An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (6 page)

CHAPTER 8

My Parents

I hadn’t seen Father since the wedding, and once I had become Mrs Raynor, he had disappeared. Moments after the rings had been exchanged he had left, without a word. He never even said goodbye. I didn’t expect much more of him, but I was hurt nonetheless.

The morning of the ceremony, as I dressed with the help of a stranger, a girl from the village who I had never seen before but had now seen me half-naked as she pushed me into my gown, he hadn’t spoken a word to me. He had stayed in his study, writing, for all the world as though it was a normal day and it wasn’t our last opportunity to spend any time together.

Once dressed in the finest gown I had ever owned, I sat alone in the little parlour and tried not to pull out the bun my hair had been styled into. It felt as though my forehead were being ripped apart, and my hairline being pulled away from my skull. I was glad of the pain though, as it distracted me from the worry of what was to come, and the churning sickness that had settled in my stomach ever since I had heard I was going to be married.

Having paced the floor several times and learned that my new shoes pinched dreadfully, I stared out of the window at my little garden. I suppose it was never really mine, and had always been my Father’s. I had just been allowed to use it for a while. I hoped there would be a garden at my new house, and that my new husband would allow me some control over it. Did men usually tend the garden? I had no idea. I was very young and very ignorant.

A floorboard creaked and I looked up to see Father stepping into the room. His eyes darted from surface to surface, resting on me only very briefly, every few seconds.

‘You ready then?’

I nodded and made to get up.

‘No, just a moment.’

Father shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. I supposed his new shoes were probably pinching too.

‘I know-’ he stopped and coughed a few times, running his hand through his hair, which I only now noticed was scattered with thick, wiry grey hairs. ‘Hmm, I mean- Fleur.’

He strode forward and perched on the seat beside me, wringing his hands all the while.

‘It will be well, you know. I’m sure it will. We’re just worried because this hasn’t happened before.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Not that this will happen more than once, in all likelihood.’

I tried to smile at him, but began to cry instead.

‘Now now.’ Father patted my hand and I leaned forward, sobbing into his shoulder. ‘It won’t be so bad. I can… I’m sure we can visit. In your new home, maybe, or perhaps he’d let me have you back for a day or so now and then. Who else can write my labels so neatly, eh?’

Father pushed me away gently and looked at me, at a loss. He had never been good with emotional situations, and I blinked back what remained of my tears so I didn’t make him feel too bad.

‘It would all be so different if your mother were here, child.’ He looked away and stared out of the window, wistfully.

‘Tell me about her again – please?’

He reached out and squeezed my hand.

‘She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Eyes as blue as Polyommatus icarus. That’s the Common Blue, Fleur, I thought you’d know your butterflies by now.’

Father frowned briefly before seeming to remember that today wasn’t an ordinary day.

‘But perhaps – nerves.’ He patted my hand. ‘But even though we call it the common blue, it’s nothing like so common in eyes. So soft. And startling. I remember the first time I saw her, I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to tell her, so she’d think I was clever, and I did, but when she asked me what the Latin name meant I had to tell her it was common blue. I tried to skirt around it but she realised what I was talking about. Thought it was funny. That was one of the wonderful things about her – she had no pride in her looks. And she could have had, she was beautiful – so beautiful. To look at her was to love her, at least a little.’

I reached up to my chest and felt my locket where it sat beneath the high neck of my wedding dress. Mother had been beautiful. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

‘She was like spring. That’s the only way I can describe it. You looked at her and she seemed to make everything light and fresh and new.’

Father paused and eyed me briefly before rolling his lips between his teeth and sighing through his nose. He’d told me before that it was a shame I didn’t take after her, but it still stung, even when left unsaid.

‘Am I not like her at all?’ I asked quietly. Father shifted in his seat beside me and seemed, really, to be giving the matter far more serious consideration than I had expected.

At length, he replied.

‘She did like plants.’

It was nothing, but I latched onto it and took it into my heart, cradling it gently, stroking it and trying to make this connection, however slight, grow. I wanted to be loved like she had been, and for a brief moment, as the shadow of my mother glanced over me, I felt it might be possible. Then the garden gate creaked, and it was time to leave.

CHAPTER 9

Alice & Orlando

Edwina said Father would have to stay in bed for the next few days. I couldn’t apologise enough for the imposition I had caused, but with an airiness that was typical of her, she wafted away my concerns and protestations.

‘We’re hardly going to turn him away, are we? He is unconscious, after all. Don’t feel bad, Alice, don’t you see? This is almost the best thing that could have happened – his injuries aside, of course. Once he’s back on his feet he can help you with your remembering. That you recognised him when you saw him – it’s marvellous. Aren’t you happy to see him?’

‘Well, I – yes, of course. It’s been a shock, that’s all.’

‘I quite understand. What a week you’ve had! I do wonder – for us to have two members of the same family turn up practically on our doorstep within a matter of days, well, it does make one wonder what happened to you both.’ I could tell she was bursting with curiosity, and am ashamed to say that I felt a twinge of annoyance at her.

‘He’s unconscious, you say?’

Edwina put an arm around me and squeezed me close to her.

‘I’m afraid so. His injuries – I daresay they’re not as bad as they look. Tristan is in there now, making sure he’s comfortable. I’d say he’s in no worse state than you were when we found you, but then, you’d had a run in with Brutus.’

‘Could I sit with him?’ I wanted to be alone with him, not to be disturbed until he had regained consciousness and we could talk. That seemed unlikely, but still, a possibility.

‘Of course.’ Edwina smiled, hugged me again, then helped me up the stairs.

Father looked worse than he had in the garden. The extent of his injuries had been masked by the shock of his sudden appearance. Now, laid out and pale, he looked for all the world like a dead man. His eye was streaked purple with a bruise that stretched over his cheek. His shallow breaths hissed out between scabbed and blooded lips to reveal that he was missing a tooth, and the one beside the gap was broken in two.

Tristan had been leaning over the bed, dabbing at the dried blood on Father’s face with a handkerchief, but at my appearance he rose, and met me at the door. He passed me the damp cloth and squeezed my shoulder as he and his mother left me alone.

I approached Father, but couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I sank into the chair beside the bed and put my head in my hands. He was the only person who really knew me, or at least, knew me a little. And here he was. Covered in blood and bruises, and all because of me. Because I was a terrible wife and daughter.

But none of that mattered right then. The thing that really mattered was that when he woke up, he didn’t call me Fleur. So I started to talk to him.

‘It’s me, Father. Alice. Your daughter, Alice. You found me. And now you’re poorly, but I’m sure you’ll be better soon. Then we can go home, and it’ll just be the two of us. Father and Alice, together. Father and Alice, just like it always was.’

I rambled on for about ten minutes, not really saying anything in particular, just repeating my middle name over and over again. Edwina and Tristan must never find out how much I had lied. As I repeated the same things over and over again, I cobbled together a hasty plan in my head. Father would wake up, and provided we were alone – and I was determined to ensure that we would be – I would explain everything, he would help me to perpetuate the ruse and then once he was better, we would leave. Perhaps we could go to America. I doubted whoever had done this to him would follow us there.

‘Who did this to you?’ I breathed into his ear, scared all the time that Edwina or Tristan would hear me. ‘Was it him, Father? Is he still alive?’

Father just kept breathing in and out, practically dead. I wished that I was too.

They still didn’t send for the doctor, and I was too glad about it to wonder why. I couldn’t risk seeing someone else who might know who we were. Edwina said he’d probably wake up in a day or two, that he was most likely just exhausted, but she seemed terribly on edge and seemed to jump at every loud noise. I thought maybe she had become suddenly aware of what sort of people she might be harbouring. There couldn’t possibly have been an innocent explanation for how Father and I had got into this situation. Yet she and Tristan were still unceasingly kind to me and aside from the frequent visits we all made to Father’s bedside, they managed to carry on much as normal.

At my insistence, Edwina allowed me to take charge of looking after Father. Jane relieved me for a few hours over night, where my sleep was just as fitful as if I had been sleeping in a chair. I couldn’t settle for the fear Father would wake and say something that would compromise our situation.

Tristan left the next day for London to see the gentleman who sold his paintings, saying he would be gone only a night or two, and promising to bring his mother a gift. Edwina took a yawning Jane to town to visit the market, and all at once, Father and I were alone. I started to monotonously repeat to him that my name was Alice, but got tired very quickly. I wasn’t sure there was any point. Now his cuts had begun to heal and the bruise around his eye had started to fade, he looked a lot less as though he was on his deathbed. He was still pale though, the fine skin on his eyelids and forehead seeming almost translucent, showing the blue veins stretched beneath.

I sat in silence and thought over my predicament, and every possible scenario in which the truth was revealed to Edwina and Tristan, and what I could say. There was no point, though. Nothing I could say would make it right, nothing could make up for the lies, which were, really, the very least of the sins I had committed. Most of all I just wanted Father to wake up, so I could ask him if Gabriel lived. I was becoming impatient, and the constant waiting was grating on my nerves.

I stood and shook Father by the shoulder, gently at first, but then more insistently when he failed to even twitch in his sleep. Then I realised I was shaking him violently, and collapsed back down onto the chair by his bed, sobbing into my hands.

I stayed there for a while. Even after my sobs had quieted and I felt calm again, I kept my head down, soothed by the cocoon of cool linen and the quiet. With nobody else in the house, I could have a moment of being entirely myself, without having to worry about keeping up the pretence of being Alice, the amnesiac.

Something creaked. Then creaked again. In a house full of creaks this shouldn’t have surprised me, but there was something deliberate about this. It wasn’t the gentle creak of the house settling after a period of quiet. It was shortened. As though someone had stepped on a board, realised their mistake and quickly stepped off.

I had become used to putting the strange noises down to the lingering effects of the laudanum I had been taking, but that was several days ago now. And this, this was definite. I stayed frozen, staring at the ceiling from where the sound had seemed to come. Nothing happened for several minutes, then to the side of me, at the wall I heard a scratching sound, then, although I doubted myself even then, a whispered sigh. I looked quickly at Father, and when he was still in exactly the same position I had left him in after my shaking, I knew I wasn’t alone any more.

Holding my breath, I crept to the bedroom door. It would be impossible for me to get downstairs without making a noise since I was still relying on the cane, so I decided not to even try.

‘Who’s there?’ I called, feeling silly. ‘I can hear you,’ I added bravely. ‘So, show yourself. Please?’

I heard a thud, then more sounds – staccato creaks and squeaks like someone climbing down stairs. I hurried down the stairs and followed the sound into the sitting room. There was a click, and then the hanging rippled. I stared and stared at the wall, unwilling to blink. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. It had been a dream. It had been the drug. But I knew. Perhaps I had always known. I wasn’t surprised when my stranger stepped out from behind the tapestry and stood before me. He was dusty, and I had never really seen his face, but I knew him immediately.

We looked at one another for a moment. I wasn’t scared. I would have expected to be, but there was something about him that meant I just didn’t feel threatened. It was the first time I’d had a proper look at him, and I openly stared at his cropped, dark hair, square jaw, and low, heavy brows that sheltered piercing green eyes. I thought he must have been a little younger than Tristan, perhaps in his mid-twenties.

‘Well,’ he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. He looked like I would have expected to feel – cornered and nervous. Yet he was large and broad, and looked stronger than any man I had ever met. I was just a girl who couldn’t even walk unaided, yet I seemed to be in control.

‘Who are you?’

He looked sheepish, and couldn’t quite meet my eye.

‘Well?’ I persisted, and he sighed deeply.

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I think I do,’ I said.

‘Well in that case, I could ask you the same question.’

I raised my brows at him, and seated myself with all possible decorum on the sofa beside us.

‘Does Edwina know you’re here? Because she knows I am.’

The man smiled, and dusted himself off a little before sitting gently beside me. He didn’t fling himself about like Tristan did, nor did he sit with an over-the-top carefulness as Gabriel had. Rather, he simply seemed to be in complete control of all his muscles, which sounds strange when I think of it, but is the only way I can describe him.

‘She knows.’ He smiled at me, as I tried to mask my surprise.

‘Yet you’re hiding in the walls?’

‘You make me sound like a squirrel.’ The man laughed, and I noticed he had one tooth missing at the side of his mouth. It didn’t make him look like a pirate or beggar, for all that he was scruffy and covered in cobwebs. He just looked charmingly roguish.

‘A larger squirrel than I’ve ever seen,’ I said.

He laughed again, before peering at me curiously. I felt myself flush beneath his gaze.

‘Why aren’t you scared of me?’

I sat up straight, feeling defensive.

‘Ought I to be?’

‘Not remotely. But it’s not every day you stumble upon a stranger in the wall space.’

‘A stranger who helped me when I was ill, though.’

He looked down at his hands.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

He nodded.

‘I was in the right place – or part of the roof – at the right time. You kept screaming in your sleep – I couldn’t not check on you. Then in here, I was just going to stretch my legs when you stumbled in.’

‘And you carried me back to bed.’ I trailed off into a whisper, remembering how much I had enjoyed the feeling of being held closely against his firm chest, and the smell of his skin. I noticed for the first time that his shirt was open at the collar, and quickly looked away. It worried me who I was turning into, that I noticed things like that, and that those things made me feel the way they did.

‘Yes.’ The man seemed at least as embarrassed as I did.

‘How- how do you get about?’ I stammered nervously, wanting to cover up the awkward silence.

‘In the roof? It’s the strangest thing. I think this house was built during the reformation or the civil war or something – that’s what Edwina told me. I’m afraid my memory’s not the best for historical details. Either way, they built in a secret section to the house.

‘You get in through the panelling behind that thing,’

He pointed to the tapestry. ‘You think it’s the end of the house but there’s another three feet behind, and ladders that get you up to the attic, where there’s about five foot of floor that leads to another dummy wall.’

‘It must be terribly uncomfortable,’ I said, eyeing him with concern. He must have been six feet tall, although he was broad, so he seemed a little stockier. 

‘I’ve slept in worse,’ he said with a smile. ‘But I appreciate it that you worry.’

His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and I was suddenly very aware of just how alone in the house we were. I wondered when Edwina would be back – I had no idea of how long she had even been gone.

‘And you won’t tell me your name?’ I asked.

He leaned back slightly, surveying me over the tent of his fingers. I met his eyes boldly. I couldn’t help it.

‘No names. But I can give you something to call me if you’d like. I’m to be here indefinitely, I believe, and I would imagine you are.’

‘For now.’

‘Well then, perhaps we shall see one another again.’

I looked away coyly.

‘Perhaps. So what am I to call you?’

‘Give me a moment to think on it. I’d like to call from legend and get something suitably Greek or Roman, but as I say, history isn’t my strong point.’

‘It must be grand then, I can see that is your aim.’ I smiled and chewed my lip as I tried to think.

‘There is something,’ I continued. ‘Something in the back of my mind from Shakespeare – should you like that?’

‘It has potential – so long as it isn’t Caliban or something of that nature.’

‘No, no.’ I chewed my lip some more. ‘It’s As You Like It, I’m sure. Yes, Orlando. I shall call you Orlando. That’s not actually your name, is it?’ I asked, as he smirked.