The Dark Enquiry (17 page)

I tried to look suitably contrite. “I do apologise, Father. I had no idea there was a reporter following me. I was only trying to assist Brisbane.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it as soon as the words came out of my mouth. I nearly bit my own tongue with wishing to call them back, but there was no help for it.

Father swung round to Brisbane, “And as for you—”

Brisbane rose with his customary indolent grace. “With all due respect, your lordship, this interview is finished. Julia is your daughter, and you have a father’s care for her, and that is why I permitted you to have your say. I am under no such obligation for myself. Come, Julia.”

“If it were not for you, my daughter would not be the subject of scandal!” he roared.

“Father, really, Brisbane didn’t mean—”

“No,” Brisbane cut in smoothly, “you were content for her to moulder away in a marriage to a man who contemplated violence against her.”

Father went suddenly quite white, and then burst out. “How dare you throw Edward Grey at my feet! I did not know what he truly was.”

“Brisbane, that’s quite enough. Father did not mean—”

I turned from one to the other, watching helplessly as they advanced towards each other, these two men whom I had loved better than any in all the world, tearing at each other like animals.

Father raised a hand, and his finger shook as he pointed to the garden door. “Get out. Leave my house and do not ever come back. You have already cost me three of my children. I will give you no more.”

Brisbane turned on his heel and walked to the garden door, departing in perfect silence. He never once turned to see if I would follow him, but then there was never a question that I would.

I looked at my father and spread my hands helplessly. “I do not know if I can mend this.”

He said nothing, and I did not wait for him to do so.

Just then, Auld Lachy poked his head out of his hut. “You are a singularly histrionic family,” he pronounced. “I blame aristocratic inbreeding. Only an inbred would want a fernery.”

Father turned to blast him as I ran after Brisbane. I caught up to him just as he reached the front door, grabbing his hand. He did not look at me, but when he took mine, he crushed it so hard that I felt the marks of my rings for some days after.

“You ought not to have said such things,” I told him when we had gained the relative privacy of the carriage. Morag turned her face to the window and pretended not to listen, but I could see she had her ears out on stalks, collecting every word.

“He ought to have protected you from that marriage,” Brisbane said tightly.

“Father did not know. None of us did. Do you think I would have married Edward had I known what he would become?” I demanded. “It was his illness made him so.”

“And the minute he so much as looked at you with violence in his mind, your father should have taken you home. It was his duty.”

“I never told him,” I confessed.

Brisbane swung his head round to pin me with a glance. “Never?”

“Not in so many words. I was ashamed. I did not know how to speak of it, to anyone. Father knew there was trouble between us, but he did not know the nature of it.”

“He should have made it his business to discover it,” Brisbane said savagely, and I realised how shatteringly angry he was still.

I ventured an unspeakable question. “Are you so angry with Father for not protecting me then because you feel you have failed to protect me now?”

The gaze he settled upon me was so baleful that I felt an instant sympathy with the victims of Medusa. Being turned to stone would have been a relief in that moment, but I knew I had struck a nerve, and so did Brisbane.

“Do not ask me that again,” he warned. “Besides, you will have no more chances to be unprotected. From this moment on, you do not stir a foot outside our house but that I am with you.”

I stared at him. “Brisbane, you cannot mean that.”

“Try me.”

That evening, Brisbane took me to Portia’s, and I counted myself fortunate for even that small concession. He had business to attend to, but he was magnanimous enough to agree that I might dine at my sister’s provided he accompany me there and I promised not to leave the house until he collected me.

“What if the house catches fire?” I demanded. “I shall have to leave it then.”

The grinding of his teeth was the only response, and I could not blame him. It was a childish remark and unworthy of me, but I put it down to the distress of being at odds with Father with whom I had seldom, if ever, seriously quarrelled. I was deeply upset that he had not only taken my own peccadillo so much to heart but that he blamed Brisbane for it. The question of how to reconcile two such stubborn and proud men occupied me for the better part of the day, and when I was not pondering that, I was wondering why Brisbane’s temper had not fully erupted. The answer finally occurred to me when we were in the carriage on the way to Portia’s.

“I know you spared me a lecture because you know how wretched I feel after that scene with Father. It was very kind of you. I will be better tomorrow,” I promised. “You can rail at me then.”

He handed me his handkerchief and—to my astonishment—gathered me close. “Your chin is wobbling. It was a nice effort, though.”

“I really am trying to be very strong, but Father and I have never fought like that.” I gave a hard sniff, dabbing at my eyes.

“It will come right in the end.”

“Will you scold me then?” I asked in a still, small voice. Beneath my cheek, I felt his chest rise and fall in a deep sigh.

“No. It was my own fault for not keeping a better eye upon you. You are curious as a monkey and brave as a lancer and the combination may well be the death of me.”

I punched him lightly upon the thigh. “I cannot like being compared to a monkey. But a lancer is rather flattering. Thank you.”

I reached up to press a kiss to his cheek. “Do not be too angry with Father. He did not mean it, not really.”

“Angry? I feel rather sorry for him. We are kindred spirits,” he observed with a wry twist of his mouth. “How so?”

“We both of us suffer because you will not understand how utterly essential you are to our happiness.”

I stared at him, but he was looking out the carriage window to the darkened streets. “You take risks,” he went on in a tight voice, “unacceptable risks, and threats and warnings will not dissuade you. We cannot protect you from yourself, and that is the greatest danger.”

“I do not mean to be difficult,” I protested.

He gave a short, dry laugh. “I think you honestly believe that. But you have battered down the last of my defences, my dear. I have nothing left to hold you at bay. So you must prepare yourself. In the coming days, you will learn things you would rather not, things from which I cannot shield you any longer.”

“Brisbane, you’re frightening me.”

“Good,” he responded grimly. “It is the fear that will keep you alive.” There was no time to ask more. We had arrived.

Brisbane declined to eat with us, pleading an engagement related to the ending of the Richmond case, but Plum appeared just in time for the fish course and I fixed him with a suspicious eye.

“Oughtn’t you to be with Brisbane, tying up the loose ends in Richmond?”

“Brisbane said he could settle Richmond alone,” he said, his expression a study in blandness.

“Feathers. He sent you to watch over me.”

Plum cocked his fez to a more rakish angle. “What if he did? It gave me a chance to dine with my two favourite sisters. Ooh, is that crab?”

He applied himself to the fish course and we talked of various things for the rest of the meal. Or rather, Portia talked—almost entirely about the baby—and Plum and I listened.

After the sweet course was cleared, we withdrew to the drawing room for tea and spirits, and Nanny Stone appeared, dressed in severe black bombazine and carrying the infant Jane.

“It is time, my lady,” she said to Portia. She settled Jane the Younger into Portia’s lap and took herself off with an air of satisfaction.

“What was all that about?” Plum asked.

Portia primmed her mouth. “Nanny Stone has apparently been chatting with the other nannies in the park. She has discovered that it is customary to have one evening off per fortnight and has decided to take it. And Sunday afternoons.”

“Good God, don’t tell me the nannies of London are
organising,
” Plum put in waggishly. “Do you think they will strike like the dockworkers?”

I rolled my eyes at Plum. “Those poor fellows have only just gone back to work. It is far too soon to jest about it.” The dockworkers had spent five weeks on strike in order to protest their abhorrent working conditions. Before them had been the gasworkers and before them the match-girls. It seemed all of London was protesting something, and I for one seldom read the accounts in the newspapers anymore. Their stories were simply too awful to contemplate, and I knew Portia felt the same.

“Of course the nannies are not organising,” Portia snapped. “It is simply that Nanny Stone is entitled to some private time and we mutually decided that she should be employed under the same terms as other nannies.”

It was unlike Portia to be so prickly, and as I stared at her furrowing brow, a terrible suspicion began to creep over me.

“Portia, dearest, have you ever actually been alone with the baby before?”

She muttered something unintelligible and I poked at her knee.

“Very well! No. I have never actually been alone with her. I do not know what the trouble is. I adore her, of course. I am her mother. But infants are difficult and I am not entirely certain of what needs be done when.”

“Of course not,” I soothed. “We all know how much you adore her. That is not even a matter for discussion. But most mothers have many months to prepare for motherhood. Yours was a more sudden attachment.”

“Precisely,” she said, her brow relaxing a little. The child squirmed in her arms, and Portia slid her smallest finger into the baby’s mouth. Jane the Younger began to suckle greedily.

“I know it looks awful, but she’s bringing out a tooth,” Portia apologised. “She likes it when I rub at her gums.”

“See there? You do know how to take care of her. Doesn’t she, Plum?” I demanded, fixing him with a piercing stare.

“What? Erm, yes, of course. Lovely mother, one of the best,” he put in hastily.

“There now. Even Plum sees it. And we will be here this evening should you need moral support,” I promised.

Portia had just shot me a grateful smile when the door fairly flew back on its hinges to reveal our youngest brother, Valerius. He entered like a whirlwind, tossing off his overcoat and kissing his sisters. He gave a nod to Plum and threw himself onto a sofa.

“Julia, what the devil did you do to set Father off? I went to dine with him and he was savaging a plate of ortolans.”

One could always tell the state of Father’s temper by his table manners. If he was feeling upset, he liked nothing better than to apply himself to something he could tear into rather brutally—something like a plate of ortolans. I felt a pang of pity for the little songbirds, then reminded myself better them than me.

“I am surprised you have not heard the full story,” I said, plucking at an arrangement of flowers upon the low table.

“Julia has gone and got herself in the newspaper,” Portia supplied.

Val’s eyebrows rose. “Really? I don’t think one of the March ladies has done that since Aunt Tamora rode her horse into the House of Lords as a protest against fox-hunting.”

I pulled a face at him. “Don’t be absurd. Bee was written up in every paper in London when she was caught smoking at a garden party at Buckingham Palace with the Earl of Bowes-Ruthven’s heir.” We fell silent a moment, musing on our second-eldest sister and her eventful coming-out. The queen had not been at all amused, and Bee had found herself struck from every guest list in society, which had rather been the point. She was already besotted with a reclusive Arthurian scholar and had made up her mind to avoid the formality of a season by becoming notorious at the first possible opportunity.

“Didn’t Father disinherit her for that?” Val asked. He had still been in the nursery when Bee achieved her aims and scarcely remembered her. Her marriage had taken her off to Cornwall and she seldom came to town.

“Yes, but only until he realised Bowes-Ruthven’s heir had tried something most ungentlemanly behind the potted palms. Then Father was outraged Bee hadn’t struck the fellow,” Portia supplied.

“It was the talk of the season, as I recall,” Plum went on. “Father challenged the pup to a duel. The queen got wind of it and boxed Father’s ears for even suggesting it. She’s quite fond of the old goat. Didn’t they share a drawing master when they were children or some such?”

“Dancing master,” I corrected.

We were all laughing by then, imagining our scapegrace elderly father learning to waltz with the future queen in his arms. In spite of her reputation for primness, the queen did appreciate a good joke, and she always said that Hector March was the liveliest boy she ever knew. She ordered the Bowes-Ruthven heir to apologise and the matter was settled without bloodshed after Father made a tremendous donation to one of her pet charities. It had been quite the scandal at the time, and I suppressed a pang of irritation that what was sauce for the goose was so seldom sauce for the gander, even in our outrageous family.

“This will pass,” Portia assured me, correctly assessing my mood.

“Of course it will,” Plum added. “You’re just feeling gloomy because you are Father’s favourite and you aren’t accustomed to feeling the full weight of his displeasure.”

“I am not his favourite!” I protested. “If he has a favourite, it is Val. Val is the baby, and besides, none of the rest of us would have got our way if we had wanted to study medicine. Clearly Val is his pet.”

Val spluttered into his cup of tea. “I most certainly am not. He cut me off four times and I still am not permitted to live at March House. He hates that I make my livelihood with my own two hands as much as he hates the fact that Bellmont has ended up a Tory. At least I know our eldest brother is no competition for the title of favourite,” he jested.

The remark cut too near the bone. Without thinking, I leapt to his defence. “Bellmont is not so awful. He has given Adelaide and the children a very comfortable home for these many years. His constituency are very fond of him, too. They have returned him every election since he was twenty-two. He has been in service to them and to his country for the whole of his adult life, with little thanks and less affection. We have made him the butt of our jokes and sniggered at him behind his back, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”

I broke off to find my siblings staring at me in astonishment. Plum had paused with a muffin halfway to his mouth, Portia was open-mouthed, and even Jane the Younger was regarding me with something akin to reproach.

“Good God, Julia, it was just a joke. And since when have you been such a devotee of Bellmont’s? He used to play your nerves as much as anyone’s,” Val managed.

“He still does,” I admitted, smoothing my skirts. “It’s just that we so often make him the butt of our jests that I think we forget he does have some good qualities.” I broke off again. I had said too much already, and any more of this spirited rebuttal would only lead to further questions. I had surprised myself. Bellmont had irritated me so thoroughly and so often that I did not realise I harboured such affection for him. I wondered if it would pass.

I hurried on. “But perhaps you are right, Val. You are not Father’s favourite. I think it must be Plum. I would lay money upon it.”

Plum snorted. “I have done nothing with my life except execute some painfully mediocre art and take up employment as an enquiry agent. I am in his black books as much as Julia at present. No, his favourite is most certainly Portia.”

Portia blinked. “You must be joking. He fussed at me for quite quarter of an hour last week because I would not sell him my cow. Julia is decidedly the favourite.”

“But you have the baby,” I retorted. It was a palpable hit. Father doted upon all of his grandchildren, showing not a particle of difference in his affections for Portia’s adopted daughter as he did for those born to his own children. As if on cue, Jane the Younger began to stretch and fuss a little.

“Poor little mite,” Plum said. “Does she need to be dandled on Uncle Plummy’s knee?” Plum’s devotion to babies was a trifle unnerving. He was the one uncle who always delighted in them as infants, proving surprisingly adept at soothing tempers and bringing up wind. But his attentions were short-lived. Once they were able to walk and eat meat, he lost interest entirely. Fortunately, with so many sisters and sisters-in-law constantly producing children, there was never a shortage of wee ones for him to cuddle.

Portia passed the baby to Plum, who cradled her expertly, and we spent a very pleasant half an hour engaged in domesticity. Portia poured out tea and Val toasted muffins upon the hearth while I slathered them in butter and handed them round. Plum amused the baby with verses of nonsense, calling forth delighted coos of laughter, and for that short while, I forgot Madame and the séance and the scandal I had wrought with my own two hands.

Just as I rang for more muffins there was a commotion in the hall, and the four of us turned expectant eyes towards the door. A moment of breathless silence, and then the door opened to reveal a thoroughly unexpected sight.

“Lady Felicity!” I cried.

She stood, hesitating in the doorway, turning appealing eyes to Portia.

“I am so sorry to intrude. I did not know where else to go.”

Plum made to stand and suddenly realised he was still holding the infant Jane.

“Oh, do not disturb yourself!” she said, shrinking back a little. She was very clearly distressed, and it was equally apparent that whatever trouble beset her had come quickly. She was dressed formally, in a gown of primrose-coloured silk, a vile choice for so pale a blonde, but the cut was good—if a year out of date—and the fabric expensive. She was pleating the silk with her gloved fingers, very nearly shredding the stuff, and I think it was that small gesture of uncertainty that roused Portia’s sympathies.