Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (16 page)

“I would have justice on my side. It would be a fair requital—a life for a life.”

“You don’t even know that he really did what you believe of him.”

He set his jaw. “I’m certain in my own heart.”

“That’s not proof.”

“It is proof enough for me.”

I seized him by the shoulders and actually shook him, trying to dislodge that faraway gaze that, together with his words, so unnerved me. “You can’t convict a man on your heart’s prompting. And even if you had proof of his guilt, don’t you realize it isn’t your obligation, or even your place, to try to exact justice from him? Can’t you leave that to—to a higher court?”

I did not know whether I meant legal or spiritual justice, but Herron did not even seem to consider the former worth thought. He met my eyes with a bitter directness unlike his former abstraction.

“What justice can I believe in?” he said fiercely. “Would you have me put my faith and trust in a God who didn’t intervene when my father was killed? Why should I believe there is any benevolent will behind such an act?”

My philosophers failed me; I had no answer for that. Feebly I said, “Perhaps there wasn’t.”

“Then why should it be a sin to turn my back on a world that’s been left to chaos?” he demanded in triumph. “There can be no sin where there is no deity to sin against. And if there is a God, He can only be my enemy now. Why should I then hesitate to enact the justice that He fails to administer, or to end my own life if I feel it has no further purpose?”

I was out of my depth. I had not the means to sustain an argument on these grounds, when Herron had evidently thought deeply and intensely on the matter. I cast about for some weapon to use against his determination. “If you don’t fear being damned for destroying yourself, then do you not have the least fear of death itself? Doesn’t that give you pause?”

He gestured to the books that lay open on my desk. “Socrates tells us that it is foolish to fear death when we don’t even know what it is.”

I choked back the urge to damn and blast Socrates. “It would seem equally foolish to rush into the unknown. You can’t be certain that the next world would be any better than this one.” He was silent, and I pressed my advantage. “You talk of oblivion, and sleep—but in that sleep there is no waking, and what sort of dreams might haunt you? Imagine, Herron—you could be trapped with your nightmares for eternity.” I knew he suffered from violent nightmares; he had wakened me with them more than once. “Instead of escaping from your afflictions, you might be rushing to meet new ones.”

Still he said nothing, and he seemed to consider. I realized I was holding my breath as I waited for him to answer. The very calm with which he could weigh his own life came near to breaking me, and I put out my hands to him, pleading now, all policy forgotten. In that moment I lost sight of his suffering and even his salvation and remembered only my own fear.

“Don’t leave me,” I said.

Born of selfishness though it was, it was a plea more effective than all the reason and persuasion I had mustered up to that moment. In an instant he had drawn me to him and held me as tightly as if he were clinging to a precipice. Words tumbled from him, assurances, protestations, promises, and I drank them in greedily. There was something desperate in the way we clung to one another, but that may have been part of its sweetness. For now at least I was sure of him and was comforted.

* * *

But the comfort did not remain long. All too soon the fear of losing him—to his obsession, if not to the grave—returned to haunt me anew. I had to speak to someone; someone who would take my worries more seriously than had the duchess. I remembered when Charles had compared Herron to Werther. Had he really feared that Herron, like Goethe’s melancholic, would kill himself? The next morning I seized on Charles as he made his way to the room that had been fitted up as his laboratory.

“I have not yet had a tour of the house, and you are going to remedy that,” I informed him. “That is, unless you find your pet skeleton a more attractive companion.” This new study aid had arrived that week, and Charles had assembled it in the drawing room to the accompaniment of much squealing from Felicity.

“No, indeed,” he said, with an emphasis that surprised me, and I think, even himself, since he looked a bit embarrassed. Or perhaps he was startled by my directness; I rarely spoke so assertively. “I’ll be happy to serve as cicerone, but my father would be far more informative.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said vaguely. “He is so busy.”

“Not too busy to join us for a quarter of an hour; he would be glad of such a diversion, I’m sure. I’ll fetch him.”

This was not at all what I wanted. “I wouldn’t dream of troubling him,” I said firmly, and took his arm. “His work is too important. Is there a portrait gallery? Shall we start there?”

“You may want a shawl,” he said, capitulating. “The fire won’t be lit.”

The long gallery where the family portraits were displayed was also, Charles told me, where balls were held; now it was an immense emptiness that echoed as I entered. A gleaming expanse of floor, interrupted by carpets in soft shades of moss green and gold, reflected the drab light that entered through the long windows ranging down the length of the room. It was a grey, lowering day, and the sun that filtered through the lace curtains was cool and pale. The unlit chandeliers gleamed dimly, their crystals trembling at our footsteps like rain, and I was struck with the notion that this must be what the ocean floor was like: a vast shadowed place of stillness, with cloudy half-light swimming through the dimness in fitful gleams. Then Charles lit the gas wall brackets, and their bright matter-of-fact glow dispelled the mystery.

“It’s quite a spectacle when the carpets are rolled up and the chandeliers lit,” he said. “My aunt will be giving a ball soon, and then you’ll be able to see for yourself. Ah, here’s a portrait of the family from several years ago. Guess who the dashing young fellow in spats is?”

“You look very young,” I said, assessing the painting. “Not more than eight or nine years older than Herron.”

He grimaced. “Six, in fact.”

Oh. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize. I don’t recommend Sevastopol as a health cure.”

Belatedly I remembered his record in the Crimea. I had thought him over thirty, but he must be no more than twenty-seven. It was certainly no wonder he looked older than his age after all he had been through. Yet his experiences had not hardened him; he looked mature, but not haggard, as were some men I had seen returned from the battlefields.

In the portrait he looked several years younger and a decade less experienced; he had not yet grown his moustache, and he lounged next to his sisters, who wore matching white dresses. On Aminta’s other side stood Viscount Montrose, her husband, and a nursemaid with a small child who must have been Freddy. Viscount Montrose inclined toward gangliness, and was already losing his hair although he could have been no more than thirty-five; but, although he was no beauty, I decided I liked his face. Lord Claude stood a little apart from his offspring, halfway between them and the group on the sofa: the duke, the duchess, and Herron. His position was strangely solitary, as if he belonged with neither group.

The duke was very much as I had envisioned him from Herron’s description: a barrel-chested man with a Roman nose and a great beard flowing over his chest. He sat stiffly, formally, one hand holding his wife’s, his face half turned toward her as if even for the portrait he could not take his eyes from her. They seemed to be kind eyes, but there was a sternness to them that, together with the rigid austerity of his posture, made me wonder if during his life the duchess had been quite the carefree lady I knew now. In the portrait she smiled graciously, but without the merriment I associated with her. She actually appeared slightly older than she did in reality, although this may have been due in part to her gown, which was a severe, albeit elegant, evening dress of dark brocade. Instead of aging her, her husband’s death seemed to have renewed her youth, as Miss Yates had suggested.

Herron, who must have been no more than seventeen, perched on the arm of the sofa, at the far end of the group. The portraitist had not flattered him: his intent dark gaze had a fixed appearance, and his mouth wore a sulky droop. Perhaps he had been chafing over having to sit still for long hours in his best suit.

Charles, too, was gazing at the portrait intently. “What do you think?” he asked at length.

“It’s a handsome family. Was the duke as majestic as he looks?”

“Oh, yes. He had a magnificent deep voice and seemed to tower over everybody else in the room. When I was a boy I imagined that God must look exactly like him.”

“He sounds like a man it would be easy to respect,” I said, and left the last part of the thought unspoken. Charles seemed to sense it, however.

“And not so easy to love, you mean? Perhaps. I certainly went in fear of him until I was almost twenty. One look from those eyes could reduce me to the condition of a gibbering schoolboy caught stealing from the jam cupboard. But he was a deeply fair man, and very wise, and he loved his family a great deal even if he wasn’t as much of a—well, a companion as my father.”

“Did the duchess feel the same?”

He turned to me, arching one eyebrow with half a smile. “I had no idea gossip was so much to your taste.”

“In general it isn’t,” I said, and at his skeptical look I laughed guiltily. “Very well, believe me or not as you please. But since it seems I’m to consider this family my own, I would like to know more about it. It seems to have had an eventful history—recently, at least.”

“That’s certain. Very well, I shall tell you what I know. But only because you badgered me without mercy.”

He led me to another portrait, an older one, in which the former duke and duchess stood together in what I recognized to be the drawing room. It must have been their wedding portrait: the duchess, slightly plumper and smiling all over her cherubic face, was wearing an extraordinary gown of white silk whose train was painted with a design of flowers and ribbons. One gloved hand was tucked in the duke’s arm, and she turned her face up to his. In the magnificent gown and heavy jeweled coronet she looked like a child dressing up in her mother’s finery. The duke likewise wore the full regalia of his rank, but on him it seemed appropriate, and it lent him an almost military appearance that accorded with the formality of his posture. He looked very much as he had in the other portrait. I wondered how old he had been at the time of the wedding, and asked Charles.

“He was forty-three. My aunt was only seventeen—the same age Felicity is now, and, so I understand, much the same in temperament. She loved to dance and sing and attend parties and was always happiest in the midst of a group of young people. I believe there was some surprise when she married the duke: certainly it was an excellent match, and she became a gracious duchess, but I think she must have given up a great deal.” I was surprised at this burst of confidence, and Charles seemed to feel he had been disloyal, for he explained quickly: “There was the difference in age, of course, and being a duchess carries a tremendous responsibility with it, as I’m sure you’ve noticed: she would have had to leave her girlish concerns behind very abruptly and learn how to manage the duke’s affairs and comport herself in an entirely new way.”

This was a new line of thought; I had imagined that she had always been as gay and lively as now. “She must have found it a strain.”

“I’m sure so, even though she loved him devotedly. Now that she and my father are married, she seems a great deal more at ease, and does not work so hard to be formal and grave.”

“Your father is much closer to her in age, isn’t he?”

“Yes; there is less than ten years between them. He married my mother when he was very young.”

My mind went back to the family portrait, where Lord Claude seemed to be set apart from the rest of his relatives. I asked Charles about this, and he hesitated.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that he may have been falling in love with Aunt Gwendolyn at that time.” He gave me a sheepish look. “That’s pure speculation, and I probably shouldn’t say it.”

I hastened to assure him of my secrecy, and urged him to continue.

“You do draw a man out, cousin! I have the feeling that few can keep their secrets around you.” Then he sobered. “But I do remember a change in the atmosphere dating from around that year—a difference in the way my father got along with the two of them.”

“He and the duke quarreled?”

“Oh no, nothing so definite; at any rate, they were always close. That wasn’t what changed.” He seemed to be choosing his words with care, or trying to cast his mind back to that time. “Rather, it was a kind of diffidence on Father’s part, a drawing back. I suppose he must have been trying to conquer his feelings, or to conceal them from Aunt Gwendolyn.”

Or from the duke, I thought. But no doubt it was the instinct of a gentleman to try to remove himself from such a situation; no wonder he looked so uncomfortable, in such close proximity to the woman forbidden him. “It must have been difficult for him,” I said with genuine sympathy. “I’m glad he found his happiness, even though he had to wait for it.”

“Yes, he’s happier than I’ve seen him in years—my aunt too, I must say. They are well matched in temperament; he is nearly as fond of fetes and entertainments as she.” He grinned. “I expect this house party will be a very lively one indeed.”

“No doubt,” I said, although I did not care either way; I did not plan on taking part in the activities, so they held no interest for me. Nevertheless, the subject provided an opportunity for me to bring up the matter pressing upon me. “Do you suppose it will improve Herron’s spirits?”

After a moment’s silence, during which I kept my eyes on the portrait in affected nonchalance, Charles said, “I doubt it. I expect it will take more than whist and tableaus to bring him back to us.”

It was no use pretending to be unconcerned; I turned my back on the portrait and faced Charles. He met my eyes gravely. “I feel the same way,” I said. “Charles, you said once that he—you mentioned him in connection with Werther. Do you really think…?” I hoped he would cut me off, but he waited for me to finish the thought. To say the worst. “Do you think he might destroy himself?”