With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (27 page)

Listening to his voice arguing with itself in the next room, I shivered, overwhelmed with horror and pity. I resolved to stay by him as much as I could, to make certain that he had all the aid I could offer—whether he liked it or not.

My plan was dealt an immediate blow. At breakfast the next morning, Atticus raised thoughtful eyes to mine across the table and announced, “I’m opening the house in London for you and Genevieve. It should be habitable within the week.”

I put down my teacup abruptly. “For me and Genevieve?” I repeated. “You’re to join us, I hope?”

He took a moment to answer, and the response when it came was unconvincing. “I’ll try.”

“Oh, but you must come with us,” Genevieve exclaimed. “I cannot imagine making my debut without you!”

The smile he summoned for her benefit was so ghastly that it struck dread into my breast. “I’ll see what I can manage,” he said.

“Genevieve, would you mind giving us some privacy?” I asked. Blessedly, she made no protest, perhaps knowing that I would be arguing for us both, and made a swift departure, shutting the door behind her.

“Atticus, what do you mean by this?” I asked.

His eyes were now on the newspaper that rested beside his plate, but I was almost certain he was not absorbing anything printed there. “Just what I say. You and Genevieve are to move to London as soon as the house is ready and stay there through the Season—or for as long as it takes for Genevieve to become engaged, which shouldn’t be long. Once she’s married, you’ll move to your own home.”

“My—what?”

His voice remained steady, neutral, as if he were reading to me from the financial pages. “Bertram can help you with your preparations. Once you decide where you wish to live, he’ll assist you in finding a house, furnishing it if necessary, all of that. It’s what we agreed on, after all.”

“But that was before.” This entire conversation felt unreal; I could not be certain it wasn’t a strange dream I was having, so little did it resemble the reality I had been living. I looked down at my left hand, which still bore the ring he had given me; I looked at my right, with the fingers clasping the delicate china handle of the teacup; and it seemed to me that these objects were the only things I could be certain of, with everything else in my world shifting so drastically that I could no longer rely on the very ground beneath my feet. “I thought… well, even though Genevieve isn’t my daughter, I thought that you rather wished for me to stay with you. For the three of us to be a real family.” I took my courage in both hands and said clearly, “That is what I want.”

There was a silence so profound that I could hear, very distantly through the closed windows, the song of a curlew. Atticus did not look at me when he said, “The situation has changed.”

“Changed how?” I burst out, and reached out to touch his bandaged right hand. “Please, Atticus, look at me. Speak to me. What has changed?”

For one moment I thought he would tell me. In that instant his eyes were naked as they looked into mine—and haunted.

Then he looked away again, withdrawing his hand from my touch. “Please just accept what I say, Clara. Gravesend is no place for you anymore.”

“Are you angry with me still for what I said about your accident?” I had searched my memory, and that was the only time I could recall his being seriously out of temper with me.

“No, I’m not angry,” he said. His voice, indeed, was empty of that or any other discernible emotion. “I’m sorry I spoke harshly to you, but it has no bearing on the matter. You must leave Gravesend.”

There seemed no arguing with that. If he had had a change of heart regarding me, nothing I might say could alter it.

But that was not the case, I felt. Something was weighing on him, something he felt he could not—or should not—share with me. All I could do was try my utmost to determine what it was… and find some way to set things right.

There was a knock on the door, and when Atticus answered, Mrs. Threll appeared. “I thought we might discuss arrangements for the funeral, Lord Telford,” she said.

He rose from the table. “I’d be obliged if you and Lady Telford planned the service and so on. I’ll instruct the stonemason regarding his part, but everything else is in your purview, Mrs. Threll.”

With that he was out the door. I rose, on the verge of calling after him, when my eye fell on the figure of the housekeeper and I held back the words. I would not embarrass Mrs. Threll by becoming emotional before her.

Even so, she seemed to have picked up on my state of mind. “Bereavement takes some gentlemen very hard, my lady,” she said to me. Her voice was as expressionless as ever, but I felt that she was trying to be of comfort.

I only wished that what was troubling Atticus were as straightforward as grief. I did my best to smooth out my expression and find a modicum of calm, saying, “How right you are, Mrs. Threll. Perhaps you and I can save my husband some distress by taking care of all the planning that lies in our power.”

Despite my effort to appear calm, my voice caught when I said
my husband.
How much longer would we be even nominally husband and wife?

If only I could find out the source of his trouble of mind, I knew I could break through this terrible barrier between us and help him. Remembering his haunted eyes and distraught manner on the morning of his father’s death, I wondered if old Lord Telford had entrusted him with a secret so devastating that it was endangering his sanity.

As if it had been only yesterday, I suddenly heard again the old baron’s words:
Death lays all secrets bare.
The death masks, he had insisted, revealed the truths that their models, in life, had hidden. Were there hidden revelations to be found in one of the baron’s masks—perhaps that of someone Atticus had known, someone whose life had touched his? Maybe his father had confided some terrible revelation about Lady Telford’s death… or about Richard’s. And perhaps I could unearth it without any need for Atticus to break his pledge of silence.

As soon as I could, I ended my discussion with Mrs. Threll and set out for the old baron’s rooms. If there was anything to be learned from the masks, I was determined to find it out.

What I had not anticipated was that the staff had already begun to clear the rooms. When I opened the door of my late father-in-law’s sitting room, I was startled to find the walls nearly bare. Many of the furnishings were gone, and what pieces remained were shrouded in sheets. Wooden packing crates crowded the floor, from which the rugs had been removed. Lifting the corner of the sheet that covered one of the curio cabinets, I found the shelves empty of masks or labels.

My heart sank. The masks must all have been packed in the crates. I could tell with a glance that the lids had not been nailed down, so I would not need to ring for assistance in order to begin my search, but I wished that my task had not been complicated thus.

Stifling a sigh of impatience, I knelt down by the nearest crate and lifted the lid. A layer of cotton-wool wadding met my eyes, and when I drew it back I found the plaster mask of Voltaire lying beneath. Fortunately, as I learned when I delved deeper into the crate, the masks had been packed in roughly the same order in which they had been displayed—that is, more or less chronologically. When I had peered into five crates I found one whose topmost mask bore the features of the hapless miner whose death had taken place almost twenty years before, so I concentrated my efforts there. After some minutes I was rewarded, and I lifted the mask of Lady Telford from the crate.

It was a strange sensation, holding in my hand the visage of the woman who had evicted me from Gravesend all those years ago. Naturally the casting had not captured her eyes, whose relentless coldness I could still call up in my memory. But the resemblance between her features and those of her sons was clear. The strong, straight nose that was handsome on Atticus was a bit too pronounced for beauty in a woman, but its assertiveness certainly accorded with my recollection of her personality.

Beyond these observations, however, I learned nothing. Had I known what to look for—whether her illness, for example, would have left some physical imprint on her face that the mask would have preserved—it is possible that the thing would have enlightened me. Instead I felt more baffled than ever, and frustrated at my helplessness. I set the mask aside and lifted the next layer of cotton wadding to find the cast of Richard’s face.

My heart was beating just a bit more rapidly than before with anticipation mixed with dread. Might I find the answer here to my husband’s transformation? I picked up the mask and rose to my feet, thinking to carry it to the window for better light.

But I had not taken a single step when suddenly, from close behind me, came a cough. Startled, I jumped, and the mask flew from my hands. Before I could move to try to catch it, it had shattered on the floor.

“No!” I gasped. The mask lay in countless fragments, so many and so minute that even if they could have been put together again I knew I could never learn anything from them.

“My lady, I am most dreadfully sorry.” It was Birch who had, unobserved, come up behind me and frightened me.

It was a moment before I found enough composure to respond. “It cannot be helped, Birch,” I said dully.

“I shall see about having repairs made, my lady.”

“Don’t go to the trouble; it is past saving.” I tried to swallow my bitter disappointment, but with little success. “Why have the masks all been packed up? And why are the baron’s rooms being cleared?”

“Lord Telford ordered it, my lady,” he informed me. His normal dignity seemed undiminished by recent events. “He indicated that the rooms should be closed and his father’s collection shipped to the British Museum. It was the late baron’s wish that the masks be donated to the museum upon his demise.”

Was it indeed—or was this a pretext by which Atticus intended to hide whatever revelations the masks might have contained? It hardly mattered now, thanks to my clumsiness. What might have been my best chance at unfolding the mystery of my husband’s torment of mind was now shattered into a thousand pieces. “I’ll leave you, then,” I said, “unless there is anything requiring my attention.”

“Thank you, my lady. I am merely selecting appropriate attire for the late Lord Telford’s viewing and interment.”

Now I could see, when I looked past the butler to the door of the adjoining room, that there were articles of clothing laid out neatly on the old man’s bed.

“Very good,” I said. “If you think Brutus will have any knowledge of my father-in-law’s particular desires, you may wish to consult him.”

“I have already done so, my lady.”

I hesitated. There was nothing in the butler’s face or demeanor to indicate that he had heard anything of the personal history I had disclosed to Strack, but as I myself had told the inspector, there were few secrets in a house of this size. It was, I felt, far better to make a clean breast of it than to pretend ignorance as word passed through the household. Besides, secrets could be poisonous, as I was learning.

“Birch,” I said, “there may be a story circulating about my past—that I was not an American widow, that in fact I used to be a chambermaid here at Gravesend and was dismissed under scandalous circumstances.”

“I try not to attend to low gossip,” he said gravely.

He had not said there
was
no gossip, I noticed. So the story had most likely leaked out. “Those things are true,” I said. “You may even remember me from that time. But I was not guilty of all that was suspected of—”

“Pray don’t feel you must defend yourself, my lady,” he interrupted. He must have been deeply distressed to forget propriety so much as to cut me off. “I’m certain you were innocent of wrongdoing.”

A pink tinge was creeping over his domed head, and I knew I could not risk embarrassing him by specifying the exact degree of my impropriety or lack thereof. I settled for saying, “My husband shares that certainty. He married me in part to make amends for the injustice of my dismissal. He wanted me to be able to leave that unhappy part of my past behind me, but I think it is important for all of you in Gravesend to understand that although I have nothing to be ashamed of, I would hate for any rumors about me to lessen anyone’s regard for my husband. He is a fine man, as you know, and I’m determined not to bring shame upon him or give him cause to regret having made me his wife.”

Birch’s face was a study as he registered these words and their implications, and I felt myself holding my breath. I hoped that his respect for my husband would move him to discourage further discussion of my deception among the servants… or outside the household. “My lady,” he said at length, and I was not certain if it was my own nervous imagination that lent the words such weight, “I think I may speak for all of us in the servants’ hall when I say that we are loyal to a man—and woman—to Lord Telford. Anything that is in our power to do to save him unhappiness, it is our honor to do.”

“That is exactly what I feel on my part,” I said, daring to hope I understood correctly.

The butler permitted himself a brief smile. It was a paternal expression, but in it I glimpsed something almost conspiratorial. “Then we are of the same mind, my lady,” he said.

My relief and gratitude were so great that it took me a moment to find my voice. “Thank you, Birch,” I said. “And if I should have to leave…” I paused to compose myself.

“Leave Gravesend?” The shock in his voice told me, if his words had not, that in his eyes I had truly become part of the family. If decorum had not so strictly urged against it, I might have kissed him at that moment.