I blinked at him. "Of me? Why should they make anything of me? I am simply Julia Grey."

He gave a short, sharp laugh. "Simply Julia Grey." He downed the whisky in one go, clearing his throat as he put down the gla.s.s. He folded his arms over his chest, gingerly, so as not to pull at his st.i.tches.

"Julia, you have broken almost every convention known to society. You are a widow, yet you do not wear black. I am a bachelor, yet you stayed as a guest in my home without a chaperone. You were alone with me on the crag when Ailith died. Read that, with the worst possible construction, because that is what the jury will do."

I considered it for a moment, then shook my head. "Nonsense. I realise it looks bad, but when they understand that Valerius was here-"

"Valerius was not here," he corrected. "Not for a matter of days. Neither was Portia. And if they have a mind to question her character as a witness, how long do you think it will be before they discover her relationship with Jane?"

"Oh, that needn't be a problem. Jane is gone. She left Portia to marry some man she met in London. She is off to India."

"That is beside the point," he said, grinding his teeth. "She is a woman of known immoral habits, that is what they will say. Do you want that in the newspapers?"

"They wouldn't dare," I whispered.

"Julia, you are not in the south. Your father's t.i.tle carries little weight here. He cannot simply come in and fix everything up for you as he always does."

I bristled. "Father doesn't always fix everything up, thank you very much. I do make some rather good decisions."

Brisbane pa.s.sed a hand over his face, fighting fatigue and frustration, no doubt.

"The March name is not hallowed here. He cannot head off the damage that might be done. Only I can," he finished softly.

"You? What can you do?"

He stared at me for a long moment, and when he spoke, his words were weighted, as if he had chosen each one with exquisite care.

"In order to protect your character-and your sister's-we will have to present a fiction to the jury. We will have to pretend to be betrothed."

I said nothing.

"We will say there was opposition from your family because of my low birth and my connections with trade. Your brother and sister came to lend respectability to the match in spite of your father's disapproval. We will tell them we meant to marry when the Hall was restored to order, only there was more work than we had antic.i.p.ated. We had fixed the date for next week and were preparing to elope to Scotland. We will say Ailith suggested a picnic luncheon on the crag to celebrate our impending nuptials, but the weather turned foul and when we went to descend, she slipped and fell. It was a tragic accident, and that is all."

"What about Hilda?" I asked faintly.

"Hilda will do anything to keep the true story from becoming known."

I tipped my head. "You are rather fond of her, aren't you?"

Brisbane shrugged. "She is alone and defenceless, and she is as much a victim of this b.l.o.o.d.y family as those babies in the coffin."

I suppressed a smile. "I knew it. I knew you could never really harm a defenceless woman. You are the most virtuous man I know."

He sputtered. "Virtuous? I cannot think that that is a word that I have ever heard in relationship to my character. You are quite mad."

"I am not," I said stoutly. "I am perfectly serious."

"Julia," he began patiently, "there are certain expectations of behaviour in every civilized society. The fact that I observe them does not make me virtuous. It makes me no better than the next man."

"Rubbish. What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man."

He shook his head, wonderingly. "You are a singular woman, Julia Grey. You persist in seeing me as the man you want me to be."

"No," I corrected him. "I see you as the man you want to be."

He looked away sharply and took another sip of his whisky. "Thank you for that."

I primmed my mouth. "Yes, well." We both fell silent for a moment until I cleared my throat and wiped at my eyes. I a.s.sumed a brisk tone. "And what of your escapades on the moor? Surely you do not expect me to believe you were really playing at being a sheep farmer. What were you about at all hours, creeping about on the moor and receiving secret correspondence?" I asked, reminding him of the letter he had sealed so secretively in my presence.

"Mines," Brisbane said shortly. "There is still silver and lead under this land, I know it."

I quirked a brow and he pulled a face.

"Very well," he said. "I do not know. It is merely an intuition, but it springs from sound logic. Romans mined here, and there are traces of where they worked, if you know how to look for it. I instructed Monk and he set himself up in Howlett Magna as a visiting schoolmaster, complete with false whiskers. That way he had an ident.i.ty established to account for being in the neighbourhood. We met once a week upon Thorn Crag or at the Bear's Hut to discuss our findings."

I stared at him, mouth agape. "That is astonishingly clever. But why the secrecy?"

Brisbane shrugged. "I did not want the village to know what we were about. If we found a mine, it would have put half the village back to work. It seemed cruel to raise their hopes only to dash them. Not only cruel, dangerous. They nearly stoned the Allenby who closed the mines, remember." His mouth shifted into a grin. "You gave poor Monk quite a fright when you arrived, you know. He spotted you across the street and dove into a linen-draper's lest you recognise him and give it all away."

I thought back to the odd elderly man with the curious limp I had seen in Howlett Magna.

"So there are no mines?"

"None that we have found," he said, his tone regretful. "And the estate itself has no resources beyond three sheep."

"Three sheep? You and G.o.dwin spend every day out of doors looking after three sheep?"

He gave me a grim smile. "I needed a plausible reason to be away from the Hall," he said. "And G.o.dwin doesn't want me to know that he has been systematically selling off the sheep to put something by should I turn him out."

"Thievery!" I breathed.

Brisbane shrugged. "I can hardly blame him. I would have done precisely the same under the circ.u.mstances. He has not been paid in three years, you know. So I pretended to believe there were more sheep on the moor and to spend my days looking for them. I could hardly tell you that Monk and I were searching for traces of Roman mines. We took it in turns to sit upon the crag, surveying the moor with a gla.s.s, both of us careful to keep out of G.o.dwin's way. It was highly methodical and perfectly useless," he finished in disgust. He gestured toward the little flasks and bottles of his scientific equipment. "I have even experimented with the soil, and still we cannot find precisely where the veins rest under the moor. We have been so close."

I thought of the day I had sought Brisbane on the crag and wondered if he was quite alone. Monk must have been there then, comparing observations with Brisbane in their futile quest.

"All these months," I sympathised, "and nothing to show for it."

"Yes, well, it doesn't much matter now, does it?" He paused, as if marshalling his thoughts. "You did not answer me."

"About what?" I blinked at him.

"About pretending to be my fiancee," he said in exasperation. "Will you do it?"

I fought the urge to sob. It hardly seemed fair that I was being asked to pretend to be his fiancee when he might have proposed to me outright and been able to tell the truth to the coroner's jury.

I swallowed hard and smoothed out the skirts of my dressing gown. "As you have made it clear you are acting out of the n.o.blest concern for my own reputation and that of my sister, it would be churlish of me to refuse," I said formally.

He inclined his head, matching my coolness with a dispa.s.sionate chill of his own. "Good. If we mean to make this plausible, we should tell no one it is a fabrication."

"You mean I have to lie to Portia and Valerius."

"They will forgive you when the truth comes out," he said dismissively. "After all, it is for their own good."

At that moment I felt an overwhelming urge to throw something heavy at his head. I left him instead. Maiming him would be a very poor start to our betrothal, sham or not.

I lingered in bed the next morning, nursing my physical ailments and hiding from my sister. A spectacular violet bruise had blossomed across my ribs from the blow struck by Ailith's knife against my corset. Morag helped me to dress, b.u.t.toning me into the only ensemble I owned that did not require a corset. It was a casual affair of bottle-green velvet, more suited to entertaining privately at home than being seen in public, but it was the best I could manage under the circ.u.mstances.

She told me Valerius had been awake for hours and had taken a nice bowl of beef tea and cursed Portia for fixing a fresh bandage too tightly about his head. In defiance of convention, Hilda had sat with him through the night and had finally retired to her own bed for some needed rest.

Morag said nothing of my erstwhile betrothal so I judged the story had not yet made its way belowstairs. My sister was another story altogether. No sooner had I seated myself at the table for breakfast than she pushed away her empty plate and fixed me with a sour smile.

"I hear congratulations are in order. Shall I buy you a wedding present? What would you like? A nice set of fruit knives, perhaps?"

Mrs. b.u.t.ters bustled over with a plate of piping hot eggs and bacon, a rack of crisp toast, and a steaming pot of tea. Jetty was weeping quietly into her ap.r.o.n in the corner. Apparently, she had taken the news of G.o.dwin's betrothal to Minna rather hard.

I took my first exquisite bite of breakfast and savoured it before turning to Portia.

"Don't let's be peevish. You always thought Brisbane and I would make a match of it."

"Yes, well, I didn't think you would be so furtive about the whole business. Brisbane said you have had an understanding since he left Bellmont just before Christmas."

My mind whipped back to that last moment, full of unspoken yearning, when we knew we would not see one another for a long time, if ever. I thought of what he had said to me, his lips against my hair, and what he had told me later still, when he lingered at the door. A woman could easily interpret such things as declarations, I reasoned, although I knew perfectly well if Brisbane ever proposed there would be no need for interpretation. He would be forthright as a bull in his intentions.

"Don't sulk, Portia. You've a nasty crease, right between your eyes. It's aging," I added maliciously.

Instantly she brightened. "Still, I think you might have told me. When do you mean to marry?"

I shoved another forkful of food into my mouth to buy myself a moment. "We have not really discussed it," I told her.

"I should think sooner rather than later," she told me sagely. "Neither of you is very young, after all."

"I am only thirty!" I protested.

"And Brisbane is nearly forty. If he means to settle down and start a family, he ought to get to it."

I shoved my plate away, feeling rather desperate to turn the conversation to another topic, any other topic.

"Mrs. b.u.t.ters, what perfect eggs. So light, I cannot imagine how you do it."

Mrs. b.u.t.ters, who had been lingering discreetly in the background, came near with a fresh rack of toast. Portia took a piece and began to break it to bits in a desultory fashion. Mrs. b.u.t.ters beamed at me.

"Thank you, Lady Julia. I have always taken great pride in my eggs."

"With excellent reason," I said, giving her a grateful smile.

Portia, who had been lost in thought, perked up suddenly. "Mrs. b.u.t.ters, will you stay on now that Lady Julia is going to be mistress of Grimsgrave?"

I groaned, but neither of them paid me any mind.

"I should think Lady Julia would be an excellent mistress," Mrs. b.u.t.ters said kindly. "But perhaps she would care to engage her own staff."

I smiled at her again. "Mrs. b.u.t.ters, you are tact incarnate. And pay no attention to my sister. No firm plans have been made at present. Nothing will be decided until after the inquest," I told them both, taking in Portia with a glance.

Portia gestured toward an empty chair. "Mrs. b.u.t.ters, I should very much like you to take a cup of tea with us."

Mrs. b.u.t.ters demurred, as any good servant would, but eventually Portia's powers of persuasion won out over her diffidence. She retrieved a plain cup, not a prettily flowered one such as those that had been laid for us, and poured out a tiny measure of tea, sweetening it heavily.

"Toast?" Portia offered, graciously waving toward the toast rack.

Mrs. b.u.t.ters shook her head firmly. "I could not, my lady. Really."

Portia accepted this refusal and pushed no further.

"Now then, Mrs. b.u.t.ters, I am very interested in Miss Ailith. There are unanswered questions, you know. And I think you can supply the answers."

I smothered another groan and took a sip of tea instead. How like Portia to go directly to the horse's mouth, no matter how discomfited the horse.

"Well," Mrs. b.u.t.ters began slowly, "a servant does see rather a lot. And I have been here a very long time."

Portia nodded, beaming. "Precisely. And a valued member of staff is practically one of the family."

She was pouring on the cream rather thickly now with that sort of flattery, but Mrs. b.u.t.ters merely gave her a muted version of her old twinkle and sipped at her tea.

"When did you realise there was an unnatural closeness between Miss Ailith and her brother?"

"Portia!" I scolded. "Is that really necessary?"

Portia flapped her hand at me. "Really, Julia, don't be so provincial. Mrs. b.u.t.ters and I are women of the world. We can discuss such things without embarra.s.sment, can we not, Mrs. b.u.t.ters?"

Mrs. b.u.t.ters was thoughtful. "I think it was always there, that attachment. Even when they were children, there was something secretive and strange about them. Miss Wilfreda, she was as plain as milk and easy to read as an open book. Miss Hilda was much the same, but she was smart as a whip, and always fretting that she could not go to school. Always hidden away somewhere with a book, she was. But Miss Ailith, she was wild as moor wind and Master Redwall was just the same. Whatever she directed him to do, he did. He was her slave."

I c.o.c.ked my head, curious now, in spite of myself. "Do you mean Ailith initiated the relationship, not Redwall?"

Mrs. b.u.t.ters shrugged. "I do not suppose we will ever know. But I would not be tha' surprised. I know she was deeply in love with him. She never forgave Lady Allenby for sending him away."

"But she must have realised, she must have known, what they did together was terribly wrong," I protested.

"Did she? Miss Ailith always believed there was another set of rules for her, if indeed there were any rules besides her own will. She took what she liked, and when she was done with it, she destroyed it. That was the sort of person she was."

Mrs. b.u.t.ters' eyes grew misty with remembrance. "She loved the little chapel by the river. I think that might have been where those poor babies were conceived. It was Miss Ailith's special place, you know. It was like a tiny palace, and she liked to pretend she was a queen in the ruins of it. Yes, it would have done very well for their trysts."

I shuddered. "She was monstrous."

"Perhaps," Mrs. b.u.t.ters said evenly. "She might have been born with a flaw in her character, like a pulled thread in fine piece of silk. Never able to be mended, no matter how much one tries. Or she might have been flawless, and twisted by human hands."

"Her mother's," Portia added.

"And her father's, and her brother's as well. Too many people too willing to acquiesce to her every whim. Such indulgence can warp even the best character, while hammering against a strong character will only hone it to its truest self," Mrs. b.u.t.ters observed.