The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (104 page)

Mrs. Butters paused in her story, looking into the depths of her teacup. “She took the babies from Ailith. She told her they must be cleaned before they could be swaddled. And she carried them out to the pond and drowned them, praying over them all the while. Then she took them back inside and dried them and gave them to Redwall. She told him sometimes healthy babies die for no reason. He were out of his mind with grief and sickness. He would believe anything she told him. He wanted to preserve them forever. He began to mummify them.”

She nodded toward Godwin. “You knew. Ailith had been able to hide her pregnancy for a very long time. She favoured those wide, old-fashioned skirts, she did. But at the end, you knew she was carrying. You’re a clever lad and you’ve seen enough ewes at lambing to know what breeding looks like.

You listened at doors and peered in windows as well, and you knew what had happened. You went to Redwall and Redwall promised you a sum of money to be quiet, did he not? He also promised to leave you the farm in his will,” she added.

“A promise he didn’t keep,” Godwin put in, his face flushing.

“Did you know about the children, Godwin?” I asked him. I thought of Ailith’s insistence that he had been there, but she had said quite distinctly that “she” had taken her babies. I wondered which version was the truth. Godwin’s eyes held mine for a long moment, then he nodded.

“Aye. And I would not have thought it possible, but Redwall hated me the more for it. The thieving bastard would have cheated me. He meant to take the gardener’s cottage from me, told me so just before he died. He would have turned me out to starve if he’d lived.”

Minna, completely unconscious of the fact that her betrothed had just confessed a very sturdy motive for murder, patted his arm consolingly.

I turned suddenly to Brisbane. “Did you know whose children they were?”

He fixed me with a steady look from those deep black eyes. “When I saw the amulets together, I knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded, but he said nothing more. His quarrel with the Allenbys was long and deep and he had done his best to keep me at a remove from it. Perhaps he had meant to use the information against Ailith, I surmised, or perhaps he simply had not decided what to do with it.

“She knew you meant her harm,” I told him. “That is why she poisoned you. It was not Lady Allenby at all. With one
stroke, she thought to remove you and see her own mother hanged for the crime. A perfect revenge upon you both.”

“Except that I did not die,” Brisbane said softly.

“No, you survived, and in an unexpected act of clemency, you did not turn Lady Allenby over to the authorities. You sent her to a convent,” I finished.

“For her own protection,” Brisbane said. “Ailith planned to destroy us both, and her initial plan would have done it. Once she was thwarted, there was no telling what she might do. If Ailith Allenby was so determined to see her mother hanged, then she would likely try again. I had to get her straight away from Grimsgrave. That left Ailith only one victim to vent her wrath upon.”

I stared at him, scarcely comprehending his carelessness. “You rage at me, but you are without a doubt the most headstrong, wilful, obstinate,
reckless
man I have ever known.”

Brisbane did not rise to the bait. He merely shrugged, wincing a little at his stitched ribs. “She had to try, and she did today on Thorn Crag. I had not expected a direct attack, and my failure to anticipate her nearly cost Valerius his life.”

“She might have poisoned you again!” I pointed out, aghast.

“Not likely, my lady,” Minna chimed in. She was still holding Godwin’s hand, stroking it gently. “Mr. Brisbane did ask me to prepare all of his food from a store I was to keep locked in the pantry. I was never to leave it unattended for a minute, and if I stepped away, I was to throw it out and boil an egg for him instead. Eggs is hard to tamper with,” she said sagely. Then she gave a sheepish little smile. “Poor Mr. Brisbane has eat a lot of eggs recently.”

Brisbane gave her a warm smile. “You did very well, Minna,” he told her, and the girl blushed deeply.

I felt a surge of anger and battered it down. It was maddening that he had entrusted himself to Minna and not to me, but given my complete uselessness in the kitchen, it was probably all for the best.

“What happened today on Thorn Crag?” Portia asked.

Brisbane did not look at me. He stared into his cup as he replied, his words clipped. “Valerius came to Thorn Crag to speak with me. He wanted to discuss a private matter and thought we would not be overheard there. It was pure bad luck he was still there when Ailith arrived. She attacked him with a rock, leaving him unconscious. Then she came at me with a knife she had taken from Redwall’s collection, an Egyptian embalmer’s knife,” he clarified.

He reached into his pocket and drew it out, laying it in the centre of the table. Light gleamed off the black obsidian blade. There were gods and goddesses wrought in small gold figures on the grip, with a chain of images set within a cartouche. It looked like something one might use to practise the dark arts, and I turned away.

“Julia arrived just as I disarmed Ailith and she fell from the crag,” Brisbane finished smoothly. He flicked me a significant look, then let his gaze slide away. I opened my mouth, then closed it sharply.

“Miss Ailith fell?” Mrs. Butters asked.

“Miss Ailith fell,” I told her, my voice ringing certain.

The process of moving us all back to Grimsgrave in the rain was slow and torturous. Valerius had roused a little, and
taken some broth. Rosalie offered the use of the cottage to nurse him, but we decided it would be more comfortable and suitable for everyone if he were removed to the Hall. John-the-Baptist was dispatched to the Gypsy encampment to secure horses and willing hands. They came, a dozen Roma men, dressed in high boots and checked neckerchiefs, leading glossy horses whose tails and manes were plaited with silken ribbons that hung limp with the rain.

I glanced around just as we left the cottage to find Brisbane. I watched as he mounted a borrowed horse in one fluid motion. He caught my eye then, and held my gaze for a long moment. Then he turned his mount in the direction of Thorn Crag and kicked it hard in the flank. Portia prodded me then as we moved to the horses the Roma had provided for us.

“Where is Brisbane going?”

I did not meet her eyes. “Someone has to bring Ailith home,” I told her.

I turned away then and John-the-Baptist laced his fingers to provide me a mounting block. I hefted myself onto the back of a sweet little piebald mare and turned her head toward Grimsgrave.

We must have looked a mad sort of parade as we rode slowly back to the Hall, a motley crew of injured and heartsick. The Gypsies, always superstitious about matters relating to death, were sombre and said little. From time to time I searched a face, wondering if any of these were cousins or uncles of Brisbane’s. Here and there I caught a resemblance, in the curve of a high cheekbone or the imperious profile. John-the-Baptist rode next to me, keeping one hand
on my bridle and a careful eye upon my face. I must have given him cause for worry because he heaved a great sigh of relief when he helped me to dismount in the forecourt of Grimsgrave.

He pressed my cold hands, startling me with his sudden gesture. “You will be fine now, lady. You are safe here.”

I looked up at the bleak façade of the Hall, then at the dark waters of the pond, and shook my head. “I do not think I will ever feel safe here. This is a house of too many secrets and too much pain.”

He smiled his gentle smile, his moustaches curving upward. “Lady, a house is merely stones. And this house holds no horrors now.”

I did not believe him, but I smiled to be polite and thanked him for his kindness. He ducked his head. For an instant I thought I detected the faintest trace of a blush staining his cheek. But darkness had fallen, and in the fitful light it was impossible to tell.

He mounted his horse again and whistled to his kinsmen. Two of them had carried Valerius inside and they returned, taking up the reins of the spare horses. They rode off then, saying nothing, but lifting their hands in farewell.

Hilda had hurried inside with Mrs. Butters to attend to Val, and Portia and I were left quite alone in the suddenly empty forecourt. My sister put her arm about me in an unusual and welcome gesture of affection.

“I cannot believe you and Hilda were stupid enough to trail a murderess to Thorn Crag,” she scolded. “You might have been killed.”

“We had no choice,” I said simply. “She meant to kill
Brisbane and very nearly Val as well. There was no time to bring help.”

We moved slowly into the hall.

“I still cannot believe it. She was such an odd, fey creature, at times reserved and elegant and at others almost childlike,” Portia said.

“And cunning,” I pointed out. “It was she who gave me the journals her brother kept in Egypt. She knew I would eventually recognise the photograph of Brisbane and deduce that he had been responsible for Redwall’s disgrace. Perhaps she thought I would leave then, go back to London and leave the field clear for her to murder Brisbane at her leisure.”

I gave a great shudder and Portia herded me upstairs as I talked, giving Morag quick instructions and seeing me safely into bed. Morag asked no questions, but I knew from her expression she would expect a full disclosure of the day’s events the next morning. She brought up a cup of hot milk with honey and left us alone again. Portia fussed with bedwarmers and stoking up the fire before she drew up a chair and made me finish my tale.

“What happened after Redwall mummified the children?” she demanded.

“He planned to sell the estate and raise more funds, perhaps to leave with Ailith after all, but he died before he could do so. Lady Allenby and her daughters were left with the house, but no money at all to keep it. They were forced to sell it, and most of the furnishings and art. Only Redwall’s collection was kept.”

“I wonder why?” Portia mused.

I yawned broadly. “Sentimental value? Or guilt perhaps? We shall never know….” My voice trailed off then.

“Sleep now, Julia. I will go and sit with Valerius. If there is any news, I will come.”

I wanted to nod, but my head was far too heavy. I thought I felt the brush of lips to my brow. Before I could respond, I fell fast asleep.

I
rose sometime later, when the fire had fallen to cold grey ash and the moon had risen high above the crag. I could just make out the cool white glow of it, though the rain still fell softly against the windowpane. I slipped my arms into my dressing gown, tiptoeing silently down the stairs.

The door to Brisbane’s room was ajar, as though he expected me.

“You ought to be abed,” I told Brisbane. He was stretched out upon his bed, book in hand, still dressed, even to his mud-splashed boots and his uncle’s shirt.

He laid aside the book.

“I cannot sleep,” he said simply. A glass full of amber liquid stood on the mantel and he rose and took a deep draught of it.

I put out my hand. “Whisky?”

“From my great-uncle Aberdour’s personal stock,” he said, handing me his glass. I took a long sip, feeling its shocking warmth clear down to my toes.

“God bless the Duke of Aberdour,” I said faintly. I handed the glass back to him and he finished it off.

“Where did you put her?” I asked. His knuckles were white against the glass.

“The inn. That is where the inquest will be held, so it seemed the simplest.” He flicked me a glance. “You will have to give evidence. I am sorry for it, but there does not seem to be a way around it.”

I folded my hands together. “Very well. I am sure it will not be so very terrible. We will say she fell, since that is the story we have already told. It will save a verdict of suicide being returned, and she will be buried in hallowed ground. Perhaps that will give her mother some comfort.”

Brisbane stared at me, his black eyes wide. “You are the most singular woman I have ever met. You threw yourself at a murderess today and yet there you sit, cool as a duchess, calmly plotting to perjure yourself in front of a coroner’s jury.”

“What would you have me do? You are the one who said she fell. If that was not the story you wanted told, you ought not to have told it,” I pointed out waspishly.

He shook his head and poured out another measure of whisky. “You really do not understand, do you? You have been so insulated from the world you do not have the faintest notion what the jury will make of you.”

I blinked at him. “Of me? Why should they make anything of me? I am simply Julia Grey.”

He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Simply Julia Grey.” He downed the whisky in one go, clearing his throat as he put down the glass. He folded his arms over his chest, gingerly, so as not to pull at his stitches.

“Julia, you have broken almost every convention known to society. You are a widow, yet you do not wear black. I am a bachelor, yet you stayed as a guest in my home without a chaperone. You were alone with me on the crag when Ailith died. Read that, with the worst possible construction, because that is what the jury will do.”

I considered it for a moment, then shook my head. “Nonsense. I realise it looks bad, but when they understand that Valerius was here—”

“Valerius was not here,” he corrected. “Not for a matter of days. Neither was Portia. And if they have a mind to question her character as a witness, how long do you think it will be before they discover her relationship with Jane?”

“Oh, that needn’t be a problem. Jane is gone. She left Portia to marry some man she met in London. She is off to India.”

“That is beside the point,” he said, grinding his teeth. “She is a woman of known immoral habits, that is what they will say. Do you want that in the newspapers?”

“They wouldn’t dare,” I whispered.

“Julia, you are not in the south. Your father’s title carries little weight here. He cannot simply come in and fix everything up for you as he always does.”

I bristled. “Father doesn’t always fix everything up, thank you very much. I do make some rather good decisions.”

Brisbane passed a hand over his face, fighting fatigue and frustration, no doubt.

“The March name is not hallowed here. He cannot head off the damage that might be done. Only I can,” he finished softly.

“You? What can you do?”

He stared at me for a long moment, and when he spoke, his words were weighted, as if he had chosen each one with exquisite care.

“In order to protect your character—and your sister’s—we will have to present a fiction to the jury. We will have to pretend to be betrothed.”

I said nothing.

“We will say there was opposition from your family because of my low birth and my connections with trade. Your brother and sister came to lend respectability to the match in spite of your father’s disapproval. We will tell them we meant to marry when the Hall was restored to order, only there was more work than we had anticipated. We had fixed the date for next week and were preparing to elope to Scotland. We will say Ailith suggested a picnic luncheon on the crag to celebrate our impending nuptials, but the weather turned foul and when we went to descend, she slipped and fell. It was a tragic accident, and that is all.”

“What about Hilda?” I asked faintly.

“Hilda will do anything to keep the true story from becoming known.”

I tipped my head. “You are rather fond of her, aren’t you?”

Brisbane shrugged. “She is alone and defenceless, and she is as much a victim of this bloody family as those babies in the coffin.”

I suppressed a smile. “I knew it. I knew you could never really harm a defenceless woman. You are the most virtuous man I know.”

He sputtered. “Virtuous? I cannot think that that is a word that I have
ever
heard in relationship to my character. You are quite mad.”

“I am not,” I said stoutly. “I am perfectly serious.”

“Julia,” he began patiently, “there are certain expectations of behaviour in every civilized society. The fact that I observe them does not make me virtuous. It makes me no better than the next man.”

“Rubbish. What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man.”

He shook his head, wonderingly. “You are a singular woman, Julia Grey. You persist in seeing me as the man you want me to be.”

“No,” I corrected him. “I see you as the man you want to be.”

He looked away sharply and took another sip of his whisky. “Thank you for that.”

I primmed my mouth. “Yes, well.” We both fell silent for a moment until I cleared my throat and wiped at my eyes. I assumed a brisk tone. “And what of your escapades on the moor? Surely you do not expect me to believe you were really playing at being a sheep farmer. What were you about at all hours, creeping about on the moor and receiving secret
correspondence?” I asked, reminding him of the letter he had sealed so secretively in my presence.

“Mines,” Brisbane said shortly. “There is still silver and lead under this land, I know it.”

I quirked a brow and he pulled a face.

“Very well,” he said. “I do not know. It is merely an intuition, but it springs from sound logic. Romans mined here, and there are traces of where they worked, if you know how to look for it. I instructed Monk and he set himself up in Howlett Magna as a visiting schoolmaster, complete with false whiskers. That way he had an identity established to account for being in the neighbourhood. We met once a week upon Thorn Crag or at the Bear’s Hut to discuss our findings.”

I stared at him, mouth agape. “That is astonishingly clever. But why the secrecy?”

Brisbane shrugged. “I did not want the village to know what we were about. If we found a mine, it would have put half the village back to work. It seemed cruel to raise their hopes only to dash them. Not only cruel, dangerous. They nearly stoned the Allenby who closed the mines, remember.” His mouth shifted into a grin. “You gave poor Monk quite a fright when you arrived, you know. He spotted you across the street and dove into a linen-draper’s lest you recognise him and give it all away.”

I thought back to the odd elderly man with the curious limp I had seen in Howlett Magna.

“So there are no mines?”

“None that we have found,” he said, his tone regretful. “And the estate itself has no resources beyond three sheep.”

“Three sheep? You and Godwin spend every day out of doors looking after
three sheep?
”

He gave me a grim smile. “I needed a plausible reason to be away from the Hall,” he said. “And Godwin doesn’t want me to know that he has been systematically selling off the sheep to put something by should I turn him out.”

“Thievery!” I breathed.

Brisbane shrugged. “I can hardly blame him. I would have done precisely the same under the circumstances. He has not been paid in three years, you know. So I pretended to believe there were more sheep on the moor and to spend my days looking for them. I could hardly tell you that Monk and I were searching for traces of Roman mines. We took it in turns to sit upon the crag, surveying the moor with a glass, both of us careful to keep out of Godwin’s way. It was highly methodical and perfectly useless,” he finished in disgust. He gestured toward the little flasks and bottles of his scientific equipment. “I have even experimented with the soil, and still we cannot find precisely where the veins rest under the moor. We have been so close.”

I thought of the day I had sought Brisbane on the crag and wondered if he was quite alone. Monk must have been there then, comparing observations with Brisbane in their futile quest.

“All these months,” I sympathised, “and nothing to show for it.”

“Yes, well, it doesn’t much matter now, does it?” He paused, as if marshalling his thoughts. “You did not answer me.”

“About what?” I blinked at him.

“About pretending to be my fiancée,” he said in exasperation. “Will you do it?”

I fought the urge to sob. It hardly seemed fair that I was being asked to pretend to be his fiancée when he might have proposed to me outright and been able to tell the truth to the coroner’s jury.

I swallowed hard and smoothed out the skirts of my dressing gown. “As you have made it clear you are acting out of the noblest concern for my own reputation and that of my sister, it would be churlish of me to refuse,” I said formally.

He inclined his head, matching my coolness with a dispassionate chill of his own. “Good. If we mean to make this plausible, we should tell no one it is a fabrication.”

“You mean I have to lie to Portia and Valerius.”

“They will forgive you when the truth comes out,” he said dismissively. “After all, it is for their own good.”

At that moment I felt an overwhelming urge to throw something heavy at his head. I left him instead. Maiming him would be a very poor start to our betrothal, sham or not.

I lingered in bed the next morning, nursing my physical ailments and hiding from my sister. A spectacular violet bruise had blossomed across my ribs from the blow struck by Ailith’s knife against my corset. Morag helped me to dress, buttoning me into the only ensemble I owned that did not require a corset. It was a casual affair of bottle-green velvet, more suited to entertaining privately at home than being seen in public, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances.

She told me Valerius had been awake for hours and had taken a nice bowl of beef tea and cursed Portia for fixing a
fresh bandage too tightly about his head. In defiance of convention, Hilda had sat with him through the night and had finally retired to her own bed for some needed rest.

Morag said nothing of my erstwhile betrothal so I judged the story had not yet made its way belowstairs. My sister was another story altogether. No sooner had I seated myself at the table for breakfast than she pushed away her empty plate and fixed me with a sour smile.

“I hear congratulations are in order. Shall I buy you a wedding present? What would you like? A nice set of fruit knives, perhaps?”

Mrs. Butters bustled over with a plate of piping hot eggs and bacon, a rack of crisp toast, and a steaming pot of tea. Jetty was weeping quietly into her apron in the corner. Apparently, she had taken the news of Godwin’s betrothal to Minna rather hard.

I took my first exquisite bite of breakfast and savoured it before turning to Portia.

“Don’t let’s be peevish. You always thought Brisbane and I would make a match of it.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t think you would be so furtive about the whole business. Brisbane said you have had an understanding since he left Bellmont just before Christmas.”

My mind whipped back to that last moment, full of unspoken yearning, when we knew we would not see one another for a long time, if ever. I thought of what he had said to me, his lips against my hair, and what he had told me later still, when he lingered at the door. A woman could easily interpret such things as declarations, I reasoned, although I knew perfectly well if Brisbane ever proposed there would
be no need for interpretation. He would be forthright as a bull in his intentions.

“Don’t sulk, Portia. You’ve a nasty crease, right between your eyes. It’s
aging,
” I added maliciously.

Instantly she brightened. “Still, I think you might have told me. When do you mean to marry?”

I shoved another forkful of food into my mouth to buy myself a moment. “We have not really discussed it,” I told her.

“I should think sooner rather than later,” she told me sagely. “Neither of you is very young, after all.”

“I am only thirty!” I protested.

“And Brisbane is nearly forty. If he means to settle down and start a family, he ought to get to it.”

I shoved my plate away, feeling rather desperate to turn the conversation to another topic,
any
other topic.

“Mrs. Butters, what perfect eggs. So light, I cannot imagine how you do it.”

Mrs. Butters, who had been lingering discreetly in the background, came near with a fresh rack of toast. Portia took a piece and began to break it to bits in a desultory fashion. Mrs. Butters beamed at me.

“Thank you, Lady Julia. I have always taken great pride in my eggs.”