The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (35 page)

But whether Julia to the task was equal
Is that which must be mentioned in the sequel.

—George Gordon, Lord Byron
Don Juan

 

I
awoke a moment later to the pungent smell of the Ghoul’s vinaigrette. Brisbane was no longer holding me. I had felt the sensation of lips on my brow and I tasted salty wetness on my mouth, like tears. But they must have been my father’s, for it was he, with Aquinas, who held me up between them as I turned and retched up smoke. They held me up and kept me well out of the way as we listened for the bells of the fire brigade.

The Ghoul fluttered about, taking sniffs of her vinaigrette and wailing. “Why does he not come out? What does he mean, going into that place? Is he quite mad?”

I shook off my father’s arm. “What is she talking about?” I asked him. At least, I thought I did. The smoke had roughened my voice and I could barely speak. He patted my arm absently.

“Brisbane has gone inside. To see if he can rescue Simon.”

I thrust him away and made to sit up. “He cannot! The first floor is in flames—he will be killed!”

The more I protested, the more they held me. Finally, I gave in, spent, and sagged against my father, silent tears channeling through the smoke on my face.

“He came to me tonight,” my father said softly. “He insisted you were in danger, only he could not tell me why. It was not until we were halfway here that he began to scream.”

“Scream?” I croaked at him. He nodded gravely.

“He did not even realize what he was doing. He beat the glass of the carriage windows like a madman, screaming that he smelled smoke. Aquinas and I thought he was deranged. But he knew—my God, how did he know?”

“He has the sight,” I told him, whispering in my smoke-thickened voice.

“Ah. That explains much.” Father was country-bred as well. He could believe in such things, as did Aquinas, who nodded, his eyes fixed upon the open door of Grey House. We waited, it must have been only a few minutes, until the fire brigade arrived, all snorting horses and clanging bells. I watched, never taking my eyes from the open door, lit with the unholy glow of that fire. I watched until my eyes burned and my lungs clouded again with that smoke. I watched until my father finally forced me into the carriage and out of harm’s way. I watched, but Brisbane never came.

They found him in the back garden in the end. He had made it nearly up the stairs before the heat had beaten him back. But his way through the hall had been cut off by then, and he had only escaped by kicking out a window and hurling himself through the broken glass into the garden. He had cuts and bruises, a few small burns to show for it, and a voice they said rasped as badly as mine.

I did not hear it for myself, for he did not come to me. I waited, as I had waited outside of Grey House that terrible night, but still he did not come. So I convalesced slowly at March House, under the care of my family, and Crab, the mastiff, who lay on my bed with her litter of pups and refused to budge, and Mordecai Bent, who was also doctoring Brisbane and sometimes brought me news of him.

It was not until nearly a week after the fire that I was strong enough, and Mordecai brave enough, to tell me all.

“He never went to Paris,” he told me. “He followed you instead.”

I thought back and made the connections I had missed.

“The old man with the twisted leg, in the Park.”

Mordecai nodded. “He was the cat in my rooms, as well,” he confessed, shamefaced. “I did not like to deceive you, but he insisted. He said that he must know.”

I shrugged, stroking Crab’s silky ears. “He had lost faith in me, and with good reason. I lied to him and I concealed evidence to protect someone. If he did not trust me, it was because I did not trust him first.”

“Even so, he did not like it,” Mordecai put in. “He followed you as much because he feared for your safety as to observe your movements. He knew you would object to being kept under surveillance, but he felt very strongly that you were in danger. He just did not know from what quarter.”

“He did not suspect Simon.”

Mordecai shrugged. “There was no reason to. The girl from the brothel told him what she had revealed to you. Nicholas decided to pursue Sir Edward’s valet instead and make inquiries at his club. He believed that so long as you were at Grey House you were safe.”

I gave a smoky little cough, halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“I did not suspect Simon, either, not until that very day,” I told him. “But the pieces all fit, however unlikely the picture.”

We talked, quietly, of things that had passed. It felt good to unburden myself, and I knew he wanted to tell me things, things I needed badly to hear.

“He had dreams of you, you know,” he said softly. “Terrible dreams. He believed you were going to die if he did not stand watch over you. But how could he tell you? He did not know
that Fleur had told you about his gift—his curse. He has never willingly told anyone about it—not Fleur, not me. I found out by accident, much the same way Fleur did, when we were boys.”

“Little wonder you are so close,” I said with a smile. I could smell the smoke on my breath still as I spoke. Mordecai’s smile was warm and nostalgic, but sad.

“It has been very difficult for him, trying to fit in, to be normal. He is an extraordinary person, in a very ordinary world.”

“That he is,” I agreed readily.

“And you will not forgive him,” he said, the humour dying quietly out of his eyes.

I shook my head slowly. “Do not say that. I do not like to think that I should harbor ill feelings for him. No, I will forgive him. In time. And perhaps he will forgive me.”

“He already has,” Mordecai protested. “You will never know the panic, the battle-rage, he felt when he knew you were in that burning house. My lady, he—”

“Do not,” I warned him sharply. “Do not declare anything for him that he will not say for himself. Whatever his feelings for me, he is not easy about them, or he would have come to me. Do you deny this?”

He shook his head woefully. “No, I cannot.”

“Very well. He will get on with his life, and I with mine, and we shall see where that leaves us.”

Mordecai left me then, sad but resigned. There were no tidy, happy endings here. There had been too much pain and too much mistrust for that. And if Crab minded the tears I wept into her neck, she did not say.

But there was some satisfaction, if not happiness, to be had. Desmond, ailing now, was removed to a nursing home in Kent. There were gardens where the patients might be permitted a little occupation at their leisure, and I was told he settled in quickly. Mordecai, having examined me from top to toe,
pronounced me fit enough, in all respects, including the one I was most troubled about. He recommended a spell in a warm climate to restore my lungs, and my thoughts turned again to Italy. I made preparations quietly, to take Aquinas and Morag, and no others. I had had enough of family entanglements to last some time. We would travel slowly together, and after a while would meet with my brothers in Italy.

The only other development of note was my father, and his preoccupation with my sickroom. I noticed he was most often present when Fleur made one of her many calls, bearing salves and sweetmeats and armfuls of flowers. She read to me and brought me magazines of the latest fashions and tempted me to eat the little delicacies she had Therese concoct for me. Father always made some excuse to linger when Fleur was perched charmingly on my bed, laughing her pretty laugh and pampering me with her kind attentions. He looked a bit bemused by her, and I fancied I saw a spark there that I had never seen in him, but I resolutely made up my mind not to worry about it. If Father took up with Fleur, he could do far worse, I thought pragmatically. For that matter, so could she.

To his credit, Father managed to sweep all the ugliness of Grey House under the carpet with the rather prodigious March broom of privilege and influence. Grey House, uninsured, was a total loss, as were the contents. My sisters came forward with photographs and sketches, books and albums, piecing together for me the remnants of my childhood. Nothing could replace all I had lost, but their efforts helped, as did the extraordinarily generous check from Lord Porlock for the grounds on which Grey House had stood. Before the ruins were even done smoking he had teams of men shoveling out the rooms and architects on the site drawing up plans for his new town house.

The fire itself was recorded as a tragic accident, and everyone viewed it as a coincidence of divine order that the
staff had all been given the evening off. Aquinas lied smoothly, saying the boon had been his idea, a treat for the servants so that they could enjoy the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, and no one could budge him from that. He knew that if the truth were known, if people understood that I had told him to dismiss the staff, it would cast suspicion upon me and my possible motives for wanting Grey House empty that night. Aquinas himself never reproached me for not confiding in him, but I knew that my failure to do so had broadened a breach between us, one that might only be healed with enough time. He had suspected what I was about, and that was why he had gone to March House, to beg my father to intervene. But he blamed himself for not acting sooner, and no matter how I tried to reassure him, I knew he felt he had failed me.

I castigated myself bitterly for not seeing what the consequences of my actions might be, but I had one consolation. In my stubborn insistence on confronting Simon alone, I had possibly saved lives that might otherwise have been lost in the fire. It was a very little consolation, but I clung to it like a drowning woman. It meant something to me that at least I had done one thing right.

Val confessed his own actions privately to Father, who took it rather handsomely and made arrangements with Mordecai for Val to work with him in his practice and under his direction. I thought this new gentleness of Father’s might perhaps be Fleur’s doing, but I could not be certain. In any case, Val moved back into March House, and their quarrels were largely a thing of the past.

Even the matter of the raven was settled, its presence at Grey House becoming public knowledge thanks to an enterprising newspaper reporter. Father was summoned to the palace, but Her Majesty, who was in a rather good mood due to the Jubilee celebrations, and who it must be said always had a fondness for handsome men as well as a natural sympathy
for another widow, insisted upon writing out an order making me a gift of the raven in recognition of the bird’s valorous conduct. My letter of thanks was answered with a somewhat terse reply from her secretary. I think she had begun to regret the impulsive gift by then, and I heard later that she had had a rather severe interview with Reddy Phillips’ father. No one knew the exact details, but I did not think it an accident that a sizable statue of Prince Albert was immediately commissioned by the Phillipses to be placed on the village green near their country house.

Free at last to enjoy my new pet, I bought him a handsome cage and applied myself to thinking up a proper name for him. Not surprisingly, the staff of Grey House was dispersed save the handful I retained for myself, some going to the country, most being found new posts in London.

So everyone settled into the same, or more comfortable, circumstances than before. Everyone except me. I found myself brooding, silent for long periods of time, and thinking thoughts best left to darkness. I thought often of Simon and his terrible love for Edward. There had been a house party at the Phillipses’ country house the same summer I had gone to the Lakes with my aunt, the summer before Edward and I wed. I had not wondered about it before, but now, when I thought of the melancholy sketches of the Gothic folly, and Portia’s revelations of what the Brimstone Club had done there, I guessed. They had been lovers there, perhaps for the first time. That whole group of young men, so eager to be thought devils. Was this the worst of their secrets? Affections that would never be accepted? Love that could never be revealed?

But then I remembered what Simon had told me once, about fearing death so much that he had tried anything to save himself. And I thought of Portia, chattering on about the Brimstones and their belief that drinking from the skull of a virgin could cure diseases. Magda came to me, quietly, simply appear
ing in my room at March House late one evening. We talked for some time. She stroked my hand, murmuring endearments and lamentations in Romany as I spoke. I had worked it out for myself by then, but she confirmed it. It had been Simon who despoiled Carolina’s grave, not Valerius. In his desperation to find a cure for his syphilis, he had exhumed Carolina to take her head for a drinking vessel. He had taken to his heels when Magda had appeared, probably quite relieved when she did not reveal his filthy secret. But she had plotted her own revenge, even then. And Simon’s suffering at the end was not entirely due to the advanced stages of his syphilis, she admitted to me through her tears. The arsenic I had discovered in her room had not gone completely unused, in spite of her claim to me that she had harmed no one. I sent her away again then, sickened, but more sympathetic to her than I would have liked. I had forgotten to ask her about Mariah Young, the one mystery I had not solved, but I found it difficult to care. I had unearthed too much misery in my meddling, and I did not have the stomach for more. I dreamed of Carolina that night, as I dreamed of all of them, Simon, Edward, even my mother sometimes.

In an effort to end the dreams, I went to Highgate one afternoon, alone and heavily veiled. I walked through the cemetery, grateful for the quiet, broken only by the soft dripping of the rain onto the gravestones. I stood for a long time by Edward’s grave, thinking over all that had passed, all that we had been to each other and all that we had not. I said goodbye that day, for the first time, and the last. And just before I walked away, I laid a small wreath of laurel at Edward’s feet and another just next to it, at the stone whose inscription read only “Sir Simon Grey.” There was no body there, and no poetry to mark where his body should have lain. But I had given him a place next to Edward for all of eternity. That should have been enough to appease any ghosts who might have lingered. I knew as I walked away that I would not come again.