to his misfortune, Knox had been captured. He’d been close-mouthed, but then I’d promised to make the man talk. It fell to Norwood’s wife to see that he did not.
“You? How were you involved with that?” I demanded. My influence upon her had lowered her guard so much that she was readily answering questions as though they were part of a normal conversation, requiring only a word or two from me to keep her going. It was just as well. The initial effort of concentration caused me much discomfort, and to sustain it for any length of time made my head throb terribly.
“I left the house carrying some of James’s clothes,” she said. “I changed into them, then cut across the fields to get to town, before any of you arrived.”
Sweet heavens. She must have taken the idea from the play I’d given Anne to read. Certainly a woman would have greater ease of mobility and be less noticeable in men’s clothing.
“What did you do?”
“Watched and waited. When I saw Knox in the room with you, I broke the window and shot him, then ran. James led them in the wrong direction, away from me. I got back, changed again, and went on to the house with no one the wiser.”
“Then what?”
“That was all. The whole thing had been so much of a risk and all for nothing because you obviously didn’t know anything harmful against us. I then told James to work on the girl. Marriage to her was safer and more profitable. Besides . . . there would be others soon enough.”
Others? I didn’t take her meaning right away. It was too awful to see, I suppose, and when I did, I wished that I hadn’t.
Elizabeth was only to be the first in a series of marriages. Now that they’d worked out their ploy, they would eventually venture forth to take full advantage of any number of other women with a fortune. These were gainful days, for the war was daily making vulnerable young widows eager to have a strong protector help them look after their inherited assets. Over the years the Norwoods would be able to accrue thousands of pounds with little effort or expenditure of their own funds.
Of course to proceed to others, they would have to find a way of divesting themselves of Elizabeth’s company fairly soon, but in these unsettled times it would be simple enough to arrange something with Ash and his cutthroats. Mention of it had already been made to him and an agreement struck weeks back before the wedding.
And, apparently, he would come calling soon, on one of the three nights of the full moon.
The idea was to make it look like another rebel incursion, an attack taking place on a night when it would be least expected. Norwood was to emerge full of anguish to relate the sad tale of how he’d been knocked unconscious trying to defend his house, awakening after all was over to discover the body of his bride, foully murdered by the pitiless raiders in their quest for booty. How easy for him afterward to collect his inheritance from her estate and leave, playing the part of a grief-stricken widower.
How it must have rankled when I’d shown up unforeseen on the first of the nights they’d allotted for the deed.
It had been the topic of Norwood and Caroline’s intense converse while I’d seen to the horses. Their disagreement was whether to keep me there to be killed too or see to it I departed and was kept too busy to return. Caroline’s insistence on going home was to insure I’d be well away from things. Originally she was to remain to provide another witness to the assault and perhaps go into distracting hysterics if needed later on during the aftermath. With my miraculous survival of the two previous attempts on my life, she’d developed a kind of wary superstition of my luck and would take no chances.
Her plans had been laid; she did not want me around to risk the least disruption of them. But to get me out, she’d have to go as well, and Norwood hadn’t liked it. His dear and loving wife was the more clever of the two, after all; he’d wanted her with him, just in case anything unanticipated did arise.
I had been able to control myself up to this point. Their attacks upon others, their murder of Knox, their murders using Ash as their weapon, their attack upon me, upon Father, none of it had been pleasant to hear, but I’d just been able to stand it.
But not this—hearing this cold recitation of the fine points of how they intended to kill my dearly loved sister. It was impossible for me, impossible for any man with a heart to endure. Until the words were out of her lips, I thought I’d reached the furthest limit of rage. Now a raw and roaring blast of it tore through me like a wild storm.
I was lost to it . . . utterly lost.
Blind and deaf to all reason, all restraint, it clawed its way out of the darkest places of my soul—
And right into Caroline’s.
* * *
When I came to myself, I was on the other side of the room, face to the wall, hands pressed to my thundering skull as though to keep it from breaking to pieces. It felt as though someone had scooped my brain out and dropped it carelessly back again the wrong way around. Sick and dizzy, I was sure that something dreadful had happened, but was as bewildered as a newly wakened sleeper. It took a moment to sort dream from reality.
The dream was a fading memory of a shapeless dark thing that had bounded up from some deep place within me. Ugly and huge, if my amorphous anger could have taken on a such a hideous form and size, it might have looked like that. It had been all force and fury, erupting forth, filling the room, filling the world, overflowing it, overwhelming it. It bellowed and raved, smashed and hurled this way and that before finally driving itself into another vessel other than myself. It seemed too large for the other to hold without shattering.
And so it proved.
I gradually became aware of the reality where it sat slumped at the table. Caroline’s eyes told the tale of what had happened. I’d seen such eyes on Tony Warburton after Nora’s temper had exceeded control and broken free while he’d been under her influence. She’d snapped his mind like a twig, and now I’d done exactly the same thing to this wretch.
Caroline stared at nothing, shivering a little. Each time she blinked, her head twitched slightly. Her trembling hands rested uneasily upon the table, inches from the incriminating letter.
Cautiously, watching her every move, I plucked it from her reach, folded it and tucked it away, hardly aware of the action. I also eased one hand into the pocket of her riding coat and drew out her pistol, placing it into my own coat pocket. It would not be a good idea to leave her armed.
But it might not matter. She paid no mind to me or anything else. With hard certainty, I knew that she had no mind left. It was just the same as before with Warburton.
Nora regretted her loss of control, though; I could not. I regarded Caroline with a bitter and unholy satisfaction. I could not raise the least shame for what I’d done to her, nor was there any desire to try. If that made me wicked, then so be it; it could hardly compare with what she and her husband planned for Elizabeth.
There was a sudden and strange peace within me, as though Caroline had somehow drained away my doubts about myself, about what I would have to do next. The attack might take place tonight or not, and I would rush there instantly to get Elizabeth away to safety. But aside from that threat I had determin
ed my sister would not spend one more minute in that violating bastard’s company.
* * *
I hurried into the common room and was surprised to find all was as right and normal as could be. I’d had some idea that they might have heard a row coming from the private room and be alert to trouble, but though I got curious looks, no one said anything. All the noise had been in my head, it seemed, part of the dream . . . or rather, the nightmare.
Only Mr. Farr, who had witnessed my initial reaction to the letter, took it upon himself to come over and have his curiosity answered. “Are you all right, Mr. Barrett?”
Some dissembling was required, then. Very well. I knew I could manage. It did not take much to look dismayed and put a tremor into my voice. “A little brandy for Lady Caroline, she has suffered some sort of a fit.”
“A fit?” he questioned, even as he turned away to find the right bottle.
“One moment we were talking and the next she put her hand to her head and seemed to fall asleep. I got her to wake up, but she seems dazed. I want one of your lads to fetch Dr. Beldon as quickly as possible.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Is there a woman who can sit with her?”
“I’ll see to it.” He came back with the brandy, full of bustling concern, which blossomed into a fearful shock once he saw the Caroline’s blank face. He immediately sent for his wife, then dispatched two of his stablemen off to my house to get Beldon.
It went smoothly and quickly, taking only minutes, better than I’d hoped, though I begrudged the time. I simply mirrored his feelings, then announced that I’d go fetch her brother, Lord James. This was met with grim approval. Yes, it was far and away the best thing that could be done; by all means her closest relative should be told of this strange illness.
Farr and Mrs. Farr were already speculating in hushed tones about apoplexy as I hurried out the door and jumped onto Rolly’s back. I clung hard to him until we were clear of the village, and then I partially vanished. Holding myself halfway between solidity and nothingness greatly lightened his burden and gave him more speed.