The Orphan Pearl

by Erin Satie

  “Of course you are.” He paused. “Is that your answer?”

  She pursed her lips, looked away.

  “Very well,” said John. “You don’t want to answer my questions. They’re embarrassing and rude and I have no right to ask. But you should know, if you don’t want to talk, that I am going to kill the Earl of Kingston.”

  She jumped in the seat. “You’re going to what?”

  “Kill him,” John repeated.

  “That’s what Papa was asking you about?”

  John nodded.

  “Oh.” She blushed. “Oh.”

  John frowned.

  She blinked rapidly. “In a duel?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You mean… what else could… you’d murder him?”

  “Don’t worry about the details. None of that matters,” said John. “I’m here to find out what you want. You have a chance to exact justice without exposing yourself to ridicule. Take it.”

  “Does he have to die?”

  “That’s up to you, Amelia. Should he?”

  “I don’t know…” She trailed off. “I don’t much care if he lives.”

  “But he mislead you,” said John. “He make promises that he didn’t keep.”

  “No, he didn’t.” She folded pleats in her skirt, pinching them between her thumb and forefinger to make a fan, and then smoothed them out with a nervous swipe. “Exactly the opposite, actually. He told me I should stay away from him, that he’d only cause me heartache.”

  John rubbed his forehead. He was not exactly surprised that this tactic had worked on Amelia. She had a bit of her father’s adventurous spirit. Always had.

  “Did he pursue you with unwanted attentions? Ignore requests to keep his distance?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “No.”

  John waited.

  “I always approached him,” she admitted. “He said all sorts of clever, cruel things. It was great fun.”

  “Cruelty shouldn’t be fun,” said John. “He took advantage of you, Amelia. He caused you pain.”

  “I thought… I came to care so much for him. I couldn’t believe he didn’t feel the same.”

  Finally, he’d asked the right question. “So he courted you?”

  “Not… precisely.” Amelia hunched over, curling her shoulders defensively. “That is to say, we could not speak to one another openly. It would have caused a scandal.”

  “Privately, then?”

  “He told me nothing would persuade him to marry.”

  “Amelia…” This was quite possibly the most uncomfortable conversation he’d ever had—and it could only be worse for her. But it seemed he’d finally wound his way round to the truth. “Am I to understand that you pursued him?”

  “What if I did?” Amelia plucked at the fingers of her gloves. “Nobody had to find out. Nothing bad happened. It would all be fine if—but, no. One mistake, and everything I like is wrong. Everything I want is forbidden.”

  “Amelia, this isn’t a little mistake. It’s an incredibly important—”

  “I don’t care what’s important!” she shouted.

  “Lower your voice,” John snapped.

  “That’s right. That’s the only thing that matters,” said Amelia bitterly. “Keeping everything quiet. Just lock me in a closet until Papa finds someone who will take me off his hands. My groom will hold his nose all the way to the altar, I’m sure.”

  “You think you should be allowed to continue on as before?”

  “I wish that I hadn’t done it,” Amelia admitted. “Because I had hoped for things that didn’t happen. I wish I could erase all of that. But mostly I wish that I hadn’t gotten caught.”

  “And so you lied to your father,” said John.

  Amelia snorted.

  “All right,” said John. “What did you tell him?”

  “He told me to stay away from Kingston and I refused.” Amelia shrugged. “Now he hates me.”

  “I see.” And he did. Wilsey had lied. John rubbed at his forehead. “So, it’s up to you. Do you want me to kill him?”

  “You’d still do it? After everything I just told you?”

  “He treated you poorly. You deserve better.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “No. Don’t. What good would it do?” Amelia stared with apparent fascination at a pigeon pecking its way along the gutter. When a carriage wheel veered too close, the pigeon fled and she sighed. “Maybe it would make my father happy.”

  “It might,” said John, dryly.

  “I’m to marry the most ridiculous man,” complained Amelia.

  “Why don’t you like him?” John asked.

  She fidgeted. “He’s not handsome.”

  “Anything else?” said John.

  “He’s a younger son.”

  “You were never guaranteed an heir.”

  “I don’t like him, that’s all.”

  “Is he ambitious? Temperate? Could you interest yourself in his work, or the environments where his work will take him? How do you find his conversation?”

  She shrugged.

  “Do me a favor,” John coaxed. “Try to get to know him. Find out if you could like him, examine his character. If you believe that there’s no possibility of a happy marriage, I’ll take up your objection with your father.”

  “Really?”

  “I can’t make any guarantees,” said John. “Your father doesn’t have to listen to me. But I’ll be an advocate, if you need one.”

  “Why are you being so kind to me?”

  “Amelia, you’re my—” John caught himself. “Goddaughter. I promised to stand by you, to help you when you’re in need. Why would that change now?”

  She blinked at him. “You really mean that?”

  “Always.” He stood up and held out his arm. “We should get you home. Your mother will worry.”

  They walked home together in companionable silence. John imagined Lily in Amelia’s place—young and bold and resentful. It was surprisingly easy. Perhaps she hadn’t sent him to Amelia because she had such faith in Kingston, but because she wished someone had sat her down as he’d just done. Having lost control of her own fate, she could have decided someone else’s.

  There was some justice in it.

  §

  He walked home deep in thought, but when he finally stepped through the door, the Duke of Clive emerged from the front salon onto the landing, one floor up. He tapped his nails on the balustrade while John handed his hat and gloves to a footman.

  “Where have you been?” Clive demanded.

  “Out,” John answered, starting up the stairs.

  “You’ve been to see her, haven’t you?”

  Not hard to guess which “her” Clive meant, which didn’t stop John from asking, “Been to see whom?”

  “Lady Lily,” Clive snapped. “She’s vanished. Again.”

  John snorted. That was one way of putting it.

  Clive squinted. “You aren’t concerned?”

  “Should I be? She’s a very… resourceful woman.” John jerked his head to indicate that Clive should follow, and led the way to the front salon. The clock read three, but he crossed directly to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink. “Want one?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” John tossed back a deep swallow, topped off the glass, and perched uncomfortably on one of the room’s dainty antique chairs. Clive’s mood, he was disgusted to observe, appeared to be shifting away from panic and toward pointed curiosity.

  “She took the pearl with her.”

  John frowned. “Oh? How do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Clive admitted, pacing toward the window and back. “She fled the same day we spoke to Palmerston, and Hastings reacted by visiting every member of the Cabinet for a round of blackmail. They fell into line behind Holland like a set of toy soldiers, one by one.”

  “Even Palmerston?”

  “No. Palmerston is
set on war,” said Clive.

  “So now there’s widespread international consensus about the treaty… with terms dictated by France and favorable to Mehmet Ali… and Palmerston is the only obstacle to a signing ceremony?”

  Clive nodded.

  John raised his glass in a mock toast and took a deep swallow. “Sounds like a disaster.”

  “It is a disaster.”

  John tapped at the glass with the nail of his index finger. “What’s your goal, Clive? Supporting Palmerston at any cost, or finding the best resolution to the crisis?”

  Clive sat down and clasped his hands between his knees. “You remember the survey work you did in Syria?”

  John nodded.

  “We have a concession now from the Sultan to build a railroad that would connect India to the Mediterranean through Syria. We’ve sent a whole team to map out the route. If Mehmet Ali takes possession of Syria, we’re likely to lose the concession to France.” Clive turned one hand palm up, tilting his head. “For that reason, and others, I agree with Palmerston that we need to ensure the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, if necessary through military intervention.”

  “A railroad?”

  “You’d know already if you hadn’t spent the past two years mapping caves in Yorkshire.”

  John nodded. He couldn’t dispute Clive’s reasoning. A concession of that magnitude was worth fighting for. “So. Explain this theory about Lady Lily and the pearl.”

  “If Hastings had it, he wouldn’t have gone to the Cabinet with threats. He could have held his tongue, and we’d all be sitting down to sign Syria over to Mehmet Ali right now.”

  No need to ask why Lady Lily had chosen to keep her current location a secret—even a widow would find her reputation harmed by a connection to the Earl of Kingston, and such a flagrant liaison? Her money and her family would not silence the harsh words that would fill drawing rooms from one side of Mayfair to the other.

  But why take the pearl? Why put her father in such a difficult position?

  “Has she tried to sell it?” John asked.

  “I wish she would. That would solve the problem quite nicely.”

  John ran his fingers through his hair. What did Lady Lily have to gain from all of this? That was the question he needed to answer, but he couldn’t make anything of the information at hand. “She knows she’ll be hunted.”

  “Which is why it’s so important that we be the first to find her,” said Clive. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

  “I have,” John admitted. “But if you can’t locate her, I’d rather not say where.”

  Clive paced another circuit to the window and back. “We have to keep the pearl out of French hands. If they obtain it now, when they’re already so close to a smashing victory, it will turn a diplomatic setback into an unmitigated disaster.”

  “Clive. If I think it will do any good, you’ll hear from me.”

  “If you think it will do any good,” Clive repeated.

  “It’s the best I can offer.”

  “I suppose you have what you were after, Consul-General.”

  “Just so.”

  “Fuck,” muttered Clive. “Walked right into that, didn’t I?”

  John smiled.

  “Don’t leave it too late,” said Clive.

  John finished the last of his whiskey after Clive had gone. He thought about pouring himself another, but decided against it. Better to keep his thoughts clear, and his hands busy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lily folded the letter she’d just read, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and picked up the next one in the pile. Like the others, it had never been opened.

  The author addressed her message to “My King of the Night,” which provoked in Lily the same mixture of sorrow and derision that it had the first time she’d read it, three or four letters ago. It went on to describe an assignation with Alfie in great detail—Lily skimmed these paragraphs, having read variations on this theme a dozen times already—and ended with an invitation to repeat the encounter.

  If this woman’s experience proceeded according to pattern, the next letter would not be so warm. Lily added the one she’d just finished to the growing stack and cut open the next envelope. “Kingston,” scrawled at the top, beneath a date, and a brief note accusing him of coldness. In the next, the cycle finished with an angry screed, insults masking deep hurt.

  They didn’t all conclude on the same note. Some were polite and worldly. Others grave, earnest, tear-stained. But it didn’t matter if the author had poured her whole heart out, or none. Alfie hadn’t read a single word.

  “I never object when I find a woman waiting for me in my bedroom, but somehow I doubt you’re here for the usual reason.”

  Lily twisted round to see Alfie in the doorway. He’d been out—he seemed terrifically busy, doing she could hardly tell what—and she hadn’t expected to see him home for a while.

  “You’re crying.” He took in the pile of letters by her knee, the open box in front of her. “I suppose I don’t need to ask why.”

  “I keep telling myself that this couldn’t be you,” said Lily. “And then I pick up another letter and it starts all over again.”

  He leaned against the threshold, eyes narrowing. “What should I have done, then?”

  “Read the letters,” said Lily. “At the very least, you should have read the letters.”

  “Why?”

  Because their pain would change you. Would have to change you. But Alfie’s mild, curious expression made her second-guess herself. She looked down at her lap. “Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “You’ve been sulking ever since that maniac assaulted you.”

  “I know.”

  “So maybe, this time, take a lesson from me.” His tone turned grave, without that edge of ironic amusement that seemed habitual to him. “Forget him.”

  Forget him. She wanted to sneer, to tell Alfie that anyone who gave such advice must be lost to all sense of decency. But she had done as much before, without naming it honestly: she had run from the consequences of youthful misbehavior, she had run from pain and loss. She had done it because, once she ran far enough, the truth lost most of its power. Far away things never seemed quite real. Even pain. Even her own pain.

  “I can’t,” she said. Not again.

  “You can,” he replied. “It’s not even very difficult.”

  It’s true, she could have agreed. Down to the last word. It’s not even very difficult.

  But she didn’t speak.

  “Or you can sit on my floor and read angry love letters,” said Alfie. “Who am I to say how noble, high-minded people ought to behave?”

  Lily frowned. “Has something happened to upset you?”

  “Everything.” Alfie threw himself onto the sofa and scowled. “I’ve been to see Adam.”

  “I imagine he’s furious.”

  “Rather.” Alfie laughed, a sharp, coughing sound, and raked his hands through his hair. “But he’s too busy fending off your father to bother with me. Hastings shut down the theater.”

  “The theater? But why? I haven’t seen Adam since the day I left Hastings House.”

  “This isn’t only about you, Lily. Hastings wanted help retrieving you. Adam refused, and that’s started up the war again, after a long period of truce.” Alfie sighed. “He’s going to have to leave London.”

  “What if—” Lily swallowed. “I could give up the pearl.”

  “If it weren’t the pearl, it would be something else,” said Alfie. “It happened so fast, Hastings must have worked out a plan ages ago. He bought our actors. Threatened some of the dancers. He even scared away the ticket takers.”

  “I don’t want to leave Adam to struggle alone,” she said. But she didn’t want to stay, either. She’d always wished her brother had stepped in to defend her more often when they were young. Now that their roles had been reversed, she wasn’t eager to involve herself. “I need to leave, Alfie. I need to
leave soon.”

  §

  John knelt on a folded drop cloth in the ballroom of his Belgrave Square home, now the staging ground for his travel preparations, surrounded by stacks of crates and loosely organized heaps of gear. Wood chips and cotton batting lay scattered across the polished floor, dusted his hair, and dried out his eyes.

  He’d packed most of his equipment away after being dismissed from the Foreign Office years ago, and much of it had suffered from the neglect. The hinges on his collapsible lantern required greasing; the holes in his mosquito net wanted patching; his boots ought to be replaced or at least re-soled.

  He didn’t have to sort through it all himself. He could trot off to his club and trust his staff to get everything in order. They were competent and exacting, they could enforce his standards as well as he did. He could check in a couple of times, give the all’s-well, board his schooner and be off.

  But survival often depended on trifles. By making his own preparations, he built an inventory in his mind. Every time he checked and double-checked, the list fixed itself more firmly in the old gray matter. By the time he left, he’d know his inventory well enough to consult it in a state of panic. And that knowledge would give him a better chance of making it through an emergency alive.

  The crates hadn’t been packed according to any organizational principle that he could decipher, and he found souvenirs mixed with more practical items. He’d never been a collector. Over the years he’d picked up a few odds and ends, mostly gifts he couldn’t sell or trade. They’d been stowed along with everything else.

  For example: the rock crystal ewer he found bundled in yards of felt, packed alongside his camp bed.

  It was beautiful work, and old. A gold cap, gold base, and gold on the handle, but the precious metal only drew attention to the carved crystal, like a frame around a painting. A sleek leopard sat on its hind legs on a field of greenery, spots carved all along its flank. The creature was shown with its mouth open in a growl, baring sharp teeth. The supple arch of its back mirrored the sinuous curl of its tail.

  He frowned at it. What did it remind him of? Had he forgotten his canteens? No—they were on the table by the window—then what… The answer, when it came, only irritated him. Lady Lily. Elegant, rare, and that lion—its tail raised up like a little question mark—it was her. Exactly her.