Lady Julia Grey Bundle

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  "Hmm." He took another sip. "Most agreeable. But this," he said, waving my own letter at me, "was not. What the devil did you mean writing this to Griggs?"

  I spread my hands innocently. "I meant what I said—I was upset. I thought that Doctor Griggs could ease my mind."

  He looked at me shrewdly from under his thick white brows. "Ye gods, girl, if you think I am going to believe that, you are dafter than any child of mine ought to be. Now, if it is a private business, tell me so, and we will not speak of it. I've no wish to press a confidence you do not wish to make."

  I thought for a long moment, then shook my head. "No, it is just as well. I could use your advice."

  I told him, as briefly as I could without losing any relevant detail, what Brisbane and I were about. When I finished, he whistled sharply.

  "So that is your game. Well, I cannot say I am entirely disappointed. No, I cannot say that at all."

  Far from looking disappointed, he was happier than I had seen him in an age. His colour was high and his eyes were gleaming.

  "You are enjoying this!"

  He shrugged, looking only very slightly guilty. "Edward has been gone a year. There is little enough chance of you getting yourself into any real danger. Edward's murderer, if there is such a person, is probably long gone from the scene. This entire exercise is largely academic. It is you I am enjoying, my girl."

  "Me? I am as I ever was. I have only cut my hair and bought some new clothes."

  He shook his head. "No, it is more than that. You've finally done something daring enough to deserve the family name. You have begun to live up to the family motto."

  "Quod habeo habeo? 'What I have I hold?'"

  Father rolled his eyes. "Not that one. The other."

  Audeo. "I dare." It had been our informal motto since the seventh Earl March had married an illegitimate daughter of Charles II, thus linking our family with the royal house of Stuart. Family legend claims that he adopted the motto with an eye to putting his wife on the throne someday, until Monmouth's unsavory end warned him off of his kingly ambitions. It was one of the favorite family stories, although when I was seven I had remarked that the seventh earl had not really dared very much at all. It was the only time I was ever sent to bed without supper. After that I never really warmed to the motto. It had always seemed like a good excuse for irresponsible and reprehensible behavior. I had long thought we would be a far more respectable family if our motto had been "I sit quietly in the corner and mind my own business."

  Father would not be put off. "There is more to it than lopping off your curls and buying some new dresses. I always worried about you as a child, Julia. You took your mother's death very hard, you know." He paused, his expression dreamy. "I wonder, do you even remember her?"

  I thought hard. "I remember someone who used to hold me, very tightly. Someone who smelled of violet. And I think I remember a yellow gown. The silk rustled under my fingers."

  He shook his head, regretful. "Ah, I thought you would have remembered more. That was her with the violet scent. I am glad you wear it now. Sometimes you move through the room and I could almost imagine she has been walking there."

  He paused and I think his throat may have been as thick as mine. But he went on, and he was smiling. "The yellow silk was her favorite gown that last summer, when she was expecting Valerius. She wore it almost every day, I think. You stopped talking for just a bit after she died, do you remember that?"

  "No." But I did. I remembered the long silences, the feeling that if I spoke, if I moved on, she would never come back. The certainty that I had to stay just as I was if I wanted her to return. I practiced stillness, rarely moving, trying to force myself not to grow without her.

  "Of course, you hated Valerius," Father was saying. "Blamed him, I imagine. Most of you children did. I did so myself for a while, although it wasn't the boy's fault. Ten children in sixteen years—too much for her. But she wanted you all. She wanted you so very much."

  His voice trailed off, and I knew he was seeing her. She had been beautiful; I had seen the portraits. I had impressions of her, but no true memories. He was right. I had been six when she died. I should have remembered more.

  "You are very like her," he said suddenly. "More than any of the others. She was gentle and good, much more respectable than the scapegrace Marches she married into," he said with a chuckle. "She would have understood you with your quiet little places, your desperate need to be normal. Yes, you are very like her." He leaned forward, his eyes bright green in the lamplight. "But she knew how to take a chance, my pet. After all, she married me. You have her blood, Julia, but you are a March as well. There are seven centuries' worth of adventure and risk and audacity in your blood. I always knew it would come out eventually."

  I smiled. "I always thought Bellmont must be quite a bit like Mother."

  "No. He is the biggest rebel of the lot. That's why he runs Tory."

  "And you think I am beginning to live up to the March legacy?"

  He gave a satisfied sigh. "I do. This murder business may be just what you need. Although, best to let sleeping dogs lie, I always think."

  I snorted at him. "You have never let a sleeping dog lie in your entire life, Father. And surely you are not condoning letting a murderer walk free?"

  He shrugged. "You have not found a murderer yet. You may not even have a murder. Perhaps poor Edward ought to lie where we buried him."

  I did think about it. It was tempting, the idea of sweeping this bit of possible nastiness under the carpet and getting on with my life. But I knew I could not. I would not be able to sleep nights if I thought that Edward had been murdered and I had done nothing to right that wrong. I smiled at the irony that undertaking this investigation might actually be the one thing in my life that satisfied both my sense of duty and my very secret, very small desire for adventure. I looked at Father and shook my head. "I cannot. It is my duty. If there is any chance that Edward was murdered, then I must do all that I can to bring him justice."

  He finished his port. "All right, then," he said, rising. "Do what you must. And I will not ask you what that Brisbane fellow was doing leaving here at such an hour," he said, chucking me under the chin.

  My face grew hot. "We were discussing the investigation," I told him quickly. "He was here a quarter of an hour at the most."

  Father smiled at me sadly. "My dear girl, if you don't know what mischief can be gotten up to in a quarter of an hour, you are no child of mine. Come to supper on Thursday next. Hermia is having an oratory contest and I mean to sleep through it."

  He was gone with a wave over his head, leaving me dumbstruck. Surely my own father was not advocating an illicit affair with Brisbane? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was exactly what he was doing. It did not bear thinking about. Well, truthfully, I did think about it quite a lot. At least until Valerius came home covered in blood.

  THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

  If circumstances lead me, I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed Within the centre.

  —William Shakespeare

  Hamlet

  Father had not been gone a quarter of an hour when Valerius came home. I heard him call a brief greeting to Aquinas in the hall, then hurry past the open door of my study and up the stairs.I called to him, but he did not reply. I followed him up the stairs, catching him up at the door to his room.

  "Valerius! Whatever is the matter? I want to speak to you. Father was here this evening—Val? What is it?"

  He was hunched over, facing the door, his coat folded over his arm. He was not wearing his waistcoat.

  "Are you ill?" I put a hand to his shoulder to turn him, but he threw me off.

  "I am well, please." He edged away, but I followed.

  "Julia, leave me."

  "Valerius, stop being tiresome. Turn around and face me this instant." He went very still, probably weighing the odds that I would go away and leave him in peace. He must have realized how slim they
were, for when I reached out for him again he turned. His face was ghastly, pale and lined with fatigue, but it was his shirt that made me gasp. The pure white linen of his shirtfront was dark crimson, crusted with dried blood. I put out my hand.

  "Val—you're hurt! My God, what happened to you?"

  He brushed my hand away. "I am well. The blood—it isn't mine."

  "Whose, then?" I put myself between him and the door and he sighed, knowing he was going to have to tell me the entire story.

  "There was a fight outside the theatre. It was quite vicious. A man, set upon by ruffians. They got out his tooth and cut him rather badly about the head."

  I raised a finger toward the wide crimson stain.

  "Careful," he said, edging away. "There are still some spots that are wet."

  I shook my head in astonishment.

  "But so much blood, you must have been quite close to him."

  He nodded, his face rather grey at the memory of what he had seen. "I sat with him and tried to stop the bleeding while his brother went for their carriage."

  "How ghastly for you! What were they about, these ruffians? Did they mean to rob him?"

  Val passed a hand over his face. "I do not know. Some private quarrel, I think. But I am out of it now. I want only to change my clothes and get into bed."

  I gestured toward his fouled shirt. "Give me the shirt. It must be put to soak or it will be spoilt."

  He hesitated, then nodded and slipped into his room. I heard the raven quorking at him irritably. After several minutes, he opened the door just enough to thrust the soiled shirt into my hands.

  "Thank you," he said shortly. He shut the door before I could question him further. I shrugged. I had no doubt the fight would be detailed in the morning papers. And very likely an enterprising reporter had obtained more details than Valerius had.

  Holding the crusted shirt at arm's length, I made my way down the stairs, through the hall belowstairs, past the kitchens and into the laundry. Aquinas was finishing his rounds of the windows and doors, his locking-up ritual for the night. He always carried a lamp with him and extinguished the last of the house lights as he went. The front of the house was in darkness and I could hear him securing the bolts on the garden doors.

  I moved quietly, feeling unaccountably timid about explaining Val's gory shirt. If Aquinas saw it he would insist upon soaking it himself and he would doubtless find some fault with Magda's methods of keeping the laundry, his own standards being far more exacting than hers. The absence of a housekeeper at Grey House, though unorthodox, was perfectly adequate in most circumstances. With Magda, it sometimes proved a liability. For the most part she kept to herself, and on the rare occasions when discipline was required, Aquinas was man enough for the task. But Magda seldom went along easily with his corrections, preferring to rage or sulk, depending upon which approach seemed likeliest to garner my support. The two of them were entirely capable of waging a war of attrition that would last for days. Rather than facing a staff row, it seemed far simpler to deal with Val's nasty shirt myself.

  Although, I should have brought a lamp or at least a candle, I realized as I barked my shin on the pressing table in the laundry. By all rights I should have summoned Magda to take the shirt herself, but I was far too tired to even contemplate tackling Magda. There was still the question of her appalling behavior toward Brisbane to address, and I was unwilling to speak to her tonight. It was late now, and I was more than ready for my own bed. All I wanted was to dispose of Val's unspeakable garment and put the whole evening's bizarre events behind me.

  With any luck, the stains would have soaked out by morning and there would be little trace of Val's adventure at the theatre. Magda always kept a bucket of cold water at hand for the soaking, and I knew she liked it to be stood below the front windows, those that overlooked the area. It gave her good light, even on overcast days, and a chance to see passersby—if only from the ankle down.

  I had just reached the bucket and lifted the lid when I heard voices. I started, thinking I was not alone in the laundry. But as they went on, I realized they were coming from the area above me. The pair had taken refuge behind the potted trees to the side of the front door and were speaking in low, harsh voices. I recognized them at once.

  "I will give you one last chance to let go of my sleeve before I break your fingers." To my astonishment, I realized that this was Brisbane. His voice was iron, cold as I had never heard it, and I had little doubt that he meant his threat, though I could not imagine what he was doing there, of all places. He had left Grey House an hour before.

  Magda's laugh echoed mirthlessly.

  "Oh, I think not. You will not hurt me. There are still some of us who remember Mariah Young."

  These last words were a hiss, and they must have struck Brisbane like a lash, for I heard a scrape, like a quick footstep, and her sharp intake of breath. There was a little moan of pain.

  "Do not interfere with me," he told her. "I will ruin you if you dare."

  "Others have tried," she spat back. "But you remember that I know who Mariah Young was—and I know how she died."

  He must have released her then, for there was a sharp clang against the railing and the sound of booted footsteps moving quickly away in the dark. And following him into the night was Magda's laugh, low and throaty, like the rasping call of a raven.

  THE SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

  Oh, we are lords' and ladies' sons, Born in bower or in hall, And you are some poor maid's child Borned in an ox's stall.

  —Traditional Ballad

  To my surprise, I slept rather well that night. The alcohol I had consumed, coupled with the evening's strange events, proved entirely too much for me. I crept up the backstairs in order to avoid Aquinas, said little to Morag as she got me ready for bed, and was asleep almost as soon as she closed the door behind her.But I woke early to the muffin-man's bell, and lay awake, listening to the streets come to life and thinking hard about the previous night. Brisbane's initial call had been unexpected, but not unorthodox. Whatever malady he suffered, it had been considerate of him to make the effort to warn me that he would be incommunicado for some days.

  Father's call was somewhat more puzzling. I could well believe him capable of encouraging me in as bizarre an undertaking as a murder investigation. What I could not believe was that he actually seemed to be regretting the fact that I had not taken Brisbane as a lover. That Father had never entirely approved of my marriage was no secret. Just before he walked me down the aisle, he had paused in the vestry and offered to take me away—France, Greece, anywhere I wanted if I had changed my mind. I had laughed, thinking him in jest, but after Edward and I had been married for some time, I began to notice things I had not seen before. Father, always a woolgatherer, became sharply observant whenever Edward was in the room. I watched him watch my husband, and wondered what he was thinking. I never had the courage to ask and he never said, but I suspected I knew already. Edward was the sort of man Father universally despised—wealthy, self-satisfied and utterly incapable of thinking or feeling deeply. Father's sensibilities were so refined, he had been known to lock himself in his study and weep over Titus Andronicus for hours. Edward had not even wept when his mother died. Father might deplore Bellmont's stance as a Tory, but he applauded his convictions. Edward had had none.

  Whenever the subjects of politics or religion or philosophy arose, generating a heated debate at the March dinner table, Edward would sit with a tolerant half smile firmly on his mouth and say nothing. No matter how fiercely Father baited him, he never rose to it, never offered an opinion on anything more serious than the cut of an evening suit or the vintage of a wine. He let the property at Greymoor decline—the most venal of sins to my own land-mad family. Marches had been taking the notion of stewardship seriously for centuries. We could no more leave a field unploughed or a hedgerow untended than we could keep from breathing. I remembered one conversation in particular. There had been a spirited disagreement regarding enclo
sure and my brother Benedick had appealed to Edward for his opinion. This was early days yet, when they had not realized that he was never going to take an interest in such things. They had all looked to Edward, eager for his view. He had simply smiled his sweet, sleepy smile and lifted his glass.

  "Brother Benedick," he had said, "I cannot think of such things when there is wine such as this to drink. You must tell me the name of your agent," he concluded, turning to my father.

  This was a blind, of course. Edward might like to discuss vintages, but he never bothered to keep them straight. His own cellar was a disgrace, not because he lacked the intellect to stock it properly, but because he lacked the initiative. Quite simply, he was the most indolent person I have ever known.

  And just then, Benedick must have realized it, too, for I heard him as Father began to discuss the wine, mutter under his breath, "Bloody useless." I raised my eyes just in time to see the tiny smile flicker over Olivia's lips and the way Bellmont was carefully studying his plate. They all thought so. But Olivia's smile was not malicious, and Benedick, for his disapproval, did not actually dislike Edward. They deplored his lack of energy, his casual ways and his refusal to properly manage his land, but they all liked him in spite of themselves. He had a way of endearing himself to people, a manner of charming them with clever conversation and self-deprecating humour that made them in turn feel quite witty. Everyone always felt brighter and sharper and more brilliant when Edward was one of our number.

  "He is a diamond-polisher," Portia once told me, and she was correct. He had a gift of being able to take one's feeble little quips and shine them up into real cleverness. He never read books, and rarely newspapers, except to see if his name was mentioned. But he always seemed to know what was being said, and about whom, who was doing what, and to whom. I suspected it was this ability to keep his finger firmly on society's pulse that multiplied the respectable fortune he had inherited into a tiny empire by the time of his death. He listened closely when others talked, and people always talked freely around him. He always cocked his head toward the person to whom he was speaking, enveloping them both in a warm intimacy. He knew just what questions to ask, and did so without anyone ever feeling that he had been intrusive or prying. He always prised just the precise nugget of information he needed, then passed it along to his man of affairs with instructions on how to act upon it.