Chapter 20
The Marchmont gallery’s spring exhibition was the kind of private showing half of London had turned out for.
Lord Marchmont had assembled his collection in three large adjoining rooms on the ground floor of his house in Berkeley Square, the doors thrown open, the better paintings hung at eye level, and the company moving between rooms at the slow appraising tread proper to those who had come to be seen looking at art and not, to look at it.
Edmund had not wished to attend. Sophia had wished to. Edmund had reconsidered.
They had been in the second room for twenty minutes when Lord Graystone appeared.
Edmund saw him before Sophia did. He saw him entering the first room with an easy step, his fair head turning once to take the room in, his smile arranging itself on cue, and then he moved through the company in a route that was, Edmund recognized within the first half-minute, designed to reach the third painting in the second room within four minutes.
“Lord Ashfield.” Percival Cummings bowed. “Lady Ashfield. A pleasure to find you here. I had heard the Marchmont collection was worth the journey, and one’s reports are confirmed.”
“Lord Graystone.”
“This canvas.” He turned to it with apparent sincerity.
It was a small Dutch interior. Kitchen window, copper pot, light arranged through the casement.
“I have always thought it underrated. The composition is the thing, of course, but the management of the light along the rim of the pot is what makes it. Lady Ashfield, I would value your opinion. You have always had an eye for the Dutch.”
Sophia turned her head slightly. She regarded the painting for a moment. Then she regarded Lord Graystone.
“The light is well done. The composition is conventional.”
“I had thought so myself, but I distrust my own judgment in these matters.”
“I am not the person to reassure you of it.”
“No. I see that you are not.” He tilted his head and turned back to the painting. He looked at it for approximately fifteen seconds, attentively, having not intended to look at it at all. Then he turned back. “I shall not detain you. I wish you both an enjoyable evening.”
“Thank you, Lord Graystone.”
He bowed again and moved on.
The encounter had taken four minutes. Edmund stood beside his wife in front of the Dutch painting and understood what had been demonstrated.
Lord Graystone had access to every room they occupied.
He wanted them both to know it. He had not, by any technical measure, done anything except admire a painting and pay Sophia a small professional compliment.
There would be three drawing rooms in London the following morning in which the words Lord Ashfield and Lord Graystone exchanged pleasantries at the Marchmont last evening would be deployed with the precise neutrality of a fact that meant the opposite of what it said.
Edmund kept his composure.
He felt Sophia beside him, taking in a slow even breath. Then she turned her head to him.
“Edmund.”
“Yes.”
Her voice was very low. He could see, by the set of her jaw, that she was holding something in her chest she was determined to deliver before she lost the nerve.
“I am not afraid of him any longer.”
Her gray eyes were entirely steady. Her color was high. The rage from what happened at the Fenwick’s had not left her. It had cooled and hardened into something else.
Edmund looked at his wife in the golden light of the Marchmont gallery and saw, for one held second, an extraordinary woman. Her chin was lifted. Her shoulders were set. She was magnificent, and he had to look away.
He looked back at the painting. He breathed once.
“Sophia,” he said. Very softly. “You are extraordinary.”
He had not meant to say it aloud. The words had arrived in the room of their own accord.
Sophia blinked. Whatever she had braced herself to hear, it had not been that. She did not look away.
He took her arm. They moved on.
***
He found Arabella in the third room a quarter of an hour later.
She was standing with two young women he did not immediately recognize, in a small alcove near the doorway, speaking with a bright animation Edmund had come to associate with Arabella conducting herself in public. He registered, within a few seconds, what she was saying.
“... and apparently, the entire engagement was conducted on her terms from the beginning. He was the soul of patience throughout. He has said himself he bears her no ill will. Of course, people will believe what they wish to believe, but there are those of us who know him better and who can speak to his conduct.”
The phrasing was entirely Lord Graystone’s. He could hear it. The soul of patience throughout. Bears her no ill will. Those of us who know him better. He had read it in the anonymous note locked in his desk drawer.
He had heard Ashworth deploy a version of it in a club a fortnight ago. It was there, in his sister’s voice, and his sister was passing it to two young debutantes who were nodding as if they had been entrusted with something interesting.
He crossed the room.
He did not hurry. He arrived at the alcove with a steady smile in place, greeted the two young women politely, and said, gently, “Arabella. I require a moment.”
She turned, saw his face, reading it within a second and a half. Her own face fell.
“Edmund.”
“In the corridor, please.”
He took her elbow lightly. He did not grip her. He led her out of the third room into the marble corridor that connected the gallery rooms to the front hall, positioned himself between her and the open doorway, and kept his voice low.
“Arabella.”
“I was only saying.”
“I know what you were saying. I have heard the phrasing before. It is Lord Graystone’s.
He is feeding it to you. He has been feeding it to you for some weeks, and you have been carrying it through our house, and tonight you are carrying it through Lord Marchmont’s drawing rooms, and I want you to stop. ”
Her color rose. He could see the defensiveness assembling itself in her shoulders.
“I am not—”
“Arabella.”
“I am not being fed anything, Edmund. You speak as if I cannot form an opinion of my own. Mr. Cummings is very kind to me. He has been kind to me at every event we have attended this Season. He has been more honest with me than anyone in this family, including you, and if he has told me certain things about your wife it is because he believes I have the maturity to hear them.”
“His name is Graystone.”
“It is Lord Graystone, yes.”
“I should be obliged if you would not refer to him by his given name in my hearing.”
She did not answer.
He looked at her. He could see her face going through small visible adjustments.
The defensiveness was holding, but beneath it something was beginning to slide.
She had not been entirely certain about the phrasing she had just used.
She had liked the way it sounded, and she had been using it because using it made her feel as though she had been entrusted with something.
He did not, in that corridor, intend to argue her out of it.
“You are going home with Catherine. Now. We shall speak about this tomorrow.”
“Edmund.”
“Tomorrow, Arabella. Not here.”
She opened her mouth to say something and closed it.
She was holding back tears, and it was costing her something, though he had no intention of cracking her in a marble corridor at a public gallery.
He found Catherine. He explained the situation in three sentences.
Catherine took her sister by the arm without hesitation, and the two of them went to find their carriage.
Then he went to find Sophia.
***
In the carriage, in the dark, he told her about the anonymous notes.
He told her all of it. The first note inside Lord Graystone’s congratulatory letter the day after their wedding. The second note which arrived in the morning post. Percival Cummings’s careful letter about inheritance and accounts.
The letter to Arabella in Lord Graystone’s hand, promising her the truth would come to light soon. He told her in the steady measured voice he used for delivering difficult information, and she sat across from him in the dark of the carriage, listening without interrupting.
When he had finished, she was very still.
“Edmund.”
“Yes.”
“I have something to tell you too.”
The carriage was turning onto Grosvenor Street. He could see, through the window, the porch lamps lit at the front of the house. He could see, on the step beside the night footman, the Arabella’s small figure, in her wrap, holding a folded paper in her hand.
The carriage stopped.
The footman handed them down. Arabella did not wait for them to reach the step. She came forward into the lamplight, and her face was very pale. The paper in her hand was thick and unmarked and sealed with a plain wax that bore no impression.
“This came an hour ago. A man brought it to the door. He would not give his name. He said it was urgent.”
Edmund took the packet. He weighed it in his hand. It was substantial. The paper inside, when he broke the wax and unfolded the outer cover in the lamplight of the entrance hall, was a stack of perhaps two dozen sheets in a clerk’s careful hand. Account ledgers.
Cargo manifests. Bank drafts. The name Graystone on the upper corner of each, the figures arranged in cold legible columns by someone who had kept them legibly on purpose.
He looked up.
Sophia was at his shoulder. Arabella was a pace behind her, watching. Catherine had appeared at the head of the stairs in her wrap. The house had gone very quiet.
“Who sent this?” Sophia asked.
“I do not know.”
“Someone wants Lord Graystone exposed.”
“Someone does.”
He looked at the topmost ledger sheet. The figures stared back at him, neutral and indisputable. A stranger had been keeping the copies in the dark for as long as Percival Cummings had been generating originals, and the stranger had decided, that evening, that the keeping was finished.
The question was who. The question was why now.