The Shadowcutter (3 page)

“For you, sir,” he said.

“Where is Mr Carswell, Holt?” said Laura, who had jumped up at the sight of him.

“No idea, ma’am,” he said, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “This is from Lord Rothborough, sir. He’s sent a carriage for you. Urgent business.”

Giles opened the letter.

“
Dear Major Vernon,

An unfortunate situation has developed upon which I would welcome your professional opinion, if it might be managed. I would be profoundly grateful if you might return with the bearer of this message. Your servant, Rothborough
.”

“It seems I have to go to work,” said Giles, getting up. “We had better go home.”

“Sukey and I will stay here,” said Laura. “If Mr Carswell comes all this way and does not find us, then –”

“Then he will not be broken-hearted,” Giles said.

“It will be rude if we do not wait for him,” she said.

“He will probably have gone back to the house first,” said Giles. “And it is rather warm for you to sit too long out here. I think we should all go home.”

“You may, of course,” she said, sitting down again. “I will stay here with Sukey.”

“I think the master is right, ma’am,” said Sukey. “It is very warm. And Mr Carswell probably will not come now.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Laura said. The remark was thrown at Sukey, but Giles felt it was directed at him as much as anything.

“I cannot leave you two here alone. I have to go to work,” Giles said. “We are going home. Holt, go and find our carriage, will you?”

Holt departed.

“Lord Rothborough would not send for me unless something terrible had happened,” Giles said. “You must understand that, Laura? I can’t leave you here.”

“Why not?” Laura said.

“Because –” he began.

“I will not be alone,” she cut in. “Sukey will be here, and that ought to be enough for you.”

“Yes, but it is not so long since –”

“I am perfectly well now,” Laura said. “And anyway, Mr Carswell will be here soon enough. I am sure of it.”

“I would rather you went home,” Giles said. “For my peace of mind, since I have to go to Holbroke.”

“You would rather I were safely locked up,” she said. “That is it.”

“I can’t leave you here without protection.”

“You would lock me up again, if you could. I know you would much prefer that.”

Of all places to have a scene, this was not the one. Giles bit his tongue. It was always better not to respond.

“Ah, look, ma’am,” said Sukey. “Here is Mr Carswell!”

Saved again, by Carswell, thought Giles. It was becoming a debt that would be difficult to settle.

-0-

Just as he was about to start for Holbroke, Major Vernon showed Felix the letter from Lord Rothborough.

“Can you shed any light on that?” he said.

“All I know is that they are all at Holbroke,” Felix said. “I don’t envy you.”

“He wouldn’t call on me without some good reason, I think,” Major Vernon said. “How was Martinez?”

“More comfortable. The nurse is a competent creature, but she was forthright about her charges. Nurses are expensive here, it seems.”

“I had better give you some money,” said Major Vernon, reaching into his pocket. “Shillings or guineas?”

“Shillings,” said Felix, “mercifully. Ten will cover it all.”

“Here’s twenty,” said Vernon. “See if you cannot get that landlady into being more useful with it.”

He took the money and saw the carriage off, and then went back into the house.

Mrs Vernon was playing the piano in the upstairs drawing room, playing scales diligently, as he climbed the stairs, but then breaking into a slow melancholy melody, full of yearning. He had encouraged her to take up the piano again as a way of giving her some serious occupation and focusing her passions. Sometimes it felt that the focus was too intense, as a magnifying glass left in sunlight was in danger of starting a fire.

He hesitated at the drawing room door, wondering if he should go in, or continue upstairs to his room.

“Will you be wanting luncheon, sir?” It was Sukey Connolly, coming upstairs with a tray. “I have something for Mrs Vernon here.”

“What did she have for breakfast?”

“Only a piece of toast. I did try.” She shrugged. It was an old struggle.

“Then I will eat with her, yes. She will eat properly then.” He was famished himself and wanted nothing more than a pint or two of dark Edinburgh beer and a greasy pie, the fodder of his student days, and to eat it in the casual anonymity of a smoky howff. “Tell her I will be down in a minute,” he said, starting upstairs. The music followed him, inexorably, almost as if she meant him to hear every plangent note.

He closed the door on it, and pulled off his coat, waistcoat, cravat and shirt. He sponged himself down with cool water, trying to cool his own anxiety.

As he dried himself, he could not avoid looking at the little posy of flowers in a water glass, which decorated the washstand. They were obviously her handiwork, gathered from the little flower garden behind the house. Usually this would have meant nothing more than the action of a thoughtful hostess seeing to the comfort of a guest. It was exactly the sort of normal behaviour that they had been working to encourage in her, but when he had seen the flowers there last night, he had been sure that they had been chosen and placed with careful significance. He knew women sometimes used flowers to make declarations of their feelings and that every flower and leaf had a meaning to those who knew their language. He did not, and he was glad of it. Their presence alone was enough to disturb him.

When he had come up the hill towards the Bower Well and she had caught sight of him, she had seemed to surge with joy, as he were the only thing capable of giving him any pleasure. Then in the carriage back to the house, as he sat opposite her and the Major, he had been acutely aware of her gazing at him. Had Major Vernon guessed that she had developed feelings? For a man as observant as the Major, it seemed likely. How could he have not seen the looks she gave him and interpreted them for what they were? Felix wished that they might discuss it. He had been thinking last night that the topic must be broached, sooner rather than later, but this business at Holbroke had carried the Major and the opportunity for that conversation abruptly away. The Major trusted him implicitly, he knew, and he would have walked a hundred leagues in his bare feet rather than betray him, and yet, the feeling remained that he was not a man to be trusted. In short he did not trust himself.

He put on a clean shirt, retied his cravat, and forced himself back into the formality of his waistcoat and coat. Despite the heat, it would not do to send such a signal of being at ease with her. He had to be cool and remote, every inch the professional man.

Yet as he descended the stairs, she broke into a melody of such gorgeous intensity and played with such obvious finesse and feeling, he had to catch his breath. He paused on the bottom step, wondering if he had better go and see Martinez instead rather than go in and be alone with her.

Sukey came out of the drawing room.

“Sukey, don’t go just yet,” he said. “Mrs Vernon may want you. Come and sit with us.”

“I’ll just fetch my sewing,” she said, slipping past him.

He went in as quietly as he could, attempting not to disturb Mrs Vernon. But she heard him, and stopped at once.

“No, don’t,” he said, seeing her rise from the piano. “Please, not on my account. I was enjoying it.”

“You were?” she said, smiling, and he realised that was the wrong thing to say. “I have been working hard at it, just as you suggested.”

He took care not to respond to that. Instead he pulled out a chair for her at the round table that was used for meals, and waited there for her to come to sit down. It was only good manners to do so, yet he wondered if it might be better to act the boor with her and take the seat for himself, and begin eating as if she were not even there.

“Shall we have some lunch?” he said.

She nodded and came and sat down, but used the excuse of his standing there to slip past him, like a cat circling his legs. Her skirts brushed against him, and as she sat, she twisted her head and looked up at him, with a look that was so terrifyingly full of gratitude that he was tempted to walk straight out of the room.

But he had a duty to make her eat and the power to accomplish it, for as he offered her the plate of ham and the bread and butter, and the radishes, she took her portion, anxious to please him. She ate too, not just pushing the food about the plate, as was so often the case. In fact she consumed a full slice of ham, three radishes and two pieces of bread and butter which was quite astonishing.

“This spa water makes one hungry,” he said, taking some more ham for himself. “Even if it does tastes so foul.” He had grabbed a cup from the Bower Well to quench his thirst after he had walked up the hill.

“I did have two cups,” she said. “Just as you told me.”

“Then you must go and take it again tomorrow,” he said.

“Yes, I would like that,” she said. She looked down at her empty plate, surprised by it. “Have I not done well?”

“Very well.”

“It is only because you are here,” she said. “It is not the water, it is because –”

The door opened and Sukey came in, with her work-basket.

“Yes, what is it?” said Mrs Vernon, looking round at her with some hostility “I did not ring for you, Sukey.”

“Mr Carswell asked me to come in, ma’am,” said Sukey.

“Why?” Mrs Vernon said, staring across the table at him, as he had betrayed her horribly.

“Because I have to go out now and see a patient,” Felix said, throwing down his napkin and getting up “And –”

“Am I not your patient?” she said, also rising from the table.

“Yes, but Mr Martinez is in a terrible condition and needs me.”

“And I don’t?” she said, with a slight sob.

“I shall be back as soon as I can,” he said. “Do some more piano practice. You are getting on so well with it.”

“You do not care one iota, do you?” she said. “Not one!”

And she ran out of the room, pushing past Sukey, the door banging behind her.

“Oh God!” Felix could not help exclaiming. He stared helplessly at Sukey.

“Two steps forward, one back,” she said. “You said that yourself.”

“But this, this is –”

“You woke her up from the dead,” Sukey said. “She’s bound to be grateful.”

He nodded.

“I had better go and see Martinez,” he said.

“Of course. She will be all right. I’ll get her busy with something else. Don’t you worry about it.”

“I will try.”

It was not the first time that her good counsel and infinite common sense had prevailed upon him. Mrs Vernon would never have recovered to such a degree had not Sukey enacted and improved all his ideas for her treatment. She was a most sensible, practical intelligent woman, worth her weight in gold, and as Major Vernon had once pointed out, possibly wasted on domestic life.

“We are lucky we do not live in a world where woman can take our posts, for we should be in for stiff competition with the likes of Mrs Connolly. She could command a regiment with ease or direct a ministry.”

To Felix it was a mystery that she had not been snapped up by a man as soon as was proper after the death of Mr Connolly. It was true she had no tangible assets beyond good looks (for she was handsome, with dark red hair that was liable to escape from time to time from under her cap) and her remarkable intelligence. She seemed content to work for the Major and Mrs Vernon, but Felix wondered how long it would be before some prosperous bachelor in Northminster lured her away with the prospect of her own establishment. When it happened, it would be a great loss.

Chapter Three

One could be aware of the facts about a man and all his possessions, Giles reflected, as he drove to Holbroke in the Marquess of Rothborough’s travelling carriage, but until one saw it for oneself, it was not knowledge.

He had heard much of the great prospects of Holbroke and its park. He had seen engravings and been told the extent of it but he was not prepared for the sheer scale of the place. It was like crossing the border into a different realm. Even before they passed into the park itself, they drove through several extremely orderly villages, where the hand of a great owner was much in evidence. The roads were excellent. The cottages were well-maintained and picturesque, with latticed windows, neat shutters and painted garden fences. A benign tyranny was clearly in operation which sat strangely with some of Lord Rothborough’s more laissez-faire pronouncements.

The entrance to the park itself was marked by a great arch and tunnel, formed from two substantial, symmetrical buildings of golden stone. The gilded gates swung open at the sight of the carriage – of course they would, because it was was Lord Rothborough’s personal travelling carriage. Yet Giles felt he ought to be stopped and asked for some form of identification, as if at a foreign border.

The carriage sped through, drawn by a pair of the most elegant greys he had ever seen, a pair of horses that would make any man jealous. He had recently been thinking of setting up a carriage for Laura and he knew he would never be able to afford such good horses.

Once through the gates, the famous prospect of the house could be seen, vast even in the distance. On this brilliant summer day, it glittered like a fairytale palace. Giles, the younger son of a respectable, but by no means expansively- landed Northumbrian gentleman, could not help feel a long moment of envy at the sight of so many acres formed into parkland alone. It was impossible not to wonder what it might feel to be the master of such a domain. What sort of life would he have made for himself if he had had such good fortune, he wondered. Would he have done good, or would too much ease have destroyed him? That Lord Rothborough was so active and energetic beyond the boundaries of his fabulous realm said a great deal about his character. Giles felt he might never have left the place if it were his. At the same time, Carswell’s own uncomfortable predicament as Rothborough’s natural son came home to him in a way it had not done before.