The Dark Enquiry. Deanna Raybourn

to him, and he had full faith in my abilities to assist in an investigation.

      I ought to have known better.

      Things had already begun to unravel the next morning. I hurried down to breakfast in high spirits, brimming with plans for my time at the Mortlakes’. I could hardly wait to discuss them with Brisbane over a delectable meal in our pretty breakfast room. With robin’s-egg-blue walls and thick velvet draperies hung at long windows that overlooked the back garden, it made a calm and pleasant room to begin one’s day. Only the enormous cage that housed our raven, Grim, struck an incongruous note, but I was very fond of the fellow, and he in turn was very fond of the titbits I passed along.

      I descended to the hall just as our butler emerged from the green baize door separating the kitchens from the rest of the house.

      “Good morning, Aquinas.”

      “My lady,” he returned with a bow from the neck. Even carrying a rack of toast, he managed a grave dignity.

      “How is the hiring coming along? Have you found a replacement for Cook yet?” Aquinas had been with me for years, first as butler at Grey House during my previous marriage, and later as my own personal retainer. My faith in him—and my boredom with domestic arrangements—was immense. I had left the staffing of the new house entirely in his hands, instructing him to use Mrs. Potter’s, one of London’s most fashionable agencies, to supply us. The results had been middling at best.

      “I have engaged a replacement for Cook, and she has prepared breakfast,” he informed me with a little moue of distaste at the slightly burnt toast in the rack.

      I raised my brows. “I have never known you to bring burnt toast to the table, Aquinas. I gather this is not her first attempt?”

      “Fourth,” he said tightly, “and this was by far the best. I did not wish to delay you or Mr. Brisbane by pressing the matter further, but I will speak with her directly breakfast is over. I have also taken the liberty of engaging another chambermaid in light of Mr. Eglamour March’s arrival.”

      I went quite still at the mention of my brother. “Mr. Eglamour?” Eglamour was Plum’s Christian name and one that was never used except by the staff and polite society.

      “Mr. Brisbane informed me yesterday that Mr. Eglamour March will be taking up residence here shortly. I thought perhaps the Chinese Room would do nicely for him as it has its own dressing room. I also thought the southern light would be quite suitable should he care to pursue his painting.”

      Southern light indeed, I thought with pursed lips. As the fourth—and therefore almost entirely useless—son of an earl, Plum had amused himself with art before taking up detection, and privately I thought him quite talented. But neither of those pursuits called for him to live under my roof.

      I plucked the toast rack out of Aquinas’ hands. “I will take this in, if you don’t mind. I should like to have word with Mr. Brisbane.”

      Aquinas withdrew to fetch the tea and I girded myself for battle. I did not have long to engage. One look at my face when I entered the breakfast room and Brisbane threw up his hands.

      “I know. It is not ideal. He did not like to tell you, but Plum has had a falling out with your father.”

      A little of the wind ebbed out of my sails then. I put the toast rack onto the table and went to open Grim’s cage. He gave me a polite bob of the head.

      “Good morning,” he said in his odd little voice. I returned the greeting, and Grim dropped to the floor to pace the room, peering into corners and making his morning inspection. I broke up a piece of toast for him and put it onto a saucer on the floor before helping myself. I turned to Brisbane. “They have quarrelled over his role in your business, I presume?”

      Brisbane nodded. “His lordship does not find the endeavour suitable to one of Plum’s elevated birth,” he said lightly, but I wondered if he felt the sting of Father’s disapproval. It was terribly ungrateful of Father, really. Brisbane had saved his life upon one occasion and the family honour more times than I could count.

      “I did warn you he would be difficult,” I murmured. “Particularly just now. Portia says he has been feuding terribly with Auld Lachy.” Father’s quarrels with his hermit had become so heated Homer could have written an epic poem upon the subject. It had not helped matters when I put it to Father that it was an absurd notion to keep one’s hermit in town in the first place. But it was no more than Father ought to have expected. He had hired Auld Lachy from a newspaper advertisement, and as I had reminded him, one ought never to hire a hermit without proper references.

      I took up a knife and a piece of toast and began to scrape off the burnt bits. Grim had studiously ignored his. I dolloped a bit of quince jam onto his saucer and he bobbed his head happily. “That’s for me,” he said, before applying himself to tearing into his breakfast. He had none of Rook’s dainty ways when it came to food. I added some jam to my own sad, sooty piece of toast and resumed the theme of the conversation.

      “The thing you must remember about Father is that he is the most terrible hypocrite. He reared us all with his Radical ideals, and yet he does not actually believe them, at least not as they apply to his children.”

      “He gave his blessing to our union,” Brisbane pointed out calmly.

      I gave him a fond smile. “Father doesn’t care overmuch what the girls do so long as we are happy and don’t make too much of a scandal. It is his sons he frets about. Between Bellmont’s turning out Tory and Valerius practicing medicine, he feels the disapppointment of his heirs keenly.”

      Poor Father had not had an easy time of it with his sons. For the most part, those who had married had married well, but his eldest and the heir to the earldom—Viscount Bellmont—was a force for the Tories. The youngest, Valerius, had taken up as a consulting physician, and Lysander and Plum dabbled in the arts. Only Benedick who ran the Home Farm at the family seat in Sussex was a source of pride and comfort to him. Father admired Brisbane’s dash and cleverness, but their relationship was a prickly one, with Father blowing hot then cold, and Brisbane always maintaining a courteous—if advisable—distance.

      I bit into my toast, chewing thoughtfully. “And I suspect it was your ducal connections that allayed any doubts he might have had. He really is the most frightful snob, the poor darling.”

      Brisbane’s elderly great-uncle was the Duke of Aberdour, a connection that served to ameliorate the fact that his mother had been a Gypsy fortune-teller and his father—well, the less said about him, the better.

      I went on. “But Father’s disapproval is not the issue at hand. Why is Plum moving in with us? There is the small bedchamber in the consulting rooms in Chapel Street. He can stay there,” I suggested. Grim quorked impatiently for another piece of toast and I obeyed.

      Brisbane picked up his newspaper. “I am afraid that won’t do. Monk is using the room at present.”

      I sighed at the mention of Monk. Once Brisbane’s tutor and later his batman—a connection I still meant to explore, as neither of them would ever speak of their time in the army—Monk served as Brisbane’s right-hand during investigations. He had taken a liking to me upon our first meeting. Since then, our relationship had been coolly polite. I had supplanted his role as Brisbane’s confidant and I think he felt the loss of their former closeness sharply. It was entirely supposition on my part, for the subject was never discussed, but Monk had made a habit of absenting himself as much as possible and treating me with detached cordiality when our meeting was unavoidable.

      Brisbane had an uncanny ability to intuit my thoughts at times. “He will come round,” he said, his voice gentle. I gave him a weak smile.

      “I hope so. It is quite lowering enough that Mrs. Lawson has decided to hate me.”

      Brisbane did not dispute the point, and I made a mental note to be more discreet during my visits to Chapel Street. I really had made life very difficult for Mrs. Lawson with my experiments, and it would not do to alienate everyone from Brisbane’s bachelor days.