He lifted my plate and whisked the toast crumbs into his little silver pan. “I called the carriage for them at midnight, my lady. His lordship offered them rooms for the night, but the Reverend Mr. Twickham was feeling a trifle unwell and wished to sleep in his own bed.”
I looked up sharply. “Uncle Fly was ill? Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Not at all, my lady. If I may speculate, I believe Mr. Twickham indulged himself a bit more than is his custom.”
I burst out laughing. “He was drunk.”
Aquinas looked mildly shocked. “I should be heartily sorry if I suggested such a thing, my lady. However, if I were to observe that he seemed to have a bit of difficulty putting on his coat, and that entering the carriage proved so treacherous he nearly ended up in the moat, these would not be exaggerations.”
“Poor Uncle Fly. His head will be sore as a bear’s this morning. And we lot are supposed to descend upon him for luncheon! How ghastly.”
Aquinas agreed and removed my empty plate. I sat over the last few sips of my tea, making note of the fact that Uncle Fly and Lucian Snow could be eliminated from the list of possible miscreants who had donned the ghostly garb.
But instead of simplifying matters, it muddied them. Snow had a sort of puckish charm, and Uncle Fly had always been good for a joke, particularly of the elaborate and practical variety. If I numbered gambling among my vices, I would have wagered handsomely on one of them being our prankster.
Still, it left me with several interesting questions yet to be answered, including the one that intrigued me the most: what had Brisbane been doing when the clock struck two?
THE SEVENTH CHAPTER
O, that a man might know The end of this day’s business ere it comes.
—Julius Caesar
The door to Father’s study was closed, but I had no doubt he was within. I could smell his pipe tobacco, and if I pressed my ear quite tightly to the door, I could hear him talking. From the rhythm of his speech, it was apparent he was reciting one of his beloved soliloquies. Lear, no doubt. He was particularly fond of Lear.
I rapped sharply, and after a moment he called for me to enter. I felt a sense of peace descend as soon as I stepped over the threshold. Father’s study held only the most pleasant connotations for me. Any childhood transgressions were dealt with as a matter of business, and lectures and punishments were meted out in his estate office where farmers and servants were given their pay or their notice. Here, there was only the memory of spending time alone with Father, a rare privilege in a household of ten children. It was in this room rather than in the schoolroom that each of us had learned our letters, following Father’s finger as he traced out a line of Shakespeare and encouraged us to sound out the words. There was always a treat if we excelled—crumpets Father toasted over the fire, turning them on forks until they were brown and crisp.
There was a fire now, crackling away merrily on the hearth, the mastiff Crab stretched out lazily in front of it, her immense paws thrust into the ash for warmth. The walls were lined with books, none particularly valuable. The rare and costly volumes were shelved in the formal library where they were regularly dusted and rubbed with neats’ foot oil. The study was the home of Father’s private collection, the bulk of it devoted to Shakespeare, with some poetry and a bit of history as well. The tall Gothic windows were hung with claret velvet, and a pair of enormous thick silk rugs from Turkey warmed the stone floor. The furniture was lushly upholstered in more claret velvet. There were curiosities as well—an enormous armillary sphere, the stone wing of an Italianputti,a revolting stuffed monkey called Cyril that Father had won in a wager against the King of the Belgians—but it was a comfortable room, a gentleman’s retreat. I remembered the hours I had spent in the window seat, secluded by those same velvet draperies as I read the books of my youth.
Father laid his book upon the desk. Bound in green leather and stamped with the March coat of arms, it was part of the set of Shakespeare that had been printed for him as a gift by the queen upon his accession to the earldom. I hazarded a glance at the cover as I took a chair opposite his.King Lear.I smiled to myself, but Father missed nothing.
“You seem in good spirits,” he observed.
“I was merely thinking how nice it is that some things do not change.”
He raised a silvery-white brow. “Like me? I shall never change. I am half as old as Methuselah and I mean to live forever. I shall point and laugh when Stonehenge crumbles to dust and I am still here.”
“Just as well. I am told there is no more space left in the family crypt.”
He pulled a face. “That may be, but when the time comes I shall make room for the old crone if I have to turn half the family out and sell their bones to make corsets.”
“I presume you are referring to Aunt Dorcas?”
Father stretched his legs, wincing only slightly. I could only assume his rheumatism was paining him. His little twinges usually presaged a change in the weather.
“I had forgotten how awful she could be,” he mused. “Hard to imagine now she was once the toast of the Regency and her sisters with her. All four of them were painted the year the elder two came out. The paintings are in the little alcove outside the music room. Striking girls, they were. All the bucks were in love with them.”
“Even Aunt Dorcas?”
“Indeed so. An heir to a dukedom shot himself for love of her when she rejected his suit. They said she heard the news, then put on her prettiest gown and went to a ball where she danced every last dance, drank two bottles of champagne, and swam the pond on Hampstead Heath just to watch the sun come up.”
I shook my head. It seemed impossible to reconcile that desiccated old toad with a ripe, nubile young woman who broke men’s hearts as easily as one might crack an egg.
“I suppose time changes people,” I hazarded.
“Time and regret,” he corrected. “Dorcas and her sisters were outraged by Rosalind’s elopement with a footman. They withdrew from society and refused to marry. They thought they were disgraced, as if marrying one’s footman is any worse than the rest of the antics they got up to,” he finished, reaching for the cup of tea on his desk. “They immured themselves in that old house in the Norfolk fens, and scarcely spoke two words to the rest of us for decades.”
“How dreadful! To shut themselves up like that, with only each other for company. Why did we never visit them?”