The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (38 page)

“I can find my own way,” Alethea said to Titus. He took no notice, and instead drew her hand under his arm as they mounted the wide, shallow stairs.

A knock on the door on the next landing was greeted by silence.

Figgins bent her head to the lock, causing Alethea to choke back a laugh as she looked up and saw Titus in the candlelight, his face full of amusement.

Figgins gave the door handle a hefty rattle, and to Alethea's surprise, the door swung open.

What had she expected? Another boudoir, a plush bed, sumptuous hangings on every side? That was foolish, she told herself, looking around the plain, sparsely furnished room. This was where Marguerite, or Meg, slept, not where she plied her trade. There were two narrow beds in the small room. On one of them lay a girl with the palest hair Alethea had ever seen, and huge blue eyes, rimmed with shadows. Like something out of a fairy tale, she told herself, but as a stream of abuse came from the rosebud mouth, she realised that this was the home of the wicked fairy, not the one with spangles and a wand.

Figgins was shocked. “That's a fine way to talk; bet you scare the men off if you blaze away at them like that. Shut your gob, Polly, and let us talk to Meg.”

The rosebud mouth shut, and she stared at Figgins. “How do you know my name? I never saw you before in my life.”

“Never mind how I know your name. Is that Meg?”

“Marguerite,” said the other girl. She had been brushing her hair and she swung its heavy darkness forward to attend to the back. She was wearing a not very clean gown over a shift and little else, and her opulent figure was very evident. Sloe eyes looked the three of them up and down, lingering longest on Titus.

“You're Meg Jenkins,” said Alethea. “You were once employed at Tyrrwhit House, where you worked for my—for Mr. Napier.”

The hairbrush was clenched in a tight fist as she slid from the bed to her feet. “Polly, go and get Mikey, tell him there are men up here, tell him to come up and turn them out.”

“No, Polly, don't you do no such thing,” said Figgins. “Or you'll wish you hadn't.”

Titus, meanwhile, had placed a hand over Meg's mouth to silence her shrieking. “Sit down. I want some information, that's all, and I'm prepared to pay handsomely for it.”

“I don't know anything, anything at all,” said Meg, all the fight suddenly leaving her as she slumped down on the bed. She looked very young and frightened, and her eyes were those of a cornered animal. “I've done nothing wrong.”

Alethea, filled with sudden sympathy, went over to the girl and knelt down beside her. She started to put her arm around her, but dropped it as Meg winced and let out a cry of pain.

Alethea stood up and stared down at her. “Show me your back,” she said. “Did he whip you?”

Tears were falling down Meg's cheeks and she rubbed at them with the back of her hand.

“He sent for me. I didn't know it was him, it was just another gent. I never heard his name, or I wouldn't have gone. I don't know how he found me, you see; I think it was by chance.”

Her voice had a definite country lilt to it; Alethea felt a pang of remorse at the realisation that the girl had not come from the kind of home where she would ever have expected to end up like this.

“He was full of wine, and there was wickedness in him. He said he would beat me until I died, and I knew he meant it.”

“That's all lies,” said Polly's sharp voice. “She's making it all up. She goes with the ones who like the lash, that's why she's all cut up. Those marks will heal soon enough, and as for the rest of it, it's lies, like I said. I and Mrs. L and all the girls will swear she never left the house all that evening. Mikey, too, that keeps the door, and some of our gentlemen regulars, we'll all swear. Now get out, you with your mincing ways and smooth talk, or I'll throw open the window and scream the place down.”

 

The journey back to Melville Place passed in a blur for Alethea. Her mind was a jumble of darting thoughts and memories, of Meg as she had been, of Napier when his black mood was upon him, of Mrs. Legrange's chamber, of Titus, so threatening and yet a tower of strength.

They slipped in through the back, and Figgins, wiry, concerned, and muttering reprehensible curses under her breath, helped Alethea upstairs. She brought up a hot bottle to warm the bed, and found her mistress already between the sheets, eyes closed, her face still taut and drained.

She roused her and made her drink the strong hot toddy she had brewed for her, and then blew out the candle before going to her own room in the attic, her mind buzzing with speculations.

Alethea slept fitfully. Too tired at first to do anything but sleep, she woke in the dark hour before dawn and lay quite still, her mind clear, her thoughts grim. What had she done? What evil had she brought on herself, on her family?

She looked back to her life only a year before, and saw her younger self as a stranger.

How innocent she had been, how naive! She had thought she knew all that she needed to know to take her place in the world, and she couldn't have been more wrong. Impulse had driven her; she had blundered blindly from folly to folly, never listening to advice, concerned only with herself at any given moment.

She had ill repaid Fanny's kindness, had scorned the advice of her parents; oh, how much she wished she had listened to those warning voices, and had not rushed headlong into marriage. Pique and pride and hurt feelings had overcome reason and sense; she had cared more for what the world would say about her than she had for listening to the deeper dictates of her heart. She hadn't loved Napier, she had made a great mistake in marrying him. It had been a dishonest and a dishonourable action, to commit to a marriage where there was no real bond of love—had there even been much affection?

She had imagined, stupidly, that life could be lived on the surface, that if she couldn't be with Penrose for the rest of her life, then it didn't matter very much whom she lived with. What folly, and what a price she had paid for her error and for the betrayal of her own feelings.

Now, looking back, she realised how she had allowed herself to be overwhelmed by her passion for Penrose, how rashly she had let that attraction become all important to her. Here she was, scarcely a year later, and Penrose meant no more to her than—than the casual friendship of a girlhood acquaintance.

Tears prickled in her eyes, but she was too overwrought to find release in a storm of weeping.

Thoughts crowded in on her. She had brought disgrace on herself, on her family, possibly on Titus—dear God, how was she going to find a way out of this wretched coil? What had possessed her, to dress up as a man and go off to Venice? Had living with Napier cost her her wits? It wasn't a scrape, it was a disaster, a scandal that would rock polite society to its foundations. She could never live in England again—what kind of a bleak future awaited her in some distant, foreign place, where all she might hope for was that no one had heard her name and the dreadful story attached to it?

It had all been unnecessary.

That was the cruellest rub of all. Letty might not understand or care what Napier was, but now it turned out that Fanny would have understood, at once, and would have known exactly what was to be done; yes, and Mr. Fitzwilliam would have supported her, too.

She need have gone no further than Aubrey Square. So much for her pride in managing to reach Venice with only Figgins to accompany her. She had thought that a real achievement, and as it happened, she had been discovered the very first time she was in company with a group of her fellow countrymen. Not by all of them, it was true, only Titus, and it was absurd to suppose that you could deceive a man as acute as he was.

How much he must despise her. His sense of honour alone had led him to help her. She had been so shocked at finding him at that whorehouse, had at once attributed the worst motive for his being there, and in that, too, she had wronged him, hitting out at him like that. When all he wanted was to clear her name, so that suspicion might be lifted from her without her having to reveal that she had been with him when Napier was killed.

How the newspaper editors would lick their lips over that story! Even if she hadn't fired the fatal shot, it was full as bad for her to have been with another man when her husband breathed his last. They would make Napier into a martyr, scorned by his wife, murdered under his own roof. Never mind that it was a far from respectable roof, and that he had been keeping very unrespectable company there. He was the injured party, she would be branded a shameless adulteress, and Titus would be condemned on all sides for his share in the intrigue.

Dawn, and the first murky light of a heavy summer's day, brought no relief from the turmoil in her mind. She dozed a little, in the end, and woke with a start as Figgins's face peered round the door at her.

“Visitors downstairs,” she hissed. “It's Lady Hermione, and a tall gent as I've never seen before. I let you sleep, seeing as how you've still got great dark rings under your eyes, only now you'd best get up as quick as you can.”

Alethea ran down the stairs, ignoring Figgins's appeals for her to wait so that she could brush her hair. Alethea didn't care that the cloud of dark curls wasn't brushed or pinned up, nor that her black dress was barely hooked up at the back: all she wanted was to see Lady Hermione.

“Good gracious” was that lady's greeting. “Alethea, my dear girl, how well you look in black. Allow me to present Mr. Hellifield, who has escorted me from Venice. He is an old friend of Titus's and is eager to make your acquaintance.”

“I'm greatly honoured,” said Harry, bowing with grace over her hand. “Forgive the intrusion, ma'am, but Lady Hermione said I might come. I have been longing to meet the woman who has so disturbed Titus.”

“Disturbed?” This was dreadful; here were his friends lining up to pour scorn on her.

“Why, yes, it was high time he was shaken out of his complacent ways. He told me he was past the age of losing his heart to any woman. I am glad to have him proved wrong.”

Her face was burning. “I have caused Mr. Manningtree a good deal of trouble, and I am heartily sorry for it.”

“Nonsense,” said Lady Hermione.

Alethea blinked and turned her attention to Lady Hermione. She had been so delighted to hear that Lady Hermione was downstairs that she hadn't stopped to wonder why she was there at all. “How come you to be in London?” she asked. “You were heading for the mountains, to escape from my cousin the bishop.”

“Yes, but then word reached Harry, who has his own inimitable methods of receiving news from England more rapidly than anyone I know, that Napier had been murdered. He came to tell me of it, and I knew at once that this meant you were likely to be in some difficulty, so I made Harry accompany me back to this country.”

“Yes, and a devilish journey it was, too. Lady Hermione should have been a soldier. I never knew anyone to travel faster or need less rest while on the road.”

“I have always been able to sleep in carriages,” said Lady Hermione briskly. “I can't be doing with dawdling when one needs to be elsewhere.”

Alethea recalled her manners, and rang the bell for Figgins to bring refreshments.

“How pleased I am to see Figgins again,” said Lady Hermione. “That girl is a treasure.”

“Not too sure about the butler, however,” said Harry. Alethea could see he was glancing about the room with a look of displeasure on his elegant countenance.

“The house was never lived in by my husband,” she said apologetically, “and the staff was reduced to one old caretaker and his wife. The whole house is in a dreadfully shabby state, and the butler is Figgins's brother, who is more used to naval ways than smart London houses.”

“That explains it,” said Harry, seemingly satisfied. He drank a cup of coffee, rose, and took his leave of them with exquisite politeness. “I, unlike Lady Hermione, am quite shattered by my journey and shall retire to a peaceful doze in a comfortable armchair at my club.”

“All so much talk,” said Lady Hermione as the door closed on him. “He may look no more than a dandy, but he was the toughest of soldiers and is not a whit worn out by the journey. He is off to find Titus; he is the most inquisitive man of my acquaintance, and he feels, quite rightly, that he has not had the whole story out of me. I doubt he'll get much out of Titus, who can be a clam when he wants. Now, my dear child, tell me exactly what has been going on, and how you came to be in such a fix.”

Try as she might, Alethea's account of her voyage back to England, the discovery of Napier's death, the surprising attitude of the Fitzwilliams, of the fix she was in, was incoherent and stumbling. Lady Hermione listened patiently, asking questions now and again, and finally summoned Figgins into the room. Figgins came in with Miss Griffin, rather to Alethea's surprise.

She could see Lady Hermione taking an immediate liking to the gaunt authoress, and in no time they had their heads together. With interpolations from Figgins, the narrative became clearer. Much of what was told was news to Griffy, and the colour flared into Alethea's cheeks as her ex-governess shook her head over her extraordinary exploits.