Chapter Fourteen
“I will pay for this day’s work.” I accepted a brandy from Arthur, not because I wanted a brandy, but because Arthur was being gracious. Thus did shy dukes settle their nerves.
Miss Dujardin was tucking Leander in up in his aerie. I’d sent notes to Hyperia and to the Danforth household. Atticus had received a hero’s welcome in the stable and kitchen, as well he should have. I’d asked for a tepid bath to be prepared for my dusty self, but given the late hour, nobody—least of all myself—was moving with any haste.
“You found him,” Arthur said, saluting with his drink. “That is all that matters.”
We sat outside the library’s French doors, no sconces lit, no footmen hovering. I was worn out as only a long day of indecisive battle could leave a soldier weary in body and spirit.
“Finding Leander is not all that matters,” I replied, setting my drink aside, untouched. “We still don’t know the boy’s antecedents.”
“He’s Harry to the life at that age. Not something you would know. We have likenesses, somewhere. We were all immortalized in Her Grace’s sketchbooks.”
Arthur had watched in silence when Miss Dujardin had been reunited with her charge. She had not wept, but the boy’s puerile dignity had come completely unraveled, and that had nearly undone me as well.
Poor little mite. Poor, brave, reckless little mite. “Leander and I are due for a talk, when he’s feeling a bit more the thing. When I retrieved him from the park, he was too busy inhaling a meat pie and fretting that he’d be made to do endless sums.”
“An unkind fate indeed.” Arthur’s tone reminded me that he did sums by the hour. By the day and week too. In his absence, that task would fall to me. I liked tallying and toting up. I’d found such work restful when I’d been recuperating among the quartermasters.
“I don’t particularly care who Leander’s mother is, Jules. The Hammerschmidt woman won’t try to steal him out of his cot, and if that cook—the one with the Viking name—tries to claim him, I will have a word with Her Grace of Ambrose. If anybody has the temerity to inquire, Mrs. Waites had the honor of bringing him into this world.”
A fine plan, if one was a duke and could quell gossip with a raised eyebrow. As soon as that duke’s back was turned, the whispers would resume at even greater velocity.
“The boy deserves to know the truth, Arthur. Who one’s parents are is not a detail in this life.” I sipped my brandy, needing the fire in my gullet. “I don’t suppose you know who my father is?”
“Your father was His Late Grace of Waltham, as far as I know. You’d have to take up the discussion with Her Grace, and I’d say she owes you those answers.”
“Perhaps you’d opine to that effect in your next weekly report to her?”
“I might, at that.”
I was learning to read my brother, and in Arthur’s silence, I heard enormous relief. Leander’s situation had cast a cloud over Arthur’s travel plans—and over his heart—and now that a departure date had been set, Arthur was allowing himself to look forward to the occasion.
I, by contrast, was looking forward to long weeks at Caldicott Hall, the beauty of the English countryside in autumn, the peace and deep quiet of a rural winter…
“The boy will come down to the Hall with me,” I said. “Safer for him there.”
“Healthier too. Show him all of Harry’s old haunts. You never did say where you came upon the lad.”
“Stuck ten feet up a tree.” A metaphor, that.
“Harry was always part monkey. Once I explained to him that nobody looks up, he started on his career as a spy. He was always sizing up this or that tree for climbing potential, and then he began on the porticoes and gazebos. Took years off Papa’s life with his acrobatics.”
“I have visions of you parading around the nursery in miniature full court regalia. How would you know about the privacy to be had in trees?”
He sipped his drink. “Leander is not the first Caldicott boy to run away from home. We can get his name changed by deed poll before I leave for Calais.”
“Changed from what? We have no proof of his present name, and the legal types generally like to start there.”
Arthur set his glass beside mine. “You won’t let this go.”
“Can you forget you are the duke?”
“I intend to give it a damned good try, thanks to you. All my life, I’ve known what lay ahead. Papa made sure I held no illusions. I’d have little privacy, few real friends, many dilemmas. No matter what choices I made—to ignore petty poaching or enforce the letter of the law, to support this cause or decry that one—I’d be judged vociferously. For the next year, I hope to set all of that aside and be… myself.”
My brother and I shared a burden of loneliness I hadn’t been able to see clearly because I’d been so wrapped up in my own troubles. Banter’s company was doubtless a comfort, but the title also made Banter’s company a greater risk.
“The boy will know a version of the same burden you do, Arthur. Whispers will follow him from the schoolyard to the churchyard, into whatever profession he chooses. The talk will affect how he sees himself, what doors open to him and which slam in his face. His Grace was my father of record, and even the great edifice of legal, ducal legitimacy has been no shelter against the looks, the asides, the jokes in poor taste.”
I’d chosen reconnaissance in part because those duties meant less time spent in the officer’s mess, less time in camp, less time idling about on leave with the men who were my inferiors in one sense and my irrefutable betters in another.
Leander is just a boy , I wanted to shout. A small, frightened, helpless boy. Shrewd for his age, likely of necessity. A competent liar, Miss Dujardin had said, and that broke my heart. I had learned deception at a young age as well.
I’d learned to pretend the name-calling didn’t matter. To put on a convincing show of indifference when the young ladies passed me over at the tea dances for the spares of lower rank. To act as if the hostesses invited me for my competent dancing and charming small talk, rather than out of fear of offending my mother.
“You are tired,” Arthur said. “I am tired, for that matter. You are the hero of the day, and yet, you insist on fretting. Go to bed, Jules. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow… Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”
“Matthew, chapter six.” A deportment manual Mrs. Danforth ought to be made to memorize. “We must deal with the Danforth woman, or she’ll be every bit as persistent in her attempts to extort money from us as Clothilda Hammerschmidt on her most tenacious day.”
“That reminds me. Your trip to Horse Guards bore more fruit. A note arrived from some friend of Healy West’s. Somebody recalled a few facts regarding the late Lieutenant Colonel Danforth. He was a lecher and a drunk, not much liked.”
“Neither would have disqualified him for military service.” Though Danforth had made an enemy of his own wife.
“He was given the choice of selling up or a dishonorable discharge. Something to do with a colonel’s pretty young wife.”
“Then he was a fool, and the military can tolerate only so many fools among its officers.” The news ought to spark in me some compassion for the fool’s widow, but she’d struck a child simply because he’d been unable to fight back. Hell hath no fury…
Arthur finished his drink. “Get up to bed, Jules, lest you fall asleep out here and take a chill to go with your unhappy mood. I will call on Mrs. Danforth in person. She will dine out on that miracle for years. I will inform her that I have purchased the lease to the dwelling she so graciously made available to my nephew.”
I considered that tactic, which had much to recommend it, though we still did not know for a certainty that Leander was our nephew. “Have you purchased the place?”
“By this time tomorrow, I will own yet another Town property I do not want and become responsible for all of its repairs and maintenance. She’s likely late on the rent and will communicate her ongoing displeasure with the shutters and flues to me personally. Some people derive all manner of joy from complaining.”
Arthur was not one of them. I did not want to join those ranks either. “Deed the place to her, Arthur. Thanks for her charity, appreciation for her generosity. She will be bound by your largesse to speak well of you and thus of Leander.”
“That is…” Arthur rose. “That is... I do like it. Deprive her of her victimhood, her martyrdom—she is nothing remarkable without it—and she will be truly furious, not simply bitter. Diabolically noble of me. Jules, you might find you have a flair for the ducal role after all.”
He jaunted off to bed, or to pen his daily epistle to Banter, who likewise sent missives up from the country with faithful regularity.
If Mrs. Danforth was given a roof over her head and the prospect of a secure old age, she might part with a portion of her ire. I did not particularly care how she dealt with her windfall, provided she spoke no ill of Arthur or Leander, ever.
I followed Arthur into the house, because he’d been right: Another quarter hour sitting in the dark, and I’d have succumbed to the sheer weight of fatigue. Better by far to fall asleep in the bath. I had loose ends to tidy up on the morrow, and inertia would see me through that day. The day after tomorrow, though, I was likely to be completely useless.
I might manage to show my nephew some of the lesser-known details of the battle plan Wellington had adopted at Waterloo. Might let him sit on a pony for his first ride up and down the alley.
But was Leander truly my nephew? That question prevented me from slumbering in the tub and even kept me awake when I’d found the great and glorious comfort of my bed.
I rose in the morning, stiff, sore, and well aware that I owed Hyperia a report, despite Healy West’s interdiction on my socializing with his sister. First, I had another party to interview, however reluctant he and I might both be to even acknowledge each other.
I’d awoken with the birds, the habit of an officer behind enemy lines, one with miles to cover before the worst heat of the day. I was still tired and also famished in an I’ll-deal-with-that-later way, but I made myself take tea, toast, and eggs in my room. I left the house shortly after first light.
Atlas was happy to be under saddle and set a brisk pace for the park. We’d even managed to canter a bridle path or two before I spotted my quarry. He stood on the same hillside, reins in hand, his horse patiently awaiting further orders.
I kept Atlas to the walk as we approached. St. Clair merely watched us. If the eyes were the window to the soul, Sebastian St. Clair’s soul was an impenetrable abyss of silence. His gaze put me in mind of an old battlefield, still haunted, perhaps never to return to the province of the living.
“Lord Julian, good day.”
He did not bow, but I took his greeting for a willingness to parley. I dismounted a good eight feet from where he stood.
“St. Clair.”
“You found the boy?”
How could he possibly…? But then, St. Clair was supposedly living on borrowed time, and I figured near the top of the list of those who’d be justified in killing him. He doubtless kept a close eye on me and many others.
“He’s safe and sound, biding at Waltham House. Is he Harry’s son?”
“That’s good. Good that you found him.”
The relief seemed sincere, and I was reminded that St. Clair had been a boy stranded in France when the Peace of Amiens had come to an abrupt close. I shoved that recollection far to the side.
“Is he Harry’s son?”
St. Clair’s horse, who was of a height with Atlas, nudged at his owner’s arm. St. Clair stroked the beast’s ear gently. “Why would you expect me to know such a thing?”
“Two reasons. First, you were apparently the last person to see Harry alive. If, God forbid, I am taken from the mortal realm in a situation of extremity, I hope my dying sentiments will be to commend my love to my family. Second, if Harry had a son—a boy you’ve apparently taken some interest in—then you’d have used that knowledge against my brother. You made it your business to know a man’s vulnerabilities and exploit them.”
“Of course I did. I had to get results, or my superiors would have resorted to that time-honored diversion of torturing the prisoners.”
“ You tortured me.”
St. Clair was silent for a time, gently petting his horse.
Part of me wanted to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the life from him. But there he was… scratching his horse’s ear while the horse made sheep’s eyes and tilted his head at an undignified angle. One could not commit murder—or even take revenge—against a fellow who was merely showing his mount some affection.
I couldn’t, apparently. Not on this fine summer morning in the midst of Hyde Park’s peace and verdure. Bad form and all that. Then too, I was tired.
So abidingly tired.
St. Clair produced a carrot, broke it in two, and passed me half. Atlas was wiggling his damned lips before I’d accepted the bribe—or peace offering. The morning air was soon full of the sound of horsey mastication, though I well knew St. Clair was using the delay to organize his thoughts and choose his tactics.
“Physical torture is problematic for many reasons,” St. Clair began, as if embarking on an exegesis of some verse from Proverbs. “The first and most glaring difficulty is that the results are generally useless. Torture makes liars of the most honorable men. Why damage a fellow to the point that he will tell any falsehood, no matter how outlandish, if it’s what his tormentors want to hear? Torture also has the disagreeable risk of resulting in death. If the victim guesses wrong about what information is sought, if his constitution isn’t up to the challenge… you see the difficulty.”
So rational. While Atlas crunched his carrot, I envisioned backhanding St. Clair off his feet. I wasn’t the walking weapon I’d once been, but my bitterness made Mrs. Danforth’s look like the village militia bumbling about the green by comparison.
And yet, I wasn’t merely tired, I was exhausted. Backhanding a man of St. Clair’s proportions onto his backside would take considerable strength.
“You broke men’s minds rather than their bodies.”
“What is broken up here,”—St. Clair tapped his temple with a black-gloved hand—“can heal. What is broken in the body often lingers, providing an unrelenting echo of the original wound.”
“So you starved me, half froze me, and denied me water out of concern for my wellbeing. How considerate of you, and entirely beside the point. Did Harry speak of a son, of children in the general case?”
“He did not, and I have no reason to lie to you about this, my lord. If anything, I am motivated to serve your cause.”
“Because you are such a philanthropist among men. Of course.” I was getting angry, or trying to, but my temper wasn’t much interested in obliging me. St. Clair would deal graciously with my anger—like Arthur deeding a house to Mrs. Danforth—and I would find no satisfaction in being humored.
More to the point, my rage, much like my manly humors, seemed to have deserted its post. No doubt, three evenings hence, pretending to appreciate another brandy, I’d feel the fullness of my ire, but watching the sun rise over stately maples and the calm expanse of the Serpentine… I could conjure only annoyance and weariness.
St. Clair produced another carrot and repeated his ritual of sharing. “I am the last of my line. Because of my station, the French allowed me a choice of starvation in a parole town or joining La Grande Armée . Not out of compassion, but because they delighted in the thought of an English baron’s son—the baron himself in later years—being made to serve the Corsican. French humor can be a subtle thing, non ?”
His French accent, barely in evidence in previous occasions, was less subtle now, possibly by design.
“Did Harry have a son?”
“I believe he did, but I do not know of a certainty. He made no dying declarations, no convenient entreaty to me or the Almighty. He kept his own counsel, and he knew I held you elsewhere in the chateau. He could have bargained, he could have negotiated. He kept silent.”
“You are saying he could have protected me by compromising his honor, but refused that course?”
“Despite all rumor to the contrary, I am a rational man. For the sake of my continued survival, my efforts at the chateau had to bear fruit. But by the time you and your brother were captured, Wellington was moving through the passes. He was crossing the border, and the French army was in no state… I needn’t recite particulars. I offered your brother options. He chose his own course.”
The sun turned the dewy grass into a sparkling green wonder, the birds sang, equestrians offered one another cordial greetings, and footmen chatted while walking dogs for nearby households. A lovely morning, and Harry wasn’t here to see any of it.
“Did Harry bargain for my life?” I hated that I’d ask, but realized that St. Clair wanted me to have this discussion with him. St. Clair might or might not have information regarding Leander, but the topic of Harry had to be aired first.
That Harry’s ghost troubled what passed for St. Clair’s conscience gratified me exceedingly.
“Lord Harry did not bargain for your life, perhaps because he knew your death was never my objective. He trusted your ability to come through any ordeal I could devise, and you have. He kept his own counsel, but at the last, he was a man with deep regrets. I have no proof, but I have experience of men facing death, and Lord Harry Caldicott struck me as a fellow with much to mourn.”
“We all had much to mourn.” Also much to be grateful for, though I wasn’t about to admit that to St. Clair.
“True, but some griefs are harder to bear than others. I, for instance, am under an unwritten death sentence, but I have been given a reprieve. I am certain that once I have a healthy, legitimate son in my nursery, my days upon this earth will be brought to an end.”
“Because English honor is a subtle thing, non ?”
“ Précisément . As is English justice. I will never live to see my son grow up. I will be denied the chance to explain my choices to him at moments when he might receive my words with compassion. I will never have an opportunity to beg, if not his forgiveness, then his understanding. I will never hold a grandchild in my arms. My torment now is to know and mourn my fate.
“The woman who marries me,” he went on more softly, “had best include widow’s weeds in her trousseau, if any such woman I can find.”
I would not, in my most drunken imaginings, have seen the potential for this patch of common ground between Harry and his killer.
“You think Harry had the same regret—that his son would never know him?”
“I do. I have no basis in fact for this conclusion. Intuition and reflection alone suggest it to me. I am sorry I cannot be more help.”
“But you are not sorry you killed my brother.”
St. Clair offered his horse one final pat, then swung up into the saddle with the athleticism of the born equestrian.
“ I killed no one. Your brother essentially ended his own life and took his secrets—military and personal—with him. He had his reasons. I beg you to accept them and let the matter drop. I did not kill him, though I don’t expect you to believe that. Nonetheless, if my opinion means anything, that boy is Lord Harry’s son. Good day.”
St. Clair departed, keeping his horse to a sedate walk.
Had I put a bullet in his back, he might have thanked me, but I knew then, if I hadn’t known before, that the gun that fired such a bullet would not be mine.
And that was a relief beyond words.
I had barely regained the saddle before Hyperia, mounted on her elegant mare, emerged from a break in the trees. She waved her groom off as soon as she spotted me, and that was a relief too. I wasn’t up to small talk and subtle innuendo, not after my exchange with St. Clair.
“Is that who I think it is?” she asked, gaze following St. Clair’s progress along the hedgerow.
“Sebastian St. Clair, Lord St. Clair. I think he comes out here of a morning in hopes somebody will use him for target practice.”
She swung her gaze to me. “The war is over. His title is ancient. His auntie dotes on him.”
Of the three considerations, the last was the one that likely kept him from stealing a march on his assassins. If St. Clair was the last of his line, then that auntie had no other family, no other benefactor.
“St. Clair knows things,” I said, turning Atlas to toddle along beside Hyperia’s mare. “Things about Harry. He claimed Harry took his own life rather than divulge any secrets.”
“Then Harry chose the lesser of two dishonors,” Hyperia murmured, “or perhaps St. Clair was speaking metaphorically. By keeping his mouth shut, Harry sealed his own fate. St. Clair offered him another option, but Harry refused to compromise.”
“St. Clair’s style is more irony than metaphor.” We chose a path between stately maples, and already the shade felt good. “Murder was also not St. Clair’s style, though his guards and superiors had a less refined sense of how to encourage a prisoner to talk. He believes Leander is Harry’s son.”
“Does St. Clair know that, or was he sharing a hunch?”
“An informed and educated hunch.” Or knowledge disguised as a hunch.
The horses moseyed along. If I hadn’t been in Hyde Park, where what remained of polite society was likely to come upon me, I might have dismounted, propped my backside against a handy tree, and dropped straight off to sleep.
“You are not satisfied,” Hyperia said. “What additional stone could you turn, Jules? You’ve been to rubbishing Horse Guards, and that cannot have been a pleasant errand. Now you’ve confronted the author of your worst nightmares and consulted him on private family business. Arthur would be appalled that you sought out St. Clair.”
No, he would not. He’d suggested it, in fact, and allowed me to introduce him to St. Clair. “Are you appalled?”
“Quite—at Harry. A son is not a trivial matter. That child has been on this earth for years, a Caldicott by birth, for all we know, and Harry could not see fit… I know Harry could be rackety and that he was involved in delicate matters, but to simply abandon the boy was disgraceful.”
“Unless he wasn’t Harry’s concern.”
Hyperia had a point. No other explanation fit with Harry’s behavior, and yet, Harry had been sending money to some female regularly after he’d returned to Spain.
We rode along in silence, the conundrum of Leander’s paternity and Harry’s behavior gnawing at me. Hyperia’s presence was nonetheless a balm to my soul. I could not imagine discussing St. Clair’s revelations with anybody else.
“Maybe Harry didn’t have time to tend to Leander’s situation as he ought to have,” Hyperia said. “He never took extended leave after that interminable winter. I don’t even recall seeing him in Town again.”
“He claimed he’d nipped up to London on his next leave, but I didn’t go with him. He might have been meeting with an informant in Portsmouth.”
Hyperia drew her mare to a halt at a shady bend in the path. “Harry kept secrets from even you and Arthur. I don’t like that. You were not only a fellow soldier, you grasped the particulars of Harry’s role. Arthur is a peer, the head of the family. Harry should not have left his brothers such a mess.”
Atlas had shuffled to a stop as well. He’d had his brisk canter. He’d worked out his fidgets. He wasn’t exactly dragging me off in the direction of his morning oats, but his business in the park had concluded for the day.
“Let’s walk for a bit,” I said, dismounting and coming around to the mare’s side. “It’s a pretty morning, and I meant to call on you when I was finished with St. Clair.” I might never be entirely finished with St. Clair, but thanks to the very tangle Harry had left behind, I’d made progress in that direction.
“I planned to call on you on my way home.” Hyperia freed her knee from the horn and slid into my arms. “Better that we meet here. Leander should have you and His Grace to himself today, I think.”
I wrapped Hyperia in an embrace a shade too close to be considered a mere hug. She reciprocated with surprising ferocity.
“I was afraid you’d take on St. Clair in solo combat,” she said, arms around my waist. “Jules, I would have come with you to call on him.”
“I was afraid I’d lose my nerve. I’ve dreaded the sight of him, heard his voice in my nightmares. In the mountains, I’d imagine him stalking me, and when I wanted to quit, to lie down and give up, dread of him kept me moving. He was a devil on two feet, with his polite English and relentless civility. Such coldness isn’t human.”
Hyperia bundled closer. “And now?”
“He’s broken. Something in that man—his heart, perhaps—cannot heal. Will never heal. I should be glad. I should gloat. He is tormented, and I should delight in his misery.”
I could admit these things with Hyperia in my arms, and I could admit one more truth. “I don’t think he killed Harry, not even metaphorically. I think Harry did himself an injury, on purpose. A mortal injury.”
Hyperia eased back enough to look me over. “Will you tell Arthur?”
The next question, which she had the grace to spare me, was even more fraught: Would I someday tell Leander?
“I will tell Arthur what St. Clair claims to be true about Harry’s death, but whether Arthur believes St. Clair is another matter.”
We walked along the verge, leading the horses, until we came to a clearing with a single bench sitting in sunshine.
“Good grazing,” I said, unwilling to give up Hyperia’s company just yet. “Will your mare behave?”
“If there’s grass at her feet, she’ll bide patiently enough.”
Atlas would not leave my sight without my permission, and that, too, would keep the mare from galloping off. We loosened girths and tied up reins, then took the bench and let the horses snack. Six different etiquette authorities would doubtless have been offended at our behavior and our horsemanship, and a dozen more would have chastised me for taking Hyperia’s hand when we were side by side on the bench.
“The boy will need his things,” Hyperia said, turning her face to the morning sun.
“When I found him, he had the cavalry stuffed in one pocket, the artillery in the other. He took Dasher’s mane between his teeth to get up the tree.”
“He will need his clothing, Jules. The boy needs trousers and shirts and linen. He might have a prayer book, a lucky robin’s egg, a pretty pebble.”
Right. Practicalities. One of the many reasons I treasured Hyperia West was because she kept hold of the practicalities.
“I’ll fetch them.”
“Has he told you why he piked off?”
“Mrs. Danforth apparently threatened him again.” Except that wasn’t quite right. As best I could reconstruct matters, Mrs. Danforth had interrupted him when he’d already been intent on eloping. “Leander and I need to have a talk about his order of battle.”
Hyperia rested her head on my shoulder. “Does he ever mention his mother, Jules?”
“He does not.”
“Ask him about her too.”
We sat in the morning sun, and I let the enormity of recent events wash over me. I’d faced down Horse Guards. I’d skirmished, or something like it, with St. Clair. I’d found a missing boy despite all odds to the contrary, and I’d preserved my family from scandal. Successful missions, and yet, I’d failed to find the truth of Leander’s antecedents.
“You’re still fretting, aren’t you, Jules?”
“Ruminating. Nothing urgent.” And as long as Hyperia was content to stay with me hand in hand on that bench, everything—every other single consideration in the known universe—could wait.