Page 6 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
“Good God, man.” It was Halliday. “You’ll catch your death.”
Lawrence made a noncommittal noise, too physically and mentally drained to enter into a debate about the dangers of standing outside in wet clothes. Instead he proceeded to wring the water out of his hair while Barnabus greeted his friend. “Firewood,” he offered after a moment. “It’s too cold to swim.”
“Ah.” The vicar had known Lawrence long enough to be familiar with his habits. “I see.”
Lawrence had learned years ago that when he felt the creeping unease that signaled what he had come to think of as an attack of madness, he could sometimes set his mind to rights by exhausting himself. It was probably only a temporary reprieve, only delaying the inevitable moment he went as fully and irretrievably mad as his father and brother. But temporary relief was better than no relief, so in the summer he swam in the sea, and in the colder weather he chopped enough wood to warm a house far grander than Penkellis. He didn’t know why it worked, but he imagined his mind as a fire with too many twigs. Some of the tinder had to be burnt off before the fire was any use at all.
“Did the secretary arrive?” Halliday’s voice was too casual.
“Yesterday.”
“Is he settling in?”
“I mistook him for a housebreaker and nearly throttled him. Later I threw a book at his head. This morning he sorted my papers and I threw them into the fireplace.”
Halliday winced. “That would be ano, then.”
“He’s a London popinjay.” Lawrence pulled his shirt on over his head. “He smells like flowers.”
“His references were—”
“He’ll be useless.” Worse than useless. Distracting.
Lawrence slid his braces up over his shoulders, then shrugged into his waistcoat and coat, all while the vicar shuffled and looked around the garden as if it held anything of interest.
“David Prouse had another sheep stolen,” Halliday finally said.
Like as not it had fallen off a cliff into the sea or been stolen by a neighboring farmer. These things happened and always had. “Am I supposed to have stolen this one too?”
“The general sentiment is that you sacrificed it as part of an eldritch rite.”
Lawrence snorted.
“I wish you’d take this seriously,” Halliday protested. “Show your face at the village fete, buy some jam and pie at the ladies’ auction. Otherwise people make up their own stories, and every little thing that goes wrong within a league of Penkellis is laid at your doorstep. It’s only a matter of time before something serious happens and you’re blamed for it.”
Lawrence wasn’t concerned about his tenants thinking the worst of him. After his father and brother, they had every reason to suspect the Earl of Radnor of any and every crime. “If the villagers are indulging in superstition, perhaps they need stronger spiritual instruction.” Lawrence shot a pointed glance at the vicar.
Halliday threw his hands up in surrender. “Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me. I lie awake nights wondering what I’ve done wrong here. Do you know, when I went to Bates Farm to read to the old lady, I found salt sprinkled on the windowsills.”
“Salt?”
“To keep away the evil spirits, I gather,” the vicar said, his voice weary.
If only it were that simple, Lawrence thought. If only evil could be kept away with a dusting of salt, a bowl of iron filings, an old incantation. But he knew that the madness that ran in his bloodline would one day fully claim him as surely as it had claimed his brother and father.
Georgie tried to orient himself within the rabbit warren of rooms and corridors, heading towards what he hoped was the back of the house. Because if there were any servants—and he reassured himself that there simply had to be, despite all appearances to the contrary—they’d likely be in the kitchens.
Even the most mazelike places had a certain logic to them. Georgie, born and bred on the labyrinthine streets of London’s rookeries, could often intuit how a new place was laid out. When he found himself in a new town, at a new house, among a new set of people, he knew how to detect the various currents that led towards money, towards pleasure, towards power.
That was what Georgie did: he slid into places he didn’t belong. Nobody realized what had happened until the damage was done, like a stiletto in the heart. It was only a matter of the right words spoken to the right people and a total indifference to the truth.
Quietly, casually, he would mention that he had invested his small inheritance in a business venture: canals, mines, shipping . . . it hardly mattered. Interest was piqued, greed uncovered. Georgie would offhandedly mention the name of the firm in question, the greedy gentleman invested, and Georgie disappeared into thin air, as effortlessly as he had appeared, taking half the proceeds with him.
Mattie Brewster took the other half in exchange for tolerating Georgie’s doing business on Brewster’s own ground. It had seemed a good deal ten years ago, when he had been too young and foolish to consider what it would be like to have a man like Brewster as his enemy. As his family’s enemy. Now it was too late to renegotiate. It was too late for a lot of things.
Georgie had never felt bad about his swindles until he became foolishly fond of old Mrs. Packingham, with her perpetually tangled embroidery floss and the equally tangled tales of her youth. Before her, he had taken from people who were greedy enough to throw caution to the wind and rich enough to spare money on rank speculation. They were no better than gamblers, and nobody wrung their hands when high rollers lost their money, did they?
As he wound his way through the passageways of Penkellis, brushing aside cobwebs and stepping lightly over creaky floorboards, he checked for signs of civilization, some clue that would bring him closer to a hot meal and a working chimney: a sconce that had been dusted, a carpet that had been rolled up rather than left to molder, the telltale lemon scent of cleaning polish.
