Chapter Three Evangeline’s Letter
Marianne Vale did not sleep.
She made the attempt, because there were duties to be performed the next morning and because Mrs Finch possessed an instinct, alarming in its accuracy, for detecting when one of her ladies had gone through the night on nothing but tea and stubbornness.
Marianne put out her candle at half past eleven, folded her shawl at the foot of the narrow bed, and lay very still beneath the counterpane while Lantern House settled around her.
She heard the final turning of locks below stairs.
She heard Tom’s tread crossing the hall, heavier than usual because there were now strange men in Halgrave livery stationed beyond the square and no footman liked to feel himself observed while guarding his own door.
She heard the faint murmur of Mrs Finch giving some last instruction to Bess, then the soft close of a door.
She heard a carriage pass long after midnight, its wheels fading into wet distance.
She did not hear peace.
The little room that had been hers since Lady Theodosia first took her in was tucked under the eaves at the back of the house, neither a servant’s room nor a guest chamber, but something between: plain, warm enough when the wind did not push too hard at the window frame, furnished with a narrow bed, a washstand, a small chest of drawers, two shelves of books, and a desk that had once belonged to a schoolboy and therefore bore knife marks along one edge.
Marianne liked it because no one had intended it to impress.
The room did not pretend. It held what she required and asked no performance from her.
On ordinary nights, the smallness of it comforted her.
Tonight, it enclosed her with the thought of a black rook.
She had placed Evangeline’s packet back in the japanned box before retiring.
Helena had locked the box herself and taken the key.
That ought to have satisfied duty. Nothing was unsecured.
Nothing could be mislaid by weary hands or frightened servants.
Yet Marianne saw the ledger scrap still, as clearly as if it lay upon the pillow beside her.
The small black mark. The raised wing. The crowned rook stamped in the margin beside figures no honest household account would have needed to disguise.
And she saw, again and again, Sebastian Rookwood’s hand as it closed around his gloves, the heavy signet ring catching the study light.
The same rook.
Perhaps such a device belonged to the Rookwood family generally.
Perhaps it marked an old estate account, a banking house, a seal used by some solicitor associated with Halgrave.
Perhaps the Duke wore an inherited symbol whose misuse he had no more chosen than his sister had chosen the shame placed upon her.
Marianne understood all these possibilities.
Indeed, she listed them in her mind with careful fairness, as one might arrange weights upon a scale.
But the scale did not balance.
The threatening letter had come after an anonymous warning sent to the Duke. The stone had come through Lantern House’s window after the first confrontation. Someone wanted the papers returned. Someone feared what Lady Theodosia had preserved. Someone had known enough to demand a ledger by name.
And that someone, or someone near him, used the mark of a rook.
At one o’clock, Marianne rose, relit her candle, wrapped herself in her shawl and sat at the little desk beneath the sloped ceiling.
She had brought nothing from the study except her memory, but memory, when trained by Lady Theodosia, could be made almost as useful as paper.
She opened a blank notebook and wrote across the top of a clean page:
Lady Evangeline Rookwood — known facts and questions.
She sat for a moment, listening to the scratch of rain against the small window, then began.
Known: Lady Evangeline came to Lantern House in distress. Approx. seven years ago. Evening. Ball gown. Mud on hem. Ink on cuff. Trembling hands. Bruise at wrist. Carried small leather ledger.
Known: Later public account alleged improper attachment, signed transfer, instability, removal from society.
Known: Letter states she did not sign transfer and did not write letters “in the form they have shown.”
Known: Copied settlement page contains irregularities: middle name, witness date, inconsistent sums.
Known: Ledger scrap includes initials E.R., P.A., S.M., H.R., symbols including black rook.
Known: Duke claims to have searched for ledger for years.
Question: Was Duke ignorant, complicit, or misled?
The last question sat there, dark and accusing.
Marianne stared at it for some time before drawing a careful line beneath it.
She did not like unfairness. It was a luxury often enjoyed by those who had been wronged, but Lady Theodosia had taught her that a wrong answer given in righteous anger could still ruin an innocent person.
Marianne had no intention of becoming careless merely because she disliked Sebastian Rookwood.
Dislike, however, was too simple a word for what she felt.
She disliked his arrogance. She disliked the ease with which he had first called her a paid companion, not because it was untrue but because he had meant to place her by it.
She disliked the force of him in a room, the assumption of obedience that clung to him even when he spoke with civility.
She disliked that he had threatened Lantern House because grief had frightened him into power.
But she did not know what to do with the look in his eyes when he read Evangeline’s letter.
That look had followed her up the stairs.
It followed her now.
Marianne closed the notebook, then opened it again because closing things had never made them vanish. She turned to another page and, though she had not meant to do it, wrote from memory the line from Evangeline’s letter that would not leave her.
If he looks at me with pity again instead of belief, I shall break.
The words were not from the portion Sebastian had read in full.
They came later in the letter, in the part Marianne had returned to after he left, when the house had quieted and Helena had allowed her one hour alone with the packet before locking it away.
Marianne had read the whole letter then, not as evidence, but as a voice.
She had told herself it was necessary. It was, in part.
Yet necessity did not explain the ache that had opened beneath her ribs as Evangeline’s words moved from ink into breath.
Lady Theodosia, I beg you to believe that I did not sign what they claim I signed.
I know what they say of me. I know I have been vain.
I know I have liked admiration too well, and I know my brother warned me of Ashmont before I would hear him.
But folly is not consent, and vanity is not madness.
They speak of me as if I have become a storm that must be shut in a room until it passes.
They watch me. They correct me. If I say I did not sign, they tell me I do not remember.
If I ask to see the paper, they say I have already seen it and distressed myself.
If I protest, they lower their voices and look at one another, and their pity is worse than anger, because anger at least admits I am there.
I am told that I wrote letters I do not remember writing in words that do not sound like mine.
Some lines are mine, I think. Taken from here and there.
A jest made in one place. A foolish compliment answered in another.
But they have been sewn into something ugly, and now they hold it up and call it my character.
Sebastian thinks me reckless, and perhaps I was once, but I am not mad. If he looks at me with pity again instead of belief, I shall break.
Marianne pressed her fingers to her eyes.
It was the pity that did it. Not cruelty, not even disbelief in its plainest form, but pity.
That cold, social pity that spoke softly while it removed keys, papers, choices.
Marianne had seen it too often. Pity used as a glove over power.
Pity that said, We know what is best, because your distress has disqualified you from knowing yourself.
She had seen women arrive at Lantern House still wrapped in it.
A widow whose son-in-law had pityingly explained that she was too frail to manage her own money.
A young wife whose husband had pitied her nerves until he had convinced a physician to confine her to the country.
A governess pitied for misunderstanding a gentleman’s attentions after he denied every promise he had made.
A niece pitied for her fanciful objections to a guardian’s choice of husband.
Pity had many faces and always clean hands.
Marianne rose from the desk and crossed to the window.
Beyond the glass, the garden was a square of darkness edged by wet brick.
Somewhere near the rear wall, a man in Halgrave livery might be standing watch.
She wondered whether he knew whom he guarded.
The ladies of Lantern House, perhaps. The Duke’s interests, perhaps.
The secret that might yet condemn the house he served.
At two o’clock, she sat again and wrote down everything she remembered of the night Lady Evangeline came to Lantern House.
It had been raining then too, but harder.
A summer rain, warm and violent, beating the leaves in the square until the gutters ran like little rivers.
Marianne had been newly employed, newly instructed, newly terrified of disappointing Lady Theodosia.
She had not yet understood the house. She had known only that ladies came at odd hours, letters were burned in the study fire after being copied in cipher, and Lady Theodosia frequently asked questions that made solicitors perspire.