Was this the letter that had convinced Alice to separate herself from Jonathan? Had it caused some crisis in her? She had been harder to read, full of fear and nerves and sudden storms of weeping after Jonathan set sail, and worst of all in the last three months before she vanished, following her fateful decision to visit Lord Faukes in Box. The last three months before Jonathan came home again, all black inside, half mad with grief and violence; a stranger wearing a familiar face. No wonder she loved him no more, no wonder he killed her for it. Starling played this scenario over and over, until it started to feel like fact. Perhaps letters like this one had been what killed Alice’s love for him to begin with – I have done things… things I can never tell you. There is such a stain ofshame upon my heart… I am worthy of you no longer – and then when she saw him again, it was confirmed. Something had happened to Alice, in those last three months. Some spark inside her had died, and though she was clearly full of secrets, they no longer lit her up and made her flit about like a firefly. They were heavy on her shoulders, and exhausted her; and when Starling asked her, late at night, what the matter was, Alice only shut her eyes and said I can’t bear to tell you. Starling had been left to wonder what could possibly have been so bad. Being kept in ignorance had been torture then, and it was torture still.
That evening, Starling slid the letter back into the mess on Jonathan Alleyn’s desk as he lay on his bed with the drapes closed, so she couldn’t even see him. His rooms were darkened again, the shutters latched. There was no sound at all, and at the faintest rustle of paper as she returned the letter his disembodied voice came across to her, like a ghost:
‘Touch nothing on my desk. Leave me be.’ Bridling, Starling put down an uncorked bottle of wine for him with a loud report. It was ordinary wine – she’d run out of the strengthened stuff Dick had once mixed for her. She could only hope that Jonathan would drink enough of it to damage himself. There was a slice of chicken pie on the tray she’d carried up as well; she picked up the plate, tipped the pie into the fire. As she crossed towards the door she paused, and turned to face the closed drapes.
‘Whatever happened to Suleiman? Your horse?’ she asked. There was a long, loaded silence, and she began to think he would not answer.
‘Suleiman… my good friend. I… We ate him.’ Jonathan’s voice was thick with revulsion, with sorrow. Starling swallowed convulsively; his words caused a lightning bolt of horror and rage to shoot down her spine.
‘Murderer!’ she hissed. ‘You will burn for it!’ She flew from the room, tears springing in her eyes.
Captain and Mrs Sutton’s lodgings were in a tall, narrow townhouse on the north-east side of the city. As Rachel walked across town, the frigid air seemed to press needles into her skull, just between her eyes. The mist on the inside of the bedroom window had become a fine layer of ice crystals, tiny and perfect and dead. On days like this at Hartford Hall, in the heart of winter, the chambermaid would have been in to Rachel’s room to stoke up the fire an hour before it was time to rise. The soft sounds of her doing so would reach Rachel, comforting and familiar, as she lay nestled beneath the thick eiderdowns and blankets on the bed.
Rachel was shown into the Suttons’ parlour by an elderly female servant who had tired eyes and a faded dress. It was a small room, but well furnished. Harriet Sutton had been sewing, but she put down her work and rose with a smile.
‘Mrs Weekes, how good to see you again. Tea, please, Maggie. Unless you’d prefer coffee, or chocolate, Mrs Weekes?’
‘In truth, some chocolate would be lovely,’ said Rachel.
‘I agree. Something to ward off this wretched chill wind. Chocolate for both of us then, Maggie.’
‘Very good, madam.’ The old woman curtsied slowly, as if not sure of her knees.
‘Now, come and sit by the fire, Mrs Weekes – you look quite blue!’ Mrs Sutton took Rachel’s cold hands in her warm ones, and drew her forward to sit in the fireside chair.
‘I’ve never known it be so cold this early in the season,’ said Rachel.
‘Aye. It bodes ill for a hard winter. I pity the poor what is to come,’ Harriet said gravely. Then she smiled. ‘And we will have to go to the assembly rooms more often, just for the warmth.’
‘I’m not sure I will be there much. I don’t think Mr Weekes enjoyed it a great deal last time,’ said Rachel, carefully. After the losses he’d made at their last ball, they could scarcely afford to go again soon.
‘But the Mr Weekes I know loves nothing better than a dance, and good revelry!’
‘Well.’ Rachel shrugged. ‘Perhaps he grows more sober as time passes,’ she said. She remembered the stiffness of Richard’s arm beneath her own; the fixed, distracted look on his face. She had a sinking feeling inside. In all, he had grown less and less jovial, less and less cheerful, with each day that had passed since their wedding. ‘How long have you known my husband?’ she asked.
‘Oh, a good many years, now. When Captain Sutton first went into the army, and became friends with Jonathan Alleyn, that was when he first met Mr Weekes.’
‘Oh? While Mr Weekes was at their house, perhaps? On business?’
‘Well,’ said Harriet Sutton, looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘Not exactly business, no. Mr Duncan Weekes, who I am sure you must know, was coachman to Lord Faukes, Mrs Josephine Alleyn’s father. For years and years. After his wife died, Duncan Weekes and your husband had their lodgings above the coach house. This was not at Lansdown Crescent, you understand, but at Lord Faukes’s great house, in Box. Your Mr Weekes grew from a boy to a man during that time. But I am sure he must have told you as much?’
At that point the servant came in with a tray and their cups of chocolate, and Rachel was grateful for the chance to compose herself. Small wonder then, that Josephine Alleyn thinks of me as her servant, since I am indeed wedded to one of her servants. An ostler, he said his father was. She thought back to Richard’s stories, his confessions to her during their brief courtship, when he had seemed to lay himself bare. Yet how carefully and completely he had concealed this truth about himself. With a jolt, she realised how little she might really know her husband.
‘In truth, no. He had not mentioned it. There is some… bad blood between my husband and his father. Mr Weekes does not speak to me of Duncan Weekes. I hope I might reconcile them. Perhaps I will manage it, in time,’ she said, in a strained voice.
‘Oh! Forgive me, my dear Mrs Weekes, if I have spoken out of turn! I didn’t mean to talk about your own family as if I knew better.’ Harriet took Rachel’s hand and squeezed it, to make good her apology. Her expression was open and mobile, and once again it put Rachel at her ease. She felt that here was a person with whom she could speak freely, with no fear of misunderstanding. Trust. She inspires trust, and how greatly I need such a person close to me.
‘But in this case you do know better, that much is clear. There’s no need to apologise,’ said Rachel. ‘It is my impression that Mr Weekes would rather forget his… start in life, and focus on his future.’
‘A wise man, then, and a philosophy we should all espouse. Our birth should not define us so much as what we do thereafter, surely?’ said Harriet.
‘But society runs contrary to that very idea, though it is a pleasant one.’ But I am not a gentlewoman any more, though I was born one. ‘In this country it seems that those who are born lowly must remain lowly, no matter how they strive or what they achieve; and some that are born gentlefolk remain so in spite of their base actions and debauchery,’ she said. Harriet Sutton’s expression grew troubled.