His At Night

Chapter Twenty

“Will Lord Vere be able to handle everything?” asked Aunt Rachel, as the train pulled out amidst much whistling and steaming.

Vere remained on the platform, watching their departure. Still in his cabbie guise, he had driven Elissande and Aunt Rachel to the rail station, so they could leave Exeter and its ordeal behind. Much better that Mrs. Douglas recuperate at home than at a police station, he’d said.

But his home was not theirs, was it?

“He will be fine,” said Elissande.

He receded farther and farther from view, his absence a sharp emptiness within her. Finally the train station became only a buoy of light in the darkness and he was lost from her sight.

“I suppose…I suppose you will want to know everything,” said her aunt.

No, not her aunt, her mother. Elissande turned her gaze to that familiar face, less gaunt than before but still aged far before her time, and felt a wave of terrible sadness.

“Only if you feel strong enough for it, ma’am.”

She didn’t know if she was strong enough for it.

“I can manage, I think,” said Aunt Rachel with a weak smile. “But I don’t quite know where to start.”

Elissande thought back to what her husband had recounted earlier. It was an effort not to shudder. “I’ve been told that my uncle—my father—had painted you as a good, kind angel long before you were married. You did not know who he was?”

“He said he first saw me in Brighton, on the West Pier, and was so taken with me that he bribed the owner of the studio where we had a family portrait taken to tell him the address we’d written down for our portraits to be sent to—and also to sell him a photograph of me. I never saw him before he called on me. He claimed to be an acquaintance of my late father’s and I did not doubt him. I was in reduced circumstances and Charlotte had run away from home—people lied about why they no longer wished to receive me; it didn’t occur to me that anyone would lie to get close to me.”

Elissande’s heart pinched: her gentle, trusting mother, all alone in the world and utterly vulnerable to a monster like Douglas.

“When did you learn the truth?”

“Shortly before you were born. I found his old diary when I was looking for quite something else—I don’t remember what. Had I known the diary belonged to him, I wouldn’t have opened it. But it had the initials G. F. C. embossed on the cover and I was curious.”

Mrs. Douglas sighed. “I was so naïve, so stupid, and so completely thrilled with my handsome, clever, rich husband—even his jealousy I’d thought romantic. When I realized that George Fairborn Carruthers’s handwriting looked just like my husband’s, and some of the events from this stranger’s life were identical to what Edmund had recounted from his, I asked him, of all people, about it.

“He must have panicked. He could have fobbed me off with some cock-and-bull story, but he told me terrible things. That was when I first saw his true nature—when I first became afraid of him.”

That was why she had been so distressed by the news of Stephen Delaney’s murder, Elissande realized: Douglas must have vowed to her that he would never take another life.

“When you were one month old, your cousin was delivered to our doorstep by a Salvation Army sergeant. I’d lost touch with Charlotte over the years. I had no idea she’d died in childbirth or that her husband had perished already. The sergeant said that she tried to give the baby to the Edgertons, but they absolutely refused. I was terrified of admitting another child into my house—under my husband—but there was nothing else I could do.

“The baby was adorable. She was only a week older than you, and you two could have easily passed for twins. But less than ten days after she came to live with us, you both caught a fever. She had seemed stronger, while I feared for your life. The jubilation I felt when your fever broke…you could not imagine. But only a few hours later, in the middle of the night, your cousin died in my arms. The shock of it—I could not stop crying. I thought surely she wouldn’t have died had she been with the Edgertons. I was petrified that the Edgertons had realized their mistake and would arrive in the morning to claim her. What would I tell them then?

“That was when it occurred to me. Your uncle—your father—was away on business in Antwerp, and the nursemaid had been dismissed because the housekeeper had caught her with the footman. If I claimed that you had died instead of your cousin, nobody would be the wiser. Then when the Edgertons came, you could go with them and live free of your father, the way I could not. Once I made my decision, I sent out death notices to everyone I knew—it was before your uncle moved us to the country, and I still had some friends and acquaintances. That made it official. No one doubted that a mother wouldn’t know her own child.”

She dabbed a handkerchief at the corners of her eyes. “I must say the Edgertons disappointed me terribly. I sent letters. I sent your photographs. They never even wrote back.”

Elissande had to wipe at her own eyes. “It’s all right, ma’am. You did your best.”

“I did not. I have been an awful mother, a useless burden to you.”

Elissande shook her head. “Please don’t say that. We both know what kind of man he is. He would have killed you had you tried to leave.”

“I should have made you leave. He didn’t need to have dominion over both of us.”

Elissande reached across the narrow space between their seats and touched her mother on the cheek. “I wasn’t altogether a prisoner: I had Capri. I always imagined myself there, far away from him.”

“Me too,” said Mrs. Douglas, tucking her handkerchief into the cuff of her sleeve.

Elissande was astonished. “You also imagined yourself on Capri?”

“No, I imagined you there. There was this passage you used to read to me that I dearly loved. I still remember bits and pieces of it: ‘Like Venice, Capri is a permanent island in the traveler’s experience—detached from the mainland of Italian character and associations,’” Mrs. Douglas recited, her eyes wistful, “‘a bright, breezy pastoral of the sea, with a hollow, rumbling undertone of the Past, like that of the billows in its caverns.’

“I imagined you exploring those caverns—I’d read about the discovery of the Blue Grotto when I was a girl; it seemed enchanting. When you had had your fill of grottos, you would dine at a farmhouse and eat robust peasant food full of herbs and olives. And when evening came, you would return to your villa high above the cliffs and watch the sun set over the Mediterranean.”

Tears rose again in Elissande’s eyes. “I don’t believe I ever thought about what I’d eat or where I’d live on Capri.”

“That is quite all right. But I’m your mother. When I imagine you far away, I’d like to think that you are well fed and safely housed.”

But I’m your mother. The words were as disconcerting and beautiful as the first sight of stars.

“And I imagined this easily navigable path between your villa upon the ramparts of the island and the hostel where all the English visitors were gathered. So that when you were bored or lonely, you could go there for tea or dinner. And perhaps a nice young man could call on you.”

Mrs. Douglas smiled hesitantly. “I’d imagined an entire life for you, in a place I’ve never seen.”

Elissande had always known that the woman before her loved her, but never how much. “It sounds like a lovely life,” she said, a catch in her throat.

“Almost as lovely as the life you have with Lord Vere.” Mrs. Douglas took hold of her hands. “You are a fortunate woman, Ellie.”

Her marriage was a sham, her husband willing to pay large sums of money to never see her again. And the man she despised the most had turned out to be her father—the ramifications of which she was still too numb to understand. But Mrs. Douglas was not wrong. Elissande was fortunate: She had her mother, safe and sound.

She leaned forward and kissed her mother on the forehead. “Yes, and how well I know it.”

Vere watched the train that carried his wife disappear into the night.

He’d thought he’d known everything there was to know about the twists and turns of the Douglas case. But tonight’s revelations had shocked him to the core.

Was she reeling? Was she in denial? Had she even understood everything that had transpired?

Instead of allowing himself to be mesmerized by the unfolding secrets, he should have sensed imminent calamity. He should have been quicker with the chloroform. Had he acted a minute sooner, he would have preserved her state of ignorant bliss.

There had been such joy to her—this ugly, faded world was fresh and beautiful in her eyes. Once, at dinner, she had recounted her aunt’s amazement at their visit to Dartmouth. And he had almost commented on the amazement he saw on her face each day, the incredulous pleasure she took in the least things.

He had said nothing, in the end. Her joy had unsettled him: It was a flame, a dangerous flame that he feared would burn him if he were foolish enough to embrace it. He had not known until this moment how beautiful he thought it. How much he cherished it.

He did not dare such happiness for himself—he did not deserve it—but he wanted it for her. Hers had been a hard-won innocence. And he felt its shattering deep inside him, shards of pain puncturing his every breath.

When he arrived back at the house Douglas had chosen for his scheme, Holbrook, also dressed the part of a cabdriver, stood guard in the meager streetlight.

“Our man has already come to,” he said by way of greeting.

Vere nodded. “I will change into my own clothes and we’ll take him.”

He changed inside the house. Then together he and Holbrook carried Douglas, still bound tight, into Holbrook’s hansom cab. Holbrook mounted the driver’s perch; Vere climbed inside the cab and took a seat next to Douglas.

“So, you are my son-in-law,” said Douglas.

As the man spoke, Vere felt something crawl on his skin. “Eh?” he said. “No, no, I married your wife’s niece.”

“Didn’t you understand a single thing that has been said tonight? She is not my wife’s niece. She is my daughter.”

Vere looked at Douglas blankly. “Cracked in the head, aren’t you?”

Douglas laughed. “I must say, part of me is more than a little delighted that she married an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Vere said quietly, experiencing a great and terrible regret at not having thrashed the man more systematically when he’d had the chance.

“No? Then beware. She is my daughter. I know her. I know she entrapped you. Clever as the devil himself, she is, and just as ruthless. She will use you until you’ve nothing more to give, and who knows, maybe she will get rid of you.”

The vileness of the man never failed to astonish. Vere’s fingers tightened into a fist. “How can you say such things about your own daughter, as you keep insisting?”

“Because it’s true. She has learned a great deal from me, an opportunist if ever there was one. Why do you think—pardon me—you don’t think; I forgot. Well, I feel sorry for you, you cretinous lummox.”

“Pardon?” said Vere.

“You stupid half-wit.”

Vere punched him in the face, almost breaking his own hand with the force of his violence. Douglas screamed in pain, his entire body shuddering.

“Sorry,” Vere said, smiling to see Douglas flinch at his voice. “I do that when people call me stupid. You were saying?”

“Let me make sure I understood you correctly, Lord Vere. You were in Dartmouth at a pub. The gentleman sat down and bought you a drink. After which drink you found yourself lighthearted and silly, and agreed with him to come look at a nice piece of property in Exeter. You woke up on the floor of an empty house, realized you’d been abducted, subdued your abductor when he came to give you your bread and water, and brought him in?” asked Detective Nevinson, who, as a result of one of the cables Vere had sent from Paignton, was at the police station.

This damnable, never-ending role. Vere ached to be home—his wife should not be alone tonight.

“Yes,” he said. “I am what you would call, well, not an heiress—I know that’s a woman—but what is a man heiress?”

“You are a rich man,” said Nevinson, with a roll of his eyes.

“That’s right. And as such, I know when I’ve been mugged for my money. And the bastard there—pardon my language, gentlemen—the bounder there had the audacity to suggest he’d keep me so that my wife would continually hand over thousands of pounds. Doesn’t even know the proper etiquette for a ransom, does he? Ah, thank you, sir,” he said to the chief inspector of the Exeter City Police, who had handed him a cup of dark, overbrewed tea. “Good stuff this is, Inspector. Can hardly taste the fancy Ceylon the missus likes.”

Nevinson shook his head. “Do you know, sir, who you’ve brought in?”

“’Course not. Told you, never laid eyes on him before.”

“His is name is Edmund Douglas. Sound familiar?”

“Good Lord, I’ve been had by my tailor!”

“No!” Nevinson cried. He took a deep breath and swallowed a mouthful of his own tea. “That man is your wife’s uncle.”

“That’s not possible. My wife’s uncle is at Holloway.”

“He was found missing from Holloway.”

“He was?”

“That’s why he wanted you. Not because you are a random rich bloke, sir, but because you are his nephew-in-law.”

“Then why didn’t he introduce himself?”

Nevinson bit hard into a rock biscuit.

“Well, in any case,” said the chief inspector, “you’ve brought him in, my lord, and saved everyone from a prolonged manhunt. I, for one, think this calls for more than tea. A bit of whiskey, perhaps, Detective?”

“Please,” said Nevinson fervently.

A police sergeant rushed into the chief inspector’s office. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but the man his lordship just brought in, he’s dead.”

Nevinson gasped. Vere jumped up, knocking over his chair. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Of course you didn’t kill him,” Nevinson said impatiently. “What happened, Sergeant?”

“We aren’t sure, sir. He was perfectly fine. Then he asked for some water. Constable Brown gave him the water. Five minutes later, when Constable Brown went to get the mug back, he was lying in his cot, dead.”

They all rushed out to Douglas’s cell. Douglas lay on his side, seemingly asleep, but entirely without a pulse.

“How did this happen?” Vere cried. “Did he just drop dead?”

“This looks like either cyanide or strychnine.” Nevinson patted Douglas’s person. “Nothing on him but a bit of money and a watch.”

“Do you think he kept his cyanide pills in his watch?” Vere asked, eyes wide.

“That’s lud—” Nevinson stopped. He fiddled with the watch; the face slid open to reveal a secret compartment. “You are right: There are more pills. Enough to kill three people—if these are cyanide pills.”

A chill shot down Vere’s spine. Perhaps Douglas had envisioned poisoning his wife along with himself. Or perhaps they’d all been meant for Mrs. Douglas, his long-delayed, ultimate vengeance.

And perhaps there was enough to do in Elissande as well. Vere’s blood turned cold, even though the danger was now well past.

“I suppose he knew that this time there would be no more escaping,” said Nevinson. “We have enough evidence; he was headed for the gallows.”

For a man who sought to master his fate through whatever means necessary, the thought of having his death imposed upon him must have been unbearable. At least he could never again hurt Elissande or her mother.

A thought that did not bring nearly the relief Vere had hoped. For the damages Douglas had wrought this day—and over the entirety of his worthless life—he should have suffered every last agony the human body could comprehend before dying in public ignominy.

“And look.” Nevinson set the watch on the floor and showed them a tiny pouch. “There are still two diamonds inside. That’s how he must have bribed the prison guards to make his escape.”

While the detective and the chief inspector examined the diamonds, Vere took the watch in hand and unobtrusively fiddled with it some more. There, a second hidden compartment, and inside, another tiny key.

He pocketed the key and handed the watch back to Nevinson. “Really, he didn’t need to kill himself. I would have said a word to the judge for leniency. Rich men are tempting targets. And he’s my uncle, after all.”

Suddenly Elissande could not breathe.

She had inhaled and exhaled tolerably on the journey home. She’d not lacked for air as she put her mother to bed. Even when she was at last by herself, reclined on the chaise longue in the parlor, a compress on her face, another waiting in a basin of water made cold by a block of ice from the ice cellar, her lungs had expanded and contracted as they ought to.

But now she bolted upright, throwing the compress to the floor. Now she yanked at her collar. Now her uncle’s hands were clenched about her throat again, pitilessly, inexorably closing her airway.

She panted and gasped. She opened her mouth wide and gulped down what little oxygen remained in the room.

But she was still not getting enough air. Her head spun; her fingers were numb; her lips tingled strangely. She breathed ever faster, deeper. Her chest hurt. Her vision dotted with points of light.

Sounds came from outside. Was it a carriage? Was that someone opening the front door? She could not make sense of anything. She could only bend over and tuck her head between her knees, fighting not to lose consciousness.

Footsteps—she was no longer alone.

“Slow your breathing, Elissande,” he instructed, sitting next to her. “You must control your breathing.”

He stroked her hair, the warmth of his touch as lovely as that of a cashmere scarf. But his words made no sense—she needed air.

“Inhale slowly, and not too deep. Same when you exhale.” His hand was now on her back, a subtle pressure that calmed her.

She did as he asked. Soon it became apparent that he was right. Controlling her intake of air, a course of action that ran entirely counter to her intuition, soothed her nerves. The numbness and tingling went away; the tightness in her chest dissipated, as did the wobbliness in her head.

He helped her sit straight. Her eyes still hurt slightly at the corners, but she no longer saw dancing spots—only him. He looked worn, his expression a slight frown, but his gaze was steady and kind.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

His fingers barely touching her, he turned her face to inspect it. “The bruises will be ugly. You should be in bed—it’s been a very long day.”

Was it only this morning she’d awakened full of boundless optimism for the future, certain that every piece of her life had at last fallen into place? How could so much be destroyed in so little time?

“I’m all right,” she muttered mechanically.

“Are you?”

She could not hold his gaze. Her eyes dropped to her own hands. “Is he back in custody?”

“He was.”

Her chin jerked up. “Was?”

He hesitated.

Her hand gripped the scroll arm of the chaise longue. “Has he escaped again? Please tell me he has not escaped again!”

Her husband glanced away briefly. When he looked back at her, there was a certain emptiness to his eyes. “He is dead, Elissande. He committed suicide at the police station. Some sort of poison pills—cyanide, most likely. We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report to know exactly what he died of.”

Her jaw dropped. Her breaths once more turned wild and uneven.

“Slowly,” he had to tell her, his hand on her arm. “Or you might get dizzy again.”

She counted as she breathed. She could force her diaphragm to obey, but inside her rib cage, her heart pounded away in shock.

“You are—you are sure it was not a ruse?”

“I was there in person. He is as dead as any of his murder victims.”

She rose; she could no longer remain seated. “So he couldn’t bear to face the consequences of his own actions,” she said, her voice sounding infinitely bitter in her own ears.

“No, he couldn’t. He was a coward in every way.”

She pressed two fingers to the place between her brows—hard. It hurt. But nothing hurt as much as the truth. “And he was my father.”

Everything she believed of herself had been turned on its head.

Something was pressed into her hands—a generously filled glass of whiskey. She wanted to laugh: Had Vere forgotten her limited capacity for liquor? Instead she had to bite her lip to force back tears.

“He abused Andrew and Charlotte Edgerton to me every chance he had. I understood that even were the two judged kindly, most people would still see Charlotte Edgerton as loose and her husband foolish. Yet—”

She blinked hard. “Yet I loved them—I believed them dashing and larger-than-life. I imagined that as they drew their last breaths, their greatest regret was that they could not watch me grow into womanhood.”

Instead, when her father drew his last breath, his greatest regret must have been that he could no longer torment Elissande and her mother to his heart’s content.

The thought seared her. Instead of generous, affectionate, if overly impulsive Andrew Edgerton, her father was a man who laughed gleefully at the possibility of her having to raise a passel of moronic children.

She saw her reflection in the mirror on the wall. Her husband was wrong. It was not that her bruises were going to be ugly, they already were: red welts turning purple, a cut across her lips, one of her eyes swollen nearly shut.

Her own father had done this to her, with distinct pleasure at her pain and injury.

She had believed freedom was as easy as physically escaping Highgate Court. But how did she escape this? For as long as she lived, Edmund Douglas’s blood would pulse in her, a daily reminder of the unbreakable ties of kinship that now forever bound her to him.

She turned away from the mirror, pushed the glass of whiskey back into her husband’s hand, and made for the door. Up the stairs, down the corridor, into her room. She opened the treasure chest and took out all the mementos she had so cherished over the years.

“Elissande, don’t do anything rash,” said Vere.

She had not even heard him, but he was in her room with her.

“I’m not going to damage them.” Even if the mementos no longer held the same meaning for her—it was a knife in the heart to look upon them and remember the life she believed she could have had if only Andrew and Charlotte Edgerton had lived—her mother would still wish to have a few keepsakes by which to remember her sister. “I only want to burn this chest.”

“Why?”

“There is a secret compartment in the lid. When I was a little girl he showed me the key slots and told me that one day I would find the keys. I know now what’s in it.” She had to clench her teeth against an upsurge of disgust; she felt entirely unclean. “It must be his diary.”

And the painting that had hung in her room at Highgate Court, with the thorny red rose arising from a pool of his blood, that had been his hint to her all along, hadn’t it?

“This chest would produce a great deal of fume in the grate,” said her husband. “I have the keys for the compartment. Why don’t I open it instead?”

She stared at him; she’d forgotten his field of expertise. “When and where did you find the keys?”

“One in the safe at Highgate Court, when we visited after our wedding, the second tonight on Douglas’s person.”

He left briefly to retrieve the other key from his room. She set the chest on top of her dresser. He fitted in the keys and turned both at the same time. The bottom of the lid sprang open half an inch or so. He carefully pulled it down until a small, cloth-wrapped package slid into his palm.

Opening the square of blue broadcloth revealed a leather-bound volume, with the initials G. F. C. embossed in a corner.

“There is a note here for you.”

“What does it say?” She did not want to touch anything that had been in Douglas’s hands.

“‘My Dear Elissande, Christabel Douglas never died. Ask Mrs. Douglas what happened to her. And—’” Her husband stopped and glanced at her. “‘And may I live forever in your memory. Your father, George Fairborn Carruthers.’”

It was as if Douglas had punched her again. At least he need no longer regret not silencing him sooner with the chloroform. He always meant to have the last laugh from beyond the grave.

She grabbed the diary from Vere’s hands and threw it across the room. “God damn him!”

The tears that she’d tried to keep back streamed down her face. They burned where Douglas had hit her.

“Elissande—”

“That’s not even my name.”

She’d always loved her name, which combined Eleanor and Cassandra, the names of Charlotte and Andrew Edgerton’s mothers. She’d relished the care and thought that had gone into its creation, the exotic, musical syllables, the aspirations that Charlotte and Andrew Edgerton must have had for their daughter to bestow such a grand name on her, one not every girl could carry off.

Much of her life she had seethed in powerlessness. But never had she felt as powerless as she did this moment—stripped of everything that had ever mattered to her.

Behind her, her husband placed his hands on her arms. Then, very gently, he wrapped his arms about her middle and held her against him.

And she wept for all her broken dreams.

When she had no more tears, he disrobed her and changed her into her nightdress. Then he lifted her, carried her to her bed, and tucked her in.

He extinguished the light and left her room. She lay with her eyes open, staring into the shadows, wishing she hadn’t been too proud to ask him to remain with her for a little longer. But to her relief—and a bittersweet moment of happiness—he came back in the next minute.

“Are you thirsty?” he asked.

She was. He pressed a glass of water into her hand—that must have been what he’d left to get. She drank almost the entire glass and thanked him. He pulled a chair next to her bed and sat.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she was grateful for every little kindness shown her. But this was no little kindness on his part, to stay with her on the darkest night of her life.

He took her hand in his. “Elissande.”

She was too worn-out to remind him that Elissande was not her name.

As if he’d heard her, he said, “It’s beautiful, this name with which your mother rechristened you.”

Her heart skidded. She had not thought of it that way.

“It’s beautiful for all the hope with which she endowed it, the bravest moment in an otherwise timid life. That she dared to hide her daughter in plain sight is testament of her love for you.”

She’d believed that she had no more tears. Yet her eyes prickled hotly again as she remembered her mother’s desperate valor.

“Do not forget it, Elissande.”

Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, past her temples, into her hair. “I won’t,” she murmured.

He gave her a handkerchief. She held on tight to it—and with her other hand she held on tight to him.

He skimmed the back of her hand with his thumb. “When I did my reading on the artificial synthesis of diamonds, every article I came across mentioned the fact that a diamond consists solely of carbon, which makes it kin to both blacklead and coal. Douglas is your father—I don’t dispute that. But whereas he is nothing but a lump of coal, you are a diamond of the first water.”

She was hardly that. She was a liar and a manipulator.

“Your mother would not have lived to this day were it not for you—of that I have no doubt. When she was defenseless, you defended her.”

“How could I not? She needed me.”

“Not everyone watches out for the powerless. You would have profited far more by flattering Douglas—or you could have left by yourself. It takes moral fiber to do the right thing.”

She bit the inside of her lip. “Keep talking and soon I will believe myself a paragon of virtues.”

He chortled. “That you are not, and probably never will be. But you have both strength and compassion, neither of which Douglas understood or possessed in the least.”

He smoothed away the wetness at her temple, his touch as light and careful as a miniature painter’s brushstrokes.

“I have watched you these past days. A life under Douglas could easily have made you brittle, anxious, and resentful. But you have been incandescent. Don’t let him take it away from you. Laugh at him instead. Have friends, have books, have a ball with your mother. Let him see your days suffused with pleasure. Let him see that even though he devoted his life to it, he’d failed to ruin yours.”

More tears tumbled into her hair. Mrs. Douglas was right: Elissande was a fortunate woman. The man she’d wronged the most had turned out to be a true friend.

She thought of her mother, safe and sound in her room, never to be mistreated again. She thought of herself: still her own mistress—that would not change. She thought of the coming morning—even the darkest night did not last forever—and surprised herself with a desire to see the sunrise.

“You are right,” she said. “I will not let him diminish me from beyond the grave, just as I never allowed him to take a piece of my soul while he yet lived.”

When Vere was sixteen, he and Freddie were summoned from Eton to attend their father on the latter’s deathbed.

Being a dying man had not rendered the marquess any less vitriolic than usual. With Freddie in the room, he had instructed Vere to marry soon and reproduce fast, so that there would be no chance for the title and the estate to pass on to Freddie.

Vere had held his tongue because of the presence of a physician and a nurse. But he’d grown angrier and angrier as the evening progressed. Finally, deep in the night, he could stand it no more. His father might be at Death’s door but he needed to be told that he was a despicable man and a wretched excuse for a father.

He made for the marquess’s bedchamber. The nurse had nodded off in the next room but the door to the marquess’s bedchamber was ajar, leaking both light and voices into the passage. He peeked in and recognized the rector by the man’s vestment.

“But—but—but, my lord, that was murder,” stammered the rector.

“I knew bloody well it was murder when I pushed her down the staircase,” said the marquess. “Had it been an accident, I wouldn’t need you here.”

Vere saw black. He gripped a wall sconce for support. Eight years before, his mother had died of what everyone believed to be an unfortunate fall from the grand staircase of the marquess’s London town house. She’d stayed out too late, had a little too much to drink, the heels of her dancing slippers had caught, and down she had gone.

Her death had devastated Vere and Freddie.

Her blood had had nothing of the Norman purity her husband so prized in himself; her father, despite his superlative wealth, had ranked in the marquess’s eyes as little more than a peddler. But she had been no wilting flower. The only child of an extraordinarily wealthy man, she’d known very well that her dowry paid the marquess’s debts and kept the estate afloat. And she’d protected her children, especially Freddie, from the marquess’s unpredictable and often virulent temper.

The marquess and the marchioness’s mutual loathing had been common knowledge. The spendthrift marquess had already depleted the considerable dowry his wife had brought into the marriage and was in debt again. Vere’s maternal grandfather, Mr. Woodbridge, no fool, provided for his daughter’s needs directly: her gowns, her jewels, her trips abroad so she and her children could get away from her husband.

Yet despite all the domestic tension, no one had ever suspected foul play in her death. Or at least, no one had ever dared to accuse the marquess himself of it. Six months later the marquess married again, a lesser heiress this time, but one who had already come into her inheritance—no pesky father-in-law this time.

While the record was firmly set that the first marchioness’s death had been an accident, pure and simple.

And so Vere had believed, until that heinous moment. He wanted to hide. He wanted to run. He wanted to kick open the door and stop the proceedings. But he was frozen in place, unable to move a single muscle.

“I assume you have repented, my lord?” asked the rector, his voice squeaking.

“No, I would do it again if I had to—I couldn’t stand her another minute,” said the marquess. He laughed, a wheezing, horrible laugh. “But I suppose we must go through the formalities, mustn’t we? I tell you that I’m sorry and you tell me all is well on God’s green earth.”

“I can’t!” the rector cried. “I cannot condone either your action or your unrepentant ways.”

“You will,” said the marquess, his spite inexorable. “Or the world would finally learn why you are the confirmed bachelor you are. For shame, Reverend Somerville, carrying on with a married man, damning his eternal soul to hell even as you damn your own.”

Vere turned and walked. He could not stand to listen to the marquess have his way one last time, not after he already got away with murder.

The marquess’s funeral was a dreadful occasion, thickly attended, his lofty character and good deeds lauded to the rafters by those who either didn’t know or didn’t care what he truly had been: a fiend.

The night after the funeral, Vere had his nightmare for the very first time. Never mind that he’d never seen the scene of his mother’s death; he would now find her cold and broken at the foot of the staircase again and again and again.

Three months later, Vere broke down and confided in his great-aunt Lady Jane.

Lady Jane listened with sympathy and sensitivity. And then she said, “I’m so sorry. It devastated me when I learned of it from Freddie. And yet it devastates me no less to hear it again from you.”

Her revelation shocked Vere almost as much as the truth behind his mother’s death.

“Freddie knew? He knew and he didn’t tell me?”

Lady Jane realized her mistake but it was too late. Vere refused to allow her to retract her knowledge. Eventually she gave in.

“Freddie was worried about your reaction. He feared you might kill your father if you knew—not an unjustified concern, based on what I’ve seen so far,” said Lady Jane. “Besides, he believes your father already adequately punished.”

When Freddie was thirteen, so the story went, he had gone to their father’s room one night, after the marquess had confiscated one of his favorite sketches, in the hope of stealing it back. Apparently the marquess, believing the sounds Freddie made to indicate the presence of his first wife’s ghost, had been terrified.

Vere was beside himself. How dense could Freddie be, to think that their father suffered any twinge of regret, let alone fear? The man who’d threatened to expose the rector’s homosexuality had been no penitent and deserved no one’s forgiveness.

Two years Freddie had known it, two years during which Vere could have made his father’s life a living hell. That, to him, would have been Justice, or at least some measure of it. To have been denied it…to have been denied it by Freddie of all people…

Perhaps Lady Jane saw true potential in Vere. Perhaps she only wished that he would stop with his rants on Truth and Justice. In any case she returned his confidence with one of her own: She was an agent of the Crown whose life’s work had been to unearth truth and restore justice. It was too late for Vere’s mother. But might he find some solace in helping others?

He said yes immediately. Lady Jane advised that in order to turn himself into someone no one took seriously—an enormous asset to a covert agent—he should adopt a pose. She suggested the guise of a hedonist. Vere balked. He’d never been one to overindulge his senses. More important, despite his loneliness, he did not want to be near crowds any more than he must. And who’d ever heard of a secluded hedonist?

“I’d rather be an idiot,” he said.

Little did he realize that as a hedonist, at least he’d have been able to express his own opinions on a range of issues. The role of the idiot permitted no such relief. And the more skillfully he played the fool, the more he isolated himself.

Lady Jane recommended that he not make a decision right away. Exactly two days later, however, he was thrown from his horse. He immediately resolved to exploit the very serious accident, and to take advantage of Needham’s presence as Lady Jane’s houseguest. Once the physician stamped the cachet of his considerable medical expertise on Vere’s condition, nobody would be able to say he didn’t suffer a severe, life-changing concussion.

The physical requirements for his sudden transition to idiocy established, he had a choice to make: What to tell Freddie?

Had Lady Jane’s slip of the tongue never happened, he might have made a very different decision. He and Freddie had always been close. While Freddie couldn’t lie, in this instance he didn’t have to: Vere’s own act was going to spread the news. Should Freddie be asked, he could simply give Needham’s diagnosis verbatim. And Freddie’s loyalty to Vere was so well-known that even if he continued to speak of his brother’s assorted cleverness, his listeners would only conclude that he had trouble accepting the new reality.

But as Freddie had seen fit to rob Vere of any chance of avenging their mother, Vere returned the favor and kept his new secret to himself.

When Vere had wholeheartedly disliked his wife, in a way it had been because she, with her thespian skills and her facile lies, reminded him too much of himself.

But those had been mere surface similarities. Underneath, he was a man who had been fractured at sixteen and never been made whole again, while she, as imperfect as she was, possessed a resilience that left him breathless.

Her hand remained in his, her fingers slack with slumber. He’d meant only to stay with her until she fell asleep, but he was still here at the break of dawn, guarding against her nightmares.

He wanted always to be a bulwark against her nightmares.

The thought didn’t surprise him as much as he imagined it would, now that he’d stopped denying that he loved her. But he wasn’t worthy of her—at least, not as he was, now with all the deceit and cowardice that still blighted his character.

He knew what he had to do. But did he have the courage and humility for it? Was his desire to walk beside her and protect her stronger than his instinct to shy away from the repercussions of truth and continue the fraud that was his life?

He felt as if he stood at the very top of a high cliff. Take a step back and all was safe and familiar. But going forward required a singular leap of faith—and he was a man of little faith, particularly when it came to himself.

But he wanted her to look at him again as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.

And for that he would do the right thing, whatever his shortcomings.