A Rip Through Time(70)

Once I realize I’m alone, I become uncomfortably aware of how empty and quiet it is. The raven killer tried to strangle me. That note he left tells me he knows who I am, which means if he wants to finish the job, he’ll know exactly where to find me.

I slip upstairs and get my knife before I begin work. When I do hear the knob turn, though, it’s clearly the front door. I straighten, hoping for Gray. Instead, Isla walks in bearing an armload of papers.

“It is only me,” she says with a smile. “Do not look so terribly disappointed.”

“Sorry,” I say. “But if those are the newspapers, then I’m just as happy to see you.”

Her brows rise. “I’m not certain that’s a compliment.”

“You know what I mean. Your brother is avoiding me, and until he stops that, I’m stuck with this.” I wave my dusting rag. “I said I’m okay with it. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather be examining stab wounds.”

“Duncan will come around. He is being prickly, and you need to get used to waiting it out.”

We move into Gray’s office, and I take a chair as she sets down the papers.

“I don’t blame him for getting prickly,” I say. “I heard about his, uh, backstory at the police station.”

Her lips tighten. “I’m quite certain you did. Yes, our father showed up one night with a child barely old enough to toddle. I was only three at the time, but it is my earliest memory, that little boy in my father’s arms, him telling my mother the child is his, and the mother is dead and so she must raise him now.”

“That’s…” I shake my head. “No words.”

“Oh, I have a few. Such a thing is not unheard of, but it’s still a scandal and an unforgivable insult to my mother. However, it has nothing to do with Duncan, and so she raised him as her own, which was nearly as scandalous.”

“Was she supposed to play the evil stepmother and make him sleep in the servants’ quarters?”

“Apparently, that would have been more acceptable. No, to her, Duncan was her child, as much as the rest of us.”

“Rest?”

She settles into the seat behind Gray’s desk. “Duncan is the youngest. I am next. We have an older sister, who is married and visits as little as possible. We also have an elder brother, who was supposed to inherit the undertaking business but dashed off to the Continent before Father was cold in his grave.”

“Leaving Dr. Gray to run the business.”

“Not Duncan’s first choice of occupation, but it did afford him the opportunity to pursue the science of death, and I daresay he enjoys that far more than he would a standard surgical practice. His interest has always been in the science.”

“A researcher rather than a practitioner. Whereas your chemistry is more practical? Or more research oriented as well?”

Her lips twitch. “I do believe you have turned this conversation into something of an interrogation, Detective. Learning what you can about those around you. I will play along. My chemist’s trade involves both the sale of medicines and the study of new formulations. That poses problems for me professionally. Women may ply their trade as natural healers, with herbs and a mortar and pestle, but when it comes to proper chemistry, it raises the specter of poison. My products are primarily traded through third parties, like Mr. Bruce, who is a chemist in his own right, but not a very good one.”

“So he buys your medicine and passes it off as his own. Hope you charge him extra for that.”

She smiles. “I should. A surcharge for improving his professional reputation.”

“And you’ve been doing that since your husband passed? Or have you always done it?”

She shakes her head at me. “You do want all the sordid details. All right then. Let us get this out of the way. I married young. I married foolishly. A handsome classmate of Duncan’s who swept me off my feet, mostly by insisting that my family scandal did not matter to him.”

“Seems like a low bar.”

“A low bar,” she murmurs. “Yes, it should be the lowest possible bar for a suitor to vault, but he was the first to do it.”

I frown. “I’m sure your father wasn’t the only guy in this world with an illegitimate child. Is it because he brought your brother into the household?”

She glances at me and then at the door. “It is not…” She clears her throat. “It is not the fact of Duncan’s existence as much as the fact that we accepted him as an equal, given his…” Another throat clearing. “Unique heritage.”

“Ah, because he’s a person of color.”

“Is that what you call it? I might have hoped you’d have needed no special term, but yes. Our mother embraced him, and we followed her lead. Or I did and our eldest brother did. Our sister did, too, until she found that society accepted her far better if she distanced himself from her half brother and our unfathomable attachment to him.”

“Damn. Okay. So maybe it wasn’t such a low bar to hurdle after all. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal for you.”

“It is a bigger deal to Duncan, and whenever I face scrutiny for my acceptance of him, I remind myself how much worse it is for him. So yes, accepting me in spite of that put Lawrence in very good stead. It did not hurt that he was handsome and witty and clever, and if Duncan warned me against him, well, that was my little brother being overly protective and so terribly sweet of him. It became far less sweet when Duncan tried to interfere with the courtship and brought our mother to his side, forcing me to elope.”