“So that is your game. Well, I cannot say I am entirely disappointed. No, I cannot say that at all.”
Far from looking disappointed, he was happier than I had seen him in an age. His colour was high and his eyes were gleaming.
“You are enjoying this!”
He shrugged, looking only very slightly guilty. “Edward has been gone a year. There is little enough chance of you getting yourself into any real danger. Edward’s murderer, if there is such a person, is probably long gone from the scene. This entire exercise is largely academic. It is you I am enjoying, my girl.”
“Me? I am as I ever was. I have only cut my hair and bought some new clothes.”
He shook his head. “No, it is more than that. You’ve finally done something daring enough to deserve the family name. You have begun to live up to the family motto.”
“Quod habeo habeo?‘What I have I hold?’”
Father rolled his eyes. “Not that one. The other.”
Audeo.“I dare.” It had been our informal motto since the seventh Earl March had married an illegitimate daughter of Charles II, thus linking our family with the royal house of Stuart. Family legend claims that he adopted the motto with an eye to putting his wife on the throne someday, until Monmouth’s unsavory end warned him off of his kingly ambitions. It was one of the favorite family stories, although when I was seven I had remarked that the seventh earl had not really dared very much at all. It was the only time I was ever sent to bed without supper. After that I never really warmed to the motto. It had always seemed like a good excuse for irresponsible and reprehensible behavior. I had long thought we would be a far more respectable family if our motto had been “I sit quietly in the corner and mind my own business.”
Father would not be put off. “There is more to it than lopping off your curls and buying some new dresses. I always worried about you as a child, Julia. You took your mother’s death very hard, you know.” He paused, his expression dreamy. “I wonder, do you even remember her?”
I thought hard. “I remember someone who used to hold me, very tightly. Someone who smelled of violet. And I think I remember a yellow gown. The silk rustled under my fingers.”
He shook his head, regretful. “Ah, I thought you would have remembered more. That was her with the violet scent. I am glad you wear it now. Sometimes you move through the room and I could almost imagine she has been walking there.”
He paused and I think his throat may have been as thick as mine. But he went on, and he was smiling. “The yellow silk was her favorite gown that last summer, when she was expecting Valerius. She wore it almost every day, I think. You stopped talking for just a bit after she died, do you remember that?”
“No.” But I did. I remembered the long silences, the feeling that if I spoke, if I moved on, she would never come back. The certainty that I had to stay just as I was if I wanted her to return. I practiced stillness, rarely moving, trying to force myself not to grow without her.
“Of course, you hated Valerius,” Father was saying. “Blamed him, I imagine. Most of you children did. I did so myself for a while, although it wasn’t the boy’s fault. Ten children in sixteen years—too much for her. But she wanted you all. She wanted you so very much.”
His voice trailed off, and I knew he was seeing her. She had been beautiful; I had seen the portraits. I had impressions of her, but no true memories. He was right. I had been six when she died. I should have remembered more.
“You are very like her,” he said suddenly. “More than any of the others. She was gentle and good, much more respectable than the scapegrace Marches she married into,” he said with a chuckle. “She would have understood you with your quiet little places, your desperate need to be normal. Yes, you are very like her.” He leaned forward, his eyes bright green in the lamplight. “But she knew how to take a chance, my pet. After all, she married me. You have her blood, Julia, but you are a March as well. There are seven centuries’ worth of adventure and risk and audacity in your blood. I always knew it would come out eventually.”
I smiled. “I always thought Bellmont must be quite a bit like Mother.”
“No. He is the biggest rebel of the lot. That’s why he runs Tory.”
“And you think I am beginning to live up to the March legacy?”
He gave a satisfied sigh. “I do. This murder business may be just what you need. Although, best to let sleeping dogs lie, I always think.”
I snorted at him. “You have never let a sleeping dog lie in your entire life, Father. And surely you are not condoning letting a murderer walk free?”
He shrugged. “You have not found a murderer yet. You may not even have a murder. Perhaps poor Edward ought to lie where we buried him.”
I did think about it. It was tempting, the idea of sweeping this bit of possible nastiness under the carpet and getting on with my life. But I knew I could not. I would not be able to sleep nights if I thought that Edward had been murdered and I had done nothing to right that wrong. I smiled at the irony that undertaking this investigation might actually be the one thing in my life that satisfied both my sense of duty and my very secret, very small desire for adventure. I looked at Father and shook my head. “I cannot. It is my duty. If there is any chance that Edward was murdered, then I must do all that I can to bring him justice.”
He finished his port. “All right, then,” he said, rising. “Do what you must. And I will not ask you what that Brisbane fellow was doing leaving here at such an hour,” he said, chucking me under the chin.
My face grew hot. “We were discussing the investigation,” I told him quickly. “He was here a quarter of an hour at the most.”
Father smiled at me sadly. “My dear girl, if you don’t know what mischief can be gotten up to in a quarter of an hour, you are no child of mine. Come to supper on Thursday next. Hermia is having an oratory contest and I mean to sleep through it.”
He was gone with a wave over his head, leaving me dumbstruck. Surely my own father was not advocating an illicit affair with Brisbane? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was exactly what he was doing. It did not bear thinking about. Well, truthfully, I did think about it quite a lot. At least until Valerius came home covered in blood.
THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
If circumstances lead me, I will find
