doubt the Allenbys would find such a notion heresy.
I crossed the hall again, feeling very intrepid indeed as I made my way into the dust-sheeted room next to Brisbane’s bedchamber. I crept through, scarcely heeding the ominous, ghostly shapes in the half-light. I was bound for Brisbane’s inner sanctum, for reasons that did me no credit.
“Curiosity is a dangerous pastime,” I reminded myself as I edged into his room. But then so is love. I sat on the edge of his bed for a long moment, breathing in the scent of him. It was an easy thing to imagine him there, lying with his black hair tumbled across the soft white linen of the pillow. I put out a hand to touch it, then drew it back in haste.
He had made his bed, skilfully as any housemaid would have done, and I was suddenly glad of it. I had been seized with such a tremendous sense of longing I might well have lain down.
I surged up from the bed, realising I had strayed into rather dangerous territory. I had not come to build castles in Spain, I told myself firmly. I had come to find some clue as to Brisbane’s state of mind as master of Grimsgrave.
His trunk yielded nothing unexpected, save a copy of Socrates in Greek, the endpapers heavily marked in Brisbane’s distinctive hand. I had known he had a facility for languages, but I had not realised Greek was among them.
I tucked it neatly back into his travelling trunk, along with a small leather purse full of what seemed to be Chinese coins, and a set of false white whiskers so realistic I started back in fright at the sight of them. I had seen Brisbane in them once before and had not known him, I reflected with a smile. We had come quite far since then, and yet not far at all.
I rose and moved to the covered table in the corner, lifting the linen cloth carefully. A set of scientific instruments reposed there, some chemists’ glass, a scale, and most impressively of all, a microscope even finer than Valerius’. “No wonder Brisbane keeps that under cover,” I mused. “He would never know a moment’s peace if Valerius suspected this was here.”
“Talking to oneself is the first sign of a disordered mind.” I whirled to find Lady Allenby standing in the doorway, leaning upon her rosewood walking stick, her expression gently reproving.
I dropped the cloth and straightened. “I was just—”
Her expression softened and she held up a hand. “There is no need to explain, my dear. I was once your age. And I was in love.”
I took a deep breath. “Is it so obvious?”
“Only to someone who has also suffered.”
I dropped my head. “It isn’t always dreadful, you know. In fact, it is rather wonderful most of the time.”
She gave me a moment to compose myself. I took a deep breath and forced a smile.
“I was looking over the other rooms as well. The dining room and the great hall. They must have been magnificent.”
“There were Jacobean suites of furniture in each of them, the finest English oak, carved by a master’s hands. They were sold along the way, with the Flemish tapestries and the French porcelains,” she added with a sigh. “So much of this place lost. It will be a mercy, I think, to leave it behind.”
I marvelled at her courage, twisted and wracked with pain, forced to leave the only home she had ever known.
“I hope you will be happy in your new home,” I said impulsively. It seemed a stupid sentiment. Who could be happy in such circumstances, torn up by the very roots?
“God will provide. As will Mr. Brisbane. He might have turned us out into the streets to starve, you know. We must be grateful that he is a generous man.”
“Or perhaps he feels kindly toward old friends,” I ventured, watching her closely. She blinked a little, but her expression of gentle kindliness did not falter.
“Ah, I suppose Ailith has told you they knew each other as children? Well, do not be misled by that. Their acquaintance was of short duration. Mr. Brisbane was, er, travelling, with his mother’s family at the time,” she said, neatly glossing over the fact that the gentleman who now owned her house had once been a wild half-Gypsy boy. She went on smoothly. “They passed through, every spring. And you know what children are, always swearing eternal friendship, then quite forgetting one another when the season has passed. Ailith did not even know him when he first arrived here in January, he is so changed.”
I remained silent, wondering whether Ailith’s attachment to Brisbane had been deeper than her mother knew.
Lady Allenby looked around her for the first time, taking in the small room and its tidy complement of furnishings. “This was my son’s room,” she said suddenly.
She turned away then, and I knew she was thinking of the son she had lost so precipitously. “I wonder if you would like to see Redwall’s things,” she said, almost hopefully.
Nothing could have appealed to me less than sorting through the possessions of a dead man, but Lady Allenby had been very gracious, and I did not like to offend her.
“Of course.”
We entered the long room I had passed through the previous night. She busied herself lighting a few lamps to throw off the chill and the shadows. Without the gloom, the room seemed more inviting, the shrouds less sinister. The tops of the walls were decorated with the same frieze as the small bedchamber—a riverbank, edged with marsh grasses and flights of birds taking wing. Here and there a lily bloomed, pale and fragile against the delicate green grasses, and near the corner a graceful gazelle stopped to drink from the river. It was beautifully done, and I remarked upon it to Lady Allenby.
“Oh, yes. Ailith painted that. She’s rather clever at such things, and it was a present for Redwall after he returned from his travels in Egypt. He was quite taken with the decorations of the tombs, and brought back many drawings, and even a few plates taken by the expedition’s photographer.”
“Egypt—how exciting! I should love to travel. I have only been to the Continent, but Africa seems another world entirely.”
She smiled, her expression nostalgic. “It was to Redwall. He was never happier than when he was reading his books about the pharaohs or working on his models of the tombs and temples. I am afraid it was rather difficult for him to leave Egypt behind. I believe Ailith thought he would pine less if he had something of the place here in his private rooms. Let me show you something.”
She moved toward the nearest dustsheet and tossed it aside with a theatrical flair. I swallowed a gasp. There was a long, low couch, fashioned of thin strips of woven leather and held aloft by a pair of golden leopards.
“Astonishing,” I breathed, moving closer. I dared not touch it. The gilt of the cats’ spots was alternated with blue enamel, the eyes set with great pieces of amber that glowed in the lamplight.
“It is a fake, of course,” she told me, regretfully, I fancied. “Redwall purchased many treasures in Egypt. He wanted to furnish all of Grimsgrave in the Egyptian style. Much of what he purchased is of no value—modern reproductions of the furniture of the pharaoh’s tombs, although I believe some of the smaller pieces and the papyri may be worth something. And there is some jewellery as well. I seem to recall a few pretty things amongst these bits.” She gestured toward the other shrouds in the room, and I turned slowly on my heel, thinking rapidly.
“All
