Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“Such a pity Dantry has done this,” Her Grace said, accepting a postprandial brandy from Sir Clive.
Mrs. Stoneham and Miss Weatherby had excused themselves after the fruit and cheese, and the duchess had suggested that she and Hyperia share a digestif with the gentlemen rather than withdraw for a final cup of tea.
Sir Clive took the place beside the duchess on the sofa. I handed Hyperia into one wing chair and took the other myself.
“Dantry has created a damned inconvenience,” Sir Clive said, lifting his glass. “Or somebody has. Your health, madam, and pardon my language.”
We sipped while the fire crackled gently in the hearth. Sir Clive was hosting us in his study, which suggested to me that he and Her Grace were indeed dear friends.
“Dantry’s mother pulled a similar stunt,” the duchess said. “She eloped, though apparently not with a lover. Simply disappeared.”
“That was years and years ago,” Sir Clive observed. “Not long after the boy was born, in fact. He might not know of it.”
“He’d know,” Mama said. “Unkind gossip never truly dies. Dantry might not have the details, but he’d know his mother broke the rules.”
“What happened to her?” Hyperia asked.
Sir Clive was apparently content to let the duchess provide the explanation. By the light of the fire and the few lit sconces, Dantry’s cousin looked sad and worn. Would my mother see him thus, or would she view him in a more affectionate light?
How would Hyperia view me thirty years on, assuming I was still extant?
“The whole business was a tempest of rumors,” Her Grace said. “The previous earl never stood in the middle of the dance floor at Almack’s and announced that his wife had gone missing and, ‘Would anybody who sees her please send her home.’”
“How did polite society know she was truly missing?” I asked. The London staff, Sheldon, even Mrs. Stoneham hadn’t known Dantry was absent without leave until Sir Clive had begun spreading the word.
“Her lady’s maid was in evidence,” the duchess said, “while the countess was not. Other ladies’ maids took note of that and mentioned it to their employers.
The countess wasn’t in attendance on Sunday mornings at St. George’s Hanover Square.
Invitations she had accepted were replaced with regrets, and yet, no physician had been seen frequenting the Dantry townhouse.
She’d either been banished to the country by her husband, or she’d fled his company. ”
Every bride’s worst nightmare was likely the situation Mrs. Stoneham had faced. She’d trusted that she was being courted in good faith by an estimable suitor, only to find she’d married a brutish, bad-tempered sot, from whom there was no escape save death or disgrace.
Had Dantry’s mother found herself in a similar purgatory?
Hyperia again asked the logical question. “How did matters resolve?”
“Somebody saw the lady in Edinburgh, as I heard it. The earl fetched her home, though the story was he’d gone north for some shooting.
We did not see much of the countess after that.
Her health was apparently failing, and she had gone to her heavenly reward within a year or two.
All very sad, but the earl subsequently remarried, and his second union was said to be happy. ”
Sad, indeed, for a very small boy who had likely formed no memories of his mother in good health and good spirits.
“Was Dantry’s mother mentally unsound?” I asked.
“No.” Sir Clive’s answer was confident. “She was exactly the sort of lighthearted young creature who should have brought some good cheer to my uncle’s dour outlook. He seemed to dote on her, in his way, and he observed proper mourning for her.”
“One can become mentally unsound,” Hyperia said slowly. “I knew a girl at school who seemed to all appearances to be as right as a trivet. She had friends, she earned stellar marks, she wrote regularly to her family, and we all thought she was destined for a good match.”
The duchess studied her drink. “This would be the Humbertons’ youngest?”
Hyperia nodded. “Daphne. She made her curtsey, caught the eye of some worthy suitors, and was set to marry one of them, when she simply disappeared. We were told she was taking a repairing lease before embarking on married life, but then the wedding never happened. A few of her former schoolmates received letters that didn’t even mention prospective nuptials. ”
“Dantry is no schoolgirl,” Sir Clive said, “nor is he an unsteady groom who has come down with a case of nerves before speaking his vows.”
“The letters were unhinged, Sir Clive,” Hyperia said quietly. “Full of fanciful terrors and wild flights and illegible scribblings that were supposed to be sketches. That cheerful, sensible schoolgirl we’d known had gone mad.”
Or been driven mad.
I abhorred this tale, though I also saw its relevance.
“If the same sad fate befell Dantry’s mother, then he might have a propensity for instability, or he might not.
” The earl was certainly passionate about his numerous causes, unusually, even irrationally, so.
“In the alternative, somebody who knows Arbuthnot family history intimately wants the world to believe that Dantry has decamped without notice, just as his mother did.”
“Ugly,” Sir Clive said. “This explains why we haven’t received a ransom note. Dantry’s foe is motivated by worse sins than greed.”
“What sins are those?” I asked.
“Revenge,” the duchess said. “Pride, ambition, delight in the suffering of others. Sheer evil.”
I had encountered such evil behind the walls of a French prison. A certain senior officer who enjoyed torturing the helpless, not for information or to strike terror into subordinates, but simply for the pleasure of watching another man lose all dignity and hope.
I had done my best not to oblige him, or his more tactically inclined subordinate.
“Julian?” My mother’s tone was gently curious. “Where does this unfortunate family history leave your investigation?”
“I should have interviewed Dantry’s land steward,” I said slowly.
“He’s reported to be ancient. He would know the old scandals and know who else is familiar with them.
Then too, Sheldon professed on the one hand to be keeping matters together as best he could and, on the other, to have no authority to actually put the finances right. ”
“Is that why Sheldon forwarded all those invoices and bills to Dantry?” Sir Clive said. “What did he expect Dantry to do with them?”
“Approve them,” Hyperia said. “Approve payment, put his initials on them, or note that the sum was excessive or had been paid at the time services were rendered, and so forth.”
“Seems a lot of bother,” Sir Clive muttered, downing half his drink. “Oh, the Quality.”
Her Grace smiled at him in a manner that suggested real fondness. “You are the Quality, sir.”
“An antique knight on his little farm. A tired antique knight. Your Grace, may I light you up to your room?” He rose easily and extended a hand to the duchess.
“You may.”
They departed in silence, leaving me alone with my intended, who promptly deposited herself in my lap.
“They are so sweet,” she said. “I hope we are that sweet when we approach our three score and ten.”
I accommodated the bundle of femininity in my arms with a loose embrace. “Her Grace isn’t that venerable.”
“She said Sir Clive was a bulwark against insanity when they were younger. I took that to mean he was her gallant, but prevented her from making a cake of herself. He can wear a bumpkin’s colors while treading a chivalrous path.”
“He has truly been her friend, then. I hope she has been the same for him.”
Hyperia shifted a little, settling closer. I rested my cheek against her temple, feeling a sense of contentment that had eluded me since last I’d been in her company.
“What were you doing in my rooms earlier, Perry?”
“Dantry’s rooms? We brought you some clothes from London, and I put them away, then I began reading the piles of correspondence, invoices, and pamphlets. Dantry is certainly fond of his rhetoric, isn’t he?”
“I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not a bit too fond of literary flights and hopeless causes. The duchess’s tale about Dantry’s mother is disturbing.”
“You think he’s lost his wits and is wandering around Edinburgh reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy?”
“Or Paris, Lisbon, even London.” The slopes of the Pyrenees were singularly uncongenial in late winter. I prayed the earl had no reason to learn as much. The Sussex Downs would be little better.
Hyperia yawned behind her hand. “You are such a lovely warm pillow, Jules. We will chat up this elderly steward, take another look at all those shopkeepers’ invoices, and turn Her Grace loose on the Dovecote’s neighbors.
A call on the vicar is often on your agenda as well, but I suppose you didn’t want to abandon Atticus any longer than you had to. ”
That was my opening to bring up the peril that had nearly befallen me precisely because I had left Atticus behind. Those moments of non-recollection, of having to rely on gossipy footmen to tell me where I was and even who I was.
“I never took Dantry for a spendthrift,” Hyperia went on sleepily. “The merchants of the realm certainly have reason to hold the earl in great affection.”
“You looked over the shopkeepers’ bills?”
“I did. They have a daunting sameness to them. ‘Presented for your lordship’s attention in the event previous notices have been mislaid.’ ‘A polite reminder respectfully intended for your lordship’s clerks.
’ They all write with the same painfully legible penmanship, as if there’s an academy in Southwark teaching the art of the dunning hand, and they use the same painfully chiding tones. ”
“While the pamphlets all sermonize with an arrogance one ought not to encounter from even angry bishops.”