A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (34 page)

"I
have
not
!" he yelped, nettled, and Rupert's lean, dark face broke
into a slow grin.

"I
hoped you'd say that."

61

She
stood watching the straight tail of his barley-pale hair, so distinctive
against all those monstrous curled periwigs, until he was out of sight.

He
could not mean it, of course. He could not mean that she must go straight home,
for she had to tell Chas Fairmantle, or burst - well, apart from anything else,
she had to let him know that he might start to noise it abroad that
someone
had made a fatal mistake, and he was a friend, and it would make him happy to
know that
his
friend was exonerated. And so as soon as he was gone from
her sight, she caught Deb, and they escaped to Birstall House - unannounced,
unceremoniously, but with tidings of great joy.

But
it didn't make him happy. It made him very angry, and that was a thing she had
never seen before, and it scared her a little, as she stood in his drawing
room. She was not dressed for formal visiting, and she was flushed and sweaty
and her hair was coming a little unpinned, and she only had Deb for company,
but that was how it was, in Essex - and, she presumed, how it was in
Buckinghamshire: if you had an errand, or a matter of some import that you must
tell a neighbour, you did not stand on ceremony for the doing of it, but went,
like a person of sense. But then he was not dressed for formal visiting,
either, but was in his undress, wearing an embroidered cap over his
close-polled head and a long, padded chamber robe lined with pink and white
striped satin.

"Well,
that is not how it is in London, madam!" he snapped at her, "and the
sooner you realise that the better it will be, for you draw attention to
yourself!"

"But
this is important!" she snapped back at him, and he did not laugh, his
face did not soften the way it usually did.

"Indeed,
and you not bringing the eye of half the world to my threshold is important,
madam, I have business to transact!" And then his face softened, and he
looked down, looking almost ashamed of his outburst. "I'm sorry, Mistress
Russell, but you have been much on my mind, lately, and I can help you no
further, I think."

"But
Chas -"

"No,
dear, I mustn't. And I think I must be Master Fairmantle, or Lord Birstall,
from now on."

"But
I don't -"

"I
know you don't, dear. And that's why it must be." He sighed, and gave her
a rueful smile. "Oh, there, now, you're looking at me like a kicked puppy,
and that breaks my heart. Come. Sit down, and - how does that old poem go, now?
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part
. We are, I hope, still
friends?"

"I
do not understand," she said firmly. "Should we not be?"

He
rang the little bell over the mantelpiece, his pink face reflected drooping in
the big gilt mirror there.

"I
imagine I should call for a dish of tea, shouldn't I? Or something fashionable?
But you, my little country mouse, would like a mug of warmed ale, or a similar
rustic pleasure, I imagine. You never really have taken to the metropolis, have
you?"

"I
should like to try tea," she said. And then, stiffly, "But not if it
is any trouble to you.
My lord."

He
gave the order for it. He was right, of course, and she would have preferred
ale: her mother's, for preference, and warm, and a little spiced, and buttered.
Not that she was going to tell
Lord Birstall
why her stomach was in need
of settling, not if he was minded to cast their friendship aside. Though she
might have told Chas, once. And tea, to be fair, was not that marvellous, but
she sipped it politely, from its shallow dish, fragile as a thrush’s eggshell.
"We have dishes like this at home," she said coolly, in case he
thought she was so much of a country mouse she did not even know real China
porcelain when she saw it. "They were a wedding gift."

"Well,
you have some very generous friends." He smiled, and sat down on one of
the stiff, upholstered chairs opposite her. "Now, dear. I have cudgelled
my poor brains to think of a way round this, but I am glad you have decided to
make an informal call - a
very
informal call, dear," he said
reprovingly, taking in her mud-splattered skirts and pattens, "it saves me
the trouble of attending on you. A thing I should rather not do, I fear."

"What
have I done?" Her voice sounded like a hurt child's, and she tossed her
head, wanting to look as if she did not care.

"You
have done
nothing, bless you. Oh, dear, what a tangle. And I had grown so fond of you,
dear. Well. Mistress Russell, you should never have married that man," he
said, and his lips pursed into a little pink drawstring of disapproval.

"I
beg your pardon!"

"Well.
You did, you have, and there it is, we have made our beds and we must lie on
them. I’m sure he is a sweetheart, madam, in his way. But you should never have
married him."

Thomazine
surged to her feet, and did not care that the fragile dish slopped its fragrant
contents over her skirts. "I will thank you not to speak of my husband
so!"

"Oh,
sit down, madam. I'm sorry, Mistress Russell, I am a member of Parliament, and
I am, I flatter myself, a man of some standing in society, and I cannot
continue to lend countenance to a murderer. No matter how fond I may be of his
wife."

She
wondered if this was how it felt to faint - not a thing she had ever done in
her healthy life, but suddenly it felt as if her head were as empty as a
bubble, all her skin shrinking cold on her bones -

And
then she was sitting down again, with no idea how she got there, and Fairmantle
was eyeing her anxiously, as if she might do something unpredictable any
minute. "Oh my poor girl - my poor girl I did not mean - oh dear - "

"He
is not a murderer," she said, and all the stiffness came out of her
suddenly, like a starched cap dropped in a puddle, and her eyes and her nose
began to run simultaneously. "He is not, Chas, he's
not
, and you
know he's not! And that's what I came to tell you, he isn't, he isn't, he can't
be -"

He
did not touch her. "Thomazine -"

"He
did not hurt that poor man, he did not hurt anybody," she sobbed,
"and we can prove that he did not, there is a doctor, a man in the Royal
Society, he said he could prove it, he had evidence, real proof that could not
be argued - Thankful is turning it over to the authorities even as we speak, to
investigate properly, to clear his name once and for all  -"

He
hushed her, gently, as you might a fractious child. "I know he did not,
dear. I know he did not, and he could not. But Thomazine - oh, my poor girl -
this is what I have agonised over, dear. He
did
kill his sister."

And
she said nothing, for she had no answer to that, she felt as if all the air and
all the words had been punched out of her, and her fingers crept all
involuntary to her wedding ring. She saw his throat move as if he choked a
little on something.

"I
have known him - well, all our lives, you see, and he was always - I pitied
him, poor boy that he was, I pity him still, do not think for one minute that
this is easy. She - his sister - you know she was older than he? That she had
the care of him since he was a small, a very small, boy. Barely lisping his
first prayers, the poor mite. She was - she was zealous, I think you know. He
has said. She was more zealous than perhaps is - natural, or normal, for a
woman to be. And she hurt him."

Thomazine
could not breathe. She could only stare until her eyes felt dry as sand.

"She
hurt him very badly, dear. Some people might say she tortured him, poor little
mite. And we all knew of it, everyone knew that she was cruel to him, that she
- she made him a little mad, I think. More than a little. There is only so much
torment a little boy might bear, you see, before he might - well. He thought,
in the end, that he deserved it. That he was a bad, horrible, worthless little
boy, and that he did not deserve to be loved. I was at school with him, dear. I
grew up with him. I wanted to be his friend -" and rather horribly,
Fairmantle's eyes were filling with tears, too, and his hands were trembling,
"you have no idea how much I wanted to befriend him, the poor lost soul, but
he would never
let
me. Oh, Thomazine, he was so lonely, you have no
idea, he would stand watching us at play, and he did not know - he would just
stand, staring at us, with those dreadful greedy eyes, and we would never let
him in, and I am so, so sorry: I am sorrier than you could ever imagine, that
we did not let him be one of us, for he would have grown up with - "

He
squeezed her hand very tight, and gulped. "You know all this, dear, I
think. He grew up a very sad, and very lonely, little boy, with no more idea of
loving than a beast of the field. I probably don't know most of what she did to
him. He never told. He doesn't, does he? And - oh, Thomazine, I am so sorry.
They hated each other at the end, and he killed her, so that she could not
carry on hurting him. He was frightened. I think he has always been frightened.
That she would tell you what a bad, horrible, worthless child he had been, and
what a worthless man he was, and - " he seemed to shrink a little,
"that you would not care for him, any more. I cannot blame him, dear, for
if she had been my sister I should have killed her years ago. She was a
dreadful woman, and I cannot blame him for it, but -"

He
blinked at her, wet-eyed, and squeezed her hand again. "I think we need a
drink, dear.
Not
tea. For myself, I think I stand in need of a
restorative."

And
stood up, and took a turn about the room, stopping in front of her so that when
she raised her head her eyes were on a level with the silver filigree buttons
on his straining waistcoat. "You must know that he doesn't love you, don't
you? He would, if he could – poor soul, he wants nothing more than to be – to
be like other men, but she took all that away from him. He feigns it, because
of all things he has learned how to dissemble - to appear like any other, as if
he thinks and feels just like any of us, but he doesn't, Thomazine, he
can't
.
He doesn’t know how to. And it doesn't matter how much you love him, because it
can't be enough. It can never be enough. Like pouring water into a hole, dear -
and I've tried, God knows I have tried, to stand his friend, but he
will not
let me
. "

Her
face felt stiff, and numb, as if it was made of marble. She had to remember how
to move her lips, her tongue. "I." The oddest shrinking feeling about
her bones, a cold, prickling sensation. "I know it. I know of her. She
-"

Fly
Coventry had not broken him.
She had not.
Thomazine would not have it
so.

"How
can it be enough, Thomazine?" he said sadly. "You deserve better than
a man who will not love you. He will not
ever
love you. He has not the
capacity."

It
would be enough
.
Because she was a daughter of blood and fire, and born when the world was
turned upside down, and she did not retreat. Not ever. It did not have to be a
storybook love. She'd never took much to Sir Lancelot anyway. She lifted her
head and looked squarely into Charles Fairmantle's moist, doggy eyes, and she
said, "He will. He does. That will be his revenge, sir. To be loved."
- and she
almost
believed it.

"You
will stand by him?"

"Always,"
she said, and it was starting to come easier. It was someone else's voice
coming out of her mouth, but they were her thoughts, at least.

He
nodded. "I am fond of you, Thomazine. Were I not - did I not think we
were, truly, friends - I would not tell you this. I feel sorry for Thankful, I
feel dreadful that I knew what was done to him as a child and I did nothing,
but it must stop. I cannot stand by and allow him to continue. I can't. I -
well, if you had been unhappy, if he had treated you ill I should have helped,
I would have given you money, found you a place, but -"

"I
am well content, my lord. My husband -"

"Thomazine,
I have spent the last quarter-hour very delicately trying not to tell you, and
since you are determined to stay set on your misguided course; if you will have
it in plain linen, mistress, if you persist in being obtuse, I will give it to
you in plain words - your husband is a spy for the Dutch, my lady,” he said
stiffly, and she bridled.

“He
is not –“

"Will
you
listen
to me! Do you understand nothing of what I've been telling
you?
That woman
twisted him, she warped his loyalties, his honour, his
–“

"That
is not true!" she shouted back.

"Is
it not, madam!
Is it not
! Then you will not mind, my lady, if I pass
what
I
know to the authorities, either, will you? About how a retired
Army officer on half pay might afford silks, and porcelains, and all manner of
pretty things from his
friends
in Europe - he has never changed,
Thomazine, can you not see that? He has never changed, and he
will
never
change, he is exactly the same damnable anarchist he was twenty years
ago!"
His face had grown red, and he was leaning down into her face, but she wasn't
afraid of him.