The Misbegotten (54 page)

‘Mrs Weekes, I can’t for the life of me discern what possible interest you might have in Alice Beckwith, a common girl who made an outcast of herself twelve years ago.’

‘Did she? Did she make an outcast of herself, or was she cast out?’
She will not have me back here again
, Rachel knew in that moment.

‘I’m sure I don’t understand what you mean.’ Josephine Alleyn’s voice was like ice. ‘Now let us come to what I wished to say to you, Mrs Weekes. It’s clear to me that your . . . employment with my son is leaving you tired and overwrought. It’s only to be expected, after so many weeks of close contact with an invalid—’

‘Your son is no invalid, madam!’

‘Please don’t interrupt me. When I said that manners had abandoned us here, I did not expect to be taken quite so literally. The task is clearly too much for you, and I will not hear of you continuing, and risking your own health by doing so.’

‘And that is your final word on it?’ said Rachel, after a stricken pause.

‘I never change my mind, Mrs Weekes.’

‘May I . . .’ Rachel took a breath. ‘May I go and explain my coming absence to your son?’

‘I have already informed him. Now.’ Mrs Alleyn stood, her back immaculately straight.

‘But . . . I’m
helping
him! He’s been getting so much better.’

‘You have my thanks, I’m sure. But to continue is quite out of the question. I was mistaken about your . . . suitability for the role. Do not let me detain you further.’

‘It pleases you to keep him shut away, does it not? Far less trouble to you, less scandal. Far less chance of him learning the truth about Alice, and about your noble father!’ said Rachel. Josephine’s face went rigid with anger.

‘Go no further, Mrs Weekes, into matters that are none of your concern. It would be a shame if your misconduct meant I could no longer support your husband in his business. You saw yourself in; now kindly see yourself out.’ Rachel had no choice but to obey her. Falmouth opened the front door for her, a golem without the least flicker of an expression on his face. But Rachel hesitated on the threshold.
I will be allowed to see him no more.

‘I demand to be permitted to take my leave of Mr Alleyn,’ she said, turning with her heart in her mouth. Josephine stood on the parlour threshold, her arms loose at her sides.

‘I thought I had made it quite clear—’

‘He would wish to see me. If you refuse me I will make it known to him that . . . that you have turned me away.’

‘Oh? And how exactly—’

‘I will make it known to him.’ Rachel spoke with such quiet resolve that Josephine made no reply. For a moment they simply stared at one another, a silent war which Rachel won. Without another word, she started up the stairs.

She felt hunted; she felt Josephine’s hard, angry eyes follow her every step. By the time she reached Jonathan’s rooms she was almost running. She knocked and let herself in, closing the door fast behind her. The floorboards creaked under her feet like the deck of a ship.
And the storm beneath us is just now breaking.
Jonathan got up from his desk. There was ink on his fingers; his hair was clean and had been cut to skim his collar at the back. His face was clean-shaven. He looked so different that Rachel hesitated.

‘Mrs Weekes, I didn’t expect you today, though I am delighted you’ve come. See how I have tidied . . .’ He trailed off, so she knew she must look desperate.

‘Your mother has told me I must not come again. That I will no longer be admitted,’ she said breathlessly. ‘She said she’d already told you of this decision, but I wanted to . . . I wanted to be sure.’

‘She lies. She said nothing to me,’ said Jonathan.

‘I had feared as much.’

‘What has happened between you? You look as though she has hounded you up the stairs!’

‘I feel as though she has!’ Rachel almost smiled, but it would not come. She felt too desperate, too afraid. ‘I came to speak to . . . to speak to you, but she found me first and I . . . said some things to her about . . . about Alice. And about your grandfather. I let it be known that I had begun to suspect . . . That I had developed a greater interest in Alice’s disappearance than perhaps I should have.’ She stopped, shook her head and tried to put her thoughts in order.
Will I accuse him outright, then?
‘But I fear that if we are to see each other henceforth, it will have to be in some other place.’

‘What things about my grandfather?’ Jonathan frowned. ‘No – you must not let her prevent your coming, Mrs Weekes!’

‘She is the mistress here, and if she tells the servants not to let me in . . . It would be impossible, to attend under such circumstances.’

‘I own this house, and the servants – not my mother. I will
make
them let you in.’ Jonathan’s eyes were intent, his voice rose indignantly. Rachel shook her head.

‘No. No, I could not. Not knowing that it angered her, that she had forbidden it. My husband . . . my husband would not permit it. She has some hold over him still – some powerful hold. He was in love with her, you see. Perhaps he still is.’

‘Who? Richard Weekes in love with my mother? Who says so?’

‘His father, Duncan Weekes. He’s known it of old. Since Richard was a young boy, he says . . .’ Rachel shook her head, still confounded by it.
Josephine Alleyn, and Starling, and others no doubt . . . all called him theirs before I did; some might call him theirs still. It is as well that I love him not.

Jonathan thought for a while, and then gestured to the chairs by the window.

‘Come. Sit,’ he said, more gently. ‘Let us discuss this, please.’

‘It’s hopeless, sir. I can come here no longer – you must see, it would be impossible? If my husband forbids me – and he will, should your mother decree it – then we could not hope to keep our appointments secret.’

‘You must agree to still visit, however. You must.’

‘How can I?’ Rachel stared hopelessly at him. ‘I am not the mistress of my own destiny – it is bound to his. To him. He has already found out that I see his father against his wishes . . . I have not yet discovered what the full consequences of that will be. And he would find out in an instant if I went against him with regard to you, and your mother. He might beat me, sir. He might indeed do something worse.’

‘Mrs Weekes . . .’ Jonathan paused uncomfortably. ‘You must not let him. You must not abandon me so easily. I beg you. I . . . I cannot do without your friendship. That is, I would not want to.’

‘You would not?’ she breathed. They sat apart, not touching, but Jonathan did not look away from her, even for a second.

‘Your visits are the only thing that makes life bearable, Mrs Weekes. In all the long years since the war, no one else has managed to . . . return a fragment of my former self to me. I have been so afraid, all these years, of the . . . lost, dark places in my mind. In my memory. Only you give me the strength to look into them. Please. Do not abandon me now, at the behest of two people who cannot understand. Not when you have shown me that forgiveness is possible.’ After this he fell silent, and his face darkened, and Rachel thought of the letter in her pocket. It seemed to weigh more than a piece of paper should; her hands began to shake.
Why do I not hand it over to him? Do I fear him, still? Do I fear the effect it might have?
For a moment she wished she didn’t have it; she wished she knew nothing, that her face was hers and hers alone, and no question of a vanished or murdered girl could come between them. To be with Jonathan, there in that room, and to hear him say such things, would be enough to make life happy.
Why couldn’t it have been so?

Rachel turned her face away. Outside, a man came with a taper on a long pole to light the streetlamp on the corner; the fog devoured its weak glow just a few feet from the flame.
I was going to show the letter to Starling, not to Jonathan
. Rachel wasn’t sure whether the letter would bring Starling any joy. Combined with what Duncan Weekes had told her, she knew that Starling would be newly convinced of Jonathan’s motive for killing Alice.
She could have ruined them with what Duncan told her. No wonder they tried to stop all her letters. Yet still my courage near failed me when I was told I could see him no more.
So she stayed silent a while longer, with the letter heavy in her pocket, and some other weight fettering her heart.

Jonathan cleared his throat softly.

‘Mrs Weekes, I must tell you something,’ he said. He was watching Rachel intently, and at once she sensed bad news.

‘What is it?’

‘I have been thinking a great deal about what you told me . . . about your sister, who was lost, and the possibility that she might have lived a second life, as Alice.’

‘Yes?’ Suddenly Rachel was alive with nerves; the blood seemed to swell in her veins.

‘Something had been plaguing me over it. Mrs Weekes, how old are you?’

‘I am twenty-nine, sir. I will be thirty next spring.’

‘Then it is as I thought. I fear that . . . Alice was not your twin sister; she could not be. Alice was a year and a half older than me. If she lives, she is thirty-five now. You are too young.’

And as simply as that, Rachel’s hopes were destroyed. There was silence after Jonathan spoke. The words fell dead from his lips, and landed at Rachel’s feet like little bones, cold and hard. There was a writhing feeling in her chest, and she gasped at it. Tears burned her eyes.
Abi, no. Don’t go.
But she couldn’t bargain or riddle her way around this; she could not argue
it might not be so.
Even after everything she’d heard from Duncan Weekes, and Bridget, after everything she had come to believe of Lord Faukes and Josephine Alleyn, still her mind had clung to the idea that they might all be lying, or mistaken; that it was all talk and rumours and no proof; that the little girl Lord Faukes had put into Bridget’s arms, and sponsored all her life, had indeed been Abigail. It had never occurred to her to check that most fundamental thing she and her twin had in common – their birthday. Rachel bowed her head and wept in utter disappointment; she felt so cold, and so tired.

Outside the window the world seemed to stretch away, endlessly grey and empty.
Say something to me
, she implored but the voice in her mind stayed silent.
Then I am alone.
She felt desolate then, as though she could never again move from the chair where she sat, because she would never have the strength to, would never have the cause.
This was why my heart was numb. To save me from ever feeling this way again.

‘Do not weep so, Mrs Weekes. Please. It would have been a wondrous happenstance, I know, but . . . wondrous things rarely prove to be true,’ said Jonathan, gently.

‘Wondrous? Perhaps.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘But it was the one thing I was hoping for. You break my heart, sir.’

‘Losing your sister breaks your heart, and I am sorry for it. But I had to tell you, did I not?’

‘Oh, why? Why could you not have just left me in ignorance, and with hope?’ she cried.

‘Because it was lies, Mrs Weekes,’ he said grimly. ‘Two girls were lost, not one.’

‘But I had hoped that it was otherwise, Mr Alleyn. I had hoped so much,’ said Rachel, brokenly. ‘It was the one thing that could have given Alice a happy ending.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If she was Abi, and not Lord Faukes’s, then there was no cause for anyone to harm her. If she was Abi, the two of you could have defied them, and wed. And if she was Abi she might indeed have run away with another, and perhaps be alive somewhere. But I cannot believe any of that if she was Alice. I cannot imagine Alice a happy ending.’

‘What are you saying? What do you mean, if she was not Lord Faukes’s?’ Jonathan was frowning now, that darkening look that she had learnt so well, and learnt to avoid. But she was too sad and sorry to be cautious, then. She took out the letter and handed it to him. ‘What is this?’ He stared at it as if she offered him a live snake.

‘It is Alice’s last letter to you. The one that reached you in Brighton.’

Jonathan froze. Still held in mid-air, the letter began to tremble. Clenching his teeth, Jonathan snatched it from her, and Rachel saw a tremor pass right through him. He closed his hand, crumpling the paper tight inside.

‘How came you by this?’ he said, grinding the words out.

‘I was given it, to return to you, by . . . by Harriet Sutton.’

‘Sutton? Then he—’ Jonathan swallowed, his throat constricting. ‘He had it all the while, and kept it from me? My
friend
. . . why?’

‘He . . . he didn’t want you to dwell on her, I think – on Alice. Once you were back with the army, and preparing to fight again . . .’

‘It wasn’t for him to decide that.’

‘No. No, it wasn’t. But he could have left it where you discarded it, and it would have been lost . . .’

‘Damn
him!’ Jonathan burst out. He stormed out of his chair and paced the floor beside her, his face contorted with anger. ‘And you have read it, I take it?’ he snapped. Rachel looked away in shame.

‘I’d thought she was my sister—’

‘Even if she was, you had no right!’

‘No. I had none,’ she said.

‘But you made it your business, to enquire into mine. You and the rest of the world alongside you.’ Jonathan stopped pacing and looked down at her with that blankness she had seen before.
Where is it he goes, when he is most angry or afraid?
Slowly, Jonathan flattened the letter out and slid it into his pocket.

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’ said Rachel, wiping her face with her gloved fingers.

‘Not here,’ he said coldly. ‘Not now.’

‘She writes of the other man—’

‘Say
nothing
more!’

Jonathan half turned away from her and covered his mouth with one hand, and Rachel was suddenly, horribly reminded of Richard, and the pose from which he’d raised his arm to strike her, just hours before.
When Ifirst met this man he would have choked me to death, were it not for Starling.
‘How long have you had this letter? How could you keep this from me? I
trusted
you!’ he said savagely. Rachel stood and moved away from him. She thought of the heavy glass jar, thrown down at her feet, and his blind empty eyes as he’d done it.
So much that is good, and so much that is bad, contained in this one room.
Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to be enclosed by those four walls for a second longer. Jonathan’s face was terrible; he took two steps towards her, and Rachel fled.