The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious] (12 page)

The servants were extraordinarily lax this evening. When the door finally opened, Charles was ready with a quip about having died of thirst, but had to swallow his words when he realized it was only George.

“Oh, you’re back,” George positioned himself in front of the fire, absorbing all the heat, and measured a line of snuff along the back of his hand. The woody, cinnamon smell was a burst of orange in the white panelled room. “Took your time.”

Charles shifted nervously in his chair. Here was the guilt, hanging on the ends of George’s greying blond hair, played by his fingertips like a harpsichord. A ball of burning pitch seemed to lodge in the back of Charles’ throat at the sight of George’s easy nonchalance, the confident way he leaned his elbow on the mantel. “It rained,” he said, reluctant to share a moment of Jasper’s company, even the memory of it, with his brother. How could George be so shameless as to look Jasper in the face after what he had done, let alone have the nerve to try it again?

“You don’t say?”

But he couldn’t risk George’s suspicions, so he swallowed the lump down, where it lay gently seething with jealousy and resentment in the pit of his stomach, and said, “But they say Elizabeth may stay. We can take her there tomorrow.”

George chuckled. “Goose! She’s been upstairs these past four hours, in travail. You’re a little late.”

“Oh.” Charles looked down at the portrait of Sir Henry on the fly leaf of the book open in his hand. It had a smile so similar to George’s he felt time-sick with it. “If it’s any comfort, I’m coming around to your opinion about father’s death. With such ghosts in the house, murder on top seems extravagant.”

“I thought you’d see it in the end.” Having toasted his back, George drew up another chair, settled into it, unlatching the diamond-studded buckles at his knees with a sigh of relief. “What brought about this conversion?”

“I find,” Charles pressed a hand to his lips as if it was the feather of a quill pen and he composed his thoughts before putting them down on paper. “I cannot see any reason for any of us to do such a thing. Moreover, you showed no concern when I looked for the killer in father’s eyes. Elizabeth loved him, and is genuinely distraught. Jasper had been sent here by the Admiral to forgive the old feud, rather than avenge it. And I was in London at the time, at the theatre. There is no one left to accuse.”

But the salt in the plant pot? The fox in the ash pit?
He shook his head at his ancestor who grinned back up, unabashed, foxlike himself with his pointed tuft of beard. Neither of those things killed Emma, scared himself and Elizabeth half out of their wits.

“So I’m wondering about the ghosts. Is anything known about them?” He raised the morocco bound volume so that George could see the title. “Sir Henry met one, according to this, but it seemed inoffensive enough.”

“Sir Henry is supposed to have
made
one.” George opened the door and shouted for brandy and cigars. The house settled a little, creaking, and it was so quiet Charles fancied he could hear the women talking above his head, crooning encouragement over the little gasping grunts of someone determined not to scream. The mystery of it came over him like a wave. No wonder Jasper was religious, when this life touched eternity at so many points, coming from the unknown, and returning there, tarrying here for so short a time.

“How’s that?” he said.

George regarded the empty corridor outside with a scowl, returned to throw himself disconsolately back into his chair. “Oh, Sir Henry? He had a mistress, you know. Well…” he laughed, “one of many. But this one gets herself pregnant. Nice Catholic girl—she’s afraid Daddy’s going to pack her off to the nunnery. So she comes to Sir Henry and says ‘you said you would marry me, we’d best do it soon.’ ‘Course that’s out of the question. He can’t marry a Catholic. She should have thought about that before she let him under her skirts, stupid trollop.”

“At any rate, that’s the last anyone sees of her. Her brother comes looking for her and gets an arse full of shot for his trouble. ‘Course, the rumour is that Sir H had killed her, buried her under the parterre, but no one dares ask. Three months later, the White Lady's first seen on the stairs, and she's been with us ever since." He laughed, a quiet hiss of breath through the nose. "Quite an heirloom. If it wasn't such a hit and miss affair I'd be tempted to add one to the collection myself. Nothing like it for ensuring your posterity."

"You are a piece of work, George." Giving up on the drink, Charles knelt on the bare boards to make up the fire, feeling his brother's gaze like a weight on the crown of his head.

"The same blood is in you, my lad." George spread his arms wide along the back of his chair, and tipped his head back with a weary sigh. "I do hope she isn't all night about it. I need my sleep."

§ § § §

The morning brought an early fog that eased into one of those autumnal days that felt as though it had been seeped in cider. As Charles burrowed deeper under his coverlet, reliving in slumbering content the press of arms about him, the sweetness of breath on his cheek, his valet cruelly flung open the curtains and allowed chill saffron sunlight and a scent of wild garlic to scour in a tonic blast throughout the room.

The early post brought missives and play-bills, but not the letter he waited for. He knew it could not; not yet. But still it was a disappointment.

News came down from Elizabeth's room that the new baby too was not all that could have been hoped for, being a girl, but that mother and child were both alive, both sleeping, and would not be receiving visitors until the morrow. So Charles selected the most interesting of his plays and went down to London to watch it.

Theo was in the crowd, with some members of his troupe, encouraging the audience to heckle their rivals, and supplying mouldy oranges for throwing. Charles spent all evening avoiding him, and returned with no notion of what he had seen, sober as a judge.

Still no post the day after, but the wind had risen and shifted direction. The chimney pots hummed and dank grey leaves rushed past like the wild hunt, but the house felt homely again; an encircling, protective presence. He noticed, as he went up to Elizabeth's room around noon, that he was no longer obsessively checking the shadows.

He had no desire to be fond of babies, in the general course of things, but when he was allowed to hold his niece, he was charmed despite it. The wriggling creature in white bonnet and long dresses regarded him with a frown, as if trying to puzzle out what he was. She smelled milky-sweet, like a sleeping puppy, and lay trustingly in his arms. She had a thin crop of copper hair, an empurpled look about the face from the exertion of being born, and eyes like Chinese porcelain—blue even about the whites.

"Ugly little thing, isn't she?" he said, pretending not to be affected as the tiny hand reached out and grasped his neckcloth.

"Not worse than you at the same age." Elizabeth's eyes were bruised with fatigue, but it felt like the first time in months he had seen her smile. "I really thought she was dead; that I was going through all of that to bring forth a stillborn. Knowing she's alive, I'd love her if she had two heads."

He carried her away from the window's light, and perched on the side of the bed with her, so that Elizabeth could run a caressing finger from the curve of snub nose to chin. The child smacked her lips as the fingertip touched her mouth.

"Does she have a name, this niece of mine?"

The door opened to admit Mary Dwyer, and a comfortably round matron in her forties with a child of indeterminate sex toddling behind her.

"Harriet." Elizabeth cast a lazy glance at the women, then stiffened like a pointer dog and whipped back a newly intent look. Her face hardened into war-like lines. "Her name is Harriet. And thank you Mrs. Price, you come in excellent time. She is about to be hungry. Please take her into the nursery and feed her. Mary, would you tell Lord Clitheroe I need to speak to him at once."

The change from pliable new mother to mistress of the house was so extreme it took Charles several breaths to catch up with it. By the time he did, she was in the middle of saying "Charles, you stay. I want you to hear this too."

"What…?"

She waited until the door had closed before answering, tucked her plaited hair up under her cap and motioned for him to pass her bedgown. "Please call for two of the menservants."

"Why…?"
"Just do it, Charles. I have a good reason but I'm tired and have no desire to explain this more than once."

The wind rattled the windows, and as Mary came in on George's arm the leaping candle flames twinkled in the deep purple jewel of her pendant, tied about her neck on a ribbon as green as her eyes. She dropped a little curtsy. "Lord Clitheroe, mum," and, smiling, headed back towards the door.

"No Mary, stay a moment." Drawn and deflated as she looked, there was still the iron of the Latham family will in Elizabeth's quiet command. Mary was arrested between one footfall and the rest. Noticing the footmen who stood like sentinels, one on either side of the door, she turned slowly back, looked from Charles' face to George's, in innocent appeal. "Yes, mum?"

"Where did you get that necklace?"

Mary's eyes flickered as though she had closed an inner eyelid, opened it again, fast as a snake. "It's mine, miss. My young man give it me."

A nicely cut amethyst in the centre of a cluster of tiny seed pearls. The setting looked to be made of gold. Fine for a servant girl, Charles thought, maybe a little too fine, but not something he would have looked at twice. Yet here was Elizabeth vibrating with righteous indignation, and George, having leaned forward to examine it close, gasped, his mouth and eyes drawing thin as wire.

"You are a liar as well as a thief." Elizabeth's firm voice chilled even further. "That is Emma's. It's the drop from one of her earrings. I'd know it anywhere."

"Damn me if it isn't." George picked it up, his knuckles brushing Mary's breasts. "I'd have seen it as part of the pair. I didn't recognise it on the ribbon." He pulled her slightly closer by the neck. "Where did you come by my Emma's jewellery, girl?"

Mary raised her chin, looking splendid and vivid as an orchid and not at all abashed. "She didn't have no use for it any more. And my young man
did
give it me, or leastways, he should have.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Elizabeth drew herself up, outrage burning her cheeks. Amongst her satin pillows, surrounded by her silver-bullion laced curtains, she might have been the goddess Hera on her throne, completely certain of her own power and the justice of her cause.

But Mary pried George's hand off her finger by finger and made a little swirling twirl to look at each member of the family in turn, eyes clear as absinthe, and her face bold. Fearsomely brave and quite undeterred. It was the completest thing. "When I'm Lady Clitheroe it'll be mine anyways. So yes, it is mine miss, or it will be soon enough."

"When you're Lady Clitheroe?" Despite her fierce beauty, the thought made Charles laugh.

At his snigger she rounded on him in a fury. "What's so funny? He said he would marry me. Didn't you George? And Mr. Latham is a fine gentleman, so of course I believes him."

Scarcely a week ago, Charles' laugh would have expressed his every thought on the matter. But that had been before Jasper. He was in love with a bastard. A man! A maidservant seemed a step up. "
Do
you mean to marry her, George?”

“Oh, don’t be absurd!” George drew himself up to the full extent of his middling height and oozed contempt. “Marry my father’s drab? I think not.” He caught Mary’s chin, his thumb in the centre squeezing until it turned livid white, and sized up her face as though buying a horse. “I could buy a dozen of you at the local tavern.”

There was still nothing like fear in her eyes; her back straight, her fists clenched, and her face pure. “Then it’s you what’s the liar and the thief. Taking what don’t belong to you, breaking your word after.”

George’s face suffused with blood, purple as young Harriet’s. He beckoned the footmen over with a savage jerk of the chin. “Take her and lock her in the coal cellar. Then Jones, you run for the magistrate. Insolent slut! I’ll see you hanging from the gibbet in the marketplace before the week’s out.”

The footmen took her by the upper arms. She didn’t fight, merely dropped a mocking curtsey and smiled sweet as sugar plums. “You want to watch your language, sir. You know what the Bible says about the wages of sin.”

When she had gone, the silence thickened about them like clotting blood. Then at last Elizabeth sighed. “Poor child. George, really…!”

George rolled his eyes. “Oh don’t let her wounded virtue trouble you. I inherited her from father, like the other secret passages. She was well trodden by the time I got her.”

Elizabeth bent her head into her hand and rubbed her eyes. “Even so, I wish you would keep your hands off the servants. It makes the management of the household so tricky. Lord knows, if you have her hanged we must expect to have to part with Kitty, and Cook too. And it will be Christmas soon!”

c
hAPteR eLeven

It began with a creak as the library door swung slowly open, and a wave-front of cold air broke over the back of Charles’ seat. The flames of the fire sputtered blue for a moment and then blew out. Ash came up in a plume from it, rolled out, gritty, warm as flesh, about his knees. From the chair opposite, George looked up with a brittle, frightened smile. “Dear Lord!” he whispered. “I hoped it was over!”

Charles forced himself to his feet despite the fear pressing him down. A faint, persistent breeze came in from the hall. The walls wavered as if seen through thick glass and a crawling horror seeped out of them, chilling him.

Silence. And something moving. He felt its approach mutely, as a shepherd might sense an oncoming storm. George moved jerkily towards the door. They looked at one another and from the expression on George’s face Charles knew he too was thinking
which one of us does it want?

Wordless terror floated like ice in George’s sea-coloured eyes, then he turned abruptly, strode across the room and threw open the sash. Leaves blew in, and moss, and fog. “It’s coming this way. Out the window!”