Deanna Raybourn - Silent on the Moor

I tipped my head to one side and began to enumerate on my fingers. “You did partially disrobe me to question me about the circumstances at Grey House, although I should add that you asked permission first. You kissed me on Hampstead Heath, but as I kissed you back, you can hardly count that amongst your crimes. You gave me a piece of jewellery, highly inappropriate, but I kept it, which is equally inappropriate. We have been together unchaperoned, both at your lodgings and mine, upon numerous occasions. I have seen you in a state of dishabille more than once, but on none of those occasions was I specifically invited to view your nakedness. If anything, my misbehaviours quite outnumber yours. I would say we have compromised each other thoroughly. Steady, Brisbane,” I finished. “You are about to tear that shirt.”

He muttered under his breath as he pulled on his shirt, and I looked away to afford him a chance to settle his temper. When I looked back, he was as tidily dressed as any valet could have managed, his cuffs and collar perfectly smooth, a black silk neckcloth tied neatly at his throat.

“You astonish me, Brisbane. I should not have thought you bothered by the conventions of gentlemanly behaviour.”

He turned to face me, his expression betraying nothing but deep fatigue. “Every man should have something impossible to which he aspires.”

“You look tired, Brisbane. What takes you abroad on windy nights and leaves you covered in blood that is not your own?”

He canted his head, his eyes searching my face.

“Sheep. I was assisting a ewe at a difficult lambing. Quite a comedown, isn’t it? I am a sheep farmer now.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, immobile as any sculpture of antiquity.

I shrugged. “Any man of property who owns livestock could say the same. It is a very great change from your investigations in London, but I do not see why you think it objectionable.”

He gave a short, mirthless laugh, sharp and unpleasant. “You do not see. No, you do not. You will see a great deal more when the sun comes up. Folk in the village say this place is accursed, and I am beginning to wonder if they are right.”

“Nonsense,” I said briskly. “Of course, it is a little remote—”

He laughed again. “Remote? Julia, I do not want you here, and I cannot even compel you to leave because I have no means of sending you back to the village. No carriage can manage these heights, and there isn’t even a farm cart left here. The entire property is in shambles. Only the façade of the east wing remains; the rest of it has crumbled to dust. The gardens are overgrown to wildness. Everything of value has been stripped from the house and sold. There is nothing left here except ruin.”

“And you,” I said, emboldened by his excuses. Brisbane was more determined and more capable than any man I had ever known. Had he really wanted me to leave, he would have carried me to Lesser Howlett on his back and put me on the first train back to London. His pretexts told me everything I ought to know: Brisbane needed me.

His expression was bitter. “I? I am the most ruined thing of all.” He turned to face the fire, and for a long moment I watched the play of light over the sharp planes of his face. There was something new in his expression, something careworn and bedevilled that I did not like.

“How did you come to be here?” I asked at length. “I thought you were to receive the viscountcy of Wargrave from the Prime Minister.”

I trembled to hear the answer. I had interfered with Brisbane’s investigation at Bellmont—interfered so badly it had taken tremendous work on his part to salvage the situation. He had been engaged in business for the government, and the title had been offered as incentive for his involvement. When the promised viscountcy had not materialised, I had blamed myself.

He rubbed at the dark shadow at his jaw. From the look of it, he had not shaved in some days. “Prime Minister was perfectly willing to give me the viscountcy. Then I discovered this property was available. When the previous owner, Sir Redwall Allenby. died, his mother and sisters were forced to sell. Lord Salisbury pointed out that the income from this estate was not sufficient to support the style of a viscount, but when I offered to take the estate in lieu of the viscountcy, he made the arrangements to purchase the property on my behalf.”

“But why would you want this place at the expense of the Wargrave title?”

He gave me a long, level stare. “Because it suited me.”

That he was concealing something, I had no doubt. But Brisbane could be solitary as an oyster when it pleased him.

“And the Allenby ladies? I presume you have extended your hospitality to them because they have nowhere else to go?”

“Something like that,” he said, his eyes flickering away from mine.

Silence stretched between us and I glanced around, noticing for the first time the delicate frieze painted upon the walls. Stylised palms and lilies reached toward the ceiling, and here and there a bird took flight, its wings gilded with a touch of gold paint.

“It is an interesting room,” I offered. “The decoration is most unusual.”

“Sir Redwall was an Egyptological scholar. His rooms were decorated to suit his tastes.”

“Very pretty,” I remarked. I drew in a deep breath and moved closer to him. The firelight flickered over his face, casting shadows and lifting them again, making his expression impossible to read. I could see the lines etched at the corners of his mouth, lines I knew too well. I put out a fingertip to trace one.

“You have been in pain. The migraines?” He did not brush my finger away. He closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head.

“I have kept them at bay, but not for much longer I think. I can feel one circling on wings. There is a blackness at the edge of my vision.”

“All the time?”

“Most.” This time he did brush my finger away, but gently.

“What do you take? Do you still smoke the hashish?”

He shook his head. “Too much trouble to procure it here. Nothing but a glass of whisky before bed.”

I clucked at him. “That will never serve. You require something far stronger than that.”

“Don’t fuss, Julia,” he said, but his tone was soft.

I put out my hand again, cupping his cheek. He exhaled sharply, but did not move.

“Brisbane,” I murmured. “If you really want me to leave you, tell me now and I will go and you will never see me again. Just one word, that’s all, and I will remove myself. Forever.”

I stepped closer still. He closed his eyes again and covered my hand with his own. “You smell of violets. You always smell of violets,” he said. “You’ve no idea how many times I have walked these moors and smelled them and thought you were near. On and on I walked, following the scent of you, and you were never there. When I saw you in the hall tonight, I thought I had finally gone mad.”

He opened his eyes, and I saw a world of heartbreak there I had never expected. My own eyes filled with tears, and his image shimmered before me.

“You should leave,” he said finally, his voice thick. “It would be so much the better for you if you did.” His hand tightened over mine.

“But do you want me to go? Will you send me away?”

“No.”

I sagged against him in relief, and his arm came around to catch me close to him. I could feel the beat of his heart under my ear and it was the pulse of all the world to me.

Suddenly, he drew back and slid a finger under the chain at my neck. He tugged gently, and a pendant slid out from under my gown, a coin struck with the head of Medusa and incised with a code Brisbane had chosen at the end of our first investigation. Those few strokes of the engraver’s steel told me everything about Brisbane’s regard for me that the man himself could not. He turned the pendant over in his hand, then slid it back under the neckline of my gown, his finger warm against my flesh.