Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
A Discussion Among the Romans
The morning was absurdly bright—one of those rare London days when the sun seemed to have mistaken March for May. I arrived, with my maid in tow, at the British Museum at half past ten, having told Miriam I intended to study the Roman antiquities—which was not, strictly speaking, a lie.
One could study a great many things in the Townley Gallery. Roman portrait busts. The behavior of gentlemen who signed their letters with one name and introduced themselves with another. The limits of one's own judgement.
Inside, the museum swallowed the sunshine whole. The gallery was cool and dim, nearly deserted as Lord Everthorne's note had promised. A pair of elderly scholars murmured over a catalogue. Otherwise, the Roman dead had the room to themselves.
I found the portrait busts and pretended to examine them. A row of marble senators stared back with expressions of varying severity, each convinced of his own importance. They reminded me, uncharitably, of Lord Pemberton.
I was contemplating a particularly supercilious Caesar when a voice spoke from behind me.
"The expression on that one suggests he has just been told the wine has run out."
I turned. Julian Ashcombe stood a few paces away, carrying a walking stick with the easy manner of a gentleman for whom it was simply part of his dress. Tall, dark coat, plain cravat—but there was nothing simple about the way he occupied a room. Containment. A man holding a great deal in check.
"Lady Larkspur." He inclined his head. "Thank you for coming."
"Your note was persuasive. Shall we walk? Two people standing in conversation attract more notice than two people strolling past antiquities."
He fell into step beside me. My maid followed far enough behind she could not hear our conversation. As we moved deeper into the gallery, I noticed the slight unevenness in his gait—a faint favoring of the left leg, the kind of thing one might miss if not paying close attention.
"You wished to discuss how we might proceed," I prompted. "Regarding Miss Gray."
"I have been thinking of little else." He paused before a bust of Marcus Aurelius, though I doubted he saw it. "Lydia was companion to my grandmother for twenty years. She was intelligent, discreet, and quietly courageous."
"You knew her well, then."
"Well enough to respect her. My grandmother was not a woman given to trust." There was a dryness in his tone that suggested considerable understatement. "But Lydia earned it. She was not merely a companion but a confidante."
We moved past a case of Roman glass.
“You think your grandmother shared things with her?”
"I cannot say with certainty. My grandmother died while I was in the army." He glanced at me. "But Lydia kept a notebook. I saw it, in those early years—a small leather-bound thing she carried everywhere. She might have written down what Grandmother shared with her.”
My pulse quickened, but I kept my expression steady. The notebook was locked in my writing desk drawer at Everly House, its pages half verse, half cipher. I had deciphered barely a page in three evenings. "Do you believe it still exists?"
"That is what troubles me. The landlady testified at the inquest that Lydia's rooms had been ransacked. If whoever killed her went to the trouble of searching her lodgings, the notebook is precisely the sort of thing they would have been looking for."
"And if they found it?"
"Then we have lost our best evidence of what Lydia knew and whom she intended to expose. But there is a chance they did not. Lydia was careful—more careful than anyone gave her credit for. The rooms should be searched properly."
I let the silence fill with the soft echo of our footsteps. The notebook was not in Lydia's rooms. It was in mine. But I was not ready to trust him—not yet. His family's name appeared in its pages. Until I understood what Lydia had written about the Ashcombes, sharing it with him would be unwise.
"The landlady was fond of Lydia," I said. "Lydia spoke of me to her once as the lady who hosted a literary salon. I think she would let me in."
"You. But not me."
"A woman calling on a dead friend's landlady to collect a keepsake is unremarkable. The Marquis of Everthorne arriving to search a murdered woman's rooms would be rather more conspicuous."
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "You have a talent for strategy, Lark—" He stopped, as though the name had slipped out ahead of permission. "Forgive me. Lady Larkspur."
I let the moment pass.
"There is something else," he said, stopping before a marble Roman matron whose serene expression suggested she had never been troubled by anything so vulgar as doubt. "The poem Lydia read at your salon. It spoke of men who used power to escape scrutiny. Of silence purchased."
"It did."
"Was she writing about Everthorne Manor?"
The question was direct, and I respected him for asking it. A guilty man—or a cautious one—would have circled the subject.
"The poem was not specific. She described a figure—unnamed—who built a public image upon charity while privately sanctioning cruelties that would never survive daylight.
Lydia came to see me privately before she died.
She told me a young woman in your grandmother's household had been dismissed very suddenly with no explanation.
By the end of the week, the girl was spoken of as unstable, unsuitable.
Lydia said the man responsible dined at the table the following evening as though nothing had occurred. "
Julian went very still.
“That was in the past,” I said. “What she wrote about in her poem reflected the present. But I sense that somehow the two are connected.”
“Did she say so?”
“She said that was the start. Why else would she bring up Everthorne Manor when she spoke to me? She must have seen something, heard something.” I gazed straight at him. “Lydia was frightened. Genuinely frightened. But she was resolute about publishing the poem. She wanted the world to know.”
“And that same day, she was dead. Someone with a great deal to lose had reason to stop her."
“I believe so,” I said. “The question is who.”
We walked in silence for several paces.
"What happened at the manor a decade or so ago?” I asked. “I understand Mainwaring was at Everthorne that fateful night. I spoke with him at a recent supper party. He knows more than he admitted."
His jaw tightened. "Mainwaring was William's closest friend at Oxford. If anyone knew the truth, it would be him. What did he say?"
"He was evasive. When pressed, he could not meet my eye."
He stopped and faced me. "You have heard the story, I imagine. About me."
"I have heard several versions. None of them complete."
"Including mine." His bitterness was so finely controlled it was almost invisible.
"I was drinking heavily that night. A habit I have since abandoned. I know I did not touch Emily. But I cannot account for every hour, and I cannot name who did. My father decided that my uncertainty was less important than William’s future.
So I took the blame, took a commission, and spent the next decade trying to become someone worth being. "
"Your brother. William. Was he—"
"I don't know." The words came quickly, with the sound of a question asked a thousand times without answer.
"He was in the conservatory where Emily was found.
But so were others. My father never told me the truth, and William—" He stopped.
"William is dead. Whatever he knew or did, he took it with him. "
We strolled a few minutes in silence while I pondered what he’d said. It wouldn’t do to pursue that painful subject with him. At least not at the moment. But there was another question that had been turning in my mind.
"At Highgate, you introduced yourself as Julian Ashcombe. But you signed your note Everthorne. How shall I address you?"
Something shifted behind his eyes—not quite surprise, but the faint recalibration of a man who had not expected to be read so closely.
"Julian Ashcombe is who I am," he said, after a pause that lasted a beat longer than politeness required. "Everthorne is what I inherited. I confess I have not yet reconciled the two."
"Then which does the world get?"
"The world gets Everthorne. It is what they expect. But it has never felt quite right."
An idea occurred to me. "What about Thorne? Less formal than the title and maybe closer to who you are?”
"Thorne." He turned the name over, trying it on.
Then something eased in his expression—as though a knot had been loosened rather than untied.
"Yes. That suits." The smile he gave me then was a different smile altogether—not the careful, contained one of a man on his guard, but something warmer, more approachable. "Thank you, Lady Larkspur."
That he had accepted the name I offered was a minor thing. But it warmed me nonetheless that he’d valued my suggestion.
"Lady Larkspur! What a delightful surprise."
I turned to find Lord Peregrine approaching from the Egyptian rooms, his expression one of mild and unconvincing astonishment. Peregrine was never surprised to find anyone anywhere. He simply performed delight as a courtesy.
"Lord Peregrine. What brings you to the museum?"
"The Assyrian reliefs. I am developing a theory about the palace at Nineveh that will bore everyone I know within a fortnight." His gaze slid to Julian. "But forgive me. I am intruding."
"Not at all. Lord Peregrine Montfort, may I present Lord Everthorne?”
The two men regarded each other with the careful courtesy of people taking precise measurements.
"Lord Everthorne." Peregrine extended his hand. "I have heard a great deal about you. Very little of it from reliable sources, so I shall form my own opinion, if you don't mind."
"I would prefer it," Thorne said. There was a beat of mutual recognition—two men accustomed to being underestimated.
"Well." Peregrine adjusted his gloves. "I shall leave you to the Romans. They are dreary company, but less likely to gossip than the Egyptologists.”
“We’ll see if we can fit the Egyptian exhibit into our visit,” I said.
“You won’t be disappointed.” He inclined his head before strolling away.
"A friend of yours?" Thorne asked.
"One of the best. And sharper than he lets on."
"I gathered as much." For a few moments, we considered the Roman antiquities, and then he asked, "So, how do you wish to proceed?"
"I will call on Lydia's landlady and search the rooms. And we must identify everyone who was at that Everthorne house party. Lydia did say that was the start." I stopped and gazed at him. “Do you recall who was in attendance?”
He let his gaze drift past me, somewhere beyond the gallery, as though casting back to a half-remembered time.
“It was to be a shooting party, that much I recall. Several of William’s friends were there.
Mainwaring for one. But the others? Sorry.
Can’t remember their names.” He brushed a hand across his brow.
“There were ladies there as well. Father was in a tear to find William a wife. The morning started out fine enough. But then the weather turned, and we returned to the house. That’s when I started drinking. ”
“We have to find out who was there.”
“My grandmother kept meticulous records—guest lists, seating, correspondence. I can send for them.”
I hated to pin my hopes on a dowager’s journals alone. “What about Mainwaring? He resides in town. We should press him.”
He appeared relieved by my suggestion. “Leave it to me. Whatever happened that night, he’ll know at least a piece of it."
“Lydia was killed because she threatened to expose the truth,” I said. “Whoever is responsible will move to silence anyone asking questions. So please take care.”
He looked at me steadily. “That applies to you as well, Lady Larkspur. Are you certain you wish to be involved in this?"
“I’m already involved. Lydia Gray read her last poem in my drawing room. She was frightened, and I did nothing about it. The least I can do now is seek justice for her.”
Something shifted in his face—the faintest easing, as though a weight had been redistributed rather than removed.
"Then we begin. I will send for my grandmother's papers and track down Mainwaring. You call on the landlady. And if there is any trace of the notebook—"
"If there is any trace, I will find it."
It was not a lie. Merely a deferral. I told myself there was a difference.
He drew a card from his waistcoat pocket and held it out. "My direction in town. If you learn anything—or find yourself in any difficulty—send word."
I took the card. Our fingers did not touch, but the space between them felt oddly charged, like the air before a storm.
"Thank you, Thorne.”
"Thank you, Lady Larkspur." He inclined his head and walked away, lightly leaning on his walking stick. The slight unevenness of his stride was just visible—a private cost, carried quietly, that most people would never notice.
I stood among the Romans for a time, turning his card over in my gloved hands, thinking about trust and its costs.
When I stepped outside, the March sunshine struck me with almost startling force after the cool gloom of the gallery.
The contrast felt apt—the move from shadow into light, from the dark uncertainty surrounding Lydia's death into the slow, deliberate work of uncovering it.
We had agreed to begin. I would decipher her notebook.
And when I knew whether Thorne's concern was genuine or the most convincing performance I had ever witnessed, I would decide whether to trust him with everything.
Until then, the notebook would remain locked in my desk. Some truths could not be rushed. They had to be earned.