Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [8]
I was twenty-one and six months at the time.
‘So I have six months to find a husband?’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Hardly that. In fact, I am proposing that we should leave the whole question on the shelf …’
‘And me on the shelf too?’
‘Exactly that, until I return next summer and we can set about the business in a sensible fashion.’
He must have seen the hurt in my face.
‘Libby, I’m not talking about the marriage market. I’m not proposing you trade your youth and beauty for some fat heir to a discredited peerage.’
‘I don’t think they’d rate higher than the second son of a baronet,’ I said, still defensive.
He came and took my hand.
‘You know me better than that. I’m not a young man any more.’ (He was forty-six years old.) ‘I must think of providing for you in the future. I shan’t die a rich man and Tom has his own way to make.’
‘I’d never be a burden on Tom, you know that.’
‘I’ve not been as much of a father to you as I should. But I have tried to give you the important things in life. Your education has been better than most young women’s. You speak French and German adequately and your musical taste is excellent.’
‘That reminds me, I’ve broken another guitar string.’ I was uneasy at hearing myself praised.
‘And we’ve travelled together. You’ve seen the glaciers of Mont Blanc at sunrise and the Roman Forum by moonlight.’
I was wonderfully fortunate, I knew that. When I was back with my father it was easy to forget the other times, lonely and homesick in a cold French convent, or boarded out with a series of more or less resentful aunts or cousins. It was almost possible, though nowhere near as easy, to forget the glint of my brother’s handkerchief waving from the rail of the ship as it left Gravesend to carry him away to India, and the widening gap of dark water.
‘Couldn’t we just go on as we are?’ I asked. ‘Tom will come back one day and I can keep house for him and you. Do I really need a husband?’
He became serious again. ‘The wish of my heart is to see you married to a man you can love and respect who values and cares for you.’
I watched the steam packet go out again, arching sparks from its funnel and trailing a smell of coal dust. In three hours or so it would be in Calais, then perhaps bringing my father back with it. Around noon I felt weary from my early start and went back to my room. I took off my dress and shoes, loosened my stays and laid down on the bed. I must have dozed because I woke with a start, hearing the landlord’s voice at the bottom of the stairs, saying my name.
‘Miss Liberty Lane? Don’t know about the Liberty, but she called herself Miss Lane, at any rate. Give it me and I’ll take it in to her.’
As his heavy footsteps came upstairs I pulled my dress on and did up some essential buttons, heart thumping because either this was a message from my father or my aunt had tracked me after all. But as soon as the landlord handed me the note – adding his own greasy thumb-print – I knew it had nothing to do with Chalke Bissett. The handwriting was strong and sprawling, a man’s hand. The folded paper was sealed with a plain blob of red wax, and a wedge-shaped impression that might have been made with the end of a penknife, entirely anonymous. I broke the seal and read: … take the liberty of addressing you with distressing …
‘Bad news, miss?’
The landlord was still in the room, his eyes hot and greedy. I gripped the edge of the wash-stand, shaking my head. I think I was acting on instinct only, the way a hurt deer runs.
‘I must go to Calais. When’s the next boat?’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Was your father a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England?’
The clergyman was plump and faded, wisps of feathery brown-grey hair trailing from a bald pate, deep creases of skin round his forehead and jaw giving him a weary look. I’d traced the address on the card I’d been given at the morgue to a terraced house in a side street, with a tarnished