"A visit to your family might be in order."
He stopped. We had reached the canal bridge. Below it, the water rippled serenely, stretching to the horizon in either direction. Beyond the canal, the peaked roofs of the Sudbury School showed through the trees.
"I want to see Miss Rutledge," he said.
I gave him a severe look. "It might be better, might it not, to simply go?"
"I want to speak with her. I want to tell her good-bye."
"Then you are returning to your family?"
His dark eyes showed resignation. "Yes. My uncle is right. I do not belong among your people. I will never be one of you. When things go wrong, their eyes turn first to me, the Romany." He paused and let his gaze rise to the horizon. "Megan… she is a good wife."
He pronounced it like a sentence of doom.
"A wife who can share your heart," I suggested.
He did not believe me. He had decided he must do his duty, nothing more. I hoped that Megan would make him realize that his duty could also be his greatest pleasure.
"I will see what I can arrange," I promised.
In the end I had to recruit Bartholomew's help. He met clandestinely with the maid, Bridgett, who communicated with her mistress. I felt vaguely like a character in a Sheridan farce, in which servants handed round love notes and lovers hid behind screens.
I planned to accompany Belinda Rutledge to her meeting with Sebastian. Sebastian had grown much subdued during his imprisonment, but I did not trust him to not turn around and make a dramatic gesture, such as running off with her.
In the meantime, Grenville grew no better. He sweated and threw off his covers, and not even the laudanum could keep him quiet. I feared him tearing the wound further and bleeding inside. I also feared that he'd die of the fever, which increased. The wound, when we took off the bandage, was yellow and oozed pus and blood. I kept washing it, not knowing if it did any good, but wanting to see it clean.
Sir Montague Harris returned to London. He had business there, he told me. I explained to him what I meant to do. He did not like it, but he agreed that the killer might get away with his crimes otherwise.
When I met with Belinda a day later to arrange her meeting with Sebastian, Rutledge caught me talking to her in his study.
Rutledge was supposed to have been visiting with Timson's father all afternoon. Timson's cache of cheroots and business selling them to his fellow students had been found out, and Timson's father sent for. I wondered if Sutcliff's blackmail network had begun to break down or whether it had simply been bad luck on Timson's part.
Rutledge was not in the best of moods when he stormed in and encountered us. He stared, mouth open, for a full minute, then the shouting commenced.
"Lacey, good God! What do you mean by this?"
He halted under the portrait of his handsome, smiling wife. Before I could answer, he plowed on, "The only reason I have not packed you off is because of Grenville. That does not give you leave to wander about as you will and have private conversations with my daughter."
I planned to extemporize that Belinda had been asking me about Grenville, but I did not get the chance. Belinda, who was already distraught about the meeting with Sebastian, burst into tears and fled the room.
I faced Rutledge, deciding not to explain. A simple silent stare was more effective with him than explanations, in any case.
"I never wanted you here," Rutledge said. "I took you on Grenville's recommendation, but I regretted it from the first. You are rude, arrogant, and insufferable. I am surprised you had a career in the army at all."
I was too tired of Rutledge to be stung by his remarks. "As I said, my commander agrees with you. But I managed to lead men for nearly twenty years and lose very few of them. A man does that by being arrogant and insufferable and rude enough to tell a general that his plan is stupid and deadly."
Rutledge did not care. "Be that as it may, you do not know your place, sir."
"On the contrary. My place is by the side of my friend, who lies hurt because of my own stupidity. You, sir, allowed two men to die, because you could not see what was happening under your very nose."
I had said too much, as usual. Rutledge, though he annoyed me in every way possible, was not wrong about me.
"Perhaps you, Lacey, simply do not understand the reality of being headmaster of a school. To keep fifty boys disciplined, to make them actually learn something, for God's sake, to placate their boorish fathers so that they will continue to send their money, is a continuous and mountainous struggle. Forgive me for not foreseeing the death of a criminally minded groom and a Latin tutor equally as criminally minded. Their greed brought about their own ends."
"That is essentially true. But there is unhappiness here, and fear, and you have chosen to bluster your way over it. Your prefect, Frederick Sutcliff, is an exploitative little monster, but of course, his father provides much money."
"What I decide about Sutcliff is my business," he growled, "and the school's. Other boys fall into his power only because they have something of which to be ashamed."
I stared at him, amazed. "So you let him be your substitute bully to keep order?"
"His methods work."
"You're a bloody tyrant, Rutledge."
"It no longer matters. Fletcher was a weak fool, and Middleton was tied to unsavory characters. I will simply find a better Classics tutor and a groom. I am amazed at you for letting the Romany go. I still believe he killed Middleton, and the woman must have killed Fletcher."
I smiled an angry, almost feral smile. "No, it was not that easy. If I tell you who I suspect, you will stop me, and I will not allow that. But I warn you to lock your door at night."
He glared. "I do not believe you. You can have no evidence, or the magistrate would have arrested him already."
"The magistrate is no more intelligent than you are, nor any safer." I made a bow. "Good day to you."
"Where are you going?"
"Back to my place," I said coldly, and left him.
Rutledge, after that, left me to my own devices. He said not one word about finding me with Belinda. In the polite world, a man found alone with an unmarried young woman could unleash great scandal, often hushed up by a hasty marriage. Rutledge, on the other hand, decided to pretend it never happened, much to my relief.
Rutledge would have been apoplectic with fury if he'd seen me meet Belinda the next afternoon on the path to the stables and lead her to the canal and Sebastian.
I had arranged the meeting for the dinner hour, because I knew that Rutledge would be in the hall scowling at his students. Belinda, on the other hand, always took her meals in their private rooms, so her absence would likely not be noted. She had wanted to go in the dead of night, but I had talked her out of so foolish a course.
I had chosen a place halfway between Lower Sudbury Lock and the next bridge. Sebastian stepped out from behind a tree as we approached, and Belinda, like a heroine in a novel, ran to him.
I, the chaperone, stood back out of earshot and let them have their little romance.
Sebastian took Belinda's hands in his and began to talk. I saw Belinda falter, saw her shake her head. To all appearances, he was keeping his word and telling her they could not be together.
They made a pretty tableau, Sebastian with his dark hair and tall body, Belinda with her fair skin and sun-dappled hair. I envied them the intensity of their infatuation, but at the same time, I was relieved that I had left such things behind me.
Or had I? I thought of Lady Breckenridge and her smile and the feeling of her hand in mine. A man could still be a great fool at forty.
After a time, I spied a shadow moving near the lock. I knew it was not the lockkeeper going about his duties, because I'd seen him enter his house as we approached. Stifling a sigh, I turned and strolled back down the path, leaving Belinda and Sebastian alone.