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“So she hasborne a child?” Grey asked, pouncing upon this last injudicious phrase.
All of the reverend’s wrinkles flushed dark red and he stood abruptly.
“I fear that I can spare you no more time, Lord John. I have a great many engagements this afternoon. If you will—”
He was interrupted by the parlor maid who had brought tea, who bobbed a curtsy from the doorway.
“Your pardon, sir; it’s Captain Fanshawe come.”
The choler left the Reverend’s face at once.
“Oh,” he said. He glanced quickly at Grey, then at the doorway. Grey could see the figure of a tall man, standing in the hallway just beyond the maid.
“Captain Fanshawe…would that be Captain Marcus Fanshawe, perhaps?” Grey asked politely. “I believe we are members of the same club.” He’d met the man briefly on that last, riotous visit to White’s, he thought.
The minister nodded like a clockwork doll, but looked back and forth between Grey and the doorway, exhibiting marked perplexity and what looked like embarrassment.
Grey was somewhat perplexed himself. He was also angry with himself for having allowed his personal opinions to intrude on the conversation. No help now but to retreat in good order, perhaps leaving enough goodwill to provide for another visit later. He rose and bowed.
“I thank you for receiving me, sir. I can show myself out.”
The Reverend Mr. Thackeray and the maid both gave sharp gasps as he strode through the door, and the minister made a brief movement as though to prevent him, but Grey ignored it.
The man in the hall was dressed in ordinary riding clothes, his hat in his hand. He turned sharply at Grey’s appearance, surprised.
Grey nodded toward the newcomer, hoping that his face did not reveal the shock he felt at Fanshawe’s appearance. It was the sort of face that drew both men and women, dark and arresting in its beauty—or had been. One eye remained, sapphire-colored, dark-lashed, and framed by an arch of black brow, a perfect jewel.
The other was invisible, whether injured or destroyed, he had no idea. A black silk scarf was bound across Fanshawe’s brow, a bar sinister whose starkness cut across a mass of melted, lividly welted flesh. The nose was mostly gone; only the blunt darkness of the nostrils remained. He had the horrid fancy that they stared, inviting him—almost compellinghim—to look through them into Fanshawe’s brain.
“Your servant, sir,” he heard himself say, bowing automatically.
“And yours.”
Had he ever heard Fanshawe’s voice before? It was colorless, correct, with the slightest tinge of Sussex. Fanshawe turned at a sound from the parlor door, and Grey felt suddenly faint. Part of the captain’s head had been caved in, leaving a shocking depression above the ear, nearly a quarter of the skull…gone. How had he lived?
Grey bowed again, murmuring something meaningless, and escaped, finding himself in the road without noticing how he had got there.
His heart was beating fast and he felt the taste of bile at the back of his throat. He tried to erase the vision of Fanshawe’s head from his mind, but it was no use. The ruined face was terrible to look upon, and filled him with a piercing regret for the loss of beauty—though he had seen such things before. But that sickening place, where the eye expected a solid curve of skull and found emptiness instead, was peculiarly shocking, even to a professional soldier.
He stood still, eyes closed, and breathed slowly, concentrating on the sharp autumnal odors round him: chimney smoke and the sweet scent of windfall apples, rotting in the grass; damp earth and dead leaves, the bitter smell of hawthorn fruits, cut straw, used to mulch the flower beds in Thackeray’s garden. Soap—
Soap?His eyes flew open and he saw that the branches of the hedgerow beside him were heaving.
“Psst!” said the hedge.
“I beg your pardon?” he replied, leaning to look closer. Through the spiny branches of a hawthorn, he made out the anxious face of a young woman, perhaps eighteen or so, whose large, prominent eyes and upturned nose betrayed a close resemblance to the pug-like Mr. Thackeray.
“May I speak to you, sir?” she said, eyes imploring.
“I believe you are, madam, but if you wish to continue doing so, perhaps it would be easier were I to meet you yonder?” He nodded down the road, to a gap where there was a gate set into the hedge.
The clean-smelling young woman met him there, her face pink with cold air and flusterment.
“You will think me forward, sir, but I—Oh, and I doapologize, sir, but I couldn’t help overhearing, and when you spoke to Father about A
“I collect you are…Miss Thackeray?”
“Oh, I am sorry, sir.” She bobbed him an anxious curtsy, her ruffled cap clean and white, like a fresh mushroom. “I am Barbara Thackeray. My sister is Miss Thackeray—or—or was,” she corrected, blushing deeply.
“Is your sister deceased, then?” Grey inquired, as gently as possible. “Or married?”
“Oh, sir!” She gave him a wide-eyed look. “I do hopeshe is married, and not—not the other. She wrote to me, and said she and Philip meant to be married ever so soon as they might. She is a good girl, A
“She wrote to you, you say?” He glanced involuntarily back at the house, and she correctly interpreted the look.
“She sent a letter in care of Simon Coles, the lawyer. He is—a friend.” Her color deepened. “It was but a brief note, to assure me of her welfare. But I have heard nothing since. And when we heard that Philip—that Lieutenant Lister—was killed…Oh, my fears for her will destroy me, sir, pray believe me!”
She looked so distressed that Grey had no difficulty in believing her, and so assured her.
“May I—may I ask, sir, why you have come?” she asked, pinkening further. “You do not knowanything of A
“No. I came in hopes of learning something regarding her whereabouts. You are familiar with Lieutenant Lister’s family, I collect?”
She nodded, brows knit.
“Well, Mr. Lister is most desirous of discovering your sister’s current circumstances, and offering what assistance he might, for his son’s sake,” he said carefully. He really did not know whether Lister would be interested in helping the young woman if she had notgiven birth to Philip Lister’s child, but there was no point in mentioning that possibility.
“Oh,” she breathed, a slight look of hope coming into her face. “Oh! So you are a friend of Mr. Lister’s? It was wise of you not to tell Father so. He holds the Listers responsible entirely for my sister’s disgrace…and in all truth,” she added, with a trace of bitterness, “I ca
“Captain Fanshawe was an—a suitor of Miss Thackeray’s?” Grey said, hastily substituting that term for the more vulgar “admirer.”
Barbara Thackeray nodded, looking troubled.
“Oh, yes. He and Philip both wished to marry her. My sister could not choose between them, and my father disliked them equally, because of their profession. But then—” She glanced back at the house, involuntarily. “Did you seeMarcus?”
“Yes,” Grey said, unable to repress a small shiver of revulsion. “What happened to him?”
She shuddered in sympathy.
“Is it not terrible? He will not allow me or my younger sisters to see him, save he is masked. But Shelby—the parlor maid—told me what he is like. It was an explosion.”
“What—a ca