Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (5 page)

I refused to meet his gaze, even though I could feel him silently urging me to.

Michael shifted in his seat at the head of the table. “Will mentioned he’d met Sir Anthony once.” He smiled tightly, but with good humor. “Said he was a bit of a tyrant, but skilled at his profession. Patched up his friend, but not without a great deal of grousing.”

From the looks of the others’ startled reactions, I wasn’t the only one surprised to hear him mention his brother in such a casual manner.

“He told you he met Sir Anthony?” I asked in confusion.

Michael nodded.

A tingling sensation began at the base of my neck and I felt Gage’s eyes intent on my face, but I would not look away from Michael. Somehow knowing that what he said next would change everything. “When he returned from the war?” I pressed for clarification.

He hesitated, and I held my breath waiting for him to speak, as did everyone at the table. He sensed the mood shift, and I could see him consider not saying anything further. My muscles tightened in protest, wanting to force the answer from his lips. Then his gaze met mine warily.

“No. A few weeks ago.”

The blood drained from my face. “You spoke to . . . William . . .” I swallowed “. . . a few
weeks
ago?”

“Yes,” Michael replied calmly as everyone else observed our exchange with avid interest. “In fact, I spoke with him just today.”

I wavered in my chair and slammed my hands down flat on either side of my plate to steady myself. It was so difficult to breathe, I wondered if my corset was too tight. Lord Keswick reached out to cradle my elbow, helping me remain upright.

“Perhaps this conversation should wait until later,” Gage argued, half rising from his chair, at the same time that Philip demanded, “Your brother is
here
?”

Michael’s gaze passed from Caroline, who was clutching her napkin to her chest, to Philip, and then to me. “Yes. He’s upstairs.”

Pandemonium broke loose.

Lady Hollingsworth shrieked and threw down her serviette. “You’ve allowed that madman into this
house
! While we’re
visiting
!” She shrieked again before almost toppling from her chair, which necessitated Lord Keswick to release my elbow so that he might attend to the marchioness.

Lord Damien turned to argue with Miss Remmington, insisting somehow she was to blame, while Laura tried to calm him. Caroline was weeping into her napkin, while Philip rounded the table to stand behind his wife. He clutched her shoulders and demanded an explanation from Michael, who had also risen from his chair, along with Gage, who urged the men to remain calm. Alana sat with a hand pressed to her mouth, as if she didn’t know what to say.

My eyes lifted to the ceiling, as if I could see past the layers of wood and plaster to the floors above to verify the truth of Michael’s statement. Will was here? And . . . alive? I could scarcely comprehend it. Could it really be true?

Ignoring the shouts and accusations swirling around me, I sought out Michael’s face. “Will is alive?”

Michael halted midsentence in whatever he was telling Philip and turned to stare at me.

“Will is alive,” I repeated, stronger this time. Some of the others looked up at me. “But I thought . . . that is . . .” I shook my head, as if I could clear away the confusion. “I thought . . .” I swallowed again, feeling sudden anger well up inside me. “This isn’t some kind of terrible jest?”

His eyes widened. “No! Of course not.” Then his gaze turned gentle, seeming to realize that, whatever the others had been told about the matter when William disappeared, my fifteen-year-old self had not been given the truth. And neither had anyone seen fit to inform me since my arrival at Dalmay House. “Kiera, I understand you must have been led to believe otherwise, but . . . Will is very much alive. And he has been for the last decade.” As I watched, his face seemed to age before my eyes, draining of all light and happiness. “Our father had him put away. Locked in a lunatic asylum.”

CHAPTER SIX

T
en years after the fact, I could not remember exactly what, if anything, I’d been told had happened to William Dalmay, or if I’d just been allowed to believe what I wished, for he’d simply been there one day and then gone the next. But in that moment I knew that whatever lie I’d been told, or told myself, would have been a far kinder fate than his reality.

I felt sick, in stomach and at heart. It was true that the man I remembered had been damaged somehow, scarred by his experiences, but he certainly had not been beyond reason, or in any way violent or dangerous to those around him. He had simply been trapped in his own private hell, and some days, as I had witnessed, had been harder than others for him to break free of it. To discover now that he had returned home to the bosom of his family only to be locked away in another kind of hell—one where there was even less hope of escaping—chilled me to the core.

I knew what lunatic asylums were like. Black holes of filth and degradation where the unfortunates were, at the very best, drugged and left to rot, but more likely tortured until they turned into the very beasts they were alleged to be. Sir Anthony had taken me to tour one about a year into our marriage, dangling the threat of incarceration when my cooperation in sketching his dissections had wavered. And upon his death, his colleagues had threatened to have me thrown into one when they learned the truth about who had completed the drawings for Sir Anthony’s anatomy textbook, and accused me of unnatural tendencies and desecrating bodies. Even after my husband’s death and the dismissal of the charges against me, the threat had never actually vanished, and neither had my nightmares that I might one day find myself caged inside such a place. Locked inside a cell where people could pay a penny to stare at me and laugh.

I had heard of asylums that instituted “moral treatments” of their patients, but those were few and far between, and often derided for their methodology. I was quite certain the old Lord Dalmay, Will’s father, who was a heartless despot, had not sent his son to one of those.

I pressed my hands into the hard wood of the table, hoping its stability would calm the swirling in my head and in my stomach. Questions flooded my mind, overwhelming me with the need for answers, and yet I was unable to speak them. Lord Keswick leaned over to ask if I was well, and somehow I managed to nod.

“Surely this is not an appropriate conversation for the dinner table, let alone a young lady’s ears,” Lady Hollingsworth proclaimed in disgust, apparently having regained control of herself after all of her shrieking.

It was obvious now what had upset her enough to send an urgent missive to Philip and threaten to call off the engagement. She was undoubtedly concerned with how Will’s mental state would affect her family. After all, marrying your daughter into a lineage with known madness was no small matter. I fully grasped what a blight even a hint of mental illness could be to a family. It called into question the stability of every member and made one fear for the sanity of future children.

However, I was quite certain Lady Hollingsworth was more concerned with the ramifications to her family’s reputation than whether Will’s alleged insanity could be catching.

I turned to glare at her, wanting to snap at her for her ridiculous comment.
The tragic past of a beloved family friend is not appropriate dinner conversation, and yet the treatment of your sister’s goiter is?

Whether or not he had seen the venomous look I sent his aunt’s way, Philip took control of the situation. “Perhaps the gentlemen should skip their port tonight, and we should
all
adjourn to the drawing room.”

The others murmured their assent and began rising from their chairs. Still dazed and disoriented, it took me longer to follow. I simply could not convince my limbs to obey. I sat there, staring at the remnants of my mostly uneaten cheese and fruit, chasing the same thoughts round and round my head.

It wasn’t until Gage bent over me and asked if I was finished that I was jolted out of my trance. The warmth of his hands at my back as he pulled out my chair and supported me by the elbow was somehow bracing and yet comforting at the same time. It was exactly what I needed. Though by no means was I returned to myself when he pulled my arm through his and escorted me from the room.

The others were already gathered in the drawing room when we entered, seeming to have drawn up flanks. Lady Hollingsworth had settled on a pale blue and white damask settee between her two children. Damien appeared as fierce as his mother, but Caroline was plainly miserable, torn between her mother and brother and the man she loved seated across the room. Michael sat in a rather ornate golden chair between his sister and Lord Keswick on one side and Miss Remmington on the other. Obviously having chosen to play the mediator, Philip took up a position off to the side, behind where Alana rested on an indigo-patterned settee, glancing worriedly between the two opposing factions.

Gage guided me over to them. I sat next to Alana, who promptly took hold of my hand. While the others continued to square off in silent accusation, I seemed to be the only one who noticed when Gage crossed the room to take up what I knew to be his customary position before the fireplace mantel. One arm rested negligently against the shelf of wood, somehow avoiding the delicate porcelain figurines littering its surface, as he crossed one ankle over the other and slouched against the wall. He seemed to be settling in to watch a show, which I resented. Shouldn’t he be offering his friend Michael his support, or at least helping to arbitrate matters, rather than distancing himself from the gathering as if he were a spectator?

“Now, then,” Philip said. “Dalmay, I think we deserve an explanation.”

Michael’s gaze shifted from the occupants of the settee across from him to look first at Philip and then at Alana and me. He sighed and reached up to rub his temples with one hand. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. But first I must apologize to Lady Darby. I did not know that you believed Will was dead. Or that no one had given you at least some idea of the matters that called your brother-in-law here.” His eyes darted toward Lady Hollingsworth and back. “Otherwise I would never have broken the news in such a thoughtless manner. Please accept my sincere regret.”

I nodded.

“What about the rest of us?” Lady Hollingsworth demanded. “Do we not deserve an apology? First you court my daughter under false pretenses. And then you invite us under the same roof as a madman!” She nearly shrieked the last. “I have never been so ill-treated in all my life.”

“I apologize for not informing you of his presence immediately, but surely you can understand the matter is delicate. No one knows where William has been.” Michael made a sweeping gesture to include all of us. “No one besides those of you who are here. And I want it to remain that way.” He glared at Lady Hollingsworth. “When my brother is ready to reenter society, we will develop a fiction about his whereabouts for the last ten years.”

The feathers in Lady Hollingsworth’s hair quivered in indignation. “Reenter society? Are you as daft as your brother? He’s a madman! No one will be safe if he’s let loose.”

“My brother is
not
a madman! And he’s
certainly
no danger to others. He just needs more time to . . . readjust before he enters the world again.”

“Surely if Lord Dalmay had him locked up, he deserved to be there,” Lord Damien said, trying to sound reasonable.

“Father didn’t know what he was doing,” Laura replied heatedly, bright color staining her cheeks. “Will didn’t
do
anything wrong.” Her gaze dropped to her lap, where she plucked at the embroidery on her goldenrod skirts. “It’s not a crime to be sad. Or to have nightmares.”

I wondered how much Laura remembered of her oldest brother. She had been twelve when he . . . disappeared. Had she been told the truth of William’s whereabouts? The thought horrified me. At that age Laura would never have been able to understand.

Lady Hollingsworth sniffed. “I saw a lunatic once. And he was
raving
. Flailing his arms and shouting, spittle flying from his lips. He fought the men who tried to take him away. Broke one of their noses.”

“Will wasn’t like that,” Michael declared, shaking his head. He flung his arm out toward me. “Ask Lady Darby. He acted as her drawing master during the months before his . . . detainment.”

I gazed morosely back at the others as they turned to stare at me. I found it odd that of all the statements just made, this one should be met with the most surprise. Even Gage seemed unsettled by it, straightening from his slouch.

“I had forgotten that,” Alana murmured beside me, concern pleating her brow.

Philip lifted one of his hands from my sister’s shoulder to forestall further comment. “Now, hold on. Before we start collecting everyone’s testimony, there are a few things I don’t understand.” Alarm tightened his voice. “How long have you known William was locked in an asylum?”

“Almost three years,” Michael admitted. “And as soon as our black-hearted father admitted what he had done, I worked every single day to obtain his release.” His jaw was rigid with anger.

“Why did your father finally tell you?”

His eyebrows arched contemptuously. “Because he’d recently been ill. And seven years had passed. He wanted us to petition the Court of Chancery to have William declared dead and assert my claim to the title.”

I pressed my hand to my mouth in shock.

“I insisted he tell me how he knew that William was dead, and when he finally told me the truth . . .” Michael shook his head. The muscles in his jaw jumped.

At this display of emotion, Caroline shifted in her seat on the settee across from him, but her mother draped her arm over her daughter’s lap, preventing her from going to her betrothed. Laura reached out to touch her brother’s sleeve, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, gathering his composure.

“I begged him to tell me the location of the asylum where William was being held, but he refused. He simply would not listen to reason. I pleaded with his secretary and estate manager, and our solicitors, but none of them would admit that they knew anything. Either they truly were ignorant or they were too afraid of my father to confess.”

“And so you refused to make the petition,” Philip said.

Michael nodded. “And threatened to tell everyone the truth if he tried to push it through without me.”

“I don’t understand,” Miss Remmington said. “Couldn’t your father have just had your brother declared insane? Wouldn’t that have disinherited him and made you his rightful heir?”

Philip shook his head. “A man cannot disinherit his heir. And entailments cannot be broken by cause of insanity, only a conviction of treason or murder. So the most Lord Dalmay could hope for by having his heir proved legally insane was that the guardianship of William and the Dalmay interests would be given to Michael. But even then Michael could not inherit the title or its entailed property outright until William died.”

“But dragging William into the courts in search of a verdict of insanity would only tarnish the Dalmays,” Lord Keswick pointed out. “And the last thing Lord Dalmay wanted was to taint his own illustrious name.”

“Is that how you were finally able to obtain his release?” Philip asked. “Lord Dalmay never attained such a verdict against his son?”

Michael lifted his eyes from the swirled pattern of the rug. “When my father died I was able to search through his papers to uncover where he had sent my brother. Even then, I almost found nothing, just a scrap of paper tucked away in his file at our solicitor’s office, as if the foul deed had never occurred.” He pounded his fist on the arm of his chair. “And then it took me two more months to extract him from that villain Sloane’s custody. Father had signed some document giving him total authority over William’s care. I had to threaten the man with kidnapping and causing bodily harm to a peer of the realm and actually had to go so far as to petition the local magistrate before Sloane would release him to me. That was over nine months ago.”

“And he’d been locked away all that time?” I could barely mouth the question.

Michael’s voice was graveled with anguish. “Nine years. He spent
nine years
in that cesspit, while we were all blissfully unaware.”

The room fell silent while everyone contemplated his words. I felt sick, unable to fathom being trapped in such a place for nearly a decade. Good heavens, what he must have been through. A knot formed at the back of my throat and I had to swallow hard to force it down.

Feeling a pair of eyes on me, I looked up to find Gage watching me. His face was inscrutable, but that in and of itself was telling. Why, in this moment, was he so intent on shielding his emotions from me? Surely he could only feel empathy for the Dalmays’ plight.

“Who is Sloane?” Philip queried, moving around to perch on the arm of the settee beside his wife.

Michael’s face twisted. “The doctor who convinced my father that my brother was mad in the first place. He owns the Larkspur Retreat where William was detained.”