Silent in the Sanctuary (36 page)

One of the ladies—it may have been Charlotte—screamed, and with a roar of pain, in a movement so swift the eye could scarcely follow it, Brisbane thrust his left hand up and out of the sling, gripping Alessandro’s blade in his bare palm. Brisbane’s face was white with fury as he jerked Alessandro’s sword toward him, bringing the younger man’s face within inches of his own.

Instantly, Alessandro’s face drained of colour as he realised what he had done. “Signore, you must accept my apologies, I am most abjectly sorry.”

Brisbane said nothing for a long moment. Then, with infinite slowness and perfect disdain, he pulled Alessandro’s sword from his hand and dropped it to the floor. Alessandro winced as it clattered on the stones, and it was still echoing when Brisbane stalked from the room, closing the door softly behind him. I think I would have preferred if he had slammed it.

Violante put a tentative hand to my shoulder. “Giulia, are you all right?”

“Of course. I am perfectly all right. Should I not be?”

She shrugged. “You screamed, very loud.”

“I most certainly did not.”

Violante gave me a little push. “You did.”

I drew myself up to my full height and smoothed my skirts. “I most certainly did not. Now, if you will excuse me, Brisbane seems to have left his coat behind. I will make certain it is returned to him.”

As I gathered up Brisbane’s coat, I noticed Alessandro, still standing where Brisbane had left him, defeated and a little shocked. I ought to have said something encouraging to him, but Ludlow and Plum had already taken him in hand, and I wondered if perhaps this was one time the company of other men was preferable to a lady’s society.

I gave a quick backward glance as I left. Alessandro was staring after me, his expression anguished. It would have been a kindness to offer him a smile of absolution, but I did not. I was not feeling particularly kind, I reflected sourly. And Alessandro had just revealed a little too much of what mettle he was made of.

Things without all remedy should be done without regard.

What’s done is done.

I made directly for Brisbane’s room in the Galilee Tower. It seemed likely he had withdrawn there to attend to his shoulder. I mounted the staircase slowly. It was possible the violent movement of his left arm had opened the wound, and I was no Nightingale to look easily on blood. Better to let him see to that himself in privacy, I decided, and not suffer distraction when I informed him of my revelation regarding Henry Ludlow.

As I rounded the corner into the bachelors’ wing, I heard a door close and saw Aquinas coming my way carrying a tray.

I gestured toward the tray. “I presume you have been playing nursemaid to the patient?”

Aquinas gave me a short nod. “I believe his lordship is in considerable pain, but the wound opened only a little. He refused to permit me to put in a stitch, so I packed it with Lady Hermia’s green salve and bandaged it.”

I glanced down at the tray and saw a pile of cotton strips, streaked with blood.

“Very good of you, I’m sure.” I looked up at Aquinas, but his face swam out of focus.

“My lady, are you quite all right? You have gone very pale.”

I blinked hard and swallowed. “Quite well, thank you. Brisbane left without his coat. I will return it to him now.”

If he thought it unseemly I would visit a bachelor in his rooms, he betrayed no sign of it. He merely inclined his head and went about his business. Portia had told me before that whatever I paid him was undoubtedly not enough, and once again I was forced to believe her. Discretion is an invaluable commodity in a servant.

I tapped at Brisbane’s door and waited a moment. When there was no reply I knocked, quite loudly, and he growled for me to enter.

I was not surprised to find he had flung himself into an armchair. He was sucking hard at the mouthpiece of his hookah pipe, drawing in great choking lungfuls of smouldering hashish.

I waved a hand, clearing the atmosphere just a little.

“Good heavens, Brisbane, you are as bad as Sir Cedric. I thought I would choke on the stench of his cigars this afternoon.”

Too late I realised I had betrayed myself. In spite of the narcotic fog, Brisbane’s wits were undulled. He looked up at me inquiringly.

“Sir Cedric indulges only in the smoking room,” he said slowly. “When were you there? And more to the point, why?”

I thrust his coat at him irritably. “I went to ask him about Lucy. I learned nothing of importance, save that he is a thoroughly nasty man. Here is your coat. You left it in the billiard room after that revolting display.”

He blew out a great exhalation of smoke. “Am I to deduce you blame me for what happened?”

I took the chair opposite, flopping gracelessly with my elbows on the padded arms. “I do. I do not believe for a moment you challenged Alessandro. It was entirely within your power to avoid such a confrontation by not accepting his challenge. And then to bait him—”

“I did no such thing.”

“You most certainly did. You pranced about, refusing to engage him. It was insulting. You patronized him and deliberately frustrated him to the point of rashness.”

Brisbane lowered the mouthpiece. “I never prance. I would not know how to begin to prance. And you are quite wrong in any event. I did challenge him.”

I sat up, staring in disbelief. “I do not believe it. Even you could not be so willfully stupid. That shoulder is not healed. You have a bullet wound scarcely a fortnight old—”

“I fell off my horse.”

“You do not ride! For the love of heaven, can we not have the truth between us?” I cried. “You were in Trafalgar Square during the riot and you were shot!”

Brisbane leaned forward, his pupils indistinguishable from the rest of his piercingly black eyes. “I. Fell. Off. My. Horse.”

“Oh, you are the most maddening man I have ever known. If stubbornness were water, I could sail on you to the ends of the earth.”

Brisbane resumed his pipe, giving me a sardonic smile. “Well, we have that in common at least.”

“Whatever do you mean? I am the most amiable of women.” I felt a little insulted. I had never thought of myself as stubborn, and it was hurtful of him to say so.

He laughed. “You might have been, a year or two ago. Now you are unmanageable as any March.”

“Then we ought to both be grateful it is not your task to manage me,” I retorted hotly.

An uncomfortable silence fell between us. I do not know what thoughts ran through his head in those moments, but I would have given my last farthing to know. He merely sat smoking, inscrutable as a pharaoh, while I hated myself only a little less than I hated him.

“Why did you challenge Alessandro?” I asked finally.

“I wanted to take the measure of him. Your brothers were feeling restless, so Lysander suggested a friendly bit of exercise with swords. And for my purposes, fencing is as useful as chess in learning one’s opponent.”

“And what did you learn of Alessandro?”

Brisbane shrugged, then winced sharply as he eased his wounded shoulder back into place. He made no sound, but he had gone pale under the deep olive of his complexion.

“I learned he wishes to be taken seriously. He is a man, but not yet respected as such. He feels any slight to his dignity deeply, and when he is frustrated, he is apt to strike without thinking.”

I felt my blood running cold in my veins. “You think he murdered Lucian Snow.”

Brisbane took another deep draw of the pipe, exhaling slowly through his nose. Sir Cedric had done something similar with his cigar, but from him it was faintly grotesque. On Brisbane, the gesture was suggestive of something altogether more sensual.

“I do not know. What possible motive would he have? He seems to have no ties to Lucy, no reason to bear a grudge against Snow. He may have the temperament to do murder, even a murder of this variety, but whether he did or not, I cannot say. There is simply no motive, though God knows I have looked for one.”

I shook my head. “I wonder at you. How can you be so determined to lay this crime at the feet of a young man who has given you no cause to think ill of him, save one impulsive moment that was completely provoked?”

“And I wonder you cannot see it for yourself,” he said softly.

I paused. Surely Brisbane could not wish Alessandro to be guilty simply because of his affection for me. That would demonstrate a possessiveness, an attachment to me on Brisbane’s behalf that I could scarcely credit. It was astonishing. I felt my breath catch in my throat. My lips trembled as I parted them.

“Brisbane,” I murmured.

“It is quite simple,” he said, smiling slowly, triumphantly. “If Alessandro is the murderer, then no member of your family is implicated, Lucy will go free, and I can return to London and put this case behind me.”

If there had been a vase at hand I would have thrown it at his head. Instead I summoned a smile of my own. “How succinctly you put it. If you will excuse me now, it is time for tea, and I have things to attend to.”

I took my leave, remembering only when I reached the gallery I had forgotten to tell him about Henry Ludlow. I shrugged and dismissed the thought. Brisbane was stalking his own game. I would give chase myself and see what the hunt turned up.

*

I hurried down to tea, nearly colliding with Portia on the staircase.

“Heavens, Julia, have a care. You nearly upset Puggy,” she chided. She was carrying her loathsome pet in her arms. He snuffled wetly at me and I curled a lip at him in return.

“It would be no very great crime to upset Puggy,” I remarked peevishly.

Portia gave me a dark look. “Do not think of joking with me. I have had a vile afternoon, and my head is throbbing again.”

“I am sorry, dearest. What is the trouble?”

She adjusted Puggy in her arms and we started slowly down the stairs. “Another one of the cats has delivered a litter, this one in the fireplace in the dining room, so we cannot light the fire.”

“Which cat?”

“Peter Simple.”

I paused on the stairs. “A moment, Portia. You mean to say both of Father’s toms have thrown litters this week?”

Her lips thinned in annoyance. “I do. And in the most inconvenient places. None of us has had clean linen on our beds because Christopher Sly scratches anyone who comes near her babies, and now we shall have to dress like Esquimaux at dinner or risk slowly freezing to death over the pheasant.”

“Oooh, I do love a nice pheasant. Normandy sauce, I hope?”

“Puggy, darling, do try not to drool on Mama. What? Yes, of course Normandy sauce. You know it is Father’s favourite. But when I ordered the pheasant for dinner, Cook nearly had an apoplexy and I had to spend almost an hour soothing her.”

“I thought Cook prided herself on her pheasant,” I put in. I was trying to pay attention for Portia’s sake, but the domestic dramas were all a bit tedious to me. Aquinas had ordered my household in London, and since the fire I had been without a home of my own. I felt a little adrift without a proper home. If nothing else, it would be lovely to have a place to keep Aquinas. I had never enjoyed the homekeeping aspects of marriage, but now I was on my own, I thought I might rather like to set up a little household. Whatever mess I made of it, Aquinas would soon sort out.

Portia, on the other hand, was alarmingly competent at that sort of thing. She had organised her husband’s household in a matter of days, overthrowing a century’s worth of poor management and turning the country house into something of a showplace. Her house in London was equally fabulous, and she was renowned for her elegant dinners.

“She does an excellent pheasant,” Portia said patiently, “but she did not want to cook these birds because they were in the game larder when Lucian Snow was brought in.”

My stomach lurched a little. “Oh, dear.”

“Indeed. They were cleared out quickly enough, and it isn’t as though they touched him, but she still kicked up a tremendous fuss. And then of course she was quite bitter about the laudanum.”

We had reached the bottom of the stairs and I knew I had but a moment to extract the rest of the story from Portia. I laid a hand on her arm.

“What laudanum?”

Puggy leaned over and sniffed at my hand, then gave a great sneeze. “Julia, honestly. You haven’t been into any lavender, have you? Puggy suffers so from lavender.”

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped at the moistness on my hand, feeling slightly queasy. “No. Now tell me, what laudanum?”

“Cook keeps a bottle in the water closet belowstairs, for medicinal purposes,” she said, raising a brow significantly.

“That is ludicrous. Why, any one of the scullery maids or boot-boys could have at it. What possible reason could she have for keeping laudanum so near at hand?”

Portia raised the brow even higher and said nothing.

“Oh. You mean she doses herself, and quite often I imagine if she must needs keep it so close.”

“Precisely. She claims it helps the rheumatism in her knees, and who am I to contradict her? She said there was but a drop left in the bottle. But the fact remains it is gone, and it took me another quarter of an hour to settle her feathers about that.” I thought feverishly. A drop would never have been sufficient to account for the poisoning of the brandy bottle. But it might be just enough to put a small dog entirely unconscious.

I patted Portia’s arm. “Poor dear. No wonder you have a headache. Have you had something for it?”

“I would have done, but the laudanum is missing,” she replied sourly.

As we started toward the drawing room, my mind was working rapidly. The water closet belowstairs was actually located in a back passage, quite removed from the kitchens and sculleries of the Abbey, and readily accessible from the back stairs. It would have been an easy matter for anyone to have slipped down that way and helped themselves.

Just as we reached the door of the drawing room, I glanced at Puggy and noticed an embellishment.

“Portia, is Puggy wearing a ruff of black crêpe?”

She paused and looked down at Puggy, then up at me, her eyes wide. “Yes. I thought it proper in light of the events of late.”