“I am sorry,” I murmured.
“I know. I ought not to have threatened to beat you,” he returned. He pressed a kiss to my hair.
“I just cannot bear to be kept out of your life,” I said into the dark.
He gave a sigh. “Julia, you daft woman. When will you understand? You are my life.”
It cost him something to say it, for Brisbane’s declarations were always a thing of pain to him, wrenched by some force, as if he were Samson, giving up his strength a lock at a time with his words.
I said nothing, pressing closer and easing myself on top of him. We were silent, but in our silence was desperation, feverish and sharp, and when we spent ourselves and lay, damp and exhausted in each other’s arms, we were silent still.
The SIXTH CHAPTER
Rest, rest, perturb’d spirit.
—Hamlet
The next morning, Brisbane was up and gone before I descended to breakfast. Aquinas entered with tea and toast as I helped myself to eggs from the sideboard. As a very superior butler, he made no allusion to events of the previous evening. It fell to me to raise the subject we were so carefully avoiding.
“I do hope the rest of the staff were not disturbed by our arrival last night,” I began.
Aquinas poured out the tea and tidied up the various pots of jam and honey. “Not at all, my lady.”
“Hmm. Did they happen to notice anything amiss?”
Aquinas gave me a kindly smile. “It is beneath the dignity of a member of staff to notice or remark upon the activities of the family,” he reminded me.
I took a piece of toast, crumbling it in my fingers. “I suppose. I should hate for the new members of staff to think that such goings on are typical of this house.”
Aquinas’ lips thinned a little as he folded Brisbane’s newspaper. I dropped the toast. “Oh, very well. You’d best prepare them that such things are entirely typical. That the mistress will occasionally dress in boy’s clothes, that the master has been known to disguise himself as a pedlar or a beggarwoman, that we keep ravens in the morning room and that from time to time, we are menaced by murderers and thieves and blackmailers and villains of every description,” I said, flinging up my hands in exasperation.
“I have already done so, my lady,” he informed me. “And I have hired the staff at a premium to accommodate the inconvenience.”
“Oh, well done,” I murmured. “Are we fully staffed then?”
“All but the tweeny,” he acknowledged. “She gave notice yesterday on account of the telephone device that has been installed under the stairs. She thinks it an ungodly and heathenish apparatus and will not remain in a house where one is in use.”
I snorted. “Any other domestic troubles? Have we a new cook yet?”
“I am assured by Mrs. Potter that a new cook will be in residence by this afternoon. We are also lacking a valet for the master, although Mr. Brisbane is quite gracious about my own efforts in that capacity.”
Aquinas had been acting as valet to Brisbane for some weeks, although it was not entirely fair to expect him to continue to do so. The duties of a butler were onerous at times, particularly in our establishment, and Brisbane could be exacting about his clothes. Of course, he also managed perfectly well by himself without a valet when necessity demanded it. On our honeymoon, he had availed himself of hotel valets and shipboard stewards to see to his clothes, but I had seen him just as impeccably turned out whilst camping at an archaeological site in Turkey or pursuing a murderer in the Himalayas as in any London ballroom.
Aquinas went on. “Furthermore, Mr. Brisbane and I discussed the matter this morning, and I suggested a pair of footmen for messages and carrying packages, with the notion that one or both could serve as valets as needed.”
“And he was amenable?” I asked.
Aquinas whisked away invisible crumbs from the tablecloth. “Not at first. He pointed out that he is accustomed to living rather more simply, and did not immediately grasp all of the advantages to keeping a pair of footmen on staff.”
“Advantages?”
Aquinas took up the empty pan of eggs and retreated as far as the door, giving me a smile that was almost, but not entirely, correct. “As it is the custom for fashionable ladies of rank to take a footman with them upon leaving the house, I pointed out to Mr. Brisbane that it would be far easier to ensure your ladyship’s safety with a footman in attendance at all times.”
I gave a squawk of protest. “Aquinas, tell me you did not!”
He straightened himself to his full—if diminutive—height. “I do not think that my lady fully comprehends the depth of regard in which she is held by every member of this establishment,” he said firmly. “Her safety and comfort are our highest duty.”
With that, he took his leave, and I could not scold him. I knew Aquinas was deeply affected whenever he resorted to addressing me in the third person. Besides, I mused as I crunched into a piece of toast, it was rather better to have one’s husband and staff devoted to one’s safety than the opposite, but I could not like the feeling that I was being slowly bound up in chains. Velvet chains, but chains to be sure.
After a hasty breakfast, I summoned Morag and the town coach and made my way to the house of my dear friend, Hortense de Bellefleur, in the pretty little neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood. Her elderly maid, Terese, admitted me and carried Morag off to the kitchens for a good gossip. Hortense—Fleur to her friends—rose and greeted me with alacrity.
“Julia!” she cried, her lilting French accent rendering my name something lovelier than it usually sounded in English. “How happy I am to see you.”
I went to her and kissed her cheeks, feeling suddenly ashamed of myself. I had not seen her in such an intimate setting in far too long. Our friendship had been a prickly one. I had come to terms with the fact that she had once, many years ago, been Brisbane’s mistress, and I knew their friendship was nothing more than a deep affection on both sides. She was almost twenty years his elder, and the attraction had been easy enough to understand. She had been a glamorous widow, a lady of the world, both exciting and kindly for a very youthful Brisbane. She had cared for him when his migraines bedevilled him, and she was one of the few, the very few, who knew the story of where he had come from and how he had made his way in the world.
No, I had learned to look past her affaire with my husband in his youth. It was her liaison with my father that had raised my hackles. They had met when I was convalescing at my father’s house after nearly losing my life at the conclusion of the investigation into my husband’s murder. To my astonishment, they had struck up an immediate friendship, and then something more. By the time I had returned from a six-month sojourn in Italy, she had become his paramour. The relationship was a terribly discreet one, but the family were still scandalised. Fleur had made her way in life as little better than a courtesan, taking up with men of power and influence and wealth. Some of them she had married, some of them she had merely entertained. The difference between Fleur and a true professional was that she always fell in love with her admirers, my father included. Ultimately, their relationship drifted, and as a result, I found my own relationship with her had regained some of its previous warmth. We resumed our correspondence throughout my travels, and I had looked forward to each of her chatty, engaging letters.
But they were no substitute for the genuine pleasure of her company, and as she hugged me to her, I felt a surge of the old affection take hold.
“My dear girl,” she said, drawing