“Well and good,” he replied. “I’ve given my report to Sir Avery.”
“And Abberline?”
“He will not be pleased, though not for the first time.”
“Nor the last,” she added. She glanced toward the stairs.
“I don’t know what’s to be done with her.”
“Lily.”
“She is quite impossible.”
“Her ladyship seems to have the situation well in hand.”
“That’s what worries me. She’s talking about taking Lily on safari.”
“Aye.”
“You agree?”
“I do not disagree.” He knew when to pick his battles, and it seemed there would be many.
“Miss Lenore has packed your clothes and the coachman is waiting,” he reminded her, half expecting that she would make some excuse.
“What if Lily burns the place down?” she said with a worried frown.
“My money is on Lady Antonia, and yer sister. And there is always Munro.”
She wasn’t convinced. This was a new side to her and one that he suspected he was going to take pleasure in.
“Eighteen days, though?”
“Aye. Eighteen,” he replied.
Eighteen
OLD LODGE, SCOTLAND
There was a greaterwisdom about Scotland in the winter, I had heard, what with the incessant rain and wind, and the frost and snow that might blow in from the loch, cattle in the pasture at Old Lodge like enormous shaggy snow creatures going about their way as if the storms were no bother.
Eighteen days, Brodie had declared and tolerated no argument.
It was, he informed me on the train north, the requirement for a civil license, avoiding the reading of the banns and the requirements of the Church.
I suspected he might have considered that he would not be let into the Church for such things. Myself included.
Now, twenty days, and counting, and it was done.
“Ye said aye. I’ll no allow ye to take it back,” he had told me on that trip north, effectively carrying me off with the bag my sister had packed while my aunt looked on with a smug expression. I did detect a conspiracy afoot.
Those long hours from London to Edinburgh and then farther north to St. Andrews and still farther north by local rail as the coach roads became impassable, we had spoken of the case, our meetings with the families of the young women who were lost, and had then attended their funerals.
There were no funerals for the Laughtons. The fire from the explosion had taken care of that.
I had gone with Brodie to the Port of Southampton, to personally let Captain Mathison know that the persons responsible for Amelia Mainwaring’s death had been found and would not harm anyone again.
So many shattered lives.
