An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (15 page)

‘I still don’t understand half of it, but I’ve spoken to Father and… I’m angry. And I’m frightened of Gabriel, but most of all I don’t want him to get away with what he did. To my Mother, to your sister, and to me.’

‘What did you remember?’ Damien asked, as I sank down to the rugs beside him. He was so solid, and even sitting down, hunched in the dark, he radiated strength. He seemed tense though, and I feared that if I made one wrong move or said one thoughtless word, something in him would snap.

‘I’d rather not tell you. Not now, anyway. Maybe after.’

‘After?’

I reached out and squeezed his hand.

‘After this is over. However it ends. Maybe.’

Damien looked up and regarded me with suspicion.

‘I thought I’d disgusted you,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to speak to you like that.’ Like him was the implication, and it sat between us, unspoken in the dark. ‘I think maybe, though, you understand. I’ve done things, many things I’m not proud of - things I’d rather forget. I’ve been at war, and you see the good behind what you’re doing and you do your best for your country, but…’

He trailed off, and I shuffled closer to him, never relinquishing my grip on his hand.

‘You have to do things,’ he continued eventually, ‘that you can’t make sense of. I never wanted to kill anyone. I joined up for the same reasons Tristan did, although I never said it. It was for glory, and promotion. There’s no time like a war for making a career!’ Damien laughed bitterly.

‘But I didn’t think about what it’s actually like on those boats, and what I’d have to do to other human beings. What other human beings would do to me, to my friends, to anyone. And we won, and there’s glory, but I did it by becoming someone I never wanted to. But I had to. And I did all that, and I came home to glorious England, and there’s someone here, who’s been doing horrible things to the people I care about. So I thought, that’s the least I could do, to make things right here, too. And I will, you know.’

He turned to face me now, his eyes bright and burning even in the darkness.

‘I meant what I said. I’m not proud of who I am, but I can’t let him get away with what he did to Cass. The people in France – that we had to try and kill, and that had to try and kill us – they were just boys, and we were all just doing our job. But here, in my own damned country, Raynor was doing what he did to my sister. And then you. I was too late, I’m so sorry, Fleur. I’m so sorry you had to do it alone.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ I whispered, wrapping my free arm around his front and holding him close to me. ‘But we’ll make it right.’

He let me hold him for a little while. He was warm, and I could smell dust and sweat on his skin, but it was nice. It was comforting and I realised it was the closest I had been to a man since Gabriel, and I hadn’t flinched at all. In fact, aside from Gabriel, and very rare occasions with my father, this was the first man I had ever been this close to. Tristan didn’t count. Tristan didn’t even seem like a real person.

I felt a hot, embarrassed flush steal over my body, but when I began to slowly lean away, Damien caught my arm and held me closer. And like with Tristan, one of the most wonderful things was that I knew, without a doubt, that if I wanted to move away, he’d let me go.

‘What did he do to your mother?’

‘Hmm?’ His sudden question startled me.

‘Your mother. You said you didn’t want Raynor to get away with what he did to your mother. What did he do? Although of course- ‘ Damien added hurriedly, ‘you don’t have to tell me.’

‘He was in love with her, apparently.’

Damien’s silence spoke volumes.

There was a click, suddenly, and I heard the little panel swing open. I looked at Damien, so close but now in company, so far away, and he shrugged. I managed to disentangle our arms and move away to a slightly more respectable distance before Edwina’s head popped up into view.

‘Ah, there you are. Dinner’s ready, dear. And perhaps you’d better come down too, Damien.’

CHAPTER 20

Fleur, Again

Tristan watched me with wide, wary eyes as Damien and I entered the kitchen. I was nervous, worried over what I would have to say to Edwina and her son, scared of what they would think of me after. Yet they had lied to me, too. Not so much, but lied nonetheless. But at that moment, it didn’t feel like I had much of a leg to stand on.

‘There, now.’ Edwina settled herself comfortably behind a steaming bowl of stew and patted the seat beside her. ‘You sit here, Alice. No, is it Alice?’

‘Fleur,’ I said quietly, but it came out as more of a croak.

‘You pull that chair over, Damien, there’s a dear. Fleur, you say? Such a pretty name. Do you have the bread, Jane? Very good. Now then, I think it’s time we all talked to one another about how things are in this house. Don’t worry,’ she patted me comfortingly on the arm, ‘nobody’s going to get cross.’

Tristan cast a mutinous look my way. I wasn’t sure why entirely. There were quite a few things I’d done that he might think worth his censure.

‘Now, you’ve discovered Damien hiding in the walls and I daresay that seems strange-’

‘She knows,’ Damien interrupted. ‘I’ve told her what I’m doing here.’

‘Oh, good.’ Edwina looked pleased. ‘That makes it all a lot simpler. Now, Fleur, I think it’s only fair to tell you that I know who you are. I didn’t when you arrived, but I know your father, and I knew your mother. Not well mind you, but we met a few times when your father first started visiting, and I knew your mother to speak to for most of my life. We weren’t really in the same circles, but… she always seemed very nice.’

‘Who was she, Mother?’ Tristan asked, and I felt a tremor of unease at what was about to be revealed.

‘Rosie Raynor. You probably don’t remember her – you must only have been about four when she left.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Raynor?’

‘Gabriel Raynor’s sister,’ I supplied quietly.

‘Oh. Then I take it she was nothing like her brother.’

‘What was she like?’ I longed for an unbiased view from a person whose opinion I trusted.

Edwina wrinkled her pretty brow as she tried to remember.

‘Well as I say, I never really knew her, and we can’t have spoken more than once or twice – but she was so pretty. Terribly, terribly pretty.’

I pulled off my locket and passed it over to her.

‘This is the only picture I have. Is it a good likeness?’

‘Oh my, yes.’

I peered over her shoulder to look at the miniature again. Pale skin, like mine I supposed, but a cloud of red hair and a coy smile that I could never master, along with kind, green eyes.

‘We don’t look much alike.’

‘May I?’ Tristan asked. With a fond cluck and one last look, Edwina handed the locket over, careful not to dangle the trailing chain in the stew. He studied the picture carefully.

‘Nice piece of work,’ he said. ‘Good technique. You can tell she came from a well-off family if only because they could afford to get a picture of this quality done. I say-’ here he leaned over and passed the locket to Damien. ‘Doesn’t she remind you of Cass? Not the face, but the hair?’

Damien frowned, the small, fragile locket looking almost ridiculous in his large hands.

‘I see what you mean – but just the hair. Cass’s face was completely different.’

It was then that I began to see, I think, the motives behind Gabriel’s marriages to Cassandra and myself. What a disappointment I must have been to him! Like my father, he must have felt the pain that I wasn’t in my mother’s image.

‘I should tell you – if you don’t know – that… Gabriel’s my husband.’

The words fell out of me in a rush, and fell into the silence. Tristan turned a strange grey colour, and dropped his spoon into his stew. Damien raised his brows and mopped a few drops off the table.

‘Oh, dear.’ Edwina reached over and patted my arm. ‘Was it quite as awful as we’ve been imagining?’

‘Yes,’ I said emphatically. ‘It’s why I ran away. And also I tried to kill him.’

Damien began to cough and splutter on his spoonful of stew and I realised he was laughing. I glared at him as Edwina clucked her tongue.

‘Oh, dear me. Well that certainly explains a lot of things. Is that why you ran away?’

‘Yes,’ I said, casting a shy glance in Tristan’s direction and pointedly ignoring Damien. ‘I’m sorry I said I’d lost my memory – I mean, there were some things I’d blocked out and didn’t realise, but I knew most of it. Sorry.’

‘It’s perfectly understandable, dear,’ Edwina said, patting my hand once more. ‘We hid a young gentleman in our roof space. We all kept secrets from one another, but everything’s out in the open now. Tristan, eat your stew before it gets cold. You too, Fleur, else you’ll never get any flesh on those bones.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’ Tristan asked quietly, looking very like an angelic religious martyr. I toyed with my spoon and tried not to look at him.

‘Come on, Tris, she could hardly just come out with it, could she?’ Damien chipped in.

‘But she told you, didn’t she?’ My angel pouted, and my heart broke a little.

‘Ah, but I was hiding in the walls. Entirely different circumstances.’

I glared at Damien again, who appeared to have entirely recovered from the fit of melancholy he was in earlier. He shrugged and smiled boyishly.

‘Sorry, but I’m sitting at a table in daylight and eating with people. Look – I can even stretch my legs. It’s quite wonderful, considering the past few weeks. I think I’m a little giddy.’

Tristan shot him a look that would never have graced the features of a saint.

‘I did want to tell you all,’ I said. ‘I felt so awful about it, but if it hadn’t been Gabriel, and you hadn’t happened to hate him and wish him dead too, think how it would have looked.’

Tristan appeared somewhat mollified, and I caught Jane’s eye across the table. She just shook her head, as though tired of the lot of us.

‘If you could hear yourselves,’ she muttered. ‘You’re all cracked.’

‘Oh hush, Jane,’ Edwina smiled. ‘I think we’re all quite giddy tonight. It’s so nice not to have to be too careful of what one says in one’s own home.’

‘Well, indeed,’ Tristan said sourly. ‘I just wish you’d told me. I feel like quite the fool, everyone else knowing except me.’

Damien rolled his eyes.

‘Try living in a wall for a week, see how that cuts you off from the gossip.’

‘And what do you plan to do now, Fleur?’ Edwina cut in, effectively curtailing any argument between the two men.

‘I don’t really know. If I weren’t here, or you weren’t… you know, then my plan was to wait until Father was better, then to run away, to America or something.’

‘I’ve always fancied the colonies myself,’ Damien smiled across the table. ‘Good place for a bit of adventure, I’ve always thought. All that open space, lawlessness and so on.’

‘If you don’t mind, I think what Fleur was saying was slightly more important,’ Tristan said, bitingly.

‘But I suggested it to Father – before I knew your position on the matter with Gabriel – and he… well, he wasn’t entirely of my way of thinking,’ I tailed off lamely.

‘What did he suggest?’ Edwina asked gently.

I stared down at my stew, avoiding the intent gazes of everyone at the table.

‘He rather thought that I should… go back to Gabriel. Apparently he wants me back, and sent Father with that aim. But he’s scared him, that’s why. Father’s been hiding me from Gabriel since I was born, and I think he’s just tired of running,’ I began to gabble, ashamed as much as anything else, that my father was willing to abandon me twice.

‘Hmm.’ Edwina’s lips were tightly pursed while Damien and Tristan looked mutinous. ‘Well I think we can all agree that’s probably our last resort.’

The love I had always felt for this family and this house blossomed anew. It was affirming to have someone else echo the idea that perhaps it wasn’t that I was a bad and unnatural daughter, and maybe Father wasn’t the best he could be.

‘What would you like to do, Fleur? Do you still want to go abroad?’

‘I don’t really know. I just don’t want to have to hide any more. And I certainly don’t want to go back to him.’

Damien leaned back and folded his arms.

‘You know what I want to do. I say we go along with the original plan. Having Fleur here shouldn’t make it more complicated. Raynor’s hardly going to have broadcast it that his wife beat him and ran off.’

‘Oh, is that how you tried to kill him?’ Edwina turned to me with interest.

‘I hit him with a candlestick,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

‘But you’re happy to go along with what Damien’s suggesting?’ Tristan asked.

‘I don’t know the details – but I don’t really know how I feel about a lot of what’s happened in the past few weeks. But I know Gabriel has done some horrible, horrible things, and that he’d kill me if I went back to him. He told me as much himself. I just didn’t recognise the part of me that tried to kill him. That’s what scared me. I didn’t think I was capable of that – I didn’t even realise I’d hit him until it was over.’

‘I think we forget,’ Edwina said softly, ‘just how young you are, and just how much you’ve been through.’

We fell silent for a few moments, and I nervously swirled my spoon in my stew, feeling terribly self-conscious.

‘What is your plan, Damien?’ I said, eventually, as the silence stretched and everyone else seemed reluctant to break it.

‘We’ve nothing concrete. It’s basically working with the fact that nobody, outside of this room, knows I’m in the country. The idea was to shadow him for a few days, see where he goes and when he’s alone and so on, and try and take my chance. Worst case scenario, I have to break into his house and do it at night, best case, I get him while he’s on the road and everyone thinks it’s a botched mugging.’

‘All very cloak and dagger,’ Tristan said, ‘but it seems the best way. Damien was all for bursting straight in there and challenging him to a duel.’

‘It’s more honourable.’ Damien folded his arms again and quirked a brow at Tristan. ‘You can’t argue with that.’

‘Don’t think he’d have any problem with shooting you in the back,’ I said. ‘However honourable you might be, I assure you, he won’t feel the same way.’

‘That’s what I said,’ Tristan picked up a hunk of bread and swilled it through his stew with purpose. ‘Said he’d kill him as soon as look at him.’

‘And your mother can’t lose two children,’ Edwina said sadly. ‘At least this way, you could come back in a few months and live here openly, if you wanted. Nobody would ever question it.’

Damien pushed his now empty bowl away with a sigh, and I realised I’d barely touched my dinner.

‘I agreed to it, didn’t I? And I’ll stick to it. But I still wish I could do it the right way. But of course,’ he turned to me again, ‘it’ll be a lot more difficult to get out of the house now he’s watching it for you. You’ve seen he’s got one of his lackeys hanging about? Makes it more challenging, but not impossible. If he’s the only person watching the house it shouldn’t be too hard to give him the slip.’

‘When will you start?’

‘Tomorrow, maybe? I only waited because you arrived.’ Damien smiled at me and I felt myself flush pink.

‘Your mother said she’d visit then,’ Edwina added, ‘so you can see her before you go.’

It was a surreal meal. One where I had felt more comfortable and cared for than at any other time in my life, but one where the murder of a man we all knew had been calmly discussed, like we were talking about the weather, or when to do the laundry.

When we finally rose, and I had finally finished both my stew and the apple pie that was pressed on me after, I was exhausted. We sat together in the living room, the curtains tightly closed and candles lit. Edwina and Jane sewed in the corner, Damien busied himself with the newspaper, and Tristan alternated between reading and casting moody glances around the room. And I was home, and these people were my family. My world narrowed, excluding even my father as he slept upstairs, and enclosed only this room, where my love lay.

It didn’t take long for my eyes to grow heavy, and reluctant though I was to leave, I made my excuses and rose to go to bed. Tristan closed his book and seemed to make to follow me, but Damien detained him with a hand on his arm. He shook his head slightly and Tristan looked mutinous, but leaned back again. I could understand his frustration, and made the sort of positive promises one makes to oneself when one is happily on the cusp of sleep, that I would talk to him tomorrow. Then I slept, deeply, dreamlessly, and as though I was dead.