I turned and saw that nothing had been as I had imagined it. The little club was not a club at all; it was a howdah pistol, the largest bore pistol ever made, capable of felling a fully-grown tiger with a single shot.
And holding it, still draped in the white veils of the leper, was my husband.
I stared at him a moment, then felt the earth begin to tilt.
“I think I am going to faint,” I said in a firm clear voice.
And that is precisely what I did.
The Fifteenth Chapter
I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path!
—Friend
Rabindranath Tagore
I was roused to the pungent odour of Miss Thorne’s smelling salts.
“Do not try to rise,” she told me, capping the nasty vial. “You must keep quiet for a moment.”
I might have expected to have been attended by Dr. Llewellyn, but when I turned my head, I saw him vomiting quietly into the bushes. My head was resting in a lap cushioned by white veils.
“The instant we return to London I am divorcing you,” I told him. But my rage at his deception evaporated when I looked at his face. I had not seen him so affected since…well, ever, I realised with a start. The naked emotion upon his face was too much for me to bear and I turned away.
Portia was weeping openly. “I thought I was going to lose you,” she managed through her tears. She kissed my hand and put it to her cheek.
“I am fine,” I said, pushing off Brisbane’s lap and fighting off a wave of dizziness.
“You are not fine,” Plum said flatly. “You need rest now, and plenty of it. We must get you back to the Peacocks.”
He helped me up and I looked back to see Brisbane rising more slowly. His veils and robes were something of a hindrance, I thought nastily.
“I will arrange to dispose of the tiger,” Harry put in. “Go home now, all of you.”
He waved his arms to indicate the whole of the valley. The natives were staring at Brisbane with a combination of shock and awe, and several of them clutched their children a little more tightly at the thought that the monstrous tiger that had roamed so close to them was dead. A few raised their hands to Brisbane to bless him, but he did not acknowledge them. He seemed not even to see them, and I noticed as he replaced the howdah pistol into his belt that his hand shook ever so slightly.
When we arrived at the Peacocks, Morag busied herself by tucking me into bed with a hot brick and a glass of whisky, muttering all the while about heathens and their wicked ways.
“It is hardly their fault they have tigers,” I murmured as I slid into sleep.
“If they were good people, God would not have sent them tigers,” Morag retorted, and those were the last words I heard.
I rested until the evening when Morag brought a tray with my supper, Portia hard upon her heels.
“How are you feeling, dearest?” she asked, shooing Morag from the bed. She had a mind to fuss over me herself and uncovered the dish of blancmange upon the tray.
I looked up at her. “Blancmange? I loathe blancmange. You know that.”
“It is just the thing when you’ve had a nasty shock,” she said, putting the spoon into my hand.
Personally, I preferred Morag’s approach of a large whisky and said so.
“It is proper invalid food,” Portia insisted. I poked the blancmange with a spoon and watched it wobble.
I turned to Morag. “What is the rest of the household having for dinner?”
“Roasted capon with pommes dauphine,” she told me, mangling the French. “Petit pois, and a nice macaroni cheese after the fish course of trout amandine.”
“I will have that,” I said thrusting the blancmange at her. “And wine.”
She bobbed a curtsey and took the offending blancmange away.
Portia gave me an offended look. “I do not think you are taking this seriously, Julia. You suffered a tremendous shock today. You must have a care for your health.”
“Portia, it was terrifying, but it was over almost before it began.”
“If it had not been for Brisbane,” she said with a shudder. She did not finish the sentence, and she did not need to.
“Yes, well. Brisbane was there, although why he was wearing that ridiculous disguise is something I intend to take up with him as soon as possible.”
“Be gentle with him,” Portia advised.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Be gentle? He has been masquerading as a native woman with leprosy since his arrival, and did not trouble to take me into his confidence.”
“Do you tell him everything?” she countered. “Ah, I thought not. Your expression betrays you. The pair of you are supposed to be partners. Why do you not work together?”
“Pride, I suppose.” I explained swiftly about Brisbane’s reluctance to include me in the investigation, and my own conviction that if I could prove my worth, he would accept me fully as a partner in detection.
“But, Julia, have you never considered how insulting that must be to him?”
I stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do not take that icy tone with me,” she reproved. “I merely mean that you have never considered the matter from his perspective. Until you stand upon the ground he stands on and survey matters from his vantage point, you will never be able to fully enter his world. And frankly, if I were a professional and some meddling dilettante thought she could do my job as well as I could, I would be mightily put out!” I said nothing, and she went on, her voice gentle and low. “Brisbane is a professional man with an excellent reputation and wide experience. He has built a career for himself using only his wits, and although most of our acquaintance deplore that fact, I esteem him for it. You have seen where he came from—you have met his relations, you have walked through a Gypsy camp. When his father abandoned them, Brisbane and his mother had nothing. He ran away and made himself the man he is today with no help from anyone. Whatever he has accomplished, whatever he has achieved, it is a testament to the man himself. He, more than anyone I have ever known, has created himself. He is steel, Julia, forged in fire. I admire him for it, but I have never made the mistake of thinking I could be his equal simply because I am clever and observant.”
I burned with shame. “I confess, I never thought of it in those terms.”
Her smile was one of absolution. “I know you have not. You only saw a bit of danger and intrigue and thought you would like to have it for yourself. But you must open your eyes to the rest of it. To the tedium and the hard work and the dedication it requires. You cannot play at being a detective, Julia. To do so demeans the work of one who does it seriously.”
I traced the embroidery on the coverlet with my finger. “I understand what you say, Portia. But I do have talents and advantages to bring to an investigation that Brisbane does not. I can help him.”
“You can and you should,” she agreed. “But never forget that for you it is a game. For Brisbane it is his livelihood, and men are defined by such things. A woman’s importance comes from who she is, a man’s from what he is. It has always been so, dearest. I do not say that it is right or that it will always be so, but you must be awake to the truth of it now.”
She departed then and I was left to stew over what she had said. It rankled to think that my sister could so easily find fault with my behaviour and take it upon herself to lecture me, but I realised I had done Brisbane a grave wrong.
Morag brought my dinner tray and I picked over the food, thinking of everything Portia had said. I had played at being a detective. Brisbane himself had warned me against it during our first investigation. He had told me it was a dirty and dangerous business and I had pressed on, nearly getting myself killed in the process. But it had not deterred me from wanting to involve myself in his cases again, I reflected. I had inserted myself into the matter of murder at my father’s country estate and untangled a misdeed long-buried at Brisbane’s home in Yorkshire. It had been there that I had met his aunt
and discovered the truth about his past. I had heard from her the tale of the beautiful Gypsy seeress who had been Brisbane’s mother and who had died with a curse on her lips. I had learned too of the aristocratic wastrel who had been his father. It had not been easy for Brisbane to lay the ghosts of such dramatic and useless parents, but he had done so, and he had crafted himself a rich and productive life. Portia was quite right. It was a testament indeed to the character of the man, and I was deeply proud to call him my husband.
Such were my reflections when the man himself appeared shortly after I had finished my tray. He appeared in his formal evening clothes of stark black and white, the sharpness of the contrast showing his dark handsomeness to best advantage. I gave him a gentle smile and he came to sit beside me upon the bed.
“Feeling better?”
He took my hand and pressed it to his lips.
“Yes. I only needed rest and food. I am quite recovered.”
He said nothing, but his eyes spoke for him and they were eloquent. I had seen the look upon his face when he killed the tiger, and I knew he would have taken the animal apart with his bare hands to have saved me.
“Shall I thank you formally for saving my life?” I said, rather more lightly than I felt.
He shuddered. “Do not speak of it, I beg you. I am rather surprised though,” he added with a sharp look. “I expected a haranguing for not confessing my disguise earlier.”
“I never harangue,” I said flatly. “Although I own, I am curious. Why the disguise? And where in heaven’s name did you acquire the child? Rather an elaborate prop, if you ask me.”
He began to undress, first untying his neckcloth, then shrugging out of his evening coat and unpinning his collar.
“The boy is from a village just outside the valley. I paid his family a handsome wage for his services for a few weeks. I should probably return him tomorrow,” he mused, rubbing a hand over the shadow at his jaw. “He went into the fields to talk to the pickers for me, gathering information while they gathered tea. He knows a variety of songs and tricks and kept them amused. I knew they would never speak to someone they viewed as an Englishman and an outsider, but a winsome child might loosen their tongues. I was right, as it happens. He discovered quite a few titbits, whether they will prove significant I cannot yet say.”
“And you disguised yourself to ensure his protection?” I surmised.
“And yours,” he said quietly.
I blinked. “Mine?”
He sighed. “Julia, you have the most unnerving habit of doing precisely what you oughtn’t. Sitting at the crossroads was a way of keeping track of your movements without relying upon either you or your notebook to find out where you had gone.”
I felt under the mattress, but he held up a hand.
“It is still there. I always replaced it after I read it.”
I mouthed a profane word and he shot me a devilish smile. “Later. In any event, I was able to let you go about your business without any interference from me.”
“How stupid I was! I ought to have known you would never permit me to wander about on my own with a potential murderer on the loose,” I mused.
“Yes, you ought to have. I did it for your own good,” he said.
“You spied upon me!” I protested. “I would have been perfectly happy to apprise you of my whereabouts if you had only asked.”
He began to unpin his cuffs as he gave me a reproachful look.
“Very well. I might not have told you everything,” I conceded. “But it seems a mean trick to put on such a disguise just to keep your beady eyes upon me.”
“Not just you,” he corrected. “The crossroads is the centre of activity in the valley. Sooner or later everyone passes, or at least almost everyone.”
“Not the Phipps girls,” I said with a note of triumph.
“Not the Phipps girls,” he conceded.
“And you would have to admit it was useful of me to call upon them and eventually discover Lucy’s liaison with Harry. It may very well prove the pin upon which this entire case hangs.”
“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “As I said, it is too soon to tell, although I will have to wrap matters up as quickly as possible. Now that my disguise is revealed, there is very little I can do unobtrusively. I shall have to take the opposite course and question people directly.”
“Detection by intimidation?” I asked.
He stripped off his shirt. “Something like that.”
“Do you think…that is…” I hesitated and he looked at me curiously. It was unlike me to have difficulty in speaking my mind. “Portia pointed out that I may be a trifle overzealous in my eagerness to share your work. But I think I could be helpful here. Do you think with your direction, I might be able to offer you some assistance?”
By way of reply, he crossed the room and applied himself to the marital affections so thoroughly I could only think afterwards it was an affirmative. I lay, sated and drowsy, one of his heavily muscled arms draped over me, various thoughts passing as lightly as thistledown through my head.
“Brisbane?” I asked sleepily. “How long have you been here?”
His voice was muffled by the pillow. “Hrrmm?”
I poked at one muscular shoulder. “I asked how long you have been here. I first saw the old woman at the crossroads before your actual arrival at the Peacocks. You must have come into the valley shortly after we did.”
“Before actually.”
I poked him again, harder this time. “Before? How?”
He sat up, stretching. “I left Calcutta the day after you did, but I reached Darjeeling several days before you.”
I thought rapidly. “Of course. The little railway that Portia would not countenance.”
“Yes, quite an efficient little system. I finished my business in Darjeeling and struck out on the road into the mountains before you even arrived in the town.”
“What business?”
“Investigation, of course. That much of what I told you was true. I made enquiries, both in Calcutta and Darjeeling, but I did not wait for replies. I dropped enough fleas in ears and coins in pockets that I could afford to leave and have the information sent by letter.”
“Which you received earlier today,” I finished. “What did you learn?”
He yawned broadly. “The disposition of the Cavendish estate. It is as we suspected. If Jane’s child is a boy, it will inherit. There are no provisions for any children other than legitimate sons in the direct line.”
The thistledown thoughts drifted in my head again. And then one of them caught and snagged and I sat bolt upright in bed, flinging off his arm.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep. Brisbane was always rather slow to wake after such exertions.
I sprang out of bed, snatching up my dressing gown and flinging it about myself. “You lied to me. You were not the leprous granny, at least not all of the time. On at least one occasion I saw you directly after I saw her. There was not time for you to have divested yourself of your disguise and reached the Peacocks before me.”
He yawned again and laced his fingers behind his head, offering me a rather splendid view of his physique. I kept my eyes focused quite deliberately upon his face as he spoke.
“Ah, yes. That would be Plum. I used him on one or two occasions when I wanted to make certain there was no chance of anyone, particularly you, connecting me with the unfortunate figure at the crossroads. You do have rather a suspicious mind, and I was not entirely certain you would be diverted by the disguise.”
“Plum! Why would Plum oblige you? The pair of you have been at each other’s throats since we arrived.”
Brisbane had the grace to look slightly abashed. “Yes, about that, I ought to have mentioned it, I suppose, but Plum has been doing a bit of work for me.”
“I do not believe you,” I said flatly.
Brisbane twitched slightly and the sheet dropped a little lower on the smooth olive expanse of his belly. “Believe or
not as you like. I offered Plum the opportunity to make a few inquiries and he seized it. Naturally, it had to remain secret, so we chose to give the appearance of being less than fond of one another.”
“Those quarrels then, over Miss Thorne—”
“Manufactured,” he finished. “It seemed best to keep up the façade of disliking one another, at least for a time.”
I felt the rage beginning to rise again and this time I did not bother to tamp it down.
“You asked my brother to do you a favour and did not tell me?” I said, my voice dangerously low.
He folded his arms over his chest and the sheet slipped farther still. “To be quite precise, I did not ask him to do me a favour. I engaged him. Plum is now an operative in my employ.”
I covered my face with my hands. “Father will murder the pair of you,” I told him in a muffled voice.
“It is nothing to do with him, nor with you,” he replied coolly. “My business is my own, Julia, to run as I see fit. I required Plum’s services. He is competent and clever and discreet, and more importantly, he was short enough of money and bored enough to do it.”
I dropped my hands. “I cannot believe you would hire my brother and fail to tell me,” I said. “That is beyond the pale, Brisbane, it really is. We are married. We are not supposed to keep secrets from one another.”
I snatched a pillow from the bed and flounced to the dressing room to make up the bed for him. “The cot is a trifle narrow, but I do hope you won’t mind because you will be sleeping here for a good while to come,” I called to him, throwing the pillow onto the narrow bed and giving it a kick for good measure.
Dark Road to Darjeeling Page 24