Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (34 page)

“You could have written.”

I stared at him, trying to tell if he was hurt or simply making a point. “And you would have come?”

“Of course.” His reply was spoken with quiet certainty, as if he wasn’t surprised I’d asked, but he wanted to be sure I understood that I never need do so again. He leaned forward, his pale blue eyes gazing solemnly into mine. “Kiera, if you ever need me, I will come. You have only to ask.”

I didn’t point out that I hadn’t precisely
needed
him to come to me so that I could say good-bye. But then I realized: perhaps I had. Just to know he hadn’t completely abandoned me. That he still cared enough to stow away in my carriage and look at me in that way that had always made my insides melt. To show me that I hadn’t lost him, like I’d lost Will.

I didn’t understand why he’d distanced himself from me, but maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d been aloof and reserved. I couldn’t control the emotions churning inside of me, so I’d stifled them, all of them but my anger. Just like I’d done when I was married to Sir Anthony and I couldn’t bear the fear and hurt and disgust he’d caused me.

I felt tears burn the backs of my eyes and furiously blinked them away refusing to let them fall. I didn’t want to feel this hurt, this sadness. So I pushed it away, burying it down deep.

I took a deep breath and then nodded, telling Gage I understood.

He watched me a moment longer and then reached up to tap the head of his cane on the ceiling again. The coach immediately slowed.

“Take care of yourself, Kiera,” he murmured.

I nodded, feeling like I’d swallowed a bubble. “You, too.”

He reached out to open the door and rose to exit the carriage, but at the last moment changed his mind. Slamming the door shut again, he sat down on the seat next to me, and before I’d even realized his intent, he reached out to cradle my face in his hands and kissed me. For how long, I never seemed to be able to tell, but it was with sincerity and purpose, and when he pulled away, there was something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Something that made my heart stutter in my chest.

He was gone before I could put a name to it.

The carriage pulled forward again, gently rocking back and forth over the cobblestones while I sat there dazed and not unpleasantly befuddled.

Unlike our last good-bye, I knew I would see Gage again. Why he had distanced himself from me since the night of Will’s death I still didn’t understand, but I knew our paths would cross once more. That it would be so soon, and under such mysterious circumstances, I could never have guessed. Particularly when it involved a grave on the hallowed grounds of an ancient abbey. But if my experiences with Gage had taught me anything, it was to expect the unexpected, and this time I certainly learned my lesson.

HISTORICAL NOTE

For the setting of this second novel in the Lady Darby Mysteries I used several interesting locations that actually exist in Scotland. For Dalmay House I utilized many elements of the Dalmeny House and Estate, located along the Firth of Forth, northwest of Edinburgh, much the way I described it. Details have been altered to suit the story’s purposes, but several items of interest, such as the Goya tapestries Kiera admired and the magnificent entrance hall, are very true to life.

The former ancestral residence, Barnbougle Castle, also stands nearby on the estate and was the basis for my Banbogle Castle. The castle became somewhat dilapidated after the family moved to the newly built Dalmeny House in 1817, and suffered damage when some of the explosives stored there accidentally detonated, but it was restored in 1881 by the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who became prime minister in 1894. There is indeed a legend about Sir Roger Mowbray (although I changed his name to Dalmay) and his faithful hound, whose howls supposedly presaged his death and each subsequent laird’s as well. There are several versions of this tale, and even a ballad written about it, but they all center on Sir Roger’s dog and either his howls or his ghostly appearance being a harbinger of death.

The village of Cramond and Cramond Island exist much as I have described them. As does Inchkeith Island, though no lunatic asylum was ever located there. It was utilized for military purposes, and historically it was used at least once for quarantine, as well as for James IV’s bizarre linguistic experiment to discover the original language in 1493.

The artist Francisco Goya figured prominently in the creation of this book. I borrowed several of his pieces of artwork and attributed them to William Dalmay. First and foremost are his series of prints called
The Disasters of War
. These disturbing images were crafted from Goya’s experiences during the Peninsular War in Spain. They seemed to be exactly the type of scenes that a soldier like Will would have witnessed and have difficulty forgetting. I also utilized some of the themes from Goya’s paintings
Yard with Lunatics
and
The Madhouse
to help create the images Will brought back with him from Larkspur Retreat.

Like any war, the Peninsular War was riddled with atrocities perpetuated by friend and foe alike. It was bloody and horrific, sparing no one, even women and children. It’s no wonder that soldiers returned home with battle fatigue, or what today we would more commonly call PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this troubling and sometimes debilitating disorder was not acknowledged as the medical condition it was, and soldiers were made to suffer in silence or risk being branded a coward or a lunatic.

After his stay in the lunatic asylum, William Dalmay also suffered from sensory deprivation syndrome, due to the primitive conditions of his cell and his time spent in “the pit.” Being deprived of our normal senses, particularly light, can be severely disorienting and often causes sufferers to experience unpleasant hallucinations to make up for the absence of stimuli. In 1830 this was also an unknown medical condition, as most mental disorders were at that time. Even the falling sickness Lady Margaret suffered from, the more common name used in that time period for epilepsy, was looked on with superstition, though at least strides were being made in the understanding of that disorder.

Lunatic asylums in the early nineteenth century were much as I described them. Fortunately, men like William and Samuel Tuke, Jean-Baptiste Pussin, and Philippe Pinel had begun a movement years before toward instituting more moral treatment methods. However, changes in the general public’s thinking took time to take effect, and so many lunatic asylums remained as primitive as ever.

In Scotland, the gift of second sight was, and in some areas still is, widely believed to exist. The expression comes from the Gaelic term for the ability,
an da shealladh
, which means “two sights.”

Several of the details about Sir Anthony Darby’s life were borrowed from the real life of English surgeon and anatomist Sir Astley Paston Cooper. In 1820 Sir Astley performed surgery on King George IV, removing an infected sebaceous cyst from his head. He received a baronetcy for his efforts and was appointed sergeant surgeon to the king.

Though confusing to some, in the past, particularly in the UK, there was a strong distinction between physicians and surgeons. Physicians were usually considered gentlemen, and therefore treated with the courtesy of one, being allowed to enter through the nobility’s front doors and such. It was believed that surgeons, on the other hand, were of a lower class because they performed manual labor, something a gentleman did not do. So while a physician could examine you and prescribe medicines, a surgeon had to be called in to do bloodletting or set a broken bone or perform any type of surgery. Surgeons were consequently treated like the lower classes, entering through the servants’ door and being denied entry to the formal receiving rooms of the house. Which is why Sir Anthony would never have been permitted even to court Kiera had he not received his baronetcy.

Also perplexing to many Americans is the fact that most surgeons in the UK go by the title
Mr.
even to this day. This tradition originated in the sixteenth century when surgeons were barber-surgeons and did not have a medical degree like physicians who attended university. When the College of Surgeons received its royal charter, the Royal College of Physicians forced the law to stipulate that surgeon candidates receive a medical degree first. So an aspiring surgeon was made to study medicine first, achieving the title Doctor. Then when he obtained his diploma to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, he reverted to Mister as a sort of snubbing to the Royal College of Physicians. To avoid confusion, I opted not to title the characters who are Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons as
Mr.
, but left them with the distinction
Dr.

Through the course of history, there was indeed a set of special privileges reserved for the British peerage, namely the right to a trial by their peers in the House of Lords, access to the sovereign, and freedom from arrest. In the case of the latter, peers were supposed to be free from arrest in civil cases only, not criminal, but the law enforcement officials of the time, particularly before formal police forces were established, would have found it difficult to arrest a peer at any time without getting other peers or magistrates involved. Without definitive proof, Constable Paxton would have had trouble convincing a magistrate to arrest Lord Dalmay, because of his title. And even if he had been arrested and charged, Lord Dalmay would still have been tried in the House of Lords, if, under the circumstances, it ever came to that.