Something about it captivated me, made me long to look upon it further, to hold it in my hand and run my fingertips over the smoothness of the stone.
“What a lovely necklace,” I blurted, unable to help myself.
A grunt that sounded like agreement came from him—and then his bleary eyes focused on my face.
“Whooo?” he said, like a tubercular owl.
“Your letter bid me come,” said I, remembering myself at last. I took his hand in mine, but almost dropped it in surprise. It felt leathery and chitinous at once; I could not feel the bones beneath the skin. “It is I, Chelone Burchell, your ward. I had not expected to see you again. I am so glad—”
There was more I was going to say, but, unexpectedly, my greeting induced a sort of apoplexy in the Lord Calipash. He began to cry out and wheeze and make such a ruckus I let go his hand immediately.
“Never!” I managed to understand through it all, and also, “Begone!”
This cut me to the quick. It was not as though I had forgotten what was supposed to be my permanent banishment when I received his missive! How could I fail to recall the day I was turned out of the house and sent alone in a coach to attend Miss Redcombe’s School for Girls of Quality? I was not even allowed to pack, my things were sent after me. All I had were the clothes on my back, a few shillings in my pocket, and a letter of explanation in my hand that stated, among other things, that payment would soon arrive to cover my education until I came of age; that I should stay at the school for all holidays unless invited to a friend’s house, and that every effort must be taken to keep me away from young men!
And yet I had always hoped we would be reconciled, despite his returning every letter I ever sent him, unopened; that he would come to regret punishing me so severely for such a trifling youthful indiscretion …
“I’m—sorry, the letter, it must have, I don’t know,” I stammered, backing away from the bed. The old man had begun to twitch and froth at the mouth, looking wildly back and forth between myself and Mr. Vincent.
“Begone!” he cried again, and then he fell back on the pillows—stone dead!
Lizzie, Mr. Vincent, and I stood still for some minutes, all shocked by what had transpired.
I was the first to speak.
“I brought the letter,” I heard myself saying, protesting this awful scene and my part in it. “You can see it for yourselves!”
Mr. Vincent—or rather, Lord Calipash, as I should start to call him, checked for the old man’s pulse.
“Well,” he sighed. “That’s that. There is nothing to be done but prepare ourselves for the funeral and legal expenses. A damned nuisance, I’ll warrant, but it shall be soon done with.”
“My lord,” said Lizzie, in her how shameful voice that I knew too well. “How can you say such things? And at a time like this?”
“I barely knew the man,” said the new Lord Calipash with a dismissive wave of his pale hand. “He sent me away to live with strangers as soon as I could walk, and called me home only so he could instruct me as to the management of this estate. He cared nothing for me, nor I for him. Now get thee to the kitchen to make my supper, and have Bill dress the body and put it in the crypt to keep it cool until the official burial. Oh—and have him go into the village to send a telegram to our lawyer in London, too.”
And he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
I jumped—and then jumped again. The skies had made good on the storm promised since I arrived at the station; thunder crashed, a sudden spatter of thick raindrops hit the glass window. The room lit up with lightning, then fell dark again.
“For goodness’ sake, it’s only rain,” said Lizzie, reprimanding me for my jumpiness. I detected a note of bitterness in her voice. “You’d better go settle in. You will not want to try to return to London tonight.”
“Of course,” I heard myself say. “I—I am sorry…”
“And what good does that do anybody?” she said, not looking at me. She looked wracked, grief-stricken, bereft even. “You’ve ruined so much this day, girl.”
Then she said what I had been feeling since my arrivaclass="underline"
“You should never have come back to this house, Chelone Burchell. Not for love or money.”
Night. In my room—I thought I should not to go down to supper, but hunger drove me from my chambers. Out of respect I dressed in my most somber gown—but I found the new Lord Calipash tipsy as a lord in his father’s chair at the head of the table, cravat untied, his meal unfinished before him. A cold collation awaited me on the dirty sideboard; apparently Lizzie was too occupied to cook something hot. At least the platters looked clean.
“My lord,” I said, entering the shabby dining room. “You must allow me to apologize—I had no notion my presence would so upset your late father. If I had known—”
“If I had known, I should have invited you myself, and weeks ago,” he slurred, looking at me half-lidded. “Have some wine, cousin? And some salad, and meat? The cold boiled is particularly good.”
I was surprised to hear him address me as cousin, for while that is certainly true, I was taught from a young age that my illegitimate origins prevented me from claiming such a connection with the Calipash family.
I could not bring myself to be so informal with him.
“Thank you, my lord. I am thirsty,” I said, and he poured me a large glass out of the crystal decanter by his elbow. The claret was blood-red, and sparkled as it flowed. I knew just by looking at it that it was of a better vintage than I had ever before tasted.
“Allow me to apologize for the rude hello I gave you earlier,” he said. “I was flustered and not myself.”
“It has already been forgotten,” I said, accepting the glass he handed me. I took nothing else, I found I did not wish to eat just then, during our first real encounter. “I understand. Meeting each other—now! It is a queer thing.”
“What, that a strumpet’s whelp should have lived here, in this house, while the son of the lord was exiled? Yes, that is a queer thing,” he said. His eyes finally focused on me. “A queer thing indeed.”
I knew not what to make of his mood, so I said nothing. I do not enjoy verbal fencing with mercurial gentlemen, that is for sharp-tongued spinsters with many cats and well-thumbed copies of Emma.
“Well, let bygones be bygones,” he said at last. “’Twas not your fault, my situation, and it would make me unreasonable to blame you. Tell me about yourself, Miss Burchell. What do you do?”
“I am—a writer,” I said. “I live in London, where I work for a ladies’ periodical.”
“Which?”
“You would not have heard of it,” I said demurely. Experience has taught me not to reveal my status as pornographer too readily, I have found it is better to let people form an opinion of me before revealing how disreputable I am.
“You might be surprised,” he said. “I read all sorts of things.”
“Indeed?”
“Things that would make you blush, I’ll warrant.”
I thought this a sorry attempt at rakishness. “My lord?”
“I should show you my collection sometime…even though you are but a distant, and to be truthful, unwanted relation, you have Calipash blood in you, and thus should appreciate certain genres considered outré by the masses. It is really too bad the Private Library was burned to ashes—”
A clap of thunder from outside, where the storm still raged, silenced him, but I did not mind. I needed a moment to recover myself: He had mentioned the Private Library! That was what had been written on each bookplate: This Book Belongs to the Private Library of the Calipash Family.
“Perhaps you are referring to the collection of infamous volumes that used to be housed on the leftmost bookcase of the library? The one that required spinning about to find what it really housed?”