Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (18 page)

At that, he leaned toward me, hands braced on his knees. “My dear, this is exactly what all of us have sensed—have feared,” he exclaimed. “Do you know what it is?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath, hating myself. “He has told me that on the day of the funeral, upon returning to Ellsmere, he saw his father’s ghost. He took the visitation to mean that his father died unhappily—that his spirit is not at peace.”

This was my gamble, my sole reason for breaking Herron’s confidence: if his uncle showed fear at this news, I would know that Herron had been right. I watched him intently from under my lashes, alert for any word or gesture that would betray his guilt.

But none came. With a long sigh, Lord Claude sat back in his chair, his eyes reflecting not dread of discovery or fear of retribution, but sorrow. Wonder was there as well, a tired unhappy amazement at the extent of his stepson’s distress.

“How very tragic,” he said at last. Not, I noted, “Did the ghost accuse anyone?” He was not thinking of himself. “And he truly believes in this spirit he thinks he saw?”

“Completely. He lives in hope of seeing it again and confronting it. He’s certain his father was murdered, and believes the ghost will name the murderer.” Again I watched him.

And again he passed the test. He shook his head gently, his brow furrowed. “Good God,” he said softly. “I had not realized…. I have read of such cases, when the bereaved are so unwilling to accept a death that they convince themselves they are visited by their dead. The poor lad. Is there anything we can do to help him?”

“I wish I knew.” This time I spoke without calculation, from my heart. “He seems beyond reason on that point. He has been keeping a vigil on the roof at night, where he believes he saw the spirit, and nothing I can say will sway him. Not a night passes but he is there, waiting.” My voice cracked, and he reached out to cover my hands, which were plucking restlessly at my skirt, with his own.

“There, now. We’ll find a way to bring the boy back to himself.” The gentleness of his voice was comforting, and when I looked up our eyes met in shared grief. He squeezed my hand in sympathy. “It pains you to see him this way when you care about him, I know. It’s the same for me, and for his mother. But if we love him enough, and are patient enough, we’ll find a way to save him.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.” He was watching me with concern, and I summoned up a smile to reassure him. Satisfied, he let go my hands and I groped for my handkerchief. “But he is not the only one I fear for.”

His brows contracted. “He has not threatened to harm you?”

“Oh, no, nothing of the kind. Rather, he shows so much animosity towards you.”

To my surprise he laughed at this. Rising, he went to his desk and retrieved his tobacco pouch. “I have observed it,” he said calmly, cleaning out his pipe and proceeding to refill it, with as little concern as if we were speaking of the weather. “I find it perfectly understandable that he should be angry at me. To him, I have tried to replace his father, and I have had the further effrontery to take his mother’s attention away just when he most wants company in his grief. I am sorry he resents me so—indeed, I greatly miss our former friendship—but I’m sure he’ll recover from it in time.”

“You are very fond of him, aren’t you?”

His head was bent as he worked over his pipe, and I could not be sure of his expression. “He’s like one of my own children.”

There was silence as he finished refilling his pipe and lighting it, a lengthy process that seemed to involve a great deal of concentration. At last he had accomplished it to his satisfaction and returned to his chair, relaxing as he puffed at the pipe. We sat for a few minutes in a silence that was oddly companionable. As the smoke wreathed around his face, he regarded me through it with something like contentment, and I too was content to sit there in his company. Without speaking we seemed to be in sympathy, drawn closer together by our mutual concern, and the closeness itself as a comfort.

He may have felt it too, that sympathy, for when he spoke his voice held a kind of camaraderie or intimacy, as if there was some new understanding between us.

“It was kind of you to speak to me, my dear,” he said. “I’m grateful, and moved, that you felt you could confide in me. You will, I hope, come to me in the future if you discover anything else about the boy—anything that I should know?”

I shifted uncomfortably. Again I felt overpoweringly torn in different directions: I wanted to believe in this sense of allegiance with Lord Claude, but my conscience was so uneasy…. Another confrontation like this might undo me. I wondered if I would ever feel free to come to him again about Herron.

My silence may have revealed something of my dilemma, for Lord Claude set his pipe aside and leaned forward again to look into my face. “You’re a loyal little thing, aren’t you?” he mused. “You’ve no wish to tattle on Herron, and you’re already wondering if you’ve said too much. No, no, don’t try to explain, my dear; I admire your fidelity to him. The last thing I want to do is to cause you any qualms of conscience.” His voice was tender, and I felt myself being soothed out my agitation; almost, even, out of thought.

“You’re the lad’s true friend, and if you feel you’ll help him more by keeping silent for him, I’ll not try to dissuade you. But don’t forget”—he gazed searchingly at me, his dark eyes earnest—“I’m the boy’s friend, too. And I want to help him. You’ll remember that, my dear?”

My mind spinning, I stood. I needed to get away from the spell of that quiet, lulling voice and think. “Thank you, sir. It was good of you to make time for me.”

“Not at all.” He rose to see me out, and at the door he took my hand again, this time in farewell. “Please don’t hesitate to come to me whenever you need to talk. I assure you I will be glad to listen. And I thank you for your touching concern for me; it speaks of a womanly heart.”

“You will be careful then, sir?”

The fine lines around his eyes crinkled in a smile. “I’ll take the spirit, if not the letter, of your warning to heart. Have no fear for me; I shall take care not to goad the boy further if I can help it.” He half bowed over my hand in a courtly way, then raised it to his lips. The kiss was the most delicate of touches. “Good night, child.”

“Good night.”

I had crossed the library before I looked back. He was not watching me, as I had half expected; he had vanished into his study, and the door had shut soundlessly. I stopped and took a few deep breaths before starting for my room. My thoughts were in more confusion than ever.

What a strange interview!

I had never before encountered such disturbing charm in a man. It was something I had never expected to find in Lord Claude, who was usually so self-effacing. It was as if he felt the division in this family, and had been wooing me over to his side.

At that, I shook my head angrily, trying to find different words to fit my impression. I was not being required to take sides in a battle or aid in a conspiracy, and I should be ashamed to ascribe his kindness to me to an ulterior motive. It was only natural for Lord Claude to want me to share my knowledge with him, in view of his affection and concern for his stepson, and there could be no harm in doing so.

Why, then, did I feel like a traitress?

At any rate, qualms of conscience aside, I could now dismiss the idea of Lord Claude as a murderer. Never in our conversation had he given any sign of guilt, of uneasy conscience. Certainly had he been guilty of murder he would have shown some anxiety over the mention of the ghost: whether or not he believed in such things, the rumor of an uneasy spirit would raise questions that would endanger the safety—at the very least, the peace of mind—of the duke’s murderer. My mission had not been in vain. Now, if only I could convince Herron of my feelings… if possible, without revealing how much I had told.

Still mulling this over, I was so preoccupied as I entered my study that I did not at first notice the new addition to the effects on my desk. When I did notice I pulled up short in an instant of irrational fright.

From atop a stack of books a human skull was staring at me.

After a moment, when my heart had slowed to something like its normal pace, I approached and picked the thing up. It was cool and smooth to the touch, and when I tried the jawbone it dropped open obligingly. It was undoubtedly genuine.

Now that my brief panic was over and I could think sensibly again I knew where it must have come from. Charles, after all, was the only one in the house in possession of a skeleton. But how the skull had found its way to my desk was a more difficult mystery to solve. In that first glimpse it had struck me as an evil omen, even a warning perhaps, but from whom? “Why would anyone wish to frighten me?” I puzzled, but the silent gaping jaw offered no answer.

I sat down in front of the fire and held the skull in my lap, turning its face—what had once been a face—toward the light. It had ceased to be a thing of horror and now seemed only faintly ridiculous. What a sad and pathetic pass it was that a person could be reduced to this mindlessly grinning piece of bone. The thing was utterly anonymous; there was nothing to tell whether it had belonged to a man or woman, octogenarian or debutante. Perhaps the skull I was handling so casually had been a distinguished professor, a man of learning who would resent his present undignified position.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I apologized. “I realize I am taking great liberties with a gentleman to whom I haven’t been properly introduced. But then, of course, you mightn’t be offended at all. You may have been a young roué, and quite accustomed to having young ladies fondling your cheekbones. For shame, sir! I hope you are repenting for your behavior now, wherever you are.” I smothered a giggle at my own fancy, and a voice behind me demanded, “Who are you speaking to?”

I started; Herron had entered without knocking and stood behind me. “Just a friend of Charles’s,” I said, and held it up in explanation.

“It seems unfair to make fun of him when he can’t defend himself,” he commented, sitting down on the hassock and holding out his hands for the skull.

“It can scarcely harm him now.”

One of his rare smiles came and went, bright but quick, like a flash of lightning. “True; even if he had ears to hear with, which he doesn’t. We can abuse him to our heart’s content.”

I watched as he turned the skull this way and that as I had done. “If it was a man, which we don’t know,” I pointed out. “I wonder if Charles has any idea, if he was told the identity. That would be gruesome.”

“Why? You said yourself it’s no longer a person. It’s just the empty shell; the essence of the man—or woman—cast it off long ago.” Dismissively he tossed it back at me, and I snatched at it in haste lest it fall; I did not want to hear the sound it would make if it struck the floor. “One carcass is much like another.”

“Well, I suppose so; but think what it was before the essence abandoned it. This common bit of bone was what allowed that person to talk, and feel, and eat, and kiss—at least, I hope so. Perhaps it belonged to some lonely spinster who never got much use out of it.”

“Don’t waste your pity on it,” said Herron idly, stretching his legs out before the fire. “Whatever its owner did during life, it’s too late to change anything now.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be so cool about it,” I said. “That skull may have had a father he loved… or a son.”

For a moment he said nothing, and I wondered if I had gone too far. Then he said evenly, “I don’t deny that. I simply find it difficult to feel any great emotion for a hunk of bone. I can’t think of it as a person. The only reason to feel sorry for the thing is if the owner was robbed of its use before he was ready to relinquish it.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?”

He shrugged, but his face had hardened. “No holes from bullets or cracks from bludgeons, but there are other ways. Ones that wouldn’t show on bone.”

I rose at that, somewhat hastily, and replaced the skull on the desk—behind the stack of books, where its blank stare wouldn’t be visible. “That’s a horrible idea.”

“Murder generally is, Ondine.”

Taking a guess, I ventured, “Is that why you took it? To see if it showed signs of violence?”

He hesitated. “No, not exactly. I was… curious.” So he had been the one to bring the thing here; not a warning, then, after all. “I wanted to see what we all look like in the end—if there’s anything to distinguish a good dead man from an evil one. And there’s not a bit of difference. It’s strange that there should be no remnant of personality left. The machine is always the same; the only difference is the use to which it’s put, and that dies with the man.”

“Greatness doesn’t die with the body, you know; things a man does in life can have powerful effects on those who come after.”

“Yes, of course. But the man himself, be he martyr or murderer, will look like all his fellows in a century’s time. Nothing he can do will change that; in the end we are all the same, a bare assemblage of bone. It makes all one’s efforts or enterprises seem quite futile.”

“Not quite that, surely. After all, the machine must be given to us for some purpose.” I sat on the carpet beside the hassock, where I could rest my head against his knee. After a moment I felt his hand alight on my hair, abstractedly. “Herron,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about all that you’ve told me, and I want to ask you something.”

“Hmm?” His thoughts had already moved far away from me. It might be difficult to make him contemplate the subject I had in mind, but I would rather fight distraction than broach the topic when he was in one of his moods of bitterness. I nerved myself and plunged in.

“Have you considered that your uncle may be innocent? I know, you are convinced of his guilt. But think, Herron—did he and your father ever have any harsh words? From what everyone says they seem to have been on perfectly amiable terms. Why would your uncle suddenly take it into his head to kill a loved brother? And what’s more,” I went on quickly, as he started to speak, “your uncle doesn’t show any signs of a guilty conscience. Surely if he were guilty of so monumental a crime his behavior would betray him. But speak of the duke before him and he’ll not show fear, only sorrow. That can’t be the way a murderer would react.” I paused for breath, half fearful of his reply.