An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (12 page)

‘Well, I need to paint you. And I find that with every day, I want to know you more. Is that ridiculous? You barely know yourself, so how could you tell me? But I’d like to know.’

He moved his hand to cup my cheek and ran the pad of his thumb against my lower lip. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight like this. Did he – could he care for me? But he ought not, he could not, and he would not when he found out who I really was.

With the greatest difficulty, I drew back.

‘I’m sorry,’ we both said in unison. His hand fell to the ground, and he looked at it, rather than me for a moment.

‘Maybe, when you know,’ he said.

‘Maybe.’ I struggled to my feet, my legs feeling numb.

‘These are the paths untrodden,’ he called after me as I hobbled towards the house. A shadow passed across one of the upstairs windows.

CHAPTER 16

Crossing the Line

My Father was a man of many drawers. One wall of his study was entirely covered with them, the result of a project that he had worked on, now and then, over several years. Not long after my eighth birthday they were as good as finished, or at least, so close to finished that Father never quite summoned the energy to finish them entirely. So they were rough around the edges, a little haphazard here and there, and occasionally gave me splinters. He had fronted the drawers with mis-matched off-cuts of wood, and made handles from whatever had been to hand at the time. Some had tiny brass knobs, perfect for the purpose, ordered when the project was in its infancy from a shop that had never been visited again. At least one had a large door knob, slightly rusty, and many either had a bent nail to hook a finger beneath, or even just a drilled hole.

The wall of tiny drawers, many less than six inches wide, was fascinating to me. As a child I would sit and look at them for as long as Father would let me, which never seemed long enough. The contents of the drawers interested me less than the characters of the fronts - often repulsed me, actually, and often I had not dared to wriggle those stiff little drawers open for fear of what insect carcasses I might disturb.

By the time I had reached nine, Father had enlisted my help in his work. At his direction and in my neatest print, I copied from a list of long Latin names in his notebook, onto little scraps of paper which were pasted to the front of each drawer. As each label was written, Father would prise the corresponding drawer from the wall and tell me about what was in it. I tried to be interested in the gruesome contents, but with each drawer I saw, the more my fascination with the wall seemed to wane.

After a month the labels were complete, but there were three drawers, right in the top corner, that remained unlabelled. Father toyed with naming them “Misc.”, but ultimately decided against it. My fascination returned, intensified and magnified, centred entirely upon these three drawers, far out of my reach, mysteriously nameless but for “Misc.”, a word I did not understand.

From that moment on, whenever I was left alone in Father’s study to write up his notes, I would, after a sly glance at the door, run to the wall of drawers, climb the chair and stretch as far as I could to try and reach them. Only an inch or two higher than my fingertips, they seemed tantalisingly close but at the same time, miles away. I resigned myself to never knowing, at least not until the eons had passed until I was, perhaps, ten years old, when I hoped to be tall enough to reach.

I imagine now, although of course I don’t know, that all children and even adults would be curious about those drawers, but at the time I was easily persuaded otherwise.

Salvation came one miserable day when the sun shone on my little garden and the trees tapped on the window, their branches beckoning fingers, pleading with me to go out and play. I was shut in the study. Father was fractious and had been mumbling something about deadlines and publishers all day. I had to remain at the desk until I had finished copying out all his notes, even, he had said with a very stern look on his face, if it took me all summer. Looking at the thick pile of papers, it certainly felt as though I would be there until mid-autumn at the very earliest. My mind skimmed over the long words I didn’t understand, flitting onto what work I longed to be doing outside.

I sighed and shifted on the chair, swinging my legs and trying to get comfortable. My foot struck something, and I wriggled down from the chair and crawled under the desk to investigate. It was a squat, round footstool, upholstered with vine green velvet. Threadbare in places, the brass studs around the cushion were tarnished and, more often than not, missing.

I looked at it, and thought. Then I crawled from under the desk and looked at it again. With barely a thought to the idea that what I was doing might be wrong, I pulled out the footstool and placed it onto the seat of the chair. It wobbled slightly, but that was nothing to mind.

It was the work of mere moments to push the chair up to the wall of drawers and hop on, steadying myself against the wall when the stool wobbled and shifted on the shiny wooden seat. It seemed a lot more wobbly up there, and I froze for a moment, taking deep breaths. The floor seemed so much further away. I decided that I wasn’t so bothered about growing that extra six inches, if this was what it was like.

The lowest of the three drawers was within easy reach now, but it felt perilous and foolish to try and wriggle it out. Yet since I was there and had come so far, I decided to do it anyway, although my enthusiasm at the illusive “Misc.” was fading fast.

After a series of jerks and squeaks that very nearly unbalanced me, I had managed to open the drawer far enough to get my hand in. Considering the likelihood of the drawer containing papery wings or shiny beetle backs, this was probably foolish, and I flinched when my fingers brushed against something cold and smooth.

‘Fleur.’

He spoke quietly, but there was no mistaking the danger in his voice. I jumped at the sound and knocked the drawer out of the wall, sending it with a splintering crack onto the wooden floor. It spun away from me, landing with a thud against the door at Father’s feet, leaving a trail of folded pieces of paper, scraps of fabric and the locket that I would come to know so well. I wobbled helplessly on my perch, feeling ridiculous and sick to my stomach.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t- I didn’t-’

‘I don’t recall,’ Father continued, his face and voice both tight with anger. ‘Asking you what you weren’t doing. I can see for myself that you aren’t doing the work I set you. That I asked you to do. The work that is very important to me and the upkeep of this house. The work that allows you to flit about in that garden. That keeps you in shoes and frocks, and buys food for our table. I can see very well for myself that you aren’t doing that. So I ask you again what you are doing.’

I couldn’t look at him, nor could I stop myself from trembling. The stool wobbled ominously, and Father picked his way across the room through the scattered debris and with one arm and an unexpected strength, whisked me off the chair and set me firmly down on the floor. He moved the footstool before picking me up again and sitting me roughly on the chair, where I was even smaller, all the better to loom over and frighten.

‘Since you seem to have lost your tongue, I shall answer my own question. What you were doing, Fleur, was abusing my trust. What you were doing was going through my things. Did it occur to you that there might be a reason that I keep things in places where dirty, thieving hands can’t reach them? That there might be some part of my life that I don’t wish to be forced to share with you? That I might have some claim to a life of my own, not entirely governed by you and what you want? No?’

He had grasped me by the shoulder and shook me roughly with every question. I began to cry, and couldn’t look at him, the face I knew so well contorted beyond recognition, the eyes which were usually so tired and small now opened wide and alight with rage.

‘Have I not taught you the difference between right and wrong? Have the hours I’ve spent trying to educate you all been in vain? Do you know what the bible means, Fleur? Do you know what the words you say every night in your prayers mean?’

Father shook me still, more roughly with every question and my head glanced against the back of the chair and I cried out in pain. He dropped my shoulders with disgust and stepped away, turning to survey the damage to the drawer on the floor.

‘All these things – and you thought you had the right…’

He knelt among the debris, trailing trembling fingers over the creased papers, his touch a lingering caress. With shaking hands he brushed them into a pile, and stared in silence, gently rocking on his heels. He seemed to have forgotten me, and I shifted on the stool, wondering if I should leave.

‘Keep still,’ he bit out. ‘I haven’t finished with you. Did you read any of these? Did you stoop so low as to read my personal, private correspondence?’

‘No,’ I whispered.

‘Say again,’ my father barked, like an animal crouched on the floor, gloating over his possessions, and defending them against my intrusion.

‘No, Father,’ I said again, louder this time. My nose began to drip from my tears, and I fought the urge to sniff or reach for my handkerchief. I must stay still. His hand twitched at his side, and I knew he was on the edge of lunging at me, of attacking me and beating me and pulling my hair and scratching my face. Every second he leaned over that pile of papers, he seemed to grow angrier. He reached out and scooped up the locket, cradling it in his palm.

‘Your mother gave her life for you, Fleur. Do you remember that? She died that you might live. I gave up my life, my career, my studies and my travel, to look after you. We both died, at least a little, that you might have this life. Have I not been kind to you? Have I not?’

‘You have,’ I whispered.

‘And yet, you do this. You make me wish that she had been the one to survive that day, and not you. You waste the life she gave you, fritter it away in sin. There is right, and there is wrong, Fleur. A clear, defined line between the two, and what you have done today is wrong. Evil, sin, hell, wrong. The devil was with you when you sinned, you let the devil in. There is evil in your heart and you let it triumph.’

Father sank to the ground and began to shake, his forehead rubbing against the rug on the floor.

‘This locket was your mother’s,’ he said quietly, so quietly. ‘She wore it as she died. She said you should have it when you were old enough. Do you think you deserve it? Do you think you will ever deserve it?’

‘No, Father.’

And I knew I was right. I was the lowest of the low, detritus and dirty, besmirching the memory of the woman who had loved me so much she had allowed me to kill her by being born. I looked at the locket, the chain visible between the fingers of Father’s clenched fist, and longed for it more than anything.

‘All I have left of her are these memories. And you try to spoil them, to befoul them with your touch. I cannot trust you. I try so hard, I try to love you like she asked me to, but you will not help me in this. Say you won’t look in these again. Say it.’

‘I won’t look, I won’t. I promise.’

‘Words,’ Father spat. ‘Just words, meaningless words and lies from your forked tongue. Get out.’

I grasped the chair with both hands.

‘I said get out. Go to your room. You shan’t leave until I tell you to. Take the work with you. You can begin to repay your debt to me, at least.’

CHAPTER 17

The Truth Will Out

I needed time. I always needed time, away from everything. But Tristan wasn’t important – he was, that is, but not so important to me as the resolution of that which was so pressing in my own life. Gabriel was getting closer. I could feel the net of his presence tightening around my neck. He knew where I was, he knew the family I stayed with. They had already suffered so much at his hands. I wondered again if he had loved his first wife, the enigmatic, seemingly capricious Cassandra. For the first time I wondered if she had really loved him. But that too, could wait. Father was growing stronger every hour. Perhaps now he would be more open to my idea of us running away together.

Jane was tidying away tea things when I entered his room. She smiled at me and put her finger to her lips. Father lay on the bed behind her, his face looking haggard and prematurely aged even in sleep. I nodded to her as she left and slipped into the seat beside the bed.

I doubted he would wake soon, but so long as I was here and he slept, I reasoned that nobody would try to talk to me. The cool, clean room was an oasis of calm away from the tumult of everything else. I reached into my bodice and pulled out my locket. Holding it lightly in my hand, I was with both of my parents, at last. I reached out and placed my other hand gently over Father’s. This was how it was supposed to be.

For a while I allowed myself the luxury of imagining how my life would have been if Mother hadn’t died. The paths untraveled. She had been so beautiful. She had given her life for mine, all being said. And what I had done with that life? What a waste it was. I supposed that she was the first person I had killed, before my attempted murder of Gabriel. Was that my destiny in life – to kill those charged to protect me? It would be no surprise, then, that Father had kept his distance from me. I hadn’t realised it at the time, but the relationship we’d had throughout my childhood had not been a close one. I dared think now that it might not be normal. Tristan and his Mother, Damien and Cassandra and Mrs Hudson, even Gabriel and Mrs Raynor. All were closer than Father and I had ever been. But maybe that was mothers. Perhaps all fathers were distant and cold. Perhaps that was nature.

I cried then, again, as I cried so often now. It didn’t solve anything, but it was the steady outpouring of that excess of emotion that I didn’t understand or know what to do with. The sun moved in the sky, beaming brightly through the window with the heavy, yellow glow of afternoon.

Time was passing, and still Father slept. I didn’t have long. The time before we had to leave, if leaving was what we would do, grew short. Hours or days, I did not know. I would have woken him, but I could still see the bruising around his eyes, faded to a ghastly yellow over his pale skin, and the scabs around his mouth and beneath his nose. I tried not to be selfish, and let him sleep.

His personal effects had been neatly arranged on the dresser by his bed, removed by Edwina when she prepared his coat for cleaning and mending. His pocket watch, a cheap, brassy thing, lay on top, its thin chain curled around it like a tail. Beside it were the stubs of pencils, pen nibs and a few ripped up pieces of paper with scribbled names and numbers. There was the handwriting I had known all my life. Beneath it all, bursting at the binding, was Father’s notebook.

He’d carried it with him always, writing in it in pencil in tiny, neat writing I could barely make out. Between the pages he’d slotted more and more pieces of paper, creating a book that grew as I did every year, thicker and fatter as I grew taller. I picked it up and thumbed through it idly. I knew he wouldn’t mind – it was almost mine as much as his, as I had spent even longer than him poring over the pages, trying to decipher and write up his notes. My life was in those pages too.

As I flicked through the pages I came across a small sheet folded into two, both sides written in a hand I did not recognise. Glancing across at Father, I saw he was still sleeping, and hesitated only momentarily before reading it.

Mason,

My son told me he’d found you, and that you had a child. Gabriel says he’s marrying her and bringing her into my house. You were supposed to take her away, Patrick. You were supposed to take them both away. My poor Rosie. I don’t know how to feel, as I have not known how to feel for almost twenty  years. The best thing you could do is leave now and take her with you. I will give you money, as I did last time. I try as best I can to save my son from himself, but I am old now. I can’t do it alone. If she comes here I don’t know if I can bear it.

R

I read it three times, trying to understand what it meant. Mrs Raynor had written to my father. She knew him. I could have guessed that, given that Gabriel had been touted to me as “an old family friend”. But still. It all stank of some sort of scheme, full of deceit and bribery.

‘Who said you could read that? Who said you could go through my things?’

Father was awake, roused in anger to a finer fettle than I had seen him in for weeks.

‘What is it, Father? What does it mean?’

‘You shouldn’t be looking at it, it doesn’t concern you.’

‘It’s about me!’ I fairly shouted, before remembering where I was and that we were not alone in the house. I tried to calm down, smoothing out the letter I had creased with trembling hands. ‘Father, I need to know. You want me to go back to him. What does it mean?’

Hs lips quivered against spitting out some retort but after a moment he sagged back against his pillow and rubbed his eyes, sighing wearily.

‘It’d have come out sooner or later, I suppose. We did well to keep it for all these years. If only he’d not found us. I was happy, almost, in the cottage with the insects. Is it so much to ask for a quiet life?’

‘Father.’ My tone was quiet but dangerous, and I think he sensed that.

‘Your mother, Rosie, the Rosie in the letter, was Gabriel Raynor’s sister. Mrs Raynor’s daughter.’

‘What? We had family? She wasn’t a dancer? But why?’

‘No, of course she wasn’t a dancer. She was a lady of quality.’ He glared at me as though I besmirched the memory of the woman I never knew by repeating the lies he had told me.

‘Tell me.’ I reached across the sheet towards his hand. He didn’t take mine.

‘She died when you were born – that much is true. But if you’re trying to hide a memory, what better way than saying she was French – nobody asked about her then – everyone hates them, what with the war.’

‘Why were you hiding?’

Father took a deep breath and closed his eyes. For a second I thought he had fallen back to sleep. Then he spoke quietly, and I had to lean forward to catch his words.

‘I fell in love with Rosie as soon as I saw her. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, all that hair, such a colour. To my surprise, she returned my advances, but being as I was a student, and poor, it seemed as though we could never marry.

‘She hated living at home, she didn’t tell me why, really, until we’d run away together. Her brother –‘ Father spluttered and coughed before clearing his throat and continuing.

‘Mrs Raynor, to my surprise, supported my suit, and even gave us two hundred pounds and some jewellery, to start a new life together. It almost seemed too good to be true. We ran away from Gabriel, but he’s a hard man, who doesn’t like being thwarted. We knew he’d hunt us down. Some months later, you were born, and your mother died in the act. Perhaps it was a blessing- how can one be happy when constantly looking over one’s shoulder? But even though I wrote to Mrs Raynor and told her, Gabriel continued to pursue me. Or us, rather. I thought we were safe, in our little cottage. But then he found us.’

I stared at him, trying desperately to make sense of all I was hearing.

‘He’s my uncle?’

Father nodded.

‘Can I marry my uncle? Is that even legal?’

‘You’d be surprised at what is legal in this country, Fleur. Or rather, not illegal.’ For the first time in days, he managed a small smile.

‘That’s awful. Oh Father, how could you have me do that? With my uncle?’

Father opened his eyes to thin slits and glared at me.

‘You have no idea what it’s like to look over your shoulder every single day of your life.’

‘She would have given you money.’ I waved the letter at him. ‘We could have gone to America, anything, anywhere. We could have got away.’

Father laughed, a hollow, guttural sound that seemed to echo around his throat.

‘He’s not changed, after all these years. That day he arrived on our doorstep, it was like stepping back almost twenty years. A little greyer, but the same eyes. Just stood there when I opened the door, and stared at me with that look on his face. Said “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”, then just stepped in and shut the door behind him.

‘He didn’t beat around the bush. Said he’d heard there was a daughter, and that seemed a fair swap for killing his sister. What can I say to that?’

‘You didn’t kill her,’ I whispered. ‘I did.’

Father waved that away airily.

‘I know I didn’t kill her. God knows, if I had I’d have welcomed all this damned guilt and hiding. Thought it was what I deserved. But you, Fleur, I’ve always looked after you, I’ve given up the fame that should have been mine – Everything I’ve done I’ve had to do under a pseudonym, or a pen name. I made those discoveries, I catalogued all those insects. Me. But nobody has heard of Patrick Mason. Patrick Mason isn’t a member of the Royal Society, and why would he be? Nobody knows who he is.

‘So when Gabriel arrived and told me that if you married him, I wouldn’t have to hide any more, why shouldn’t I take him up on it? You needed to marry, and it is legal, after all. How the hell was I supposed to know you’d try and kill him?’

‘I didn’t-’

‘You don’t know what he said to me, Fleur.’ All of a sudden the brash, angry man was gone, replaced by a pale shell of a man with fear in his eyes. ‘What he said he’d do. You have no idea of the threats he made. I’d have been dead within the year. You saw what he did to me when you left him.’

He leaned across the sheets and grappled for my hands, his feeling cold and clammy. I struggled away from him.

‘I would be dead within the year, Father, if I’d have stayed.’

‘Please Fleur, have a heart.’

‘You want me to give my life? Why can’t we just go?’

‘I gave my life for you. Please Fleur, just go back to him. He’ll never leave us alone if you don’t. Make it work, for me.’

He was clawing across the bedspread towards me, like a disgusting wounded animal, all pale, lined and covered with a sheen of perspiration.

‘I have to go. I’ll think about it.’ I spat the words out, eager to get away. Father crumpled into a heap onto the sheets and began to sob softly. I was ashamed that I felt disgust at seeing him like that. I, who had brought him to it, however unintentionally.

I ran to my room, shutting the door behind me and locking it for the first time since I had arrived. I began to pace, trying to process all I had just heard, but my mind kept going blank. My mother was my sister-in-law. I had been raped by my uncle. Only it wasn’t rape, because I belonged to him, by law he could do what he liked with me. I began to giggle hysterically. It was surprising what wasn’t illegal in England.

I felt trapped again, like I had been in Gabriel’s house. I unlocked the door, pulling it open just slightly. I wanted to go outside, but a glance out of the window told me Tristan was still sitting in the garden, now joined by Edwina, who was reading on a rug beside him. I supposed I could leave by the front door and wander further afield, but beyond the boundaries of this house lay the unknown, and the fear of being found by Gabriel or some of his staff. I expected nothing less of him than seizing that which was his property.

Jane was also working in the garden. That was it, then. While the coast was clear, I resolved to visit Damien.

I hesitated only as I stood behind the hanging, my finger poised over the little knot I needed to press to open the door. We had parted last so awkwardly last time, I didn’t know if he’d want to see me again. Let alone to hear what I had to say. I rested my head against the cool panelling for a moment and breathed in and out, in and out. Then I opened the door.

It was so dusty. Light filtered down the narrow passage from a small window in the second story of the house, highlighting the dust swirling in the air. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. It was barely wider than my shoulders, and I could see stripes in the dust on the walls where Damien, a man too broad to be contained in so small a space, had brushed it as he passed. All was silent in the little passage, and my soft slippers seemed to scrape too loudly along the floor, and the ladder creaked fit to raise the dead as I climbed up.

As I climbed higher, although it was only about six feet high, I saw that the room opened out, just as Damien had described. The floor was padded with rugs and cushions, I assumed to make it creak less as he moved about, as well as to serve as a bed – for that was all the room was. It was as deep as the house, but only a few feet wide.

‘Welcome.’ The word came a whisper that I barely heard over the noise I was making.