As soon as the hue and cry had gone up earlier in the day, Atticus had seized upon a convenient oil can and, under the guise of tending to my neglected window, gone straight to my quarters. He’d found the watch rolled into a pair of my cotton stockings.
“What made you look there?” I asked as we tarried in a gazebo perched on the bank of a trout pond. “Why my stockings?”
“Canny hides his medal and letter of commendation in his socks. He pretends he doesn’t want the medal to get dusty, but in truth he doesn’t want the rest of us gawking at it.”
“A man’s past is private.” Or should be. Perhaps Canny the footman didn’t want to be reminded of the days when he’d been Canny the feared and respected sharpshooter. “Good work, in any case. The question remains how to get the blasted watch back to Cleary’s rooms, and don’t tell me you’ll do it. You cannot be seen anywhere in the vicinity of his apartment if you’re also looking after my quarters.”
“You got no faith, guv. I can be quick as a cat and twice as quiet.” Atticus leaped up onto the gazebo railing and spun gracefully.
“You can be transported for thievery, and I doubt you’d enjoy the hazards of the voyage or the hard labor. What about Canning? The footmen are in and out of guest rooms at all hours. If he can stand guard, I can return the watch.”
I hated to spread the risk such an activity represented, but for all I knew, Cleary had set a booby trap. If he couldn’t catch me hiding the contraband, he’d ambush me when I returned it.
“Canny takes the coal up every evening. He could be your lookout.”
Perfect. “He’s not in the ballroom?”
“Nah. He don’t go in for gettin’ champagne spilled on his livery while the dowagers pinch his bum. The younger footmen like the ballroom work. Some of the chaperones are happy to pay for a bit of romping and rogering.”
Oh, the Quality. “If Canning and I can return the watch discreetly, and only on that condition, please tell him I want to do it tonight. I am already in your debt, Atticus, and in his as well. I can rely on other resources if need be to accomplish the task, but I’d rather not.”
Atticus hopped down from the railing as nimbly as he’d ascended, landing with barely a sound. “You don’t ditch a lady and then ask her to go housebreakin’ for ya, guv.” He sat on the gazebo’s railing, his feet resting on the seat of the wooden bench facing the pond.
I took a more decorous place on the bench opposite. Merciful powers, I was tired, and I had yet to show my handsome face in the ballroom.
“I did not ditch Miss West, and I would not ask her to return the watch.”
“Then you’d ask your auntie.”
“Lady Ophelia is my godmother, at least for official purposes.”
“She’s got a lordly nose like yours, and wouldn’t nobody be transporting her unless she wanted transporting. I like her.”
“I do too—or I did. Hadn’t you best be getting back to the kitchen?” I wanted a moment to enjoy the solitude and quiet of the pond, or the relative quiet. A pair of bullfrogs had begun serenading the evening, and their homely songs, like the lowing of the cattle and the singing birds, soothed my soul.
When natural darkness went silent, a prudent man took notice.
“You like Miss West.” A casual observation on Atticus’s part.
I sensed in his words the puzzlement of inchoate adolescence, though he was young to be contemplating wooing—or romping and rogering. But then, childhood belowstairs was nearly nonexistent, and he was a noticing sort of lad.
“I like her very much, but married to me, she’d be burdened by association with my wartime failings, and she doesn’t deserve that.”
Atticus leaned back, tore a twig off the nearest tree branch, and lobbed it into the pond. The ripples flowed outward, like the whispers of a spreading scandal.
“We won,” he said. “We lost a lot of battles, but we won the war. Five years from now, nobody will care that the Frenchies got you for a time. You’ll be just another old soldier, telling stories that are only half true.”
Five years on, I’d be the age my father was when he married, but Atticus would still be a boy, while I already had white hair. The bullfrogs continued with their nocturnes, and the sweet notes of a fiddle tuning up drifted from the manor house.
“I don’t know what the truth is about my time in captivity. I went a bit mad for a time.” The admission came as both a relief and a surprise.
“Like a tomcat in a hamper? Fair loses his mind when the lid closes.”
Loses his dignity too. “Something like that.” The reality had been exactly like that at times, shut away in complete darkness, only the occasional scurry of a rodent marking time and assuring me that I hadn’t died. Perhaps I did not want to confront Girard for fear I’d kill him, or stash him away in an oubliette of my own making.
I had had enough of killing, particularly killing for the convenience of kings, emperors, and the lords of the City who’d made a lucrative job out of playing both sides.
Atticus had apparently forgotten that he was in a hurry to return to the kitchen, and perhaps because he represented my younger, happier self, I kept talking.
“I can’t recall all of what happened behind the French lines, but my memory is more problematic than that.”
“Did you take a knock on the noggin?” The boy was merely curious and not ghoulishly so.
“I can forget everything. My name, what country I dwell in, which language I’m to use and why… I can speak coherently when these spells are upon me, but everything that I am, everything I’ve done, slips from my recall.”
“Did the Frenchies do that to you?”
“No. It just… happens. Has been happening since I went up to university. Then some hours pass, or I nap, and when I wake up, it’s all back.” Except for the time at the chateau. Some part of that horror yet eluded my memory. No other explanation presented itself for what had clearly happened there.
The first two times I’d lost my powers of recollection, I’d attributed the lapse to strong drink, overexertion, sexual exuberance, lack of rest… all the excesses young men embrace so recklessly. The third time, I’d been at Caldicott Hall, and Arthur had seen me in my befogged state.
I hadn’t known who he was, why he felt entitled to scold me—Stop playacting, Julian. Your humor eludes me—or where I was. Some fancy country house belonging to a rude fellow who was almost as tall as I was.
I’d gone off to war, confident that vigorous activity and a soldier’s discipline would put the problem to rest. More fool I.
“I fear the condition is worsening.”
I’d had a spell of forgetfulness at the chateau—I could recall the lapses themselves once they passed—but something worse must have happened, some further erosion of my powers. Unlike every other instance, when the lost information returned that time, the puzzle had been short a few critical pieces.
Atticus tossed another twig into the water. “I’d like to forget every birching I’ve ever suffered. I’d like to forget that time the footmen put me up to stealing a sip from Cook’s cooking sherry. Putrid stuff, and people drink it on purpose.”
I’d never tried to explain my malady to anybody other than medical professionals, though various family members had seen its effects, and Hyperia knew the bare facts.
“I don’t merely forget what day of the week it is, Atticus. I forget my name, my age, my nationality, where I am… Everything is gone right down to the name of my first pony or if I ever had a pony. I also forget that I’m prone to such lapses when I’m in the midst of them, so each time it’s like I’m losing my mind all over again.”
I had discreetly consulted physicians, and they’d been of no help. One old herbwoman had suggested I was eating something that induced an imbalance in my humors others were not prone to. Salvia, cannabis, opium, and many other plants affected the mind, so her theory had been some comfort, though I could find no association between my diet and my memory lapses.
“I carry a card,” I said softly, “in my pocket.” I took it out, though the light was too dim to read what I’d written. “I’m never without it.” The card had been Hyperia’s idea, like sewing a soldier’s name into the collar of his uniform. Though few with any sense carried much money on London’s streets, I’d affixed some pound notes to the card in an abundance of caution.
“What’s it say?”
“You are Lord Julian Caldicott. You have written this card to remind yourself that your memory sometimes fails in its entirety. The lapses pass within a few hours. You have merely to be patient, and all will be well.” I’d also written my direction and my brother’s particulars on the card, though I’d never had need to consult it.
Since returning from France, I’d yet to suffer a bout of forgetting.
“So you can’t woo Miss West because you’re dicked in the nob?”
“That’s part of it. She knows about the memory lapses, but five years ago, I had an extra older brother standing between me and the title, and after every lapse, my recall eventually returned. Now I am the spare, and I can no longer be confident of a complete recovery from a bout of forgetting.”
“Like you’re an old man. Old men get married all the time.”
“I’m not an old man.” Though, for all I knew, in another few years, I’d be as dotty as one—or worse. I’d be like Miss Cleary, waiting for my favorite tisane and losing track of the very room I slept in.
“You should tell Miss West,” Atticus said, hopping off the railing and rubbing his rump with both hands. “She might not care. She woulda married you before you bought your colors, wouldn’t she?”
“That’s different, and when I told her not to wait for me… she had the option of bestowing her favors elsewhere.”
“Except she didn’t. Ormstead’s making sheep’s eyes at her now.” Atticus slid gracefully down the banister of the few steps leading up to the gazebo landing as lightly as that cat he’d referenced earlier.
“If Ormstead is wooing Miss West, that is none of your affair, my boy.” Or mine. I rose from the bench, though I was reluctant to give up the night for the thumping and chattering of the ballroom. “Tell Canning to meet me in the guest wing in an hour.” I could put the watch in Cleary’s jewelry box, where no maid or footman ought to have peeked.
“I’ll tell him, and won’t nobody overhear me when I do. You should let Miss West know you’ve gone off your head worse than before.”
“I don’t tell anybody that, and if I’m lucky, my memory will improve over time.”
Atticus tossed a final stick into the water. “From what I seen, you ain’t lucky, guv. You’re smart, you cut a dash, you got some blunt, and you’re a decent fella, but you ain’t lucky.”
When I offered him no argument, he slipped away into the night, and I resigned myself to the dubious charms of Roger de Coverley and his loud, sweaty ilk.
The old skills had not deserted me. I made my presence known in the ballroom, pretended to enjoy a flute of champagne, and looked in on the cardroom long enough to know Ophelia and Hyperia were trouncing Banter and old Sir Pericles at whist. I asked the lone red-haired footman for directions to the gentlemen’s retiring room and prepared to commit reverse larceny.
Canning met me at the top of the main staircase. “Starting to get loud,” he said. “We’ll be bringing out the cheaper champagne within the hour and watering the punch.”
Country dancing, by its nature, was thunderous. Four dozen feet thumping and glissading in rhythm had the same power and punch as a marching army crossing a bridge. One feared for the bridge, and for one’s nerves.
“Loud is good,” I said, “unless the noise drives Cleary from the ballroom. He wasn’t playing cards.”
“You’d best be careful, my lord. He might be looking in on his auntie.” Canning’s observation was less than complimentary. “He looks in on her frequently.”
“He’s either a devoted nephew,” I said, “or he’s trying to impersonate one. This is his room?”
“Aye.” Cleary was billeted exactly where a doting nephew would ask to be, right next to Miss Cleary’s apartment.
Canning retrieved a bucket of coal and a bucket of ashes from the nearest alcove while I mentally reviewed my position. These rooms were at the end of the corridor, facing the home wood rather than the garden. Weak light came from beneath the door to Miss Cleary’s parlor, while the room across the corridor and Mendel’s room showed no illumination.
“Whistle if trouble is afoot,” I said. “Laugh, pretend to be tipsy. I shouldn’t be above two minutes. ‘God Save the King’ means all clear.” Thirty seconds might suffice, but I wanted to do a little nosing about while I was in the neighborhood.
I slipped through Mendel’s parlor door and found his apartment to be a mirror of his aunt’s. The parlor was small, comfortable, and devoid of human touches. No flowers, no window cracked open, no riding jacket slung casually over the back of a chair.
The bedroom was a different story. Mendel was managing without a valet—or maybe he was imposing on the good offices of Brimstock, Ormstead, and Banter’s valets—and his room was going untidy about the seams. The jewelry box was open, the contents a pile of sleeve buttons, cravat pins, and rings. One door of the wardrobe hung ajar, a pair of tall boots beside it. The right boot had flopped over at the ankle, while the left was held straight by a boot tree.
Shameful abuse of expensive footwear. A quick gloss of fingertips over the soles confirmed that they were Hoby boots, but that hardly proved anything. I wore Hoby’s work, as did much of Mayfair.
The bed was made, though a discarded shirt topped the quilt. A top hat sat on the sideboard, wrinkled gloves beside it, Mendel’s shabby riding crop across the brim. At least when it came to his attire, Mendel was not given to ostentation.
Hearty laughter came from the corridor, followed by a murmur of masculine voices. I slipped the watch into the heap of gewgaws in the jewelry box and cut a swift, silent path to the balcony. A little acrobatics on my part, and I was soon on the next balcony over and silently counting to one hundred in French.
The voices faded, and the door to Cleary’s room opened. The clank of a poker against andirons followed—Canny, just doing his job—and I let myself into Maria’s bedroom. The chamber was dark and filled with antiphonal snoring. Mrs. Waldrup was ensconced in a reading chair near a dying fire, and Miss Cleary was in the chair opposite her. An empty decanter sat on the table beside Mrs. Waldrup’s chair. A book lay open in her lap. Two empty glasses glinted in the light of the embers on the hearth.
Bless their hearts. Would that I could have joined them.
I made my way into the parlor and waited for Canny’s signal. This room also had a fire, which rendered it quite warm, and allowed me to see what I had not noticed on my earlier visit. The chair backs were topped with lace doilies, probably Mrs. Waldrup’s work. The serviceable shawl had been folded on the sideboard.
A vase of roses graced the mantel, and beside them sat a framed sketch.
I knew not what inspired me to examine that sketch, but I knelt with it by the fire and expected to see some little rendering of flowers or kittens. A decorative memento brought along by a traveler to give temporary quarters a touch of home.
The sketch was quite good. Either Maria had been a talented artist, or she’d commissioned a small portrait of her nephews in boyhood. The younger two might have been peas in a pod—albeit one pea plumper than the other—while the oldest already showed signs of the arrogance that would make him such disagreeable company later in life.
Arthur had a fine opinion of himself, but he wasn’t arrogant. Our sisters would have dealt swiftly with any pretensions in that direction.
I recognized the middle brother from our time together on the Peninsula. Daniel Cleary had the gift of rubicund good cheer, and even a maimed foot hadn’t stolen that from him. Mendel, by contrast, peered out of the frame with impatience, as if even sitting with his younger brothers was an affront to his youthful dignity.
Twit.
A quiet baritone importuned the Almighty regarding a happy, glorious, victorious monarch, and I set the sketch back on the mantel. Curiosity sent me back into the bedroom, where I lifted the lid of Maria’s jewelry box. She’d worn not so much as a brooch or bracelet when I’d come across her playing truant, and her jewelry box, while sizable, housed only a few rings and one string of pearls.
An older lady of means should have some pretty baubles about, reminders of younger, more sociable times. Where was her painted fan? Her engraved watch? Her keepsake brooch?
I lifted the velvet-covered false bottom of the jewelry box, expecting to find answers to my queries, and a quantity of gold winked back at me, though none of it was wearable. A pile of sovereigns sat atop equally impressive stacks of bearer bank notes made out against an account at Wentworth and Penrose’s institution.
Pots of money, indeed, and like many an aging eccentric, Maria kept hers—a small but impressive sampling of hers—where she could reassure herself daily of its safety.
The ladies slumbered on as I replaced the false bottom, closed the jewelry box, and quit the room. I retrieved the shawl from the parlor and draped it across Maria’s lap, then returned to the corridor. I was pretending to have paused before a pier glass to retie my hair into its queue when Canning joined me, his coal swapped for a second bucket of ashes.
“I thought the gentlemen’s retiring room was along here somewhere,” I said.
“Around the corner to your right, my lord.”
“Thank you.”
He winked and took the left turning, which I had reason to know would lead to the footmen’s stairs. “Happy to be of service.”
I took the right turning, though my thoughts remained with the two ladies, dreaming so peacefully in their chairs, where the stomping and chattering from the ballroom barely registered.
Poor Maria might well have a devil of a head come morning, but for now, she was at peace.
“And may flights of angels sing you to sleep,” I muttered, then realized that I’d cited an epitaph for a mad, dying prince. I mentally revised my sentiment to a cheery nighty-night and prepared to be seen by many trustworthy witnesses in the gentlemen’s retiring room.