Page 84 of What Cannot Be Said

“A week or two after Waterloo. It was horrible. Malcolm had to pull Arabella off Emma, and Emma, she was so mad at Arabella that she was screaming at her, saying she was as crazy as her mother.” Thisbe threw a quick glance back at her governess, then lowered her voice. “She’s not really dead, you know—Aunt Georgina, I mean. She’s locked up in a madhouse. No one ever talks about it because it’s supposed to be this big dark secret. But Malcolm found out about it and told Emma. So then Mama got mad at Malcolm and Emma, which wasn’t fair, because Arabella started it all—and was saying how she hated Emma and wished she was dead, on top of that.”

Hero had assumed the children all believed the polite fiction given to the ton, that Lady Salinger had died. What would it do to a child like Percy, she wondered, who’d grown up believing his mother was dead, only to suddenly learn such a horrible truth?

What must it have done to Arabella, who could surely remember her mother?

Hero chose her next words carefully. “What did Arabella do after Emma said that about her mother?”

“It was really eerie. I mean, she’d been acting so wild, trying to scratch Emma’s face and screaming, ‘I hate you.’ But then, after Emma said that about Aunt Georgina, Arabella went all still and cold-like, and said in this strange, high-pitched voice, ‘I could kill you.’ ” Thisbe gave a little shiver, her head falling back as she watched a red squirrel scamper up the trunk of a nearby oak. “To tell the truth, in some ways I didn’t mind too much being told I couldn’t go on the picnic—I mean, not with Arabella going, too. I don’t like being around her. She’s... She can be scary.”

Hero found she had to clear her throat before she trusted her voice enough to say, “You told me you had to stay home because you were being punished for something you didn’t do?”

Thisbe set her jaw hard. “That was on account of Arabella. She wrote my name all over one of her books and then told Mama I had done it. But I didn’t! I promise I didn’t. Why would I? I mean, if I wanted to ruin her stupid book, why not just spill ink over it? Why write my own name so everyone would know it was me?”

Hero was aware of Laura’s daughter looking up at her with tear-filled, hurting eyes. “Oh, Thisbe,” she said, drawing the child into her arms and holding her close. She didn’t want to believe a fifteen-year-old girl and her thirteen-year-old brother were capable of plotting and executing such a diabolical series of murders.

But she didn’t like the way the facts were beginning to line up.

Chapter 50

Sebastian had only recently returned from his morning ride in the park when Hero came to stand in the doorway of his dressing room. Her cheeks were flushed from her walk in the fresh morning air and she still wore a moss green spencer over her muslin walking dress, with her broad-brimmed straw hat dangling at her side from its ribbons. But her face was solemn, her eyes wide and still.

“I think I might owe you an apology,” she said.

He looked up from adjusting his cuffs. “Is what you learned from Thisbe that bad?”

“Actually,” she said, walking forward to slip her arms around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder as she held him close, “it’s worse.”

?One seemingly innocent incident or remark, followed by another and another and another. Taken all together, they formed a damning sequence. But that didn’t prove anything, and Sebastian knew it.

Thinking over Thisbe’s series of artless revelations, he went, first, to the Middle Temple. But Michael Finch hadn’t seen his brother since breakfast, and a quick search of the gardens along the Thames and the Temple Church proved fruitless.

And so Sebastian turned toward the west, to the Haymarket.

?Damion Pitcairn might teach the sons of London’s wealthy elite in their own homes, but for his less exalted fencing students he often made use of a rubble-filled wasteland near Piccadilly. Once occupied mainly by aged terrace houses and shops that had been torn down in the past year, the area would someday be part of a grand scheme envisioned by the Prince Regent and his architect John Nash to clear away a section of the West End’s old, fading streets and replace them with a broad, sweeping new street lined with rows of elegant, classically fronted structures. But the actual building process was slow to get underway, leaving vast stretches of dusty lots filled with piles of old timbers, used bricks and stones, and other debris.

At one end of the stalled construction site, near the propped-up relic of a stretch of old stone wall, lay the ancient courtyard of what must once have been a substantial Renaissance-era house, its cobbled surface worn smooth by the passing of the centuries. As Sebastian worked his way toward it, he could hear the familiar quick patter of stockinged feet and the ringing clang of foil meeting foil.

“Careful,” he heard Pitcairn say to his student. “When used sparingly and at the proper time, the replacement is a clever means of scoring. But don’t try to use it when your opponent makes a fast direct return.”

Sebastian could see them now, two lithe young men dancing back and forth across the sun-soaked ancient courtyard, their foils coming together again and again in a delicate play of feint, thrust, parry, and riposte. From the distance came the familiar shouts of costermongers, the cries of street sellers, and all the racket of modern London. But the scene here was timeless: two skilled swordsmen practicing an age-old art. Sebastian leaned his shoulders against the crumbling remnant of an old chimney, crossed his arms at his chest, and watched.

Pitcairn’s unknown pupil was lean and quick, with the supple grace of a dancer and the strength and agility of a born athlete. Both master and pupil had cast aside their hats, coats, and boots, stripping down to breeches, shirts, waistcoats, and fencing masks of wire and leather. But the more Sebastian watched, the more he realized the pupil’s mask didn’t simply protect its wearer from an opponent’s sword; it also helped hide a dangerous secret.

When the lesson ended, Pitcairn pulled off his mask and paused to confer briefly with his pupil. Then he tucked the mask under one arm and turned to walk toward Sebastian.

“She’s very good,” said Sebastian.

A flicker of surprise passed over the fencing master’s features. He glanced over to where the girl now sat perched on the steps of what looked like an old mounting block, her head bent as she tugged on her boots. “She’s more than ‘very good’; she could be one of the best—if she were a he.”

Sebastian watched the girl push to her feet and reach for her coat and hat. Her nose was small and straight, her cheekbones high, her lips full, her skin a rich golden hue. And yet he knew that however beautiful or brilliant or talented she might be, the options open to her in their world were limited.

“But you’re not here to talk about my pupil, are you?” said Pitcairn, swiping one crooked elbow across his damp forehead. “I had some bloody Bow Street Runner following me last night when I left the theater. I suppose he thought he was being clever and unobtrusive, but if so, then he failed. Am I about to be taken up for murder?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

Pitcairn sat down and began to pull on his boots. “According to one of the bits of muslin who works the Haymarket, someone was also hanging around asking questions about me yesterday afternoon. You know anything about that?”

“No.”

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