Frail Read online

  His features turned stony. The hatred in his glower was tangible.

  What had she done?

  “Naturally, I was a little taken aback when I learned she was related to one of the wealthiest men in England,” he continued.

  “I was young when—”

  “She had written your father for help when her husband was dying of typhoid and received no reply.” His voice was rising.

  “I will check my correspondences. Surely, I—”

  “It’s too late,” he barked, causing heads to turn.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I took Emily’s young daughter into my home before her father’s funeral. We planted tulips while I explained to her about a beautiful place called Heaven where she would be reunited with her loved ones. Do you believe in Heaven, Miss Gillingham? Because sometimes I don’t.”

  “What—what?” she said, shaking her head, unsure of what was happening. “I said I didn’t know about—”

  “What else do you not know?” he shouted.

  People around them ceased dancing to stare. Something wasn’t right about this gentleman. His eyes glittered like a feral animal ready to attack. She tried to wrest herself from his grip. “Let go! You’re squeezing my fingers.”

  “Do you know the cost of your ball gown alone could tide your cousin and a dozen other war widows over for a year?” he spat. “But I would hate for you to be deprived of one less gown to flaunt yourself in!”

  “How dare you!” she hissed. Her chest was heaving in great gasps. The violins continued scraping out the beat of a waltz, but no one was dancing.

  “No, how dare you! You are a vain, ignorant, and selfish girl. I fail to see society’s attraction to you.”

  Helena’s mouth flopped open with a sharp intake of air.

  Then something broke behind his eyes. “Why couldn’t you have helped her?” he pleaded. “Do you and your father have any decency? Compassion? Are you really that cruel?”

  The corner of his eyelid ticked as his gaze darted from side to side. He began backing up, colliding with a couple behind him.

  “What is the matter?” she whispered, instinctively reaching for him.

  “My son,” the Earl of Staswick broke through the dancers. His wife held his arm as he dragged his bloated leg over the chalked floor. He clamped a hand on Mr. Mallory’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” he said quietly.

  “Son?” Helena echoed.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Mallory whispered. “I’m so sorry.” He spun on his heel and strode from the dance floor, breaking into a jog when he hit the grand doors to the hall.

  “It’s not you, my dear,” Lady Staswick said quietly. “It’s that Theo, he…he…” Her lips quivered as if she were trying to convey something that couldn’t be said in words. “He becomes a little upset at times,” she concluded. A fragile smile broke across her face. “T-that’s a lovely dress. I admired it when I came in.” She touched the fabric, her smile drawing down. “Good evening, then,” she said and clasped her husband’s elbow.

  The imposing earl’s shoulders were slumped as his wife led him on the path through the guests blazed by their son.

  Helena wrapped her arms about herself. She stood alone on the stage, her audience watching, waiting for the next laugh or daring act. But she couldn’t move. She was the small child again who had tumbled from the castle walls.

  “Well, at least,” she swallowed. “At least we—we’ll have s-something to talk about tomorrow rather than the usual dull gossip.” She affected a breezy flip of her curls to hide her shaking. She knew what she said was cruel, but it pushed away Mr. Mallory’s ugly words and pained eyes, as well as her shame.

  She pivoted, coming face-to-face with her friend Emmagard Ainley, whose family had brought Helena here in their carriage. She was a slim lady with sharp angular features on her thin face, which seemed at odds with her delicate lavender taffeta gown and the tiny violets sprinkled about her curls.

  “Come away, dear,” she said, taking Helena’s hand.

  ∞∞∞

  Helena and Emmagard dashed through the parlor, picking up Emmagard’s twin brother Jonathan along the way. He kept Helena’s admirers away as the two ladies disappeared into a library.

  The room smelled of lemon-polished wood and leather. The fire in the grate reflected in the various brass fixtures. Jonathan closed the door behind them, drawing a chair under the lock. He resembled his sister, except that where Emmagard exuded efficiency, he was an intense and sulky man. He threw himself on the leather sofa. “The man’s truly demented,” he said and broke out into laughter.

  “What happened out there?” Helena began to pace, pressing her hand to her racing heart. “He called me selfish and ignorant. To my very face!”

  “Oh, don’t take it so hard.” Jonathan tapped his temples. “Everyone knows Theodotus is a regular mad-hatter. He called our own father…what was it? Oh, yes, an unfeeling complacent arse.” Jonathan shrugged. “Which he is, of course.”

  “Jonathan, don’t talk of Papa that way,” Emmagard admonished weakly, as if it was her duty.

  Her brother waved his hand. “Anyway, the earl had to apologize to us and several other families on account of Theo. Seems the old boy makes a point of alienating himself from all proper society. Getting into brawls in pubs, insulting his betters on the street, and generally loitering about with the wrong sorts. I understand they had quacks shocking him with electric currents like a galvanized frog and filling him with opiates before he was finally put in an asylum.”

  “An asylum?” Helena flung her arms up. “Why didn’t you say that before—”

  “Before you asked him to dance?” Emmagard finished, her lips quivering with amusement. “I should have stopped you, dearest, but it was so darlingly funny. Helena and the mad man. You have to admit he is rather handsome.”

  “Quite a handsome lunatic,” Helena agreed. She sighed as she looped her arm through her friend’s. “Do you truly think I’m vain, ignorant, and selfish like he said? Truly?”

  “Of course, and that is what is so charming about you.” Emmagard’s chortle sounded like a gurgle deep in her throat. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, all bereft,” she said, kissing Helena’s cheek. “I am joking. I adore you.”

  “I adore you, too,” Helena replied and then cast a teasing glance at Jonathan from beneath her lashes. “And I adore you,” she purred.

  Despite his façade of world-weary, cynical boredom, his eyes lit up. She tilted her head and cast a coquettish smile, feeling her confidence coming back. “And now you must dance with me and make me forget about that horrid Mr. Mallory.”

  Two

  “What are you going to do, Theo?” Marie demanded. “Wait in the train station all night?” She lifted the edge of her gown and chased after him as he hurried down the corridor to his old room in his father’s London home. He had intended to stay the night and try to be the good son again in order to repair some of the damage from the months after the war. But now his white dress shirt was drenched with his sweat, his heart racing, and his mind was flying too fast for him to know his own thoughts. He had to get back to Wales, to the quiet rush of the wind through the mountains.

  He yanked his portmanteaux from the closet. “I’m taking the next train going west. I’ll see from there.”

  “Can you not stay here one evening?” Marie snatched the handles from his hands. Tiny red veins webbed in the edges of her eyes. “Is that too much to ask? Your father is worried about you.”

  He ran his hand across his mouth. “I’m not like this in the mountains,” he said. “I’m well there. I need to be home. That’s all.” He reached for his bag, but Marie hid it behind her back.

  “You are not leaving this house.”

  “Son, we want to help you.” His father’s large frame blocked the doorway.

  “I said I am well!” Theo shouted. Dammit! He pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead. Forget the portmanteaux. Get the hell ou
t. “I must go,” he muttered.

  “You will goddamned stay here,” the earl thundered.

  “See what you’re doing to your father?” Marie snatched Theo’s elbow. “For God’s sake, let us help you,” she pleaded.

  “Marie has found some physicians here in London.” His father’s voice turned low and controlled. He entered the room with his palms up. “No need to go to an asylum. You can stay with us. We can take care of you.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of!” Theo bit down on his tongue, reining in his anger.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be a better son,” he whispered after several long seconds. “I’ve always been sorry. But I have to go.”

  “No!” Marie cried.

  Theo’s throat burned. He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. Her perspiration was salty on his lips.

  “I love you both,” Theo raised his gaze to his father. “Please.”

  The creases in the old man’s face appeared deeper in the low light.

  “I promise I am myself in the mountains,” Theo continued. “The man I once was. You must believe me.”

  The earl studied his son for a moment, and then something broke behind his eyes. “Do what you feel you must.” He rubbed his lids, turning away from his son.

  Marie dropped the portmanteaux and buried her head in her husband’s chest. He put a protective arm around her. Her quiet weeping echoed in the room.

  Theo wished he had the strength to stay for the night, to perhaps even see that damned physician, if it would make them happy. His chest was heavy with self-loathing as he picked up his bag and quietly walked from the room.

  His footfalls echoed in the dim stairwell. On the walls, his ancestors watched from their painted frames—his uncle, who was with Wellington at Waterloo, his great-grandfather, who fought against Cromwell. These men believed wars were won by “honor” and “breeding.” But a heavy conical Russian bullet could tear into a man, shattering his bones and all he believed about himself, making him hold the dead body of his fellow soldier as a shield as he crawled to the safety of a ditch.

  Theo couldn’t make his father understand the bloated nothingness inside of him. All the philosophies he’d learned in school, all those virtues extolled by the reverend, were the empty fodder of bored fools. Reality was a hundred dead soldiers—his men—like Eugene, an Irish farmer’s son who had trapped and skinned rabbits the winter the troops ran out of food; James, who’d written letters for the illiterate men to carry on their person into battle so their families could be informed in the event of their deaths; and slight Colin, who the French Zouaves had dressed in women’s clothes and made join in their ridiculous pantomimes. All beloved sons of mothers. Their arms, limbs, entrails blown apart, strewn in the mud.

  Theo turned. His parents hovered above him on the landing. “I’m sorry,” he told them again.

  ∞∞∞

  Theo waited alone on the Paddington platform for an hour. Occasionally, a watchman would walk by, nod, and say a terse “Good evening.” Otherwise Theo was alone and in blessed silence. He counted the railroad ties until they blurred together in the distance and then started over again.

  The train chugged in a little after one-thirty. He walked past the first-class cars. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he didn’t feel safe spending the night in an empty compartment. He stepped into a crowded car smelling of soured human sweat. The passengers were resting their heads against the glass or seat, and a low buzz of snores filled the air. He edged down the aisle, trying to avoid outstretched legs as the train lurched forward. He found an empty set of wooden seats and slumped down. Outside the window, London was the shadows of roof lines and dots of light. He gripped his knees with his fingers. His muscles were taut and perspiration cooled under his shirt sleeves.

  The train rolled into two more stations, then, at last, the lights of London dimmed as the countryside approached. Theo blew out a long stream of breath, rested his head on the glass and tried to sleep, but the memory of Helena Gillingham dancing returned. Her silvery eyes haunted him all the way to Manchester. He wondered if the spoiled beauty had any idea that her small, gilded world was about to crumble.

  He finally sank into sleep and dreamed of the fog whirling around him at the Sandbag Battery. His raw throat burned from shouting for his men to obey, but both sides had lost control of their armies. A bullet exploded the forehead of the man beside him, splashing warm blood and torn flesh onto Theo’s cheek and into his mouth. Even in his dream, he had remembered the haze which had opened to reveal a young, frightened Irish boy gripping his rifle, having shot his own countryman. Except now no soldier stood there, screaming in anguish at his horrible mistake, only Miss Gillingham smiling in her ball gown cut so low her breasts had popped free from the bodice. This is wrong, he thought in his dream. She was supposed to be in London, not here.

  ∞∞∞

  Emmagard and Jonathan’s family conveyed Helena home a little after three in the morning. Helena’s feet burned and her muscles ached from keeping her arms lifted, clutching numerous partners. She had danced every dance after Mr. Mallory’s strange exit. Her nerves were on edge. She couldn’t keep still, else his eyes—confused and scared—would fill her mind, his words echo in her brain, You are a vain, ignorant, and selfish girl.

  Now she kissed her friends on their cheeks. “You were naughty to let me dance with that lunatic,” she teased them, even as her belly knotted. “And I shall get back at you when you least expect it.”

  She exited the carriage and stared up at her town home, her laughter dying away. She hated coming home. The white stone glowed in the dark and only a few windows were lit. The rest were glossy and vacant, like the eyes of the dead. The housekeeper, Mrs. Baines, opened the door. The lamp she held made an orb of light about her thin, crinkled face.

  The house was cold. The balusters on the staircase cast long, vertical shadows across the floors and up the walls. She felt overwhelmed by the silence here and wished she could run back into Emmagard’s carriage. She must go through her invitations tomorrow and see if there was a house party or such she could attend, anything to shrug off the despondency of this place.

  “Did you enjoy a pleasant evening, miss?” the housekeeper asked in her flat, disinterested servant’s tone as she lit the way up the stairs. The corridors were frigid at night so Helena kept her coat and gloves on.

  “I suppose,” she murmured, she couldn’t tell the housekeeper about Mr. Mallory, in fact, she didn’t confide anything that truly mattered to her to anyone.

  As she turned to head up another flight, she noticed gold light flooding from under her father’s study.

  “Is Papa home?” she asked, surprised. Her father rarely came home. He was either working at the bank or visiting some woman she pretended not to know about.

  “He returned a little after midnight.”

  Helena asked Mrs. Baines to wait in her chamber. She knocked softly on the library door and slipped inside without waiting for a summons. The room was stuffy and hot from the high blaze of coals. The flames reflected on the polished wooden panels and fixtures. Her father sat, his shoulders hunched over his massive inlaid desk. He was a well-built man, more slender than robust, with a grave face, slightly sagging jowls, graying curls that hung to his collar, and pale eyes like his daughter’s. He balanced a cigar in one hand and scribbled in a ledger with the other.

  When she was a child, she would steal his ledgers and hide them under her bed to garner his attention, even if it were a thundering, face-reddened anger.

  “Papa.”

  His head jerked up and his eyes narrowed, focusing on her form. “Helena.” He sounded annoyed. “I presumed you were asleep.”

  “Of course not.” She dropped into the leather chair before his desk. “I was at a party. Why would I stay home at night?”

  He nodded, his expression vague, as if he wasn’t listening to her but to his own thoughts. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You’ve caught me in t
he middle of trying to solve a problem.”

  “You are always in the middle of solving some problem.” She laughed to cover the exasperation in her voice.

  He waved his pen before him. “Do you think this home and the gowns you wear are free? No, someone must pay for this.” This, or some variation thereof, was his usual response to her questions. That she ought just be grateful for her finery and not impose on his precious time.

  He returned to his ledger, a signal their conversation was over.

  She didn’t move from her seat. “There was man at the ball asking about you.”

  He scribbled something and then took a draw from his cigar.

  “His name is Mr. Theodotus Mallory,” she continued. “His father is the Earl of Staswick. Is Mr. Mallory a client of yours?”

  “No, and I’m glad of it.” He blew out smoke and tapped his ash into a tray, still not looking up from his work. “He suffers from a nervous condition that renders him unstable.”

  Helena remembered the terror in Mr. Mallory’s eyes before he fled. She had visited Bethlem Hospital and noted the inmates appeared unmindful of their madness. But Mr. Mallory was acutely aware of his lapse.

  The coals shifted in the grate.

  “Papa, have you heard from Cousin Emily recently?”

  He paused, as if to remember his cousin. “No, of course not. Why are you bringing this topic up tonight?”

  “Mr. Mallory said she is a poor widow now. Is that so?”

  He hissed through his teeth and slammed his pen into the inkwell. “I can barely keep up with my clients, let alone begging relatives.”

  “But she does send letters.”

  “Helena, I’m tired.” He gestured to the stack of ledgers beside him. “And I have to go through all these client accounts by tomorrow. I require solitude. You run on off to bed. We shall talk in the morning.”

  She knew in the morning, there would be some other crisis, and by the following morning yet another issue would have arisen that would require immediate attendance. There would never be time to talk.