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Eliza

Eliza raced through the concealed passageways as though the devil—or at least a knife-wielding lunatic—were at her heels. She burst into her bedchamber through the armoire to find the room dark and entirely deserted. The fire that had burned bright earlier was now no more than white dusted coals. The charred remains of Jane's room were equally void of inhabitants. Her foray into Bell's domain had taken far too long. Jane should have been back here by now, wearing a groove in the already uneven floor with her nervous pacing.

"Where are you?" she huffed, hand to her mouth, her mind awhirl with all manner of ill-fated nonsense. She had to be practical… logical about this, not give in to fear and fantasy. Jane had been bound for Linfield's room. It seemed unlikely that she would still be there, but she had made mention too of her new chambers. She must surely be there. Though where that was, and how the room was reached she was far less certain about. Still, find it she must. Thus, Eliza tumbled into the corridor, tripping over her feet in her haste, to find a figure standing there. The maid, Betsy, idling, backlit by moonlight, in the looming maw of the hideous iron-pinned door.

"What in heavens?" Eliza asked, approaching cautiously. "Why is this door unlatched? Whatever are you doing?"

The sky outside was the black of coals, clouds so fearsome dark as to be almost indistinguishable from the heavens. The shell of the tower gleamed like the withered bones of a slumped giant, where a frosty rime clung to its remains.

"Begging your pardon, Miss, but… my mistress asked me t' keep watch."

"Your mistress? Whatever is there to keep watch for out there?"

"Oh, Miss, Old Lady Cedarton's ghost. Terrible, she is, and milord's death only proves it. She'll see us all into our graves if she can."

"Nonsense." Eliza dismissed the notion before the tale grew any longer. She had to wonder if Mrs Honeyfield hadn't a hand in raising that spectre. "What are you really about, girl?" There was something about outwardly bright and bonny Betsy that tickled in Eliza's mind and raised her suspicions. A certain slyness to her pale eyes. Something about the defiant tilt of her chin. It was then she saw the rope and her heart jumped right into her throat. Tied, it was, to a spoke on the lintel just beyond the door, and she feared at once what she would find dangling from that hempen horror. A fool may have rushed forward to determine what or who hung there, but Eliza had wits aplenty, and had no intention of placing herself in a position where she might be pushed. She remained well back from the ledge.

"What are you about?" she asked again.

This time visible wroth crossed Betsy's features before it was masked by a studied servitude. "Nowt that needs be any concern of yours," she snapped, before adding a reluctant, "Miss." She pushed the door to then, but didn't, Eliza observed, fasten any of the many bolts. "Does't need me for summat?"

"Yes," Eliza replied cautiously. "You can tell me where I might find your mistress."

At least the girl's gaze did not stray towards the end of that wretched rope.

"Went 'up ta 'er new chamber. Mrs Honeyfield showed 'er."

"How long ago?" Her heart was hammering, bile flooding her throat. If that monster had hurt her dearest Jane….

The maid's gaze went to the door again, but she fixed on a smile. "Need ta know where 'tis?"

"Yes."

Surprisingly, directions were provided in a swift and straightforward fashion. Eliza recited them back and received a nod in return. She did not like to leave another mystery behind her, but Jane had to remain her goal, and she had to believe that whatever mischief Betsy was about, it wasn't murder, but a lesser sin. Theft, perhaps. Was there more to her scaremongering tattle than a typical maid's delight for the macabre? Cedarton had stood empty for years. It wasn't far-fetched to believe it had attracted other inhabitants over that time. Folk for whom the ghostly rumours about the place made it an attractive proposition. Again, it was a riddle for another moment. She had to remain focused on reaching Jane.

Eliza's travel took her through portions of the castle as yet explored with swiftness that fast extinguished the candle she'd lit from the fireplace. Eliza left it abandoned on a window ledge. Through the glass she saw the groundsman's crooked form, pitched almost double as he wheeled a small barrow before him towards the tower. "Theft," she repeated to herself. It was almost a prayer. It was too horrid to think of her dear friend being taken from her. No, she would find her yet, and deliver her from the monster who'd dwelled beside them all.

Once again, she cursed Linfield for the wretched cur he'd been. What manner of man placed his wife's chambers this many acres away from all the other inhabitants?

One with secrets, that's whom. He'd meant to conduct his sinful business without fear of being observed or overheard, though with Cluett already in possession of that worrisome record of a previous marriage, 'twas a wonder he even bothered to try and hide the matter at all. For certain the drawing room tattletales would have decried his antics, but she did not suppose the bucks would have done so. Two men sharing a woman was hardly unheard of. Such possibilities had after all reached her tender ears. The scandal here was more to do with the woman in question being his wife. No one would imagine sodomy to be involved. And as for the possibility of him already been wed to another… Well, one might say he was only copying the Prince Regent.

When she found the room, the only one at the end of a tediously long corridor, and some very narrow stairs, she burst in without making any sort of knock. "Jane… Jane, are you there?"

A smoky fire burned in the grate, providing the main light source. Although twin candelabras were also lit and burned atop a chest of drawers. The hexagonal room, which seemed to occupy the whole top floor of this turret was far better appointed than Jane's previous room. It was warm and comfortable, draped all in red velvet and old fringed brocade. As for her friend, Eliza's heart leapt to find her curled beneath the eiderdown. She dived towards her crying, "Jane? My Jane."

Pale hair curled against a cheek that remained rosy. Relief seeped through Eliza's veins. Jane remained very much whole and hearty.

Released from her doze by Eliza's shaking, Jane roused with a sigh, then sat, and sleepily rubbed her eyes.

"Eliza." She blinked. "I'm sorry, I've found not a thing." She yawned again, only at the last remembering to cover her mouth. "I must have dozed off. What of you? You've been ever so long."

Eliza crushed her in a fierce embrace. "Jane, thank the Lord. You're well. When Betsy said Mrs Honeyfield had showed you here—"

"She did, but she left right away. The poor woman is in the most dreadfully poor state, Eliza. She's only abroad so that she might help drape the mirrors. Is there not anything you can do for her?"

Eliza both nodded and shook her head. "Bell has extracted the problem tooth. But Jane, tell me, you haven't eaten or drunk anything? Especially nothing that Mrs Honeyfield has brought to you. Pray tell me that's so. Please, Jane. It is so, isn't it?" She looked around for evidence but spied neither crockery nor crumbs.

"Eliza?" Jane's brow crumpled in confusion. "Heavens, you're in a tither, and you're making very poor sense. Has something happened? Something more? Could you not find the deed?"

The document was forthwith pressed into her hands. "Hidden in his coat pocket. Jane, there is so much foulness afoot I hardly know where to begin, but you must not call for or accept anything from Mrs Honeyfield. In fact, if you've men at your command who can do it, she should be placed under lock and key."

"Mrs Honeyfield? Eliza, why? Whatever for? Wait, you can't think—" Scepticism twisted her bonny features.

"But Jane, I do, and there's evidence for it. Bell has performed his autopsy. I shan't burden you with the details of it, but it was… It was both ghastly and enlightening. There's no question that Linfield was poisoned. You must summon the magistrate and inform the earl at once that his son has been murdered."

Jane leapt up immediately, but she did not reach for the bell pull to summon anyone. "I cannot quite believe it, even if you are quite sure." She shook herself, and began to wring her hands, the very picture of indecision and distress. "Oh, what to do? Linfield's man has already departed for Bellingbrook with my letter, and I can hardly spare another to tear off after him. Unless one of the gentlemen were to go, but then what if you are wrong, and I am letting the culprit go free? You have to admit, they are each more likely to want Linfield dead than our housekeeper."

"I don't admit that."

"But Mrs Honeyfield? Truly?"

Why was it so hard a notion to grasp?

"What would even prompt her to such action? 'Tis more likely George, or Henrietta, or your Mr Whistler, or you or I than her."

"And yet it is her. Jane, I am certain of it. I don't know that I can rightly prove it to you, but there is cause, if all I've learned is true. Your husband was responsible for the death of hers. She is here for revenge, and I fear for your safety, and that of the bairn. I shouldn't wonder if you weren't in her sights from the beginning. Think Jane, someone has meant you ill from the moment you arrived here, and she has been here throughout, passing by without notice. I bet she used the pills to set your bed alight. It would be easily done. One would only have to seed them among the sheets or the curtains, and time would do the rest."

"Eliza?" Jane shook her head. "Truly? You are clever and beloved, but the bed fire was just as likely a result of an upset candle. Such things are easily done. Nor do I see how pills can cause a fire. Things don't spontaneously ignite."

Except that sometimes they did. Eliza wasn't in the mood to conduct a lesson. It would be daybreak before Jane likely wrapped her head around it. Not because she didn't have the mental capacity for science, rather she would interrupt and take them off along tangents so that the fundamental facts about phosphorus were entirely lost in amongst the sixteen other subjects they had conversed on while Eliza attempted to explain the basic chemistry of the matter.

"Explain away the ghost you saw, then," she challenged instead.

Her friend shook her head.

"The pills—" Eliza insisted.

"I didn't take any pi—"

"Or at least the phosphorus contained in them. It would account for the spectral glow, and I'm sure there are tricks with mirrors or glass that could be used to make it seem she was floating." If there was one thing her sister Caroline was good for, it was keeping her abreast of society's doings, or more specifically the Marchioness of Pennerley's doings. She'd heard all about Bella's first visit to her husband's home, and the phantasms he'd created to spright his guests. "Jane, please. What harm will it do to summon the magistrate? If I am wrong and look a fool, then I will accept that."

Again, her friend shook her head. "Who should I send, Eliza? Moreover, where should I send them? You have given me a means by which we could all have been tricked, and delivered the likely method of my husband's poisoning, but not a reason why Mrs Honeyfield should be behind it beyond some vague mumblings about a husband that I wasn't aware she had. I think I need more than that to rouse a man from his post-dinner tipple."

"A peer has been murdered; I should think he would be astonished that you had not sought to rouse him."

Truthfully, people had a habit of leaving things until morning, so he might not have thought over much of leaving things until daybreak, especially given the weather, but really Eliza had simply been trying to spare Jane all the gruesome details of her husband's actions and peculiarities. Now, it rather seemed she would have to recount them. Only when she tried, Jane swiftly cut her off.

"Eliza, stop. I don't wish to hear of Linfield's foibles or his sins. I'm abreast of enough of them to know my position is precarious. I can't help but feel that is where I must place my focus. If Mr Cluett's demands are not met…" She set to pacing and worrying her hands again. "Can you not see what a threat he is? Far more dangerous than a woman with chronic toothache. Eliza, society… my new family, must believe that I am carrying the Bellingbrook heir… Linfield's heir. I cannot have George cast the slightest doubt over that. Besides, if Mrs Honeyfield meant me ill, then she could easily have dealt with me. It was she who led me to this room faraway from everyone else, but instead, she was delighted to hear my news." She pressed her hands protectively to her belly, though there was no trace of any roundness there yet.

None of which made sense. Why would Mrs Honeyfield be pleased to know Jane was increasing with Linfield's brat? Unless it was mere guise. The woman had certainly proved herself talented in the art of deception.

"Where is she now?"

Jane wrang her hands. "About her tasks, I should imagine. Although, I hope she is resting, considering the pain she was in."

"Have you not heeded a word I have said? She is likely your husband's killer, and you are rattling on as if she is someone we ought to feel sorry for."

"Well, it is a rather spurious supposition. You've mentioned some pills and the bed fire, and her being married, but nothing more concrete. No reason why she'd do away with her master."

They hadn't got into the details because Jane kept insisting that she didn't want to hear them!

"Revenge," Eliza summarised.

"Eliza, I've more reason to suspect you on those grounds than my housekeeper. You're the one who feels slighted over the fact that Linfield meant to bring Mr Whistler into our marriage bed, and you have all this knowledge of things that others don't—chemicals and surgeonry, and how all manner of plants and poisons work on a body."

"I thought we agreed we weren't going to suspect one another."

"I'm just saying that what others will, if you start finger pointing without any evidence to back the accusation up."

"There is evidence."

"You have these pills?"

Not yet, but she'd find them given the chance, and there was the evidence of Lord Linfield's body.

"Proof that Mrs Honeyfield is a wedded woman? You know that every housekeeper in the land is termed missus regardless of her actual matrimonial status?"

"Jane, I cannot believe you won't listen to me. You were there in the room when she told us her husband had recently passed."

"Was I? I don't recall. And, I am listening to you. I just can't… It seems so far-fetched… ridiculous. I think Mr Cluett is by far the more likely culprit. They fought only this afternoon."

With irritation now causing her nose to tingle, Eliza rubbed at it, then crossed her arms to suppress her vexation. "Jane, if you truly believe that, then why are you about to hand him the deeds to a property in London?"

"Because I know when I'm defeated, Eliza." Jane yelled at her, raising her arms above her head, then letting them drop like stones. "Do I like any of this? Of course not, but what else am I supposed to do? Should I risk what little I do have simply to see justice done? We've been wed little over two months, and now Linfield is dead. Nothing I do will change that. But I can at least give my new family—a family I have not yet properly met—the heir they so desire. But only if George doesn't blab."

"So, your plan is to buy their affections with another man's child?"

"And now you are judging me because I was fool enough to fall in love."

"That is not what I am doing."

"It is exactly what you are doing. Just because you are so wise and inured to strong emotions—"

Eliza's jaw fell. "Is that what you think?"

"It is what I know. Oh, you are vexed about certain things, for sure, but do you feel them in here?" Jane clamped her hand fast to her breast, which in turn made Eliza's breast ache with all the things she had bottled up to deal with later, when there wasn't a man's death to investigate. "I dare say you like Mr Whistler, but you've no idea what it is to be in love, Eliza," Jane continued, oblivious to the pain she was causing.

She made Eliza sound about as warm and friendly as Doctor Bell, with a fraction of his qualifications, and hence reasons to be aloof. She wasn't nearly so cold or dispassionate. Not that Bell, once you got past the professional persona he presented, was either of those things either. His drollness had rather grown on her.

"You don't know how love feels. How it makes the heart sing and every waking breath sweeter. Eliza, I might be a ninny, but at least I felt something. At least I lived. I loved. And I wouldn't change that. I would do it all over again, even knowing where it has led."

"What you describe sounds very lopsided. Where is he now, Jane? This man who loved you so, and whom you so desperately adore? The truth is that he abandoned you. He did not love you. He used you. You were taken in by a rogue. If he'd loved you, if it'd been remotely real between you, he wouldn't have filled your belly and then run for the hills leaving you no choice but to marry another rapscallion to preserve your reputation."

Jane paled, and her lower lip began to wobble, but Eliza was not quite done. "And if you tell me now that he was unaware of your condition, then I shall think very poorly of you indeed for both your dishonesty, and not holding him to account."

"I can't… I can't believe how horrid you are being." Jane bit her lip, and snuffled, but soon wiped the tears from her cheeks and pulled herself together. "He did… He does know. I made him aware."

"And he left anyway."

Jane did not reply. She didn't have to. The story was an all too familiar one.

"Who is he, Jane?" They were getting further away from the matter that needed dealing with and deeper into murky waters, but the opportunity for such directness might not occur again. "I don't know why you won't say, unless you fear I would recognise him. What do you imagine I'll do? Challenge him?"

She very well might.

Jane stiffened her spine and pulled her shoulders back. Her head remained bowed as she sighed, then she looked Eliza straight in the eyes and said, "I've only ever known my husband carnally. It's a tragedy that our time together was so short."

Eliza gave a slow blink. So that's how things were going to be. "You'd best hope the bairn is born with Linfield's colouring. Tongues will certainly wag if the baby has black hair with Linfield and yourself so fair."

"Of course it'll be golden haired."

So, the father was blond also. That didn't narrow things down overly.

They stewed in uncomfortable silence for several minutes more, Jane pacing, Eliza noting details of the room like the fact it had doors in three of its six walls, each shooting the other uncomfortable glances but refusing to meet the other's gaze.

"Do you not think capturing your husband's killer might be beneficial?" Eliza eventually asked. Mrs Honeyfield could have packed her belongings and walked up onto the moors never to be seen again by now.

"I do," she said with teeth clenched. "But at the same time, I'm still unconvinced, and I realise this is going to sound heartless, but I never even liked Linfield overly much. Obviously, I'm shocked and horrified by what has happened, but…" She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "But maybe it's for the best. Maybe he even deserved it. Let us not pretend he was a nice man."

That was something they could agree on. "Nevertheless, no one deserves to have their life snatched from them like that."

Jane gave a modest snort. "Yes, I recall that about you. You were always the one arguing for lesser punishments and rehabilitation for villains during our philosophical debates. What was it you would say? ‘That it wasn't anyone's fault if they were born poor or unlovely, and that we oughtn't to punish them for it. That we are all equal in God's love and should be afforded the same dignity and respect.' Except Linfield never did a thing to earn my respect. Mostly he mocked and belittled me. Truly, Eliza, I cannot be sad. Dying is probably the best thing he could ever have done for me. I wasn't exactly relishing the mechanics of him finally bedding me."

"Jane, if you keep saying such things, then I'll begin to suspect you are at very least in collusion with Mrs Honeyfield."

"Perhaps you have been reading too many horrid novels if you think I conspired with my housekeeper to do away with my husband."

"It's always the men who are diabolical creatures in those books," Eliza pointed out.

Jane sat with a thump. She sagged forward from the shoulders and sighed into her hands as she covered her face. "I'm sorry. It is all just too much. Everything is buzzing around in my brain like a swarm of angry wasps. I am not used to being the one who must make decisions. It is not what I was bred for. Eliza, I'm not like you. I don't like puzzles or unravelling conundrums. I just want things to be simple, and nothing here feels that way. If I send for the magistrate, then the earl might see me as a meddling woman who has brought outside attention onto something he would rather handle in his own way. But, as you say, if I do nothing, then it makes me look unfeeling at best, and guilty at worst."

She flopped backwards so that she was looking at the canopy. Eliza sat alongside her, suddenly bone-tired of arguing. Sometimes, it was wiser to save your breath, and act alone, than exhaust yourself trying to win people to your cause.

"How soon do you mean to negotiate with George?"

"Soon."

"What if I went for the magistrate?"

Jane pushed herself up on her elbows. "Eliza Wakefield, you are not marching across the moors in the mist gone midnight."

"Frightened a boggart'll get me?"

"No," Jane confessed with a sad shake of her head. "I'm worried one might come for me if you're not here to see them off."

"Well," Eliza said, getting to her feet. "I can't sit and do nothing." She had to assume that neither Bell nor Jem had acted as she'd bid them do. "I mean to find Mrs Honeyfield and confine her to her quarters. Then, I shall see if I can track down a footman to send for the magistrate. I shan't mind in the slightest if the earl sees me as a meddlesome woman. This is of course assuming I can find any servant at all in this place, and they haven't all already departed with your silverware ahead of the Cedarton ghost eating their faces off."

"I don't think I should accompany you to do that."

"Then stay here and bolt the door behind me."

"Eliza, be careful," Jane said, as they lingered on the threshold. She hugged Eliza to her bosom, then let her go. Eliza paused until she heard the bolt slide into place, then trotted back down the narrow stairs again, her heart heavy in her chest. As the gloom pressed in around her, she felt the keenness of her loneliness. At home in Bluebell Lane, she eternally longed for solitude; now, she would like nothing more than her sisters about her, to share the burden of this adventure. At least them, she could rely on.

Jane was too tied up in her own shortsighted vision of the future, and Jem… How bitterly she felt the loss of his affections. The strings of her heart remained cut by his betrayal. She couldn't entirely forgive him the hurt, even knowing he'd acted to protect her.

He still ought to have confided in her.

Trusted her.

Treated her as the equal he claimed he considered her.

Instead, it was all ruined between them, and over something so utterly pointless. Yes, certainly, Linfield could have ruined her reputation, but such scandals were easily averted by means of a wedding ring. Marriage pacts aplenty were formed for similar reasons, and while she didn't want to be wed, that didn't mean she wouldn't have gone through with it if it'd become necessary to ensure her sisters' futures.

Sometimes things were bigger than your own wishes, and you were obliged to act accordingly.

Besides, as husbands went, Jem wouldn't have been such a bad one. They could have brewed potions and meddled with machinery together. Plus, the lovemaking part might have been fun. At least, so long as they could agree to avoid or at least postpone having children.

There were ways of doing that.

Ways she wished more women were acquainted with and didn't judge one another over.

If Jane had only confided in her the truth of what she was about in Scarborough much earlier, then she could have educated her in the ways of avoiding mishaps.

But, Lord, she was being as big of a ninny as Jane thinking of such things now. She needed to apply her mind to the matter at hand. Jane's bun was already buttered, and whatever she and Jem might have had was already lost.

She could forgive him his past lovers, was undaunted by the fact he loved other men, what she couldn't get past so easily was him not trusting her enough to confide the truth. In that regard, he was too much like every other man.