Lady in Rags

Chapter Forty-Two: An Old Friend

Jane was in her best parlour, plucking the petals from the roses her sister-in-law had cut and arranged that morning, when the butler brought the card in. She glanced at it, toyed with the idea of making Richard wait an hour or two, and then, because she was violently, tortuously bored, decided against it.

"Bring him in." She tossed the card on the table and gathered up the fallen petals in a pile next to them. Elise would make pot-pourri from them later, when she had recovered the offence of seeing them plucked.

Richard came in, thumping his stick dully against the carpet. He nodded at her, and sunk down in a chair without waiting to be invited.

"Well," said Jane. "I gather you're not here for the joy of my company." She didn't like the look on his face. He looked tired and faintly sad. She sat down on the chaise opposite him.

"I could be."

"You've not visited me in years, Rich. I've chased after you every now and then, but you've never once called upon me. I don't suppose my absence in recent months has made your heart grow fonder. You don't have one."

She was trying to goad him into some kind of energy, even if anger, but it wasn't working. He merely shrugged.

"He's not dead, is he?" she said hesitantly. She had heard that Neil had returned, miraculously, from France, but had not dared visit the Armiger estate and seek him. She had burned his letter of dismissal, balled it up and tossed it in the fire, without a backwards glance, but she could not forget it. She could have recited it, word for word, like a bible verse – old testament, and full of fire and brimstone and righteous wrath.

"No." Richard played idly with the pile of petals on the table beside him. "I'd like you to come with me to Albroke today. Stay for lunch. Talk with Neil."

"I cannot."

"Break your engagements. You have heard he is ill, no doubt, well, today he is not so bad that it will hurt him to have you visit. It might be the last time, Jane."

"Then I shall come to his funeral."

"Damn you!"

The explosion of anger surprised Jane. She had never before suspected Richard of loving his brother, even in that small amount normally taxed as due to blood relatives. But she had been crude.

She pursed her lips. "I'm sorry. I have told no one, and Neil, I am sure, has not, but when I last spoke with him we had an argument. I cannot come, for he has forbade me from his life."

"You?" Richard frowned. "I am sure he would not."

"He did." She offered no elaboration, though Richard looked questioningly at her. "Did you believe I would bring him joy, in his dying days? I won't. I shall only make him furious."

"Even that might be good for him. Fury is some kind of spirit, at the very least. But either way – you must come, no matter what he has said."

"But it does matter. I can assure you."

"It does not." Richard tapped his cane twice against his boot: an old habit that perpetually irritated her. "You know he is sick. Perhaps you do not know that he has lost his mind, and most of his memories with it. Some days he wakes and believes he is a twenty year old boy who must run away from home to Italy, where a woman waits for him. The other days, he knows well that he is not that boy, and that the woman is dead, but little else outside the first twenty years of his life, and these past few weeks. Your argument is of no consequence. He has forgotten it, along with most else of the past nine years."

She had not known. A faint shiver ran over her body, every muscle tensing and releasing in turn.

"He spoke of you fondly once or twice," Richard added. "I shouldn't have come if he hadn't asked about you."