Merciless Reason (6 page)

Gerald turned to Daisy.

“He loved her, you know. And yet he was prepared to do that to her—to maintain control of the family. I admire his strength of will. I know you and Tatiana—perhaps even Cathal—have been making moves against me. Obviously you are more subtle than some of the troglodytes in the house, but I am not fooled. I tolerate Tatiana out of some soft-hearted affection—and because she amuses me. Cathal is valuable to me, and his defiant character is also entertaining. I put up with you because, bizarrely, you have a better head for business than most of the men in the house. But you must be aware that there are costs for interfering with my plans, Daisy. Don't push me too far.”

Looking down at his cigarette, he saw that it had gone out. He flicked it into the wind and it was whisked off into the vast space beyond the roof. Then he turned away and strolled towards the door to the stairs. Daisy stood there, trembling in the cold for a while longer, preferring to walk back downstairs alone.

No matter what happened, she refused to let him see how terrified she was of him.

There was a letter waiting for Daisy on her desk when she returned to her office and her heart lifted when she recognized the handwriting on the envelope. She could tell that the letter had been opened and resealed, but she had grown used to that. Gerald allowed her little privacy.

Daisy did not open it immediately. Her hopes for the future hung on these letters, sent to her at regular intervals by Nate's man, Clancy. Or, at least, the man who had once served Nate so devotedly, and who now searched for him with equal diligence. Ever since Nate's disappearance, Daisy and Tatiana had waited impatiently for each letter from Clancy, hoping each time that it would announce that he had found his master and was bringing him home.

It was unfair to leave Tatty out of this, but after a week of frustration over the church and her ordeal with Gerald on the roof, Daisy wanted this moment to herself. Closing the glass and wood door of her office, she sat down at the desk and laid the envelope in front of her, flattening the already-flat fold of ivory-colored paper with her fingers. Clancy had lovely handwriting—masculine, but elegant—and he insisted on using a high quality nib, always carrying his own ink.

Daisy took a breath and let it out. It seemed a pity to spoil the glow of anticipation, but she supposed it was best to get the disappointment over with. She broke the wax seal, opened the envelope and drew out the single sheet of paper. The first few fines made her next breath catch in her throat:

My Ladies,

I have reached Boston, where I believe his Grace boarded a whaling ship several months previously. The vessel was set for a three- to four-year voyage depending on its catch. Having spoken to an officer of Her Majesty's Navy, I have learned that the ship, the Odin, was sunk in stormy seas off the coast of New England, with all hands lost but one. This man was questioned, and claimed to have no knowledge of his Grace, or anyone matching his description.

I have not given up hope that either the reports of his Grace boarding this ship were mistaken, or that he somehow survived unseen. I will endeavor to resolve the matter either way. At this point, however, I must confess that the trail has grown cold.

My search continues, my ladies. As ever, I will keep you informed of my progress.

Yours faithfully,

Clancy

Typical of the man, he never used his first name. Daisy bit her hand. Glancing towards the door of her office, she rose from her upholstered, walnut swivel chair and crossed the carpeted floor to the door, opening it and peering out into the corridor. There was no one about. She closed the door and clutched the letter to her breast.

“YES!” she cried, jumping a couple of times on the spot.

Composing herself, she waved the letter in front of her face to cool her flushed cheeks and then read it again. There could be no mistake. The report of Nate's possible death had shaken her for a moment, but then there came that fine:
‘At this point, however, I must confess that the trail has grown cold
.” Before he had left, Clancy had counseled against speaking openly in their correspondence, in case it should be read. Instead, they had agreed a series of sentences to transmit confidential signals. The sentence he had just used was one of these. Put simply, it meant: ‘
I have found him, and we are coming home.
”

There was no telling how soon they would be here. They could well have come on the same ship as the letter, but Clancy would be too cautious to travel on a scheduled vessel. They would have to employ a great deal of stealth.

Daisy bit her knuckle again, resisting the urge to let out another yell. She could play mind games with Gerald until the cows came home, but as women in the Wildenstern house there was nothing she or Tatty could do about going on the offensive against him. And their trusted cousin, Cathal, had no real power in the family. However, being offensive was Nathaniel's area of expertise. With him, they had a chance of knocking Gerald from his position of power … with physical force, if necessary.

And as time had numbed her grief for her murdered husband, Daisy's feelings for Nate had changed too. Their relationship had never been easy, but his disappearance had cut her deeply, making her wonder if her feelings for him had always been more …
complicated
than she had imagined.

Dear God, she thought, clutching the letter to her breast, but can I tell Tatty? Her sister-in-law was her best friend and an unshakeable ally, but the girl was something of a flibbertigibbet. Cathal could possibly be told, but Daisy was not entirely sure Tatty could keep a secret of this magnitude. Daisy groaned. How could she
not
tell her? How could she tell Cathal and keep Tatty ignorant of it? Tatty idolized her big brother; when they were together, they were as thick as thieves. But if Gerald found out that Nate was coming back, he would do everything in his power to have him killed. And he had almost limitless resources with which to do it.

“What's got you all up to high doe?” Tatty asked from behind her.

Daisy's heart thumped the front of her ribcage in fright. She turned to find her sister-in-law standing behind her, having entered the office with uncharacteristic silence. A small, bird-like engimal perched on her shoulder.

“Daisy? Are you all right? You look quite piqued.”

“Tatty!” Daisy exclaimed in a slightly shrill voice, hiding the letter behind her back. “I just came down from the roof—a charming chat with Gerald. That bracing cold air … you know.”

“And fearing for your safety, no doubt. I was down the hall in the press office. I thought I heard a cry.”

“I stubbed my toe.”

“God, I hate it when I do that. I kicked the leg of my bed the other day, nearly split my bally pinkie right open. It was jolly sore. Do you want to go for a ride with me? I was thinking of taking the brougham out towards Enniskerry.”

The bird opened its mouth and emitted a passable impression of a horse cantering along a gravel road to a chorus of joyful animals and birds. It looked pleadingly at Daisy, eager as it was to get out of the house. The creature's name was Siren, and it was capable of generating almost any kind of sound, including peculiar, pulse-pounding pieces of music that Daisy was sure had no place in any civilized society. It was certainly unpopular in Wildenstern Hall, due to the near-demonic influence it had on Tatty's taste in music, and the volume at which she liked it to be played. Tatty suspected more than one family member of plotting her pet's untimely demise. Its fist-sized, blue and silver body was made of some kind of almost weightless metal and an even more mysterious feather-like material. The little engimal had a white breast, a copper-colored beak and bright, intelligent orange eyes. It chirped hopefully at Daisy.

Daisy, in return, regarded her sister-in-law with suspicion. Over the last few years, Tatty had developed an obsession with a local criminal known as the “Highwayboy.” Some held that he was a Robin Hood figure, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. To most of the gentry, however, he was just another brigand. Tatty took frequent trips along the roads he was known to haunt, in the hope of happening across him. Daisy was unsure if it was in some romantic hope of capturing him, or if Tatty entertained thoughts of actually joining his gang. With Tatty, it could be hard to tell which way her mind was working.

“I'm very busy here, Tatty. Besides, it's a bit late to be setting out for Enniskerry, and it's not a good road to be traveling after dark.”

“It's not fair!” the younger woman protested, flopping down in the armchair Daisy kept near the south-facing window of her corner office. “You never do anything I want to do.”

While Tatiana gazed out the window, Daisy slipped the letter under the blotter on her desk.

“That's not true at all, Tatty, and you know it. Only yesterday you had us both running like geese round the edge of the pond, trying to catch carp with those nets. One of the gamekeepers could have fished a couple out in an instant, but you insisted we do it ourselves.”

“It was fun! And I wanted to have some for a bowl in my room. Now I can watch them swim around waving their marvelous little tails.”

“That's what the
pond
is for,” Daisy pointed out.

“I can't be lulled to sleep in my bed, looking into the
pond
,” Tatty pointed out back. “Anyway, if you won't come for the ride, I'm not going to go either. I'll just stay right here and contemplate life. I believe I'm getting awfully good at it. What fascinating subject did Gerald want to discuss? Mathematics? Microscopic biology? His complete moral turpitude?”

Daisy sighed. It was unkind to think it, but sometimes it was like trying to hold a conversation with a springer spaniel.

“No, he wanted to talk about us,” she said in a tired voice. She wished Tatty would be careful of what she said and where she said it, but was reluctant to pass on Gerald's threat. “He thinks we're interfering again.”

“Well … we
are,
aren't we? Only last week we were investigating what had happened to those steam-powered pressing machines—the ones that have gone missing from the factory on the North Wall. They weighed several tons each. I daresay they weren't carried away by pickpockets. We know he's taken them for some reason. He can't go about removing industrial machinery from the family's factories and expect us to turn a blind eye.”

“That's exactly what he expects,” Daisy said. “Nothing can get in the way of his research.”

“All right, so he's had his quiet word with you,” Tatty chirped. “What are we going to do?”

Daisy was silent for a moment, picturing in her mind the steel-framed window on that windy rooftop. Then she thought of the letter lying under the blotter on her desk.

“We're going to keep asking questions. But we'll tone it down for a while. Let him think he has us under his heel. We must avoid drawing his attention over the next few weeks. I fear that, as a result of his obsessive quest—whatever that is—Gerald has developed a very short fuse. We must be careful not to light it.”

VI

AN AWKWARD SILENCE

DINNER IN WILDENSTERN HALL
had become a tense, fraught affair. Ever since Gerald had taken over as acting Patriarch, there had been unrest among the more ambitious relatives. Three assassination attempts later, that simmering rebellion had settled into a murmur of dissent. Simply put, Gerald had terrified them into submission. The family had been on edge after Gerald had foiled the first two murder attempts. But Ainsley's death had put an end to any further thoughts of disposing of him in the traditional manner.

On the evening of Daisy's rooftop discussion with Gerald, the expansive meal started with the slurping of oysters, followed by soup and breads and then baked fish. The main course was roast beef with a fine variety of vegetables and more bread. Some of the diners indulged in wine, stewing their spirits in silence. These days, those of a junior rank in the family found it was very easy to say the wrong thing, so it was best to say nothing at all. Others, more confident of their position, took advantage of this gathering to make their case to the Patriarch.

Every adult male member of the Wildenstern clan had a position within the North America Trading Company. As Gerald was Chairman, every important business decision had to be run through him. But as Gerald wasn't all that interested, these decisions were often delegated to Daisy—a situation many considered bad form, and a few declared downright intolerable.

And yet, it
was
tolerated, because Gerald said it must be so.

There were over thirty people at the huge table, with Gerald at one end and his mother, Elvira, at the other. She was in a wheelchair, ancient and disabled but still able to out-think younger, more agile minds. Her sense of hearing was failing her, however, and had to be compensated for with a listening horn and a tendency to bellow her way into conversations.

To Gerald's right sat Leopold. Young children were not normally permitted at the main table, but Leopold's mother, Elizabeth, had insisted the four-year-old sit at Gerald's right hand. She fully intended that when the child was old enough, the positions would be reversed and Gerald would sit at the right hand of the true Patriarch. She sat beside her son and helped him with his food.

Daisy sat opposite Leopold, on Gerald's left, and Tatiana was beside her, opposite Elizabeth. Gerald used these four as a kind of buffer between him and the rest of the Wildensterns at dinner. He acknowledged the family's need for firm control, but resented the amount of time he was forced to devote to it.

One of the chief pests was his Uncle Gideon, who was in charge of the Company's enormous fleet of ships. A large, loud oaf of a man, he wore too much gold on his person and hair on his face. He had five sons who hated him as much as he hated them, but who still regularly joined him in his greedy, nefarious schemes.

“Gerald,” Gideon began, with his mouth still full, crumbs of turnip shooting out from his black beard, “we are having a frightful time with the British Navy. They have got into the habit of stopping our ships on the way out past Gibraltar. They accuse our captains of transporting slaves. Something must be done.”

“Perhaps somebody has told them that you
have
been transporting slaves, Gideon,” Gerald replied. He was only picking at his food; he rarely showed any appetite these days. “I suggest you stop, before someone finds one of the Company's ships with slaves aboard. We would all hate to see you hanged. It is your operation—I can assure you that you will be the only one to go down with that particular ship.”

Gideon was still considering his response when Elvira shouted up from the other end of the table. “And what about the contracts with the East India Company?” she called. “They want to buy our gold mines in California. It is important we sell the dratted things before those nabobs discover they're empty. This ‘Gold Rush' has become more akin to a ‘Gold Trickle.' The contracts must be signed as a matter of urgency!”

“Let Daisy handle it.” Gerald waved his hand towards her.

“She can't handle it,” one of the other men said. “She's a
woman
. She can't sign contracts. She can't represent the family, and if we send her to negotiations no one will take us seriously. You need to seize the reins, Gerald.”

Daisy listened, but did not speak. She was forced to put up with the bigotry in the family because it merely reflected that of the wider world. Having long ago resigned herself to the idea that women of her generation would never achieve equal status to men in business, she had set about finding other ways of achieving her jails.

“What about the bloody Civil War in America?” Oliver demanded. He was Gideon's second eldest son. He was responsible for the estates in Ireland, but fancied himself as a leader and business strategist. “Silas over there, he says the place is awash with vacant land—what with so many of the menfolk dead and all that. According to him, we should be buying up farms now, while all the widows are still single and desperate. There's a killing to be made, what? Loosen the purse-strings a bit, Gerald, eh? That's what I say!”

“I'll have Daisy look over it,” Gerald muttered, cutting through a piece of beef.

“Daisy can't sign checks!” Oliver protested.

“And what about the talk of these Irish-American Fenians?” Gideon called out. “Hardened veterans from that blasted war of theirs, coming back in their thousands to fight the British here? Some are already here, training up the native rabble! They'll cause havoc!”

“This idea of a returning army is a myth for the most part,” Gerald replied, jabbing his meat with his fork. “I think most men in Ireland are concerned with going in the opposite direction. Certainly, thousands spend their life savings to leave on our ships every year, with little prospect of returning. The Irish-Americans make a lot of noise, but they have their own problems to occupy them.”

“How can we be sure?” someone asked.

“More to the point, should we be charging more for the passage to America?” another voice piped up. “If it's such a popular route, I mean.”

“We have not resolved the matter of selling our empty gold mines,” Elvira shouted. “There is still money to be made there, before it all falls flat. This must be completed, before we discuss buying more land from destitute widows or taking the life savings from emigrants.”

“What are we going to do about this blasted Highwayboy?” someone else called up. “I've been robbed twice by the little rotter, and now we hear the cur's got all the ruddy peasants on his side by throwing them money he steals from
our
pockets!”

“What about all the money we lost on that fool Livingstone's expedition up the Zambezi?” a new voice asked. “How—”

“Who gives a damn about Africa?” another snapped. “It's more trouble than it's worth. As far as I'm concerned you can stick that bloody Livingstone up
your
Zambezi and be done with it!”

“We must discuss California!”

The voices rose in volume and number, shouting each other down until no one voice could be heard. As the crescendo of arguments became angrier, Gerald pinched his nose and sighed. Then he started to whistle.

It was a sound mat every ear in the room recognized. Even Elvira's. There was a sudden silence as Gerald continued to whistle Brahms's
Lullaby.
It was a sweet, innocent tune and Daisy was amazed at how quickly it had its effect. Voices faltered and fell quiet. Those who had stood up to make their points abruptly sat down. Everyone exchanged anxious looks and then picked up their cutlery and started eating.

Daisy could not be sure if it was the whistling itself that had physically forced them all to shut up, or if it was merely the fear of it that had the effect. Either way, nobody spoke again after Gerald stopped whistling. Apart from the clink of cutlery and the nervous gulps of wine, there was hardly a sound.

Until Leopold started banging his spoon on the table and demanded another tune. His mother gently took the spoon off him and waved to a servant, who nodded briskly and walked out. Seconds later, the man was back, holding a violin. His gentle music accompanied Leopold's eating for the remainder of the meal.

Gerald was first to leave the table. Elizabeth and Leopold went with him. Daisy waited a full minute before following them. She allowed them to reach the elevator and step inside before coming round the last corner. Ringing the bell to summon the other lift, she walked in as the doors opened. The boy controlling the lever looked up at her.

“The laboratory, please,” she said.

Occupying much of the basement space at the foot of the tower, Gerald's laboratory was the only part of Wildenstern Hall that truly reflected his state of mind. Once, this place had been orderly, laid out with careful deliberation. Daisy had often found it an exciting place—with its Bunsen burners, glass vessels, gutta-percha tubes and array of chemicals, the smells of chemistry hung in the air. A place dedicated to intellectual exploration.

Even when he had started experimenting on engimals, Daisy could see the reasoning behind Gerald's cold-blooded dissections. Back then, she had believed that he was not being cruel in any calculating way. He simply would not let sentimentality stand in his way of solving the mystery of their existence. In some ways, it appealed to her own curiosity, even though the sight of those dissected creatures turned her stomach. Once, they had been full of life, only to be reduced to ruined corpses of metal, ceramic and other, unknown materials.

But now, there was very little rational thought to be seen here. The laboratory equipment was unused for the most part, gathering dust, and the glow from the thickly glassed grates up at ground level was dulled by dirt—Gerald would not allow the staff to do any cleaning down here. And yet he spent more and more time out of the house. Whatever he was doing, he wasn't doing it here. Still, the place bore fresh signs that he had been here. There were pieces of paper everywhere, some in piles, some left discarded on the floor. When he couldn't find paper, Gerald had written on tables and walls with a pencil, or even scratched into their surfaces with a nail or a knife. The place was covered with haphazard notes. None of them made any sense.

When she entered the laboratory, Daisy found Leopold running up and down on one of the sturdy worktops, jumping over the equipment there like a horse at a showground. There were times he reminded Daisy so much of his father.

Elizabeth was standing at another table, looking through a pile of the notes. Most of them were covered in mathaumaturgical symbols, like the ones Gerald had scribbled on the plans for the church. This was an arcane mathematical language that some scientists around the world thought was a means of communicating with engimals, and possibly with the very elements of the world itself. Others dismissed it as nonsense, and the false magic of pagans.

There was a frustrated frown on Elizabeth's face and Daisy allowed herself a smile, before quickly hiding it again and clearing her throat. The older woman looked round. At first she seemed annoyed, but then her expression became more neutral and she returned her attention to the page in her hand. The two women lived in a constant state of antagonism, but were too civilized to show it.

“Still trying to figure it out?” Daisy asked.

“It is fascinating … staggering work,” Elizabeth said to her, without raising her gaze from the paper.

“You haven't a clue, have you?” Daisy sniffed. “All this time you've spent with him, working on him with all your charms, and you still can't fathom what he's up to. You must be tearing your hair out. Has there ever been a man before whom you couldn't wind round your finger?”

“It's only a matter of time, my dear.”

“It's been three years,” Daisy snorted. “But then, I suppose you've never come across anyone like him before, have you? He must seem as if he's from another world. What passed for science in your time, I wonder? Had the Normans conceived of higher mathematics? They probably weren't paying too much attention to what the Hindus or the Muslims were doing. Too busy trying to conquer them, I expect.”

“This is just another knot to unravel,” Elizabeth said. “Men bind us into this world
they
have constructed, so that we cannot make a move without their assistance. But I will not stay bound.” She caught her breath, as if she had said too much, and turned to face Daisy. “My love and admiration for Gerald are real, no matter what you think. He is worthy of me, and I of him. He is strengthening the empire that my darling Leopold will inherit.”

“Is he?” Daisy asked. “How can you possibly tell?”

“I can see into his heart,” Elizabeth assured her. “Sometimes we must obey instinct over intellect. I must support him in any way I can. You do not understand his plans, but he shares them with me. You
will
see, one day. Someday, the whole world will understand.”