By the time the light began to go she had a neat pile of acceptances in her careful new hand, on paper stamped with a crest she still did not feel was hers. It was the first thing all day that had felt like the work of a duchess, and she was absurdly pleased and grateful. She sealed the last of them and thought no more about it because she had other matters to attend to. Like searching her husband’s chambers.
She had been avoiding drinking the tea for two days as a precaution. The taste of it was growing stronger. And because she could no longer ignore the rumours about the Reaper of Iredell.
She waited until Henry was at his club before making her way to his room through the connecting door. She found cold grates, meticulously organised drawers full of smalls, and a small painted miniature of a fair woman she assumed was his mother.
In the dressing room she went through the rest. A campaign chest stood at the foot of the bed, every compartment squared away to a hard military order: razors in their case, a strop, a tin of tooth powder that smelled of orris and myrrh and stopped her a moment until she saw what it was. There were scents enough on the stand to chase, eau de Cologne, the sweet bergamot of the oil he dressed his hair with, and not one of them was relevant to her search. The wardrobe breathed camphor and cedar when she opened it, the smell of wool guarded against the moth, and nothing worse.
His physic was in a drawer that locked, the key still sitting in it: a bottle of laudanum half gone, a jar of embrocation that stank of camphor and turpentine. At the back stood a small dark phial. She carried it to the window to read the label, and what she read there made her go still: tincture of monkshood. Her mother had grown monkshood at the far end of the garden and forbidden the children to touch. It could kill a grown man between his dinner and his bed.
For one long moment she thought she had found him out. Then she made herself think.
The phial stood near full, the dust thick at its stopper, bought and scarcely used. And the thing she was hunting was slow and quiet. Aconite was anything but slow and quiet. They died of it inside the hour, in agony, and any physician alive would know it at a glance. But a few drops were also useful for a pain that would not let a man sleep. Nothing worse than that.
A cased pair of pistols lay on the high shelf, cleaned and lately oiled. She stood with them in her hands longer than was wise. She put them back. Every gentleman in England kept a pair and they proved nothing.
At the very back, beneath a folded stock, were a curl of fair hair bound with black threads and a worn little book of psalms. These she did not touch despite her curiosity.
She put each item back as she had found it, pushing down the shame, although she could not make herself regret it.
Chapter twelve
The Bickles
Violet
Patten sent up the afternoon’s post on a salver. Among the cards and a note from Mr Brigg was a letter in a large round hand, crossed and recrossed to spare the paper, that could only be Mrs Bickle’s.
Her mother had warned her of this. Mrs Bickle would be at her door to see the inside of the house and carry the report back to the whole of Hampstead, and Violet might as well give her a good tea, for she would come whether Violet willed it or no. She read now, by the window, three crossed pages of news, who had married and who had not and whose pig had taken a ribbon, working toward the announcement two pages in that Mrs Bickle did mean, if it were no trouble in the world and her dear Violet must say at once if it were, to call.
She had not reached the foot of the page when Patten knocked again. “Mrs Bickle, Your Grace,” he said with uncertainty, “and Miss Bickle. And a Mr Harris.”
Behind him came Mrs Bickle in her best, which was a great deal of best, a bonnet with so much fruit upon it that a duchess’s dining room seemed the proper setting for it; and behind her, her daughter Letty, who came through the door with her face up at the ceiling and very nearly went down over the edge of the carpet; and behind them both, hat in his two hands and saying nothing, Kit Harris.
“Oh, my dear.” Mrs Bickle stopped and put both hands to her bosom and took in her hall, the staircase, the marble, the great cold height of it. “Oh, my dear. Look at where you are.”
Violet crossed the hall and let Mrs Bickle gather her in, fruit bonnet and all. The good woman smelled of camphor, of home. Behind her, Letty was explaining to no one in particular that the chandelier beat the one at the Assembly Rooms by half. Kit had stepped back and set himself to watching the corners of the hall, as he had once watched the corners of every room her father entered.
The hackney had cost a shilling and ninepence, Mrs Bickle announced, and been worth every farthing, for she would not have found the place in a week of Sundays. These western streets were got up to look alike on purpose, she was sure of it, to keep honest folk out. She had not cared to come so far from home without a man to lend her countenance, and Lady Thornwick had been glad enough to spare Kit for the afternoon.
“Though it takes him from his work, my dear, for he is much in demand now.” She dropped her voice on the wordworkas though it were something fragile. “There is not a merchant in Holborn who would not have him keep his books, after the way he kept your poor father’s. And not the books alone, as you well know.”
This was Mrs Bickle’s method of informing the butler, who stood by the door pretending not to listen, that the quiet manwith the worn hat was a person of consequence and to be used as one.
“You look well, Kit.”
“Well enough, Miss.” He caught himself. “Your Grace.”
The old name and the correction hung a moment in the cold air.
Patten was waiting still to learn what these people were, whether they were for the morning room and the treatment of persons who had presumed, or for something gentler. Violet did not leave him in doubt.
“We will take tea in the drawing room. The good room. Bring it up yourself, Patten, with the seed cake. Please tell Mrs Greer the best service.”
Mr Patten, to his credit, kept his expression neutral. “Very good, Your Grace.”
She meant them to have the best of everything even though she herself wasn’t sure what the best would look like. A shopkeeper had turned her into the street over the cut of a gown. She would not, under her own roof, do to the people who loved her what the world had been so willing to do to her. Let Hampstead hear that the Duchess of Iredell had given Mrs Bickle the good room. Let the whole of them hear it.
Tea in the good room did Mrs Bickle a great deal of good. By the second cup she had recovered the power of consecutive speech, and Letty, who had been struck dumb only by the ceiling, found her tongue along with her mother.