“It has been very difficult for him, trying to fit in, to be normal. He is an extraordinary person, in a very ordinary world.”
“That he is,” I agreed readily.
“And you will not forgive him,” he said, the humour dying quietly out of his eyes.
I shook my head slowly. “Do not say that. I do not like to think that I should harbor ill feelings for him. No, I will forgive him. In time. And perhaps he will forgive me.”
“He already has,” Mordecai protested. “You will never know the panic, the battle-rage, he felt when he knew you were in that burning house. My lady, he—”
“Do not,” I warned him sharply. “Do not declare anything for him that he will not say for himself. Whatever his feelings for me, he is not easy about them, or he would have come to me. Do you deny this?”
He shook his head woefully. “No, I cannot.”
“Very well. He will get on with his life, and I with mine, and we shall see where that leaves us.”
Mordecai left me then, sad but resigned. There were no tidy, happy endings here. There had been too much pain and too much mistrust for that. And if Crab minded the tears I wept into her neck, she did not say.
But there was some satisfaction, if not happiness, to be had. Desmond, ailing now, was removed to a nursing home in Kent. There were gardens where the patients might be permitted a little occupation at their leisure, and I was told he settled in quickly. Mordecai, having examined me from top to toe, pronounced me fit enough, in all respects, including the one I was most troubled about. He recommended a spell in a warm climate to restore my lungs, and my thoughts turned again to Italy. I made preparations quietly, to take Aquinas and Morag, and no others. I had had enough of family entanglements to last some time. We would travel slowly together, and after a while would meet with my brothers in Italy.
The only other development of note was my father, and his preoccupation with my sickroom. I noticed he was most often present when Fleur made one of her many calls, bearing salves and sweetmeats and armfuls of flowers. She read to me and brought me magazines of the latest fashions and tempted me to eat the little delicacies she had Therese concoct for me. Father always made some excuse to linger when Fleur was perched charmingly on my bed, laughing her pretty laugh and pampering me with her kind attentions. He looked a bit bemused by her, and I fancied I saw a spark there that I had never seen in him, but I resolutely made up my mind not to worry about it. If Father took up with Fleur, he could do far worse, I thought pragmatically. For that matter, so could she.
To his credit, Father managed to sweep all the ugliness of Grey House under the carpet with the rather prodigious March broom of privilege and influence. Grey House, uninsured, was a total loss, as were the contents. My sisters came forward with photographs and sketches, books and albums, piecing together for me the remnants of my childhood. Nothing could replace all I had lost, but their efforts helped, as did the extraordinarily generous check from Lord Porlock for the grounds on which Grey House had stood. Before the ruins were even done smoking he had teams of men shoveling out the rooms and architects on the site drawing up plans for his new town house.
The fire itself was recorded as a tragic accident, and everyone viewed it as a coincidence of divine order that the staff had all been given the evening off. Aquinas lied smoothly, saying the boon had been his idea, a treat for the servants so that they could enjoy the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, and no one could budge him from that. He knew that if the truth were known, if people understood that I had told him to dismiss the staff, it would cast suspicion upon me and my possible motives for wanting Grey House empty that night. Aquinas himself never reproached me for not confiding in him, but I knew that my failure to do so had broadened a breach between us, one that might only be healed with enough time. He had suspected what I was about, and that was why he had gone to March House, to beg my father to intervene. But he blamed himself for not acting sooner, and no matter how I tried to reassure him, I knew he felt he had failed me.
I castigated myself bitterly for not seeing what the consequences of my actions might be, but I had one consolation. In my stubborn insistence on confronting Simon alone, I had possibly saved lives that might otherwise have been lost in the fire. It was a very little consolation, but I clung to it like a drowning woman. It meant something to me that at least I had done one thing right.
Val confessed his own actions privately to Father, who took it rather handsomely and made arrangements with Mordecai for Val to work with him in his practice and under his direction. I thought this new gentleness of Father’s might perhaps be Fleur’s doing, but I could not be certain. In any case, Val moved back into March House, and their quarrels were largely a thing of the past.
Even the matter of the raven was settled, its presence at Grey House becoming public knowledge thanks to an enterprising newspaper reporter. Father was summoned to the palace, but Her Majesty, who was in a rather good mood due to the Jubilee celebrations, and who it must be said always had a fondness for handsome men as well as a natural sympathy for another widow, insisted upon writing out an order making me a gift of the raven in recognition of the bird’s valorous conduct. My letter of thanks was answered with a somewhat terse reply from her secretary. I think she had begun to regret the impulsive gift by then, and I heard later that she had had a rather severe interview with Reddy Phillips’ father. No one knew the exact details, but I did not think it an accident that a sizable statue of Prince Albert was immediately commissioned by the Phillipses to be placed on the village green near their country house.
Free at last to enjoy my new pet, I bought him a handsome cage and applied myself to thinking up a proper name for him. Not surprisingly, the staff of Grey House was dispersed save the handful I retained for myself, some going to the country, most being found new posts in London.
So everyone settled into the same, or more comfortable, circumstances than before. Everyone except me. I found myself brooding, silent for long periods of time, and thinking thoughts best left to darkness. I thought often of Simon and his terrible love for Edward. There had been a house party at the Phillipses’ country house the same summer I had gone to the Lakes with my aunt, the summer before Edward and I wed. I had not wondered about it before, but now, when I thought of the melancholy sketches of the Gothic folly, and Portia’s revelations of what the Brimstone Club had done there, I guessed. They had been lovers there, perhaps for the first time. That whole group of young men, so eager to be thought devils. Was this the worst of their secrets? Affections that would never be accepted? Love that could never be revealed?
But then I remembered what Simon had told me once, about fearing death so much that he had tried anything to save himself. And I thought of Portia, chattering on about the Brimstones and their belief that drinking from the skull of a virgin could cure diseases. Magda came to me, quietly, simply appearing in my room at March House late one evening. We talked for some time. She stroked my hand, murmuring endearments and lamentations in Romany as I spoke. I had worked it out for myself by then, but she confirmed it. It had been Simon who despoiled Carolina’s grave, not Valerius. In his desperation to find a cure for his syphilis, he had exhumed Carolina to take her head for a drinking vessel. He had taken to his heels when Magda had appeared, probably quite relieved when she did not reveal his filthy secret. But she had plotted her own revenge, even then. And Simon’s suffering at the end was not entirely due to the advanced stages of his syphilis, she admitted to me through her tears. The arsenic I had discovered in her room had not gone completely unused, in spite of her claim to me that she had harmed no one. I sent her away again then, sickened, but more sympathetic to her than I would have liked. I had forgotten to ask her about Mariah Young, the one mystery I had not solved, but I found it difficult to care. I had unearthed too much misery in my meddling, and I did not have the stomach for more. I dreamed of Carolina that night, as I dreamed of all of them, Simon, Edward, even my mother sometimes.
In an effort to end the dreams, I went to Highgate one afternoon, alone and heavily veiled. I walked through the cemetery, grateful for the quiet, broken only by the soft dripping of the rain onto the gravestones. I stood for a long time by Edward’s grave, thinking over all that had passed, all that we had been to each other and all that we had not. I said goodbye that day, for the first time, and the last. And just before I walked away, I laid a small wreath of laurel at Edward’s feet and another just next to it, at the stone whose inscription read only “Sir Simon Grey.” There was no body there, and no poetry to mark where his body should have lain. But I had given him a place next to Edward for all of eternity. That should have been enough to appease any ghosts who might have lingered. I knew as I walked away that I would not come again.
But still the dead came to me. I dreamed of them, nearly every night, waking shivering and alone, and often weeping. Morag brought me warm drinks and bathed my brow, but we both knew it was time for me to move on.
“I shall speak to Mr. Aquinas about packing,” she said one night, after a particularly unspeakable nightmare. “It is time to go.”
I nodded, and between the two of them, they made all the arrangements. My father helped, and it was soon settled. My clothes had been replaced, thanks to Portia and the Riche brothers, and some new things ordered, suitable for travel.
“You will go to your brothers,” Father advised me. “Ly writes that they are most concerned for you and would be happy to meet you in Florence.”
I nodded, listlessly. “That will do.”
He talked on, detailing things I did not care to know, before he reached down suddenly and took my hand.
“Julia, listen to me.” I looked up and saw him, really saw him for the first time in days. “You have suffered a terrible blow, but you shall recover. You are young and strong, and you will feel this pain acutely because as yet in your life you have not suffered much. But you must believe me when I tell you that this will be blunted, the edge will not cut so deep after a while. You will enjoy life again, and you will laugh and love and weep for others.”
He held me then and I wept against his shoulder, sobbing out an entire marriage worth of betrayal and pain and despair into his jacket. He simply held me, stroking my hair until I had finished. Then he pulled back and smiled at me.
“A good wet weep is always just the thing. You will feel better soon. Not just yet, but soon. And when you do, enjoy it. Life is too uncertain, my dear. You must seize happiness where you find it.”
I nodded, and after he left, I thought for a long time on what he had said. But I was still not ready to face Brisbane. He had not written to me, or attempted to call upon me, and I woke the morning of my departure feeling grateful for it. I did not think I would have the strength to go if I saw him just then. How could I tell him that when I saw Grey House, blazing up into the evening sky, my regrets were for him, for what would never be between us? I had not mourned Edward then, or Simon. I had mourned him.
