Page 43 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

A few years of having to make his own way in the world might have had an even more salutary effect. “I have another suggestion regarding the care and management of your brother.”

Lady Standish merely regarded me. The instinct to protect and defend had apparently been silenced, particularly in light of Strother’s willingness to sully the family name for new boots and a spanking high-perch phaeton.

“He ought to accompany your mother on an extended visit to her girlhood home. He should see where his maternal antecedents hail from, and he should ensure your mother’s travels are all that is commodious.”

“Scotland?” Strother expostulated. “You want me to escort Mama to Scotland?”

“I like the idea,” MacNamara said. “Hannah?”

A look passed between Hannah and her mother. “You could meet James’s family. He tells me they are quite nice. The earl is in failing health and might appreciate a chance to meet his prospective in-laws.”

“Those in-laws weighed on my mind,” I said.

“The viscountess knows Debrett’s, probably down to the last footnote and appendix.

She would not have overlooked James MacNamara’s prospects, and yet, she disapproved of him as a suitor.

Her first real conversation with me was to dissuade me from suitorly tendencies, when I would have been an excellent match.

” Though a cousin, and that had at first hidden the viscountess’s true concern.

Cousins married legally all the time, to wit, the Royal Family had done in the present and immediate past generation.

The more pressing issue for the viscountess was to either keep Hannah and her coin pinned down at Pleasant View, or to see her consigned by marriage to as distant a province as possible.

The captain showed no longing to return to Scotland, and I was both local and socially prominent, at least in terms of standing.

“I would have sent Captain MacNamara to the Antipodes if I’d had the authority,” the viscountess said. “He encourages Hannah’s scribblings.”

“The captain is truly a terrible man,” Lady Ophelia replied.

“He’s a much-respected veteran of the Peninsular campaign, he looks after his fellow soldiers, and he’s done everything in his power to ensure your brilliant daughter has a safe, inviting, private place to create her essays and do her thinking.

What mother could possibly look upon such a scoundrel with affection or respect? ”

Thank you, Godmama, for putting those sentiments so civilly.

“Scotland is beautiful this time of year,” Carstairs wistfully observed.

“Scotland,” said the viscountess, “is always beautiful. Perhaps a journey might be in order. I must discuss this with Lord Standish. Strother, you will see me back to Pleasant View.”

“My lady is forgetting something.” Hyperia spoke up evenly, and she was, as usual, entirely correct. “Something important.”

“Mama, you needn’t…” Hannah began, only to find herself pulled to her feet by the captain.

“She needs to,” he countered. “She needs to if she wants to be welcome in our home. Otherwise, her grandchildren will never even see her portrait.”

A dig perhaps, because Hannah’s portrait had not hung on the walls of her own home, so obsessed was the viscountess at keeping her daughter from polite society’s view.

As forward-thinking as the captain might be, he yet believed in holding wrongdoers accountable, and Hannah apparently agreed with him.

“Very well,” the viscountess said. “Hannah, I apologize for any harm to you that might have resulted from my attempts to…”

Lady Ophelia cleared her throat.

“To stifle your creativity. You have a gift. You have been a loyal daughter and sister, and I owed you a different sort of support than I showed you.”

Hannah looked to the captain, who smiled thinly. “Your apologies need work, my lady, but that suffices for the nonce. If our paths should fail to cross before your departure, enjoy Scotland.”

“I’m still unclear on one point,” Carstairs said when the door had been firmly closed on the viscountess and her son. “Our plan did not include Miss Stadler leaping out of a window and fleeing her captors, but you somehow put the notion in her head.”

Miss Stadler, who might have spared my sensibilities by arguing to the contrary, merely grinned. The captain, leaning on her perhaps a bit more than necessary, also disdained to intervene.

“How would I have suggested anything to anybody when my every word was plain to Miss Stadler’s captors?”

Hyperia cocked her head. “Jules, have you been devious?”

“Please say yes.” Lady Ophelia paused in the pouring out of six servings of brandy at the sideboard. “I have long known you harbor the potential. Vindicate my hopes on this challenging day, dear boy.”

Oh bother. The plan had worked. Why not own it? “I hate sieges,” I said. “Cannot abide the loss of life, the sheer tedium, the cruelty to those besieged… I tried resorting to Marcus Aurelius first.”

“That business about…” Carstairs furrowed his handsome brow. “The sun will soon set and you with it?”

Hannah nodded, smiling hugely. “Tell them the rest of it, my lord.”

Lady Ophelia handed around servings of spirits. “For our nerves.”

I accepted mine with good grace. “I left out the crucial portion on purpose. The whole quote runs something like this, loosely translated: ‘Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.’”

“I love that part,” Hyperia said. “‘Throw open the windows of your soul to the sun.’ A beautiful sentiment.”

Hannah lifted her glass a few inches. “The most important part, and his lordship purposely left it out because he knew I’d notice the omissions. Windows… windows that had been thrown open by Mr. Carstairs’s marksmanship.”

Carstairs nosed his drink. “But you kept maundering on… Something about…”

The captain took up the narrative. “His lordship resorted to John Donne, quoting from ‘The Sun Rising . ’ ‘ Busy old fool, unruly sun. Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us?’ Hannah, of course, knows the whole verse by heart, and there was another mention of windows. Clever, clever woman.”

“James, you flatter me,” Hannah said, looking more pleased than coy. “The Downings were plastered to the wall across the room from me, awaiting the next volley, so out I went, exactly as his lordship intended, safe in the knowledge that I would be running away from the line of fire.”

Bullets could bounce and ricochet. They could hit a glass target that sent lethal shards spraying in all directions. I took a risk, suggesting Hannah Stadler avail herself of the open windows. I had also gained insight into the range and depth of her acuity before I took that risk.

“Miss Hannah assessed a suggestion,” I said, “and used her great good judgment to act in her own best interests. Shall we offer a toast to Miss Hannah and to all who are safely returned to their loved ones?”

Carstairs sent me a sidewise glance but drank dutifully. He offered to see to having Lady Ophelia’s coach brought around, and Lady Ophelia made her exit with him. If she did not know of the Hampshire Carstairs yet, she would soon have their entire lineage back to the Domesday Book.

“I have just this moment,” MacNamara said, “decided upon a gift for my bride. Hannah, what do you think about refurbishing your granny’s cottage as a sort of dower property?”

“The place needs a serious airing,” she said. “The poor books… Half of them are mildewed. Gran would hate to see the state of the place now. From the outside, it looks cozy enough, but the inside is in a sad way.”

“We will rectify matters, then, and consult Lady Dewar as to the particulars. Caldicott, the rumors about you were not exaggerated in the least. My thanks, and if you can think of a way to put Carstairs’s situation to rights, you will have my eternal gratitude and probably his too.”

I was not about to meddle in Bryson Carstairs’s situation .

Hyperia took my hand. “Julian, what is the captain alluding to?”

“We’ll leave you to discuss the specifics.

” Miss Hannah parted from her swain long enough to kiss my cheek, pat my chest, and sigh.

“I have had an adventure. I ought to be swooning or taking to my bed, oughtn’t I?

Instead, I am considering penning a novel about desperate, pigheaded young men and plucky women, and oh, James…

Might we have a meal sent to the fishing cottage? ”

“Oh, of course, my dear. I don’t know as you’ve met Coombs. Prepare to be smitten. The man can whip up a feast from bread, apples, and a splash of cognac. I kid you not…”

They wandered from the room, arm in arm.

“This fishing cottage will soon acquire a comfortable bed,” Hyperia said.

“Already installed. Perhaps writers are inclined to frequent naps.”

Post-battle nerves were setting in. Relief, also a somewhat shaky acknowledgment of all that could have gone wrong and profound gratitude that it hadn’t.

Not for Miss Hannah, and not—at least not yet—for Hyperia and me.

“Is Mr. Carstairs in need of an investigator?” Hyperia asked.

“Perry, might we sit?”

“The morning has been long,” she said, leading me to the sofa.

“I worried for you. Carstairs warned us that he’d be practicing his marksmanship.

He has promised himself that on the anniversary of Waterloo, he would always practice his marksmanship, though the actual date is still a fortnight in the offing.

To hear the blast of a gun, then another and another…

How did you not go mad in the first five minutes of every battle? ”

“Some of us did, and the gun smoke made it all nightmarishly worse.” I slipped an arm around her shoulders. She rested against my side. “Have you considered our earlier discussion, Perry?”

“About your restored animal spirits?”

No beating about the bush with my darling intended. “Yes.”

“I’m sure you’d rather have all your faculties in working order, and the possibility of a recovery was always there. You are an exceedingly resilient creature, Julian Caldicott.”

I needed a moment to follow the logic: The possibility of my recovery had existed when she’d agreed to marry me.

“The possibility is now a reality. If you cried off—”

She jabbed me with her elbow. “Do not use that phrase ever again within my hearing, please. What couple expects their entire situation to remain unchanged for years? Do you suppose your father would have abandoned your mother if she’d become incapable of bearing children?”

“Of course not.” He’d not exactly honored his vows as a young husband, and Mama had offered him some turnabout, but he and Mama had sorted themselves out, eventually.

“Julian, for today, can we not simply be grateful for another investigation happily concluded and for a couple who face a brighter future because of it? Can that not be enough for the present? Think of where you were two years ago, and be grateful you survived the battle. I certainly am.”

Which? Ah, she referred again to Waterloo, and like one far gone with fatigue, I only in that moment realized the import of what she’d said about Carstairs and his vow to practice his marksmanship annually.

“Waterloo.” June eighteenth. Napoleon’s final defeat. Wellington’s great victory.

“Yes, Waterloo. The horrible climax of the horrible Hundred Days after we thought the Corsican monster had finally been vanquished once and for all. June eighteenth should be a national day of bewilderment, if you ask me. For every family rejoicing in Wellington’s victory, other families must mourn the cost of his triumph.

I don’t know how our former soldiers stand it, now that so many of them are left to beg in the streets.

They were heroes, if you believe the press.

What sort of nation leaves her heroes starving under Parliament’s nose? ”

A national day of bewilderment was an excellent idea. “Perhaps you should write a pamphlet.”

My darling gave me a stern perusal. “You had better not be jesting, Jules. I know what your years in uniform cost you. I am a good writer. All of Healy’s tutors liked my essays very much, though I wrote them under Healy’s name, of course.”

Hyperia was asking my permission to publish her sentiments. She did not need my permission, except that she was that considerate, that much my ally, and her topic of choice was that personal to me.

“Write so passionately that Eve’s Advocate will be inspired to even greater literary feats.”

“Perhaps I shall.” Hyperia subsided against me, her weight a comfort and a pleasure.

A sense of dread eased. Not a specific dread, but the sort of dread that knew the enemy was on the march and well provisioned. My creeping dismals, my restlessness and ill humor… They were part bewilderment, part preparation for a battle I still fought in my nightmares.

In future, I would not let the eighteenth of June ambush me. I would arm myself with good company, with gratitude for the blessings of victory, and—Carstairs was no fool—a bit of marksmanship for old times’ sake. A battle plan to keep bewilderment from any more victories.

“For today, I am not merely content,” I said. “I am very pleased with how events have progressed, and I love you, Hyperia West, very much.”

We indulged in some sweet kisses and some of the spicier variety. We both had much to think about, and awkward discussions were likely to ensue from time to time, but our regard for each other remained fixed, and Hyperia was right: For today, that was blessing enough.

The captain did take my suggestion to consult Dr. Hugh St. Sevier and with good results, though the healing took time. Fortunately, the captain’s lovely wife, ably assisted by a quantity of books, rendered the convalescence something of a prelude to a delayed wedding journey.

And as for Bryson Carstairs, he was, indeed, in a situation in want of investigation. That, of course, is a tale for another time!