“What happened?” Judith’s heart was racing.
“Well,” Theresa said, “I was teaching Whiskers to climb, and—”
All of Judith’s helplessness, all her bitterness, all the anger she’d stored came rushing to the surface. Her face heated. She could feel her hands balling into fists, almost of their own accord.
“Teaching her to climb.” Her words sounded arctic. “What did I tell you? What were the rules?”
“But you said!” Theresa’s chin wobbled. “You said that kittens were more important than rules.”
“Oh, for the love of ducklings. I didn’t mean you could ignore every rule with impunity, you nitwit.”
Theresa’s nose scrunched up. “I’m not a nitwit.”
“Right now you are. Only a nitwit would tell me that kittens were more important than rules when she had just endangered her kittens’ lives by teaching them to do the exact thing I’d told her not to.”
“You’re shouting.” Theresa’s arms folded around herself. “Ladies don’t shout.”
“Do you think that just because you paid no money for those cats, they were free? And what of crockery?” She picked up a shard of plate. “What of this, Theresa?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t think! I just—”
“You never think,” Judith said. “You just break things. You break things on purpose.”
“No, I don’t,” Theresa said. And then, because she was honest, she continued. “Yes, I do. Sometimes. But I didn’t, not this time. This was on accident.” She inhaled. “You’re still shouting. Anthony would never talk to me like that.”
Anthony wouldn’t. Camilla wouldn’t. All of Judith’s anger had reached the boiling point.
“Anthony,” Judith heard herself say, “is not here.”
“No, but he promised he would always take care of me. You aren’t taking care of me. You’re screaming at me. You never listen. You always favor Benedict.”
Judith made herself set the piece of plate down carefully. For all that she told herself she didn’t begrudge the past years—for every smile that she’d managed to plaster on her face, thinking of the safety and security that she was winning for her sisters—a part of her, a part that she hated, a part that would not go away—that terrible part of her was always present, whispering that she would have been better off without her family. Without them, she’d have all the money she had earned for herself. Without them, she’d have been able to hire a full-time servant instead of scarcely getting by with a half-day charwoman twice a week. Without Theresa, she’d have been with Camilla in the first place, and none of this—none of it—would ever have happened.
She would never want to be without her brother and sister. She hurt because she didn’t know where Camilla was. But some small, hateful part of her soul wished that she didn’t have to carry that burden.
Judith hated that deep down, she was hateful.
“Anthony,” Theresa was saying, “never talked down to me or told me that I was a nitwit. Anthony never corrected me. And when Anthony gets back—”
That hateful part of herself snapped. “Anthony,” Judith said, “is dead.”
Theresa stood in place. Her eyes widened. “Don’t say that.”
“He’s dead,” Judith said. “He disappeared in the middle of a storm eight years ago. He has not attempted to make contact, not with me, not with you, not with anyone at all in England. Anthony is a traitor. He could have argued his innocence, and if he had, he would have been here with you. Get this fact into your nitwitted skull: Anthony abandoned us. He doesn’t care for us. He is not alive. He is dead.”
Theresa’s eyes grew even wider, if that were possible. She turned her head away and swiped at forming tears. “Don’t say that! Don’t say that, Judith.”
“Anthony has not put food on your table,” Judith continued. “Anthony has not provided for your future. Anthony has not scraped and scavenged and worked himself to the bone to save you. Anthony didn’t spend months searching through secondhand stores to find decent teacups. I am sick and tired of hearing about Anthony doing this and Anthony doing that when all Anthony did was betray his country, his family, and then perish under circumstances that left a cloud over the title. Anthony was a terrible brother.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Theresa was screaming now. “You’re saying that because you don’t want to be criticized for your mistakes. You don’t want me to realize the truth. Too late. I already know. You are the wicked half-sister. Anthony told me that he would be there when I most needed him, and he would not lie to me. You’re a hateful person.”
Judith knew she was hateful. She knew because every time she thought of Anthony, she could no longer simply mourn him. She hated him, too. Love was a knife, and try as you might to hold it properly, it would always twist in your grasp, cutting your fingers.
“Yes,” she said spitefully. “Now you know the truth. Your eldest brother is dead. Your eldest sister is hateful. But do look on the bright side, Theresa—you are only a brat.”
Theresa’s nose quivered. She swallowed and looked away. “I am… I am…” Theresa was a great many things, but she was not a liar. She couldn’t finish the sentence.
That was the thing about hateful truths. They hurt because they were true. Theresa knew that she was a brat. The part that hurt her? That Judith knew it, too.
“I hate you,” Theresa said instead in a low voice. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. And when Anthony finally does come home…” Her eyes filled with tears. But she couldn’t finish that sentence, either. Because deep down—deep, somewhere, behind the brattiness, and the difficulty, and the acting up—deep down, Theresa was not actually stupid.
And not being stupid, she knew the truth about her brother.
Anthony was not coming home. He was not ever coming home.
“I hate you,” Theresa said, crying. “It’s all your fault.”
“It isn’t all my fault,” Judith said. “It’s just all on my shoulders. Try it, sometime, and see how well you do.”
“I hate you,” Theresa repeated, stomping up the stairs. “I hate you, I hate you—you, you—” She floundered, trying to find a venomous enough word. “You mallard,” she finally hurled at her.
The door to their joint room rattled as Theresa slammed it. One final piece of crockery fell to the floor from its perch on a broken shelf and shattered.
Anthony was dead. Judith was alone and surrounded by broken crockery, and mallard didn’t seem a strong enough epithet to describe the wreckage.
She picked up a shattered plate and moved a door that had been wrested from its hinges. There, spilled over the floor where once they’d been hidden behind the doors of the bottom shelf, were three bound volumes. They’d once been blank; her elder brother had filled them with his cramped, scarcely readable writing while he was in China.
She stared at Anthony’s journals for a very long time.
Then she gathered them up. “Duck it,” she muttered. “Duck it all to shell.”
Chapter Seventeen
One of her umbrella spines snapped halfway to Christian’s home, sending little lashings of summer rain into Judith’s face every time the wind shifted.
An hour’s walk should have been enough to calm her, to allow her to change her mind. But the image of the front parlor, a mess of wood and shattered plates, would not leave her.
Her mismatched teacups might not have been much, but they’d been something. For Judith, they’d been proof that after being thrust so precipitously from polite society, her family might still aspire to rise to the heights where they’d once effortlessly soared.
Myths. Lies. Nightmares.
Judith was done pretending.
By the time Judith rapped on Christian’s door, the rain had stopped and the sun was on the verge of setting. Little gray scudding clouds were pinking up just over the edge of the Mayfair roofs. She was going to have to walk home in the dark—a prospect she didn’t particularly care to think about at the
moment.
The door opened a bare thirty seconds after her knock.
Every detail in the interior of Christian’s house seemed too bright, too luxurious. Oil lamps were turned up full bore, so that a golden radiance spilled onto the front step. Cream paper graced the walls, with some ornate pattern traced on it in gold. Marble floors, polished wood furniture. Even on the front steps, she could detect some delicious scent wafting from the kitchen.
It hit her like a strike to the solar plexus. She forgot so easily how different that other life was, the one she’d once lived. It was a life where fabrics never itched and shoe leather never cracked, where a shattered plate was whisked away without any need to think about how it was to be replaced.
Here she stood in her gray shawl with the pilling yarn, holding her broken umbrella. She clutched a canvas satchel that had seen better days.
The butler blinked at her.
She had nothing but her manners. Judith swept her umbrella down, closing it. Her chin went up.
She handed the broken, dripping utensil to the man. “Do tell Lord Ashford that Lady Judith Worth is here.”
The queen could not have said it better. The queen would not have hesitated to step inside the warm, dry room and so Judith did not, either.
“Of course,” the butler said a little stiffly. “I shall inquire if my lord is at home, but I expect he is not.”
This was servant-speak for you’ll be tossed out.
“Jeffries.”
Judith looked up the main stair. Marble steps were clothed in red and gold carpet, and Christian stood at the top like some conquering god set to descend his temple steps.
“I’m at home,” Christian said. “I’m always at home to Lady Judith. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” The man glanced mulishly at Judith’s skirts. She wasn’t dripping; she’d checked. She’d cleaned too many floors in her brother and sister’s wake to do so.
“Have Mary send in something warm to drink,” Christian said. “And scones. Lady Judith?”
He gestured, and she ascended the stairs to meet him.
She would not be overawed. She would not be overawed. This was what she’d been born to. This was what she would have had, had Christian not…
Or maybe, had her brother not…
It didn’t matter. Now, she might have been lady of smashed crockery and broken furniture, but she wasn’t going to duck her head to him. She’d spent the past eight years working for something impossible, trying to fit pieces together in ways they would not go.
Maybe it was a fairy story to believe that things could still turn out for her family, but at least it was her fairy story. She might not choose the ink or the paper, but she could write the words. Christian and his marble and his carpet and his butler all put together could not stop her and her smashed teacups. Her fists clenched as she made her way to him.
“Judith.” He looked utterly bemused. “Whatever brings you here? And what are you…”
She hefted her canvas satchel. “Keep your tea,” she said. “Keep your scones. Destroy what little remains of Anthony’s reputation. I don’t care any longer.” She thrust her burden at him.
He staggered under the sudden weight. “What the devil, Judith?”
“Go ahead, then. They’re Anthony’s journals.” Her chin was in the air, and she didn’t think the queen could have said it more proudly if she did secretly visit Daisy. “It doesn’t matter any longer. Take them.”
He set the package on a side table. “What is going on?”
She turned to him. “Go ahead. Explain it to me if you please. Use small words if you must, so I’ll be sure to understand. Tell me how you’re so certain. How you know that my brother was a traitor. Tell me how it makes sense for Anthony to have betrayed everything he held dear. Tell me, Christian. Everything else is broken. Tell me now.”
She poked his chest as she spoke, and he looked down at her finger. Her hand was beginning to shake, and that wouldn’t do.
“Well,” he finally said. “I’m surely not going to shout the whole thing at you in the hall. Come.” He opened a door to a spacious office lined with shelves. A desk and a few chairs sat near a fire.
“Come in,” he said. “Have a seat. Have a scone.”
“I don’t want a scone.” It was a lie.
She didn’t want any of his quiet reassurances. She wanted justice. She wanted anger. She wanted to make his life turn topsy-turvy, as hers had done.
She also wouldn’t have minded a scone. It was hard holding onto her hard-won anger when there was food available. Especially when she noticed a little brown kitten curled on a pillow before the fire.
She sat instead. The fire crackled pleasantly, and when Christian sat next to her on the sofa—a good three feet away—she refused to look at him.
“I’ll make it simple,” he said, “I believe that Anthony gave military secrets to the Chinese because he did not want Britain to win the war over opium.”
Her hands were finally warming up in front of the fire, and that made them feel itchy. She rubbed them surreptitiously against her skirt. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Christian simply inclined his head. “Do you know why Britain and China were at war?”
“I was seventeen,” Judith said. “I remember something about trade dealings and tea.” She frowned. “Something about the Chinese seizing a British ship.”
“Close enough.” The door opened and a servant brought in a tray. She set it on the side table near them, and Judith tried not to wonder what was on the plate beneath the cloth napkin. Of course Christian’s teacups matched. She hadn’t really expected anything else, but she still glowered at him as he poured pale liquid into a pink-edged china cup, and then set a little biscuit on a plate.
“Here.” He set these unceremoniously to her left. “You didn’t ask for it, so you needn’t feel obliged to me when I give it to you.”
She looked at him from beneath her lashes. She had never in her life not eaten food that was put in front of her, and he must have known that she was hardly going to start by spurning a sugary little biscuit. Especially not when little flecks of real vanilla were visible from this vantage point. When was the last time she’d had anything flavored with vanilla?
She wasn’t fooling anyone. She picked it up and ate it in one bite.
Christian spoke again as she lifted her cup. “It was really about one thing from the British perspective: tea.”
She looked down at the saucer in her hand. “Tea?”
“Tea. Tea comes from China.”
“I know. It’s why it is so very dear.”
“And yet we cannot do without it,” Christian said with a lopsided smile. “China has tea; Britain demands tea. Unfortunately, we have nothing that China wants in return. If life were fair, we’d simply send a vast quantity of money to China every year. They would grow wealthy. And we would not.”
Judith looked at the cup in her hand once again. “Britain waged war for better tea prices? That seems…”
It seemed like a tremendous waste, even if only one life was lost over the matter. Even if the only life had been her brother’s. And there had been many more lives lost than the one. Many more.
He noticed her frowning suspiciously at her cup. “It’s a tisane,” he told her. “Mint and chamomile. It’s not tea.”
She took a sip.
“It wasn’t just about tea prices.” Christian set another biscuit on her plate. “In truth, England found a much more effective way to balance the trade deficit than to lower tea prices. We found a product that the Chinese demanded.”
“That’s…good?”
His nose wrinkled in distaste. “Not when that product is opium. It’s addictive. It ruins men, utterly ruins them. Men addicted to the drug can think of nothing but how and when they’ll find their next smoke. Even men who manage to drag themselves away from the opium dens still feel its call years later. They’ll catch a hint of a scent on a breez
e, and next thing they know, they’ve abandoned all caution. One doesn’t stop being an opium addict, not ever. One can only stop taking the drug. I’m simplifying decades of history, but the Chinese government outlawed the trade of opium. Britain couldn’t afford that. Two wars later, and…” Christian shrugged.
Judith fell silent. “You think Britain was in the wrong.”
“On balance? There’s no question. But you didn’t ask about my beliefs.”
Judith felt a little thump to the side of her chair and looked over. Fillet had abandoned the fire to greet her. She was looking at Judith, blue eyes steady in her little brown, whiskered cat face. Judith reached over and stroked her between the ears.
Finally Judith spoke. “You think Anthony believed Britain was wrong. That he believed it so strongly he betrayed his own country.”
“Yes.”
“Why would he care?”
Christian looked away. His voice dropped. “He had a particular hatred of opium.”
“I never knew it.”
Fillet stepped daintily onto Judith’s lap, kneading at her leg and letting off a low purr. Her feet crackled noisily as she did so; she was stepping on the letter in Judith’s pocket.
Judith slid it out surreptitiously and moved it under her leg so it wouldn’t make any noise.
“No. You wouldn’t. He’d never tell another’s secrets. But—you see—” Christian stopped again and inhaled. Then he looked over to her.
She had seen Christian unhappy. She’d seen him laughing. She’d seen him the way she always saw him—as if he had five jokes at the ready, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.
Right now, it looked as if his jokes had all been stripped away. Every care he had, every worry, seemed to reflect in his eyes.
“You see,” he said in a low voice, “his best friend was an opium addict.”
Judith’s hand stilled on the cat. “That’s ridiculous. You were his…”
Christian stood. “Ah,” he said. “I misspoke. I should have said his best friend is an opium addict. One doesn’t stop being an opium addict, not even if it has been…” He swallowed and looked up. “Fourteen years and eight months, since one last had a dose.”