Twelfth Night (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Give
sorrow
words
.
The
grief
that
does
not
speak

Whispers
the
o’er
-
fraught
heart
,
and
bids
it
break
.

—
Macbeth
, IV, iii, 209

The door swung back slowly, the hinges silent, as if
they had been recently oiled. A woman stood in the shadow of the doorway, and as
she beckoned us forward, I saw precisely what the boys had described—a
witch.

At least that was my first impression. Her nose was long and
hooked towards her pointed chin, but her eyes were kindly, and when she gestured
us forward, she gave us a kindly smile. There was a single room in the cottage
with a scrubbed table and a freshly swept hearth upon which a kettle sang. A bed
lay in the corner of the room, neatly made with a pile of quilts, and there was
a slim figure tucked into it. She raised her hand in a gesture that might have
been supplication.

“Julia.” Her voice was weak, and I was aghast at how thin she
had grown. But I would know her anywhere.

“Lucy!” I cried. I went to embrace my cousin, but the slender,
birdlike bones would bear little affection. Brisbane followed me, his manner
gentle as he took her hand.

“Lucy, I am glad to see you,” he said gravely. “But I think
whatever you have to say, you will wish to say to Julia alone.”

Sudden tears sparkled in her eyes. “You are very good.”

“I will wait outside,” he said, and the kindly witch showed him
out. She returned with a chair for me and dipped her head to Lucy.

“I will be up in the loft if you need me, Mrs. Brisbane.”

She gathered up her skirts and left us, climbing the steep
ladder to the loft. I did not blame her. Like many cottages, this one was snug
and easy to heat, but the greatest warmth would gather upstairs under the low
rafters. No doubt this was where the creature did her sewing and such, and I
dismissed her from my mind as soon as she had gone. I settled myself on my chair
and looked at Lucy with expectant eyes.

“I wish she would not call me that,” she said faintly.

“It is your name.”

She closed her eyes as if a spasm of pain gripped her. But when
she opened them, the sudden tears were gone. “I wish I were not. Marrying
Brisbane’s father was the greatest mistake I ever made.”

I said nothing, and she gave a short, sharp laugh. “How kind of
you not to tell me I was stupid. Believe me, I have said it to myself almost
every day since.”

During a previous investigation in India, Lucy, a recent widow
with a sizeable fortune from her late husband’s estate, had eloped with
Brisbane’s father, a darkly glamourous man of breathtaking villainy.
3
I had hoped the marriage would be the
making of him, but it appeared it had been her undoing.

“I am sorry it was unhappy,” I told her.

“I think you mean it,” she said, picking at the quilt with
restless fingers.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have left him,” she said simply. “I have run away from my
husband.”

“How long has it been?”

She shrugged, her expression dreamy. “I can’t remember anymore.
It’s been so long, so many rented accommodations, so many hurried flights on
trains and mail coaches and steamers. I have eluded him across half the world,
and still he hunts me.”

“Is that why you did not come to the Abbey? Father would have
taken you in. Surely you must know that.”

She rubbed her temples. “I know. But I could not bring his
cruelty to bear on anyone else. Yet I longed to be close to my family. I am weak
and foolish and—”

I sighed. It had ever been Lucy’s habit to carp on her
shortcomings. But her life had been full of woes, great and small, and I could
not be unkind to her.

I covered her hand with my own. “Lucy, you ought to have come
to us. Brisbane and I would have cared for you. He has a thousand connections in
London, abroad. He could have hid you anywhere.”

“I thought of it,” she told me. “But then I read in the
newspaper about your accident.”

She stopped there and turned her hand to grasp mine. “I am very
sorry about your child.”

It had been two months, but still I did not speak of it easily.
The accident that caused my miscarriage had been one of my own making, and while
I could not regret it as it had saved Brisbane’s life, neither could I wholly
reconcile myself to our loss.
4
It was
something I dared not let myself dwell upon, and I had no wish to discuss it
with Lucy.

I withdrew my hand gently. “It was not to be.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “In any event, I could not burden you with
my troubles, not then. And I knew your father was in London, but I felt if I
could only get near to the Abbey, someplace familiar and quiet, I could be
safe.” The Abbey had never been her home, but as a distant poor relation, she
had spent her share of holidays with us. I had little doubt that in her mind,
the Abbey represented all that was safe in the world.

“I came by closed carriage, quietly,” she told me. “So as not
to attract notice. I thought of the vicar. He gave us this cottage for our use
without telling a soul. He was so kindly when he performed my marriage to Sir
Cedric. God, it seems a lifetime ago! How long has it been?”

Her expression was dreamy again, and I wondered idly if she
were taking some sort of drug.

“Two years.”

“So little time! And yet my life has been utterly destroyed,”
she murmured. “How I wish I had died with Cedric. To have been spared what came
after—”

She broke off, covering her face with her hands, and I did not
have the heart to point out that Cedric had been murdered
because
of her.

There was a long, still silence broken by the crackling of the
fire.

“How is he?” she asked, and I knew she meant her child.

“He is well. Thriving, to hear Morag tell it. My maid is
helping Portia to care for him. He is in good care,” I assured her.

She nodded, closing her eyes. “I knew the family would not let
him suffer for my sins.”

I felt a stab of exasperation. Lucy could dramatise as well as
a character from Beaumont and Fletcher. “What sins, Lucy? You had a child by
your husband.”

“Husband! Do you think I could bear to call him that?”

“But he is,” I persisted. “Your child is legitimate. You have
committed no transgression, and even if you had, we are not the sort to make a
fuss over such a thing. You know that.”

Tears leaked from her eyes and slid down to the pillow. She
opened her eyes slowly. “I know. But his lordship has already been so generous.
And, as I say, you all had your own troubles. I could not add to them with my
burdens. It was a difficult pregnancy,” she told me. “I suffered much, no doubt
because of my mental anguish. You cannot imagine what it is like to be tormented
by fear, hounded and chased like an animal, never settling. Even now, I try to
sleep, and I fear I can hear him, trying the locks, calling my name in that sly,
insidious voice. If it were not for Nanny Bleeker, I would not have survived at
all.”

“Where did you find her?”

“On the ship, when we fled India. She had gone to India to
deliver her last charge into the care of his parents. She had been comfortably
pensioned off, and...I suppose she sensed I needed a friend,” she said quietly.
“It was supposed to be our wedding voyage, but he spent all of his time in the
card saloon, fleecing the other passengers,” she said bitterly. I noticed she
did not mention Black Jack by name. “And the nights...well, best not to speak of
them.”

“Did he mistreat you?” I felt a surge of rage at the notion
that any man could raise a hand to my gentle cousin.

Her expression was one of astonishment. “Mistreat me? He never
laid a finger upon me in anger. His cruelties were of the subtler, more refined
variety. He made me do things with him, to him.” She shut her eyes against the
memory of their marriage bed. “But the worst of it is that he made me want to do
them. I had no will except his. And when he was finished, he would tell me
things, terrible things he had done, as if to make me despise myself because I
could not help wanting a man capable of such deviltry. I learned to hate him
during that trip. And by the time we docked in Marseilles, I knew I had
conceived his child. I had made up my mind that I must escape him, for the
baby’s sake. Nanny Bleeker had money, and I had put some by after Cedric died.
He took most of it,” she added bitterly, “but there were one or two things he
had not yet found. And Nanny and I simply disappeared in the melee at the docks.
We stepped off one ship and made our way directly to another that was about to
set sail for South America. There was a terrible row when they found we had
stowed away, but there was an empty cabin, and we paid for it, and they looked
the other way. That’s how it began, this long, terrible chase. I am the hind to
his hunter, and he will find me,” she said at last breaking into long, violent
sobs.

I stroked her hair and marvelled at how much the village gossip
had got wrong. There was no witch, only a kindly old woman. And no ghostly
lamentations, only the weeping of an unhappy girl who had made a deal with the
devil.

“Lucy, about the baby,” I began.

She gave a low sob and pressed her hands to her eyes. “Not now.
I cannot think now.”

I sighed. She was in no fit state to consider her child’s
welfare. He was in good care at the Abbey, and we could certainly keep him until
she had recovered herself. She was family, after all, and we owed her as
much.

I rose and pressed a kiss to her brow. “I will leave you now,
Lucy. But I will come back soon and see how you are.”

She struggled up and clasped my hand. “You will keep my
secret?”

“Yes, but I really think—”

Colour rose stormily into her face then ebbed as swiftly as it
had come. She was as pale as the sheet upon which she lay. “Swear it!” she
demanded. “Upon your honour.”

“I will tell no one,” I promised. “Save Brisbane. We are
speaking of his father, after all. He deserves to know.”

She nodded and collapsed back onto the pillows. “Very well. I
trust him,” she said dully. “He is nothing like his father.”

Chapter Eight

To
business
that
we
love
we
rise
betime

And
go
to
it
with
delight
.

—
Antony and Cleopatra
, IV, iv, 20

I related the sad tale to Brisbane as we made our way back to the Abbey. A valiant winter sun had burnt off the worst of the mist, and we were surrounded by the sound of dripping water as the frost melted. It was a strange sort of day, with the unearthly light and the cottage like something in a fairy-tale wood and the sad maiden locked away from a villainous wretch.

Brisbane took my arm. “Stop romanticising,” he said.

“I was doing nothing of the sort,” I protested.

He gave me a knowing look, and I conceded the point. “Well, perhaps a little. I suppose the truth is that Lucy is a rather stupid girl who has acted impulsively and is paying a terrible price for it. Still, we are better equipped at the Abbey to care for the child until she recovers herself.”

We walked along in silence for a few minutes, retracing the route we had followed the previous night. The countryside was solemn and still, and in the distance, I could just make out the gaily painted
vardos
of Gypsies camped on the fringes of my father’s land.

“It must have been cold for them in the snow,” I remarked.

“They’ll not be bothered by it,” he assured me with a quirk of his shapely mouth. “We’re hardy stock, or had you forgot that?”

I slipped my hand into his. “They’re lucky to live so lightly—everything neatly tucked into one wagon to take along in their travels. I envy them the simplicity of it.”

He shot me a quizzical look. “Do you mean it?”

I stopped to look at him. “Yes, why?”

“It’s just that I had a letter from Mrs. Lawson,” he began. “She grows tired of London, and her sister wants her to move to Bath. She has offered to sell us the house in Half Moon Street.”

“I think it’s a brilliant idea. You would own your consulting rooms, and we could let the rest of it.”

“Or we could live in it,” he suggested.

I said nothing for a moment, thinking swiftly. “The house is far smaller than anywhere else we have lived. It would mean a drastic reduction in staff,” I said, beginning to warm to the idea.

“We wouldn’t need half a dozen maids,” he agreed.

“Or footmen,” I put in with real enthusiasm. Our footmen were Brisbane’s idea, former thieves recruited for the sole purpose of acting as my bodyguards and employed against my will.

Brisbane nodded. “I thought you would like that. I could put them to work for Monk,” he said, referring to his right-hand man, his former teacher and batman and friend of long acquaintance. “They can take the day-to-day cases, the missing jewels and purloined letters and blackmail notes.”

“And what would you do?” I asked.

Brisbane’s nature tended towards the serious, but there was a graveness to his manner that told me he was speaking entirely from his heart. “I would like to work with Morgan. On a regular footing.”

Sir Morgan Fielding. Secret advisor to the Prime Minister, my distant cousin, and Brisbane’s sometime employer in activities that could only be termed espionage. “You have given this a great deal of thought,” I temporised.

“I have.” He began to walk, pulling me slowly along, his hand covering mine. “The threat in Germany grows. I don’t know how long we have, but something is stirring, something ugly and dangerous. Morgan is worried, too. He is in Berlin now.”

I blinked at him. “He said he was going to Paris for a bit of recreation. He might have told me the truth. I am taking care of his larcenous cat,” I reminded Brisbane. Nin was a violently loud Siamese with a penchant for making off with anything that sparkled.

“Morgan is not terribly trusting at the best of times, even of us.”

“But you want to work for him.”

“With him,” he corrected. “Times are changing, and we both believe that the methods that have been used in the past will no longer serve. It’s time to create a new agency with new operatives, young minds that can be trained properly to sleuth out information and pass it back to London.”

“You
have
thought this through,” I said, a trifle tartly. “I suppose it even has a name.”

“Morgan likes the notion of the industriousness of bees. He was thinking of calling it the Apiary.”

I thought a moment then shook my head. “No. Call it the Vespiary. After a nest of wasps. They have a more ferocious sting. If we are going to take on Germany, let them know we mean it.”

He stopped, openmouthed. “You’re serious. You raise no objection.”

“To what? You taking on dangerous work? You’ve done that since before I knew you. It was half the reason I fell in love with you, I expect. I could no more ask you to give up your work than I could hold back the tides. It is the stuff of which you are made.”

He embraced me then, and when he drew back, my lips were tingling in the cold. “There’s something else,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“Morgan and I shall want your help.”

It was my turn to stare, mouth agape. “You mean it?”

“I do. You bungle into my cases with no method or order, and yet you have the instincts of a bloodhound. You understand people and what drives them. The Apiary will have need of people like you.”

I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “The Vespiary,” I corrected.

He grinned. “We shall see.”

Just then he cocked his head. “And I would like to go up to the nursery and see the child.”

I smiled in return. Brisbane had shown little interest in babies. “Why?”

“Because I have never had a half-brother before.”

* * *

We arrived back at the Abbey hand in hand and in perfect amity. In the space of our short walk we had agreed upon a new career and a new style of living. We should embrace simplicity, at least a privileged and eccentric sort of simplicity. We would have rooms for consulting and photographic equipment as well as a sitting room and bedroom with further accommodation for Morag and Aquinas. A pair of guest rooms and another pair for a cook and maid would complete our domestic arrangements. That still left a few rooms unused, but I had little doubt we would eventually put them to good purpose. As to the work Brisbane proposed, I felt a thrill at the prospect of taking on such important and clandestine activities. There was much yet to be discussed, but I felt the new year had dawned full of expectant promise, and already it was being fulfilled.

The feeling of smug contentment was doomed to be short-lived. No sooner had we arrived in the nursery than Morag thrust the infant into my arms.

“Mind you don’t drop him. I am wanted,” she pronounced grandly.

“By whom?” I demanded.

“Lady Bettiscombe. She is feeling particularly unwell,” she told us. Heedless of Brisbane’s presence, she launched into a description of Portia’s bodily woes complete in all its lurid detail.

After a particularly informative passage, Brisbane raised a hand. “No more, I beg you.”

Morag smoothed her skirts. “The maids are fair dropping on their feet with all the running and fetching. It would help matters no end if his lordship had bothered to modernise the Abbey,” she added with a severe look at me.

“It wasn’t my idea to keep the Abbey practically mediaeval in its arrangements,” I protested. “But what am I meant to do with this?” I asked, glancing at the sleeping child.

She pulled a sour face. “Try not to drown him. Or drop him. Or stab him with a pin. He’s a baby, not a Fabergé egg.” She turned to Brisbane and spoke to him, her voice suitably respectful. “You’re wanted downstairs, as well, sir. His lordship has instructions regarding the Revels. He’s fretting himself to bits worrying over the arrangements, and you’re the only one of the family still on your feet. The doctor says he needs to rest, but he won’t until his mind is settled.”

Brisbane looked from me to the baby and back again. “Go,” I urged. “Father will only make a nuisance of himself if he doesn’t get the Revels sorted. You know how stubborn he can be.”

“You’re quite certain?” he asked, eyeing me doubtfully.

I put out my tongue at him by way of response. “It’s a baby. How difficult can it be?”

As it turned out, very difficult, indeed.