Trying to keep her voice neutral and summon a smile, Rosamund moved toward him. She’d no intention of admitting this man to her Aladdin’s Cave, the same place his mother had likely poured out her soul. Shaken by what she’d read, she was unprepared for the effect his presence would have on her. Revulsion swept her body, followed by a driving need to get him away—from her, from the room, from the house if she could.
Deciding assertiveness would be better than pleading, she folded her arms. Only then did she become aware she still held the pages in her hand. She tried to curl them into a smaller shape without him noticing. It didn’t work, so she made a point of folding them brazenly before him.
“What are you doing here, Aubrey? You made a promise to Mr. Lovelace, or have you already forgotten?”
“What do you know about my agreement with Lovelace?” he asked swiftly, jittering from foot to foot. Glancing at what she held, Aubrey’s gaze went back to her face.
He looked thinner than she remembered, and mauve crescents sat in unflattering pouches under his eyes, eyes that regarded her slightly warily. She tried hard not to let her repugnance show.
“Only that you made one and, up until this moment, adhered to it.”
Aubrey made a noise of disparagement. “Circumstances change, my dear—so do people. You know that better than most.” Any rebuke was softened with a smile. “I need to talk to you,” he said. His cheeks were red. His hat and hair were littered with small pieces of ash. Streaks of gray ran the length of his jacket. He’d made an effort to tidy himself and failed.
Rosamund’s heart plummeted. “Shall we retire downstairs? We would be more comfortable there.” Before he could protest she pushed past him.
Subdued, Aubrey followed her down the stairs and into the withdrawing room. Musty from being closed up for the last few days, the room was filled with tiny motes that spiraled in the sunbeams. Rosamund pushed the pages into a pocket, crossed to the windows and opened them. The air outside was warm, infused with ash, dreck and stinking of smoke; smoke and whiffs of burned metal, straw and other things Rosamund didn’t wish to identify. All the same, she needed to let the outside in.
Silently counting to ten, Rosamund turned to face Aubrey.
“What is it you wish to say to me? I’ve only just returned from Sam’s place, and I have much to do . . .” Her gesture encompassed the whole house.
“This is more important.” Without waiting to be invited, he sat down, gesturing for her to take the chair opposite.
Instead, she found a decanter and some glasses and poured them both a drink, taking the chance to shove the pages further into her pocket. They still protruded slightly, but it was the best she could do. She handed Aubrey a glass and sat down.
“What is it you want?” she asked, taking a sip of the wine. It was warm and too sweet.
Aubrey settled, regarding the room with a proprietary air. “You know,” he began, “I never imagined I could set foot in here again after Helene died. I thought the place would echo with memories of her. And it does. Memories that not even your redecorating has managed to bury.” His eyes settled upon her. “I wondered about that at first. How a place that’s altered, even slightly, can still evoke the same feelings. How, even with her gone, I can still be happy when I’m here. Then I worked it out. It’s because of you. You suit this place, Rosamund, and it suits you. You belong here.”
Rosamund didn’t like where this was going. “That’s what you wished to tell me?”
“Partly.” He took a long swallow of his drink and pulled a face. “What I also wanted to do,” he continued, reaching across to deposit his glass on the table, “is offer my condolences on your losses. I heard about the chocolate house, the bookshop.”
Rosamund bowed her head.
“They were your . . . How do I put it? Assets. If I recall, once the will was executed, they were the sum total of your wealth, if I’m not mistaken? Unless you count your slave, Bianca.”
Rosamund snapped, “Bianca is not an asset except in the way that a good friend always is.” She met his gaze steadily, wishing Bianca were here now.
“Ouch,” said Aubrey, then laughed. It was shrill, discordant and more than a little unnatural. “I assume from that you neither value nor trust me.” He placed his hand over his heart. “A pity. You’ve no reason not to.”
Rosamund could barely countenance what she was hearing. But then, he didn’t know what she now knew.
He rose and began to walk about the room, touching objects, lifting curios and putting them down again.
“You see, when I learned of the destruction of the Phoenix and the bookshop, and knowing the value you placed on them, how essential they were to maintaining your—how do I put it?—your means of living and maintaining a household, well, once I learned they were gone up in a puff of smoke”—he made a motion with his fingers—“I began to wonder and, I admit, to reevaluate my promise to Lovelace. Before the fire, you were an independent widow, a woman of small means, but means nonetheless. You had shares in a bookshop, in the chocolate house too. Now you have nothing. You don’t even have a roof over your head, except through my munificence.”
Rosamund stared at Aubrey. What was he playing at? “I thought you a man of your word.”
As she slowly rose, unaware of the pages falling out of her pocket, Rosamund made an effort not to let her perturbation show.
Aubrey gave a bark of laughter. “What you need to understand is my word was given under duress, when I was in no position to bargain. Therefore, it does not count. Things have changed. The fire caused a great alteration not only to this city, but to your circumstances. Lovelace’s as well. As far as I am concerned, this voids any prior agreement.”
Rosamund narrowed her eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t see how . . .”
“Don’t see? Come on, Rosamund, you’re being deliberately obtuse. Lovelace threatened me. If I didn’t leave you alone, desist in my wooing, allow you to live here with no obligation, he would injure my person or worse. I’d no choice but to obey, especially since you appeared determined to refuse my advances.” He leaned toward her. “Truth is, while you had the chocolate house and the bookshop, you had alternatives. I would have to be patient. Now my patience can come to an end.”
“Ah, I see.” So much for his word—it was as empty as the wind. “You wish me to leave.” She made to pass him. He grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop. She looked at his fingers wrapped around her sleeve, then up at his face. His eyes were so different to the deep, dark azure of Matthew’s . . .
“On the contrary, I insist you stay.” He released her. “You will stay here. With me.” His finger stabbed his chest.
Needles pricked the back of Rosamund’s neck. “No, Aubrey. I won’t.”
Aubrey threw back his head and let loose a merry burble. “Is that so? Where will you go? I tell you now, if you do not remain here, with me, then I will tell the government what I know to be true about you.”
Rosamund went cold. “What do you know?”
“Not only do your chocolate drawers disperse dissident material written by Matthew Lovelace about the streets, but you harbor Quakers beneath your roof. You even welcomed them into the bookshop.” He gave a coarse laugh at her expression. “I’ve known for a long time about Bianca’s religious disposition. If you care about her as you claim, then you will do all in your power to protect her . . . and those boys you dote on at the Phoenix. If you care about Matthew Lovelace, you won’t want the authorities knowing what else he writes—those delightful little pieces to which he doesn’t put his name.” He laughed. “Doesn’t matter the place no longer exists; proof of what he was doing, they were doing—what you were facilitating—does. All it takes is one word from me and the men I paid to watch you all will run straight to the Secretary of State. They work for him, and, it turns out, anyone else for the right fee. Very convenient. And don’t think for a moment of turning to Lovelace. Once he knows the information I have, the witnesses I can produce, the damage I can do to you, to those you harbor affection for and, indeed, to him, his threats to me are rendered neutral. Choose carefully, Rosamund—you can either live here with me as my lawful wife or you can languish in prison after you’ve been thoroughly questioned. I hear Henry Bennet is a master at extracting confessions, he and Mr. Williamson . . . Ah! I know what you’re thinking, but ponder this: when one is proved a traitor, friendship counts for nothing; I know. Just ask Lovelace. As for Bianca, well, she’ll be bundled on a ship and sent to a plantation somewhere—if she survives. And while I know you employed a boy without a hand, how will the other drawers find employ with none?”
Rosamund’s mind galloped.
When she didn’t answer, he smiled. “As of this moment, I’m taking possession of my home, and, my dear, sweet Rosamund, my little chocolate maker, I’m taking possession of you.”
He whipped an arm around her waist. When she pushed him away, his hand closed over hers, holding it captive. She could feel the thud of his heart through his jacket.
Stroking the hair that fell down her back, he bent toward her.
“Rosamund, Rosamund. Don’t you understand? This is how it should be. You and me. We can live beneath this roof. If not as husband and wife, then just together. It’s all I want. It’s all I’ve ever wanted . . .” His voice was a furnace in her ear. “Just you and me . . . always. Not one word of what I know will ever escape my lips. I will keep you safe—and those you lavish your affections on—with my silence. I’ll give you everything you ever wanted—another chocolate house if need be, as many slaves as your heart desires, a babe to love. Just say the word.”
He caught her lobe in his lips and nibbled it.
Disgust made her pull away. His mouth made a popping sound as her ear escaped.
“The word is ‘no,’ Aubrey. It’s always been ‘no.’”
Suddenly, he released her. Staggering back to a chair, she saw the pages crumpled beside it.
“Without a chocolate house, without a place to call your own, where will you go? You can’t go back to Gravesend. As for Lovelace, you think he’d take you? The woman who looks like the wife he despised? Whom he killed? He didn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve you.”
Rosamund could not tear her eyes away from the pages.
“But I want you. I want to take care of you. Love you. I do. We are Blithmans. Together, we can live here, run the business. Don’t you see? It’s perfect. God brought you into my life so I might atone . . .” He stopped.
Sweeping up the torn pages, Rosamund was left with no choice. She had to stop this lunacy before it went any further. “Atone for what, Aubrey? What were you about to say?”
His eyes flicked to what she held and back to her face. He frowned. “What’s that you have there?”
She shook them. “The truth, Aubrey. I hold the truth.”
At first she thought he was going to snatch the pages from her. Instead, he strode to the table and scooped up his drink and downed it.
“Truth? What are you talking about?”
Making sure the table remained between them, Rosamund held up the remnants of his mother’s diary. “I know about you and Helene, Aubrey. I know everything. About your obscene sins, about the baby.”
His face paled. His expression became guarded. “What nonsense is this?”
“Your mother . . .” Rosamund stopped. She was about to betray a woman’s last attempt to admit to all the wrongs she’d done. While she was unrepentant, Aubrey could at least own his actions, admit his wickedness. “Your mother blamed herself for what you and Helene did . . . She took responsibility for everything, including hiding the truth, and it killed her.”
Aubrey’s glass dropped from his hand. The sound as it struck the floor was stark. It rolled under the chair. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Killed her? What nonsense is this? Helene and I did nothing wrong. My mother was ill, unwell . . .”
“Lady Margery pulled strings, made decisions, manipulated people, all to protect you and your sister, concealing your foul sin. She knew everything; she wrote it all down in her diary, confessed to God that it sickened her just as it sickens me.”
“Sickens?” exclaimed Aubrey. “There’s nothing sickening about love.”
“Love? You call that love?” Rosamund stared at him aghast. “Because of your love, innocent people died—Robin, the baby, your mother. Even your father declared you dead. Matthew Lovelace nearly died because of you.”
His face contorted. “He should have.”
Rosamund shook the pages in his face. “Matthew? He was innocent, deceived. Your father was willing to become a murderer to protect your secret, to turn me into one.”
Aubrey’s face changed. “But don’t you see?” His voice was wheedling. “This is why you must stay. This is why we have to be together. We can make all that right. We can undo all those terrible things—the baby’s death. Father’s actions, Mother’s . . .” He frowned. Shaking himself, he scooped up her hand and held it tight. “Helene and I were foolish, misguided—I know that now. But you, you’re not my sister, you only look like her. You were my father’s wife in name only. With you, I can love openly, out of the shadows. Even God Himself would bless our union. Why else would you have come into our lives if it isn’t God’s will?”
Rosamund stared at him in disbelief. The man was deranged. He wanted to replace his dead sister with her. She bit back a laugh. They all did. Everard. Aubrey. She once thought Lady Margery was the dead woman whose shoes she walked in. But all along it was Helene’s shoes they’d wished her to wear.
No more.
“God would never bless something so, so wrong.” She snatched her hand away. “I don’t love you, Aubrey. I never could. Don’t you see? Your so-called love for me is iniquitous as well.” She lowered her voice, infused it with empathy. “I am not Helene. I never will be. You’re sick, Aubrey. Your mother saw you and your sister for what—”
There was a loud crack. Rosamund’s head flew back and the pages scattered as she fell against the chair. Her cheek burned. Flashes of yellow and crimson arced across the horizon of her sight.
There was a rattling sound: Aubrey locked the door.
Rosamund blinked. Nausea rose. She was being tossed on a wild sea.
“Sick, am I?” snarled Aubrey. All pretense of civility and persuasion was gone. His eyes were wild, sweat dotted his forehead and ran in rivulets down his face.
He grabbed her by the throat and shook her. “Dear God, it would be so easy to stop those vile words coming from those lovely lips.” Bending, he pressed his mouth against hers. When she tried to push him off, he tightened his hold. She couldn’t breathe. Forcing her lips apart, his tongue scraped her mouth. Planting his knee between her legs, he pulled her against him as she fought the darkness at the edges of her vision.
As quickly as he bundled her to him, he flung her away. She tumbled into the chair. Drawing lungfuls of air, it was a moment before she became aware of him standing over her. He was reading his mother’s words. His face was blotched with patches of carmine and a spiderweb of veins. He finished one page and tossed it aside, his shoulders slumping as if by reading it, he had taken the weight of the contents upon himself.
Rosamund surreptitiously wiped her sleeve across her mouth and searched for something to arm herself with. Anything to prevent him hurting her again. Her neck was tender; it was difficult to swallow. Blood was in her mouth. There were candlesticks, but they were too far away.
A tortured sound escaped him and he fell to his knees. As she watched, moment to moment his expression changed from calmness to storms and back again. Her heart swelled. How could she feel so sorry for such a man? Yet she did. Like Fear-God and Glory, like Ben and Jed, like her, children are the choices their parents make. Aubrey was the result of the choices his mother and father made. He was not absolved. But at the same time he never understood the price others paid for his lustful sins—and Helene’s. Now he confronted his mother’s anguish.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He dug the heel of his hand into one eye then the other before continuing. He looked at Rosamund at one stage.
The room finally stopped spinning and Rosamund was able to sit up. On the table by the window was a statuette of Venus. If only she could reach it, she could use it to deter Aubrey if he struck again.
Finally, he let the last page drop. Rosamund lurched out of the chair in an attempt to get to the table by the window. He caught at her skirts, tripping her. Her head struck the floor.
He dragged her toward him, uncaring that the dress tore, and gathered her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed into her breast. “I’m so sorry. I only ever loved you. With all my heart and soul. I felt good, right, when I was with you. Only you. How can God not bless such feelings?” He raised his head, searched her face, then burrowed into her neck. “Father said what we did was the worst of transgressions, that we would go to hell for them. When you died, I thought he was right—this was God punishing me. I wanted to die too. But then you came back. He brought you back to me. Our love was never wrong . . . But that—” His arm flailed toward the pages. “Mother . . . How could she . . . how could she say those things? How could Father? Lovelace was never good enough for Helene. She was meant to be with me. With me.” Sobs strangled his words.
Vacillating between believing she was his sister and understanding she was not, his mind was torn asunder. Almost every instinct in Rosamund screamed at her to crawl from beneath him and escape. All except one. She listened to it.
Putting her arm about him, she drew him closer, swallowing her abhorrence, gritting her teeth as she stroked the back of his head. “Hush, there, Aubrey. Hush. It will be all right, it will be all right.”
How long they sat like that, Rosamund didn’t know. Her head ached, and her body began to protest at the peculiar position she was in. Staring at the wall, she watched the light change as the afternoon sped on through a smoke-filled haze: from golden to white-hot to lucent. Still Aubrey didn’t move. His weeping quietened. The rancid, wine-soaked, sweaty smell of him grew. She wanted to put her head back and close her eyes and sleep until the world righted itself. She wished Bianca were home, that Matthew would come in search of her, that someone would understand the door was locked and release her. But she knew that couldn’t happen just yet.
If she came through this, she would leave Blithe Manor. She had no real rights here—nor did she want them. It was Aubrey’s house. His house, his memories, and he was welcome to them. What a sad, terrible place. What a sad, terrible family.
Aubrey ceased crying. He lifted his head and stared at her. Mucus ran from his nose to the top of his lips. His cheeks were smeared with wet saltiness. More than anything he resembled a naughty little boy. A boy who committed the sin of loving his sister too much.
As he continued to stare, his mouth worked itself into strange shapes, as if trying out words and discarding them. She reached out to brush away a stray hair that had fallen on his forehead. He slapped her fingers away and, without warning, stood up.
Rosamund toppled from his knees.
“You’re right. You’re not Helene, you ungrateful cunt.” He spat and kicked her. “Helene wouldn’t make me cry. She would never cause me such pain. She crafted beautiful letters to buoy my spirits, to remind me of her constancy. She did everything she could to be with me, risking her life and the babe’s. We always promised we’d find each other, sail to the ends of the earth. That’s what she tried to do . . . not like you.” His foot flew out and connected with her ribs.
She gasped and tried to protect her side with her hand, but he kicked her again, her fingers bearing the brunt this time.
“Please, Aubrey.” She tried to roll away.
“There’s no pleasing you.” He followed and kicked her in the head. There was a burst of agony, followed by darkness. She could still hear his voice.
“I offer you marriage, a life together, but all you say is no. I offer you my house, my name. You say no.”
She heard footsteps crossing back and forth, back and forth over the floor.
“Helene loved me. She understood me. You’re just like the rest. You tell me it’s wrong. Lovelace used our letters to bribe me, to manipulate me. You’re just like him, using those awful words Mother wrote to make me behave the way you want. Father threatened me too. What about me? What about Helene? Why couldn’t you all just let us be? We never hurt anyone.”
Rosamund had the presence of mind not to mention the baby . . . or Matthew.
“You had to interfere; you had to try to keep us apart. It wasn’t our love that killed Helene. It was you. All of you. You never should have been given to Lovelace. Never. Mother deserved to die. Father too.”
Through a veil of agony, she watched as he scrunched the pages together. As he threw them on the chair, she saw there were other things stacked there. Books, a news sheet, some pamphlets he found, a shawl. Searching his pocket, he added his pouch of tobacco, his pipe, before pulling out a flint. She heard him strike it a few times before it finally caught. Why was he doing that? Surely if he wanted to burn the remnants of the diary, it was much safer to do so in the hearth.
With growing horror, she saw him lower the flame to the pages.
“No—” she croaked.
“No?” cried Aubrey, without bothering to turn. “Is that all you can say to me? Why not? Just as fire cleansed London, I’m going to have my own little ritual and cleanse the past. Burn these foul musings and all their untruths.” The corner of a page caught, blackening and folding as a thin ribbon of orange rippled across it. “May as well keep going.” He lifted the flaming page and held it against the other papers stacked on the chair. “If you don’t want to live here, well, neither do I. In fact,” he said, moving back as the objects began to smoke, “no one will. It will be my monument to Helene . . . to our love.”
He turned, a ghoulish grin upon his face.
Behind him, flames leaped. The paper was old, the chair too. The other bits he’d found to feed his fire crackled to life. The time-worn pillows, the shawl, the upholstery covered in fine specks of ash and soot from days of blazes, became hungry kindling. The flickering grew and danced, rising higher, catching the edge of the curtains.
Rosamund tried to move, to cry out, but she couldn’t. Before her, Aubrey leaped from foot to foot like a pagan. He added more fuel, other news sheets, more books from which he tore the pages. He threw them on the chair, which had become a torch. The heat was furious.
Hand over hand, she hauled herself away, barely able to breathe. Her ribs were blistering bands of bruises; blood trickled down the side of her head. The curtains were aflame. The windows she’d opened to admit air now fanned the fire. It jumped across the windows, crawled across the walls. Paint peeled, plaster charred and dropped. Artworks became scorched, the faces stern and unmoving as they melted.
Smoke rolled around the ceiling, falling to descend upon them both and choke them in its thick, cloying grasp.
Shouts followed by screams issued from outside.
“God!” she cried, before a volley of coughs interrupted. “Help me.” Dragging herself along the floor, the distance to the door was so vast, it was another country.
A hand fastened around her ankle.
“Don’t leave me, Helene. Please, not again.” Ignoring her limp kicks, her pleas, her hoarse screams, Aubrey threw himself on top of her. She tried to thrust him away, but he was too heavy. She had no energy; she couldn’t breathe. Above her she was aware of his face as it swam in her vision; he was saying something, but the roar of the fire was too loud, the way it undulated across the ceiling in a blur of gold and orange seared her vision, she couldn’t look away.
That was how she saw what happened next. There was an almighty crack and the ancient beam above began to sag before, with a great groan of protest, it fell.
Rosamund watched it coming toward her over Aubrey’s shoulder. She tried to warn him, tell him to move, but the words wouldn’t come.
At the last moment she cowered in the shelter of his chest before something struck with a flash of white-hot torment and blessed oblivion claimed her.