The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (82 page)

He was too gently bred to take it other than well. His features contracted slightly, but he managed a strained smile. ‘It’s because you don’t care for me,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘That isn’t it at all,’ she said with perfect truth. On the contrary, the fact that she didn’t love him was his main attraction. She didn’t want love. She was done with that. She only wanted peace, and perhaps a little affection.

He squared his shoulders and gave her another slight smile. ‘Well, I give you fair warning, old girl. I shall ask you again in a month or so. And who knows, if I’m very lucky, you might even say yes.’

She put all thoughts of Fever Hill and cockleshell orchids and Ben firmly from her mind, and returned his smile. ‘Who knows,’ she said, ‘one day, I might.’

The headless angel sat very straight on the sarcophagus by the cemetery gate, its legs nonchalantly crossed beneath its flowing marble robe. It looked as if it had just alighted for a moment’s reflection on one of the quality tombs.

The inscription read
George Solon Ladd, aged 47, of San Francisco. 1889
.

Long way from home, thought Ben.

He started slowly up the wide gravel avenue, between the tidy battalions of the better class of dead. Sharp granite obelisks and windowless mausolea. A whole convocation of angels, serenely ignoring each other.

Kensal Green necropolis.
Necropolis
. He’d had to look it up. It meant a city of the dead.

He tried to picture his family relocated here. Kate and Jack, and Lil and Robbie and Ma. He couldn’t do it. They’d lived in a city all their lives, and it had killed them. How could he drag them into yet another city, and leave them here for eternity?

And even if he did, they’d be right at the bottom of the heap. Everywhere he looked there was a Sir William this and a Lord Justice that. A Member of Parliament, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. That last one brought a wry smile to his lips. He could just see Jack’s face if he was put to rest beside a copper. Poor old Jack. He’d never catch a wink.

No, it had been a mistake to come here. Just as it had been a mistake to go to Kew. Bloody Kew.

Still, how was he to know that he’d see her there? How was he to
know
?

Sibella Traherne.
Miss Sibella
, he’d automatically called her in his mind, and then corrected himself. Besides, she wasn’t a Traherne any more, she was a Palairet. And maybe a widow – unless she’d been in mourning for her father, or for that brother of hers.

Still, at least she hadn’t recognized him. She’d only glanced at him as they’d passed each other in the greenhouse, with the casual appraisal which any young woman gives to any man under sixty.

She’d put on a bit of flesh since he’d last seen her, but she was still pretty enough in a bovine kind of way, although she’d acquired a line of discontent between the eyes, and was beginning very slightly to resemble the dear, departed old Queen. In her younger days, of course.

Well, well, he’d thought as he walked past her. Sibella Palairet in London. And when you think about it, why not? She probably comes over once a year for the shopping, and to keep in touch with her friends. She probably sees quite a bit of Sophie.

Christ.
Sophie
. That was when he knew that he had to get out of Kew.

Thinking of that now, he quickened his pace and walked rapidly up the main avenue of the necropolis, his footsteps crunching on the gravel. He passed a well-dressed couple taking a stroll, and gave them a sharp, angry stare.

Maybe it had been a mistake to come to London in the first place. After all, the idea that he might chance across her had kept him away for years. But then one morning he’d woken up and thought, bloody hell, you’re letting her tell you what to do. If you want to go to London, then sodding well go. Don’t let her dictate to you.

Fine words, he thought, as he walked across the gravel. But still a mistake. Grinding his teeth, he moved swiftly up the avenue between the silent yews and the whispering poplars, and finally emerged onto a well-tended lawn before the chapel.

He found himself looking up at an enormous twenty-foot plinth which occupied pride of place in the middle of the lawn. On the plinth stood an ornate sarcophagus supported by four winged lions. The inscription on the side read:
SOPHIA 1777–1848. Her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia, 5th daughter of His Majesty King George III.

The Princess Sophia.

He forgot to breathe. It felt like a message. A message aimed directly at him.
You may think you’ve made something of yourself, Ben Kelly, but the truth is, you don’t belong with the quality, and you never will. There are some things that’ll always be as far out of your reach as a princess on a pedestal.

The Princess Sophia.

Astonishing how it all came crashing back. The pain. The loss. The anger. Sophie’s pale, determined face in the dappled shade of the forest. Telling him she was leaving, telling him it was over. Casually destroying his dreams, like a child smashing a sandcastle.

The Princess Sophia
. For ever out of reach.

He turned up the collar of his astrakhan coat and walked swiftly through the Grecian colonnade of the chapel and down the steps on the other side. He walked fast, and almost fell over Austen, kneeling on the verge.

‘You!’ cried Ben. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?’

Austen flushed and nearly overbalanced in the grass. ‘N-no, of course not,’ he stammered.

‘Then what the hell are you doing?’

Austen reached for a bunch of lilies he’d dropped in the grass, and his large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘Um. Visiting my grandmother?’

Ben blinked. ‘Oh. Sorry. It’s just that I didn’t expect to see you.’ He turned on his heel and started back the way he’d come. Bugger Kensal Green necropolis. Bugger the whole daft idea.

Behind him he heard hesitant footsteps, and turned to see Austen lagging a discreet distance behind, but definitely following. ‘I thought you were visiting your grandmother,’ Ben said roughly.

Austen gave the characteristic ducking nod that always reminded Ben of an ostrich. ‘And also my mamma,’ he said, wincing and holding up the lilies as evidence. ‘In point of fact, she’s just over there, past the chapel.’

Well of course she is, thought Ben. Where else would she be but in the main avenue with the rest of the top brass? Again he felt constrained to apologize. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be off and leave you to it.’

‘Oh please, not on my account,’ said Austen.

Ben shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered, and slowed his pace a little.

Austen fell into step beside him. They passed the chapel again, and shortly afterwards Austen came to a halt before a hideous mausoleum of pink speckled granite, guarded by four sludge-green marble sentinels sporting turbans and heavy moustaches.

So not angels, then, thought Ben, moving away to give him some privacy.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched his secretary stoop to lay the lilies before the blank stone door.

In the pediment above the door, five lines of large Roman capitals trumpeted the achievements of
Major General the Honourable Sir Algernon Austen KCB, of the Bengal Army and Member of the Supreme Council of India, Knight of the Legion of Honour
. . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Below it, an inscription in cramped Gothic lettering had been squeezed in:
Euphaemia, 1860–89, widow of the above, and beloved mother of five grieving children
.

Austen straightened up and came to stand beside Ben.

Ben nodded at the lilies. ‘Are they for your old man too, or just your mother?’

‘Just Mamma,’ said Austen with startling promptness. He caught Ben’s glance, and looked sheepish. ‘To tell the truth, I never much cared for the governor.’

‘Me neither,’ said Ben.

Austen gazed thoughtfully at his father’s epitaph. ‘He couldn’t abide children. We were always supposed to keep out of his way. And if we forgot, and he happened across us, he used to wave his hand and murmur, “Vanish, vanish,” and we fled like hares.’

Ben thought that sounded like the upper class equivalent of a clip round the ear.

He had an odd feeling that he ought to match Austen’s confidence with one of his own. So in a few words he explained his idea of having the family relocated to Kensal Green. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I’ll have to find them first. And that won’t be easy. They weren’t exactly buried in a mausoleum to begin with.’

Austen nodded vigorously. ‘Hence, the, um, private detective?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I did wonder.’

There was a silence. Then Austen said, ‘I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.’

‘What was? Wondering?’

‘No. Saying that I did.’

Ben threw him an amused glance. That was what he valued about Austen. His discretion, and his precise way of expressing himself.

‘So if the detective succeeds,’ said Austen, emboldened by Ben’s silence, ‘do you think that you’ll go ahead? I mean, with the – er – relocation to Kensal Green?’

‘No,’ said Ben. He looked about him. ‘Too posh. Too built-up. And too bloody cold.’

Austen buried his large nose in the collar of his greatcoat and nodded. ‘So where else, do you think?’

Ben did not reply. He stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at the sarcophagus of the Princess Sophia. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, unwilling to reveal more of his plans. ‘I’ll have to give it some thought.’

Chapter Twenty-One

Sibella took her brother’s walking-stick and hammered on the roof of the brougham, and told the driver to keep circling the park. Then she turned back to Alexander and pursed her lips. ‘It’s high time that you faced it,’ she said importantly. ‘You’ve simply got to marry money.’

‘But that’s what I’m trying to do,’ he protested. ‘It’s scarcely my fault if she said no.’

With cordial dislike he watched her settle back against the cushions. She was enjoying herself immensely. She adored it when he misbehaved, for then she could play the responsible daughter, and ‘do her duty’, as she called it, by relaying the governor’s increasingly irate messages. ‘I don’t believe’, she said severely, ‘that you fully appreciate the gravity of your position. Sophie Monroe is positively your last chance.’

‘
My
last chance?’ he said indignantly. ‘What about her?’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Well, hang it all, Sib. I’m fond of Sophie and all that, but you’ve got to admit she has some pretty serious drawbacks.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, for one thing, she was born on the wrong side of the blanket. And she’s a frightful blue. And definitely damaged goods, what with that illness, and that appalling business about the groom.’

‘It’s because of those “drawbacks”’, she snapped, ‘that you even stand a chance. Any other girl with a fortune like hers wouldn’t touch you with a polo stick.’

‘Oh, I
say
—’

‘Well it’s true! Tell me, Alexander. Give me a rough estimate. How much do you actually owe on the horses?’

Alexander ran his forefinger along his bottom lip, and wondered what to tell her. ‘At a rough estimate, I should say – about five thousand?’

His sister’s eyes became enormous. ‘
Alexander!
I never
dreamed
it would be as much as that!’

Oh, yes you did, he told her silently. And wouldn’t you be delighted if you knew that the real sum is actually four times as much.

Even he was well aware that twenty thousand was going it a bit strong. But it really wasn’t his
fault
. It had been such an amusing little dinner, and the fellows had got to joshing each other, and before he knew it he’d bet Guy Fazackerly a ridiculous amount on his nag in the Silver Cup. And then the confounded beast had plunged, and he’d had no choice but to take it on the chin. Twenty thousand? Of course he could pay. Just let him put his name to a bill for a few months, to give him time to rustle it up.

And of course he would manage it, somehow. He could hardly welsh on a debt to one of the fellows in his own set. Besides, the bill only fell due on New Year’s Day, and that was
eight months
away. Plenty of time for him to marry Sophie. And plenty of time for Sib to snag that rich admirer of hers, which would be an additional comfort. So why was she trying to worry him like this? Why were women such confounded fools?

He turned to her and gave her his most charming smile. ‘Sib darling, isn’t this a tad academic? After all, the governor won’t live for ever, and then I shall be a landowner, just as the Almighty intended.’

‘Haven’t you been listening?
Papa is losing patience with you!
’

Alexander swallowed a yawn. ‘I’m amazed he has any left to lose. He’s been losing patience with me since I was eight.’

‘Be serious. If you don’t go back and square things with him at once, I can’t answer for the consequences.’

‘But – what does he wish me to do?’

‘For a start, he wants you to send him a schedule of your debts.’

‘How should I know what they are? I’m not a bank clerk.’

She heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Failing that, he wants your proposal, in detail, as to how you plan to settle them.’

‘But I can’t,’ cried Alexander. ‘I haven’t any money. What does he want me to do, work in a shop?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Then what? I’ve tried everything else.’

It was true. He had tried all the professions open to a gentleman. He’d taken a commission in the Guards, which had lasted a month. He’d sat at a desk in the City for a week. He’d even spent a fortnight in some appalling barrister’s chambers. It simply wasn’t for him.

‘Why won’t people understand?’ he complained. ‘I
can’t
work. I wasn’t born to it. It is an unkindness of Providence, but there we are. I was born to be a landowner.’

‘That’s all very well, but in the meantime you’ve got to get along somehow, haven’t you?’ She shook her head. ‘Such a shame that you couldn’t bring yourself to be attentive to Aunt Salomon.’