A Little Knowledge (21 page)

“The Irises are very proud of their heritage,” she told Sam after she’d pointed it out to him. “I’ve seen a lot of Norman construction as a result.”

“They were the bad guys, right? The ones who tried to kill Robin Hood.”

“It was far more complex than that, my dear man. The so-called Robin Hood wasn’t the paragon of social justice that the mundanes have crafted. Though, in fairness, a fair few of the Normans were just as bad as people like to think. I know, I’ve dined with some of them. The current Duke of Londinium is descended from William the Conqueror. Did you know that?”

Sam shook his head, still processing what she’d just said about dining with the Normans. “I know he’s an arsehole.”

Eleanor laughed. “I can see why you get along with Cathy. Not that she’d agree with you. She’s quite taken with him, I think. You don’t have a chance.”

“What? I didn’t—”

“Now follow me,” she said, disinterested in any defence. “You said you wanted the oldest part of the house. I think it’s downstairs, but it’s been covered over.”

“So is this how you’ve been keeping busy?” Sam asked as he followed her down the back staircase, its stairs warped and uneven with age. “Playing architectural detective?”

“Amongst other things,” she replied with an enigmatic smile. “Reading this house to learn its history didn’t require a great deal of work. In the Nether, property is hugely important to us. We learn how to read a building like one reads a book. They all have their own narratives and stories to tell. This house is too modern for our tastes—there have been too many additions over the centuries. It’s refreshing to spend time in it and trace what each of your predecessors added and took away. I always wanted to change the house I moved into when I became Dame of the family, but of course, I never expressed that desire. It would be unthinkable.”

“Why? Surely things wear out and need to be changed to stay fit for purpose?”

“Oh, you misunderstand me. I meant it would be unthinkable for a lady to alter a house structurally. Each Patroon adds a little bit, makes his mark, there’s no way to stop that. My husband built a new wing of the house several hundred years ago to keep the business of running the family separate from our home.” She paused at the bottom of the stairs, as if she needed all of her attention to hold the memory. “He did it for me. I complained about the young bloods littering the hallway and pacing so much they wore the flagstones down. So he built the new wing to have lots of receiving rooms without the pressure of fitting our family life into them too. Most of the young ones now have no idea what our—his—family house is like. Only the most important people see the real home.”

Sam waited, happy to listen. She so rarely talked about her former life. “You sound like you miss him.”

“I do. I loved him. I still love him.”

“Even after he threw you into that asylum to die?”

She turned to look at him. “That was an act of love. He could have done far worse. It was that weevil who replaced me who deserves my anger and hatred. Not him.”

Sam didn’t know what to say to that. Besides, what did he know about good marriages?

Eleanor carried on down the narrow hallway, one that Sam hadn’t been down before, and came to a stop at the end, where a door led to the rest of the house ahead of them and a second door on the right opened onto stairs down into the basement. She patted the wall on her left. It was uneven and looked old. “This is the oldest part of the house. That bedroom with the window is above it. I think something has been walled off here, though.” She beckoned to him and he followed her through the door to the rest of the house. She took him to the adjoining games room, opening the door to switch on the light but stopping him in the doorway. She patted the left-hand wall. “On the other side of this is the hallway we just walked along. But take a step back and you can see how far apart the wall of the old hallway is from this wall. It’s too thick. There are no doors to any cupboard or small room that I think should be here.”

Sam did as she instructed, and saw what she meant. “But how thick are the walls?” he asked as they went back into the narrow hallway. Sam pressed his hands against the wall, feeling the undulations. It felt solid enough. He knocked on it. No echo, nothing to suggest any space was behind it.

“I think it’s the original cob, plastered with lime and whitewashed,” Eleanor said. “My educated guess is that it’s about a yard thick. If that’s so, there’s a space at least three or four yards across between this wall and the games room next door that’s been sealed off.” She twisted to Sam, grinning ghoulishly. “It’s probably where the first Lord Iron walled up his enemies to die in the dark.”

“Jesus, Eleanor!” Sam said, and she laughed.

“You modern men. So soft. Well, I’m for my bed. Good night.”

“Good night. And thanks!”

Long after she’d gone, Sam found himself still standing there, hands on the wall. He wanted to see what was in the space behind it. No, more than that; he felt a pull towards it.

He closed his eyes and told himself he was just tired. That he’d wanted to find something so badly that his mind was playing tricks on him. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. After finding out several Lord Irons had lived here over hundreds of years and made additions to the building, he wondered if something was being protected here, in this house. As far as he knew, all of his predecessors had lived there, even Amir, who had properties all over the world.

Eleanor was right about there being too big a space between the hallway and games room for it to be just a wall dividing the two. What was hidden in there?

“Sod it,” he said, resolving to get a sledgehammer from the toolshed near the forge and demolish it in the morning. The worst that could happen was damaging a wall that could be easily repaired. That and finding skeletons, but he tried not to think about that.

Cathy looked out of her carriage window as it drew to a stop, chewing her lip. “Looks like we’re here,” she said to Carter. “Have you stopped sulking yet?”

Carter reddened. “I wasn’t sulking, your Grace. It’s just harder to protect you when you change your itinerary at the last moment.”

“This may be nothing,” she said, gathering up her reticule as the footman lowered the step. “I just have to check, that’s all.”

It wasn’t as though she’d planned to visit the Lutea-Digitalis household. She was meeting Natasha in less than two hours and had a mountain of correspondence to plough through. But something in the letter she’d read that morning from Mrs Lutea-Digitalis, former Marchioness of Westminster, had made her worry. At first she’d thought it nothing more than a courtesy letter to remind the Duchess of her existence, but it went on to express her great interest in the Ladies’ Court and her hope that the fortunes of the women of Londinium were soon to change. The handwriting was hurried and distinctly emotional. Why would this lady, well respected in the city, be so keen for fortunes to change?

The footman helped her down and she walked up to the front door, Carter shadowing her as usual. She pulled the chain for the bell, and a rather shocked butler answered the door.

“Your Grace!” He bowed.

“I know you aren’t expecting me,” Cathy said. “Is Mrs Lutea-Digitalis receiving guests this morning?”

“The lady of the house is at home, your Grace. Please do come inside. May I take your cloak?”

Cathy could hear the hurried footsteps of several servants down the hall to the left. It was a rather austere house, with only a dramatically arranged vase of foxgloves to brighten the entrance hall.

“If you would like to follow me?”

“Is Mr Lutea-Digitalis at home?”

“No, your Grace. I understand he’s attending to business elsewhere.”

She was shown into a claustrophobic drawing room, filled with ornaments and heavy drapery as loved by the Victorians. She couldn’t see a spare inch of wood on the mantelpiece, covered as it was by a fringed cloth. A portrait of Mr Digitalis in his finery dominated the chimney breast. Carter scanned the room and then assured her that he’d wait outside.

Mrs Digitalis stood nervously next to the fire, wearing an early Victorian gown with sloping shoulders that, combined with her fearful eyes, made her look horribly diminutive. She had a heart-shaped face with large brown eyes and sallow skin. She curtsied deeply. “Your Grace, what a delightful surprise.”

Cathy suspected that saying “bollocks” to that blatant lie probably wasn’t the most Duchess-like response. “Sorry I didn’t send a note ahead, Mrs Digitalis. I probably should have.” She didn’t explain that she hated the stilted and carefully arranged visits that happened after she sent word ahead. Having a shocked butler and a host caught off their guard wasn’t exactly pleasant either, but at least she was likely to see more of what was really happening in the household. “Oh, please don’t look so nervous, I’m not going to eat you!”

A high, slightly strangled giggle escaped from her throat. “Please, call me Wilhelmina. Would you like to sit down?”

As if on cue, tea was brought, along with shortbread. Cathy imagined there’d been a debate about what to serve, it being on the early side of sociable hours. “I received your letter.” She watched the flush rise up Wilhelmina’s neck. “I’m delighted you approve of the new court.”

“I…I confess, I am very interested to see what is discussed there.”

“Well, that’s one of the reasons I came,” Cathy said, accepting the cup of tea that had been poured for her. “As the former Marchioness of Westminster, I thought you’d have a wealth of knowledge about the issues women face here.”

Wilhelmina was paying a great deal of attention to the teapot as she poured her own cup. “You flatter me, your Grace.”

Cathy reined in the impulse to roll her eyes. She was so tired of these false conversations with people half-terrified of her, resembling awkward dances where every move was mirrored by a complementary step as each evaluated the other. “Hardly. You’d have to be mostly dead not to have picked up a few things over the past couple of hundred years.”

Wilhelmina stared at her over the teacup, uncertain whether to laugh or be offended, it seemed. She erred on the side of caution and smiled.

“You were there at the last Court,” Cathy continued. “Surely by now you know I want every woman to feel able to speak her mind?”

“Indeed. Though sometimes it’s not the wisest course of action.”

“Do you think I did the wrong thing in speaking up?”

Wilhelmina almost dropped her cup. “Oh, no, not at all, your Grace! I didn’t express myself adequately. I simply meant that sometimes, speaking one’s mind can have…undesirable consequences.”

This was it. Cathy could see she was desperate to tell her something. “In your letter, you mentioned a hope that fortunes will change for the women of Londinium. Did you include your own amongst them?”

The nod of Wilhelmina’s chin was almost imperceptible.

“But your family is respected and you have a beautiful home, and…” Cathy paused, wondering how much more conversational rope she needed to pass out to this poor woman. “And something’s wrong. Isn’t it? I know we’re supposed to say bland pleasantries to each other for at least half an hour before you might even consider telling me what it is, but I’m not very good at them and you can trust me. As Duchess, I serve you. I came here to listen to you.”

“I watched you stand up in that room and speak so clearly,” Wilhelmina said after a long pause. “And I watched your husband too, your Grace. He looked so proud when you made the announcement. How I envied you, even as that awful man was so rude to you. I watched you stand there and challenge him. I saw that you were unafraid. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would life be like, if I could feel that too.”

Cathy put her cup down. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“If you tell me why, I will do everything in my power to help you. I promise.”

Wilhelmina looked into the fire, at the hearthrug, at a crystal vase, the mantelpiece—anywhere except at Cathy. “My husband is a very unhappy man. I would like to be able to blame it on his loss of status, but he was hardly happy when he was Marquis, truth be told. Lots of things upset him. I never know what he will be like when he comes home. Sometimes he’s angry. Sometimes he’s miserable. Sometimes he goes from one to the other in a heartbeat. It’s always my fault.

“I try to make him happy, but I never know the right thing to say. And then when I decide to say nothing at all, he accuses me of being cold and uncaring. When I try to make conversation he thinks I’m mocking him. It always ends the same way.”

Cathy feared she knew what that was. She stayed quiet, trying to be present without imposing herself. Wilhelmina was clearly struggling to talk about it, as if each sentence had to be physically pushed out of her. It wasn’t like when Cathy suspected something was wrong at Charlotte’s house; there was no sign of any Charm controlling the way she spoke. Cathy suspected it was simply hard for Wilhelmina to confess that she was suffering.

“It’s so hard to talk about it. I never have. I think…I think I should show you. I’m using a Charm, your Grace. Will you permit me to remove it in your presence?”

Confused, Cathy nodded and watched as Wilhelmina removed a pin from her hair and whispered some words. The breath caught in Cathy’s throat as the purpose of the Charm revealed itself.

Wilhelmina’s right eye was bloodshot and the skin around it yellowed with faded bruising. One cheek was swollen to twice the size of the other and her jawline varying shades of purple and green. She undid the collar of her dress and several buttons below, showing more bruises on her collarbones.

Cathy saw a flash of her father’s stick, of his fist, of the grimace he wore when he hit her and told her it was all her fault for not trying hard enough. She started to shake as she watched Wilhelmina roll back the sleeves of her dress to reveal more bruising and a swollen wrist.

“I…” She looked at Wilhelmina, who was shaking just as much, and realised how hard it had been for her to reveal the abuse. “He does this to you?” Cathy watched her nod. “No matter what he has said to you, this is wrong.” She felt a rush in her chest, a sharpening of awareness into the sure knowledge that she had to do something about it. Not only for Wilhelmina but for all the women in Society hiding the abuse she was sure was happening far more than anyone spoke of. “Will you let me protect you?”