“Even before the disease?”
He shrugged. “Did the rot claim her? Or did she claim it? There are people—artists and poets—who believe syphilis is a gift that opens the soul to genius. My lady Maude believed it. She told me once that love was the only cure for living; and she pursued it in every slum, every house in Mayfair, in the back hallways of Pall Mall clubs, even in the open air—under the ramparts of bridges where the prostitutes dwell. Publicity gave the act spice, d'ye see? I don't know whether she took pleasure from her anonymous couplings or clawed art from debauchery—by that time I was dead tired of collecting my wife from every hellhole in London, each night. I gave her up, Georgie, to the glittering death palace she'd made of her life. And it was years before I saw her again—and then she was already sick past caring.”
Georgiana was toying with her food, her face pallid in the candlelight. “How did she come to this place?”
“Her father leased it, when he understood she was dying; and since he went to his grave, her brother's agents have managed the business. The family likes her marooned in the middle of the ocean—but convenient to Kent, should they wish to call.” His mouth twisted. “I spent long months here, years since, when we hoped the mercury might cure her. The pain of it—the destruction—was horrific. She turned back to me, Georgie—she was in dire need of a friend. But when I see the enormity done to her, I bless the demon that destroyed her mind. Better that she not know—most of the time—what she has become.”
Georgiana rose. “You haven't eaten a thing.”
“No. I've no taste for food at Shurland Hall.”
“Then we ought to leave this place.”
He assessed her face. “Can you bear it here?” he demanded. “Did I do wrong to bring you?”
“I understand why you did. Von Stühlen will never find us. I'm just—” She leaned toward him, kissed his weathered cheek as chastely as though she were his daughter—“so sorry, Patrick. For her. For you. For the waste of two lives.”
He watched the woman he loved mount the stairs of his wife's house. And then he turned back to the bottle.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fitzgerald crawled into his cold bed after three o'clock in the morning, while the wind off the sea battered Shurland Hall. He awoke with a violent shudder of fear, as an enormous cosh whistled through the fog of his alcoholic dream and tumbled him from a pitched slate roof. When he collected his wits and his aching limbs from the floor, his pocket watch read eighteen minutes past seven o'clock. His mouth was foul with the memory of brandy. He stumbled to the wash stand. He rarely slept so late; it was his habit to greet his clerks each morning with a fire already burning in chambers. It was Sep who never appeared before noon, Sep who worked late into the night and of a Sunday—
The shock of water against his skin silenced his stuttering thoughts. There'd been no time, last night, to stop in Great Ormond Street and consult with Sep's doctor. His need to tear Georgie from the metropolis—from the threat of hands that had stifled the breath out of a young girl's lungs—had proved too consuming. He'd chosen to protect her as he'd failed to protect his oldest friend. Guilt and weariness flooded his mind. The summons to Windsor two days before had been followed relentlessly by fear and death. Why? What had he—what had Georgie done? If Sep should die—
He forced down the thought and stripped off his nightshirt.
Coultrip had taken away his filthy clothes and laid out some old things he'd left behind in a storage chest—country clothes a barrister never needed in London: tweeds and riding breeches. He put them on, and wondered if Maude still kept a horse.
The stable was empty, but he read the obvious signs in the fresh hay and water. Theo. Of course. He'd have taken the Chatham & Dover line from Oxford and then the ferry to Sheerness—but Maude kept his mount in readiness still. Or someone did. Coultrip, probably.
He set off in the grey light along the rough track to the shore, less than a mile north over the undulating sheep pasture. The rain was done, but tufted clouds hung low and dark over the sea, flattening the landscape. The island was a horizontal world—strange and liberating after the vertical confines of London. The sharp air smelled of salt, of wet and matted wool, of the sourness of the marshes behind him. Fitzgerald was a hunted man, with the most powerful monarch in the world against him; but he was walking down to the sea in the early light and might have been returned for an instant to Ireland. Some part of his black mood lifted.
As he crested the line of dunes that bordered the shingle, a dull, rhythmic thudding came to his ears—the sound of pursuit. He wheeled, heart thudding and eyes straining up the coast toward Sheerness, in search of the men who had inexplicably tracked him and Georgie down. And there was the horse: a chestnut he did not recognise, although he had probably paid for it. On its back, slung low over the galloping animal's neck, was Theo.
The boy was not looking for watchers in the dunes, but at the endless stretch of empty shingle, the oblique line of advancing waves, the light of morning as he raced toward the east. Fitzgerald almost let him pass. He almost turned like a coward and shuffled back along his trail, to the despairing Hall and the tea that would be waiting there. But he had so little to lose. He ran pell-mell down the dunes, on an intersecting course with the chestnut, calling out his son's name.
“What are you doing here?”
The boy was scowling, his dark brows so like Maude's, all his fierce joy vanished in an instant.
It was the greeting Fitzgerald expected.
“I was passing by. So I gave a look in.”
“Passing by Shurland?” Theo snorted, sounding rather like his horse. “Nobody does. You weren't expected.”
“I never am,” he said mildly. “How are you, lad? How's Balliol?”
“How long do you intend to stay?” The chestnut tossed its head, backing and prancing, and for an instant Fitzgerald saw the horse as Theo—fighting for control.
“Not long. Put that beast in his stable and walk with me. Please.”
Theo eyed him, unsoftened. “Clive's too fresh—he needs a good run. I doubt anybody's loosed him since Michaelmas. I'll come to you later, in the library—after breakfast.”
“Sure, and I'll be there,” Fitzgerald said. But Theo was already gone.
When he did reappear, at half-past ten, he was in a towering rage: the library door thrust violently open, and slammed to with equal force.
“I've just made that woman's acquaintance. What do you mean by bringing her here?” he demanded, as Fitzgerald rose from his chair by the fire.
“If you mean Miss Armistead—”
“I don't care what her name is! The insult, to Mama! Parading your mistress at Shurland with brazen disregard for everyone in the household—” Theo wheeled. “Do you know what they're saying in the servants' hall? Did you never stop to think how we might feel ? No! You simply suited yourself, with your usual appalling—”
“Theo.” Fitzgerald set down the roll of charts he'd been scanning. “Lower your voice, for the love of Mary. Miss Armistead is not my mistress. She's in the way of being my ward.”
“Your—”
“Ward. Placed in my care on her guardian's deathbed.”