The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (15 page)

Monk ran a hand through his thatch of silvering hair, his expression grieved. “I used to think he was getting better. There were months, several at a stretch sometimes, when he would be free of them. But since we came back to London…he is getting worse. And so are the cures. He used to take absinthe with an equal part of water. Now I count myself lucky if I can persuade him to put a pipette’s worth of water in the glass. He will kill himself with it.”

There was acceptance in his voice, but genuine regret as well.

“How long have you known him?”

He gave me a wistful smile. “Since he was a boy. He was a student at the school where I was master. Wild as a moorland pony, he was. A wretched student. He never could abide the rules, the discipline. But a fine mind, the best I ever taught. When they finally threw him out, I went with him.”

“Did he have these headaches, even then?”

Monk hesitated, as if he feared to say too much. But I think he realized we shared a bond of sorts, a bond of knowing too much. “As long as ever I have known him. But they are more frequent now, more painful. His usual methods have begun to fail him. I do not know what will become of him.”

I set the glass down firmly. “Surely something can be done. There are doctors—”

“He has seen them all. He has been bled and purged like a medieval serf and dosed with things I do not like to think of. They have done things to him that frighten me still, and I am
a grown man who has seen two wars. Nothing helps him except oblivion. He tried opium for a while—we had a nasty business getting him off of that. Then he tried morphia, cocaine—every narcotic known to man. We had high hopes for the absinthe, but I think it begins to fail him as well. They all do eventually.”

We were quiet a moment, each of us caught up in our thoughts—mine wholly unpleasant ones. There seemed to be nothing I could do, and the helplessness infuriated me.

“At least you could have some help with him,” I said finally, taking in Monk’s lined eyes and pale skin. Caring for Brisbane was taking a toll upon the portly former schoolmaster. “I think you have not slept in days.”

But if Monk was a retired schoolmaster, he was also a former soldier. He raised his chin and shook his head, his spine stiff. “No one sees him when he is like this. Besides, there have been episodes, violent ones. He has never harmed me, but I could not be absolutely certain…”

His cleared his throat, steeling himself, I thought.

“I do hope that he did not offer your ladyship any insult?”

“No. He—he embraced me. I think he was quite delirious. I am afraid that I acted rather stupidly. I stepped on his foot with my heel. That is when he collapsed.”

Monk seemed relieved. “It was not your doing, my lady. The oblivion comes on quickly. The last dose should have affected him by the time you arrived. It was coincidence that he should have collapsed at that moment. You do understand he was not himself?” he asked earnestly. “I have known him from boyhood. He would never force himself on an unwilling lady.”

I pressed my lips together. There seemed no possible comment to that.

I smoothed my skirts and my thoughts and rose, offering my hand to Monk. “I think you and I must rely upon each
other’s discretion. If you will gather up the fruit, you may tell him that I sent it with a servant and my compliments. He will never hear from me that I saw him in this state.”

Monk’s face was suffused with gratitude as he took my hand.

“I will say nothing of your visit, I assure you, my lady. And I must apologize for speaking so freely. I am overtired, as you yourself observed. I would not usually confide, but as Mr. Brisbane has himself remarked, you are a most unusual lady.”

Monk pressed my hand. “And thank you for your discretion, my lady. I need not tell you how disastrous it would be if he ever learned you were here.”

“Then we shall not speak of it.”

He bowed me out of the room and closed the door firmly behind me. I heard the locks being turned and the bolt being shot and I wondered if he was locking the world out—or Brisbane in.

’Tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favour’d children.

—William Shakespeare
As You Like It

 

I
left the rooms in Chapel Street in a vile mood—so vile that I elected to walk, hoping that the freshening air would blow some of the confusion from my mind and the heat from my cheeks. But exercise was no balm. Rather than being charmed by the bustle of the streets, I was annoyed at being jostled about. I found myself glaring at people and walking too quickly in my agitation. I arrived at Grey House out of breath and perspiring faintly in spite of the breeze. I was tired and cross, more at myself than anyone else. I should have mastered my impatience and my excitement at finding the Psalter and bided my time until Brisbane sent word he was prepared to see me.

Instead I had behaved like a schoolgirl. Brisbane was no performing monkey on display, but I had allowed my own curiosity and excitement to propel me into his sanctum, insulting his privacy. What was wrong with me that I had forced my way into the rooms of a sick man? Such impetuosity was not even part of my character. It was a March trait, one I deplored. And I had allowed myself to be seduced by the thrill of the investigation into acting like a member of my own family.

And worse by far, I had taken advantage of Brisbane’s in
disposition and state of undress to assess his physique. It was shameful, really. Poor Brisbane, racked by pain and half mad with absinthe, and I had actually taken the opportunity to look at his bared chest.

My only consolation was that I had not enjoyed the experience. Brisbane was not at all the sort of man I admired. He was too dark, too tall, too thickly muscled, altogether
too much
. I preferred a slender, epicene form, with delicately sketched muscles and golden hair. Graceful, aristocratic, like a Renaissance statue
.
Like Edward.

But if Edward was Donatello’s David, in fairness, I must concede that Brisbane was more Michelangelo’s. It was the difference between Hermes and Hades, really. The slim, glowing youth versus the dark, brooding lord. Grace versus power, although, if I were entirely truthful, Brisbane had his own sort of grace, nothing so effete as Edward’s, but graceful just the same. Brisbane put one in mind of wolves and lithe jungle cats, while Edward conjured images of seraphim and slim young saints. It required an entirely different aesthetic altogether to appreciate Brisbane, one that I lacked. Entirely.

Even so, it was wrong of me even to look at him, especially at so fraught a time. I had acted with a complete lack of decorum and good breeding, and I was thoroughly ashamed of myself.

In fact, I was so preoccupied with my little bout of self-loathing that I did not see the caller lounging at the front steps of Grey House until I had nearly passed him by. I paused and peered closely.

“Reddy? Reddy Phillips, is that you?”

The young man swept off his hat and made me a very pretty bow. “Good afternoon, my lady. I hope that you are keeping quite well.”

I surveyed him from his extremely fashionable hat (surely not yet paid for) to the empty watch chain at his waist (cer
tainly the watch was pawned to pay a debt). He had always been a handsome creature, but I looked at his too-carefully brushed hair and meticulously shot cuffs and found myself growing impatient, my lips thinning in disapproval. Not my most attractive expression, but I could not help it.

“What brings you to Grey House, Reddy? I am not in the habit of receiving callers in the street.”

He had the grace to blush a little, but it was not as charming as I had once thought.

“I have come about a matter of honour,” he said, leaning toward me with a conspiratorial little smile. He glanced up and down the street, as if to make certain we were not overheard. He needn’t have bothered. The only passersby were on the other side of the street and Curzon is wide enough that low voices and clandestine glances are more for effect than necessity.

“What matter of honour? Are you referring to that ridiculous bird in Val’s rooms?”

He blanched, either at my forthright conversation or the audibility of my tone.

“Well, Reddy?”

He smiled again, licking his lips. I noticed that they were peeling. I glanced down at his hands and saw that the nails were bitten to the quick, one thumb bleeding discreetly around the nail. Surely he had not pawned his gloves, as well.

“My lady, I am certain that you will appreciate the need for discretion in this very delicate situation. Perhaps we could go inside.…”

He moved toward the door, but I stepped neatly in front of him, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin. Really, this was too much. I had complained to Val that the Phillipses were all jumped-up tradesmen and it was only too true. Two generations of money cannot compensate for the complete neglect of a gentleman’s social education. No other person of my ac
quaintance would have presumed to invite himself into my home, particularly when I was still observing my period of mourning. But I was rather relieved at Reddy’s pushing rudeness. It absolved me of being nice to him.

“No, we cannot go inside, Reddy, because it is nearly teatime, as you would know if you still owned a watch, and I have no intention of inviting you to stay.”

Stunned, he opened his mouth, but I put up my hand.

“Silence, please. Clearly you have come because you think that you can prevail upon me to intercede with Val on your behalf. I can assure you that such efforts on your part would be entirely futile. Do you deny that you put up the bird as a wager?”

“N-no.” I raised an eyebrow at him. He had very nearly insulted me by leaving off my honorific. I was beginning to get annoyed.

“No,
my lady,
” he amended swiftly.

“Do you deny that Valerius won the wager fairly?”

“No,
my lady,
but the Honourable Mr. March—”

“There is no but, Reddy. Either Valerius won the bird fairly, in which case you have no business trying to get it back as you well know, or he cheated you of it. Which is it? Is my brother a cheat and a liar or are you just a particularly poor loser?”

If I had thought him pale before, it was nothing to the colour he faded to now.

“I had no intention of calling his honour into question,” he managed to say, his voice tight with panic. I think he had some dim idea that aristocrats still dueled with swords at dawn. Of course, Marches
did
still do that sort of thing from time to time, though none within my memory. And for all I knew, Valerius would indeed call him out over the matter if pressed. He was an odd, unpredictable child, even for a March.

“Good. Because if you did—” I leaned closer to him, lifting my veil so that he could see my eyes clearly “—if you did accuse my brother publicly, I should have to inform the earl
at once. And if there is one thing his lordship will not brook, it is the malicious slander of one of his own. He would take action, Reddy, swift and entirely merciless, I assure you.”

I was referring to legal action; Father was nothing if not litigious. But Reddy did not know this. He was doubtless imagining himself shot dead at twenty paces on Hampstead Heath in the faint light of some misty dawn while his seconds looked on. He gulped and I counted silently to ten before I dropped my veil.

“Now, let us hear no more of this.” I moved to enter my house, then turned back.

“Oh, and Reddy?”

“Yes, my lady?” He shied like a pony.

“The word ‘Honourable’ is never spoken, only written. You would properly refer to my brother simply as Mr. Valerius March.”

His face went a dull, sullen red and I knew that I should have left off toying with him, but I could not. It felt obscenely good to torment him. He had behaved badly, and after my call in Chapel Street I was feeling volcanic. Besides, if I had loosed my anger at my staff, I would have paid for it for the next year with cold meals and poorly laid fires. I could abuse Reddy and send him on his way with a fine story to tell at the gaming tables.

“And remember, Reddy, if I catch the slightest breath of a rumour about this, I will assume you have been talking indiscreetly. And I will not go to the earl with the matter. I will deal with you myself.”

I would swear the boy actually shivered. I swept into Grey House, feeling powerful and strong and capable of anything.

Then my hand touched the Psalter in my pocket, and I realized that I was a good deal less capable than I had thought.

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

—John Donne
“Song”

 

F
or the next several days I mooned about the house, brooding and regretting my horrid treatment of Reddy Phillips. Everything had seemed rather safe before that fateful visit to Brisbane’s rooms. The brief minutes I had spent there seemed to have unbalanced something within me, leaving me unsettled, wobbling like a child’s spinning top, and the worst of it was that I did not know why. I had behaved wretchedly, and in consequence found myself rattling around Grey House, starting every time the bell went, imagining that now Brisbane would write and something resembling normality would resume.

But the days stretched on into a week and the bell rang many times, but he did not write. In the end, I found myself in my study, taking up the books I had disarranged the day I found the Psalter. I had it still, locked snugly in a drawer beneath my costliest lace for safekeeping. But the rest of the study was still a wreck and I thought a bit of physical labor was in order. I sorted the books carefully, grouping poetry with poetry and alphabetizing novelists, rather than my usual haphazard method. The books of my childhood I gathered on the last shelf, smiling to myself as I touched them again, these treasured, yellowing friends from my youth.

Persuasion. Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre. Pride and Prejudice.

The rest were much the same, romantic stories with dark, brooding men with mysterious pasts and scornful glances. Some of them were good novels, by proper authors. Much of it was complete rubbish. I groaned as I shoved them back onto the shelf. How many summer days had I whiled away tucked in the apple tree at Bellmont Abbey with one of these books, dreaming of the day when a darkly handsome man would sweep me away to his castle on the moor? How many winter evenings had I huddled in bed, reading by candlelight until my eyes ached just to see if all turned out happily for the beleaguered lovers?

Why on earth had my father permitted me to read such muck? It had left me with an overactive, overromantic imagination, I thought furiously. As a girl, when I had imagined my future husband, I had always thought of someone dark and masterful, lord of some crumbling estate, hopefully with a mad wife tucked away in the attic for effect. I had never looked to marry a fair man, preferring instead to dream of someone mysterious and saturnine. No one was more surprised than I when I married a man with golden curls and bright blue eyes, a slender and graceful man, with a sleepy smile and beautifully-shaped hands.

Once I married him, I ceased to think of my girlhood heroes, carefully shelving the books I had once adored. I somehow felt it disloyal to Edward to read them and spend hours conjuring thoughts of other men. Not that Edward would have minded. He never troubled about such things. I sometimes wondered if he would have cared if I had taken a real lover, someone flesh and blood to replace him. But he never said and I never had the courage to ask. And I remained faithful to him, even in literature.

This time, though, after carefully shelving the other volumes, I kept back
Wuthering Heights
and carried it to my
room. London was no cloud-scoured moor, and I was no Cathy, but at least I could thrill to Heathcliff in the privacy of my own bedchamber. That Yorkshire moor was a far sight more entertaining than the rest of my activities. I spent many quiet hours reading to Simon or taking the Ghoul for drives in the Park. Unfortunately, Simon often fell asleep just as I was getting to the interesting bits, and the Ghoul wanted only to talk about her current bout with constipation.

The high point of my week came when the boxes from the dressmakers were delivered. Messieurs Riche had outdone themselves. The costumes I had ordered were even better than I had anticipated, so daring in their simplicity, so eye-catching in their stark purity that I felt almost naked, even when Morag fastened the last button. There was not a single ruffle or bow or rosette to draw the eye—only the pure line of severely perfect tailoring and the elegant curve of a draped bustle.

Morag stepped back and said nothing, her gingery eyebrows higher than usual.

“Say what you like,” I snapped. “I can smell your disapproval.”

Her brow puckered in surprise. “Not me. I think it suits you.”

I stared at her. Never, in all the time she had spent in my employ, had Morag ever complimented anything I had worn. The best I could hope for was a grunt of approval that I looked respectable. But open admiration was something entirely new.

“You do?” I turned, observing myself as many ways as possible in the cheval glass. “You don’t think that it is too—”

“Oh, yes. That’s why I like it,” she said seriously.

Considering Morag’s penchant for garish colours and blowsy feathers, I was not completely certain I should be pleased. But I was. Approval is pleasant, no matter from what quarter.

“But the others are just the same,” I said, waving at the boxes
yet to be opened. “And this is the only black one. All the rest are colours.”

Morag shrugged. “It was a year last week, my lady. It is time enough to put off your mourning.”

I stared at her reflection in the cheval glass. “Last week? You must be joking. Edward has not been dead a year—he cannot.”

She said nothing but went to my escritoire and retrieved my diary. She opened it to the previous week and pointed.

I looked at the little boxes with their printed dates, trying to make sense of the numbers. “Good Lord,” I said finally, “it was.”

Morag continued to unpack the boxes, lifting rich violet and chocolate-brown silks from the crackling tissue.

“There is a note here. From the elder Monsieur Riche himself,” she told me. I waved at her to read on. “He says you are an appalling creature to order the gowns without allowing him to fit them personally and he will come to Grey House whenever you like to alter them. He begs that in the meantime you will not tell anyone they came from his establishment. He does not like to think that anyone will know he let them go without a perfect fitting.” She finished the note with an air of satisfaction. She had only learned to read at Aunt Hermia’s refuge and the skill was one she was rightly proud of.

I nodded absently, admiring the set of a particularly luscious bottle-green sleeve. “I will reply later. He can come tomorrow if he likes, although I don’t see why he bothers. You are just as handy with a needle as any of his soubrettes.”

Morag preened herself a bit as she laid out the rest of the gowns, but I ignored her. How could I have let Edward’s anniversary slip by unmarked? It was thoughtless and disloyal and I made a note in the book to take flowers to his grave soon. It did not seem enough, but I could not think of anything that would serve better.

I glanced again in the glass at my new reflection, but the bloom had gone off it a little.

“I will try the rest of them on later,” I told Morag, her hands full of bottle-green and claret silks.

Her face fell, but her eyes went to the book still clutched in my hand and nodded. She left me then, surrounded by my extravagantly simple finery and I sat for a long time, uncomfortable both with the person I had been and the person I was finally becoming. Caught between the two of them, I felt rather lonely, as one often does with a new acquaintance.

I remembered quite suddenly a stream at Bellmont Abbey, broad and swift, rushing each spring with clear, icy water. There were only a few flat rocks between the banks and picking one’s way among them was a tricky undertaking. Once, when I was perhaps seven, I had managed to follow my brother Benedick. I had skipped blithely across the rill, leaping from rock to rock. But when I reached the middle, surrounded by dark, tumbling water, I had frozen, too frightened either to move or to remain where I was. I hesitated, half turning back toward the bank I had started from. Benedick, who had reached the other bank, turned and saw my predicament.

“You’ve come too far to go back, Julia,” he had shouted at me. “Be a man about it and come on.”

And I had. He had been so calm, so matter-of-fact, that I had obeyed, slower and more cautiously than I had begun, it was true. But I had made it and Benedick had rewarded me with the first bite of the cherry tart he had stolen from Cook’s larder. Be a man about it. Good advice then and now, I supposed. Doubtless Father would have made some Shakespearean reference to Caesar and the Rubicon, but the idea was the same. Begin as you mean to go on and do not look back. No sniveling, no quivering.
Audeo
.

I thought for a long time about what that might mean in my particular case. I could continue the investigation, leave off my mourning, express my opinions freely and with vigor. I could dance with whomever I chose, travel alone,
to Italy or to Greece and beyond. I could take a lover if I wished, albeit discreetly, and unlike Lot’s wife, I would not look back.

The question was, was I capable of it? I had always sympathized with Lot’s wife. Serving as the family salt cellar for all eternity seemed a rather stiff price to pay for a little understandable curiosity. My own consequences would not be so extreme. Certain people would give up my acquaintance, I was sure. I would no longer be invited to the endless round of tea parties, card parties, music parties, dance parties that had bored me for years—parties, I reminded myself, to which I had scrupulously not been invited during my year of mourning. I would no longer be viewed as a suitable chaperone for young virgins in some quarters, but as young virgins were usually monumental bores, I was not unduly distressed. The people who would hold themselves too respectable to associate with me were the very people who had neglected my acquaintance during my widowhood. Widows were skeletons at the feast, dampening everyone else’s pleasure, so they had not asked me.

But neither had they called on me privately. The visits and letters of encouragement that had deluged Grey House in the first weeks had trickled to nothing. My acquaintances in society would accept me readily enough back into their set if I wore grey and married again, someone dull and sober and not interesting or suitable enough for their own daughters. That was what was expected of me.

But what if I did the unexpected? People would whisper behind their hands about me, there might be one or two veiled references in newspapers—nothing actionable of course, but everyone would know who they meant. In short, I would lose a little respectability among those whose good opinion mattered not at all to me, and I would gain my freedom. It seemed a bargain I could live with.

I did not rouse until Morag returned, bearing a note written
in a flowery hand and smelling strongly of attar of roses mixed with something else. Musk, I think.

“What is this?”

“It is a note,” she said, exasperated. I knew why she was annoyed. I had been sitting so long she had been unable to dust my room and would have to explain to Aquinas why it had not been attended to. Like most of the staff, Morag made a point of avoiding Aquinas whenever possible. For a fundamentally gentle soul, he could be quite unnerving when roused.

I took the envelope and paper knife, slit the envelope and waved Morag away just to complete her annoyance. She always took a healthy interest in my correspondence. The signature I did not recognize, but the message was direct.

My dear Lady Julia,

I beg you will forgive my impudence at writing to you without an introduction. Our mutual friend, Nicholas Brisbane, begs me to write to you on his behalf as he is still too much unwell to undertake correspondence. He wishes to know if you will call upon him here at my house where he is convalescing. Naturally, you must come at your convenience. You are most welcome at any time.

 

It was signed with a scrolled flourish of flowery ink—Hortense de Bellefleur. I turned over the envelope, running my fingers over the heavily embossed crest. Not just an Hortense, but probably a Comtesse Hortense. Perhaps even a duchess. The note was gracious, but its syntax seemed foreign, French, if memory served. I had heard of the lady, of course, most of London had. But I could not place her correct title. That was not surprising, I supposed. She had been married so many times to so many different Continental aristocrats that it was impossible to remember whose title she was currently using.

But it was not her title that intrigued me. Brisbane had chosen to convalesce at her home, which led me to one extremely diverting question: what precisely was Brisbane’s relationship with London’s most notorious courtesan?

Later that afternoon, to my astonishment, Hortense de Bellefleur opened the door to her house herself. The address was a good one and the home so beautifully appointed that I could not believe that financial troubles precluded her from employing staff. The explanation was quick in coming.

“My dear Lady Julia,” she enthused, wrapping her hands about mine and tugging me gently into the foyer. “I was so eager to meet you that I could not wait for my poor old Therese to hobble her way to the door and back. You will forgive my impatience, will you not?”

I had stared at her all through this unorthodox little speech as she flitted about me, taking my swansdown cape from my shoulders and putting it carefully aside with my umbrella. She was older than I had expected, well past forty.

In another woman this might have marked the end of real beauty, but not Hortense. Bellefleur, indeed! For she was a beautiful flower, not with the blowsy obviousness of a rose, but rather with the lush grace of a wild lily. The bones of her face were so eloquently sculpted that the years had merely honed them, mellowing them to something more arresting than mere loveliness. There was good humour there and kindness, as well as an elegance no Englishwoman could ever match. I took her in from her barely silvering dark hair to her pure, rose-tinted complexion, discreet jewelry to embroidered lace slipper tips, and I thought how easy it would be to hate this woman.

But in fact, it was impossible to hate Hortense. She chattered like a between-stairs maid, praising my costume—the fabric (heavy Lyons silk), the colour (bittersweet chocolate), and the artful cut. Morag had applied her needle discreetly to
the hem, but nowhere else. In spite of Monsieur Riche’s protests, the dresses required little alteration.