An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (10 page)

CHAPTER 15

The Paths Untraveled

Edwina’s face, as I came down to breakfast the next morning, betrayed her shock at what I had done. Where once there had been a neat, heavy, length of hair, which had always been plaited straight down my back, there was now a shaggy and uneven crop. Along with the pale skin of a recovering patient and the grey-ringed eyes of a sleepless night, I looked quite shockingly haggard.

‘Alice!’

I smiled weakly, and slid into my seat, trying to avoid her eye. I hadn’t expected it to go unnoticed, but I wanted to avoid discussing my motivation. For myself, when I had woken to the recollection of what had happened with Damien the night before, and how awful it had been, the realisation that I had taken some control and cut my hair was a comfort. I felt liberated and adult. It was a step towards rebellion that affected nobody but me. It was a small thing, but it was the only thing I had ever really done that was entirely independent. Except it wasn’t. I knew why I’d done it. It was because of Gabriel.

Edwina rose and scurried around the kitchen table to put an arm around me.

‘Oh darling,’ she said quietly, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘Did you remember something?’

I supposed I had, really. Damien’s action, however undeliberate, had brought back details of that night I had been hiding from myself.

‘Yes, but-’

‘Don’t worry,’ she hugged me to her, and held a hand against my neck, where my hair used to be. I winced slightly as she brushed the tender scabs, only now beginning to heal. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. If it’s made you- well. I don’t like to pry open wounds, and I thought something terrible might be behind your not wanting to remember, but –‘

She seemed more upset than I was, but I suppose we had settled into a comfortable existence, Edwina and I, and I had overset it.

‘Well.’ She resumed her seat and tried to look positive. ‘I daresay there aren’t many young ladies who would look quite so charming with such short hair, but I do feel you carry it off rather well. If you’d like, I could neaten it up a bit for you. I used to be so good with hair when I was younger, and I cut Tristan’s, you know, when he was a boy. Of course, he favours wearing it longer now, but I’m sure I could still do a good job.’

She rattled on, and I let her. It felt as though she didn’t want me to feel the need to speak. I loved her so much, and her unceasing kindness only compounded the guilt I felt at my constant deception. If only on that night I had run, I had fallen into the company of beggars or thieves! That was the company I deserved.

‘Jane’s made some more soup, so you can take that up to your father if you want? I popped my head round this morning, and he seemed a lot more the thing. And then Tristan will be back later today, which will be nice, won’t it?’

Tristan. I had almost forgotten about him. I surprised myself by feeling a rush of self-consciousness as to what he would say about my hair. Would he still want to paint me? Perhaps now I was just a mess, an awful unattractive mess. I nodded decisively at my teacup. That was how it should be. If I was unattractive, then he would never love me, and I would not need to feel bad about spending time with him, or liking him more than I ought. As for Damien, strange, strange Damien, I was sure he simply wouldn’t care. Damien treated the world as though it was a bit of harmless fun. I told myself there had never been any danger there.

I took a tray up for Father, but he grunted and didn’t even open his eyes when I bade him good morning. I knew we would have to talk later, but I was happy to wait for the moment. Instead, once I had helped Jane to clear away the dishes and slyly returned Edwina’s embroidery scissors to her bag, she set about to make the best of my hair.

I was perched on a high stool in the kitchen and she attacked me with a wet comb, combing bits this way and that.

‘I should have loved dark hair when I was a girl. Still would, really. And so thick and straight! Mind you, you always want the opposite of what you’ve got, don’t you? That’s girls for you I suppose. Boys never seem to complain, but why would they? They’re too busy trying to hide the latest accident from you. I remember Tristan and Damien – Rebecca Hudson’s son – you remember, why they got into some terrible messes, the pair of them. With Damien it was always mud and water, Rebecca used to tell me. She said he couldn’t so much look at a puddle without falling over in it.

‘With Tristan it was always paint. He got it everywhere. Always dragging his cuffs through it. And in his hair! I used to wonder how he managed it. But boys will be boys, don’t you think?’

I smiled, happily distracted by her industry. She would chatter and snip, step back and tilt her head to one side then the other, then reach for her comb. Chatter and snip, chatter and snip, until I wondered if I had any hair left.

‘It was always mud with me too,’ I said. ‘Mud and grass.’

‘It’s natural, isn’t it? You expect children to be dirty. A dirty child is a happy child, that’s what I found. You heard them giggling in the garden and you knew they’d roll in an hour later covered in heaven knows what. He’s grown out of that now though, Tristan. So careful with his shirts, and I’ve never had to scrub his cuffs since he turned sixteen.’

‘That must be a help.’

‘I’m sure you know yourself what a trial laundry can be – if it was just you and your father.’

‘Yes.’

But I doubted my poor efforts at laundry were anything to Edwina and her pristine house and gowns. I had never ironed anything beyond my father’s collar and cuffs – nothing else had been on show to anybody. All my clothes had been creased, darned and poorly fitting. I had been almost feral, I supposed. I glanced down at my hands, folded neatly in my lap. Now my wrists were encased in beautifully pressed cotton, fitting precisely as it should, caught with neat little buttons at the wrists, without a single loose thread.

‘Now I’m a bit older it’s simply wonderful I have Jane to help me. She’s been with the family for years but it’s far too much work for one, so we always do it together. She’s not much younger than me, bless her soul. There now.’

She finally drew back and surveyed me proudly.

‘Let me get you a pin and then you can have a look. I don’t mind telling you it was a shock at first, but now it’s neatened up a bit and I’m more used to it, it looks quite charming. You hear of girls in London with their hair short – I daresay it’s all the rage now!’

She bustled off and I raised a tentative hand to the back of my neck, feeling the bristles she had left behind. I must look like a convict. I couldn’t imagine any of the girls in London wore their hair like prisoners. But I was a criminal – while I hadn’t killed him, I still assumed that assaulting one’s husband was a crime.

The back door clattered and swung open, bouncing off the wall with a bang, and there stood Tristan, a wide grin on his face. Again, he reminded me of a Labrador.

‘Fleur! What are you doing there? Have you- Oh my…’

He trailed off and stared at me. I felt a bit like an exotic curio, or more likely a caged animal. Surely it wasn’t so bad. It was only hair, after all. What was hair if not vanity?

I stared at my dirty nails as Tristan dropped his packages on the floor and began to circle me slowly. He didn’t say a word. I repeated to myself that this was what I wanted, over and over again in my head like a mantra. He must think I’m repulsive. He needs to think I’m ugly. I cannot be allowed to dream.

‘I say…’ he said eventually, coming to a stop directly in front of me. He reached out and put a long, slim, pale finger beneath my chin to raise my head. ‘I rather like it. Very avant-garde. You look like a pixie.’

I finally met his eyes and he was smiling and so close. It wasn’t right. He should hate me. He must hate me. They were all supposed to hate me.

Edwina bustled in, not a moment too soon.

‘Mother!’ Tristan whirled away and embraced her, spinning her round as she giggled like a child. He set her down and kissed her cheek with all due deference.

‘I brought you gifts,’ he said with a grin, striding over to his parcels, where they still lay in a haphazard pile on the floor.

‘Darling, you shouldn’t have,’ Edwina said, still smiling.

‘Just a few bits, you know.’ Tristan unwrapped one of the packages on the kitchen table, and drew out lengths of silk, fine as cobwebs, for Edwina’s embroidery. Then ribbons, a bundle of all colours and textures. He flicked through a few of the loose ends for a while before drawing out one, about an inch wide and the deepest, darkest green I had ever seen. He pulled out a metre, wrapped it around his hand and then handed it to me.

‘I thought you could do something with it for the painting. Put it in your hair or around your waist or something. I just liked the colour, really.’

I stroked the pad of ribbon in my hand, marvelling over the sheen of it and how it rippled beneath my touch.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ I said quietly, wondering if I was reading too much into his gift. I was sure I was. I tried to hope I was too. Tristan batted my concerns away with an airy wave of his hand.

‘Tis a mere trifle! I’m raring to get working on this new piece – would you mind me sketching you again this afternoon? If you’re gardening again.’

I nodded.

‘Excellent! I’ll set to unpacking then see you in an hour or two.’

Edwina watched him bound from the room with a fond smile on her face.

‘So much energy – bless him, it’s so nice when he’s back. So lovely to have youth in the house.’

She came towards me and took the ribbon from my hands and wrapped it around my crown. She tied it with a bow under my ear and securing it with two of the pins she had brought.

‘There now, you look lovely. Pop upstairs and have a look in the glass, won’t you? And take these rolls in to your father. I daresay he’s sick to death of eating soup by now.’

I took the plate she offered, the bread still pleasantly warm from the oven, and cut a wedge of butter and stuck it to the plate.

Father was still lying down, with his back propped up by a few pillows and his eyes tightly shut. He grunted again when I greeted him, allowing it to trail off into a moan. I wondered when he would get up, and when he would talk to me again about Gabriel, and what must be done.

From there I went to my room, my eyes glued to the floor so I didn’t catch sight of my hair before I was squarely in front of the mirror. It was silly, but I was frightened of what I had done now, and of how Edwina had tried to fix it. How vain I was, so vain and stupid in everything I did. Every action I took was proof of my foolishness. And I looked into the glass, and I barely knew myself.

When I had taken the scissors to my hair, I had watched each lock fall, lying in ribbons and mesh on the floor around me. I had seen myself the same throughout, it was me, brutalised, changed but not changed, new but old, older than I had ever been. Without my hair I had been as much of a ruin on the outside as the inside. But Edwina had taken that away. In its place was a woman I had never met, with haunted eyes still, but the puckered and worried brow was hidden by a light, feathering fringe. I could be born again, perhaps. What scared me was that I was becoming more completely the person I did not recognise from my childhood; the person who had struck to kill.

The garden was my refuge, as it always had been, and I went with a trug full of tools and every good intention of clearing my mind. I was so tired. I couldn’t think straight and nothing made sense to me. I had the barest grasp of what had gone on these past weeks and my mind was a jumble, as tangled as the bundle of ribbons Tristan had brought home.

But once settled in by the herb garden, continuing to tidy the borders and with the intention of cutting sprigs for drying, I found myself restless. My gaze flickered from the plants to the trees surrounding me, to the wall where Tristan had sat, and the window, where I had once seen Damien when I still thought he wasn’t real. My protector.

Now I knew he was real I did not know how to feel about him. I had been safe in his arms and under his watchful eye, and he had always looked after me. Yet one wrong touch of his hand and I had run, and altered myself drastically. Would it always be that way? I shuddered to think that I was unnatural in that aspect of my life too. Perhaps it was just Damien who scared me, with all his secrets and his prying questions. Perhaps it would have been different if it had been Tristan who had taken me to the woods and danced with me beneath the stars.

I raised my hand to my face and tried to scrub away the tumult of questions. When I raised my head again I saw the shadowed figure I recognised in the window for a second, before he moved away. There was no wave now.

‘Alice!’

Tristan had left the kitchen door without my noticing and strode up to me with his sketch pad tucked beneath his arm.

‘I like the ribbon, did Mother do that?’

I cracked a smile and nodded.

‘Would you mind if I…’ Tristan waved his pencils at me. I said no, not at all, but in truth I wanted to be alone, far away from here. I thought of America whenever I thought of being somewhere else, whether because I really wanted to go or because it was a place I had heard there was little society and miles of ungovernable open space, I wasn’t sure.