The Dark Enquiry (32 page)

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he said harshly, and I knew he spoke roughly so I would not hear the break in his voice. “I am going to pick you up,” he warned. “Lift your head a little.”

He slid his arm under my neck and another under my legs and as he shifted me, I gave a cry. Something twisted in my abdomen then, a hot knife of pain lancing me inside.

“Julia! What is it?”

I put my hands to my womb just as I felt the first warm gush of blood between my legs. “The baby,” I murmured. And then all went black.

I do not like to think of the following days, for they were dark ones. I lost the child, and from what I was told, it was rather a near thing for me, as well. Brisbane’s dear friend, Mordecai Bent, and my own brother Valerius worked like madmen to save me. At length, Mordecai was able to assure Brisbane that I would live but that I would never be able to conceive another child. Brisbane swore profanely, Mordecai told me, but not at the thought of my barrenness. He was outraged that Mordecai even thought he would care about such a thing when my life was at stake.

But I cared. As little as I had thought I wanted children, the knowledge that I had lost this one—unexpected as it had been—was bitter. I had only begun to suspect in the last few days before the accident, and I reminded myself over and over again that I could hardly mourn a child that had never been truly mine. It helped only a little. I dreamed incessantly of a black-eyed boy that had his father’s tumbled dark locks and musicality and my sharp wit. Waking was little better. My injuries were extensive and painful. I had broken a pair of ribs and there were numerous lacerations and bruises to be nursed from a cracked cheekbone to a fractured bone in my foot. Brisbane came only occasionally to see me, for Mordecai kept me drugged with morphia until I finally threw the bottle away and said I would rather lie awake with the pain than endure any more of that strange twilight of the drug.

I demanded Brisbane and he came to me then, his face haggard, and fresh silver threading the hair at his temples. He said nothing for a long time, but climbed into bed with me and gathered me so very gently to him. It was only then that I was able to weep, soaking his shirt with my tears as he stroked my hair.

“I am sorry,” I whispered.

“So am I,” he said fiercely. “I failed you.”

I struggled to sit up. He would not let me, but I managed to move my head to look him in the eye. “How can you say it? You saved me. If you had not got there when you did, I would have died. It was my own fault for using that gunpowder without testing it thoroughly,” I said. “But I was so desperately afraid that she was going to shoot you. I had to save you.”

His expression was one of wonderment. “You were trying to save me?”

“Of course. To lose you is impossible.”

“It was not your fault,” he said fiercely. “You acted for the best.”

His eyes were haunted, and I put my hands to his face. “I absolve you. It was not your fault, and you are right. It was not mine. We did the best we could under difficult circumstances. And we are alive to tell the tale.”

He held me close then, as close as he dared for all my bruises and bandages.

“I understand now,” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder. “I really do.”

“Understand what?”

“What it feels like to see the one person you love most in the world in peril. I never knew it before, not really. And when I saw Felicity aim for your heart, I suddenly felt so very stupid not to have known.”

“Known?”

“How savage it is. There is nothing reasonable or logical about it. You were so right when you said that control deserted you where I was concerned. I could no more have controlled what I did next than I could have flown to the moon. I set off that explosion because I had no thought in my head except to save you. I never counted the danger to myself or anyone else. Only you mattered in that moment. Only you. And I would have done anything to save you. I would have paid any price, committed any sin, sold my very soul to do it.”

He stroked my hair and said nothing, but the hand upon my head stilled for an instant, and I felt it tremble.

I ventured a question then that I did not want to ask.

“Are you very upset about the child?”

He was silent a long moment, and I began to regret putting the question to him.

“It was an abstraction,” he said finally. “It was not real to me, even when Mordecai explained that this one was gone and we could never have another.”

“Did you never think of children then? Ours?”

His voice was thick with emotion. “I never expected in the whole of my life that God would be so generous as to give me you. I did not think to ask for more.”

I had never heard Brisbane speak so poignantly of God, and something deep within me that had been tightly knotted uncoiled.

We talked a little of the details then, and we pieced together what we knew between us. It had transpired that the visit to Middlesex had been to call upon Lord Mortlake, who had finally seen fit to relate to someone his doubts about the loyalty and character of his eldest child. He had long suspected Felicity of German sympathies, but he had hesitated to call her out publicly until he discovered that she was living with Portia. Afraid of what havoc she might wreak amongst innocent folk, he had finally summoned Brisbane to confess his daughter’s treachery.

“I could have throttled him with my bare hands for not telling us sooner,” Brisbane told me.

“But at least he told you where to find me,” I said, my eyes drooping heavily. The lingering effect of the drug was torpor.

“He told us no such thing,” Brisbane corrected. “He only gave us the information that Felicity was not to be trusted. We had no idea where she had gone, or—more to the point—where she had taken you.”

“How did you find me?” I asked sleepily.

“Never mind that now,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my brow. “Sleep.” And I did.

For the first time since the accident, I slipped into a deep and undrugged sleep. Oddly, I dreamed a more vivid dream than any I had had on morphia. I was wandering through a garden, a beautiful place, with the most exquisite blossoms. And as I put a hand to smell one, it closed, furling its petals tightly against me. I moved to the next flower, and it did the same, and it happened again and again until I reached the garden gate. I passed through and closed the gate, looking back only once to see the sea of blossoms, nodding sleepily on their stems. I locked the gate firmly behind me and walked on. I did not look back again.

Portia came to visit me soon after, and put the infant Jane the Younger into my arms.

“It is the best cure,” she assured me, and to my astonishment, I found it oddly restful to hold the sleeping infant, and more restful still to give her back when she woke.

She passed the child off to Nanny Stone and arranged herself comfortably upon my bed. “I have brought you five new novels, an enormous box of chocolates, the latest edition of
Le Mode Illustrée,
and a cow.”

“I thought you meant to keep the cow to have milk for Jane the Younger.”

“Yes, well, this particular cow seems highly unsuited to city life. It moos constantly and keeps wandering into the dining room. Most unsettling. Besides, I found a very pretty little dairy quite close to the house that seems remarkably clean and the milk is sweet. It will do.”

I sighed. “I suppose I could send her down to the Rookery. She will make a lovely addition to the menagerie I am starting. I hope she likes peacocks.”

“And mice,” she added with a nod towards my little dormouse. He was once more nestled into my bodice, peeping out with those black teardrop eyes. “Have you given him a name yet?”

I told her the name and she smiled. “I think it suits him.”

I stroked the velvety head with a fingertip. This tiny creature had been a surprising consolation during my convalescence. He was quiet and thoughtful, at least as thoughtful as a dormouse can be. I continued to stroke his head as Portia gave me a reproving glance. “You might have told me about the letters.”

Bellmont, in true contrary fashion, had made a clean breast of the affair within the family. He was horrified to learn the lengths to which Brisbane and I had gone to retrieve them and the dangers we had faced. The knowledge that I had almost died and that Agathe had lost her life because of them was deeply sobering, and it was a humbled Bellmont who had sought forgiveness from us all. Adelaide had risen nobly to the occasion, and it was agreed that the news need go no farther, and even the children were kept in the dark. The fact that the letters had still not been recovered and might surface one day no doubt played into Bellmont’s decision to reveal all to the family, but I think even if they had been published on the front page of the
Times,
he would have stood it like a gentleman.

Plum behaved with gentlemanly discretion, as well. He never spoke of Felicity again, not even to me, but he was most helpful in explaining how they came to find me on that terrible day.

“Mortlake was useless,” he said with some disgust. “He had no notion of where she went on her own. He was just happy when she left the house. He always had some mad notion that she would harm her little brothers.”

“Perhaps not quite so mad,” I remarked.

Plum looked from his newly set arm to my swathes of bandages and shuddered. “Quite. In any event, it seemed possible that she had decided to bolt for Germany, and if so, she would be far likelier to get a good reception from Bismarck if she had the letters with her. Brisbane suggested she might try the Spirit Club one last time to search Agathe’s possessions in case Agathe had hidden the letters. We simply went there and waited until she arrived. It was the most terrible wait, hours until she came, and the entire time Brisbane was very nearly incoherent.”

“Incoherent? What happened?”

Plum looked distinctly uncomfortable. “His eyes would glaze over and he would start to speak, the same things over and over, about choking and suffocation, and not being able to breathe. We loosened his neckcloth and opened the carriage windows, but it didn’t seem to help. I honestly thought the fellow was having an attack.”

“He was, although not the sort you mean.”

Plum gave me a narrow look but did not ask. “Then, when Felicity came, he recovered himself enough to come with us. I honestly thought that Morgan would be able to persuade her to tell us where you were, but nothing he promised, nothing he threatened did the trick. She said nothing at all, merely sat there with that same hateful smile, as if she knew it wouldn’t matter because you couldn’t be saved.”

I thought of those last terrible hours in the crypt and despised her a little more. “How did you find me?”

Plum shook his head. “Even now I do not understand it. We had been questioning Felicity for hours it seemed. We had nothing from her, and Morgan actually suggested, well, what he suggested does not befit the treatment of a lady, but I considered it. Before Morgan could act, Brisbane seemed to collapse again. He folded in upon himself and crouched against the wall, he was breathing a horrible death-rattle sound, and his eyes were completely vacant, as if he could not see us at all and could only see something very far away. He could scarcely speak, he had not the breath for it. And then he said, ‘Highgate. I see the word. We must save them.’ And Morgan did not even hesitate. He pushed us into a carriage and told his driver to drive for hell. We fairly flew there, and when we alighted, Brisbane ran ahead, like a hound on the scent of a hare. He made straight for the Mortlake crypt, and when we found him, he was trying to take the stones apart with his bare hands. We had to pull him off to use Felicity’s key.”

It was not the first time Brisbane’s second sight had alerted him to danger where I was concerned, and unnerving as it was, I blessed it.

“It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen, and so long as I live, I will never forget it.”

I had no doubt of it. As I turned the words over in my mind, I wondered. Had Brisbane guessed about the child? Or had he known, in the same way that he had known where I would be?
We must save them
. There were things I would never know, and some threads of the case that would never be tied to my satisfaction.

The question of how much Mr. Sullivan knew was one such point. He was courteous enough to send a great basket of hothouse fruit to me during my convalescence, but as I considered the untidy scrawl of his signature, something unpleasant occurred to me. During our conversation with him, Mr. Sullivan had neglected to provide us with a significant clue—that he had once followed the veiled lady to Highgate Cemetery. It was possible that he harboured some hope of uncovering her identity himself and thereby securing the gratitude of his superiors. Or he may have, stupidly, written off the incident as nonsignificant. But I realised with a pang that if we had known of her connection to Highgate, Brisbane and I might have at least searched the place and perhaps turned up some clue to her identity. I did not like to mention the omission to Brisbane, but I suspect he realised it for himself. Quite abruptly, Mr. Sullivan stopped writing for the
Illustrated Daily News,
and when I remarked upon it to Brisbane, he told me in a rather clipped tone that Mr. Sullivan had been recalled to Washington by his superiors and nothing more was said upon the matter. It would not have surprised me at all to find Sir Morgan’s fingers in that particular pie. As I lay long hours convalescing, my mind turned frequently to the events of the past weeks, and one detail I had suddenly recalled was that on the evening of the séance, it was Sir Morgan who prevented Sullivan from following the others from the building. It was a perfectly natural action—a gentleman checking the time and patting his pockets to find his cigarette case—but it effectively blocked Sullivan long enough to ensure that none of the three guests who had already departed could be trailed by the American. Had it been intentional? Morgan had told us that he had had difficulty in exposing the German agent, but it was entirely possible that he knew Sullivan was working for the Americans and had taken steps to prevent him from learning anything of importance. I smiled to myself. In blocking the American operative—whether intentionally or not—Morgan had unwittingly spent his own chance to discover the identity of Madame’s German contact for himself. The irony of it seemed entirely fitting.

To Brisbane’s disgust, Felicity Mortlake escaped prosecution. She struck her head during the blast I had detonated, and when she awoke, she remembered nothing, not even her own name. Was it amnesia? Was it pretense? No one could say. Sir Morgan and her father had her consigned to the care of an asylum in Norfolk, deep in the fens, a secure place where if she were not mad, she will surely be in time. Everything else was tidied up with the deft use of Sir Morgan’s influence. Not so much as a whisper of the affair found its way into the newspapers, and if anyone wondered whatever became of Lord Mortlake’s eldest daughter, no one asked it aloud. Not a word of Bellmont’s involvement in the Spirit Club was ever spoken. I appreciated Morgan’s discretion in the matter. That and the enormous baskets of flowers he sent to my bedside. I always did love peonies to distraction.