Page 33 of The Book of Lost Stories

Bonbons

The dying man raised his head and with an anguished expression on his livid face, whispered, ‘Sir Lemuel Grosby … my cousin! Do not—’ But then, with an expression of complete astonishment – even, one would say, horror – he fell back against the pillows, breathing no more.

‘Alas,’ said a voice behind Drusilla, ‘that I should arrive only in time to hear my cousin’s last words!’

Death or Dishonour by ORLANDO brOWNE

Alys was sitting in the drawing room, wrestling with an obstinate passage in Death or Dishonour , while Nell, reclining on the sofa, was reading an earlier chapter.

‘This is very good, Alys, but is she to marry Sir Lemuel Grosby, now that his poor wife has died in such dreadful circumstances? He may be handsome, but he is very cold and near old enough to be her father.’

‘Her situation is such that it seems her only respectable option: she is orphaned and penniless. Added to this, her youth and beauty make finding a post as governess or companion unlikely. To put it plainly, she is in a hole.’

‘Yes, but it seems very hard when she is barely acquainted with him. Not,’ she added wryly, ‘that marrying for love can be all that satisfactory either.’

‘I know,’ Alys said sympathetically. ‘It is a pity Mr Rivers will not spend more time at his estate, for he must be better away from his friends.’

‘Yes, he is always improved in the country, but I am afraid the days when my influence over him counted for anything are gone. I wish—’

But Alys was not destined to learn what she wished, for a familiar voice was heard in the hall saying gaily, ‘No, do not bother to announce me. I feel myself now to be quite part of the family!’ and Nat Hartwood walked in, very sure of his welcome.

At the first sound of his voice Alys had leaped across the room and snatched the manuscript from Nell’s hands, and was now busily stuffing the papers back into her little desk.

‘Why, Cousin, this is a surprise,’ she said, closing the lid and turning round with a smile.

‘But not an unpleasant one, I hope,’ he said, bowing. ‘Do I interrupt you? You always seem to be writing when I come to call. You must have a great correspondence.’

‘I … why, yes, I do write a great many letters.’ She moved away from the desk and sat down.

‘Your little dog is not here, Miss Weston?’ he said, looking around cautiously.

‘No, he is in the kitchen, I think. He is a great favourite with the cook.’

‘Ah, that is a pity, for I fear I accidentally trod on him on my last visit, and hoped to induce him to forgive me,’ he said with a charming smile and the most candid of expressions in his guileless blue eyes.

Alys almost believed him, for he seemed so sincere … and yet, she had seen the incident with her own eyes.

‘The real purpose of my visiting so early is to see George,’ he said to Nell, ‘but I simply could not resist paying my respects to two such charming ladies first.’

‘I think you will find my husband in the study. He said earlier that he had a painful headache and did not wish to be disturbed.’

Nat looked at her sadly. ‘Ah, but I am convinced you know the truth of these headaches and your husband’s erratic temperament, do you not, Mrs Rivers?’

‘I – what do you mean?’ asked Nell, startled. ‘What …?’

He sat down next to her on the sofa. ‘If I may speak to you as a friend? You must surely have guessed by now, as I have, that poor George is quite addicted to laudanum, and though a most excellent remedy for many ills, if taken to excess it quite alters a person’s temperament and undermines their health. ’

‘He – he does seem to take a great deal of it … but then, he has always been prone to these debilitating headaches, which have grown ever more frequent with the years,’ Nell said, wringing her hands. ‘Could this really be the cause of his change of character?’

‘Yes, I suspect he has grown to rely more and more on the drug. I am loath to interfere, yet I thought I would mention the matter to you. All his friends are concerned for him, and you must endeavour to persuade him to give up, or much reduce, his intake of it.’

‘ I? I can do nothing. He will not listen to me!’

‘Perhaps the hint would be better accepted from you or another of his friends?’ suggested Alys. ‘This certainly explains much about his conduct and the change in his disposition, which I found hard to understand.’

‘If you think it best, I will be happy to remonstrate with him,’ Nat said earnestly.

‘Please – please do try it. How kind you are! And at least I now know that the change in my husband is not due to – to something I have done, but to his medicine. Perhaps, if he is weaned off it, he—’

She broke off as the subject of their conversation, having heard their voices, came into the room.

The full force of what Nat had just told them struck the two ladies forcibly: George Rivers was the wreck of the healthy young man he had once been: pasty-faced, hollow-eyed and dishevelled.

A tic twitched his cheek and his brown eyes were unfocused.

‘There you are, Nat! What are you doing in here? Come into the study. I have been waiting for you this age. Do you have … the little commission I asked you to do for me?’

‘I do, and will come this instant! Cousin, perhaps you would take a turn in the park with me when I have dealt with this business matter? I believe the day to be fine and quite spring-like.’ He bestowed one of his dazzlingly effulgent smiles upon Alys.

Feeling more kindly disposed to him, she smiled back. ‘Thank you, but on this occasion you must hold me excused: we have a prior engagement.’

‘Then I will see you at Bella’s coming-out ball,’ he said gaily. ‘And you must save at least two dances for me.’

*

‘George, you look all to pieces,’ Nat said bluntly when they were in the study with the door shut.

‘One of my plaguey headaches – nothing a dose of laudanum won’t cure. You did bring it?’

‘Yes.’ He handed over a small bottle. ‘But you should not take such quantities. Why, it’s enough to kill a horse! It cannot be good for you.’

‘Isn’t “excess in everything” the Brethren’s motto?’ George demanded, with a wild laugh.

‘Yes, but not the entire time, burning the candle at both ends. Look at poor Chase: going to the devil as fast as he can run.’

‘That … that’s disloyalty! Treason to the Master and the Brethren.’

‘No, it’s common sense, and a respect for one’s person. Chase was never so bad until this last dose of the pox. I believe it must be eating at his brain, for his tastes have become ever more … esoteric , shall we say?’

George shuddered as he measured out drops of laudanum into a glass of water and downed it, his teeth rattling against the rim. ‘You are as bad as the rest of us, Hartwood, when we meet together,’ he muttered sullenly.

‘Within the walls of the Temple, once the other Brethren are gone, we Masters of the Inner Circle can do anything we please, although perhaps I do not drink so deeply of the wine as the rest of you, and so whatever it is laced with has less effect.’

‘That girl – the last girl, the one who …’ George shuddered, then poured another dose of laudanum into his glass, which Nat reflected would have killed a man unused to the drug.

‘Better not to think about it. She was just a drab; she will not have been missed. One rat out of many roaming the streets.’

‘But even so, I cannot believe … I seemed to be detached, watching myself – all of us – do vile things to the poor creature until …’

Nat got up. ‘We are agreed that we don’t talk about what we do at the Temple. In fact, how sure are you that any of this really happened? Might you not have dreamed the whole thing while in a drugged stupor?’

George looked at him with a desperate hope. ‘Did it not then happen? Might it all have been some kind of hallucination? But the bodies they found in the river—’

‘Many dark things happen in a city’s poorer areas. Best not to think too deeply, George. Look where that got Stavely.’

‘Poor Ger! He was always melancholy, from a boy, but ten times worse once he fell in love and began to think that what he had done made him unfit to marry an innocent girl … and perhaps it did.’

‘Nonsense, women are not such pure and fragile creatures as you seem to think. You married.’

‘Yes, but I meant never to be part of the Brethren again. I swore to Nell when I proposed that I would reform my way of life, although she did not know what it had entailed. Then, somehow, I was drawn back.’

‘We are bound by our pasts, by our oaths, and by what we have done – together .’

‘But you said—’

Nat got up, shrugging. ‘It was a bad dream? But we all return over and over to the Brethren, for we cannot resist dark pleasures, just as you, it seems cannot resist laudanum. But take care. And, George …’

His haggard face was raised, yet now more smoothed out and peaceful.

‘Your visitor, my cousin Miss Weston, she is always writing at something. When I walked in on them earlier, she was hastily hiding a whole bundle of papers in that shabby little writing desk of hers. I am curious: take a look inside when the coast is clear, and tell me what she is scribbling, for even if it is only her impressions of her London season it may be of use to me.’

*

Nell found some comfort in the idea that the change in her husband was due not to some fault in herself, but in his over-consumption of laudanum, and hoped that he would listen to his friends and give it up.

So it was that she was in a more cheerful frame of mind when she and Alys returned from paying a visit to her Aunt Becky, who had just returned to Town.

Going up to change for dinner, Alys found a little box of sugared fruits in her room, prettily tied with ribbons and bearing a card signed merely with a large and sprawling initial that she thought might be an R …

or perhaps, she admitted to herself, hoped might be one.

She had not seen Lord Rayven since he confronted her with the discovery of her authorship, although he had sent her a brief note saying he must go out of Town.