The Dark Enquiry. Deanna Raybourn

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СКАЧАТЬ I had muddled my way into something else entirely. It was not the first time I had pushed my way into his world, and not the first time I had made him shatteringly angry in doing so. The trouble, I believed, had its roots in our respective pasts. I came from a family too much in each other’s pockets. We Marches were forthright, emotional, feckless and impulsive. We also loved to talk. There was not a thought or deed that went unremarked amongst us. Secrets were short-lived in our family. We made a life’s work of interfering in each other’s business, and then telling the others about it, and with ten children, there was always much to tell.

      Brisbane’s upbringing could not have been more different. He was an unwanted child, half Gypsy, half Scot, got in the heat of a passionate and tempestuous marriage that had not even lasted until his birth. His mother had died in gaol, accused of heinous crimes and crying down curses upon her accusers. His father was best unspoken of. His aristocratic Scottish family would not so much as acknowledge he had existed. His name had been struck from the family Bible, and Brisbane himself hovered on the edge of both worlds. He was neither fish nor fowl, for his Gypsy kin felt him too much a Scot, his Scottish family considered him a wild and savage Gypsy brat.

      He had brought himself up, leaving his mother before he was ten and living upon his wits since then. He had achieved respectability by his own merit and wealth from his own accomplishments. He had built a life for himself that was larger than any his family could have given him. He was a man in a thousand, ten thousand, for I had never met another like him, and only Brisbane with his passion and his maddening ways could have tempted me again to marriage. I adored him in ways that frightened me, and the notion that frightened me the most was that Brisbane would come to regret marrying me. He had lived so long upon his own that the act of trust was a difficult one for him to master. He had his associates and friends—the redoubtable Monk, the gentle Dr. Bent, and now, perhaps, my brother Plum. His former mistress and my dear friend, Hortense de Bellefleur, was another. That he was capable of love was undoubted. That he could live with it was another matter entirely.

      I made up my mind to call upon Hortense at the earliest opportunity and slid into an uneasy sleep, only to rouse as soon as Brisbane returned. I spied from the face of the clock that it was past two.

      “Brisbane?” I called softly.

      He sat heavily on the edge of the bed. I had turned the fire down before going to sleep, and only the softest glow from the hearth lit the room. His face was thrown into shadowed relief, and I could see his features only in turn. He pulled off one boot and dropped it to the floor.

      “The death has been reported to the authorities. There will be a postmortem and an inquest.” The second boot fell.

      “Good,” I said fervently. “Even if she was dreadful, her sister deserves to know what happened.”

      He said nothing as he stripped off his clothes, draping them over the chair by the hearth. He was, as ever, casual about his nudity, but the sight of him never failed to distract me completely. My first husband had been pale and slender, like a statue of a youthful prince, waiting for his throne. Brisbane was a king through and through, a man fully in possession of his powers, and I watched the play of shadow over his sleek muscles. He slid under the bedclothes, and to my relief, reached an arm to me. I rolled close, pillowing my head upon the hard curve of his shoulder as his arm came around me.

      “I am sorry,” I murmured.

      “I know. I ought not to have threatened to beat you,” he returned. He pressed a kiss to my hair.

      “I just cannot bear to be kept out of your life,” I said into the dark.

      He gave a sigh. “Julia, you daft woman. When will you understand? You are my life.”

      It cost him something to say it, for Brisbane’s declarations were always a thing of pain to him, wrenched by some force, as if he were Samson, giving up his strength a lock at a time with his words.

      I said nothing, pressing closer and easing myself on top of him. We were silent, but in our silence was desperation, feverish and sharp, and when we spent ourselves and lay, damp and exhausted in each other’s arms, we were silent still.

       The SIXTH CHAPTER

      Rest, rest, perturb’d spirit.

      —Hamlet

      The next morning, Brisbane was up and gone before I descended to breakfast. Aquinas entered with tea and toast as I helped myself to eggs from the sideboard. As a very superior butler, he made no allusion to events of the previous evening. It fell to me to raise the subject we were so carefully avoiding.

      “I do hope the rest of the staff were not disturbed by our arrival last night,” I began.

      Aquinas poured out the tea and tidied up the various pots of jam and honey. “Not at all, my lady.”

      “Hmm. Did they happen to notice anything amiss?”

      Aquinas gave me a kindly smile. “It is beneath the dignity of a member of staff to notice or remark upon the activities of the family,” he reminded me.

      I took a piece of toast, crumbling it in my fingers. “I suppose. I should hate for the new members of staff to think that such goings on are typical of this house.”

      Aquinas’ lips thinned a little as he folded Brisbane’s newspaper. I dropped the toast. “Oh, very well. You’d best prepare them that such things are entirely typical. That the mistress will occasionally dress in boy’s clothes, that the master has been known to disguise himself as a pedlar or a beggarwoman, that we keep ravens in the morning room and that from time to time, we are menaced by murderers and thieves and blackmailers and villains of every description,” I said, flinging up my hands in exasperation.

      “I have already done so, my lady,” he informed me. “And I have hired the staff at a premium to accommodate the inconvenience.”

      “Oh, well done,” I murmured. “Are we fully staffed then?”

      “All but the tweeny,” he acknowledged. “She gave notice yesterday on account of the telephone device that has been installed under the stairs. She thinks it an ungodly and heathenish apparatus and will not remain in a house where one is in use.”

      I snorted. “Any other domestic troubles? Have we a new cook yet?”

      “I am assured by Mrs. Potter that a new cook will be in residence by this afternoon. We are also lacking a valet for the master, although Mr. Brisbane is quite gracious about my own efforts in that capacity.”

      Aquinas had been acting as valet to Brisbane for some weeks, although it was not entirely fair to expect him to continue to do so. The duties of a butler were onerous at times, particularly in our establishment, and Brisbane could be exacting about his clothes. Of course, he also managed perfectly well by himself without a valet when necessity demanded it. On our honeymoon, he had availed himself of hotel valets and shipboard stewards to see to his clothes, but I had seen him just as impeccably turned out whilst camping at an archaeological site in Turkey or pursuing a murderer in the Himalayas as in any London ballroom.

      Aquinas went on. “Furthermore, Mr. Brisbane and I discussed the matter this morning, and I suggested a pair of footmen for messages and carrying packages, with the notion that one or both could serve as valets as needed.”

      “And he was amenable?” I asked.

      Aquinas whisked СКАЧАТЬ