The Lion Lies Waiting Page 25

  Vince winced a little as he tried and failed to retrieve something from his coat. Duncan tutted and stuck his hand into the pocket, rummaging around until he found a pipe, a striker, and a tin. He filled the little clay pot from the tin then lit it with the device, thumbing the lid closed as Vince took the pipe from him. He puffed on it a couple of times, the smoke mixing with his foggy breath in the cold air.

  “Tell me—what’s he like?” he gestured toward Robin, who was out of earshot and talking with Mrs. Knight. “I mean, really like?”

  Duncan leaned back on the cold steps and exhaled slowly.

  “Honestly? He’s one of the best men you could ever hope to meet. But don’t tell him I said so,” he said with a grin. “If you’re serious about turning over a new leaf, you’ll get a fresh start with him. He’ll not judge you on your past. Robin always sees the best in everyone, so he may never see you for what you truly are. Or what you were, at any rate.”

  “Told me about his own past. Losing his father when he was a boy, finding his real mother just this summer.”

  “He may have told you, but you don’t know what’s it’s been like for him. Not really. The loneliness he felt.”

  Duncan stood up and brushed the snow from his clothes.

  “You don’t know what finding family means to him, Vince. Don’t let him down.”

  Vince thought about it for a moment. “So, you’ll be going back to Merryapple soon?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Vince ran a meaty hand over his own short, silvery beard.

  “Be visiting Robin, in Blashy Cove. Soon. Says he has a painting of our dad. Like to see it, see what he looked like. It, ah, it would be good if we could…catch up, too. You know, while I’m there.”

  As the sound of the prison bells wafted across the harbour, he smiled again, only the third time Duncan had ever seen him do so.

  “Always did like you, Duncan,” he said.

  Despite himself, Duncan smiled as well.

  The nurse approached with Robin and Mrs. Knight and advised Vince he should be moved indoors to have the shot removed from his side.

  “We’ll come with you,” Robin said.

  “Don’t need any company,” Vince objected.

  “Too bad, you’re gettin’ some. You’re family now, so you’re not gettin’ left alone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  EVA SAT AGAIN by her father’s bedside in the cold, clean room at Chase Manor. She was still wearing her red dress from Clementine’s ball. After the excitement of the explosion and the goings-on at the town hall, the night had fizzled out and she and Iris had returned to the Manor with the rest of the household staff. A serious-faced Dr. Cranch had suggested she visit her father immediately.

  “There was no need to end your festivities on my account,” her father wheezed.

  “You give yourself too much credit,” Eva replied. “It was quite an exciting night. You might be interested to know your precious Baxbary Mudge tried to murder the council tonight.”

  She said it with no small amount of satisfaction. Her father’s milky eyes grew wide and he huffed from the mask.

  “He planted barrels of gunpowder under the stage. It was quite spectacular to watch it go up. We had ever such a good view from the tearoom. Oh, and we hear he had his private army try to take over the town hall. He failed, of course, and now he is in prison. You certainly backed the wrong horse there, Father.”

  He was shaking with anger.

  “You cannot be serious,” he said.

  Every word took effort, scraped from his raw throat.

  “I can assure you, I am. You can ask anyone. The whole town will have heard about it by now. Come to think of it, were you not meant to be on the stage this evening? I do wonder if he would have warned you, or if he would have been happy to let you be scattered across the harbour in pieces with the rest of them?”

  “He would never have harmed me!”

  “I believe I will do us both a favour by not asking if you knew about his plans.”

  “Of course not! What do you take me for?”

  A conniving, lying, power-hungry bastard. “Best I don’t answer.”

  “I suppose that explains the smug look on your face. You were right about him all along.”

  “I was, wasn’t I? Though even I never suspected he would go this far.”

  “If you had married him, you could have—”

  “Could have what? Stopped him? Been a calming influence? Or are you suggesting had I married him he would never have resorted to—”

  “That is not what I am saying, I simply—”

  “What are we doing? You’re dying, Father,” she said suddenly. The mechanisms above his head clicked in the silence which followed. “Why are we arguing?”

  “Because it is what we have always done,” he said, his voice a rasping shadow of what it had once been. “It is all we know how to do.”

  “Habit of a lifetime,” she said.

  “And it is far too late to break now. If you are expecting some deathbed sea change, a last-minute repair to our relationship, you will be sorely disappointed. You broke my heart, Eva. I loved you.”

  “You nev—”

  “I loved you! You are my daughter, of course I loved you! I wanted the best for you. It is all I have ever wanted.”

  “Well, that is where we shall never agree. Iris is what’s best for me.”

  “I can see that. I can. And I truly hope you have many years of happiness ahead of you.”

  Eva crossed her legs and set her hands on her knee. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  “Why can you not see how I love you?” he said, his voice quivering. “I was never able to make anyone see how I felt about them. Not your mother, not Sada, not Daisy. Why can I not make you see me, Eva? I could never make you see me.”

  Eva shook her head. Seeing her father—her strong, imposing, frightening father—reduced, diminished, on the brink of weeping, it was more than she could bear.

  “I hope you learn from my errors, and I hope your child treats you better than you treated me,” he said. “I am sorry we will not get a chance to meet.”

  His eyes were growing wetter.

  “Please…please tell them about me. And be kind. Be kinder to me in my death than you were in my life.”

  He began to sob and as he tried to lift one liver-spotted hand, Eva took it in hers.

  “Do not let me be forgotten, Eva, please. Do not let me just fade away into the night.”

  “I won’t, Father. I promise. I see you. I swear, I see you.”

  They sat there, father and daughter, hand in hand, for a good long while, until the only sound was the ceaseless tick-tick-tick of the machines.

  THE FUNERAL WAS held the following afternoon. The death of such an important figure in the community as Lord Marley Chase drew an enormous crowd. Most everyone in the town was affected by him in one way or another. If they didn’t work on his ships, in his dockyards, his prison, his warehouses, they had a family member who did. The remaining council members, clad in their masks and their finest clothing, each drew up in the courtyard in resplendent coaches. Eva and Iris greeted them personally. Robin, Edwin, and Duncan arrived soon after. Clementine Frost was late, of course, arriving in an extravagant ivory closed-top coach and dressed in sumptuous bronze, ensuring she stood about amongst the black-clad mourners.

  The great Swan of Blackrabbit Council would be spared the common man’s fate of being buried by a yew tree. Instead, he would be interred in the family mausoleum, alongside his parents, who were the architects of Chase Manor, as well as two of his brothers, and his first wife, Ivy. Eva was more like her mother than her father. The same effortless elegance, the same icy outward demeanour. She often wondered if it’s why her father had such difficulty in dealing with her—she reminded him too much of her mother.

  A long, gentle, cobbled slope led into a hillside on the grounds of the manor, all crowned with snow. The doors were ma
de from oak and carved with the family crest, intertwined with vine leaves and tree branches. After the undertakers had laid him to rest, the assembled crowd took a moment of silence to remember all he had done, laying trinkets in his sepulchre. Symbols of his life, his work. A carved wooden swan, a small anchor, and a length of ship’s rope, amongst others. Eva’s uncle, Alnet, gave a short speech. Sadly, her aunt Ellinora was too elderly to safely make the trip from the Devonshire on the mainland. Rabbit also spoke a few words in his honour.

  Afterwards, refreshments were served in the manor house. A popular topic of conversation was Baxbary Mudge and how he’d ended up incarcerated in the same cell which had held his father until his death. Many of the Port Knot natives relished the chance to explore the great house, having never been allowed in before. Others took the chance to earn favour with the new Swan of Blackrabbit.

  They spoke to Eva of shipping lanes and docking fees and taxes, but she was hardly listening. The death of her father had struck her more than she’d expected it to, though less than she knew it should. Their final words together had gone some way to assuaging her guilt over how she’d treated him in the past, but she would carry it with her for the rest of her days. His loss affected her, of course, and she was grieving in her own way. A way that was no one else’s concern. After his passing, she had wept in Iris’s arms as the enormity of it crashed over her in waves. The years of arguing had come surging back, drenching her. She thought, just for a moment, she could drown in regret. And then it passed, and she was herself again.

  Despite his reputation, there were people around her who’d genuinely suffered a great loss. More than a few townsfolk wept in corners. Eva was halfway down a hall when she heard a gentle, unfamiliar sobbing. Approaching the corner, she peeked round and was distressed to find Mrs. Knight sitting on a chair, bawling. Gathering herself together, she approached, holding out a tissue. Much to her amazement, it was accepted.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Eva said.

  Mrs. Knight looked unconvinced. “Are you really?”

  “I’m aware of how much you cared for him, even if he wasn’t.”

  “He was. He was,” Mrs. Knight said, dabbing her eyes. “The relationship between master and servant must be carefully balanced. Familiarity can easily be mistaken for something more. I was his longest serving—”

  “You were his companion,” Eva interrupted, sitting down next to her. “His longest-serving companion and the closest thing he had to a true friend.”

  Mrs. Knight exhaled, and tears started to flow freely down her soft cheeks. Eva instinctively took her by the hand and was surprised when it was gripped firmly. They sat for a spell and Mrs. Knight told Eva stories of her father.

  Upon returning to the crowded drawing rooms, the question became should Eva, for the sake of appearances, publicly mourn? Should she wear her grief as a mask to appease the expectations of the people? The antagonism between herself and her father was well known, and it would surely come as no surprise if she didn’t. No, she had to be true to herself, she decided. Her emotions were her own affair, not tawdry baubles to be flashed for the amusement of others.

  More than one whisper about her coldness reached her ears, most surprisingly from her cousin Dorothea, with whom Eva had always gotten along. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t care one jot. Coldness was a quality she enjoyed portraying as it made people ill at ease, made her difficult to predict. But there and then it irked her to know instead of remembering her father, people were more concerned with her not participating in a grandiose display of suffering. As though the theatre of grief mattered more than the loss which inspired it. Well, if they wanted to talk about her, then she’d give them something worth talking about.

  EDWIN AND ROBIN had enough of high society and began exploring the house, eventually returning to the bedroom where they had spent the night earlier that week. Had it only been two days since they were here, drinking by the fireplace?

  Robin walked in and beckoned Edwin to join him.

  “We shouldn’t be in here,” Edwin whispered.

  “Oh, it’s fine, we’re not goin’ to take anythin’. Or break anythin’,” Robin said, sitting on the edge of the bed. It creaked under his heft. “Not on purpose, at any rate.”

  He took his cap off and lay back, putting his bandaged hand on his broad chest.

  “Come ’ere, look at this,” he said in a hushed voice, patting the blanket beside him with his good hand. Edwin sat down and lay back, gazing up through the open top of the four-poster bed at the cornicing atop the walls of the room.

  “That is a very high ceiling,” he said. “I didn’t notice it before.”

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Robin said.

  “Poor Eva. I know she never got on with her father, but still, it can’t have been easy, watching him pass.”

  “At least she got a chance to see ’im off proper, though. All I got were a few words round a gravestone. Just me an’ Mum. Not even a body to bury.”

  “He was buried at sea, in a way,” Edwin offered by way of comfort.

  “I suppose,” Robin said, forcing a smile.

  “I worry about Dad. About what’s going to happen to him. He’s getting weaker and weaker as the days go by. I’m going to have to spend more time looking after him.”

  “It won’t just be left to you. You’ve got me now,” Robin smiled his proper smile this time. The big, wide one. The one that crinkled up his eyes and always made Edwin feel happy. “And there’s the village. We take care of our own. Not like ’ere.”

  Edwin took comfort in knowing his father would be looked after if he wasn’t around to do it. If he decided to stay there, on Blackrabbit, to look after his mother. Robin took his hand and held it tight, as if he hadn’t held it in years. They stayed there a good long while, side-by-side, staring at the ceiling. A small brown moth flickered in the corner.

  “Do you ever wonder about what happens after we die?” Edwin asked.

  “You mean about what we leave behind?”

  “Well, yes, but also…do you think there’s another life after this one?”

  “I’ve never thought much about it, to be ’onest. In the old days—when there were druids and gods and all that—they talked about it a lot. A place beyond what we can see, a place higher than the world around us. Better. Sometimes when I’m fallin’ asleep, I’ll see Dad, in my mind’s eye, you understand, an’ ’e’s sailin’ ’is ship towards the ’orizon an’ ’e’s got this great, big grin on ’is face. I wonder if that’s what it is, if that’s what life after death is like. For ’im, anyway. Doin’ what ’e loved.”

  “Is it what you’d like? You and Bucca’s Call, sailing forever?”

  “Maybe. But when I see Dad, it’s just ’im. I don’t think I’d want to be alone. I’ve ’ad enough of bein’ alone in this life.”

  The moth moved to another corner.

  “I wonder if old Marley Chase will end up ’auntin’ this ’ouse? ’Is ghost rollin’ up and down the ’allways in ’is chair forever.”

  Edwin laughed. “You’ve been listening to too many of Mr. Reed’s stories.”

  “Now, George Reed, well, ’e’ll definitely end up ’auntin’ the Moth & Moon,” Robin chuckled.

  “You’re hardly out of the place, you’re more likely to haunt it than he is!”

  “Hah, you’re prob’ly right!”

  Edwin gazed back at the ceiling.

  “I think about Ambrose a lot,” he said. “I wonder if he’s watching over Hester and the boys. I hope he’s happy, wherever he is. Here, what do you think Duncan would want?”

  “I don’t think ’e’s particularly ’appy ’avin’ to live this life, I can’t imagine ’e’d want another one.”

  “You don’t think he’s happy?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say ’e were un’appy, as such. I’d say ’e’s more…resigned. ’E’s on an even keel now and it seems like ’e’s plannin’ to stay that way. Might be wrong, mind. ’E were
never the easiest to figure out.”

  Robin said nothing for a moment. He turned his head back towards the ceiling. The moth was gone.

  “You goin’ to do it?” Robin asked.

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Eva and Iris. The curtain. The ’ole in the screen,” he said, wiggling his square finger in the air.

  “I said no.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want me to do it?” Edwin asked.

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “It doesn’t mean you don’t get a say. I must admit, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about the future a lot lately. Especially the other day, when I saw mine slipping away from me.”

  Robin smiled reassuringly and squeezed Edwin’s hand again.

  “I wonder about what will happen to me. I see Dad deteriorating and I think about what he’s leaving behind, and I wonder what will be left of me when I’m gone. I know it would mean the world to Eva and Iris. I’ve never wanted children, but now I wonder if there might not be some comfort in knowing a piece of me will live on.”

  “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

  “Yes,” Edwin replied. “Yes, I think I have.”

  Chapter Thirty

  IN THE COURTYARD of Chase Manor, footmen and horses alike stomped impatiently in the cool air of the late afternoon. Edwin found a member of the house staff—a young man named Drake, he seemed to remember—and inquired of him the whereabouts of Lady Iris. He was pointed in the direction of the east side of the manor.

  He followed the gravelled path around the outside of the great house, closing his hazel-coloured coat tightly around himself. He buried his chin into the duck-egg blue cravat he wore around his throat and pulled his tricorne hat low over his brow. He found Iris standing beneath a barren pergola. She was swaddled in grey furs to guard against winter’s assault.

  “Edwin! I thought you’d left.”

  “Not yet, couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore the manor a bit,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be inside with the mourners? Also, where there’s less chance of freezing solid?”