The Hidden Blade (12 page)

Despite Sir Curtis’s absence, there was a subtle undertow of unhappiness at Rose Priory. At first Leighton thought it was his own loneliness coloring his perception. Then he realized that he was actually reacting to the servants: The staff at Starling Manor was unobtrusive, but the servants at Rose Priory seemed not so much quiet as subdued.

Oppressed, even.

Some of them started at loud noises. Others muttered to themselves as they worked in the gardens. The man in charge of the stable never quite said no to Leighton’s request for a horse to ride, but there had been such dismay in his face, something close to outright fear, that Leighton had not inquired again.

The man in charge of this skeletal staff was named Twombley. Leighton didn’t think he had ever come across anyone so high-strung and twitchy. Twombley was completely fixated on every little detail of the running of the house. A single speck of dust on the windowsill or one lonely weed poking its head out of the ground in the gardens would somehow summon him from wherever he was to hold a whispered yet vehement conversation with the servant responsible for this dereliction of duty.

It was as if a state of perfect housekeeping at Rose Priory were the only thing that kept the sky from collapsing.

The next time Leighton was at the village, he asked Mr. Brown, the clerk at the post office, whether he knew anything about the servants at Rose Priory.

“So you noticed something odd about them, eh?” Mr. Brown glanced about to make sure that no one else was near. “They are ex-convicts—or at least that’s what I hear.”

“Are they?”

“Your uncle is a brave and noble man, he is,” said Mr. Brown. “I would be afraid of having my throat cut in my sleep in a house full of criminals. But Sir Curtis, they say he believes in modern methods, not punishment but rehabilitation. He’s a godly man, so the good Lord must be looking after him and keeping him safe.”

Leighton’s heart thudded unpleasantly. “I see. Thank you.”

“Haven’t made you afraid, have I?” asked the clerk.

“I’m all right,” said Leighton.

But he wasn’t. Not because he lived in a house with ex-convicts, but because they were broken ex-convicts. Sir Curtis held something over each of them, Leighton was sure, just as he’d held something over Father. Father, who’d had a wealthy mother and an income larger than Sir Curtis’s, had been able to escape to Starling Manor. But to the end of his days, there had been something damaged inside him, something fearful and anguished that even Herb’s love could not cure.

How long would it be before the monster turned his gaze to Leighton?

Sir Curtis married Miss Saithwaite at the end of September. Three weeks later they arrived together at Rose Priory, both looking supremely pleased with life and each other.

Along with them came a Mr. Jonathan Colmes, Leighton’s new tutor, a slightly stooped man in his early forties. As Sir Curtis made the introductions, Leighton was almost startled to realize that despite Mr. Colmes’s somewhat nervous manner, he was not a shattered man barely held together by an animal instinct for self-preservation.

“I have heard excellent things about Mr. Colmes—he was the result of a diligent search,” said Sir Curtis.

The very timber of his voice made Leighton’s skin crawl. But there was something else too: a trace of malicious mischief. Leighton glanced warily toward Mr. Colmes, wondering whether the latter was going to be an instrument of Sir Curtis’s ill will. But in Mr. Colmes he could sense nothing worse than an awkward desire to please. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Sir Curtis dismissed Mr. Colmes and sat down behind the desk of the study. Leighton felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise—he had never before been alone with the man.

“And how are you, my dear nephew?” asked Sir Curtis softly.

“Very well, sir. Thank you.”

“Do you miss your mother?”

“Sometimes.”

“It must be difficult to be left behind. Does she write of her new life? Lady Atwood ran into her once in London and said she seemed to be enjoying herself enormously.”

It was meant to hurt and it did. Leighton wanted Mother to get on well. He wanted her to be happy. But always there was the fear that she would forget him altogether—that he didn’t matter at all.

Sir Curtis was a connoisseur of fear, a man who knew how to extract and refine it, how to forge it until he could wield it like a blade, every word leaving a gash upon the heart.

“She writes that she is busy getting ready to leave,” answered Leighton.

Sir Curtis tented his fingertips and cocked his head to one side. He reminded Leighton of a bird of prey, with coldly intelligent eyes. “You resemble my brother a great deal, young Master Leighton. But I see you are made of sterner stuff.”

It occurred to Leighton that until this moment, Sir Curtis had not paid any particular mind to him: He had separated Leighton from his family to punish Mother—and as an exercise of his own power; what manner of boy his nephew was mattered not at all. But now he perceived something in Leighton, something he had not expected.

A strength of will. More than that: a strength of will that could turn into cruelty. He saw a boy who was capable of turning on his mother.

Leighton said nothing.

Sir Curtis took a sip from the cup of tea sitting before him. “The day before my wedding, I received a letter from Mr. Herbert Gordon, asking for the album of stamps that had been bequeathed to him in your father’s will.”

This was the first time Leighton had heard Herb’s name in months. He barely stopped himself from scooting forward in eagerness.

“Quite an insolent demand,” continued Sir Curtis, “given that he was directly responsible for your father’s death. I sent him the pistol with which Nigel killed himself.”

Leighton felt as if someone stepped on his throat. Herb wouldn’t, would he?

“Quite a coward, Mr. Gordon. I heard he left the country instead.”

Leighton did his best to not exhale too obviously. Herb was safe—for now.

Sir Curtis leaned back in his chair. “I am quite sorry that you had to grow up amid such nefarious influences.”

Leighton remained silent.

“Are
you
?” asked Sir Curtis.

A chill ran down Leighton’s back—this was a question he could not bypass.

He should lie. Sir Curtis would believe him—Sir Curtis who believed that strength must always detest frailty. And hadn’t Leighton lied brilliantly before Mother, convincing her that he was as self-righteous as Sir Curtis?

“No, sir,” he said.

Sir Curtis raised a brow. “No?”

“No.”

He could never be sorry to have been born to Nigel and Anne Atwood. He could never be sorry to have Marland for a brother. And he would always, always be glad to have had Herb’s friendship.

For Mother and Marland, he was willing to undertake the Big Lie. But he would not denounce everyone he loved just so that he might have an easier time at Rose Priory.

Sir Curtis shook his head slightly. But he only said, “I’m sure Mr. Colmes is waiting to begin your lessons. You may go.”

Leighton had half expected Mr. Colmes to be incompetent, but the man was quite good at his profession, and two hours passed quickly under his tutelage. As the clock struck four, Mr. Colmes put away his chalk and closed his book. “That will do for the day. Come now, Master Leighton, let’s go for a walk in the gardens.”

It had turned cold in the past few days. Rain pelted the windows of the house. A fog floated on the moors; one could not even see down to the low wall that surrounded the lowest level of the garden, let alone beyond.

Leighton wouldn’t have guessed Mr. Colmes to harbor a fondness for the outdoors. But as he himself was game for venturing outside in any kind of weather, he fetched his coat, hat, and mackintosh, and walked out beside his tutor.

They had walked for no more than a few minutes before Mr. Colmes exclaimed that it was chillier than he had thought and he would need a heavier coat. He returned to the house to change. Leighton continued to follow the garden path—and ran into Lady Atwood, coming from the opposite direction.

He bowed. She nodded.

He thought they would walk past each other, but she stopped, looked at him a moment, and said, “You are an odd one—quite wary for a little boy.”

He was hardly little—already he stood taller than some grown women. But he did not argue with her characterization of him.

She studied him more closely. “You don’t like me.”

“I don’t know you enough to not like you,” he said carefully.

“That is not true. You dislike me strongly. Why?”

She didn’t seem at all affected by the distaste she had perceived in him, her curiosity wholly impersonal.

“I don’t know you at all,” he repeated himself.

“You are at least correct about that. So if you have no reason to dislike me personally, then…” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you have against my husband?”

He said nothing.

“If nothing else, you should admire him,” Lady Atwood admonished. “He is a godly man who donates his time to the service of his nation, a generous friend, and a devoted husband. And when he retires in a few years, we are going to Africa to save souls.”

Leighton almost laughed aloud. Herb would have made a better hangman than Sir Curtis would a missionary.

Lady Atwood’s countenance darkened. “You think there is something funny about God’s purpose for me?”

So she was the one who wanted to be a missionary. “Was that your condition before you would marry him? That in a few years you will be able to go?”

“That was his promise to me.”

“Good luck with it.”

“You dare doubt his integrity?”

“Send me a photograph when he is under the African sun, preaching to the unconverted.”

Mr. Colmes happened to return just then. He paid his respects to Lady Atwood and they spoke of their impressions of Dartmoor. Leighton walked two steps behind them, Lady Atwood’s exalted opinion of her husband echoing in his head.

He could never see Sir Curtis as anything but a monster. But he hoped for her sake that she was right about her husband’s integrity, that when the time came he would honor his promise and allow her to fulfill her dream.

By the time they had walked one round in the garden, his thoughts had drifted away from Lady Atwood’s future to Herb’s present. Was Herb on a train now, or a steamer? Was he headed east or west? Or had he already settled down someplace in Paris or Milan?

What Leighton wouldn’t give for a ten-page letter full of details.

He came to a stop.

What if Herb
had
written?

Leighton made sure he didn’t leave the grounds of Rose Priory during the ten days of Sir Curtis and Lady Atwood’s stay—he didn’t want Sir Curtis to know that he liked walking in the countryside.

After they left for London, however, with his morning lesson done, he immediately set out. But as he was about to open the picket gate in the garden wall, a gardener of about fifty came running.

“Master Leighton! Master Leighton!”

“Yes, Adler?”

“We didn’t know before, but Sir Curtis told us that your health is no good, Master Leighton,” Adler said urgently. “That anytime you catch a cold you might develop pneumonia.”