Imogen Robertson - Instruments of Darkness

She moved over to stand behind the nurse to watch the little girl feed. Her movement distracted the baby, who whined and refused the breast. Harriet shrank back a little.

“Hush, little one.” The nurse smiled down softly, then said to her mistress, “Will you hold her for a moment, ma’am?”

Harriet shook her head. “Anne is like her mother. Hates to be disturbed at breakfast,” then she leaned down to fit her finger into the tiny balled hand. The child’s eyes opened suddenly and they looked long at each other, and in a mist Harriet saw all her possible futures laid out in front of her. Then the child wriggled and opened her pink mouth with a soft mew. The nurse shifted her on her knee.

“She’s flourishing, ma’am.”

“Good, good. Thank you for your care of her.” Harriet stood up straight again. Then left the room without looking back, letting the door close soundlessly behind her.

It was only an hour later that Harriet stepped firmly into Wicksteed’s private study with a nod to the maid and sat herself in the low armchair by his window without waiting for an invitation. The estate manager looked up at her with surprise from the desk at which he was writing, then stood and bowed swiftly.

Harriet waved her hand to usher him back to his chair and began to pull off her gloves. He watched her without speaking, as if observing some wild but harmless creature. A monkey behind glass, a bird in a cage. She had meant to study him, but found herself subject. There is a certain sort of man who knows how to look intensely at a woman and make her feel exposed. She wondered if even Jemima, Lady Thornleigh, might find something fresh in a gaze of such violent focus, marveling and amazed, unblinking. It held one. She swallowed before she began to speak.

“Forgive me coming in like this, Mr. Wicksteed, so early in the day.” He began to murmur some compliment; she cut across him. “But I wanted to check with you the figure over the sale of the pretty roan we purchased from the estate for my sister in March.” She peeped at him through her lashes, with a sigh. “I fear I must have copied the wrong figure into my accounts. The column won’t add up correctly now, no matter how many times I try, and that was the one sum where I thought I might have made the error. I had it as twelve guineas, but twenty-one seems a more likely figure for such a pretty mount-and if that was the error, then all my sums will come out right!”

She beamed up at him hopefully. His expression did not change.

“I am happy to check, Mrs. Westerman. The books for March are in the main office, though I think you are right and twenty-one guineas was the figure.”

Harriet leaned forward confidentially. “Oh, would you, Mr. Wicksteed? It would be such a kindness. The commodore hates coming home to find the accounts in anything but a pristine order, you know.”

Wicksteed stood slowly and looked around the room. “I may be a few moments …”

“Oh, I am most happy to wait!” Harriet leaned back in her chair. “And I have another favor to ask. Your housekeeper has a receipt for jugged hare I think quite wonderful, and I promised Mrs. Heathcote I should try and find the secret of it. Might you ask her to jot it down for me?”

Wicksteed frowned and Harriet thought she might have overplayed herself. He looked at her again and suddenly smiled. She had seen him do so rarely and it almost shocked her. His teeth were very white. She felt like a child who has done something charming in its innocent stupidity. He turned and stepped smartly from the room.

Harriet let her smile drop as soon as the catch fell, and began to stand. The door opened again, and she managed to twist her body as if she had been doing no more than make herself comfortable. Wicksteed was still smiling.

“Perhaps I can offer you some refreshment, while you wait.”

“Oh no, I am perfectly comfortable, thank you,” Harriet reassured him.

He bowed and closed the door. She counted to ten as slowly as she could, then stood and moved swiftly to the writing desk where she had found him. There was a heap of offcuts of paper on the table, but her first thought was for the fabled diary. She searched briefly through the neat pigeon-holes on the desk, looking hopefully for his brown books, his journal books. The little desk had two drawers; the first opened easily enough and contained nothing but spare quills and papers; the lower had a little brass lock and would not yield to pressure. She cursed under her breath and wondered if any of her household might confess a colorful enough past to encompass lock-picking, and whether they might teach her. She should have considered that.

There was a noise outside, and she paused, counting the heavy beats of her heart till a footstep had passed in the hall, then turned her attention again to the pile of papers on the blotter. They were drafts or partial drafts of a letter, and she shuffled them between her hands for a few moments, frowning. Wicksteed had a very precise hand, she found herself thinking it a little too florid, too practiced for a gentleman … then the fragments of phrases began to coalesce in her mind.

“Oh really?” she murmured. “That is what we are about, is it not?”

Another step. She dropped the papers and turned to the window, so that when Wicksteed pushed the door open again, a little suddenly, she could affect to turn away from the view. He paused in the doorway. Harriet looked at him expectantly.

“Here is the receipt from our cook.” He held it out to her and she folded it neatly and slipped it into her glove. “And you were correct. The price was indeed twenty-one guineas.”

She clapped her hands together. “You are so kind! That is perfect!”

His eyes tracked across the room to the papers on the desk. Harriet saw, a little tightness growing in her throat, that she had pulled the locked drawer a little proud of the surrounding timbers as she tugged on it. Wicksteed met her eyes and she felt her smile start to falter from within.

“I hope you have all the information you need now, Mrs. Westerman, for your calculations.”

His dry voice seemed to press on each of her vertebrae in turn.

“I have enough for now, I think, Mr. Wicksteed.” Her own voice was perhaps a shade too light. “Thank you for your assistance.” She made as if to go, but he did not move away from the door, lifting and dropping the catch, watching it closely.

“Can I trouble you for a little news?” he said. “I hear Joshua Cartwright was taken ill last evening, and Mr. Crowther was attending to him. Have you heard anything further?” Harriet’s mouth went dry. He looked up at her. His eyes were shadowed and black.

“He died early this morning,” she said in a low voice. “In terrible pain.”

Wicksteed looked away from her to his rather meager view.

“Poor gentleman!”

He did not move, and continued to deliberately lift and drop the latch as if fascinated by its redundant clatter. Harriet waited for him to speak again, willing herself to keep still as the latch clacked again and again. When she thought another strike would cast her into hysterics, he suddenly stopped and spoke, and she could swear she heard some hiss in his voice.

“It seems none of us, however well established, can be sure to avoid terrible accident and great reversal, does it not?” He smiled a dead smile and then, with sudden energy, pulled the door wide enough for her to pass. “But I am keeping you from your books.”

Harriet found she had not the voice to reply, and passed him with a slight bow. She had to go so close she could smell his breath, a sweetness, overlaid with lavender. She hurried out of the house, and set off rather fast toward her own estate, her cheeks flushed and her heart dancing against her ribs.