Chapter 13

“Lord Julian Caldicott.” Lady Peele read my card, then inspected me as if questioning whether I conformed to the universally approved specifications for a courtesy lord.

“Late of Caldicott Hall in Sussex,” I said. “I am acquainted with two of your sisters and in search of the third.”

Lady Peele was an amalgamation of her siblings, with chestnut hair and blue eyes. Not as robust as Margery Semple, not as fashionable as Ardath Deloitte, not as mannish as Evelyn Tait. The result was pleasant, sturdy, and—I hazarded—nobody’s fool. When I’d been ushered into her presence, her ladyship was conferring with her head gardener regarding the organization of the conservatory for the coming winter.

Ferns and citrus sat about in pots, like second-form scholars waiting to be assigned a desk. Empty shelving lined three sides of the glass-enclosed space. The air was humid and redolent of earth, and the gardener’s boots muddy. I abruptly missed Caldicott Hall.

“I’m afraid his lordship’s business will call me away for a bit, Mr. Castle.” She pocketed the card and sent the footman scampering off with a glance at the door. “You will excuse me, and please do not move the camellias in my absence and think I won’t notice.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, yer ladyship.”

“Lord Julian, come along. I will have a word with the butler about where and how titled guests are to be received. No offense was intended, I assure you.”

“None taken. It’s a busy time of year.”

She led me through a house that put me in mind of Tait’s abode, but with a lady’s conscientious touch. Cleaner, brighter, graced with cheery flourishes—a dried bouquet here; a sketch of a sleek, saddled hunter there; a stained-glass depiction of doves in the transom window over the conservatory door.

No preachy proverbs or boring samplers.

“The fire isn’t lit in the formal parlor,” her ladyship said, setting a brisk pace down the corridor. The Hasborough ladies all seemed inclined to traverse life in quick-march time. “I daresay you will be more comfortable in the family parlor. We haven’t an informal parlor. Sir Tristan says callers are either high sticklers, or they are friends. My husband is blessedly pragmatic.”

“I am not a high stickler.”

She stopped outside a carved oak door and gave me another inspection, though I sensed no malice in her gaze.

“Margery wrote to me,” she said. “Margery takes her correspondence and her status as senior sister seriously. John Tait set you to searching for Evelyn, didn’t he?”

“He did.” Margery had written to Lady Peele, but Margery had not mentioned that I should confer with Lady Peele. What did Lady Peele know that Margery sought to keep from me?

Her ladyship preceded me into a cozy, unpretentious chamber that avoided the cluttered quality of Margery Semple’s sitting room. More sketches here, of Sir Tristan with a hunter in hand and hounds gamboling at his booted feet. He was a lean, genial sort, who probably changed for supper only on Sundays. Various smiling children occupied rectangular frames. A sleeping cat curled in a perfect oval merited an oval frame.

I looked more closely at an older couple posed on the steps of a church. They radiated gracious warmth, and I was reminded of the tavern maid’s comment about the importance of a kindly vicar.

“Your local man of God?”

“And his wife. Vicar is getting on, but he has such a gentle way with village squabbles, and his missus knows every herb and flower planted on this earth.”

Real affection colored that description, just as the artist’s benevolent regard for the couple came through in the drawing.

“You created this?”

“I did. Old people make good subjects. They can hold still. My children, on the other hand…”

“How many?”

“Five so far. Sir Tristan says more would put Margery’s nose out of joint, and it’s always better if the daughters outnumber the sons. A chicken coop with too many roosters is a loud, unhappy place.”

“An unusual perspective.” Fatherly, rustic, and unconcerned with the cost of doweries. I moved on to another sketch, of a soberly attired young man, hair queued back, with a small child sitting on his lap. The adult gazed over the child’s head with an odd seriousness for somebody cuddling a toddler.

The child, by contrast, was bundled against her companion—the frilly cap suggested the feminine gender—only a quarter profile visible. The portrait depicted shyness in the girl and the loving refuge offered by a reliable parent.

“Who have we here?”

“Our previous schoolmaster and his offspring. They were frequent visitors at our table, the child being the same age as one of mine. Mr. Keough was well-liked, but raising a daughter without benefit of a wife poses challenges. A few of the local ladies would have been receptive to a proposal, but a schoolmaster’s wages do not easily support a family.”

The next frame held a page from a child’s copybook. The same quote had been written twice, once in a tidy, elegant adult hand and, directly below that, a more wandering, rounded, wobbling version: He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

“Francis Bacon?” I asked. The same fellow who’d likened money to manure—of very little use unless spread around.

“Sir Tristan named our youngest boy Francis in memory of the right honorable viscount. Mr. Keough chose the copybook quotes with that inspiration in mind.”

A far cry from the proverbs favored by Mrs. Semple. I moved to the next frame. “And you have immortalized Thaddeus Howell.” Standing on the steps of his inn, apron about his middle, a towel over his arm, lord of all he surveyed. The frame to the right depicted a burly fellow with a mallet in his hand, dark hair tied back, a horse nuzzling the man’s pocket. “The blacksmith?”

“Blacksmith, horse doctor, and the finest bass singing voice you’ve ever heard. His wife barely comes up to his shoulder, but she can also work the forge when needs must.”

“You love these people.”

Lady Peele looked, if anything, amused. “Love thy neighbor. The greater curiosity would be if I did not love them, given that they are my neighbors, and good, dear, decent people.”

Did Arthur, who had to be the most enthusiastically ruralizing duke in the realm, love his neighbors, or was his bond to them one of duty? The coming year might provide me an opportunity to see the question from Arthur’s perspective.

“And you love your sisters, too, I take it?”

“Of course, though love and liking are far from synonymous. Shall we be seated?”

We took a pair of wing chairs worn to comfortableness. A hassock suggested the baronet passed many an evening, feet up, paper in hand, while his wife occupied her matching throne and enjoyed a book or a gardening pamphlet.

“How is John managing?” Lady Peele asked.

Interesting place to start. “Not as well as he wants the world to think he is.” And I knew precisely how that felt. “He told himself Evelyn would come home of her own free will when she pleased to. Then he told himself that Evelyn must have gone to her reward, for surely she wouldn’t leave him like that, no final communication, no terms of separation, nothing but questions.”

“I know it has been difficult for him.”

“Your sisters take a different perspective.”

“That John is the worst of husbands and Evelyn never should have married him?”

The same footman who’d escorted me to the conservatory appeared in the doorway with a tray.

“Come in, Harold. A mug of hot cider on such a dreary day will be just the thing. You may close the door behind you when you leave.”

Harold bowed and withdrew, though he got another good look at me first. Reconnaissance officers everywhere in this shire. I liked the sense that folk were looking out for one another and that strangers were kept under surveillance.

“John Tait,” I said, “based on what the man himself has told me, was delighted to marry Evelyn. He thought her the perfect wife for a country squire and counted himself lucky to win her hand.”

Her ladyship set a pair of biscuits on a saucer, added a mug of steaming, spicy cider, and passed it over. “Tea is all well and good, but one wants some variety, too, and this year’s cider is ambrosial. As a younger man, Sir Tristan broke his fast with steak and mulled cider every morning. He claims years of that diet is what kept him healthy when half of his regiment was down with fever and worse.”

“I was fortunate that my service was on the Peninsula rather than in the Low Countries.”

“An odd sort of fortune. Is John thinking of remarrying?”

Her question was curious rather than accusatory. “He might be, but I doubt anybody is considering becoming his wife. He approaches the age of thirty, and that has brought to his mind financial matters and also the sheer passage of time.”

“Evvie is to finally have her own farm at eight-and-twenty.” Lady Peele rose and made a circuit of the room, touching a frame here, then tossing a square of peat onto the fire and poking it down into the coals. “She has earned it too. Don’t get up, my lord. We aren’t in Mayfair, and God be thanked for that.”

“Where is this farm?”

“Kent, near Chiddingstone. Some ancestor forgot to entail the property, and some more recent ancestor realized that was a good idea, and thus it was available to be bequeathed to the child of Papa’s choice.”

Why were there no sketches of Ardath, Margery, or Evelyn in this family parlor? “Evelyn was the logical party?”

Lady Peele stood and stared at the fire. “Yes, and not just because Evvie is a first-rate farmer. She rides like a demon, never on anything less than seventeen hands. She is a dead shot, she can wrangle ledgers better than any clerk, and she is always reading at least two books. But Margery and Ardath have always spoken of Evelyn as if she deserves pity rather than respect.”

“Pity?”

“Pity. ‘Our Evvie is plain, but she has a good heart.’” Lady Peele had adopted Mrs. Semple’s air of humorous condescension. “‘You mustn’t worry about having such large feet, Evelyn. Every solid structure needs a firm foundation.’ ‘No matter how stout you grow, Evelyn dearest, you will always have a good figure.’ ‘Not another book, Evelyn! You’ll develop a squint.’ ‘Evelyn should have the family pearls. It’s the least we can do for her.’”

“Damning with faint praise?”

“Damning with sororal lies. Evelyn’s feet are no larger than Margery’s. Evelyn was never fat—she was just big—until after she married, when she did put on weight. She can quote philosophers and Scripture and plays by chapter and verse. Evelyn is the best of us, and Margery and Ardath will never admit that.”

Lady Peele did not speak ill of John Tait, and she showed no inclination to blame Evelyn for anything. She was comfortably situated, and her husband apparently enjoyed her warm regard.

I chose trust over suspicion. “I suspect Evelyn is in danger, my lady, if she’s extant.”

“She is extant, my lord. Evelyn is resourceful, practical, and has every reason to live. She and John are just too much alike. Not arrogant so much as proud, and both very assured in their opinions. Evelyn put up with our sisters carping and condescending, but she wasn’t about to accept disrespectful behavior from a husband.”

A confident pronouncement, but then, Lady Peele had been nothing but confident since greeting me.

“If Evelyn is extant, she is about to inherit a valuable property. If she is dead, or declared dead, then the proceeds of that property, as well as Evelyn’s considerable dower funds, will be divided between Tait and Evelyn’s surviving sisters. If Evelyn had had children, the outcome would have been different.”

“John Tait would not scheme to kill my sister.”

“Why do you say that?”

Lady Peele returned to her seat. “Because he wouldn’t. Husbands can be stupid. Wives can be idiots. We are human, and we try one another’s nerves, but John was raised largely in a household of women. Ladies, to him, are for protecting and respecting, or for diversion or flirtation, but to imply that John would take a woman’s life, especially the woman he has vowed to cherish and protect… Such an act for John Tait would be not just ungentlemanly but unmanly. Beneath him.”

Her words had the ring of something Hyperia might say and were similarly insightful. Tait might despise his wife, but he’d despise himself more should he ever raise a hand to her. He’d been too immature or spoiled to realize that infidelity would deal an equally bitter blow to a woman who lacked confidence in her appeal.

“Would Ardath or Margery scheme to kill Evelyn?” I asked.

Lady Peele picked up her mug, sipped, then sipped again. She had largish hands, competent rather than graceful. “I don’t think so.”

She knew John Tait was incapable of uxoricide, and yet, regarding sororicide, she hesitated. “Can you elaborate?”

“Both Ardath and Margery are in financial difficulties. Sir Tristan has forbidden me to lend them any more money, because I asked him to do so. Margery has taken to wheedling on behalf of my nieces. Ardath alludes to bearing all the expenses of putting me up in Town on my frequent visits.”

“You don’t visit frequently?”

“Not for a year, and when next we do travel to London, we will stay with Sir Tristan’s sister.”

“I’m sorry. Siblings can be the very devil.” A year ago, I’d doubted my welcome at the Hall, but even then, I’d known that if I’d nowhere else to go, I’d have been given accommodations. I knew Arthur better now and knew that keeping my distance had tried him sorely.

“Families are complicated,” Lady Peele said. “I don’t want to think Ardath or Margery would wish harm on Evelyn, but they might refuse her aid or otherwise scheme to get a portion of her money. I hope you do find Evelyn. John is right that years can pass while we’re planning what to do with our morning, and Evelyn deserves to be happy. I honestly don’t know where she is, my lord, and I do worry about her.”

I believed her—for the most part. “If Evelyn sends word to you of her whereabouts, please let her know that Tait is offering an annulment, if that’s what she wants. He bears her no ill will and understands that he is obligated to support her if they remain married, even if that’s under the terms of a separation.”

I rose, and Lady Peele got to her feet without any assistance from me. Whatever else was true, the Hasborough women were vigorous.

“If I hear from Evelyn, I will pass along your message. It sounds as if John has done some growing up.”

“Maybe a lot of growing up. Thank you for your time, Lady Peele, and with respect to the conservatory, we find at Caldicott Hall that regularly rotating which plants are closest to the windows keeps more of them healthy.”

“I like that idea. Gives the gardeners something to do in the colder months. Interesting.”

We parted cordially, and yet, Lady Peele had left me with her own brand of unease. She’d spoken highly of Evelyn and seemed to be a lady of surpassing common sense. Her every reference to Evelyn had been in the present tense—Evelyn is a dead shot, Evelyn is the best of us, Evelyn is always reading at least two books… Despite Barbara being the sibling most removed from the whole drama.

Not even Tait thought or spoke about his wife as if she were an immediate presence in his life, though he claimed to be haunted by her.

As I climbed into the coach and woke Atticus from his slumbers on the forward bench, it occurred to me that Evelyn Tait, possessed of common sense and some means, would have turned to Lady Peele for aid before calling on either Margery or Ardath.

I thumped the coach roof with my fist, and the horses started forward. The journey to London would take hours, but I needed that time to think. Lady Peele had been honest with me, but she also knew more than she was saying.

What was she concealing, and why conceal it from me?

* * *

I risked breakfast at the Orion Club, a favored London haunt of former junior officers. My appearance merited raised eyebrows, and I would doubtless be a subject of talk by noon.

“Ignore them, my lord,” the balding majordomo murmured. “The worst of the lot reason that if the Corsican can no longer oblige them with a big war, then they must start all manner of little wars out of boredom.”

Cranbrook was a veteran of the American campaigns, and his father had been a viscount’s younger son. He had a foot in several worlds, and I’d always liked him. I hadn’t had any idea that he might return my regard.

“My hair catches them off-stride.” I’d been born with chestnut hair. I was now blondish, having passed through a period of having an old man’s stark white locks, courtesy of captivity and its aftermath.

“Your survival caught them off-stride, if I may say so, my lord, and well done of you. A table by the window?”

Cranbook offered me an opportunity to show off my presence at the club, windows in St. James’s male bastions being more than architectural devices for admitting light. Who earned seats at a club window, what judgments they passed from their perches, and what hours they chose for viewing and being viewed were all fodder for gossip. Brummel had been king of White’s bow window until recently. Now that the Beau had left for the Continent, creditors nipping at his heels, Lord Alvanley reigned in Brummel’s place.

“Near the fire would suit me better, thank you, Cranbrook.”

“A sensible choice on such a chilly morning, my lord.”

We wended our way through the dining room, past the odd stare or puzzled frown. Cranbook showed me to a table for two in a corner near the hearth, but not too near. A pair of folded newspapers were included in the place settings such that I could hide if I pleased to, and I could sit with my back to the room or facing the other guests.

I faced them, of course. I was not ashamed to have lived through horrors most of these fellows could conjure only in their nightmares.

By the time my ham, toast, eggs, and tea had arrived, I’d been the recipient of two cautious nods and one cut direct. The cut direct had been from some fellow I did not recognize, one who doubtless held me responsible for the loss of a brother or cousin. For a time, I’d served as the military’s scapegoat at large, accused in the court of parade ground opinion of giving up all manner of secrets and hoarding riches in France gained by treasonous perfidy.

Harry’s resting place was somewhere in France. Otherwise, the entire country held nothing and no one I valued.

I was nearly finished with my tucker and resigning myself to defeat when a likely prospect strolled into the dining room. He, too, took a table to himself and sat facing the room—and, most particularly, facing the door. His presence was something of a surprise—he’d been a volunteer rather than a commissioned officer—but the man had earned a few privileges with all the lives he’d saved.

I waited until his food had arrived before approaching his table. “St. Sevier, good day.”

He could have nodded, picked up his paper, and indicated to me and to the whole room that my company at his table was unwelcome, but Hugh St. Sevier had been a French physician serving with Wellington’s army.

He well knew what it meant to forge his own path in hostile territory. When facing the generals, he’d been fearless, loud, and occasionally profane in several languages regarding the welfare of the soldiers in his care.

“My lord.” He rose slightly and gestured to the seat opposite. “A pleasure indeed. You look well, and one makes this happy observation with more than a physician’s clinical eye.”

He was a handsome devil, lanky with russet locks worn a tad longer than English fashion preferred. Military lore said he’d been born in France, raised near London, and educated in Scotland, where distinctions between physicians and surgeons were no longer made.

A doctor was a doctor, and we’d been pathetically grateful to count St. Sevier as our doctor. Every soldier who left the battlefield on a stretcher had croaked the same plea. For the love of God, take me to St. Sevier. Don’t let the surgeons get me.

More than once, I’d seen St. Sevier propped standing against a tree or a tent pole, only to realize the man was asleep on his feet.

“I’ve eaten,” I said, taking the proffered seat.

“Eat more,” St. Sevier said. “You are too skinny, and the only meal the English do better than anybody else is breakfast.” He moved a rack of toast to my side of the table, followed by jam and a dish of butter.

He made no effort to hide a slight accent, just as he wore a touch more lace than the typical Bond Street exquisite. His table manners were elegant, though I shuddered to think of the other skills his hands possessed.

“You are more rested than when I’ve seen you in the past,” I replied.

He sipped his coffee. “You heard the guns. I heard the screams and moans. We both needed time to reacquire the art of restful sleep, but now we are on the mend, non?”

I realized why I’d been so impressed with St. Sevier on the Peninsula. He took on each case with the air of an investigator. What were the patient’s symptoms? When had they begun? What of diet, upsets, exertions? Of all the courses of treatment available, how did they compare for ease of application? Unintended effects? Cost? Duration?

He had an analytical mind, and yet, he took on the air of a collaborator with his patients. Now what shall we do about this foot of yours that tried so courageously to stop the wicked cannonball? One must deal sternly with such a wayward appendage. I am open to suggestions, provided they are made quickly.

“You come here to keep an eye on your former patients, don’t you?” I asked.

“Cranbrook keeps an eye on us all, but yes. The war is over. The suffering is not. I have no Harley Street consulting room, and these men would not come to me in such a location anyway.” He spoke as if I had never inquired of him regarding my dysfunctional manly humors—we’d met by chance on a Hyde Park bridle path—and that, too, was part of his appeal. He respected his patients’ privacy and dignity, and for that, St. Sevier deserved to be canonized.

“You should be practicing medicine properly,” I said, biting into toast slathered with butter and jam. “You are too skilled to go to waste playing the charming French bachelor.”

He smiled a little sadly at his coffee. “But I am a charming French bachelor. I have this on the authority of the Mayfair hostesses, and their judgment is infallible.”

How lonely he must be, a Frenchman in postwar London, without professional colleagues, likely reviled at home for serving in the British army, and without family to speak of. Heaven be thanked for Cranbrook, who’d likely asked St. Sevier to drop by the club from time to time.

“Be careful of those hostesses, St. Sevier. One heard you are some sort of comte, and all manner of former French aristos are regaining their titles these days.”

“Their titles and sometimes even a ruined chateau, but never their lands or wealth, mon ami. The hostesses know this, and I remind them of it often. What brings you to Town when you have a lovely family estate where you should be riding the countryside by the hour and making all the local maidens swoon?”

“I am biding mostly at the Hall these days, though I can’t say swooning maidens come into it. I’m in Town to make a few inquiries. What do you recall of a Lieutenant Bellerophon Montefort?”

St. Sevier, while pouring himself more coffee, took a casual inventory of the room’s dozen other occupants. We were early. The fellows sleeping off a sore head or determined on a morning hack despite the drizzle would trickle in at a later hour.

“Bell Montefort was a hothead, as you English say, and, by his own account, capable of vanquishing the Corsican one-handed and blindfolded. A pity we did not allow him the opportunity.”

St. Sevier was rarely judgmental, but he’d taken this particular hotheaded young officer into dislike. Into contempt, in fact.

“I heard he attempted liberties with a general’s daughter and was offered the choice of selling his commission or facing a court-martial.”

St. Sevier, for the first time, met my gaze directly. “Your hearing is excellent, my lord. The young lady was ill-used, but she foiled his worst intentions. General Harcourt would have seen Montefort before a firing squad otherwise. As it is, Mrs. Harcourt insisted that the legendary English discretion must prevail. The whole matter was hushed up, and then we had another battle to fight.”

Thus did a scoundrel return to London, safe and sound, to brag of his military prowess. “He suffered no punishment?”

“Montefort was hustled out of camp so quickly you’d have thought he had the plague. No chance for a thorough beating by passing Spanish brigands behind the officers’ mess, alas.”

“He might yet get that beating,” I said, finishing my toast. “You’ve been very helpful, St. Sevier.”

“One appreciates the opportunity to be helpful. I have properties, you know, here in England, but they acquired the habit of running themselves, and now… One can only read so many plays and waltz with so many incomparables before a restlessness takes over.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “You are God’s gift to medical science, St. Sevier. London is teeming with illness, with military widows perishing quietly of melancholy. We have aging curates who can barely walk because nobody has taught them about willow bark tea and those other nostrums you prepared for us on the march. If you don’t care to endure schoolgirl French by the hour, then get back on the horse, man. By virtue of divine providence and your own native wit, you can save lives and relieve suffering. You are languishing for want of a good case of gout, a lung fever, or a colicky baby. Go forth and make medicine.”

He finished his coffee and regarded the small, empty cup. “You are much improved, my lord. Vastly improved. If you should relapse a bit, don’t be concerned, because the worst is firmly behind you.”

While St. Sevier, who had aided and saved so many, was floundering.

“If I am vastly improved, then it’s because I have accepted that some of what I learned on the Continent still serves me, St. Sevier. I am a reconnaissance officer in my bones and probably always will be. I use that aptitude now to take on inquiries society has no other means of solving, and I like the work.”

Not quite true. I liked the results, but I’d yet to face a failed investigation—until now?

“One hears this about you. You defend old ladies who lack champions and pull striplings from the River Tick. Last week, I heard something about a hound.”

“Next week, I want to hear that St. Sevier has once again put his shoulder to the medical plow. The émigrés need you if Polite Society won’t take their troubles to you.”

I left him looking thoughtful while an excellent meal grew cold on the plate before him. I made a mental note to keep in touch with him, lest he become another casualty of peacetime, as I so nearly had.