Suzanne Robinson (9 page)

“Very well,” Liza said as she turned a page of the schedule. “Toby, write a letter from Pennant’s to the secretary promising Monsieur Jacques.”

She glanced at the watch pinned to the shoulder of her gown. Ten o’clock. “Time to receive, Toby.”

The rest of the day passed quickly, for there were bills to pay and new people to hire. Pennant’s reputation had spread in the three years since she began. After Papa had thrown her out of her only home and she’d come to the town house run by Toby, she’d been confident that she could be a maid of all work. How hard could it be? She’d soon learned that there was more to dusting than just running a cloth over furniture, more to serving than just plopping plates down on a table. The first day, she’d tried to dust an arrangement of dried flowers and destroyed it.

Toby could have gotten rid of her, but he took pity on her ignorance and her desperation.

Liza had a headful of book learning. She couldn’t empty slops. Under his tutelage, she learned to empty slops, clean boots, dust, sweep, lay fires, draw baths, polish silver, and serve a table. And she’d done it all out of rage at her father.

Thinking back over her life before she’d come into service, Liza could remember a time when she hadn’t been hurt and angry. Long ago, when she was quite little and William Edward was a baby, then she’d had no notion of resentment and animosity. Her world transformed, however, one day when she was almost seven.

William Edward came down with diphtheria. Days passed in which her parents hardly left his room. She was terrified and bewildered. Longing to help, afraid to leave the house for fear of somehow losing her parents as well, she had stolen away from her governess and gone to William Edward’s nursery. She crept toward his little bed, grasped the rail, and stared at her parents.

Her mother was crying, but Mama cried a lot, and Liza had seen her do it too often to be frightened of the sight. What terrified her was Papa’s sobbing. She hesitated, afraid to remain, too frightened to leave. Then she put her hand on Papa’s shoulder. He jerked his head up and stared at her. She drew back her hand as she met his gaze and encountered for the first time his undisguised resentment and rage.

“Why?” he said, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. “Why would the Almighty take my beautiful William Edward instead of you?”

When she only gaped at him, he buried his head in his hands. “Go away. God, why didn’t you give me a son instead of her?”

That day she learned she’d been unwanted. Mama followed Papa’s every wish and, under his sway, regretted her failure to give him a firstborn son. Not that she’d been neglected. She’d been given the upbringing of a proper gentlewoman. Papa, the son of a butcher, had seen to that for his pride’s sake. But while Papa spared no expense to send William Edward, whom he’d almost lost, to Eton and on a tour of Europe, and later to Cambridge, he’d not been so inclined when it came to providing for his daughter.

Knowing her precarious position in his affections, she hadn’t complained. Yet all the while she labored under the burden of knowing that she, not William Edward, would have flourished on the meat and bread of such an education. So she taught herself with the help of governesses handicapped by the same prejudice that had robbed her of opportunity.

She hadn’t complained. Not until Papa sent William Edward to Europe. William Edward had only
been fourteen, a lackluster student. After that, she screwed up her courage and asked for the same. Papa laughed. When she persisted, he grew angry, dismissing her longings without really listening to her. And so she stayed home.

The next year, when she was seventeen, Papa discovered an interest in her. This was because she had suddenly become useful. Having spent his life building a fortune in banking and investments, he now wanted more than riches. He wanted gentility. He wanted acceptance in Society. Never a man to settle, he chafed under the besmirching heritage of his common background. Papa wanted his son to marry well. He wanted his grandchildren to have titles. He wanted to see it happen before he died.

In order to do that, he would have to purchase a suitable bride for William Edward. Such a maneuver would take years to accomplish, for England’s nobility didn’t offer its daughters to butchers’ grandsons—even if they were extremely wealthy. Thus Richard Elliot designed a plan. His daughter, with a properly splendid dowry, would spearhead his movement to conquer Society. He had clawed and slashed his way into a fortune using his sly cleverness. He could intrigue his way into the gentry using his daughter.

His one mistake was in failing to consider Liza. She was unknown to him. He saw her occasionally—at meals, after dinner. That is, he knew she was around. Other than to take note of her presence and pay her bills, he had left her upbringing to his wife. After all, how difficult could it be to teach a girl to play the piano and dress herself well? He launched her into country society first, as he would have launched one of those steamers in which he’d invested, never suspecting
that his daughter would have anything to say about his plans for her. She had.

While he’d been absorbed in raising and indulging his son, Liza had been left much to herself. Mama too was enraptured with William Edward, when she could spare time from pursuit of her one real interest in life—herself. Left alone, Liza explored the world through study, since she couldn’t do it in person. She used her allowance to buy books and prints. She read newspapers and magazines.

If he’d bothered to find out what she was doing, Papa wouldn’t have approved. As it was, the unpleasant discovery of his daughter’s bluestocking character came in the midst of her first party. Liza took perverse satisfaction every time she remembered that night. Papa had turned vermilion as he heard his daughter argue with an eligible son of a knight of the empire about the merits of a married woman’s property act and the necessity of a divorce bill.

Well, it served him right. But then had come her first season, and the event that soured her already negligible taste for titled young men. It wasn’t that she hated men. She wasn’t so stupid as to think all men as parsimonious and close-fisted with their love as Papa. It was just that none of them seemed to understand that a young woman would want more than to sit at their feet and goggle at them in adoration.

Papa had been furious at her. He accused her of being “clever.” It was social death for a girl to be thought clever. Still, it had been his own fault. Perhaps if he’d spared her some morsel of his affection, she wouldn’t have insulted a total of five bigoted young men during the course of one ball and gotten herself ostracized from Society. Definitely, it had been
Papa’s fault. After that had come his threat to disown her. She still couldn’t think of the way he’d so easily cast her out without feeling a sharp jab of pain in her chest. Yes, the whole disaster had been Papa’s fault, but this knowledge didn’t take away the pain.

H
e watched Jocelin pour brandy into coffee cups. Jocelin, the gracious; Jocelin, the beautiful; Jocelin, the dangerous. He shouldn’t have come tonight. He was feeling the beast, snarling, pawing, keening to come out in the open. On the way over in the carriage he’d almost stuck his head out the window and howled. And now they were talking about Stapleton’s death in a cloud of after-dinner cigar smoke. Stapleton had drunk two bottles of brandy without stopping. A man can’t do that and live, which had been the point.

The beast rolled over inside him, grunted, and snuffled. When he felt like this, he saw everything as if he were crouched on all fours, and everyone either
as predator or as prey. His fingers curled into claws. His thoughts blurred into elemental instincts, flashing images of quarry scrambling for safety, of running, running, running through a battlefield. His horse was gone. Oh, God, his horse was gone.

On foot he was dead. Around him shells exploded. Pieces of his men spattered his coat. He screamed. Lieutenant Cheshire rode at him. Cheshire was wounded and slumped over his horse’s neck. He grabbed the rider, who cried out as he was hauled from the saddle. He mounted. Cheshire grabbed his leg and pleaded. He kicked out, and Cheshire flew backward onto the lance of an advancing Russian.

He kicked the horse, and it sprang forward. He heard Cheshire’s dying cries, swept by Sergeant Pawkins, saw Jocelin clash his saber against that of a Russian cavalry officer. He galloped on and on until he was safe. But he would never be safe, because someone besides Cheshire might have seen his cowardice. Someone else might know what he was.

The beast lifted its head, pointed its muzzle skyward, and howled. He heard a small sound in his throat—a little grunting whimper. That sound jolted him into the present.

Jocelin had finished pouring the brandy. No one seemed to have noticed his lapse. He tapped his cigar ash on the edge of his dessert plate. He was here because of Lieutenant Cheshire. Most of the old group were here, those who had survived. That was why he came, why he supported their political aims. He could watch them, especially Jocelin, who was so wild and on the edge, uncontrollable.

Jocelin had lain next to Sergeant Pawkins in hospital at Scutari. Jocelin had been delirious when he’d come to the ward that night and smothered
Pawkins. Jocelin didn’t remember anything. And if his friend ever did, he would be there, at his side, watching, watching, watching.

Liza hiked her skirts and tiptoed up the back stairs. She had returned to her post determined to avoid the viscount. Not having seen him for almost two days, she had decided to risk sneaking into his rooms again for one last search. He was busy with his political meeting.

She had peeked at the guests and their host from behind a door as Choke and two footmen took coats and gloves. It seemed as if they had all arrived at once, and never had she seen such a collection of brilliant young men. They must be rather like their cavalry horses, all sleek, working muscle and blazing spirits.

She reached the door to the viscount’s sitting room and slipped through it. Listening for Loveday, she concluded that the valet was still submerged in the evening paper in his own room. A fire burned in the fireplace, but there was no other light. Where had she been when that awful man came upon her? Ah, the mantel.

Liza went to the fireplace and stuck her hands out to warm them. Stiff fingers dropped things, and she couldn’t afford to drop Wedgwood or anything else. After rubbing her hands for a few moments, she grasped the Wedgwood urn. Empty, as she remembered. The nautilus shell cup concealed nothing either, which left the antique blue thing with the hinged top. She took the vessel in both hands and lifted it from the mantel.

A delicate gold chain connected the top to the
neck of the flask. She pulled the top back and looked inside, but the interior was too dark. Carefully she touched her forefinger to the lip, then slid it down the neck slowly so that she didn’t push anything too deep inside to be retrieved. Her finger hit something. She withdrew her forefinger and inserted her little finger. Snagging the object, she pulled it out.

A small roll of paper. At last. Excitement caused her to fumble with the blue thing, and it almost slipped through her hands. Gasping, she caught her upper lip between her teeth and set the vessel back on the mantel. Then she opened the paper and read it.

What disappointment. But then, had she expected a confession? Still, the list must be important, or the viscount wouldn’t have hidden it. She read the five names. They were set out in two groups, one of three and one of two names. She read them over and over in order to memorize them: Griffin Poe, Nappie Carbuncle, Frank Fawn; Sir Morris Harter, Dr. Lucius Sinclair. Her lips moved as she repeated them. Later she would give the list to Toby, who would make inquiries about them among his widespread acquaintances, criminal and respectable.

She placed the rolled paper back in the blue thing and straightened it on the mantel. Then she tiptoed back to the door and opened it a crack. The hall was empty. Did she dare steal into the room that connected with the library? The viscount and his political friends had gathered there, and she might be able to hear something important. Jocelin Marshall wasn’t the only man to have close dealings with her brother. He was merely the most credible suspect.

The night William Edward died he had gone to one of these political meetings and had words with the
viscount. He’d left in a miff, if the police were to be believed, and gone drinking in Whitechapel. Fastidious, snobbish William Edward drink in Whitechapel? Never.

The other man, Airey, had died the same way. Such coincidences weren’t to be believed. And now this man Stapleton was dead, the Honorable Alex Stapleton. He too had been a member of this select group of ex-cavalry-officers-turned-political-aspirants. Stapleton, however, had drunk himself to death. Too much alcohol in his blood, the paper said. A hard-drinking man like that would know not to swill brandy. Three odd deaths. Three odd deaths. The cadence reminded her of a nursery rhyme.
Three blind mice, three blind mice. See how they run
. They ran or got their tails chopped off.