Page 14 of The Missing Page
“I can hear you ruminating,” James said groggily, rolling over and dropping an arm across Leo’s chest. “Rude.” He blindly groped for the watch, found it exactly where he expected it to be, and examined it.
“I wonder if we missed breakfast,” Leo mused.
“I wonder if there will even be any breakfast.” He stretched and rolled to face Leo. “Yesterday’s tea was half a packet of digestive biscuits. Evidently, Mrs. Carrow only does supper.”
There was a broad range of possibility between a packet of digestive biscuits and a hot meal prepared by one’s cook, and Leo guessed that Martha Dauntsey knew it and had her reasons for the packet of biscuits. “I met Mrs. Carrow last night when I used the telephone in the lodge to make my sham call to my sham sister. Will Carrow is a mechanic who was stationed at a nearby airfield during the war and now is saving up money to buy the garage in town.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t offer to fix your carburetor straight away.”
“Oh, he did, but you see, I found the entire experience of being in a breakdown very alarming and needed strong drink and nourishing food.”
James snorted.
“Mrs. Carrow is an artist who makes a living selling watercolors to tourists—seagulls and sailboats and fishermen’s cottages, that sort of thing—but the other stuff she had in the lodge was—” Leo hesitated. He didn’t know whether art was good or bad, but he knew the difference between tourist tat and something else. “I think it might be something special. In any event, she came to live here after getting bombed out of her lodgings in London and before that had never been in service. Neither of them had. They live in the lodge free of rent in exchange for light work, and viewed your uncle as a sort of pet they were glad to look after.”
“I’d like to know why in heaven’s name my uncle didn’t spring for proper servants. I know it was hard to find help during the war, and it might be even harder now, but surely he could have done something. And why didn’t he have the roof repaired or the windows fixed? And why isn’t there a single fire—electric or otherwise—to be had in this entire house?” As if to demonstrate the need, he burrowed closer to Leo, bringing the blanket tightly around them.
Leo thought his heart might skip a beat. He ought to be used to this by now. They had spent enough nights together, enough mornings together, that it was no longer practical to count them (it was thirty-two). Surely that was enough time for any reasonable person to get used to being…cuddled, or whatever this was. Leo doubted he had ever been cuddled in his life before he met James. He certainly hadn’t known that he wanted any such thing. When James touched him like this, he felt—Christ, he felt safe. And it didn’t make any sense. Leo’s career—hell, his life—depended on his ability to assess danger and seek safety, and he knew perfectly well that there was no possible peril that James could protect him from with a blanket and a strong forearm.
Leo swallowed and tried to collect himself. “I’d like to know how much was in those bank accounts that are mentioned in the will. I’d like a chance to talk with Lady Marchand, because if anyone knows what her father was thinking, it ought to be her.”
“She didn’t seem upset when Mr. Trevelyan read the will. Surprised, and maybe slightly offended, but not distressed.”
“Is her husband so wealthy that she wouldn’t notice extra money and an entire extra house?”
“I don’t think Blackthorn is worth much to anyone except Martha, and that’s only because she hasn’t anywhere else to go, as far as I can tell. As for Sir Anthony, he’s a Harley Street doctor, so he isn’t hurting for money.” There was a tightness in James’s voice that made Leo pay attention.
“You don’t like him,” Leo observed. He pushed some hair off James’s forehead.
“Is it that obvious?” James sighed.
It certainly was, which in itself was interesting. James was by no means an accomplished liar, but his manners were unexceptionable; he knew how to deliver whatever falsehoods courtesy required. Last night, though, Leo had noticed James’s jaw clench whenever Sir Anthony spoke.
“Why don’t you like him?”
James let out a breath and turned his attention to the ceiling. “I went to see him about my battle fatigue or shell shock or whatever you’d like to call it. He’s the only psychiatrist whose name I knew, and he’s a sort of relation, so I thought it made sense. But I forgot that he attended my father. I’m not sure I had even known, to be honest, considering how young I was at the time.”
Leo could imagine that James, nerves shattered and future in ruins, might wish he had a family, and therefore might look for help to someone he thought of as a relation, however old and remote the connection. “What did he say to you?”
“He said that it was no surprise that I was unbalanced after the war, considering how my father reacted. He also said that I ought to go to a nursing home indefinitely, because I have what he called a family history of mental disturbance. He said that two close family members took their own lives and he thought—well, he thought I needed constant supervision.”
Leo took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “Did you?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you need—it’s none of my business, but were you thinking of—”
“No, no. It wasn’t like that. When I got home from France, I was pretty much the way I am now, only more so.”
Leo nodded. James startled easily and seemed to get lost in memories of the war when something happened to remind him of those times. He was hardly the only person in England with that set of symptoms, and unless there was a part of the story that James was leaving out, it was perhaps excessive for Marchand to suggest that James needed to be locked up as a suicide risk.
And yet, Marchand may have been erring on the side of caution. If Marchand had been James’s father’s doctor, he might not want to lose another Sommers. Leo understood the urge to keep James safe. But still—the doctor had obviously disturbed James.
“I’m sorry that happened,” Leo said, judging that James did not now or possibly ever need to hear a defense of his cousin’s husband.
“I felt like he was putting ideas in my head,” James said. “I hadn’t wanted to do away with myself and then he made it seem inevitable. As if I was doomed by a family curse.”
That brought Leo up short. “He can go get fucked. I’ll go tell him so myself, if you don’t mind.”
