Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
No handy interruption would spare me this recitation. No convenient footman would barge through the door.
“How did you go amiss, Jules?”
“Just the usual. My memory deserted me. Entirely. Completely.”
“You had one of your spells?”
I detected only sympathy and commiseration in her question.
“I had no idea where I was, Hyperia, much less why I was there. I saw worn saddlebags on the bedpost, but all around me was opulence. Did I own the place where I dwelled? Was I a poor relation visiting from nearby? I’ve traveled for weeks with nothing more than saddlebags for my luggage, but I didn’t know even that much about myself. ”
“What happened?”
“You are so calm. Nothing happened. I nearly made a cake of myself to a pair of footmen, but I managed not to ask them if I had a name or hailed from a specific direction. My memories returned, but do you realize what might have happened had they not?”
“Sheldon might have misplaced you as he’s apparently misplaced his brother?”
“I agree with Miss Weatherby. Sheldon lacks the cunning and ruthlessness to press-gang his brother to Cathay. Sheldon is the type who’d pinch sweets on display at the tobacconist’s, but he’s lazy—morally, intellectually, and probably physically, too—none of which is directly relevant to the matter at hand. ”
“That being your forgetfulness.”
Her patience and understanding were now making me feel worse. “Perry, the infirmity goes beyond mere forgetfulness. You’ve seen me in the grip of my lapses. I am very polite and utterly flummoxed. The situation can take hours to resolve, and for all I know, the day might come when it never does.”
I wanted to pace and rant and shake my fist at the heavens, but Hyperia had hold of my hand. No dramatics allowed.
“My great-aunt grew very vague in her final years,” Hyperia said. “My uncle did not, and his job became to remind her that her spectacles were in her reticule. Her gloves were in her pocket. She had always been so very independent, but finally, he could feel useful to her.”
A touching, exasperating story. “Hyperia, I am not in my dotage. I am supposedly in my prime, and from time to time, I cannot tell a passing stranger from my own mother. Sheldon might lack the resolve to take advantage of such an affliction, but others will show no compunction or mercy in a similar situation.”
“Where was Atticus?”
“I’d left him behind at the Knot. I wanted to spare him a hard slog over winter roads, more fool I.”
“Do not ever, in my hearing, refer to your own good intentions with such scorn, Julian Caldicott.”
“I was reckless, Perry. I am frequently inspired to recklessness in the course of an investigation. I have thus concluded that if I cannot rely on my memory, I must eschew risky activities that require more of that memory than it can consistently deliver.”
Hyperia dropped my hand and got up to pace by the hearth. “Tell me something, Julian. Was the work you did in Spain dangerous?”
Heaven defend me, I had conjured the presence of Counsel for the Prosecution. “Occasionally dangerous, more often tedious.”
“You were shot at from time to time?”
“Of course.”
“Behind enemy lines without a map?”
“Certainly.” Or a compass, both being evidence of nefarious intent, of course.
“You were taken prisoner?”
“I allowed myself to be taken prisoner. Perry, what is this cross-examination in aid of?”
She put her hands on her hips and studied me where I sat on the couch. “When did your memory first trouble you?”
Belated manners had me on my feet. “At university, as best I can recall. I attributed the problem to lack of sleep, overindulgence, too much time with my head in the books. An imbalance of the humors.” I’d had a thousand explanations while I’d read every medical treatise I could get my hands on.
All to no avail. “I did wonder if I’d suffered a blow to the head and forgotten that as well.”
Hyperia’s right foot began to tap slowly on the hearthstones.
“And yet, when Harry bought his colors, you rushed to do likewise. No thought that in the midst of battle, you might forget where safety lay. No consideration for the fact that you needed to recall where headquarters was situated when your scouting revealed enemies in the vicinity.”
“We were at war.” A stupid, even irrelevant observation.
“Right. We were at war, and though your affliction might well have cost you your life and Merry Olde the advantage in some battle or other, you did what you could. You soldiered on, memory lapses and all.”
“They were few in number. I dealt with them most easily when I was isolated in the countryside.” I’d hunker down in a dry camp and let time pass. Eventually, my memories returned.
“Julian Caldicott.” Never had six syllables carried such a weight of chiding.
“Your dodgy memory did not stop you from going to war when it probably should have. So you took a small risk and came here without Atticus on your coattails. The boy is botheration on two feet when he’s in a curious mood.
I don’t blame you for leaving him behind. Stop blaming yourself.”
I didn’t, exactly. “I appreciate your perspective, Hyperia, but I do think it prudent to set the investigations aside.”
She cocked her head and regarded me as if I were some artistic oddity exhibited without a proper frame.
“Do you know why Sheldon would not have raised a finger against you, Julian?”
“Because he’s a coward?”
“Cowards get up to all manner of mischief. Witness his busy embezzlement scheme. He would have sent you peacefully on your way back to the Hall because you are Lord Julian Caldicott, the Waltham ducal heir. You might forget who you are, but others never will. Your identity protects you even when you fail to recall it.”
She had a point. A minor point. “Dantry’s identity hasn’t protected him.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Harry knew of your problem, correct?”
What possible relevance…? “He did. In that one regard, he was discreet and considerate.” In others as well, occasionally and even usually. I trusted him to keep my confidence when it came to my mental affliction.
“Then you had Harry on hand to offer explanations if the worst happened, assuming you survived the worst.”
Where was she going with this tangent? “I did have Harry on hand, albeit sometimes at a distance of a hundred miles, but every officer knew we were brothers.”
She approached me and stopped two feet away, just outside hugging distance.
“Julian, I intend to become your wife. We will share a bed, if not always a bedroom. We already have. You fight entire battles in your sleep. You curse fluently in several languages. By what flight of masculine arrogance do you think you must fight every battle alone?”
I worked well alone. In the army, I had always preferred the solo missions, but if investigating had taught me one lesson, it was that I worked better when I worked with Hyperia.
Somehow, my attempt to make a rational, sensible decision in light of available evidence was hurting my darling’s feelings.
“Perry, please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll…”
“Yes?”
“Cry with you.”
She smiled as the first tear trickled down her cheek.
“Of course you will, you daft man, and if you’d tarried too long at the Dovecote, I would have come to retrieve you, the duchess and her gallant hard on my heels.
Cease the investigations if you’ve lost interest in them, Julian, or for no reason at all. ”
She stepped into my embrace. “Do not, though, give up a highly demanding pursuit at which you excel because you fear I’ll abandon you to be snatched up by the enemy.
You will not rest until you’ve found Dantry.
I will not rest if you should become lost. Harry was content to be your brother at a distance.
I will be your wife, right by your side. ”
A truth settled on my heart in a fashion no church vows could have achieved.
My afflictions were Hyperia’s to share. My joys, my sorrows, and frustrations likewise.
Her indignation and determination, her tenacity and quiet humor—those were ours too.
Julian and Hyperia were two distinct people becoming something more and larger together.
Just possibly, I harbored a wider romantic streak than I knew.
“Have I given you something to think about, my lord?”
She had given me a stern lecture on the reality of loving and being loved. “A great deal, in fact. Thank you.”
She took me by the hand and led me again to the sofa. “And now you will tell me about the hat and spurs?”
We were back to business. A relief. I needed time to adjust to my intended’s indomitable perspective on the particulars of our marriage. A lifetime, perhaps, as Sir Clive had suggested.
“The hat and spurs, right.” I kissed her knuckles and kept hold of her fingers. “They meant a lot to Dantry, and they were also easily and immediately associated with him.”
“You think he left them along the way on purpose?”
“I am hoping he did. I also believe that if James Fletcher hired some London thugs to spirit Dantry away, those spurs would be gracing the window of a Ludgate pawnshop. Local lads would not have laid hands on the earl.”
“Alphonse was seen in the area. Are you suggesting Dantry went with him willingly?”
“I’m trying on the idea. They were acquainted.
Dantry would not have suspected Alphonse of blatant criminal intent, but neither would he trust Alphonse blindly.
Dantry might have told Deemster he was to meet Alphonse and drafted Deemster as a discreet observer.
Perhaps Sir Clive’s butler lingers in the area in hopes that his lordship will return through divine providence. ”
“Alphonse had romantic intent rather than the criminal variety, to hear him tell it.”
I was groping toward a half-formed idea—that Dantry had gone willingly with his captor—but the rest of the notion, the why of it, refused to come into focus.