Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 32

At first her thoughts had raced along the same old tracks: Silly, stupid, silly, stupid, in rhythm with the speeding train wheels. She had felt grubby, in need of a thorough scrubbing, for every hour she had spent in lustful intimacy with Lucian had itched like a blemish on her body. Had he laughed about her gullibility, about her naïve attempts at testing him, behind her back?

To round it off, a man was dead.

He did not hinder me from leaving, she thought when she boarded the early sleeper train in Edinburgh. She would have resisted any attempts on his part to keep her at the inn, and yet, recalling his apathetic face during her departure made fresh tears spring to her eyes. Was there a greater loneliness than to lie in a dark, flimsily locked sleeper compartment with only a carpetbag for company? As she drifted between fitful sleep and waking, guilt crept into her sorrow. A whole mining community had begun looking forward to their photographs, which now would never come. At least not from her camera. I shall send someone, she thought, I shall send them someone who actually masters the craft.

She climbed the stairs to her Belgravia home with her knees buckling beneath the weighty burden of three sleepless nights and days spent in emotional terror over men lost underground. Her chest ached, as if all vital organs inside were inflamed. Perhaps it had all been too much. Perhaps her exhausted brain had played tricks on her, mixing acute worries and old grievances and wholly unrelated matters, and the result had been a harsh attack on her husband and a mindless flight …. A woman opened the door, slender, sharp-eyed, with mousy hair curling around her ears. Aoife Byrne.

Hattie squinted at her. She considered reaching out to see whether her hand would go straight through the woman. “Are you a mirage?”

“Good Gad,” said Miss Byrne. “What’s he done now?”

Twenty minutes later, Hattie sat on the drawing room settee, clutching her hot teacup as if it were a buoy on the high seas. The roles of hostess and guest had clean reversed: Miss Byrne had taken her coat and carpetbag; Miss Byrne had told her to rest in the drawing room while she fixed some tea in the kitchen. Miss Byrne looked very much at ease, sprawled on the divan opposite, as though she had a habit of sprawling on it. Hattie was still glad for her presence. The woman was Lucian’s age, and she was Lucian’s friend. It was like having a small part of Lucian near without all that was horribly aggravating, hurtful, and confusing about him.

“I’ve been trying to reach him,” Miss Byrne told her. “My wires have gone unanswered, so I thought I’d pay a visit. I let myself in; they’ve all flown the coop. I’m afraid I took rather too long a nap on this very plush divan.” She petted the upholstery. “Sorry.”

“There was an accident at the mine,” Hattie said tonelessly. “The past three, four days have been tremendously busy.

Miss Byrne had gone very still. “Any fatalities?”

“None. But it took over two days to free them.”

The woman still looked deeply worried. “Must’ve shattered him.”

Hattie swallowed hard. “The truth is,” she said, “I did not much recognize my husband after it happened.”

“So that’s why he pulled the rug from under old Rutland,” Aoife Byrne said, nodding. “I saw the headlines of his sudden demise and I had my suspicions.”

“I understand Rutland coerced the miners into using a risky extraction technique,” Hattie explained. “A tunnel collapsed because of it.”

“Poor Luke. That would do it.”

Hattie clutched her teacup more tightly. “Everyone seems rather cavalier about his lordship’s untimely death.” There was quite a bite to her voice considering she was more of a disembodied mind hovering about.

“Probably as cavalier as his lordship was when he killed Luke’s family,” Miss Byrne said with a shrug. “And I’d say they’re still far from even, considering Rutland got off easy. A nice, quick bullet on a day of his choosing instead of drowning unplanned.”

“What?”

The woman looked vaguely contrite. “My—he didn’t tell you.”

The tea churned in Hattie’s empty stomach. “He told me they drowned in an accident,” she said. “He told me Rutland owned the mine where he worked as a boy.”

“They did drown,” Miss Byrne confirmed. “In the mine. Because of Rutland’s criminal negligence.”

The drawing room wobbled before her eyes as if the whole house had been shifted onto quicksand. Two decades of rigorous breeding kept her sitting composed and upright. Why, she wanted to cry, why did he not tell me? Why does a stranger know these things?

She placed her cup on the table. “Miss Byrne,” she said. “Would you be so kind as to tell me what happened in the colliery?”

The woman contemplated her. “I don’t know if it’s my story to tell,” she then said. “If he’s not told you, he might’ve had his reasons.”

“I believe his reasons,” Hattie said, “are that he suffers from stunted emotional growth and finds it easier to build a business empire from nothing than to share relevant stories with his wife.”

A snort of amusement burst from Miss Byrne. “I’d like to speak in his favor here,” she then said. “I’ve never known him to be a chatty fellow in any case, and sometimes … sometimes there’s a sorrow that can’t be spoken. Hmm.” She plucked loose one of the lavender sprigs she had pinned to her bodice and brushed it under her nose while weighing her decision. “It’s in the archives of any newspaper, I suppose,” she finally said. “I’ll tell you what I know, ma’am. The mine where Blackstone used to work had a large stream flowing nearby. And it should’ve been secured against flooding by a wall—it rains a lot in Scotland, you see.”

“I noticed,” Hattie muttered.

“But Rutland, the miser, didn’t build a wall. And one day, during an unusually dry season, a lot of rain fell unexpectedly during a thunderstorm. And since Rutland hadn’t built a building over the heapstead, because as I said he is—was—tight-fisted, the rain extinguished the boiler fire of the steam engine that pulls up the cage with the miners and tubs. Everyone working underground was stuck. I understand Blackstone was in a different pit that day, but his mother and his sister were in the tunnel because Rutland didn’t care about no women and children being allowed below the surface. Anyway, while his mother and sister were waiting in the tunnel for the lift to work again, the runoff rainwater from the surrounding hills swelled the stream that went past the colliery to a torrent, and it rapidly went over the banks …”

Goose bumps rushed over Hattie’s skin. “Go on.”

“The miners in that section of the pit had been underground for over twelve hours already because Rutland worked them like pit ponies and cared nothing for working hours. So, tired and hungry, they decided to exit on foot through a ventilation shaft. At first, they seemed to make headway, but just as most of them had made it through the air door into the drift, the stream water came pouring down the slope of the shaft with such violence, it knocked them off their feet and washed them all back against the door—see, air doors, they open up away from you when you leave a tunnel, and so the water pressure kept the door shut and the water kept rising …”

“That’s quite enough,” Hattie choked out.

“Two dozen miners, all of them women and children, died that day,” Miss Byrne said. “And Rutland washed his hands of it. Hadn’t ordered anyone to enter a ventilation shaft, he said. Higher powers, the thunderstorm, he said. So he was cleared. Refused to pay compensation to the grieving families, then evicted everyone from their cottages who couldn’t afford the rent. Well, I say, who could, with one working spouse dead in the ground? Luke had to settle in a new place, where they called him a bastard.” Miss Byrne shook her head. “And that is how he came to hate the Earl of Rutland.”

The tea surged back up Hattie’s throat, bitter like bile. She had been a fool. “I asked him to give up his vengeful designs on Rutland,” she said.

Miss Byrne looked surprised, then impressed. “You’ve some guts, ma’am.”

“And he said he’d try, and then, when he didn’t, I—I was ghastly to him.”

Miss Byrne dropped her lavender sprig. “He said that? That he’d give up Rutland?”

“He said he would try,” Hattoe whispered. “Oh. Oh, I wish he had told me. I wouldn’t have approved. What good can come from vengeance? But I would not have spoken so harshly to him.” The memory of his blank, pale face while she had railed at him stabbed into her stomach, and she buried her face in her hands. “I was a sanctimonious toad,” she moaned.

Through the fog of self-loathing, she heard Aoife Byrne clear her throat.

Hattie glanced up. “Yes?”

“Perhaps he couldn’t tell you,” the woman said. “Even if he wanted to. Even if you’d done everything right.”

“He told you, did he not?”

Miss Byrne smirked at the poorly bridled jealousy in Hattie’s tone. “The truth is, I’m not certain Blackstone has a proper memory of it when he’s conscious,” she said. “He told me everything in the days when we still shared a pallet—nothing naughty, we were only children then. Luke—Blackstone, I mean—is a poor sleeper, and he’d sometimes wake me by thrashing around and whimpering. But he never said a word, until one day, he got hold of a bottle of gin. I hadn’t taken him for a drinker, but there he was: blue ruin for a week. I thought I had picked up a drunk, and after a few days of him nursing the bloody bottle, I gave him a good kicking. That’s when he told me all I just told you, but he was stone-cold drunk. It was the anniversary of their death, you see, and he feels it in his body every year. That year, he didn’t want to feel it, so he got pissed. He’s done it every year since. He couldn’t remember that he’d told me anything after he had sobered up, but I never forgot.” She tapped a finger against her forehead. “It’s not a tale you forget. What I meant to explain is, it’s not easy to say words such as My kid sister is dead. My mum is dead. They lined them up in the mud, arranged by size, tallest to smallest. They were dead and I lived. These aren’t easy words to say. Not for a man like him, not in front of a wife he’s sworn to protect. He’s very protective. And he failed them; he didn’t keep them safe.”

I feel even less safe with you.For a beat, her chest felt icy cold. Her parting shot must have hit the mark. A strangled sob made it past her composure. “Thank you for telling me, Miss Byrne.”

Miss Byrne’s angular face softened. “Destroying Rutland was what he lived for, Mrs. Blackstone. And he was prepared to try to give him up, for you. I’m no fortune-teller, but I think he’ll forgive you.”

Hattie knew she had some forgiving to do, too. She clearly still harbored resentment over how her marriage had begun. And she hadn’t forgiven herself for her stupid conduct in the gallery. The haze of passion blurred these ugly, festering emotions, but they had never been properly drained. He was right, she thought, it had been a test in part, asking him to let go of Rutland, her attempt to reclaim a sense of power by turning him from dark knight to a Sir Galahad. What if this simmering resentment would bubble over whenever something unrelated stoked her temper?

Miss Byrne finished her tea, then she pulled a small envelope from her reticule and said, “I had come to give him this—could you keep it safe until he arrives?”

“I can’t make any predictions as to when he will show,” Hattie said. If he will show ever again, she added silently.

Aoife chuckled. “I can,” she said. “Again: he was willing to give up Rutland for you. You cannot run from him, I’m afraid. In fact”—she pulled out her pocket watch—“I’ll expect him to be here by early afternoon, for I doubt he gave you more than two trains’ head start.”

Hattie’s stomach fluttered, first with giddiness, then apprehension. The mountain of unresolved troubles between them was staggeringly high.

Aoife Byrne, knowing her letter was in safe hands, was taking her leave. Hattie accompanied her to the back entrance, her movements clumsy. She could have fallen asleep standing up; learning the truth about Lucian’s family had sapped the last of her strength. Miss Byrne took her hat, gloves, and coat from the servants’ clothing rack. In a moment, her competent presence would vanish, leaving Hattie alone in a house full of ghosts.

On the doorstep, the Irishwoman turned back. “If I may,” she said. She pulled another lavender sprig from her bodice pin and presented it to Hattie. “They say the scent is soothing.”

Hattie took the flower, puzzled. “Thank you.” She instinctively raised the purple blossom to her nose and inhaled. Yes. Soothing. Reminded her of Catriona’s lavender soap, too. As if by magic, the pressure in her chest eased a little.

“There,” said Miss Byrne, and winked at her. Or perhaps she had imagined that.

“I did not think you liked me much,” Hattie said, feeling half-delirious and emboldened. “You seemed quite amused by the incident in the drawing room when we first met.”

Miss Byrne smiled, rather roguishly. “I was amused,” she said. “It was obvious that Blackstone had saddled himself with a proper trouble ’n’ strife, one who’d give him lip.”

“Oh.”

“It’s what he deserves,” Miss Byrne said. “Probably what he needs, too. Do you like music halls, Mrs. Blackstone? You should join my friend Miss Patterson and me sometime; we know the best shows. And we live near the grandest theater of the East End.”

Hattie broke the seal on Miss Byrne’s letter while she crept up the stairs to her private chambers. She liked the woman now, and she knew she should respect her husband’s privacy, but secret messages? She had had quite enough of secrets.

News about the burglary: evidence is inconclusive but there is a solid hunch it may have been your weasel of an assistant. If he was the culprit, I want my cuff links back. Also, in your absence, his gambling took quite the turn. I understand Ritchie’s put his henchmen on him—if you don’t get to him, they will.

AB

She paused on the landing, clutching the railing and feeling faint. A burglary? Henchmen? The weasel assistant had to be Mr. Matthews. His twitchy smile appeared before her mind’s eye, and a cold shiver raced down her spine. Where was Mr. Matthews? The house suddenly felt yawningly empty, the silence menacing. A surge of energy made her rush to her bedchamber and slam the door shut. Then she turned the key.

Her room smelled stuffy, but the glossy mahogany furniture and soft blue tones of wallpaper and drapery were exactly as she remembered. It still felt alien, as though she had returned from a yearlong voyage after which the old places looked tired and smaller. On her vanity table, the perfume flasks and pots with potions lay scattered, bowled over by an angrily tossed jewelry box. A lump formed in her throat. She placed Miss Byrne’s note on the table and picked up the box with shaking fingers. A pang of misery went through her chest at the sight of the silver love spoon on red velvet.

“Oh, Lucian,” she whispered. The pendant felt solid and warm in her palm, much like the man. She pressed her lips to the heart-shaped loop. Please come home, she implored him. Strange things are happening with Mr. Matthews, and we have much to discuss.

With the spoon in her fist, she staggered toward the bed. Presently, only a nap could save her. Afterward, she would wash, change into a day dress, and call on Lucie, Annabelle, or Catriona. She would be safe with any one of them. She was asleep before her head met the pillow.

She woke to dreary afternoon light shining through the windows, a disappointing return to reality after the French lavender fields rolling through her dreams. Sluggishly, she slipped into a pair of soft slippers and made her way to the shower room downstairs. As she passed the door to Lucian’s study, the ache in her chest flared up. And then she heard a muffled sound, a thump. As if a book had been dropped. Her heart leapt with excitement—Lucian was here. He was already here. She turned back to the door and made to knock, when something stayed her hand. If Lucian had followed her as Aoife had predicted, why had he not come to see her first? He must have found her sleeping and decided to let her rest ….

She opened the door and promptly froze in unpleasant surprise. The slim, well-dressed man behind Lucian’s desk was not her husband.