Chapter 14 #2
“You are formidable,” Hyperia retorted. “You endure pain and frustration beyond what would fell most women—most men too—and yet, you think that chair will mean more to Dantry than your feelings for him.”
Hyperia was in quite good form, hurling thunderbolts of truth and insight with merciless aim. I felt for Miss Weatherby, having been the target of similar fire on previous occasions.
“Dantry needs and deserves a countess who can walk upright,” Miss Weatherby snapped. “I am not such a one, nor will I be, so might we please discuss something else?”
“Certainly. I will tell you why I am madly, passionately, permanently in love with his lordship.”
Oh… dear. I commanded my feet to take me elsewhere, double time. My feet ignored direct orders.
“You love him because he’s a good sort, and he esteems you highly.”
“Not even close. You are too polite to admit that you think I am overlooking his unorthodox appearance and ignoring his penchant for peering into potentially scandalous corners because he has a title and I am getting long in the tooth.”
As artillery volleys went, this one was flattening all in its path, including me. Miss Weatherby made no reply, nor did Hyperia give her time to form one.
“I love Julian Caldicott not because he relies on me to investigate with him, not because of his luscious kisses, and not because of his gorgeous eyes.
I love him because he has dwelled in hell, seen its diabolically cruel appointments firsthand, and been burned by its fires.
And yet, he has chosen to keep walking toward the light rather than let the darkness claim him.
“He could have given up,” she went on. “He could at any moment let the demons take him. Instead, he builds on the courage and toughness of mind he has wrested from his experiences. Julian can look at the worst human failings—greed, treachery, betrayal, hubris, hate—and still do his best to put matters right. I will never find a kinder or more honorable man, and if his hair were green and his house a hut, I’d love him for all eternity. ”
I had to brace a hand on the sideboard lest I physically be sent reeling by this… this… ferociously loving peroration.
My darling meant what she said. She had taken on the for-better-or-for-worse challenge in single combat and had every intention of emerging victorious.
I knew not how long I stood there in the dim corridor, stunned nigh to tears with the gift of Hyperia’s devoted and very articulate regard.
Courage.
Honor.
Toughness of mind.
Who was this Greek legend of a man she so adored, and how did Hyperia know that I yet struggled with melancholia that threatened to crush me?
The ladies continued conversing, but I did not hear them. Instead, I wandered to the foot of the stairs in the chilly atrium and sat upon the steps like one who knew not how he had survived the day of battle.
Hell’s diabolically cruel appointments figured prominently in my nightmares. Hyperia claimed to have heard me ordering beer in my sleep. She’d doubtless heard much worse too.
“Have you lost your way?” Sir Clive inquired kindly. “Family parlor is down that corridor, and I, for one, am hungry.”
“I lose my way frequently. Hyperia finds me.”
He extended a hand, and such was my state that I allowed him to help me to my feet.
“Been at the brandy, young man?”
I shook my head. “You said you served your time in Canada and came home to a loving marriage. The marriage made all the difference, didn’t it?”
“Ah. This is a matter of the heart, then. I would not have put the situation so directly, but yes. I lived for her letters. I labored over my replies like a sculptor crafting angels from raw stone. We were a love match, and if you’ve had the great fortune to experience one, you cannot utter those words with the condescending humor so much of Society affects. Now you’re making me poetic.”
“How do you endure her loss?”
He smiled wistfully. “With difficulty, but the love she lavished on me is mine to keep. Shall we join the ladies?”
“I need a moment.”
“No, young sir, you and your lady love will need a lifetime, and if the Deity is benevolent, you’ll have it.” He jaunted on his way, a man I’d once thought silly but now knew to be honorable, kind, and wise.
“The moment has arrived, Arbuthnot, to tell us what you’ve done with your brother.” I spoke as calmly as I could manage. The ladies and Sir Clive were in attendance, and a display of temper on my part would hardly encourage a full confession from Sheldon.
“Prevarication is ill-advised,” the duchess said, selecting a petit four from the tea tray. “Julian is nothing if not accurate in his surmises.” She occupied the library’s sofa and had doubtless ensured that we’d have privacy from the Dovecote’s ever-so-conscientious staff.
I had taken too rubbishing long to reach this particular accurate surmise, but I did trust the evidence of my own eyes.
Sheldon ceased wandering along the shelves and affected a puzzled expression. “I haven’t done anything with him. Dantry must be off on some peculiar quest. Probably touring mills in the north.”
Miss Weatherby rolled her chair to block access to the door. “Stop lying. You were never very good at it, despite an abundance of practice. You’ve been stealing Dantry blind, sending him fraudulent invoices for approval, and pocketing the resulting bank drafts yourself.”
I was pleased that Miss Weatherby had been the one to state the charge.
Sheldon stared at her. “How would… How would I do such a thing?”
Hyperia, seated beside the duchess, waved a packet of papers at him. “You forgot to disguise your handwriting. Quite legible too. I commend you on your penmanship, but your criminal tendencies lack subtlety.”
For Perry to sink to insult indicated a state of high vexation.
“Your larceny,” I said, “is for you to sort out with your brother, unless you’ve killed him.
He was on to your schemes, by the way. That’s why he took your pretty little sleeve buttons.
He was likely planning to send them to London from the relative safety of the Knot and investigate their provenance. ”
“Dantry asked to borrow them. He has no fashion sense.”
He’d known to gather facts before leveling accusations.
“Dantry’s fashion sense,” Sir Clive said repressively, “is that of a man of good, if modest, taste. His integrity is that of a gentleman. Where is your brother?”
The question reverberated with biblical wrath, and Sheldon edged away from the shelves to put the reading table between him and Sir Clive.
“I do not know. I wish I knew, but I do not. That is the truth.”
“Cease dissembling.” Miss Weatherby’s tone promised slow, agonizing doom.
“If you are not honest with us now, I will, one way or another, break both of your legs and condemn you to life in a Bath chair. You will struggle to dress, to bathe, to move out of doors at all. You will be pitied, overlooked, and laughed at behind your back. Then I will tell all the world what you have done, and that includes telling the magistrate.”
The bratty boy who’d threatened her with institutional incarceration had the sense to be frightened. He slumped into a reading chair at a corner of the table.
“I do not know where Claude is. I received a note telling me he’d been sent on a repairing lease. He would not be harmed, but I was not to interfere or set up a hue and cry, lest all my dirty secrets be aired before polite society.”
“Where is the note?” Sir Clive asked.
“I burned it.”
Miss Weatherby shifted her position again so she was directly across the reading table from Sheldon. “The only piece of evidence that might lead to the earl’s whereabouts, and you burned it.”
“The footmen are nosy, the maids not to be trusted.”
“You are not to be trusted,” I said. “Own that fault, if you please, and give up trying to ascribe it to others. What did you notice about the penmanship of the note? Was it educated? Was the spelling correct or dodgy? Was the paper good quality or salvaged from the dustbin? Did the ink run, or was that good quality too? Had the page been sanded?”
“I don’t recall.”
“For the sake of your brother’s continued existence and your own, you must try.
When you read that note, you could not believe the words.
You rejected the sense of the sentences, then realized you had an enemy.
Somebody had put together your status as a younger son, with your dandy’s wardrobe, expensive horse, and your jewelry collection, and realized you were taking advantage of your brother’s trust.
“As you held that note in your hand,” I went on, “you saw all your worldly goods slipping from your grasp and your brother tossing you into the street. What do you recall about the slip of paper that threatened to change your whole life?”
Sheldon scowled at the gleaming mahogany table.
“The page was folded properly and sealed, like a piece of correspondence, but it hadn’t been franked or sent through the post. Just left among the day’s mail to be collected from the posting inn. Anybody could have done that.”
Heaven preserve me from young men who refused to use the brains God gave them.
“No, anybody could not. Strange characters pawing around among the neighborhood mail would have been rebuked and remarked by the lowest serving maid at the posting inn. Your enemy is local and frequents the inn. Describe the handwriting.”
“Legible. Not fussy or pretty, but legible. Proper spelling. Good paper and ink, though not the stuff Town hostesses use for their invitations. Serviceable. Black ink.”
“Wax?”
“That was odd. The wax was blue. Who uses blue wax?”
Probably James Fletcher or his dubious MP of a nephew, the same James Fletcher who was emphatically not receiving when the duchess would have come calling.
“Any scent to the wax?” I asked.
“I did not notice. I’m not in the habit of sniffing threatening notes.”
“No,” Sir Clive said. “Instead, you burn them, when scent alone might have given the culprit away.”