Page 18 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

“Think, Dalhousie,” I said. “What has your mother longed for almost as dearly as she longs to see you settled?”

“To take her proper place in Society,” he replied immediately. “To be accepted with the respect due her rank. I believe she hopes that serving as hostess at a summer house party will aid her in that cause, but I foresee refused invitations and gossiping guests turning the whole business against her.”

Lady Ophelia allowed a dramatic silence to build, then offered Dalhousie a monarch’s indulgent smile. “I shall attend. I will recruit my handsomest godsons and my most accomplished nieces and goddaughters. If your mother will for once do the sensible thing and accept matters as they are, she will have my unstinting and everlasting support with Mayfair’s snobs.”

I felt as Wellington might have felt when he’d rolled his big guns into place and put the fear of eternity into a French army that had been anticipating an easy victory. Hyperia had come up with this strategy: Dangle before Lady Dalhousie the very acceptance she’d been denied for decades and make that prize contingent upon supporting the marquess’s chosen bride.

Dalhousie looked thunderstruck. “Mama will try to resist the lure.”

“That is just too bad for her,” I said, “because you will have the ultimate ace up your sleeve.”

“What ace is that?”

“You and Susanna will be blissfully married before your mother can say one word against it. Present the marchioness with a fait accompli, and she will be faced with the loss of the one devoted ally she has—you—versus the possibility of her dreams coming true. All she has to do is pretend that Susanna would have been her choice all along, but for Lady Albert’s inevitable objections.”

Dalhousie stared hard at the blooms on the table. “That is… perfect. Mama could do exactly that. She’ll sniff and murmur and sit up very straight, but she will… A fait accompli, my lord?”

“Buy a special license,” Hyperia said, rising and slipping her arm through mine. “You can be married by this time next week if you send a pigeon to your solicitors today.”

“Susanna hasn’t said yes.” Dalhousie clapped his hat on his head and then tilted it a half inch to the left. “By God, she hasn’t even been asked if I might pay her my addresses. That is an oversight. I will—”

“You will be patient awhile longer,” I said. “Susanna might suspect your hand in the whole campaign to keep your bachelorhood, Dalhousie, but of your affections, she likely has little inkling.”

“One tries not to be ridiculous,” Dalhousie said, very much on his dignity.

“Poison is ridiculous, my lord,” Hyperia shot back. “Tampering with a saddle, smashing your own coach wheels, sending yourself notes, inveigling Tamerlane into carrying the brunt of suspicion, rousing the whole village with fears of an enclosure… All because you would not stop the squabbling in your own household. Were you not a man in love, we’d find your scheme exceedingly ridiculous. Susanna has to know the whole of it, or you embark on married life with a false foundation.”

His expression became so bleak, so daunted, that I wanted to kick him, but then… I knew the feeling of being unequal to a simple task, of being faint of heart in the face of a mundane challenge.

“Let’s send another note,” I said, “and, Dalhousie, you can spend the next half hour drafting an express for your solicitors regarding the need to dispatch a clerk to Doctors’ Commons. If you hurry, they’ll receive it today.”

“Another note?” Dalhousie asked.

I looked to Hyperia and Lady Ophelia, both of whom nodded. “We’ll ask Susanna to join us here,” I said. “We’ll assure her that the whole business you orchestrated was intended not only to keep you out of the clutches of the ninnyhammers, but more significantly to clear the way for a union with the woman you esteem above all others. Even above your misguided mama. You will go down on bended knee, hand over your heart, and make a complete cake of yourself for the sake of true love.”

He had the grace to look abashed. “You are casting me as the hero when all I have been is a frantic fool, beyond desperate to keep my foot out of the marchioness’s mousetrap.”

Hyperia withdrew her arm from mine. “Heroes can be rash at times, and what looks like desperation to others might simply be unstoppable determination. I’ll ask the innkeeper for paper and ink, shall I?”

Lady Ophelia departed with her, and Dalhousie and I were left alone in a parlor redolent of daffodils and hope.

“Will she have me?” Dalhousie asked.

“A question for the ages, man, but if she won’t, then you must cede the field with good grace and know that you did your utmost to win the battle fairly. If she refuses your suit, I promise to get you drunk for a week, and your mother can blame me as the bad influence of record—again.”

“And if Miss West sends you packing?”

“I am partial to Armagnac.”

“Fair enough.”

We resumed our seats, the start of something that could be true friendship budding between us, and awaited the return of the ladies.

“My lord, my lady, Miss West.” Susanna curtseyed politely. “I admit you have me at somewhat of a loss. Is anybody ill?”

She wore an everyday bonnet, a gray cloak, and muddy boots, but when she caught sight of Dalhousie standing to the left of the parlor door, she became subtly luminous. Why hadn’t I noticed the transformation on other occasions? Hyperia certainly had.

“My lord.” Susanna curtseyed again.

Dalhousie bowed. “Susanna, thank you for coming on short notice and with little explanation.”

She looked at him expectantly, but the hero of the piece was taking on the aspect of a cornered hare. Immobile, alert, silent.

“Miss West’s note said a matter concerning Lord Dalhousie’s welfare required my immediate attention. Gordon, are you well?”

I held out a hand for the lady’s bonnet. “He hasn’t poisoned himself again, if that’s what you are asking. Hasn’t poisoned me either, I am relieved to say. Why don’t we all have a seat?”

Susanna passed me her bonnet along with a guarded glance. Dalhousie roused himself sufficiently to take her cloak and hang it on a peg on the back of the door. He held her chair for her, and because the ladies had scurried into their own chairs, the marquess by default seated himself beside Susanna.

“Dalhousie has some explanations to offer you,” I said, “but first, miss, I owe you a profound and sincere apology. I related to you certain observations I’d made, and I related them to you in an admonitory manner.”

“But you did not accuse me,” Susanna said. “Not quite. You merely mentioned that I might poison a man I esteem highly, shoot at him, bash his coach wheels, send him nasty notes, and tamper with his saddle, all for the privilege of counting linens by the hour.”

I plucked the relevant item from among the list. “You esteem Dalhousie highly, and as it happens, he returns your regard.”

The members of the besotted couple both regarded the daffodils as if I’d just suggested Napoleon really wasn’t a bad sort. Doubtless fearing for my wits, the both of them.

“When the ladies and I,” I continued, “considered all the evidence, we had the hardest time explaining the London fire.” I had had the hardest time, to be painfully honest. “That was a clever bit of work, not as dangerous as it first appeared, but impressive as a deterrent to lodging in the affected abode. Even if Dalhousie had wanted to bide in Town, his quarters were sopping wet and reeking of smoke.”

“I did not set that fire,” Susanna said, showing the first sign of true temper. “Tamerlane did not either. Chimneys are notorious for clogging. London is rife with birds who build nests. The whole business has been sorted to Gordie’s… to his lordship’s satisfaction, and I see no need, no need whatsoever to rehash—”

“Suze,” the marquess said softly. “I contrived to lay that fire.”

She blinked and resumed staring at the flowers. “Perhaps we should change the subject.”

“He laid that fire,” I went on when Dalhousie remained silent, “on his way home from Paris. The sweeps had just been through, nobody would be using his quarters for weeks, but Dalhousie was already determined to avoid another Season in Town, and this Season in particular. He took careful pains to ensure that the result would be smoke and stink rather than a genuine house fire, and quickly discovered by the staff. His scheme worked.”

Susanna nodded. “An effective ruse, necessary because the marchioness hounded his lordship into making that silly promise and because the marquess is too gallant and devoted a son to break his word to his own mother. It’s not fair, to hold a man to assurances given under duress, and the marchioness’s verbal bludgeoning never ceases.”

All the while the marchioness had been flailing away at his lordship’s bachelorhood, Susanna had listened quietly, hopelessly, and planned the menus. I was abruptly glad I’d not continued on to Caldicott Hall and left the denizens of the Manor to sort themselves out.

“Have you any idea, Susanna, why the marquess went to this bother, even to the point of having me investigate the situation?”

She sat up as straight as the marchioness ever had. “All what bother? If Lord Dalhousie sabotaged his own chimney to avoid the Town whirl, that is his business. That somebody resents his enclosure scheme enough to do him harm is another matter altogether.”

Dalhousie took a flower from the bouquet and passed it to Susanna. “There is no enclosure scheme. Never was. Caldicott worked it out. I was afraid you would, too, as much time as you spend with the ledgers. I needed to convince Mama that I was in sufficient peril that I could not safely leave the Manor, and the London fire was only supposed to be further proof. Enclosures are universally despised by the commoners losing their rights, hence I could credibly be despised.”

“Nobody despises you,” Susanna retorted. “Nobody. You are liked, respected, and worthy of the regard in which you are held.”

And that explained the reticence Hyperia had found among the neighbors, and the ladies in particular, when it came to the local opinion of the marquess. He was liked and respected. He’d never put a foot wrong in his locally scrutinized life. The ladies had been reserving judgment, weighing evidence rather than being taken in completely by gossip.

“As it happens,” I said, “Miss Susanna, you, too, are liked and held in very high esteem.”

She jammed the flower back in among its confreres. “I am nobody. The not-quite-poor relation. If Lord Dalhousie resorted to elaborate measures to fend off his mother’s meddling, we can only marvel at his cleverness and determination.”

“Lady Albert,” Dalhousie said, “will dwell with Tam at his property. The marchioness, after the house party, will remove to the dower house. My bride and I will have peace and quiet at the Manor, or I will have peace and quiet there in which to enjoy the rest of my life as a bachelor.”

Susanna, blinking repeatedly, used a single finger to nudge one daffodil apart from another. “You should not be a bachelor, Gordon. You are marvelous with children, and the title must not fall into the crown’s hands. You’ve done so much with what you inherited, and not all enclosures are the same. The fen creates foul miasmas and mosquitos and… and…”

And would somebody please propose to this dear, brave, loyal woman? Any handy marquess would do.

“Lord Dalhousie,” I said, rising, “went to extraordinary lengths, not simply to preserve his bachelorhood, but to preserve the heart he’d already given to another very deserving party. I feel a need for some fresh air. Ladies, will you join me for a stroll?”

Hyperia and Lady Ophelia were already out of their chairs.

“Don’t bungle this,” Hyperia said to the marquess. “Julian did not risk his neck on your behalf just so you could fall on your sword after a lot of empty speeches.”

I patted the marquess on the shoulder as I held the door for the ladies. “Bended knee, my lord. Bended knee.”

Susanna sent me a dazed look. “I’m nobody. The marchioness will never, ever… Gordon, what’s going on?”

I answered her. “You are not nobody. You are the glue that has held a squabbling family together through difficult years. You are the manager who keeps the staff happy in their work and the entire neighborhood cordial. You are the reason Dalhousie has carried on when lesser men would have descended into debauchery or dishonor. You are somebody of exceeding worth . Dalhousie has been smart enough to realize it. I hope you can find it in your heart to reward his steadfast love with an admission of your own regard for him.”

I drew the door closed, pleased with my little homily. When I swung around to escort the ladies into the innyard, I found Hyperia looking at me most solemnly.

“What they need,” she said, “is the courage to trust one another.”

“They also need privacy, as tempting as it is to actually lurk at a keyhole for once. Let’s enjoy the fine afternoon weather, shall we?”

Matters between Hyperia and me could not be resolved by stirring declarations and theatrical genuflections. I knew that. Unless I came to a more trusting relationship with her, I would be the one trudging through an endless bachelorhood, and that prospect threatened to make all my previous fits of the dismals pale to insignificance by comparison.

“I do not understand young people,” Lady Ophelia declared as we set off on a circuit of the village green. A pair of stately oaks provided a semblance of shade beneath a gauzy pink canopy of leaf buds, and the fountain on the inn side of the green was ringed in red and yellow tulips, half of them yet to blossom.

A peaceful spring afternoon, though Lady Ophelia seemed anything but calm.

“You refer to Dalhousie and Susanna?” I asked.

“Of course. Why didn’t the marquess simply declare himself to the lady three years ago? They are of age, distantly connected—Society likes that—and Susanna has some means but not enough to obscure the fact that it’s a love match. Society likes those, too, in moderation. I do not understand all of these sighs and subterfuges.”

Once I’d grasped the pattern of events, I’d seen Dalhousie’s motives immediately and understood them intuitively. I could not explain the combination of determination, frustration, and honor that had resulted in Dalhousie’s scheme, but I comprehended what had driven him.

“The marquess,” Hyperia said, strolling on my right, “kept his sentiments to himself because he is proud—what if Susanna did not reciprocate his affections?—and also because he is kind. What if she did? His mother would have disapproved of the match and made Susanna’s life wretched, much as Society has made the marchioness wretched. Lady Albert would have agreed with the marchioness—a moment for the history books—and declared the marriage an intolerable mésalliance. They would have pecked away at Susanna without mercy. Tam would have patted shoulders and gone back to playing scholar.”

She stopped opposite the churchyard. “The whole business would have rolled on forever had not Julian intervened.”

Hyperia was saying that she understood pride. Maybe she even understood that I kept many memories to myself so they would not contaminate happier minds with glimpses of hell. Or was that more of my pride talking, hoping that if I never spoke of my demons, I would not summon them nigh?

“I still think Dalhousie borrowed a leaf from his mother’s book,” Lady Ophelia said. “He convinced himself his love was doomed and ran amok when a bit of plain speaking might have won him the day.”

“Or cost him the war,” I murmured.

Godmama did me the courtesy of ignoring my aside.

“The chandler sells candles shaped like roses,” she said. “I restrained myself on previous occasions, but regret not purchasing a few. If you two will excuse me…”

Before I could protest, Godmama was sailing across the green, reticule at the ready, leaving Hyperia and me to accept some privacy whether we wanted it or not.

I did… and I didn’t. I wasn’t ready for the required discussion and probably never would be. I should have been court-martialed for how severely I had castigated Dalhousie for a similar unwillingness to confront thorny issues.

“Let’s sit,” Hyperia said. “Dalhousie and Susanna deserve as much time as they need, and I am loath to ever again set foot in a coach.” She perched on a weathered wooden bench that had likely occupied the same spot since the Druids had pretended to cede the shire to the Romans.

I came down beside her, mentally preparing myself for a severe, if inevitable, blow. “I have seen enough of Hampshire to last me for some time, though I suspect we will be invited to the wedding.” If there was one word I should have avoided, it was—of course— wedding.

“Jules, I’ve been thinking…”

I did not want Hyperia picking her way through a delicate explanation of why no wedding would ever befall us, of that much I was certain. I took her hand and, with all the resolution of the Scots Greys charging to their doom, kept talking.

“I dwelled in hell, Hyperia. Part of hell yet dwells in me. You want my trust, my confidence, and you deserve it, and I yearn to yield all to you. I am nonetheless afraid—terrified—that if I mention those dark depths, that if I share them with you, then you will be so horrified, so bewildered and revolted, that you will leave me to dwell in my personal pit once again, this time without the hope of a future that includes you.”

Whatever I’d planned to say, it wasn’t that.

“Julian, you were ill. What has that to do with…? Ah. You were ill in Spain?”

“Our medical man once remarked that dysentery was invented to stop wars. The French were as besieged as we were, and you have never known such a medical indignity, my dear. Men longed for death simply to end the humiliation.”

“Did you?”

The temptation to dodge, to change the subject, to leap off the bench and run all the way home to the Hall was a physical ache in my chest. I held Hyperia’s hand and marshaled my courage.

“I did not long for death then, but at times, when I was held prisoner, I did not know if I was alive or dead. I was often kept in complete darkness and deprived of food and water, and the mind takes odd flights.”

She moved, and I wanted to shout at her not to leave me, but she was merely shifting about on the hard bench.

“Hell,” she said. “You were subjected to exactly the aspects of hell we all dread, save for the fire. The darkness and eternity and isolation and yearning.”

Might we change the subject? But if I wanted to sit on more hard, ancient benches with Hyperia at my side, I had to learn to stand fast in the face of my fears. Every soldier knew the urge to run, and I had never fancied myself a coward.

The thought fortified me.

“I don’t want anybody to see me when I’m ill,” Hyperia said. “I have never had dysentery or even food poisoning. I was so worried, though, Jules, and you shut me out.”

“I am sorry.” I rummaged around for olive branches and fig leaves. “You advised Atticus anyway. He told me. The ginger tea and ginger biscuits. They helped. You did not accept your banishment without protest. If ever again I am afflicted, you have my word you will manage my care directly to the extent you wish to.”

Her fingers tightened around mine. “Do you promise, Julian?”

“You have my solemn word, but in return, Hyperia, I want your word.”

“Say on.”

“If you should ever be brought to childbed, I want to be at your side, counting the pangs or mopping your brow or whatever other comfort the brewer provides for his wife and the blacksmith offers to his. If you fall ill, you will allow me into the sickroom.”

“Julian, you are a man.”

“The very best medical authority I know is very much a man, also French. More to the point, I am a man who loves you to distraction. When I denied you the opportunity to tend me in my illness, I was acting out of pride. I have apologized for that. You remained loyal anyway. I would be just as loyal to you, if you please.”

“I don’t intend to find myself in childbed.”

“One understands that. My point was hypothetical for illustrative purposes. We will both grow old, my dear. Our faculties will diminish, our frailties multiply. I am expressing a hope that we grow closer with time despite those developments.”

“Atticus would say you are going toplofty, Jules.”

And my darling Hyperia was evading my request.

“Julian, what was the worst thing? I am not being ghoulish. I am hopeful too. I hope that if you tell me the worst thing and see that I am right here, listening, not flying off with a case of the horrors, that you might find it easier to believe in my loyalty.”

Why must my beloved be so rational? So shrewd? So wonderfully devoted?

I sorted through my catalog of terrors and regrets. “Losing Harry like that. Not knowing if he was truly gone, fearing he was, knowing I was to blame for the fact that his life had ended as a prisoner of the French, likely in pain and full of rage—at me. The guilt, Hyperia, the terrible, crushing guilt. I lived. He did not. Why? My bewilderment sometimes rushes up on me, like a biblical tempest, and I can barely breathe.”

“Nightmares?”

“Oh, my dear…” I told her then about wanting to die, about cold so penetrating it froze thought, about living like an animal on bitter mountain slopes, and dwelling in a mute beast’s fear of all creatures on two legs. I told her about despair so encompassing that movement, much less eating or speaking, had eluded me for days.

“The knowledge that I had failed and would be regarded as a traitor has tempted me to end my existence, Hyperia. I am no prize. My thoughts disgrace me frequently. If you expect me to trot out every regret and foul element of my past for your inspection, I tell you right now, I lack the fortitude. Some of the memories ambush me, leap at me out of nowhere, things I haven’t dwelled on or thought of since Spain, and there they are in all their ghastly, vivid menace. It’s all I can do in such moments to remain upright, much less coherent.”

I was being as honest as I knew how to be, and still Hyperia kept her hand in mine.

“All I ask, Jules, is that when the demons hover, tell me, and I will stand at your side while we wait for them to pass. When the recollections drop from your mental trees like highwaymen of old, let me know so I can stare them in the face with you. When you are haunted by memories of dysentery and fever, tell me, because I will fight for you as fiercely as ever you have fought to stay alive for me.”

A nigh permanent knot of dread in my chest eased a degree. Hyperia wasn’t asking me to bare my soul. She was asking me for such trust as, moment by moment, I could manage to give her. Asking me to try . I owed her that, and I wanted to be worthy of her.

“When I am haunted, I will tell you where I see the ghosts. When I am felled by memories, I will tell you from whence they arise. I will try, Hyperia, and you must be patient, and you might occasionally have to lead by example.”

She let the last comment pass, but I’d made it knowing that my beloved had been through battles of her own and that I’d not yet been entrusted with the details. We would muddle on, closer and braver, hand in hand, investigation by investigation. Consolation enough for a day that had already been long and fraught.

Lady Ophelia emerged from the chandler’s shop, clutching a sizable parcel. At the same moment, Dalhousie and Susanna, hand in hand, wafted down the inn’s front steps.

“Lord Julian, Lady Ophelia, Miss West.” Dalhousie bowed, though the man could not seem to stop smiling. “Please congratulate me. You are the first to know that Susanna has made me the happiest man in all of creation by agreeing to be my wife.”

He’d given her a ring, the devious sod. He’d been up to more than sabotaging his own chimney on his latest pass through Town. Susanna blushingly displayed her new accessory and explained that Dalhousie had agreed to include his half of the fen in her marriage settlements—a brilliant ploy for rallying the neighbors behind the new marchioness, who was staunchly opposed to any enclosures, of course.

The ladies kept up a lively chatter while Dalhousie beamed like the happy swain he was. “Have you sorted matters with Miss West, my lord?”

“That’s Caldicott to you, sir, and yes, we’ve come to an understanding regarding certain irksome matters.”

“Sent for a special license yet? I have it on the best authority that a small, sudden wedding can solve a host of difficulties.”

“I will forgive you that sally, Dalhousie, because you aren’t sane at the moment. Happy, handsome, and deserving of every joy, but not quite sane.”

Dalhousie’s smile became yet still more fatuous. “Not sane because I am to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world?”

“That too, but mostly not sane because you have been liberated from your worst fears and granted your most treasured boon. Unnerves a man, so I’m told.” And if I was smiling a bit fatuously at Hyperia, well, spring air could have that effect.

Dalhousie went back to grinning and beaming and tenderly regarding his prospective marchioness. “I owe you, Caldicott. Wellington will hear that I am in your debt, depend upon it.”

An unlooked-for kindness that meant more to me than Dalhousie could possibly know. “My thanks. If your wedding is to be discreet, you’d best nip over to the vicarage and have a word with the parson.”

“Suppose I ought to.” Before my eyes, Dalhousie’s good cheer expanded to surpass all bounds. “I suppose we ought to. Susanna, might you accompany me on a call at the vicarage?”

They strolled off, not a whisper of daylight between their sides.

“Young love.” Lady Ophelia sighed. “So lacking in dignity, so full of charm. I suppose we’d best return to the Manor and set off again in the morning. I will say I misplaced my favorite bracelet and didn’t want it entrusted to the mail. Will that serve?”

“That will serve,” I said, for want of any better ideas. “Hyperia?”

“They will be fine,” she said, tucking her arm through mine. “Dalhousie and Susanna. The marchioness won’t part them, and they will be fine.”

They were obnoxiously fine. The ceremony took place less than a fortnight later, though Dalhousie relented and informed his mother of the nuptials the morning of the wedding. Lady Albert had by then already been established on Tam’s property, and without a foe to battle, the marchioness had capitulated to the inevitable with stoic calm, if not with good grace.

Hyperia and I did not attend the Dalhousie Manor summer house party, but we did return to our respective abodes in fine charity with each other. We had barely unpacked our trunks before the next adventure befell us, but that, of course, is a tale for another time!