My Sweet Folly (28 page)

“Robert...” she said helplessly. “I can’t bear this.”

“Let me take you away where I can protect you,” he said. “I can’t do it here. They’ll be looking for us here. It’s dangerous.”

“I believe that you think that,” she said desperately. “You think that.”

“Damnation!” He flung himself away, rising. His cloak swirled around him in the increasing daylight. “You will never trust me again, will you?”

She said nothing. The tremor inside her had become a visible shake in her hands and shoulders.

“Well,” he said, “I see now what they can do. Steal every shred of credit I ever had with anyone. No one will believe me, will they? If you won’t, who will? No one will listen to a madman.” He turned to her. “I can’t stay longer. I don’t want them to see me here.”

Them.
Folie twisted her fingers together. “Yes, Robert.”

“Don’t patronize me, damn it!”
 

She bent her head. “No.”

“Be careful, Folly.” His voice changed, became soft and urgent. “Please. If you ever loved me. Watch everything. Don’t take a step outside the house without Lander. Promise me that, at least.”

She nodded, still looking down at her hands.

She felt his hands on her hair, both palms sliding down the side of her face. For just an instant. Then he stepped back. Folie did not look up as he vanished; she did not know how he came or left. Her eyes were blurred. Cold drops fell on her fingers. He was so strange and alarming and insane, and she loved him so.

Robert thrust his hands into his pockets as the sun came up on a clear day, pouring pink and gold light across the facades of elegant townhouses. His breath made frost as he strode across the street. At a park gate, he bought bread and a mug of beer from a street vendor. It was one advantage of London, at least, he could always find food he was sure would be safe.

He stood in the open, breaking his fast with the laborers who gathered in the last wisps of early morning fog. It seemed bizarre now, how he had been afraid of stepping out under the unroofed sky. And yet, if he dwelled on the thought, he could feel the sensation growing on him, the sense that the crystalline blue arch would take him up, suck him upward into a spinning infinity, spinning and spinning until he flew apart.

His heart began to race, and the bread in his mouth seemed dry and impossible to chew.

He stood still, concentrating on the ground, on the green peek of bulbs at his feet. They were growing out of the ground, pushing up into the sky. The sky did not pull them up; they forced themselves into light and air. If he thought of the bulbs anchored in rich solid earth, his feet a firm base beside them, he could breathe again.

He shook his head slightly, like a dog shaking off water. From inside the park palings, he watched the far side of the street, waiting. Just as he had finished off the mug, Lander appeared at the corner.

Robert wiped his mouth and tossed the rest of his bread to the birds. The butler crossed and entered the park. Robert waited until he caught his servant’s eye, and then with a faint gesture signaled him to follow.

As usual, Lander appeared to make nothing of the singular meeting. “Good morning, sir,” he said, as Robert stopped beneath a budding tree.

They were out of range to be overheard. Robert nodded briefly. “I don’t want you to be gone from the house long,” he said. “I cannot say that I trust you utterly, but I have no choice.”

The man betrayed no flicker of reaction. His eyes were so dark that they seemed black, but his hair was almost blond, tied back neatly. Robert thought he must be a seasoned gambler, from his square, inexpressive face.

“I have discovered that my fears at Solinger were well-founded,” Robert said, plunging into it. “I was in the political service in India. Something has followed me here, something pernicious. I have reason to believe that my—indisposition—at Solinger was the result of deliberate poison. I am convinced that it was an attempt to discredit my wits. It would appear that I am in possession of some knowledge—or someone thinks I am—something extremely valuable. I don’t yet know what it may be, but it’s consequential enough that they’ll kill for it.”

The only change in Lander’s expression was an increasing concentration on Robert’s face. They were not quite of a height, but he did not have to look up by much.

“Perhaps you do not believe me,” Robert said stiffly.

“I believe you, sir,” Lander said without hesitation.

Robert lifted his brows. He had not expected to be taken seriously without considerable argument. “I am gratified.”

“I can see that you are in possession of yourself now,” he said.
 
“I do not know how the poison reached you, for I did my best to watch. I beg your pardon; it was my failing.”

The relief of being believed was astonishing. For a moment, Robert was at a loss for words. He shrugged, scowling. “Never mind. Did you know a girl named Kathy—a housemaid at Solinger?”

“Kathy, sir?” Lander shook his head a little. “No, sir.”

“Brown hair, freckles, perhaps eighteen. She was increasing, she said. In trouble. They promised to take care of her if she did it.”

Lander looked off thoughtfully. “That could be the gardener’s girl,” he said. “Mattie.” He frowned. “Could you have mistaken her name?’’

“Doubtless,” Robert said ironically. “I was raving out of my mind at the time.”

“I think—she might have been in distress. Now that I think of it, perhaps I saw her with red eyes. It’s hard to know; I made nothing of it at the time.”

“I think she is dead,” Robert said.

Lander’s eyes widened just a little. “Sir?”

Robert told him what he had found in his hotel room. The butler’s jaw grew tight. “It was Solinger linen, sir?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Robert cursed. “I didn’t know you could tell.”

“It would have SA woven into the waistband.”

“I threw it in the river. Frankly, I didn’t want to be accused of murder myself, if I was found with it.”

“No, sir.” Lander nodded. “Should I make discreet inquiries of Mattie in Buckinghamshire?”

“No, I want you here in London.”

The butler said, “Then I shall remain, sir. But it is possible to inquire, I believe, without my leaving here.”

“Make any inquiries you can, then—but keep them concealed, and do not leave here. I haven’t told you all. My journals were stolen from my rooms.”

Lander nodded alertly. “They want something you had written in them, sir?”

“God only knows. They’re mostly full of rubbish.” Robert gave a wry smile. “My wise observations on Hindu culture and religion, some descriptions of odd cults.” He paused. A thought tugged at the back of his mind.

“No information from your political post, sir?”

The thought vanished as Robert laughed. “My political post consisted of a few pillows and a broken chair. I was no Elphinstone parleying with the Afghans, I assure you.” He shook his head. “Unless it is some secret nefarious sect that has taken the trouble to follow me here, which I heartily doubt. One thing I have seen little of in England are gentlemen in turbans and loincloths, with beards to their knees.”

“Still, sir. Might it be a native reprisal for some accidental transgression? I understand that primitive peoples can be deeply moved by apparently minor acts.”

“Those I studied were no primitive people, Lander. Believe me. However peculiar their appearance, they live in the realms of highest consciousness. Light and kindness are their creed. Cutting a maid’s throat? No—I think this is no Hindu plot against me. If I were still in India, I might suppose I had embroiled myself unknowingly in some conspiracy—we have bandit princes and
rajahs
by the dozens, all at John Company and one another’s throats, but I can’t conceive that such thing would follow me here, and I don’t know what it would be in any case. I can recall nothing political, nothing at all. Sometimes I saw our people in the bazaars. I recognized them, but we never spoke.”

“Perhaps you saw someone who did not wish to be seen.”

Robert leaned his shoulder against the tree. “Yes. That is possible.”
 
He cast a sidelong look at Lander. “You have quite a mind for intrigue.”

The manservant shrugged slightly.

“What are you?” Robert asked suddenly. “You are no butler.”

Lander stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes lowered.

“And no commoner, either,” Robert said. “You speak like a bloody aristocrat.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I have not always been in household service, no.”

He volunteered nothing further, and Robert did not press him. Likely as not, he would only get a pack of fabrications. He suspected that Lander was some nobleman’s younger son who had disgraced himself—such fellows were thick on the ground in India, and in spite of the submissive “sirs” and “I beg your pardons,” he had something of the same air of the highbred rowdy about him.

“Well, I believe you are a gentleman,” Robert said, “whatever may have brought you to this point. And I ask you, on your honor as a gentleman, to keep your own counsel on what I mean to tell you. I would not speak of it, but I want you to understand why I must have you always on guard here. I have your word?”

“As it concerns nothing criminal, sir—you have my sworn word.”

“Not criminal—not against the law, at least—unless it is against the law to write letters to a married lady.”

“Of course I shall say nothing about such a matter, on my honor as a gentleman,” Lander said.

Robert crossed his arms and looked at the ground. “Mrs. Hamilton and I exchanged letters for some time while I was in India.” He lifted his face, squinting into the distance. “Anyone who read them would ascertain that I have—a great depth of feeling for her. I kept them in my journals. They have been taken also.”

“I understand you, Mr. Cambourne,” Lander said. “May I say that I am glad, sir, to have some clearer idea of the situation. At Solinger—I could not tell—I’ll admit that I was concerned and—puzzled.”

“I was not myself there. I do not wish more to be said of it, ever.”

“Is Mrs. Hamilton aware of the danger?”

“I tried to warn her.” Robert gave a humorless smile. “I have succeeded only in convincing her for certain that I’m fit for Bedlam.”

“She was not alarmed?”

“Only by my presence, as far as I could discern.” Robert pushed away from the tree trunk. “Go back to the house now. You’ve been absent long enough. They’ll be stirring.”

Lander bowed. “Yes, sir. How shall I expect to hear from you?”

Robert shook his head. “I can’t say as yet. Be vigilant. Note any odd thing. If you receive a message marked ‘Kali,’ it will be from me.”

“‘Kali,’ sir?”

“The Hindu goddess of destruction.” Robert paused. “Speaking of which—I left that cursed ferret of hers on the back stoop.”

“Yes, sir,” Lander said.

TWELVE

By their third Wednesday night assembly, Folie had developed a positive aversion for Almack’s. She hid it, of course. Never in her most ambitious dreams for Melinda had she supposed they would be mingling at this level of Society. She was eternally grateful to Lady Melbourne and Lady Cowper for the priceless voucher, and to Lady Dingley for her steadfast sponsorship. Upon entering the handsome assembly hall for the first time, Folie had felt she must burst with pride to see that Melinda was so much more beautiful than the other girls—perhaps it was a bad year, but the nobility seemed to have produced little better than a collection of snub noses, rabbity teeth, and thin hair in their female offspring. The crowd of young girls carried themselves gracefully, danced beautifully, sipped their orgeat with refinement, but in her white gown—last year’s periodical pattern sewn up by Toot’s best seamstress—Melinda outshone them all by simply standing in a corner.