The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (16 page)

“A Frenchman has had his hands on this,” she proclaimed, turning me around like a marionette. “You have an excellent eye, Lady Julia, far better than most Englishwomen. Are your people French?” she asked, searching my face for clues to a Gallic ancestor.

“Only distantly,” I replied, thinking of Charles II’s fractious mother, the dainty Queen Henrietta Maria. She was the closest French relative I had, being my eighth great-grandmother, but it seemed inappropriate to share this with Madame de Bellefleur.

She was smiling at me. “But of course! Even a drop of French blood would give you a certain élan that your compatriots lack. Blood always tells,
madame,
do you not think?”

Without waiting for a reply, she looped her arm through mine like a schoolgirl and led me down the hall.

“Now, you will forgive Brisbane,” she advised. She pronounced his name “Brees-ban” rather than the usual “Brisbon,” which from anyone else would have sounded backward. From her it was simply charming. She was so close to me that I could smell the same fragrant mixture that had scented her writing paper. Roses and musk, innocence and earthiness. I wondered if it was a metaphor for the lady herself.

“He is in a sulky mood. He did not want to come to me,” she confided, her voice low. “He is stubborn, like all men, but like all men, he needs pampering when he is unwell. They are all little boys at heart, don’t you think?” she asked, nudging me familiarly.

Again, I did not reply, but this time it was because I simply could not think of anything appropriate to say. It seemed insulting to comment that she should know, but I did not doubt that she
did
know far more than I on the subject. I smiled instead.

She patted my hand. “You will ignore him and I shall make you very welcome. I do not often get callers, and I am so charmed that you have come.”

Her eyes were long and thickly lashed, the startling blue of a pansy. The expression in them was utterly sincere, and I realized that her attraction was not just her actual prettiness. It was this sincerity, this gift of making a person believe they were utterly necessary to her happiness. I wondered if the dustman felt this way when she looked at him.

But that was a cynical thought. By her reputation, Madame de Bellefleur had set herself beyond the boundaries of most of polite society. Gentlemen would call often, ladies almost never. I found myself wondering if I was the first, and I felt a little stab of pity for this charming and perhaps slightly lonely woman.

She threw open a door and gestured for me to enter. My first impression was one of serenity. The colours were soft, as were the lights, and it occurred to me only later that these were the most flattering for an aging beauty.

But for now they served to soothe Brisbane’s eyes, I realized as he rose slowly to greet me, still wearing his smoked spectacles. I would have waved him back, but there was something ferocious about the set of his jaw that stayed me. He was still struggling with the notion of his own weakness and I was not surprised. I loathed being ill. How much more must a strong, otherwise healthy man hate his infirmity?

I smiled at him and offered my hand. “Mr. Brisbane. I am so glad to see you up and about. I hope you are well on the way to recovery.”

I was rather proud of that little speech. I did try to make it sound casual, but the truth was, I had rehearsed it in the carriage all the way from Grey House to Primrose Hill.

He resumed his seat after I had taken mine, a lovely little Empire piece upholstered in pale blue bee-embroidered silk. He did not look as bad as I had feared. He had shaved and his
hair was orderly, though still untrimmed. Other than his pallor and the darkened lenses and a few lines still bracketing his mouth, there was little trace of his ordeal. It seemed incredible that a man could recover so thoroughly from the wreck that Brisbane had been a mere week before. I made up my mind to ferret into a few of Val’s medical texts when I returned home to learn more about Brisbane’s condition.

“My lady?” he said archly. I jumped, realizing with a dart of embarrassment that I had been staring.

“I am sorry. Building castles in Spain, as my grandmother used to say,” I told him with a fatuous smile.

His mouth turned down slightly at the corners. He seemed guarded, although whether because of his condition or Madame de Bellefleur’s hovering silken presence I could not tell.

“I am recovering,” he said at last. “Thank you for the basket of fruit. It was kindly done.”

I started, thinking of the last place I had seen that basket, tumbled on the floor with cherries spilling out, crushed juicily underfoot as Brisbane leaned into me, his arm laced about my waist. Deliberately, I pushed the thought away.

“Think nothing of it, I beg you.” I hesitated, a bit reluctant to produce the Psalter in Madame de Bellefleur’s presence. As if reading my thoughts, Brisbane lifted his eyes to the lady.

“Fleur, I think Lady Julia would like a cup of tea. Do you think that Therese—”

“Of course! I shall go and supervise her myself.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile. “Therese is old and very set in the French way of doing things. Sometimes her tea is not to Brisbane’s liking. His taste in coffee is that of a Turk, but he is a proper Scotsman about his tea. Have yourselves a pleasant tête-à-tête and I will return in a little while with refreshment.”

She withdrew and I watched Brisbane watch her leave. His eyes lingered, but not hotly, and I found myself wondering again the precise nature of their connection.

“I appreciate your willingness to come here, my lady,” he said, his voice pitched too low for her to hear through the closed door. “Not every lady would feel comfortable calling at so notorious a house.”

“Is it notorious?” I asked him with a nonchalance that fooled neither of us. “I had no idea. I had only heard Madame de Bellefleur spoken of as a great beauty, and I am glad of the chance to make her acquaintance.”

His lips lifted very slightly, almost but not quite a smile. “You are a better liar than I would have thought. But thank you for that.”

I inclined my head. It would be pointless and stupid to contradict him. I knew that I was in fact playing fast and loose with my reputation by coming to the Bellefleur home, but then I was beginning to realize that I was not altogether comfortable with my reputation in the first place.

“She is your friend, Mr. Brisbane. I trust that if she were a truly objectionable person, you would not bring us together in this fashion.”

“No, rather the opposite. For some reason, I have always thought that you and Fleur would get on rather well. You have one or two qualities in common that most women lack.”

I edged forward, wildly interested in what those qualities might be, but he disappointed me. He chose that moment to cough a little and reach for the tumbler of water that sat on the table near his elbow. By the time he had swallowed a good part of it and caught his breath, he had lost his train of thought or abandoned it on purpose. Instead, he stared at me through those strange smoky lenses, scrutinizing my face until I could bear it no longer.

“What is it, Mr. Brisbane? Have I left the house with my hat on backward?” I asked, smiling to relieve the touch of asperity in my voice.

He passed a hand over his brow. “Forgive me. I have a
strange sense that I have seen you, quite recently, but I cannot place it. A dream, I think.”

My heart began to drum so loudly that I thought he certainly must hear it. I was grateful then for the high collar that hid the pulse at my throat.

“It must have been. Perhaps you took some medicine while you were ill. They can often provoke strange dreams.”

His eyes fell briefly to my mouth, his fingers twitched, and I wondered if he was smelling ripe cherries, remembering the feel of a supple glove against his finger.

“Yes, they can,” he said finally. I dared to breathe then. Apparently he had convinced himself that I had been an apparition, conjured by his drugged fever. Would God he always thought it so, I prayed fervently. The thought of prayer caused my hand to move to my reticule.

“Mr. Brisbane, while you were indisposed, I discovered something—something rather remarkable.”

I drew out the Psalter and handed it to him. He took it, and to my surprise, did not open it at once. He inspected the cover closely, running those sensitive fingers over the binding, the edges, the stamped crest and Prince of Wales feathers. He even lifted it to his nose to sniff lightly. Curiously, he closed his eyes, pressing the book to his brow. I thought for a moment that he might have relapsed into migraine, so intently still did he become.

After a few seconds the spell seemed to pass, and he opened his eyes. He paged through the Psalter, pausing to read the inscription in the princess’ hand and my own childish scrawl beneath it. He thumbed on, stopping at the page I had marked with the splitting silk ribbon, the page defiled by the sender of Edward’s notes. He leafed through it slowly, taking note of each neatly scissored hole.

When he reached the end, he rifled through it slowly again backward, but found nothing new. He sniffed it again,
carefully, but either detected nothing of interest, or did not see fit to share it.

Finally, he spoke. “Where did you find it?”

“In my study. It was tucked into a stack of books that I have not looked at for years.”

“Was it dusty?”

I hesitated to admit the slatternly state of my bookshelves, but I knew that it might be important.

“Yes. That is, the top book was dusty, those below it, including the Psalter, less so.”

“Could the stack have been disturbed recently?”

I closed my eyes, picturing the pile of crumbling volumes. “No, I do not think so. The maids never clean there, they are forbidden. And I’m afraid that I haven’t done it myself for quite some time. There were a few newspapers in there as well, old ones, quite creased, but only folded once. I think they might have been creased more if the pile was disturbed.”

“Not necessarily, not if our villain was quite careful. And I think he must have been.”

My ears pricked unexpectedly. “He? You think it definitely a man, then?”

Brisbane was examining the book again. “No, I simply grow tired of multiple pronouns. You may take it as given that I do not know the gender of the perpetrator.”

Prickly, indeed! I pursed my lips in displeasure at his tone, but I might have been a potted cactus for all the notice he took of me. He was too busy comparing the holes and measuring them with his fingers.

“Seven passages of the Psalms, all cut at the same time, then the book was returned to your study—but why?”

“How can you be certain they were cut at the same time?” I interrupted. His tone had been thoughtful, as if he had been posing his question more to himself than to me, but I did not
care. I had found the clue, after all, and I deserved to know what he had deduced from it.

He regarded me impatiently. “What villain in his right mind would take the book seven times, and risk apprehension each time he retrieved it and put it back?”

I bit my lip again, now thoroughly chagrined. How stupid I was! No wonder he treated me like a slow-witted child.

“Besides,” he added, his tone somewhat milder, “the passages all appear to have been cut with the same scissor—a short one, perhaps a nail scissor. In the longer passages there is an overlap where the blade was moved.”

He opened the book for my inspection and I saw that he was correct.

“So the question is, who had access to the book, and more important, access to replace it, a year ago?” he mused.

I spread my hands. “Anyone! The Psalter has been there since Edward and I moved into Grey House. We entertained frequently—it could have been taken by anyone and returned at any time and we would not have noticed.”

“But would just anyone know that?” he asked softly.

It was my turn for exasperation. “What do you mean?”

He leaned forward, his long fingers tapping the cover of the Psalter. “Many people use the books given at their confirmation for spiritual comfort. One would think a volume given by the Princess of Wales would be even more prized. Most people,” he went on, “have the downstairs maid clean their bookshelves, on a regular if not a daily basis. Now, who among your circle would know that not only did you not use this Psalter, but that in fact, you never even permitted your staff to clean the study where it was kept?”

I stared at him blankly. “Brisbane, what are you on about? If you are criticizing my housekeeping skills, I will admit I have been less than—”

“I do not give a damn about your housekeeping,” he said
sharply. “I am talking about someone in your own house who just might be the villain.”

“You are quite mad,” I said evenly. It was unthinkable that he could be right.

“Am I? Think about it,” he said, not bothering to be kind. His tone was harsh, his words unutterably painful. “The person who took that Psalter had to know that you did not open it often, or he risked detection. It must have been someone with little access to another such book—this points either to someone who has little money or whose time is not their own. They needed your Psalter because it was handy and would not implicate them, but also because it was unlikely to be discovered. And if it was, whom would it implicate? No one except the lady of the house. So, whom does that suggest to you, my lady? Someone inside Grey House with little time and little money to call their own.
Whom does that suggest?
”

I saw what he was saying and I hated him for it.

“One of my staff.”

He nodded slowly, then pushed the book toward me. I snatched it from him.

“You cannot honestly believe that one of my own staff has done this. Think about what you are saying.”

He leaned forward swiftly. “No, you must think about what you are denying. What I have just given you is the only explanation that makes sense. And it means that you could be at risk if you continue this investigation. Someone in that house hated your husband, perhaps enough to kill him. If you try to unmask him now, he might kill again, and this time it will be you.”