“Surely you must understand what it means to be ridiculous in the eyes of society,” he said. “There is not a month goes by some fresh gossip about the Marches doesn’t find its way into the newspapers. I thought Lucy was far enough removed from that. She assured me after that business with your father—”
“My father? What of him?” To my knowledge, Father had been remarkably well-behaved of late. I had credited it to Hortense’s influence, but perhaps I had been too generous.
Sir Cedric shifted in his chair. He was the sort of man who liked always to be in the right, I suspected. If he knew something of Father’s exploits and had been instructed to keep his counsel, breaking that trust would put him squarely in the wrong. But I had not anticipated the streak of malice running like an ugly flaw through the fabric of his character.
“Your father was very nearly arrested a fortnight ago,” he told me, his eyes sharp with spite.
Thoughts spun past and I snatched at one. “The riot in Trafalgar Square?”
“That’s right. He went to support his friend, that treacherous Irish bastard.”
“You mean William O’Brien.” An Irish member of Parliament, he was at present languishing in prison, where his ill-treatment had been cause for the outrage in Trafalgar Square.
“I do indeed,” he spat.
“What happened?”
Sir Cedric shrugged. “March very nearly got shot for his troubles. If it had not been for that Brisbane fellow watching his back, your father would be lying next to Snow in the game larder.” He chuckled at his own joke and reached into his pocket for another vile cigar. I could not make sense of this. I had suspected Brisbane had been in Trafalgar Square on the fateful day and sustained his injury in the process. But that Father had been there as well was something I could not entirely take in.
“I am sorry, Sir Cedric, but I do not follow you. Do you mean to say that Lord Wargrave went to Trafalgar Square to protect my father?”
He clipped the end of his cigar, lit the tip, and pulled deeply from it, the end glowing like a ruby.
“I do not know how he came to be there. I only know that someone in that square fired a shot at your father, andWargrave,” he said, spreading the title thickly with sarcasm, “stepped in front of the bullet. He and his man hurried your father out of the square before he was recognised, and them with a bullet wound and a broken leg between them.” He drew in a great lungful of smoke, then expelled it slowly through his nose. “If it were not for your friend, your father’s name would have been all over the newspapers, and he would have likely been accountable to Parliament for his treasonous actions.”
I bristled. “Father is no traitor. He merely has unconventional friends.”
Sir Cedric waved his cigar. “His friends are traitors, and as far as I am concerned, he is cut from the same cloth.”
“Then I must wonder that you are so willing to marry into his family,” I retorted.
Sir Cedric paused, puffing away at his cigar, clouding the atmosphere of the room with its poisonous aroma. Grim made a sound in his throat and rose to the top of the bust of Caesar where the air was clearer.
“I want the girl,” he said simply. “I want her, and what I want, I have. But she is soiled goods to me now, and I do not think I will ever look on her without thinking I have been got the better of.”
I stared at him, scarcely believing he was serious, but his countenance betrayed no sign of levity, and I knew he spoke the truth.
“Lucy is not responsible for the actions of her family,” I said, rising from my chair. He did not offer me the courtesy of rising as well, but merely sat, drawing deeply from his cigar and watching me with his tawny predator’s eyes. “Any more than we are responsible for her choice of husband,” I concluded with a fatuous smile.
I whistled for Grim and took my leave, my raven bobbing along in my wake. I had much to think on.
THE TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
He gave you such a mastery report For art and exercise in your defense, And for your rapier most especially.
—Hamlet
Ireturned Grim to his cage in Father’s study, pleased to find the room deserted. He had likely gone elsewhere to sulk, and he was welcome to it. I took the chance to sit a moment, deeply occupied with the thoughts that were tumbling through my head like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. The difficulty was none of these bits seemed to make any nice, pretty patterns. There were dozens of snippets of conversation, impressions, facts, theories, all whirling madly, none pausing long enough for me to make sense of them. This would never do, I told myself severely. The only way to fit the pieces together was to first make them orderly.
With a brisk step I went to my room, banishing Morag and the dog as I retrieved paper and pen. I arranged them on the blotter, remembering the maxim one of my governesses had always chanted, “A tidy desk is the reflection of a tidy mind.” Of course, this particular governess had been discharged when Aunt Hermia discovered her dancing naked on the front lawn in celebration of the summer solstice. Perhaps it was best not to put much confidence in her little philosophies, but I had nothing to lose.
Writing swiftly, I put down everything I could think of pertaining to the murder, the theft of the pearls, and any other curious behaviours I had witnessed—the drugging of Lucy and Emma, the flirtation between Plum and Charlotte, the antipathy Snow held toward the Gypsies, the ghosts—I noted it all. And written down in a neat and orderly fashion, it was as tremendous a mess as it had been in my head.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, thinking hard. Nothing made any sense at all; the pieces were too tenuous, the connections between them too vague and shadowy as yet. I groaned and threw the paper into the fire, deriving a very little satisfaction in watching it burn. “How Brisbane does this every day I shall never know,” I grumbled.
But if I were to be entirely honest, I must admit I felt more alive, morenecessary,than I had in half a year. My wanderings around Italy had been pleasant beyond description, butpleasantis a very little word. And I realised, as I sat watching my efforts at deduction smoulder to ash, I wanted a larger life than the one I had led. I wanted adventure and passion and romance, and all the other things I had scorned. More than seven hundred years of wild March blood had told at last, I thought with a smile. I had done a mighty job of suppressing it for the first thirty years of my life, but it simply would not do anymore.
* * *