Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He felt sick. Rolling onto his back he stared blindly at the bed canopy overhead.
But he wasn’t seeing that. He was seeing Tindal reading from his mother’s diary, trying to prove that she was mad and so was he.
He’d failed. But the parallel had hit him hard and gone deep.
A sword thrust to the heart that Jerome had blocked until this moment.
His relentless drive for perfection. The win at all costs. Was it a form of madness?
“Jerome?” Ava sat up on one elbow to look down at him, her expression alarmed at whatever she saw on his face.
He got up off the bed. “There is something I need to show you,” he said, heading into his room.
He went to his desk and drew out the diary that he hadn’t looked at and brought it back into her room, where he found her sitting on the edge of the bed.
She had tidied up her bodice, but her hair was loose and tangled.
“What is it?” she said.
He sat down beside her, the little book felt heavy in his hands. “I didn’t tell you this. But during the trial, Tindal tried to suggest that my mother was mad and”—he swallowed—“that I was too.”
She gasped and said indignantly, “You are not!”
He smiled weakly at her valiant defense and squeezed her hand.
“The gambit failed, no one thought I was mad, and once Garrow was able to present his argument and Robert gave me a character reference, it was put to the vote and I was exonerated.”
She nodded. “Yes, you told me.” She touched the book. “What is this?”
“It’s the evidence Tindal used to try to prove my mother was insane and killed herself. It’s her diary.”
“Where did he get it?”
“Lady Mostyn paid one of her servants to break into the house and search it for, I’m not sure what she expected to find, but they found this—I believe under a floorboard in my mother’s room.
I had no idea of its existence until Tindal produced it in the trial.
Afterward I demanded he surrender it to me. ”
“That woman—!” exclaimed Ava. “If anyone is mad I think it’s her! Her mind has been turned by grief and a desire for revenge.”
“Indeed,” he said heavily.
“Have you read it?” she asked softly, covering his hand with hers.
“No. I couldn’t face it after the trial. I just shoved it in my desk drawer. I planned to take it to Letty and read it with her.”
“You should do that,” she said firmly.
He chewed his lip, and took a breath. “You’re right. I had convinced myself that my father had a hand in her death, but Tindal’s words have made me wonder if I was wrong. If perhaps she jumped after all. I—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Should we take it to Letty now?” she asked.
He glanced at the clock. “It’s after nine. Even if she is home it’s hardly the time to be paying calls—”
“Will you be able to sleep with this playing on your mind?”
“I don’t know.” He admitted reluctantly. “It’s my race in the morning. I had planned an early night—with you.” He smiled and squeezed her hand again.
She rose and said briskly. “Come on. We will pay her call. If she isn’t home, we will try tomorrow—after your race.”
He nodded and rose. And thus they arrived at Grosvenor Square twenty minutes later and were admitted by Her Ladyship’s surprised butler.
He led them upstairs to her dressing room, where she had retired for the night.
Letty was lying on her chaise longue, reading a book by candlelight, a rug over her knees.
At sight of Jerome and Ava she threw book and rug aside in alarm and rose.
“Good heavens what is it? Is someone ill? Dead?”
“Nothing like that, my dear,” said Jerome kissing her cheek.
Letty invited them to sit, and Jerome explained about their mother’s diary and held it out to her.
Letty took it gingerly. “I’m not sure if I want to know,” she said, looking at the little book as if it might bite.
“I have mixed feelings, too,” admitted Jerome. “But I feel compelled to find out. What if we’re wrong about him?”
“You can’t tell me he was a good man Jerome. I remember his rages.”
“But it is possible that Mama’s mind could have been overset by his behavior?”
“Entirely possible,” she admitted and sighed. Opening to the first page, she patted the seat beside her and he transferred to it to read along with her.
The first entry, in a curling, sloping hand, was dated some three months prior to her death, and while there were gaps between entries, it was easy to piece together the tenor of her days from her notes, which focused primarily upon her ailments or troubles with the servants.
It was clear that Lord Gareth wasn’t in residence for these earlier entries and that she longed for word from her children.
Which made Jerome wince. While he had written, it had been infrequently.
He glanced at Letty and saw her bite her lip, for to his knowledge she had not written at all after she left home.
Then there was a gap of several weeks. It became evident that she had been ill and was only then recovering, though taking rather more laudanum than she should to numb the pains in her head.
I have begun to have fancies, brought on by the laudanum. I am sure that Eliza’s ghost is haunting me.
“Who is Eliza?” asked Jerome, pointing to the page.
“I’ve no idea,” said Letty with a frown.
A cold shiver ran over Jerome’s skin, and his vision narrowed in an alarming way as something tickled at the back of his mind, but, like a black whisp of smoke, it evaporated when he tried to grasp it.
Nothing more was said of Eliza for several pages and then it was clear that the marquess was home for their mother stated baldly:
I tried to lock him out, but he obtained the key. He would have his argument of me and my submission. My face still throbs. I took the laudanum tonight, after he was done.
“That!” said Letty stabbing the page. “That is what I remember. If she ever argued with him, he would strike her across the face.”
Jerome nodded. “Did he ever hit you?”
“No. You?”
“He took a hand to me a time or two and a crop to me once. But honestly, it was no more than other boys suffered. It was the way he treated her that haunted me. I should never have left her alone that summer. If I’d been home—”
“Jerome, you were twelve!” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “I think we have our answer Jerome. If he didn’t physically throw her off that damned balcony, he drove her to jump, just to get away from him!” said Letty fuming.
“Surely you’re right. And if the laudanum was giving her hallucinations—” said Ava leaning forward.
“Yes, this Eliza, whoever she was—” Letty flicked over the next few pages scanning, and her finger stopped. “Eliza Stubbs! Now why is that familiar? I’ll swear I’ve heard the name, but—”
Jerome felt himself sway as his vision turned black round the edges again and his skin turned ice cold. He heard Ava’s voice calling his name urgently, but it was muffled as if from a long way off.
“Jerome!” Ava knelt before him, her hands on his arms shaking him. “God what is wrong with him?” she wailed. “Jerome!”
The jumbled fragments of memory flickering in his mind made little sense initially, all he was conscious of was puzzlement, followed by a creeping sense of terror. Then his adult mind clicked into place and he dropped his head into his hands and said muffledly, “He killed her. I—I think I saw it!”
“Killed who?” asked Letty sharply.
“Saw what?” cried Ava.
He lifted his head and looked at Letty. “Could she have been a housemaid? Eliza Stubbs? Young, pretty, with red hair coming out of a mob cap?”
“Oh my God!” Letty stared at him horrified.
“She was the nursery maid. She helped Nanny Mercer. She disappeared one day, and eventually I think they said she had gone home to her family. I—” She frowned in an effort of memory.
“How old were you?” She shook her head counting on her fingers.
“You must have been two, maybe? Not any older. I was eleven. How do you even remember—”
“I don’t really. Just fragments that make no sense. I wouldn’t have comprehended what I was seeing.”
“What did you see?”
“Our father with his hands around her throat.” He swallowed. “God, I feel sick.” He closed his eyes and breathed. Letty got up and came back in a moment.
“Here, drink this.” She held out a glass. He took it and tossed off the brandy, letting it settle his stomach.
She sat down and put an arm around him. “We may never know the details, but it’s clear that Mama found out and she was trying to get up the courage to confront him about it. That must have been what happened.”
“And he killed her, too?” He rubbed his face. “God, I’m glad he’s dead. If I’d known—” He shuddered. “Part of me did know. I always knew there was something. But I could never grasp it. I had night terrors as a boy—”
“Yes, you did! I remember that!” said Letty. “Poor lad, what a horrible thing to carry. Gosh, I feel guilty for leaving you behind. If I’d known, I’d have dragged you out of there.” She wiped her eyes, smiling at him sadly. “I’m so sorry, little brother.”
He shook his head. “Not your fault, Letty.” He shook his head again, trying to shake off the flood of energy in his body. He felt as if he were a geyser about to explode.
He rose. “We had better go. I’ve got a race in the morning. Are you all right?”
Letty nodded. “Better than you I suspect.”
He bent down and kissed her cheek. “I wish John were here for you now.”
Letty sighed. “I wish he were, too. I shall write to him.”
“Have you heard back from him? Does he know about the baby?”
“Yes.” She smiled, a hand going to her belly. “Yes, he does, and he is very pleased and wishing he hadn’t gone.”
Jerome picked up the diary and he and Ava left.
*
Entering Ava’s room, he tossed the dairy on her desk and drew her into his arms. They had said little to each other in the carriage, his mind occupied with trying to work through everything the evening had revealed. And she seemed to understand that and held his hand in silence.
“Ava,” he murmured against her hair now.
“Yes?”
“I need you, and I don’t think I can be gentle.”
She raised her face to him and he kissed her, pulling her tight against him. His body was shaking. “Ava?” he whispered.
“Yes, Jerome,” she said pulling at his neckcloth.
Clothing went flying, and in moments they fell on the bed in a tangle of naked limbs, exchanging fierce kisses.
She wrapped a leg round his hip and he found the place to enter her body with a hard deep stroke, pulling her tight against him.
Rolling her onto her back, he thrust rapidly.
She moved with him, her breathing as ragged as his.
His body shuddered as he drove them higher, the pleasure tightening to a pinpoint of searing flame that stubbornly refused to release no matter how much he tried.
His muscles worked and sweat broke out on his skin, his breath came in gasping pants, everything wound tighter and tighter until he was sure something would break.
And it finally did, in an explosion of pleasure that almost made him weep. He collapsed slowly in the aftermath, his body boneless, his pulse thudding, his breath coming slowly back to normal, the sweat cooling on his skin.
Eventually he moved enough to pull the coverlet over them and he sank into a dark oblivion with her arms around him.
He woke with a start some little while later, his skin prickling with latent horror.
He rolled away from Ava, careful not to disturb her.
Getting out of bed he picked up the diary, crept into his own bedchamber, where he put on a robe and slippers, and then he quietly walked downstairs to the library.
He built up the banked fire and sat down to read the whole book.
It was after three in the morning when he finished, and he sat staring into the fire for a long time before he finally got up and went to his desk where he drafted a letter to Kelham.
He folded, sealed, and addressed it and set it on the table in the hallway where it would be collected for delivery.
Then he walked upstairs slowly to his bedchamber where he lay down on the coverlet, still in his dressing gown, and stared at the ceiling until dawn.