The Fatal Engine

by Harriet Smart

  “I am hoping to persuade her to return to them,” said Giles, “before any more damage is done.”

  ~

  “What would you do, my lord?” said Giles as they drove away from Canonbury Square to Mayhew’s rooms.

  “It’s a difficult question, certainly,” said Rothborough.

  “There is a part of me,” Giles said, “and I have not discussed this with Mrs Vernon yet, which is why I hesitate, but I should like nothing better than to get her to relinquish the children entirely to me. But what I might want is not perhaps the best thing for them. I had always hoped for a family, but this may not be the right way to get one.”

  “But you like these children?” Rothborough said.

  “It is strange,” Giles said. “I had not expected to feel quite so... involved, after such a short time. There is something about them that so appeals to me that it is clouding my reason. The best place for them to be is with their mother, surely?”

  “Even when she has proved herself entirely unfit?”

  “It may be that she has conceived a foolish passion for this man and it has impaired her judgement. Such fancies can pass as soon as they arrive. She may be glad to be rescued.”

  “We shall see what she has to say for herself soon enough,” said Rothborough.

  “If she is here,” said Giles.

  The landlady opened the door to them, and when they had asked for Lord Mayhew and given their names, said with some pleasure, “I suppose you’ve come to see the lady. I told him, I did, Lordship or not, they can’t stay here. I’ve asked them to be gone tomorrow. This is a respectable house and I don’t believe he’s married to her, not for one minute! Did he think I was born yesterday? So yes, gentlemen, do come in and I shall show you straight to her.”

  “Is Lord Mayhew here?”

  “No, he went out about an hour ago. But she is here, ringing the bell like she means to wear it out. This way, if you please!”

  They followed her upstairs. The landlady knocked on the door and swept in without waiting for an answer.

  “Two gentlemen to see you, madam!” she said.

  Mrs Gordon was sitting on the sofa, leafing through an illustrated periodical.

  “Oh, Major Vernon, I had no idea you were in town,” she said putting out her hand to Giles, as if she expected him to kiss it. “How kind of you to call. Mrs Akers, bring us some coffee, will you?”

  The landlady, who was evidently hoping for a scene that would not disgrace the melodrama at Drury Lane, hesitated for a moment and then took herself off. Giles wondered if she would be listening at the door.

  “It is hardly kindness that brings us here,” Giles said, not taking her hand. She withdrew it, as if offended, and then got up from the sofa and regarded Lord Rothborough.

  “How do you do, sir?” she said. “Whoever you are.”

  “This is Lord Rothborough,” said Giles. “Lord Rothborough, Mrs Gordon.”

  “Ma’am,” said Rothborough with a curt nod of his head.

  “When will Lord Mayhew be back?” Giles said.

  “I don’t know. I am not his keeper,” she said, sitting down again.

  “But you are passing as his wife,” said Giles.

  “Why are you here?” she said.

  “I should have thought that was obvious, ma’am,” said Giles, “given the circumstances in which you departed.”

  “Won’t you sit down, my lord?” she said to Lord Rothborough. “Will you have a glass of wine?”

  “No, thank you,” said Lord Rothborough.

  “Perhaps we should get to business,” said Giles. “In the wake of your departure, it seems that various things have gone missing from the house –”

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Light-fingered servants, I suppose. What has that to do with me?”

  “You deny having anything to do with this?”

  “Of course. It is an outrageous and insulting suggestion, Major Vernon. Quite beneath you. But I suppose your grubby profession makes you see criminals everywhere. My lord, perhaps you should advise your friend that he should not say such things in decent company?”

  “It seems that the same thing occurred when you left Mr Calthorpe’s house.”

  “Oh, have you let the old man pour his poison in your ear, brother Giles?” she said, and patted the sofa beside her. “Won’t you sit down, my lord? I hate to see a gentleman standing. I know how you men prefer to take your ease, and I feel a poor hostess if you will not allow yourself that liberty.”

  “No, ma’am, I should rather not,” said Lord Rothborough. “I should be afraid for my pocket watch.”

  “Goodness!” she exclaimed, laying her hand on her breast. “I am quite condemned, am I?”

  “The evidence speaks for itself,” said Rothborough. “One of the losses is an ornament that I gave as a wedding gift to your sister, ma’am. How disgusting – to rifle through your own sister’s jewel case! Have you no nice feelings at all?”

  “You cannot prove anything,” she said after a moment.

  “You forget who I am,” said Giles. “I could easily get a warrant to search through your belongings and have you carted away by a couple of runners, and charged with common theft tomorrow morning.”

  “But you will not,” she said, “will you? For all your position and your probity, you will not. I have your mark, brother Giles, and I know you will do anything to spare your darling wife any embarrassment.”

  “Do not think you are safe,” said Giles. “Emma would be quite happy to see you transported, believe me! However, I do not think your children will appreciate your actions. For their sake, I urge you to return the goods to me, and come back to Northminster and your duty. Theft is one thing, Mrs Gordon, abandonment quite another.”

  She sat for a moment, considering his words, and then rising from her seat, said, “But I have not abandoned them. Oh no, I have done the best for them. I have left them in a loving home where they will be cared for. They will be better with you. I saw that at once.” She smiled. “And since I have given you exactly what you want, brother Giles – and do not dare deny it, you have coveted them – I saw that the moment you picked up Sandro, I saw how it might be. And who could disagree that it is better for them to stay with you? All I ask is a few trifles in payment for my great gift to you.”

  “Dear God,” murmured Lord Rothborough. “Do you feel nothing for them, woman?”

  “I know that I have no interest in being their mother,” she said. “It is a tiresome business at best. And Mayhew dislikes them very much, and I have no wish to make him unhappy. He has been such a tonic! We are going to Paris. I have always wanted to live in Paris. Do you know Paris, my lord?”

  Giles turned to the window, deeply uncomfortable at having been read so easily. He knew that experienced criminals had a fine instinct for weaknesses, and he had given his own men instructions on how to conceal their feelings when dealing with such types. However, he had not anticipated to find such a person in his own household, connected by blood to his own beloved wife, in a place where his guard had been down. In fact, the children themselves had dragged it down. He had no defences where they were involved, only a fierce desire to do what was best for them, no matter what the personal cost might be. She had seen this and considered her options accordingly.

  “You expect payment?” said Rothborough. “For abandoning your duty?”

  “But it’s what Major Vernon wants,” she said again. “Is it not?”

  Giles turned back and said, as calmly as he could, “Think about what it is you are proposing. To surrender them entirely, to have no claim on them ever again. Is that truly what you want?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you quite certain?”

  “Quite,” she said, without hesitating. “You may have them.”

  “Christ, what a fool you are!” he could not help exclaiming. It was as if he felt the blow of this cool rejection on the children’s behalf. “You will regret this bitterly.”

>   “Oh, I think not. After all, you will not turn them against me. You are too fair-minded to do that.”

  Giles could not answer for a moment.

  “Be careful, ma’am,” said Lord Rothborough. “Do not overplay your hand.”

  Giles found his voice again.

  “You may keep the cash,” he said. “I think it is a matter of thirty odd guineas, but you will return Emma’s jewels and the sauce boat. Oh, and Mr Calthorpe’s pillowcases. After all, you do not wish to give him grounds to prosecute you.”

  That this sounded ridiculous, he knew, but he scarcely cared. He could only think of Sandro pressed against him, of Sophy’s hand in his and of Hamish demanding to be shown how to hold a sword.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Blanchfort family pew in the parish church at Hawksby, well-cushioned and carpeted, with high panelled sides, offered some protection on a bright but freezing Sunday morning. But like the rest of the church, it was not heated, and Felix could see his breath as he made his responses. Since he was in the company of three people who took their devotions seriously, he took care to not make a show of his doubts – he was by no means convinced of the existence of the Great Creator. However, the sight of Lady Blanchfort and Eleanor at prayer was so unnerving to him that he was happy to throw himself on his knees and pray earnestly for deliverance from temptation. Satan he could believe in more readily than God.

  Yet this did not work. The Devil himself had arranged the pew. The communal kneeler was one of those agonising, sloping-bench affairs and, since Felix was forced to share it with her Ladyship, he found it perfectly calibrated (by virtue of its extreme antiquity) to throw them closer together than they ought properly to be. He had to hold himself stiffly in order not to collapse against her, a true mortification of the flesh, because he would have liked nothing better than to feel her pressed against him. Then, when it was time to return to their seats for the sermon, he jumped back in his haste to avoid her, only to find he had occupied her place and she started to fall back onto his lap. He put out his hands to prevent this and then for the briefest, awkward moment she was in his arms, flushed with embarrassment. At that moment he was truly in Hell.

  The Rector then delivered a harrowing sermon, with more than a whiff of sulphur about it and quite worthy of a dissenter, but Felix scarcely listened. He sat rigidly, fighting his contemptible feelings. How could it be that he wanted her so much? How could he be hungry? Eleanor had teased him awake that morning. He ought not to want anything in that department, yet he felt like a starving beggar.

  Grimly he fixed his attention on the occupants of the Rectory pew which was opposite theirs. Miss Lacey sat with her head bowed, while Miss Martha sat bolt upright for most of her father’s peroration, although at one point she began coughing ominously into a large black handkerchief. Felix wondered if he would have to leave his seat and attend to her, but the fit passed. It annoyed him that she was there at all, and he resolved at the end of the service to tell her that she should admit to her illness or face the charge of wanton self-destruction. Remembering her stubbornness, he even contemplated threatening to tell her father without her consent. That would surely shake her into common sense.

  The final hymn sung and the blessing given, the congregation – restive from the cold, and stiff-limbed – now surged out of the west door to go and chatter in the sunlit churchyard and pay their respects to the Rector. As he saw the ladies out of their pew, Felix saw that Miss Martha was still in her place but bent double, her shoulders shaking.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and dashed across the aisle. He slipped in beside her, and seeing she was on the verge of passing out from the violence of the spasm, took her into his arms. She gazed up at him, gulping for air, blood staining her chin, and so exhausted did she seem from the attack that he felt she might expire on the spot.

  “What are you doing here? Why did you come?” he said, though of course he did not expect an answer. Instead he wiped her face clear as best he could with his own handkerchief.

  He signalled to Tolley who had followed him across the church.

  “The Rectory is only a short distance away,” he said. “I think we can carry her between us.”

  “Certainly,” said Tolley.

  She was shaking with cold now, and Felix pulled off his overcoat and wrapped it about her.

  The return to the Rectory was accomplished easily enough, for she was as light as a bird. But the house felt wretchedly damp and cold – the Rector clearly did not believe in the promiscuous lighting of fires in the depth of the winter, and there was only one servant about, the old woman Tab who had just come in from the service herself and stared at them as if they were madmen.

  “Make up the fire in here, will you!” Felix said. “And be quick about it!”

  They laid her on the couch in the sitting room where he had seen her before, and covered her with their own overcoats to get her warm. Felix gave her some brandy and began to rub her hands.

  “You have a fire going in the kitchen?” Tolley said, as Tab fiddled with kindling on the hearth, with agonizing slowness. “Show me where it is.”

  Tolley came back with a shovel of glowing ashes and then went away to get wood. He soon had a good blaze going.

  “Shall I rub her feet?”

  “Yes, please,” said Felix.

  In a while, the Rector appeared, still dressed in his surplice. He stood at the doorway, as if afraid to come in. At the same time, his daughter began to cough again and the nature of her illness was no longer a matter for dispute. The Rector now moved towards the couch, when Miss Jane Lacey, appearing suddenly, darted forward and pulled him back by his surplice. She then helped him remove it, before scurrying away with it, as if an immaculate surplice was the only thing that mattered in the world.

  ~

  A little later, when they had settled her, Felix found himself in the Rector’s study where the smell of damp was if anything more noticeable. Mr Lacey did not offer him a glass of wine or even a seat. There was a portrait on the wall of two girls and a young man, rather primitive in style, but the likeness was clear enough to identify the girls in white dresses as Martha and Jane.

  “My late wife painted that,” he said.

  “And that is your son?” ventured Felix.

  “Yes, that is John,” said the Rector. “He died twenty years ago now.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Felix.

  “He was saved from further sin by an early death,” said the Rector. “About my daughter, Mr Carswell – it is consumption, then?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Felix.

  “How long does she have?”

  “That is a difficult question. With careful nursing and a warm, cheerful environment, it is sometimes possible to delay the effects of the disease for many months, sometimes years. But that is only if the patient had a strong constitution in the first place.”

  “Martha has a strong constitution,” said the Rector. “This is unexpected.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “She has lied to us about it,” the Rector went on, “which is regrettable.”

  “Yes, it would have been far better if she had not concealed her symptoms. But I think she did it out of consideration to you, sir, and to your other daughter. She did not want to worry you.”

  “Yes, but she has still lied. There is a lesson in that. She ought to have said something long ago, and now she is –” He paused for a moment, bowed his head and said, “May God forgive her.”

  “I think it is a small offence, all in all,” Felix could not help saying. “And what matters now is that we make her as comfortable as possible so that she can enjoy what time she has left.”

  ~

  “I might as well have been speaking a foreign language to him,” said Felix as he walked back with Tolley. “Poor woman.”

  “I think her sister will nurse her well,” Tolley said.

  “Yes, so long as she has made sure that there are no blood
stains on her father’s surplices! I am afraid I nearly laughed out loud at that! But I could hear my mother telling me how much trouble it is to launder a surplice and I should not mock a poor soul in the midst of affliction. Talking of mothers, did you hear from yours? Do you know when your brother will be home?”

  “Yes, and Mr Harper said I would be free to go, thank you very much. You will be a hero in our house, Mr Carswell,” he said.

  “Carswell will do, if you please,” said Felix, opening the door. “And it is nothing. It will be chaos here with these theatricals. I shall be glad of the peace and quiet of the Infirmary. Do you want a glass of sherry? Or something stronger?”

  “Sherry, thank you. I looked for the famous Mr Truro in church this morning,” Tolley said, as they went into Felix’s study.

  “None of them were there. Given that his wife is about to give birth, it is probably just as well. We were busy enough as it is.”

  “I thought of becoming an architect, you know,” said Tolley, as Felix gave him a glass of sherry. “It might have been a more restful life.”

  “And what made you choose medicine?” said Felix, pouring himself a dram.

  “I ought to say it was a desire to relieve suffering, and that’s true enough, but it is also that the human body is such a fascinating engine. I wanted to know how it all works. Not that one ever can. I realised that soon enough.” He walked over to Felix’s workbench and looked down at his microscope. “Is this a Scott and Baxter?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I?”

  “Please.”

  “I wish I could afford one of these,” Tolley said, looking down the viewfinder. “Oh, that’s so sharp! Excellent!”

  “One day, perhaps,” said Felix, handing him a slide. “This is a nice one.”

  “I don’t think I have your luck,” said Tolley. “All the pretty girls I meet have less tin than I do, and that’s saying something... Oh, excuse me,” he added. “I didn’t mean to sound offensive, I mean you would have married her without a penny, that’s for sure. Who wouldn’t? She’s so lovely – I hope you don’t mind me saying so?” He broke off awkwardly and went back to the microscope, placing the slide on the stand. “Oh, that’s superb.” He whistled. “So sharp.”