My escape was thwarted by Lady Ophelia marching after me.
“Julian Caldicott, you will listen to what I have to say.” She came on relentlessly, and manners forced me to pause at the foot of the grand staircase. “What on earth was all that about?”
“I will be damned—and I do mean damned—if I know, my lady. Mendel Cleary hasn’t simply taken me into dislike. Annihilating me has become his raison d’être.”
“I hadn’t pegged him for a hothead.” She started up the steps. “He saw you were at table and began launching Congreve rockets of rudeness in your direction. Not done. One can make no sense of it. He’s been Maria’s prop and stay, he sent two brothers off to war, he’s managing his acres as well as may be… A suitable parti, though not a catch. What could possibly justify such behavior from a man who jealously guards what standing he has?”
“Perhaps he’ll commence with a spot of blackmail,” I said, accompanying her up the steps. “He found the card in my coat pocket last night.”
“Card? Are you cheating at cards now too? Is this what you dashing blades think passes for sport these days? I despair of the younger generation. Cheating at cards and calling one another out between the toast and the second pot of tea?”
“Please do not mention food. I refer to the card I carry for reference at those times when my memory falters.” When my powers of recollection departed altogether.
“Whatever that has to do with anything.” Ophelia paused before the door to her apartment. “Cleary does not want to annihilate you, except perhaps socially, but he does want you gone from Makepeace.”
The words this is all your fault begged on their aching knees to be spoken. “He knows I have problems with my memory, my lady. I want to be gone from Makepeace, but I cannot permit his threats to send me into a disorderly retreat.”
She opened the door, grabbed me by the wrist, and dragged me into her sitting room. Like her friend Maria, she’d added a few touches to an otherwise unremarkable parlor. The flowers on the sideboard were her signature roses. A French novel lay open on the love seat, and a pair of exquisitely embroidered slippers had been half tucked beneath a reading chair.
“Your memory problem. Remind of the particulars, Julian.”
“I’ve told you about it,” I said, confident of that much, because I’d told only her and Hyperia outside of immediate family. Arthur had begrudged me even those disclosures. “I have spells of forgetfulness. They pass, but when I’m in the midst of one, I cannot remember my own name.”
She began fussing with the roses. “You’ve tried moderating your drinking?”
“The problem is not drink and not diet, that I can discern. The problem is a fundamental weakness in my mind. When the plague of forgetting descends, I don’t know where I live, what church I attend, or who my nearest relation is. I wrote out a card to keep in my pocket, one that explains the situation to me in my own hand.”
“And Cleary found the card. Have you discussed this memory problem with your mother?”
What had Her Grace’s opinion on the matter to do with the price of cheese in Cheshire? “I have not, not specifically. Arthur probably has.” The duchess was his ally and his hostess for the nonce.
“You should. This sort of thing might run in families, like webbed toes or red hair. Your brother might not know the particulars of some enfeebled uncle, though the duchess would have heard about it. If the flawed lineage was on the maternal side, she will certainly be aware of the details.”
Whether I had mentally unsound antecedents interested me not one bit at that moment. “More pressing matters demand my attention for the present. Do you know if Cleary has dueled before?”
She withdrew one wilted specimen from the bouquet and tossed it into the dustbin. “What does that matter?”
“Because the choice of weapons is mine, and if he prefers swords, I’ll choose pistols and so on.”
She drew herself up, and I was reminded that Ophelia was a tall woman and imposing when she wanted to be. “You will do no such thing, Julian. Harry’s death was tragedy enough. Arthur can’t lose you too.”
Some part of me acknowledged that she was raising a valid point—or she believed she was. As the ducal spare, my existence was justified to the extent that I was an insurance policy for my family against escheat.
That policy had been voided in France, alas. “Arthur will just have to marry and beget his own heirs,” I said. “He’s the conscientious sort. He’ll have the heir and spare in his nursery in less than five years, once he makes up his mind to tend to the matter.” Though why hadn’t he already done so, paragon and peer that he was?
I expected return fire from Ophelia, remonstrations and lamentations. References to degenerate youth and fading damsels. She picked up her French novel and sank onto the love seat.
“Arthur loves you,” she said, “and he took Harry’s death very hard. If you don’t care for the succession, please consider that your siblings believed for a time that they’d lost both you and Harry. Then Arthur got word you’d escaped. We were frantic. Weeks went by with no more news, and we thought only of you and the possibility of your survival. Mendel Cleary’s stupid games aren’t worth dying for.”
This was news. “You believed I’d perished at French hands?” And Hyperia would have been among those suffering such torments, too, but she’d never mentioned this little hell of uncertainty to me.
“There was… confusion,” Ophelia looked abruptly elderly and tired. “First, we thought you had been taken captive and killed. Then word came that, no, Harry was lost to us, then you and Harry. Wartime communication leaves much to be desired, and Wellington was intent on driving into France with all due and deliberate speed. Notices to families of officers taken prisoner while on unsanctioned maneuvers were not a priority. Then you rose from the dead, Julian. You are not to throw that miracle into the faces of your siblings because some strutting ass takes a notion to annoy you.”
Cleary had insulted me, Ophelia, and Hyperia and threatened me as well. If Ophelia would only consider the matter calmly, she’d see that Cleary was also threatening my family’s standing.
“We need not duel to the death.”
She put her face in her hands, as one did when sorely grieving, then sat back. “You stupid boy. A man who breaks every rule of etiquette at the breakfast table would gleefully run you through when you lay bleeding on the ground. You must not give him the opportunity.”
“Then I must ensure that if anybody is left bleeding on the ground, it’s Mendel Cleary.”
I departed on that note, sure of my logic, not at all sure of my chances. I was yet to be denied the solitude of my room, though.
Hyperia came up the steps looking like the Wrath of Mayfair. “Jules, I don’t care about insults or honor or Mendel Cleary’s stupid taunts. You cannot kill him. He deserves a thrashing, maybe even wounding, and I am tempted to see to the matter myself, but you must not kill him.”
Had I not loved Hyperia in some fashion since my youth, I would have fallen in love with her in that moment. Ophelia feared I’d get the worst of any encounter with Cleary, while Hyperia assumed I’d prevail. Ophelia expected me to dodge off. Hyperia would have served as my second.
“You won’t tell me to light out for Portugal in the next hour?”
She sent a fulminating glance down the steps. “Are you daft?”
“Well, yes, in one sense.” I withdrew into the nearest parlor, the one where I’d found Maria Cleary playing truant. “Do you recall the card I carry in my coat pocket?”
“Of course.”
“Cleary found it, and that’s why he could maunder on about my little problem before that assemblage at breakfast. He knows, Hyperia.”
She went to the sideboard, opened a few drawers, and came up with a pair of embroidery scissors. “You’ve been to war and suffered untold horrors. Memory lapses, nightmares, and periodic doldrums are nigh predictable for such as you.”
She began snipping away at the ailing ferns, cutting off dead fronds and tossing them into the dustbin, untangling healthy foliage so it caught the fullest complement of sunlight and curved in graceful arcs. She tested the soil with her finger.
“Overwatered. Easy to do with ferns. I’ll have a word with the housekeeper, and perhaps you should have a word with Cleary’s banker.”
“Buy up a few of his mortgages?”
“Of course. Use the weapons you have, Jules. You haven’t been out in Society much in recent years, and he’s a handy bachelor. You’re behind the starting line in the social footrace, despite your standing. Cleary is received all over Town, but he hardly moves in exalted circles.”
“He will be more effective moving on the fringes if he decides to spread nasty talk about me.” And he had the best kind of nasty talk to offer—the truth. “He’ll mutter about my mental incompetence, tainted blood, and treasonous tendencies.”
Snip by snip, the ferns were looking more the thing. Hyperia rotated one plant half a turn one direction so the side that had been facing the window now faced the room and shifted the other plant a quarter turn the other way. She moved both a few inches closer to the light and used the hearth set to sweep up the detritus from the rug.
A nothing of a domestic moment, but her care for the ferns and her ability to put them to rights soothed me. I would miss her. I had missed her, terribly, and I was going to miss her even more in years to come.
But I was alive to miss her. I could do my missing of her in England. We could remain friends, the better for me to torment myself with proof of her future happiness. All comforts, of a sort.
“Will Cleary truly slander you?” she asked, dusting her hands and returning the scissors to the drawer. “Will he presume to spread gossip about a ducal family when he’s just another land-poor squire trying to find an heiress to court?”
“Yes, and he’ll go about it like a sniper, lurking in cardrooms and making his muttered asides count, then drawling a few confidential assassinations of my character at the club or while shopping for gloves on Bond Street.”
She surveyed me with the same critical eye she’d turned on the ferns, and I had half a mind to ask if she wouldn’t mind taking those scissors to my overly long hair.
“You excel at tactics, Jules. At deduction based on a few pertinent and usually-overlooked facts. I know you were good at intelligence work, because Arthur bragged that you’d finally found something at which your skill excelled Harry’s.”
“I was better than Harry at Latin.” Also Greek, and languages generally, but I’d gloated over that skill in private.
Hyperia cracked a window, letting in a slight breeze that gently riffled the ferns and would help them dry out. “And you are better than Harry at surviving, for which God and your native ingenuity be thanked. You cannot kill Cleary, but I know you will sort him out. Look to your strengths and to his weaknesses.”
Good advice, though after a demand for satisfaction, one was given little time for pondering strategy. A duel was God’s opportunity to pronounce judgment on an otherwise unsolvable question of honor and best undertaken with dispatch.
War was doubtless justified with sophistry of the same ilk.
“I don’t have much time, Hyperia. My affairs are in order, what affairs I have, and I doubt the seconds will be able to effect a rapprochement.”
She gazed out across the park. “Cleary was clever in that regard, wasn’t he? You are challenged, but you have committed no specific slight to his honor. If you apologize for your non-crime, you admit guilt. If you refuse to apologize, he can blow your brains out. I suspect his objective is simply to run you off.”
“Lady Ophelia agrees with you. Something about my mere presence has upset Cleary past all bearing.”
Hyperia went to the door, which we’d left mostly open. “Be careful, Jules. Should anything happen to you, Cleary’s days would be numbered. If I didn’t send him to his eternal reward, Ophelia would.”
“I am careful by nature.” So careful, I’d gotten myself captured by the French, cast into permanent disgrace, and challenged to a duel that still made no sense to me.
Intelligence work for the military was both active and independent. While the regular soldier sat in camp cleaning his weapons, dicing, and longing for letters from home, the intelligence officers were out in the countryside, lingering over a pint at the local watering hole or putting a few casual questions to the grooms at the livery.
We rode and hiked over miles of terrain without being seen. We moved at night as easily as we did in daylight. We did not exactly come and go from camp as we pleased, but we had far more autonomy than the usual run of officer.
This sortie to Makepeace was reviving my appetite for movement. To gallop my horse for more than the genteel length of Rotten Row, to ramble through woods and park and village, to breathe fresh air and hear the cattle lowing… My body was rejuvenated by the environs, and thus I sought the out of doors when Hyperia left me.
I needed to approach Ormstead, because relying exclusively on old Sir Pericles as my second would not do, but that discussion could wait until I’d settled my thoughts. A change into riding attire was in order, and if I was lucky, the rain would hold off for a couple of hours while the overcast remained.
Atticus met me at the door to my broom closet. “You going to shut Cleary’s gob permanent-like?”
“Talk travels fast.” I let myself into my room, which I’d taken to locking in my absence. “Was Canny indiscreet?” He’d be the logical conduit between the breakfast parlor and the servants’ hall.
Atticus followed me through the doorway. “Canny were fuming something fierce. He don’t much care for Cleary, and he does like you. Said Cleary were completely beyond the pale, and Miss West and Miss Ellison were present, as was Lady Ophelia. Canny were insulted on behalf of the house, but he was plenty mad on your account too.”
Atticus began making the bed while I retrieved riding attire from the wardrobe. “You are not to insert yourself into these proceedings, Atticus. Bystanders can be injured at a duel. Shots go wide, horses spook, the seconds take up arms… The whole business is beyond stupid.” Military officers weren’t supposed to duel with each other, but they had, and to frequent tragic effect. I had served as second on four occasions, once for Harry.
“Will milord choose pistols or swords?”
“I haven’t decided. Cheating is easier with pistols.”
“By firing early, you mean?” Atticus smacked one of the thin pillows. “Why not choose fists? You have some reach on him, and you’re quick.”
I’d also had two older brothers, and Harry had been lightning fast with his fists. “I cannot risk a blow to my head.”
“Canny said Cleary were blathering on about you being dicked in the nob. That’s dirty tactics, that is.” The pillow got a hard right cross followed by a left jab. “Airing a fellow’s linen to rile him up, but Canny said you didn’t rile.”
“The ladies were present.” I was riled nonetheless, and yet, a part of me rejoiced to know I could still be enraged, however frustrating the provocation. I’d been drifting about in my own life, hiding behind heavy curtains and insomnia and boredom.
A man in a temper was alive in at least the emotional sense. A man who let that temper rule him wouldn’t stay alive for long.
“You going riding?” Atticus asked, shaking out the worn extra blanket and refolding it at the foot of the bed.
“I am, and if I’m lucky, I’ll run into Ormstead in the stable yard. Please tell Canny not to do anything stupid on my account. Cleary’s quarrel is with me.” I hung my morning coat in the wardrobe and took down my riding jacket. “You aren’t to do anything stupid either.”
Atticus tucked my house slippers by the bed. “I could have a little peek at Cleary’s room.”
“No, you could not. Snooping could get you sacked. We’ve discussed this.” I dragged a comb through my stubbornly white hair and sat on the vanity stool to pull on my riding boots. “You think dodging Cook in a bad mood is a tribulation, then try finding work when you’ve been turned off without a character.”
“I’d go to London,” Atticus said, opening the wardrobe and eyeing its contents. “Anybody can find work in London.”
“No, they cannot. Every former soldier has come to Town, as have the families displaced by enclosures, as have all the weavers and spinners put out of work by the factory looms. London hasn’t room to house any of them, so finding a safe place to sleep is nearly impossible unless you have a domestic post or an apprenticeship. Do you know anybody in Town?”
The boy closed the wardrobe. “I might. I was born there. My mama was from around here, though, so I was sent out this way when she died, and when I was seven, I came to Makepeace.”
At the age of seven, he’d been more or less sold into servitude, though without articling him to any profession. The parish earned a bounty, Makepeace got cheap labor, and Atticus lost any connection he might have had with his mother’s family or friends, along with the hope of entering a skilled trade.
Though he seemed happy enough, and nobody was trying to put a bullet through his heart.
“If I had a look through Cleary’s room,” Atticus said, “I might find some vowels, or naughty letters, or something he stole from Lady Ophelia, just for example.”
I rose, nigh desperate to be out of the house and away from even this well-intended, conniving stripling. “Nobody would believe the good squire had suddenly taken up stealing from old ladies. He fleeces only the gents who ought to know better. Away with you. I’ll lock up after us.”
Atticus sent me a sulky look. “You shouldn’t have to lock up. So you can’t remember everything all the time. Does Cleary have a perfect memory? His auntie certainly don’t. He cheats at cards, and nobody’s trying to snuff his candle. When the footmen get to spatting, they settle it with threats.”
“I am not a footman.” I took a final look around my quarters. Locks could be picked, and noting the location of every item in a room was old habit.
“Canny explained how it works belowstairs,” Atticus said. “Taylor has been a footman longer than Canny, so he’s mad that Canny might be made the underbutler. Taylor was in a temper one day over a compliment Miss Longacre paid to Canny, so he says he’ll tell Lord Longacre that Canny wrote his own character to get the post here. Canny says go ahead and tell that bouncer, but I’ll tell Miss Belvoir that you were making sheep’s eyes at Florence down at the posting inn. Everybody knows Taylor is sweet on Miss Belvoir and that all the lads make eyes at Florence, but Taylor ceased making trouble for Canny faster than you can say old Boney’s an ass.”
“So they conduct a war of threats?” Such drama belowstairs. “It’s a wonder anybody has time to sweep out the hearths.”
“Not a war,” Atticus said, skipping out the door. “It’s like tomcats, ya see. You have to let Cleary know you aren’t to be trifled with.”
“That’s the point of trouncing him with pistols or swords,” I said, closing and locking the door. I plucked a single long strand of hair from my head and tied it around the locking mechanism.
“That’s smart,” Atticus said. “A man who isn’t to be trifled with knows to do things like that. Nobody will notice a hair wrapped about the latch, or if they do, they’ll think it got snagged from a coat or cloak.”
“A long-haired fellow’s trick,” I said, “but a dark thread works better, provided it’s fine. Promise you will stay out of trouble, Atticus. Don’t promise you will stay out of trouble and mean you promise to not get caught. This is not your fight.”
A mulish glint came into his eyes. “Tomcats kill birds and mice and squirrels and bugs. They don’t go about killing each other, for all the noise they make.”
“Now you’re a natural philosopher. Back to the kitchen with you, and if I’m gone before morning…” I produced a sovereign from my inside pocket. “For luck and good service rendered.”
He caught the coin, looked like he wanted to berate me at length, then bolted off down the corridor.
I watched him go and considered the wisdom of tomcats, because Atticus had put his finger on a strategy worth considering.
I’d sent the stable a request to saddle Atlas, and I did not intend to keep my trusty steed—or some overworked groom—pacing up and down before the horse trough. Ormstead and I met at the top of the terrace steps, though, and the sooner I spoke with him, the better.
“My lord.” He offered me a nod. “Bit of a dull day for a hack, but you might still beat the rain.”
To perdition with the rubbishing weather. “Cleary demanded satisfaction of me at breakfast.”
Ormstead’s open, handsome face underwent a transformation—disbelief, astonishment, disapproval, and then the blank features of one trying to ignore the drunk making distasteful remarks by the men’s punchbowl.
“What did you do to provoke him?”
“Wrong question. He insists I’ve stolen his watch, which I did not. He makes vague references to my treasonous past, which the army itself has concluded doesn’t exist. He also threatens to make public a lingering memory problem that’s afflicted me since university. Now that he’s announced my personal tribulation to the world, he says he’ll spread word to all of Mayfair unless I quit Makepeace on the hour. He made these accusations while Miss Ellison, Miss West, and Lady Ophelia were present.”
Though interestingly, neither our host nor hostess had witnessed them, nor had Miss Maybelle.
“Not done,” Ormstead said, pacing off across the terrace and then returning. “Not done to involve the ladies, though you can’t ignore the encounter, given the witnesses. I gather you’re on your way back to London?”
Another wrong question. “I am on my way to enjoy a pleasant hack before the rain starts. I was hoping you’d serve as my second.”
What I’d hoped was that Ormstead would take my part, would curse Cleary straight to Hades’s front gate, demand to second me, and condole me on the inconvenience of meeting such a scurrilous foe.
As Harry would have done, may he rest in peace. As Hyperia had done.
“Second?” He rubbed his chin. “You can’t ask some other officer? Sir Thomas, perhaps?”
The wrong questions were piling up by the moment. “Sir Thomas will root for the opposition. Sir Pericles heard the exchange and offered to support me on the spot.”
Ormstead leaned over the balustrade and plucked a pink rose from a rambunctious cane. “I suppose if Sir Pericles will lend his consequence to the matter, I cannot refuse to aid you. Pistols or swords, and have you tendered an apology?”
“For what would I apologize?”
He busied himself with getting the flower threaded through the buttonhole on his lapel. “For any slight that might, in the heat of the moment, have been perceived to offer offense of any kind, et cetera and so forth. You know how it’s done. A lot of words that add up to nothing.”
“A lot of words that add up to I am a coward and deserve to be shat upon by a rude, land-poor squire who enjoys making false accusations, who delights in publicizing a man’s private miseries, and who regards violence toward women as passing entertainment.”
Ormstead’s boutonniere refused to lay at the correct angle on his lapel. He kept nudging and tugging until the flower fell to the flagstones.
“I’m not saying the situation is fair, my lord. Do you have a problem with your memory?”
“Rare, temporary, and complete lapses.”
He let the flower lie on the stones. “Then you might have pilfered his watch and not recall the prank.”
Had Harry suggested as much, I would have plowed my fist into his gut. “The lapses are temporary. I have that general drawing-a-blank feeling, but the blanks fill in. They always fill in, and I did not steal that watch any more than you did.” The blanks were enormous, and they apparently did not always fill in anymore.
“My recommendation would be pistols. You are doubtless a good shot with small arms, while Cleary has likely handled only long guns. You both fire into the air, and the matter is done. I am willing to stand about looking grave while you do it, provided Sir Pericles seconds you as well.”
I retrieved the discarded flower from the flagstones as Ormstead headed for the house. “If anything happens to me, you’ll look after Hyperia?”
His gaze went from the little flower to my face. “My dear fellow, I hope to be looking after Hyperia regardless of how your situation sorts itself out with Cleary.”
How generous of him, to stand about looking grave while I risked my life because some popinjay had appointed himself the at-large exterminator of military veterans with flawed recall.
I wasn’t about to wear the flower that Ormstead had discarded, but neither would I allow the blameless bloom to wilt from neglect. I cut around the side of the house and entered the conservatory by a side door, all the while wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t allow Cleary to put period to my existence.
I took a seat on a bench among potted lemons, camellias, and more yellowing ferns while despair became a writhing demon in my mind. My life stretched before me, a series of gatherings at which I was unwelcome, in a world that accused me of betraying my brother and my country, in a society that lived to point fingers and whisper in corners of my failings.
Arthur would expect me to marry in another year or two, and the hell that future presaged for me and the lady both… For me to marry would be pointless, and I must explain to Arthur why, or he’d throw prospects at me until, from sheer exhaustion of the nerves, I assented to wed some vicar’s toothsome pride and joy.
I surveyed a mental battlefield on which all sides sustained horrendous losses and none gained ground. A wasteland, a no man’s land of sorrow and suffering.
If Cleary prevailed in our duel, he’d have to take a repairing lease on the Continent, like his wastrel brother. That left one brother still in England to oversee the family affairs, but perhaps I should save Cleary the trouble of traveling.
I would not retreat to London, but I could retreat from life itself. Men died “cleaning their pistols” from time to time, a nine days’ wonder, always pronounced a tragedy even if the fellow was drowning in debt, addicted to the poppy, and wanted for hanging felonies.
I had entertained these sorts of thoughts before, but in previous fits of despair, the temptation to end my life had been a peculiar, morally repellant mental experiment in self-indulgence. Death was acquiring a horrid sort of appeal now, despite the fact—or perhaps because of the fact—that I was finally stirring from my postwar torpor.
I would never be able to put events in France behind me. Harry would never again beat me at chess. Hyperia would eventually marry Ormstead—the unkindest cut—and Arthur would find a good home for Atlas.
Why not spare myself and my family all those years of misery and just get it over with?
A little scandal and tragedy for them, a lot of peace for me. I had thought from time to time that Harry had had a certain luck, dying a hero’s death, then I’d be ashamed of myself for thinking such thoughts.
I wasn’t ashamed of myself for thinking them now.