Romancing the Past

by Darcy Burke

  “Mrs. Purse,” said Aunt Jenny, laying a delicate hand on Sophie’s elbow, “I’d like you to meet the second of my girls, Miss Sophia Roe. Sophie, the incomparable Mrs. Evelyn Purse.”

  “It will be my honor to dress you, Miss Roe. Now disrobe, if you please.” Mrs. Purse snapped her fingers. One of her assistants jumped to attention. “Tabitha, help Miss Roe to remove the hideous rags she’s wearing.”

  Tabitha scampered to obey, loosening laces and pulling pins. Soon Sophie was as naked as her cousin, only without the hat.

  “I’d like to put her in red,” suggested Aunt Jenny.

  “Aunt Jenny—” Sophie protested. She hadn’t agreed.

  “What do you think, Mrs. Purse?”

  The modiste planted her hands at her waist, leaning back a bit as she examined Sophie.

  “Red has always been your color, Sophie,” Bettina enthused. “Mark my words.”

  “Always?” Sophie laughed. “You haven’t been alive for long enough to say things like that, Betts.”

  The modiste surveyed Sophie with a critical eye. “The Dowager Duchess and Lady Honoria will be wearing black. Very fine gowns, but simple. No flounces. No adornments. You see why they needed me?” Mrs. Purse flicked one finger at her own skirt, the neat tucks at her waist that bloomed into a full skirt in the shape of an upside down tulip. “There are some few dressmakers in London who understand embellishment better than I, but none who understand simplicity half so well.”

  Sophie caught her aunt’s eye. Jenny nodded imperceptibly, confirming the modiste’s claims.

  “Miss Bettina and I have worked together to devise the perfect gown. She wishes to stand out, to be seen, and I wish that for her too.” Mrs. Purse ran her fingers lightly over the roll of blue silk that rested beside her sketchbook. “And so we chose a gown as colorful and elaborate as I could devise. Prussian blue to show off her eyes. Belgian lace to enhance her décolletage. Silk braid, gathered skirts, jewels on the bodice. Miss Bettina will be very beautiful, very hard to ignore.”

  “And mama will wear silver,” Bettina chimed in. “Just the most marvelous cloth that Mrs. Purse showed us. She’ll look like she ought to be locked up in a cabinet!”

  “Mrs. Roe will be quite magnificent,” allowed Mrs. Purse. She stepped up close to Sophie and ran a thumb across her scar. “I can work with this. The mark doesn’t trouble me at all. Claret silk, I believe. With a generous décolletage.” She dropped her hand from Sophie’s cheek and traced a line across Sophie’s bosom with her index finger, the nail cold and too sharp. “The sleeves elbow-length, billowing but not stiff, and the shoulders nude. We will be simple,” Mrs. Purse added. “The trick will be to eradicate any impression that you must distract from or compensate for this… tattoo. Your cousin”—the modiste waved at Bettina—“has nothing to fear from ruffles and flounces. For you, my dear, they are your worst enemy.”

  “What about my hair?” Sophie touched the nest of curls atop her head.

  The modiste stepped back and pursed her lips. “We could make a flower of silk and beads, star-shaped to echo the shape of the scar…”

  “No.” Sophie shook her head. “That’s going too far.”

  “Not at all, Miss Roe. It is necessary to your success. Don’t you see? We must own our defects, or they will own us.”

  “Are you dressing anyone else, Mrs. Purse?” Bettina asked. “Other than the ladies at High Bend, I mean.”

  “Absolutely not,” replied the modiste.

  “I should hate to be Laura Tidmarsh right now.” Bettina planted a palm on one slim hip and leaned into it, staring at herself in the mirror. “Can you imagine? Three months ago, she had the pick of the county. Now, all the best bachelors have turned their attention elsewhere.”

  “With her beauty, she needn’t worry,” Sophie replied.

  “Wouldn’t you have said the same about Lady Honoria, though?” Bettina asked. “She’s beautiful, well dowered, well connected. She could have had her pick of young men. But when she thought Peter was going to marry Miss Tidmarsh—”

  “She went a bit mad,” Sophie agreed. Peter had danced twice with Miss Tidmarsh, and Lady Honoria had thrown a very public tantrum. She’d had to be marched outside, kicking and scratching all the way. “Poor Peter. He couldn’t do a thing.”

  “Let’s not pretend he didn’t enjoy himself.” Bettina smirked. “One beautiful woman on his arm, and another eating her heart out for want of him.”

  “Peter admires Laura, but he doesn’t love her,” said Aunt Jenny. “That makes all the difference.”

  “Didn’t Uncle Malcolm say something about speaking to the old duke?” Sophie frowned, trying to remember. “After that horrible scene, he said he’d thought of a way to convince Clive to agree to the match.”

  “That’s right, dear.” Aunt Jenny nodded. “But you know how the old duke was. Nothing could move him.”

  “But Peter never proposed to Miss Tidmarsh,” Sophie persisted. “He held off.”

  “How do you forget these things, Sophie?” Bettina asked. “Papa told Peter to wait. He said he’d come up with a plan. But then Clive died, so he never had the chance to carry it out.”

  Her uncle had come up with a plan—and then Clive had died.

  Sophie felt a chill.

  It really didn’t make sense. Clive had been overjoyed when Peter began to court Laura Tidmarsh. If he’d been patient, Peter would have married another woman. Honoria would have been forced to look elsewhere.

  Could he have been in the grip of a despair so strong that he couldn’t bear to stay alive for another season? He’d been an unhappy man, Sophie knew that. Tormented, even. But never impatient.

  No. Clive hadn’t killed himself. It felt good to admit that to herself, to exonerate him. It felt right.

  But did that make her uncle a murderer?

  §

  Julian watched the last drop of amber liquid fall from the crystal decanter into his glass with what he considered admirable sangfroid. His hand trembled as he set the decanter down, and it trembled more when he took hold of the glass and carried it to his lips. This, he told himself derisively, is the worst sort of cliché, but that didn’t stop him from downing the whole thing in a single, long swallow or shouting when he heard the shuffle of footsteps outside his door.

  A young footman opened the door and peeked inside. “Your Grace?”

  “Find me something else to drink,” Julian ordered, flicking his finger against the crystal decanter and making it ring.

  The footman disappeared, clicking the door shut, and Julian slouched back into his chair, pulled up close to the fire. He’d retreated to his bedroom, where he stood the smallest chance of being disturbed, and then he’d commenced to drink.

  Unfortunately, all the alcohol in the world couldn’t make him forget.

  The fireplace swayed. His head hung heavy, a burden on his feeble neck. His stomach had gone sour, his limbs turned clumsy. He hated being drunk. The sensation of it, the inevitable regrets. What a piss-poor hobby.

  The door opened and the footman scurried back in, carrying a dusty, dark-brown bottle of irregular shape. Julian looked on idly as the footman pulled hard at the corkscrew, sweaty and nervous.

  “What have you brought?” Not that Julian cared. It was the sort of thing he’d usually say to put someone at ease—start a conversation, coax the nerves away. A habit, like scratching his nose.

  “Brandy bitters, Your Grace. Everything else is locked up, and I didn’t want to wake the butler—”

  Didn’t want to wake the butler? Julian tried to raise a single eyebrow, to express his extreme displeasure. The footman blundered on rather than quailing, leading Julian to conclude that alcohol had begun to erode his muscle control.

  “—But the housekeeper brews the brandy herself, in such quantity that we find stashes of it in all sorts of odd locations. This one’s from the root cellar, where I could just grab a bottle and pop it on up to you. The old duke loved it. Drank it all
the time.”

  “Leave the bottle and go,” Julian slurred.

  Julian didn’t pour himself a new glass until after the young footman made his exit, then made up for the long wait by filling his tumbler to the brim. Brandy. Ought to be nice and strong, at least.

  He raised the tumbler to his mouth, inhaling in the aroma as his lower lip sealed to the glass. Spices. Orange peel, cinnamon, cloves. Bitter almond.

  Julian froze, the glass tipped up to his mouth. Cyanide? Had Clive’s killer plotted a new crime, selected Julian as his next victim?

  No. Of course not. He’d watched the footman uncork the bottle. Julian struggled to shape his fogged, disordered thoughts into a logical sequence.

  Not poison. It couldn’t be poison—unless the housekeeper had added cyanide to all her bottles, which seemed the worst sort of idea, or she’d sequestered the poisoned bottles in the root cellar, not realizing that a hapless footman, afraid of waking his superiors, might grab one in the middle of the night.

  Or maybe Clive the Ninth simply had a taste for bitters. That was more likely than a nefarious housekeeper, wasn’t it?

  Julian touched the liquid with his tongue. He could think of at least one way to find out.

  He searched out the nearest clock and took note of the hour—3:15 am—raised the glass to the empty room and muttered, as snidely as he could manage, “To Sophie,” before draining half the volume in a single, long swallow.

  He slammed the glass down on the side table hard enough to slosh liquid over his fingers, which he proceeded to lace across his chest, satisfied that his experiment was underway.

  His lids felt heavy. His stomach would prefer not to hold so much strong liquor at once. Drinking:still a piss-poor hobby, even with this added soupçon of adventure.

  Twenty minutes passed with no ill effects. Of course not—he’d watched the footman open the bottle right in front of him. Wait. No. He’d already worked that out. It was the housekeeper he’d been afraid of. But no longer; if she’d tampered with the bottle before sealing it, he’d know by now.

  Unless she’d tampered with the bottles that weren’t in the root cellar.

  But that was the wrong question. What was the right one?

  Julian reeled back through his thoughts, looking for the one that mattered, and then remembered. He raised his palm to his face. Breathed out through his mouth, then in through his nose.

  He smelled bitter almond.

  What did that mean? Nothing. It meant nothing. Julian closed his eyes and sighed, wearied by the effort it took to think. That wasn’t right either.

  He eyed the brandy bitters, took another sloppy sip. He’d make sense of it all in the morning.

  Chapter 10

  Hunger roused Julian from the sour-smelling cave of his canopied bed sometime around noon, and another hour or two passed before he dressed and shaved. He slunk through the corridors of High Bend, hugging shadows so the dim, watery light that reached the courtyard couldn’t stab his eyes.

  He’d lived for years in bachelor rooms where he never had to worry if a fresh-faced young miss like Lady Honoria would float past just at the moment when his throbbing head urged him to snarl and snap, nor dodge dowager duchesses with a brimming supply of knowing looks.

  Inconsequence, he was realizing, had provided him with certain luxuries—such as indulging a foul temper, or a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, Julian understood his duty in this case. He ought to swallow his mood, to spare the people over whose lives he held authority any distress, but it chafed, like new clothes he’d paid too much for and wouldn’t enjoy wearing.

  He’d almost reached the breakfast room when the Earl of Kingston’s strange, droopy-sibilant accents floated through the open doors of the library, just as Julian had been about to pass in front of it.

  “You have the breasts of a twenty-year-old, Gloria,” he murmured. “Hard as unripe peaches.”

  “Then we have something in common,” drawled the Dowager. “As you’ve retained the filthy mouth of a twenty-year-old.”

  Their voices dropped to a murmur that Julian, blessedly, couldn’t decipher—but he had no trouble interpreting the sharp cracking noise that followed. Whatever Kingston had whispered, it had provoked a slap.

  Julian backed, slowly, into the chill, empty gallery from whence he’d come.

  “Do that again, darling,” said Kingston. “Go on. Give me a reason to pack my things and leave Derbyshire. You know I’m dying to.”

  Julian took another slow step, alert to the scratching sound his leather soles made against the hard stone.

  “You’ve been in a black mood ever since you arrived,” murmured the Dowager Duchess. “Something you’d like to talk about? We could have a little heart to heart.”

  Julian took another step away from the couple. He was more familiar than he wanted to be with these sorts of exchanges—verbal fencing matches marking occasions when it was safer to draw blood than trade endearments.

  He’d engaged in his fair share of those over the past few days, hadn’t he?

  Julian froze. Shame cut through his misery, sweeping aside his aches and pains. The late night, the passing footman, the dusty bottle. The scent of bitter almond on his unpoisoned breath.

  “Oh, I was just wondering about your little house on Park Lane,” said Kingston. “When did you buy it—three months ago? How curious that you should decide to strike out on your own on the eve of your husband’s death.”

  And that revelation shook Julian out of his stupor. Not because Kingston had brought up some terrible secret; the Dowager Duchess had visited London for the express purpose of buying property and they’d crossed paths once or twice during her stay. The purchase had provoked a fair bit of gossip, as her still-living husband owned a townhouse only a few blocks away.

  He hadn’t found the purchase damning because he’d dismissed the Dowager Duchess as a suspect. She couldn’t have forged the note, so her suspicious activities hadn’t concerned him.

  But last night had changed everything.

  He took another careful step back, finally judged the distance sufficient to allow a proper retreat. He sought the safety of his study, pausing in the doorway. Empty. Safe. Silent. Deliberately, holding his thoughts in stasis so that he couldn’t flinch, Julian stepped inside, reached for the door, and slammed it on his hand.

  Pain shot up his arm. Pure, unanswerable, clarifying. Why had he never tried that before? Julian cradled it to his chest—he wondered if he’d broken something; it only took a few seconds for his hand to feel like a swelling mound of ground meat—and slumped into a waiting settee.

  The most incriminating evidence against Sophie—the coroner’s analysis, the tin of cyanide in Sophie’s workroom—the proof that Julian had placed in a balance against all her words, had turned out to be no proof at all.

  Yet he’d seized hold of that “proof” with both hands. He had been eager to believe her guilty.

  Why?

  Because he hadn’t stopped loving her. Because she had stopped loving him.

  That was all. He’d behaved like a cur, and she’d treated him just as he deserved.

  He knew better. Wasn’t that his greatest strength of character? He could be practical, objective… and underhanded. He could ignore all the important parts of himself: his conscience, his pride, his heart. He could live without sympathy or praise; and didn’t the holy people of the world call that humility?

  Just so long as he got what he wanted in the end.

  Of course, he’d never had what he wanted from Sophie. He’d tried and tried, but he could never make her love him.

  Maybe she’d been listening to her heart all along, just as he’d been listening to his. Only hers had said never, while his had said forever—and that, he knew, was the difficulty inherent in love. It came unbidden; it outstayed its welcome; and it might never be reciprocated.

  He took a deep breath. His hand throbbed, the pain blossoming fully, and he palpated it to see if he�
��d broken anything. The bones, at least, were all in their usual places.

  What a stupid thing to do.

  Well. No time like the present to cast off lunacy and return to the land of reason. What had he learned today?

  The first lesson: he had to let Sophie go. He had to burn down the memory palaces he’d created as shrines to her. He had to be a gentleman, for once, and leave her in peace—now and forever.

  After drinking the bitters, he saw Sophie’s stubbornness in a new light. She’d stuck to her story despite his accusations. She’d stuck to it against all logic and any sense of self-preservation. When he questioned her, she’d insisted that she’d told him the truth, and that truth should be enough.

  He’d discounted everything she said. He’d bullied her into dredging up painful memories, and then he’d refused to listen.

  He didn’t do the right thing very often—he’d hate to make a habit of it—but in this one case, he’d make an exception. He’d forget he’d discovered even the slightest irregularity in Clive the Ninth’s death. He’d pack up his things and depart for London, never to see or hear from Sophie again.

  Love makes fools of us all, he soothed himself, and cradled his aching hand.

  §

  The next morning, Sophie asked for permission to take the gig up to High Bend. Nobody in the family had any use for open-air vehicles this early in the season, so even her uncle couldn’t protest, and it was small enough to drive herself.

  The horse pulled against the wind while she crouched on the bench, crop in hand, her fingers frozen inside her warmest gloves. When she arrived, a liveried manservant took her reins while she approached the front entrance, huge arched doors of iron-bound oak planks. Somewhere along the way, a human-sized door had been cut into one twelve-foot-tall panel for daily use.

  “Is His Grace receiving visitors?” Sophie asked the butler.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Roe. He won’t see you.”