A reprieve. Perhaps not a long one, but it would help.
*
It had beenan informative afternoon. Mel, after an intensive search, had discovered a trapdoor in her floor that opened into a hiding space. It was partially under the bed, completely covered by the floor rug, and almost invisible to the eye.
The cracks running straight across several floor boards were her first clue, but she could see no catch, no way of opening the hatch, if it was a hatch. Then she found a knot in the wood that, when poked with her dagger, rose up out of the floor.
It proved to be the key to the mechanism. She pulled it, and nothing happened. But when she twisted it, the hatch popped up, and after that it was easy to open the rest of the way. She was disappointed to find it empty, but at least she had confirmed that such hiding places existed.
After that, she wandered around the tower, striking up conversations with the brothers. She helped Lord Isaac to dry the dishes and put them away. She offered a hand to Lord Cornelius, who was mending a chair and needed someone to hold a plank while his own two hands were busy trimming it to shape. She played a game of chess with Lord Frank. She assisted Lord Gerard in folding some dry washing.
Some of the brothers were guarded in their replies to her conversational sallies. Others seemed pleased to have someone new to talk to. Lord Jerome, the youngest of the brothers, was one of the latter. She found him in front of the clavichord, and sat to listen to him play. He had a gift for music. Skill, too, which was all the more surprising, for he’d had little formal training. From what he said, he had been imprisoned in this tower, and not permitted to leave, since he was ten.
“My brothers have been my friends, my tutors, and my family,” he told Mel. “One day, though, I should like to walk in the sunlight. I should like to see places that I knew as a child, those my brothers have described to me, and even those where none of us have been.”
He had a distant smile on his face. “Allan went to Edinburgh once, and when Frank ran away and joined the army, he made it to Madrid before the marquess ordered his legs broken and had him shipped home.”
Lord Jerome narrated that snippet of his brother’s story in such a matter-of-fact and offhand manner that the sense of it took a moment to penetrate. Was that why Lord Francis limped? The marquess had ordered it done? And if so, did Lord Jerome’s infirmity come from the same source? The marquess was an even worse monster than Mel had thought.
The young lord had not noticed her reaction, as he was still thinking about travel. “I should like to see Madrid. Paris, too,and Rome. All the great cities of Europe. Have you traveled, Mr. Black?”
“Through most of England,” Mel admitted. “Also, Scotland and Wales. A couple of times to Ireland. Only once to France, a few years ago, after Waterloo.”
Perhaps it was only fair to share something of herself. “I dreamed of travel, too, when I was young. Then, for a few years, it seemed it would always be impossible.” She had married, and her husband had kept her in the country, waiting on his whims. Not as much of a prisoner as Lord Jerome, but free only to visit the village shops, the neighbors and the local church. “Then I began my current profession and all my traveling has been in the past eight years.”
“You are able-bodied, though,” said Lord Jerome, wistfully. “I suppose you ride? I was just learning to ride when I was locked up.”
“I do not ride particularly well,” Mel said. Her father had been too poor for the sisters to have riding horses, though they had both straddled the old cart horse to be carried around the field while the beast grazed. “But one can travel by carriage or boat. A lame leg will not prevent you from traveling, my lord. Was it a childhood injury?”
Lord Jerome’s huff of laughter had no humor in it. “You could say that. I told you Frank had his legs broken, at my father’s command, to punish him for joining the army and to ensure he did not do so again?”
“You ran away?” Mel whispered her question, as if the truth of the poor man’s injury was too horrible to contemplate.
“Cornelius did, with his wife.” Mel froze. This touched on her reason for being here. She had not expected to learn so easily what happened to her cousin. Lord Jerome was gently touching the keys of the clavichord and did not see how his words had affected her.
“The marquess’s men brought Cornelius back,” he continued, “but my brother would not say where Thomasina was. Later, I learned that he could not. For her own safety, he had told her to find somewhere to hide where even he could not find her.”
Then the suicide note and the evidence on the riverbank were fake, just as Mel had hoped and believed.
Lord Jerome shrugged. “The marquess had me beaten and tortured in front of Cornelius to make him talk. And then, as he did with Frank, he refused to let a doctor attend me. My brothers did their best to stitch and bind my wounds, and set my bones. Baldwin apprenticed with a doctor for a while, and is quite skilled. Even so, one leg healed crookedly.”
Mel said what she was thinking. “He is a fiend.”
“That is why they stay,” Lord Jerome told her. “My brothers. They remain for me, to keep my father from killing me. He is my guardian, you see. He has a right to beat me.”
“Jerome. Is Mr. Black bothering you?” It was Lord Kemble, glaring at Mel as if he wanted to incinerate her on the spot. Had he had a fall? His face was bruised.
The younger man was not bothered by his brother’s anger. “No need to fret, Allan. I’m not giving away secrets. I daresay every servant in the marquess’s employ knows how the old fiend treats his sons.”
“Mr. Black is not our friend, you young cub.” Lord Kemble’s irritated tone was laced with affection for his brother. Which didn’t mean he could be trusted, but if Lord Jerome’s story was true—and it confirmed what she had already heard from other sources—the brothers were the marquess’s victims, not his followers.
“Nor am I your enemy,” said Mel. It was a risk to trust the man, but how much more could they achieve if they worked together? “In fact, Lord Kemble, we might be on the same side.”
Lord Kemble’s lip curled. “I doubt that very much. You are the marquess’s dog, here to serve my father’s purposes. My brother might have forgotten that. I have not.”
He might change his mind if I tell him my real purpose here, but on the other hand, he might tell his father. Even disclosing her relationship with Thomasina could backfire, if any one of the brothers decided to use the information to gain an advantage with the marquess. She wasn’t ready to be thrown out—perhaps even handed over, as the marquess had threatened, to a press gang.
“I am nobody’s dog, and my purposes are my own,” she told Lord Kemble.
