Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (2 page)

Father, too, was silent and morose as the coach drove away. It was the one time I can remember when we were so in accord. Our apprehensions were fulfilled; Lionel was killed in battle less than a month later.

* * *

We received a number of visitors that afternoon, but not many friends of my brother’s: most were in the Crimea themselves, chasing after the dream of glory and excitement that had betrayed Lionel. The few who did call stood around awkwardly, holding a cup of tea with as much unease as if it had been a baby we had forced into their hands, and obviously wishing for stronger refreshment. Father’s cool reception of their stammered expressions of sympathy robbed them of the power of speech altogether, and since, as I have said, I speak as little in my father’s presence as is possible, we were not a lively group.

Nevertheless, I was sorry to see the last of the mourners leave, since that meant I was alone again with my father. More than ever I missed Lionel, who had acted as a buffer between us. In Lionel’s presence Father had treated me less harshly, made less display of his contempt for me; it surprised and amused him that Lionel was fond of me, but he humored the quirk as he humored all Lionel’s weaknesses. Since my brother had left for the war, the evenings had been tense; one night, when I dropped my thimble and startled Father out of a reverie, he stood, seized my mending, and flung it on the fire.

At dinner he was unusually silent. Even though he thinks little of my conversation, Father enjoys speaking—perhaps it is a characteristic of those in his profession—and would carry on a monologue in my presence, content for it to be punctuated by my murmurs of agreement. Tonight he watched me thoughtfully over the rim of his wine glass and spoke little. It made me nervous; but then, I am never relaxed in Father’s company. I wondered what he had in store for me. Doubtless it would not be pleasant.

“I’ll take port in my study, Molly,” he announced at the end of dinner, dabbing at his moustache with his napkin.

To my surprise, the maid continued to hover. “If you please sir, there’s a card for you,” she blurted, her black eyes bright with excitement. “It was left this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” Pushing back his chair, he glanced at but did not reach for the square of pasteboard on the salver she extended. “You knew I was at home; why didn’t you admit whoever it was?”

“It was left by a messenger, sir.” Molly took a deep breath, and I wondered what sensational morsel she was about to unburden herself of. “Her Grace did not call in person.”

Her words did indeed cause a gratifying reaction. Father flung away his napkin and darted his hand out for the calling card, a hawk snatching at prey. “Her Grace?” he demanded, and even as his eyes gave him the name, Molly announced it, in ringing tones of personal pride.

“Gwendolyn, Duchess of Ellsworth.” She let the words die away solemnly, then added in an avid whisper, “her that’s just gone and married her brother-in-law.”

Now she had caught my attention as well. Gossip had made free with the duchess of late: a few weeks ago everyone had been gabbling about the scandal, so much so that even I, with my severely limited acquaintance, was familiar with the facts. Scant weeks after the death of her husband the duke, the duchess had married his younger brother. Many winks and nudges and knowing nods had registered awareness of her haste. There was more than a dash of spite in the gossip, as well, since the duchess had flown in the face of the law, which prohibited such marriages; there were grumblings about her having received special permission for the match. Some even cast a critical eye on the social convention that decreed she would continue to be addressed as a duchess even though her new husband held no title in his own right. I could understand Molly’s excitement at the knowledge that such a celebrated—or notorious—figure had sent her card to us. As for Father, I knew of old his reverence for the peerage. Little wonder now that he was exulting in this evidence that a lady of such rank had bestowed notice on his household.

The question was why she had. How would my father be acquainted with the duchess? And if she paid him enough notice to leave her card, why had she done so by proxy, instead of calling in person? It seemed as if she wanted to show her awareness of our bereavement without running the risk of seeing us face to face.

I was rapt in contemplation of the caprices of the peerage when Father’s voice broke into my thoughts.

“Thank you, Molly. I am glad to know Her Grace’s card was safe in your keeping all this time.” He had evidently recovered from his exultation, and the acid tone of his voice made her wince. Bobbing a quick curtsey, she removed herself as rapidly as she could. To me he added, “Bring the sherry and come with me.”

As usual, I said, “Yes, Father.”

To my surprise, the sherry was for me. When we reached his study, Father told me to pour myself a glass. He strode to the buffet where the port decanter was kept, and when his own glass was filled he turned to face me where I stood, standing awkwardly since he had not told me to be seated. He lifted his glass for a toast and, wondering, I raised my own.

“To the memory of Lionel,” he said.

“To Lionel,” I said.

He emptied his glass in one brief swallow and flung it into the fireplace. I hesitated, but he watched me impatiently, waiting for me to follow his example. The unexpected sentiment of his toast had tightened my throat, making it difficult to swallow, but I forced the sherry down before sending my glass after his. The crash of the glasses was shocking in the stillness of the room.

“Now, to business,” he said briskly. Opening his desk, he took out a paper and tossed it over to me. Startled, I did not quite catch it before it fell to the ground. Father shook his head in exasperation and turned his back to me, drawing a cigar from the humidor. “Read it,” he ordered, striking a match.

“‘I, Hugo Pembroke, being of sound mind and—’” I broke off in confusion. “Your will?” Had I misjudged him, or failed to see a softer side than I had known him to possess? My father had never seemed the sort of man to let the death of another wake in him any sentiment about his own mortality.

“What a brilliant conclusion.” He frowned at me as I stared at him, expecting an explanation. “Keep reading, girl, and don’t gape at me in that half-witted fashion.”

I read to the end. It was very brief: it left the bulk of his estate to his college for the construction of a new wing to be named after him. A few modest bequests went to the servants, and some personal possessions to colleagues. “You must have made this very recently, since Lionel’s death,” I said, surprise—or the sherry—loosening my tongue.

He took his customary position at the fireplace and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Correct. I wrote it the day the telegram came. Does anything else strike your lightning intellect—or your self-interest?”

I folded the will and placed it on his desk. “I am unprovided for, if that is what you mean.”

My flash of impertinence, for once, he let pass. His expression remained calm as he puffed at his cigar. “Correct again,” he said, in what was for him an almost genial tone. “Really, I am beginning to think I was mistaken in my assessment of your mental capacities. You are showing nearly average intelligence. You will be learning chess next.”

I had often beaten Lionel at chess, in fact. “May I ask why you have shown me this, Father?” I settled into a chair and folded my hands in my lap.

“I hoped you would.” He actually smiled. “After twenty-one years of supporting you, I consider my obligations as your father fulfilled. I’m disinheriting you, daughter.”

I nodded, since he seemed to be expecting me to reply.

“What’s more”—he tapped cigar ash into the grate—“I’m disowning you.”

“What?” I exclaimed without thinking.

That brought a broad, satisfied smile from him: my shock evidently pleased him. “Yes, my girl, as of the first day of next month I will no longer claim you. I give you until then to make arrangements for your future. Three weeks should be ample time in which to find a position as a governess or companion or a similarly situated drudge. At the end of that time, should you still be in the house, I will have your belongings burnt and your person removed from my property by main force. Once you have left my house I will take no responsibility for you and make no recognition of you. You will cease to become my daughter. Should you find yourself in need of assistance, financial or otherwise, it will be useless to apply to me. I will return letters unread, telegrams unopened. You, my dear, will be a stranger to me.”

And with that endearment—the first he had ever spoken to me—he ended our life as father and daughter.

If he expected tears, protestations, hysterics, he must have been disappointed. He had schooled me well: since any display of emotion on my part acted as a goad to him, I had trained myself to become a blank wall. Perhaps I had taught myself too well, since I did not even feel anything.

“I won’t ask you why you are doing this,” I said at last. “I know only too well that you have always hated me.”

“How perceptive of you to have noticed.” The smile was gone when I met his eyes, and the hatred was so intense that it startled me, even though I was accustomed to seeing it. “Your mother would be alive now, but for you.”

“So you have always said.” I had heard him tell the story so often I could have quoted it back to him, even parroting his phrases: bearing me was too taxing for my mother’s frail nerves, and after my birth she never regained her old spirits, sinking into a profound melancholy that was only worsened by my fretfulness, for I was a fractious, demanding infant. At last her poor nerves gave way and, driven past endurance, she flung herself into the ocean.

I had no memories of my mother’s death, having been less than a year old at the time, and my father’s version was the only one I knew. In spite of what the tale suggested of my mother’s feelings for me, I had never ceased to miss her. I had not even the consolation of memories of her; so many times I had tried to force a recollection of her—a fragrance, or a snatch of song, would have sufficed—to come away with nothing. My father had never spoken of her to me, beyond enforcing upon me my part in her destruction. I had marveled time and time again that he who had always been so hostile and cold to me could have loved my mother with such devotion that he could not conquer his anger at her death. It would have seemed strange that so powerful a love could be transmuted into an equally powerful hatred, but that I was so familiar with him.

“I wonder if you would have hated me less had I been the firstborn,” I mused, half to myself. “If Lionel had been the child who drove Mother to drown herself, would you have treated him as you have me? But I would still be plain and unmarriageable, and Lionel… it would be impossible for anyone not to have loved Lionel.”

“He would have been a great man,” said Father, regret vibrating fiercely in his voice. “He would have made a name for the Pembrokes. But you—how could you ever distinguish yourself, or do anything to add luster to your family? You could never be anything but a dead weight.”

I rose, not angry, but weary of hearing the same refrain.

“You forget,” I said. “It is no longer my family. You are nothing to me now, as I am nothing to you. You have made it so yourself.”

He flicked cigar ash into the fire. “If you’re trying to play on my sympathies and evoke some gush of paternal sentiment, you may as well save yourself the trouble. You won’t alter my decision.”

“I would not dream of trying to do so,” I said, and made my curtsey. “Good night.”

“Go on, get out.” He waved me away, even though I was already going. “I know you’re longing to escape to your room and snivel over my heartless treatment of you.”

Once in my room I did not cry. I had not cried since I was a child. Like any display of emotion, it was too dangerous an indulgence; my father treated tears as hysteria, smacking me smartly across the face until they ceased. Now, after long years of such training, I seemed to have lost the ability. I had not even been able to weep for Lionel.

I drew a chair up to the window, where I could watch the small patch of stars visible between the roofs of surrounding houses. I felt no fear, no sorrow, not even anger; it seemed strangely right that my life with my father should be severed in this way. We had never, after all, been father and daughter in any real sense, and now it seemed the best thing to put an end to the pretense. As soon as I had been able to think after the news of Lionel’s death, I had known that I would not be able to continue living in my father’s house. My presence there had only been bearable when Lionel had been there to smooth things. After he had left for the war conditions had become strained, to be sure, but I never seriously expected him to be gone for long; never did I consider that he might die. It seemed impossible for one so blazingly alive, whose energy fairly crackled around him, to be snuffed out. But I had been wrong.

But even the gnawing of my grief for Lionel could not utterly blot out the strange feeling of exhilaration, even of happiness, that was pouring over me, as invigorating and refreshing as cold water. I would no longer be subject to my father’s vicious temper and cold contempt. I was free to find my own place, without having even to win it. Without knowing it, Father had done me a service. He had given me my freedom.

Now, I asked myself, what would I do with it? In that first hour, alone with the soft unwinking light of the stars, I felt only the excitement of liberty, the tantalizing array of choices spread richly before me. The world seemed a trove of glittering opportunities beckoning to me, welcoming me. Later I would realize the immensity of this naïveté; but in that first hour of freedom I never doubted that the world awaited only a word from me before pouring all it could offer into my lap.

What would my choice be? It was not the first time I had considered my future. Seven years ago I had seized upon the plan of joining an Anglican sisterhood. A life of contemplation and sacred hush attracted me; I would be freed from the stigma of spinsterhood (at fourteen already an inevitability) and be able to spend as much time as I wished in reading and translating. Having done all of Lionel’s lessons for him from an early age, I was quite proficient in languages and indeed took a great satisfaction in such study. One of my favorite memories had been overhearing Lionel’s unsuspecting tutor praising what he believed to be my brother’s translation of Catullus. “You’ve caught all the earthy nuances of the jaded lover upbraiding his mistress,” raved Mr. Peabody, and Lionel, who until now had had no idea of what his sister had been writing on his behalf, exclaimed blankly, “Good God, I have?”