Chapter 21 #2
“Accidents.” Lady Theresa clicked her tongue at him.
“Being hunted one by one by ghosts is no accident. And if it is not malicious ghosts, then I have no doubt at all that it was Her Grace. Not,” she added, reaching a placating hand Nic’s way, “that I think she meant to harm anyone, I assure you. One has only to spend a few minutes with the poor thing to realise she’s quite touched in the head. ”
“Words I will thank you not to repeat, Lady Theresa,” Nic snapped. “She is not always entirely with us, I grant, but she has never, and would never, harm a soul.”
“Then what of Lord Francis? Or Lord Ellis’s boy? If no one will explain what happened to them, what are we supposed to think?”
Her words recalled Master Everel’s admission that the duchess had been involved in Lord Francis’s death, but refusing to let doubt show on his face, Nic drew himself up.
“You are supposed to think nothing. Truly it is surprising that in my lifetime only two people have died within these walls. That is, until your arrival, Lady Theresa.”
“Lord Monterris! I was willing to forgive your accusative observation last night, as we had all had quite the shock, but repeating it now is rather too much.”
“You did hand me the cup,” Lady Lisbeth whispered.
“Now, now.” Lord Charborough stepped in. “We are all bereft by the loss of poor Millie, but such bickering will not help. We don’t even know if it was due to the tea, when something else entirely could have been ailing her.”
Dr. Fanshaw agreed with a low murmur. “And as it is, unfortunately, difficult to tell after the fact whether poison was involved, I can only recommend that everyone be vigilant.”
“That is all very well for you to say, Doctor, since you can leave any time you like,” Lady Theresa snapped.
“Never before have I wished so much not to be a Brilliant! Come, Lizzy, perhaps we should keep to the second-floor sitting room for the remainder of the lock-in. If we stay together and do not wander, then we shall not make such easy targets.”
Nic couldn’t like Lady Theresa, but he was thankful that she at least was taking the threat seriously, and hoped she would keep Lady Lisbeth firmly under her wing for the final days.
“Doctor,” Lord Charborough said once the ladies had departed. “If you would look in on Leaf this morning, I would appreciate it. Poor thing said she got hardly any sleep last night and is lying abed.”
“Of course, my lord.”
“And I do hope you will have an eye to her these last few days, Lord Monterris,” the man went on. “There will of course be no further entertainments given the circumstances, but your company may keep her from worrying unduly.”
“I will do whatever I can to ensure she feels comfortable,” Nic said. “Especially since this will soon be her home too.”
It was a strange truth, one that had been slowly creeping upon him, that while the lock-in would soon end, Leaf would not long after become a permanent fixture of his day-to-day life.
They got along well, but it was ultimately a future in which neither of them got what they wanted, where the best they could hope for was company in their disappointments.
The oddness of Nic’s pronouncement seemed to strike the marquess too, for he looked momentarily taken aback, as though somewhere along the way he had forgotten he was negotiating the departure of his daughter.
There would still be a wedding ceremony, of course, and likely a grand party to celebrate it, but in a contracted marriage the signing of the papers superseded the speaking of any wedding vows.
Which meant within a few days Nic and Leaf would officially be married, at least in the only way that truly mattered under vow law.
The marquess soon excused himself, followed by the doctor, leaving Nic standing alone beneath the great hall’s shining chandeliers.
Despite what he had said, he had no confidence that Mrs. Podmarsh would return with any answers about the ransacked rooms, and was far more concerned about them than he had dared let on.
It suggested that if someone rather than something had been behind Millie’s death, they hadn’t gotten what they wanted.
Of course, Lord Charborough had made light of it, waving off the possibility of foul play.
His own contract to marry a Monterris having fallen through, he seemed determined to ensure this one didn’t.
He’d put an enormous fee and his eldest daughter on the table to make it happen, and now ignored every risk.
There had been something between him and the duke, of course, but even a longstanding love seemed no reason for such foolhardiness.
The beginnings of a headache prickled over his scalp, threatening later suffering, yet Nic found himself chewing over the question of Lord Charborough’s motives all the same.
And knowing it was a question he could not answer alone, he spun on his heel and made for the brightly lit rooms of his mother’s sanctuary.
Nic’s knock sounded overloud in the gallery, even his mama’s flock of misfit echoes quiet.
From beyond the door came no sound, no voices or footsteps, like the house itself was pressing silence upon him to stop the questions rising in his throat.
When no answer came, he knocked again and turned the handle.
“Mama? Silla?”
No doubt the duchess was just out getting some air, yet after the previous night, the emptiness resounded.
It had been a long time since he’d been in his mother’s rooms alone, and the space was eerie in her absence.
No humming, no gentle rustle as Silla moved about, ever present—not even the scratch of quill on paper as the duchess filled yet another page of her diary.
It sat open upon the side table, however, and Nic made his way toward it with unanswered questions burning on the tip of his tongue.
Without picking it up, he looked down at the double spread of his mother’s hasty scrawl. At the top of one page, a date stared back. Not today’s, not yesterday’s. The second of August, 1790.
“Twenty-six years ago?” He turned back a page and the date changed from August to July, then into the beginning of 1789.
Nic looked around, wondering what had become of the diary she had been writing in only the other day.
Quick steps took him to the writing desk, where he pulled open the drawer and froze.
There, piled on top of one another, were several diaries.
They all looked the same, differentiated only by the amount of ink splotched on their leather covers.
He pulled the topmost book from the drawer and let it fall open. The first date was from 1788, and flipping to the end, he found the final entry dated the fifteenth of May 1791. Time is a perplexing thing, it began. Hours able to go missing at a blink if one does not keep track of them.
Leaving the book open to that last page, he picked up another and turned to the end. There the same date, the same entry: Time is a perplexing thing, hours able to go missing at a blink if one does not keep track of them.
He reached into the drawer and all but snatched out another book, but even before he found the final entry he knew what it would say.
Time is a perplexing thing, it began. Hours able to go missing at a blink if one does not keep track of them.
“All the same book,” he whispered to the empty room. “She’s writing the same diary over and over.”
Having trapped the old diaries back in their drawer, he returned to the side table. And opening the book to a random page near the beginning, he started to read.
She first sees Monterris Court in the spring.
Large blossoming trees line the drive. Their roots are thick, buckling and cracking the stones, leaving carriages to bump the final stretch to the door, but the discomfort is almost worth it, she thinks, for the sweet scent and the bright colours, and for the chirrup of cheerful birdsong.
She has been too well bred to stick her head out the window, but not so much that she cannot admit she wants to.
Nic looked away to ease the hollowing sensation in his gut. His mother had written as though telling someone else’s story rather than her own, yet the scene she painted was all too real, the moment one she would have experienced herself. He flicked over some dozen pages.
Everel bows to the duke, bows to her, and strides out, closing the door behind him.
He isn’t a cheerful companion, not even a friendly one, yet without him the room chills.
The duke is sitting at his desk surrounded by his papers.
Correspondence and trade sheets, scribbled notes and tallies, and the occasional line of smithed sigils—all the company he ever seems to need or want.
Nic knew that feeling and turned still more pages.
Francis sips from his glass, chair creaking as he leans back.
“I’m not very forgetful, I’m afraid, but fortunately I’m good at reading people.
You wish your late brother had contracted you to a different family.
Honestly, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t.
I’ve wished all my life I’d been born with a different name, so cheers. ”
She knows it must seem desperate, pathetic, that so small a moment of kindness has reached inside her, but there in that quiet, airy room full of gears and reels and the scent of oil, she doesn’t care.
His lips are soft and warm and taste of wine, the illicit act nothing to the sheer joy of feeling, for even the briefest moment, like she is alive again.
Nic stared at the page, heart thumping hard. And as though to stop the certainty growing in his mind, he flipped on.
She runs her hand over the mound of it beneath the new coat. Children are a woman’s joy, her mother used to say, but she’s still waiting for that joy. Perhaps it will arrive with the child. Or perhaps there is something wrong with her.
No.