A Flaw in the Blood (14 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T
HE COLD ITSELF SHOULD BE
a trifling indisposition,” said Harris, the Sheerness doctor, as he descended the stairs at Shurland that evening, “but when complicated by fever, is necessarily of concern. Miss Armstead must be kept warm and quiet for a se'nnight at least, if we are not to see an inflammation of the lung. That would be most dangerous, Mr. Fitzgerald, as I am sure I need not tell you. If only Shurland were not so draughty!”

Fitzgerald had driven the pony trap from the barn, his anxiety for Georgie spurred by his need to be free of the Hall and its ghosts. The chill air, laden with Channel salt and the scent of sheep dung, whipped his cheeks as it swept the length of treeless Sheppey—and he understood why Theo was so often out-of-doors, on Clive's back, during these end-of-term vacs. The boy could be free of anything—even social theory—on these moors.

“I have known just such a healthy young woman carried off in the past, from an inflammation of the lung, when insufficient care was taken,” Harris persisted. “I should have bled Miss Armistead, had she not strenuously set herself against it; and I will not undertake to promise
never
to bleed her, if the fever persists.”

“Sure and I'll do my best to support you, Harris,” Fitzgerald returned, “but Miss Armistead is by way of being learned in medicine herself, and will object to meddling.”

“Learned!” the doctor snorted. “The dear ladies will always believe they know best, in all matters of health, regardless of their limited experience and education—it is the maternal impulse, instilled by the Creator—but in Miss Armistead's case, it is for her natural protectors to steer her between the shoals of over-confidence and willful conceit. I shall call again in the morning, Mr. Fitzgerald. Pray see that Miss Armistead swallows the draught I have left in Mrs. Coultrip's keeping, at bedtime and again at two o'clock in the morning. I shall leave instructions as to gruel and fortifying broth.”

Fitzgerald promised faithfully, and showed Dr. Harris the door; then stood in the chill Hall for an instant considering his position.

In choosing Shurland as a point of refuge, he'd never intended to make a prolonged stay. Now he was trapped until Georgiana's health improved—unless he left her behind, and went on to France alone.

“What did the doctor say, begging your pardon, Mr. Fitz?”

“He says you're a grand sort for a doctor's clerk, having spotted Miss Georgie's illness before she did herself. I'm afraid we're tied to Shurland until she is well, Gibbon.”

“That means a few days, at the least. And what of these murderous folk who're after your blood, if I may be so bold?”

“We shall have to hope they've lost me altogether.”

Gibbon shook his head, and held out the London
Times
. “I took the liberty of ironing the newspaper you brought back from Sheerness, as is usual—and I don't like the look of
one
item.”

Fitzgerald glanced at the column under Gibbon's blunt thumb.
Noted Barrister Dead After Attack in Chambers
—

“Sep,” he whispered, and took the paper from Gibbon's hand.

It was a sordid little piece, full of innuendo and speculation. Mr. Taylor had been known for his Radical views; an outspoken antimonarchist; given to pursuing his affairs even on the Sabbath, and disinclined to alter his habits in respect of the Prince Consort's tragic passing; almost justifiably, attacked and laid low in chambers—dying barely twenty-four hours later—and the summary capped with a pious little dismissal, that Septimus Taylor would be chiefly regretted among the miscreants of Newgate, whose interests he had principally served.

You deserved better,
Fitzgerald thought; and wished the obituary scrivener a special rung in Hell.

It was the suggestion buried within the body of the article, however, that brought his brows together: that Mr. Taylor's partner, one Patrick Fitzgerald—having discovered the victim when he, too, profaned the Sabbath by venturing to visit chambers on the Sunday—had quitted London without consulting the police, who greatly desired to speak to Mr. Fitzgerald in connexion with Mr. Taylor's death . . .

“Have you read this?” he asked abruptly.

“My sympathies, sir. I know how you valued Mr. Taylor.”

“I shall have to leave Shurland at once.”

“With Miss Georgie—”

“Impossible. She'll stay until she's well—and you with her. It's myself the police are wanting. With Bedford Square empty, they'll look to the Inner Temple. And no doubt my chief clerk will help them kindly—he'll have received my bit letter from Shurland this morning. Faith, and the Law might arrive at any moment.”

“Beggin' your pardon, sir—but would it not be best to answer their questions? Surely you've nothing to fear—having done your utmost to save Mr. Taylor?”

Fitzgerald laughed. “Haven't you read it in the paper, man? The wild Irishman is to be charged with murder! Even did I prove my innocence, only think of the delay—the thwarting of our plans, the stripping of all protection from Miss Armistead, the frustration of our object—”

“May I presume, sir, to ask what that object might be?”

“You may not. You can't betray what you don't know.” He mounted the stairs, two at a time. “Be a good fellow and pack my things. We drive to Sheerness in half an hour's time.”

“Then let's hope the Bobbies give us so long,” Gibbon muttered.

Her door was ajar, so that Mrs. Coultrip might glance in from time to time without disturbing her patient; and as he stood in the glow of her single candle he could hear the laboured breathing. He ought to have continued down the hall to take his leave of Maude—he ought to have tiptoed past and allowed Georgie to discover his flight in the morning, when he was too far away to be persuaded. But he paused, staring at her. Her cheeks were too flushed above the white lace of her nightgown and he could sense the burning fever as though her skin were actually beneath his hands.

And suddenly what he saw was not
Georgie,
but another girl—a younger girl—her clenched fists raised to fight off the horror of night, in the form of a suffocating pillow—

A shout from below, ripe with anxiety.

“Mr. Fitz!”

He wheeled and made for the stairs.

Theo was standing before Gibbon, hands on his hips and mutiny on his face. But it was to Fitzgerald he spoke.

“You lied to me! But why am I surprised? When have you ever done anything
else
?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I asked if you were fleeing debts. You said not. But you
lied
.”

“Theo—” Fitzgerald moved impatiently down the stairs to his son.

“Appleford told me.” This was the Eastchurch blacksmith. “I took Clive over to be shod a few hours ago and he said the whole of Sheppey is buzzing about it—”

“About
what
?”

“The party of duns who're asking everywhere for Shurland Hall. A right pack of toughs Appleford said they were—led by a gent in an eye patch.”

Fitzgerald went cold. “A German? Dark-haired?”

“You see,” his son crowed in triumph, “you
do
know what I'm talking about.”

“But if they've been here all day,” Gibbon muttered, “why haven't they come to the Hall?”

“They're waiting for darkness.”

Something in the tone of Fitzgerald's voice stopped even Theo's words in his mouth. It was half-past four in the afternoon, and would be dark in a matter of minutes.

“Quickly,” Fitzgerald said. “I'll rouse Georgiana. You gather my things.”

“Father—”

He grasped Theo by the shoulders. “Listen to me, lad. Put Madame duFief and your mother in Coultrip's trap, and send them all to Sheerness. You can ride alongside. Take a gun.”

“Clive's feet are sore! I shouldn't mount him for at least a day—”

“Lead him at a walk, if need be, but get him and the rest away while there's still light. You've no thought what these men are capable of.”

“You make them sound like murderers,” Theo spluttered.

Fitzgerald glanced at him as he turned back to go up the stairs. “They are,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T
HE DRESSMAKER CAME DIRECT FROM
London today, with a fellow from Robinson's—the mourning warehouse most patronised by persons of Quality—and so I spent the better part of three hours in being fitted for my widow's weeds: a quantity of detestable caps, with a peak over the forehead; black flannel petticoats; gowns of black velvet, watered silk, and black bombazine, with its ostentatious rustle; black bonnets and shawls; black capes and undergarments; black feathers and black lace. I already possess several stout pairs of black boots, which must be a source of comfort; I detest being fitted for shoes.

And then it was for the girls to stand, and be dutifully measured for ells of mourning cloth: Alice and Louise, Helena and Beatrice—to see a child of four so sunk in mourning, is to cry aloud for Heaven's mercy. I took the fatherless child in my arms and thought what a picture we must make—I so oppressed with loss, she a vision of bewildered innocence. I must direct the Court photographer to consider of our poses.

The dressmaker dared inform my maid that all of London is submerged in black—no other shade is to be had at the linendrapers'—and that those who engage to dye lighter stuffs to mourning hue are doing a brisk business the length and breadth of the Kingdom. Robinson's cannot fill its orders fast enough, and must dispatch its goods by railway and private carriage. How extraordinary to think that Albert's death should occasion a surge in commerce. . . .

“Alice,” I said idly as she turned beneath the dressmaker's hands, “how do you like your new maid?”

“Not as well as Violet,” she replied. “But you must have suspected that, when you dismissed her.”

“Margaret is from the Highlands. She is one of our Scots. Her influence on you must be far more salubrious than that chit of a girl's.”

“Margaret drinks.”

“All our Scots are prone to . . . their ways. It is a part of their natural simplicity.”

“She no more understands how to dress a lady of fashion than would a cow.”

“That is as well—for you cannot be thinking of fashion in the depths of your loss.”

The dressmaker's hands faltered in their industrious fitting; I must suppose the creature, with unflagging impertinence, overlis-tened to my intimate conversation with my daughter—and heard my gentle words as a rebuke to her profession. I quitted the room immediately—for I have a horror of encroaching ways on the part of any of my dependents.

Alice found me out, however, an hour later, as I drank tea in the seclusion of the Blue Room—which I have strewn with bouquets of fresh flowers, sent daily from the London florists. I like to sit here, and
shall
sit here a great deal in future. I shall read what Palmerston gives me, and perhaps His Spirit shall guide whether I sign Palmerston's papers or no.

“Mama,” Alice said, “is that Papa's cast you are holding?”

The cast of Albert's arm, that we had made when the children's were cast, a few years ago. I rest it in my lap from time to time, the fingers clutched in mine.

“It feels so very like,” I said. “Particularly when the warmth of my body has softened the plaster.”

She turned her face aside, but not before I caught the expression of repugnance. Alice has never been a careful child; she is not like Helena, who presents a dreaming visage to the world and allows no hint of what she truly feels to be read by its multitudes. Alice betrays everything.

“You know, Alice, I am not sure that you truly
love
your Louis,” I observed. “But then—what can a girl of eighteen understand of love? An infatuation, merely. A flight of impetuous fancy.”

“Mama, why did you order Violet dismissed from my service?”

“I believe the girl was in
my
service, Alice—not yours.”

She gestured impatiently. “Even so. You sent her away without a character, but a week before Christmas. Was that just? Was that kind?”

I placed the cast of my Beloved's arm carefully on the desk that stands in the Blue Room; it shall weight down Palmerston's papers, when he brings them. “Violet was impertinent.”

“Impertinent! Because she reported my silk flowers to be missing—the same flowers you later burned in the garden? Mama, I must and will know why those flowers disturbed you so!”

“Because of where they were found. Naturally.”

“In Papa's study?”

“In a vase of water.”

“But how is that to the purpose—what can
that
have had to do with Violet?”

“It is possible . . . that she colluded with him. That she gave him the flowers. And told you they were missing only when you should have perceived it for yourself—when the review of your wardrobe was made, in preparation for mourning.”

Alice looked her bewilderment.

And now,
I thought,
she will tell everyone that I have gone mad.

I withdrew the one letter I had saved from burning, in the midnight destruction of my Beloved's correspondence—the letter from Baron Stockmar, written over a year ago—and offered it to Alice.

“Read it,” I commanded. “You will know better what I am about, once you have understood the words.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
HE NEED TO RUN HAMMERED
in Fitzgerald's brain. Georgiana moved only slowly across the mile of bog and meadow between the Hall and the
Dauntless.
Fever made her stumble and her breath tore through her ragged throat. Already, the dusk had fallen.

Between them, Fitzgerald and Gibbon tried to support her; but there was baggage to carry—their clothes, and Georgie's satchel of instruments. The grip of Fitzgerald's hand on her arm was so tight it must have hurt her; but she said nothing, her jaw set, as their boots squelched through the stinking marshland.

“You might consider, Mr. Fitz, an improvement to your mooring when next you're at Shurland,” Gibbon suggested. “A gravel path, mebbe, straight down from the house. Or moor the steamer at Sheerness, however inconvenient.”

Fitzgerald said nothing. They had come to the head of the brackish creek where they'd anchored the
Dauntless
. His eyes searched ahead, straining against the gathering dark; strained again.

“I reckon we're dead nigh,” Gibbon said uncertainly.

Fitzgerald stopped in his tracks and released Georgie's arm. She sagged against him.

“Patrick—what is it?”

The
Dauntless
was gone.

Theo had done as he'd agreed, and escorted Coultrip's trap as far as Brambledown, a mile and a half west of the Hall; but as the cavalcade entered the small sheepherders' village, Clive pulled up dead lame.

“You'll have to go on alone, Coultrip,” he said as he slid out of the saddle and lifted his hunter's foreleg. “I'll follow tomorrow. Clive's done in.”

“Your father won't like it,” the old man said bluntly.

Theo raised his head. “My father's on his way to France. What has he to do with anything?”

“Theo,
darling,
” murmured Lady Maude, “Patrick did his best. I was bloody to him, always. Poor lamb.”

“Go on,” Theo persisted, ignoring her. “Put up at the Britannia. I'll call for Mother tomorrow.”

“It's no druthers to me what you do, lad,” Coultrip replied, snapping the reins over his nag, “so long's you lock up t'Hall tight.”

Theo stood for a moment, watching them go. Then he turned and began to lead Clive back along the road they'd come.

He did not believe his father's warnings. He was alone, and free, for the first time in days. He would build a good fire and spend the night reading a book. His heart felt lighter than he could ever remember.

Von Stühlen had pulled up his hired fly in the sole clump of trees Eastchurch boasted. The wind off the sea, two miles distant, was bitterly cold and the driver thinking of his horses, the way muscle and bone stiffened dangerously in such weather when the animals weren't moving.

They had been waiting for over an hour on the approach to Shurland Hall, the fly screened by the coppice's branches, blankets tossed over the horses' backs. After half a day on the island, von Stühlen knew a good deal about the isolated and poorly-secured house. He knew Fitzgerald was inside, and Georgiana Armistead with him. That an invalid and her companion were the only other occupants. The servants, an elderly couple.

He set aside the volume he'd been reading—Tennyson's
Idylls of the King
—and consulted his pocket watch. Nearly six o'clock. He would have preferred midnight, the household sleeping, and the cover of darkness complete; but he could not keep his men hunched in the cold any longer.

Idylls of the King.
Albert had recounted once a visit he'd made to Tennyson's home at Freshwater, not far from Osborne—how he'd surprised the poet laureate in the midst of unpacking at the new house, Albert standing awkwardly by a window to gaze out at an indifferent view, praising everything in his correct German way as Mrs. Tennyson disposed of her china . . . Victoria did not deign to visit Freshwater, but summoned Tennyson to Windsor instead, and made him spout his poetry as though she were Elizabeth, and Tennyson Shakespeare. Such scenes reflected poorly on each, von Stühlen reflected.

Why did he
hate
Victoria so deeply? —Because she had given Albert everything in the world, when his heart whispered it might as easily have been him? That it
still
might be Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, who inherited this English earth? Provided he steeled himself. Refused to let her sap his strength, as she had sapped Albert's—

Jasper Horan, his face pinched with cold, tapped on the fly's window. Von Stühlen opened it a crack.

“Oi, guv'nor—summat's coming along the road, bound for the house.”

They had scattered five men in the sheep meadow as lookouts, against just such an eventuality; one of them must have raised his arm in warning.

Von Stühlen felt for his pistol; it lodged snugly against his ribs, hidden by his cloak. He thrust open the fly's door and walked at a leisurely pace into the middle of the road, leveling his gun on the approaching horse, his gauntleted right hand raised.

And if it were Fitzgerald? Georgiana Armistead with him?

He could carry them both back to London, and the Metropolitan Police. But the Queen would dislike that; it would place her enemies immediately beyond her control. Charges, imprisonment, a trial—all of these would attract the attention of the newspapers, and give Fitzgerald a platform for protesting his innocence. Exactly what Victoria dreaded.

Sick excitement filled von Stühlen's throat, and his fingers gripped the pistol more tightly. He would force Fitzgerald and his woman into the fly and later, in private, he would extort from them everything they knew about Victoria. He would learn, at last, why she feared and hated them so. And then—and then, he would destroy them. . . .

No horseman, but a boy leading a rangy hunter at a walk. He stopped dead when he saw the dark figure with the gun raised.

Von Stühlen's eyes roamed over the tense, whipcord body; no Fitzgerald. No Georgiana Armistead. It was
she
he had principally hoped to meet with in the dark;
she
he wanted to watch, as he killed her lover.

He swallowed his disappointment, mind raging, and walked toward the boy.