Chapter 21
“We should know what is true before we break our rage.”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Charity found Perry standing in the breakfast room, staring out the window.
He was so lost in thought that he did not turn around at her footsteps.
The line of his coat hinted at the tightness in his shoulders, as did his fisted hands at his side.
As she neared, he flexed his fingers wide and drew in a deep breath.
Outside, the grounds of the estate spread before them, the bucolic setting bathed in the light of the morning sun. A faint haze gave the scene an almost ethereal glow. It was a shame that the imminent appearance of Marian Fitzroy prevented both Charity and Perry from finding any peace in the view.
Not wanting to startle him, she grazed her fingertips along his arm, gently attracting his attention, before sliding her fingers through his and squeezing his hand. She took her place at his side and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Did your sister come down for breakfast?” Charity asked in a quiet voice.
“No, but I know she is awake,” Perry replied. “Quinn said she asked for a table to be set in front of her bedroom window.”
“It seems she has taken your words seriously enough to want to watch from her room. That is more than she would have done a few days ago. Your mother misstepped when she ordered Edmunds killed.”
Peregrine looked uncertain. “Or she reckoned the risk to her control over Lark was low. Is this where we are now, where the death of a man can be described as a miscalculation rather than an utter travesty? Lark still questions my motives. I almost wish I had not told her about this meeting.”
The way he phrased that—that Marian still had control over his sister, nagged at her, but she set it aside. She had felt Perry tossing and turning during the night, his sleep as troubled as his waking hours.
“Do you regret accepting this meeting?” she asked him.
“No. We need to talk to my mother. Still, it makes me uneasy. I am second-guessing whether we should have hidden Thorne or Hodges nearby.”
Perry had strategically positioned their guards and allies to prevent a possible kidnapping of Lark while they were distracted. His mother would not be able to leave if she committed any treachery.
Instead, Charity raised their latched hands to her mouth and pressed a kiss atop his knuckles. “I think you have chosen correctly. She needs Lark. It was better to make sure that the grounds were secure.”
She cast her gaze upon the weeping willow that stood beside the pond. Its arms trailed down to the grassy carpet, standing sentinel like a widow beside a grave. It was a fitting choice for a meeting proposed by a note left beside a cooling body.
“She will attempt to provoke us today,” Perry said, drawing her mind back inside. “Remember that she will use your emotions as a weapon against you. Even her choice of meeting point is a knife between my ribs.”
“The willow? Because it is a symbol of mourning?”
“Because that is where she had my dog buried.” Perry murmured, looking over his shoulder at her. “You asked me about happy memories here. My father gave me Argus for my fifth birthday. Never did a boy have a more faithful friend. But he despised my mother and was always barking at her.”
“Your hound was a good judge of character,” Charity said lightly.
Perry gave a wintry smile. “Sometimes I wonder if he sensed her evil, even before she had attempted to have him banished to the stables.”
The rough edge of his voice hinted that there was still more to the story. “What happened to him?” Charity asked.
“She wrote to me a week after I left for school. Said he went slavering mad, and that he had to be put down. But for Argus to have been infected by such a thing, he would have had to have been bitten by some other sick creature.” Peregrine shifted on his feet.
“Argus was nearly as attached to my father as he was to me, and my father would have kept him close after I went to school.”
“You said your father also began to take ill after you went to school,” Charity said, fitting the pieces together. Perry nodded, and Charity understood that Marian Fitzroy would have considered a protector of any sort—even a hound—to be an obstacle to be dealt with.
What kind of mother would murder her child’s beloved pet, Charity wondered. She did not realise she had voiced the words until Perry answered her question.
“The kind of mother who teaches her children to learn to love nothing, for everything one loves can be taken away.” Perry shifted around to pull her against him, clutching her tight as if to reassure himself she was real. “But not all of us find it an easy lesson to learn.”
“Not anymore,” Charity vowed. She rested her head on his chest, listening to the rise and fall of the air in his lungs. They stayed that way until the clock on the mantel began to chime the hour.
Perry allowed Charity to step away, but he kept hold of her hand. When she tried to meet his gaze, he turned his head aside and stared again outside.
“Forgive me for what you will have to see, Sparkles.”
For who he would become. Brick by brick, before Charity’s eyes, he was walling himself off from all emotion, shifting into the cold-hearted monster strong enough to take on his mother. Just because he was hardening himself now did not mean he wouldn’t pay the price of it later.
She reached up to touch his chin, guiding his attention back to her. “I see a man doing whatever is required to protect those he loves. Do not apologise for that. Not now. Not ever.”
He nodded his head, but Charity had the sense that he did not believe her. It was one more legacy of the abuse he had suffered at his mother’s hand.
Marian Fitzroy strolled slowly out from beneath the branches of the willows.
Like her daughter, she was wearing a morning gown that had a hint of foreign influence, though she had opted for less bold colouring choices.
But Charity’s attention was immediately pulled away from a comparison of the differences in fashion, instead fixing on the expression on Marian’s face.
Or rather, her lack of one.
The basilisk was plainly visible in her eyes, and her expression was not cold…
not exactly. It was more that it was somehow inhumanly empty.
Like something else was animating Perry’s mother, living inside of her skin.
And those pupils in her slatey eyes swept back and forth between her and Peregrine, coolly assessing. Watching. Waiting.
When Charity lowered her eyes in return, Marian dismissed her from all consideration. She turned the whole of her attention to her son.
Charity shivered, suffering a chill despite the unusually hot weather they were experiencing in London, staying a step behind Peregrine, as he asked her to. Perry did not want her close to his mother. He did not believe his mother would show up armed, but he was not willing to risk it.
“Peregrine,” Marian Fitzroy said, simply. It seemed a strange way to greet her only son, but given everything that transpired over the last year, perhaps this neutrality was the best situation one could hope for. “I see you got my message requesting this meeting.”
Perry was stock-still and outwardly calm, betraying not a breath of the anger he was surely feeling. Despite everything that Marian had done to Perry, Charity could not believe the woman’s pluck, that she could so cavalierly treat the death of a man who had worked for her for thirty years this way.
“It was difficult to miss,” was Peregrine’s dry response. “Even Edmunds, mother?”
Marian Fitzroy looked, if anything, bored.
She stopped paying attention to Charity, dismissing her, almost, from consideration.
Peregrine had warned Charity not to draw more attention to herself than necessary, and she understood why he had asked it of her.
She hadn’t forgotten the lesson that Selina and Bellrose had taught her—sometimes it was safer to be nearly invisible.
“Do not blame me for your failure to protect you and yours, Peregrine. A few guards, a fifteen-year-old boy, a butler, a valet, a stable hand, a driver, and two footmen. Is that the best you can muster, my son?” Marian asked instead, dusting a speck from her sleeve.
“Here I was, given the impression that your loyalty had somehow purchased you an impenetrable defence.”
Marian’s eyes flicked ever so slightly to Charity, but Charity dropped her eyes again, even though her skin was crawling. Marian’s man had managed to tally the complement of Peregrine’s household before killing Edmunds. How long had he been on the property?
The basilisk stare again returned to Peregrine.
“Is this all the duchess can offer you, Peregrine? You could not have cleaved yourself to someone who can bring you protection? The duchess is damaged goods, used and cast off by the Duke of Northumberland. Tell me, would those royal guards still darken your door if she weren’t in your bed?
Imagine being propped up by a duchess whose only worth is what she brings you from another man’s name. ”
Charity couldn’t see much from the angle she stood, but Peregrine’s stance became almost relaxed. His head tipped just enough towards his right that Charity could see he was giving his mother a reproving look, letting her know that her barb had failed to strike.
“You wanted this meeting badly enough to threaten a child’s mother. I trust you had a reason,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “What was so important to discuss that it needed to be delivered with the body of a man who served you for three decades?”
Marian smiled then, and it was like watching someone don a change of clothing.
“Well, I needed to be certain I had your attention. As for that young boy, you know how boys can be, my darling. He did not even believe Moxley was a threat. Sometimes they do not understand the situations that they so blithely wander into.”