Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
I don’t know what to say. I honestly don’t.
Our final luncheon in the abbey was the inverse of that first, drunken dinner. For one thing, we now had three Lady Burnsbys (if I still counted). Colette replaced me at the foot of the table, and Lance replaced his father at the head. Godric and I were seated side by side, facing Mima and Ophelia.
As the first course was being served, Mima waved her hand. “I don’t care for artichoke soup. I’d prefer a piece of apple tart.”
Crumpsall promptly placed a slice of apple tart before her, taking it from a row of plates that waited on the sideboard.
“What have you done with her?” Mima asked the table at large, her voice jaunty and inquisitive.
“With whom?” Colette asked.
“The strumpet.”
“Sophonisba? She—”
“She usually sits next to him,” Mima interrupted, nodding toward the head of the table. “Burnsby isn’t . . . Wait. Where is Clifford? Isn’t this Christmas?”
“Father passed away from a heart attack,” Ophelia said, her voice somewhat weary. The entire household had been repeating it ad infinitum, but Mima couldn’t keep the slippery fact in her head.
Miss Wellington said that Mima was forgetting things faster than normal, perhaps because of the emotion caused by Burnsby’s passing. That morning, she apparently hadn’t known where she was.
“Oh, yes,” Mima said now. “I never liked him much.”
“He wasn’t likable,” Ophelia agreed. She patted her arm. “You’ll be better off in the abbey without him, Aunt Mima. You needn’t eat in the nursery, where it’s so cold.”
“I shall be better off without her,” Mima said. “Did I kill her?”
Colette froze, her spoon halfway to her mouth.
“No,” Lance replied. “Miss Ainsworth has departed to live in Paris.” He turned to Crumpsall. “I shall ring when we desire the next course.” The butler bowed and left, closing the door firmly behind him.
“Excellent,” Mima said, picking up her fork to take a bite of apple tart. “Where’s the strumpet gone, then?” she asked a moment later.
“You didn’t kill her,” Ophelia said quickly.
“I didn’t ask that,” Mima said, shocked. “I never talk about killing, do I?”
“You do not,” Godric said. “Have you ever killed anyone, Aunt Mima?”
I’d never seen his expression before—though in future years, watching my husband in the court, I would come to recognize that focused intensity.
“Why on earth would you ask such a thing?” She blinked at him over her fork.
“I was merely curious,” he responded.
Mima peered across the table at me. “Are you a ghost?”
I was taken aback, though it wasn’t the first time she’d asked.
“Evie isn’t a ghost, Aunt Mima!” Ophelia cried. “She is as warm as you and I. Have you ever seen a ghost?”
“Thankfully, no. I wouldn’t like to see them, would I? I didn’t like Alice,” Mima said. “Hecuba didn’t like me. They’d be angry at me.”
“Why would they be angry?” Godric asked. Colette’s eyes were as confused as my own.
Mima shrugged. “Are you a ghost?” she asked me again, ignoring Godric.
At the head of the table, Colette said, “I’m coming to sit next to you, Lance. I feel uncomfortably as if I’m walking into the pages of a novel containing vengeful spirits.” She got up and walked to the other end of the table.
“I am not a ghost,” I stated, feeling a wave of thankfulness for that fact.
“Ghosts aren’t vengeful,” Mima said, taking a bite of tart.
I smiled at her. “I, for one, will always be grateful to Hecuba.”
“My mother saved Evie,” Ophelia said proudly. “I believe she frightened off Alice on purpose, so that I could stay warm in the library.”
“I am sorry about Hecuba, but not Alice,” Mima said. “Alice called you a mongrel.”
“Ophelia is not a mongrel,” I said, my voice frosty.
“Alice was overly fond of fainting,” Mima commented cheerfully. “It was the death of her, in the end.”
“What do you mean?” Godric inquired.
“I’d better not tell you. Aren’t you a barrister?” She smiled, showing yellowed, uneven teeth.
At the head of the table, Colette and Lance were talking quietly about whether Mima should travel with them to France. While I felt she would fare best in a familiar environment, she was Lance’s mother. The decision was his.
Godric nodded. “I adjudicate cases for the Crown, criminal cases among the aristocracy.”
“I hope you won’t arrest me,” Mima said.
“There’s no reason to arrest Mima,” Ophelia said. “She may be daft, but that’s not against the—”
Whatever she saw in Godric’s face made the sentence break off.
“I have sworn to uphold the law,” my husband said. “For example, had I been given evidence that Sophonisba Ainsworth murdered the late Lord Burnsby, I would have been duty bound to arrest her.”
“The strumpet didn’t murder Clifford,” Mima said offhandedly. “She hasn’t got it in her, or she would have done it years ago.” She squinted at me. “Now you, you might have done it, if he’d pushed you to it.”
“I hope I would flee the marriage before that exigency,” I said.
“That’s not always possible.” She paused. “I thought you’d be a ghost by now.”
“Because you believed Evie had frozen to death?” Godric asked, as if he were inquiring about a preference for tea over coffee.
I once saw a cat’s fur stand on end; I was that cat. My skin tightened all over my body.
“Well, yes, dear,” Mima said. She frowned. “Perhaps I forgot to do it. Sometimes I do forget my own plans.”
My unease turned to horror.
Beside me, Godric’s face was relaxed, his expression open as he smiled at Mima. “We all forget plans now and then, no matter how important the objective.”
From the head of the table, Lance’s eyes were searching his mother’s face. Ophelia was staring aghast at her beloved aunt.
“The right moment is hard to find,” Mima said. “Hecuba?” She shook her head.
Was she saying that it was hard to plan Hecuba’s murder? My heart thudded as I remembered Godric telling me that Mima had nursed Ophelia’s mother.
Mima’s faded, peaceful eyes met mine as she forked up more apple tart.
The fragility of my body in the chapel swept over me like a horrid nightmare: the way my blood had slowed in the freezing air, my lungs had rattled, and my mind had drifted away. My desperate, fearful recognition of Rosie’s pain, my father’s grief, Godric’s panic if I couldn’t be found.
Godric’s heartache.
“What do you mean, Aunt Mima?” Godric was leaning forward. He had a criminal in his grasp. In his face, there was certainty.
Not for the first time, I felt the sting of stupidity. I had chosen Burnsby, thinking he was kind—whereas in reality, he had driven his first wife to become a murderer.
No, that wasn’t fair. If Mima was a murderer, that had been her choice. The truth jolted me as if an open flame licked my skin. Burnsby’s bigamy wasn’t responsible for murder; Mima was responsible for her own actions.
My whole being roared with disbelief. Two women’s lives had been taken, and Ophelia had grown up without a mother—because of Mima? Mima, the kind woman who first greeted me in the abbey, the first to tell me of Sophonisba’s existence, was a murderer who almost killed me?
A sound broke from my throat, half cry and half groan. I doubled over.
“Evie, darling.” Godric drew me onto his lap and wrapped his arms around me.
“Bloody hell,” Lance whispered from the head of the table.
Mima turned her head like a bird seeing a worm and waggled her finger. “Be careful, Lance. Burnsby doesn’t like it when you boys curse.” She glanced around the table. “He isn’t here this evening.”
Ophelia’s chair squealed against the floor. She dashed around the table, throwing herself at me and Godric with the recklessness of a small child. Somehow, miraculously, Godric’s lap proved large enough for both of us, his arms circling me, my arms circling Ophelia.
I clung to my daughter as if I could protect her from the knowledge that the aunt whom she loved, the aunt who loved her, was a killer. At the head of the table, Colette clutched Lance as if she were trying to shield him from the world’s cruelties.
From the knowledge that his mother was a murderer. Perhaps a murderer several times over.
“Aunt Mima killed my mother,” Ophelia whispered, her voice breaking with soul-wrenching sadness.
As she sobbed, everyone’s eyes grew shiny with tears—except for Mima’s.
“Don’t weep for your father, child,” she said to Ophelia. “Clifford wasn’t a good man. I haven’t wept a tear for him, and I never shall. The world is a better place without him in it.”
“I’m not crying for him,” Ophelia said. “I’m crying for my mother, Aunt Mima.”
“No need for that,” Mima said, blinking at her. Her eyes wandered to me. “Aren’t you—”
“I’m not a ghost,” I said, cutting her off. “I shall never be a ghost, Mima.”
“There can’t be two of us,” she said, utterly reasonably. “There can never be two Lady Burnsbys.”
“I’m Lady Everley,” I said, my voice thin.
“That’s right.” Mima’s eyes wandered to Colette.
Lance drew his wife closer, his voice rough and protective. “Aunt Mima, you remember my wife, the Countess Marmont.”
She frowned. “Isn’t she my sister?”
Colette managed a thin grimace, quite unlike her usual honeyed smile. “I am not your sister, Lady Burnsby. I am a French countess.”
“Where has Crumpsall gone?” Mima asked.
Silence followed, and then Lance reached for the bell. “I’ll summon him.”
“You should have some apple tart,” Mima said kindly to Ophelia. “It will make you feel calmer. I know we live in the wilderness, dear, but a lady should never express unruly emotions aloud. You can follow my lead. I keep any number of secrets.”
“Yes, Aunt Mima,” Ophelia said.
She didn’t move.
The sound of Mima’s silverware clinking as she contentedly forked up apple tart filled the room until Crumpsall returned, leading footmen with the second course.
I slapped on my tranquil mask and orchestrated a banal conversation focused on the abbey garden. Mima told us about the asparagus waiting under thick bundles of hay to sprout in spring sunshine.