Jane Steele(94)

“Miss Steele,” he questioned, “do you know more of your legal standing beyond what I have just read?”

When I shook my head, he rapped his desk, as if signalling the start of a race. “I was first recommended to your father in Paris, where Englishmen often preferred to do business with a firm operating upon both sides of the water. His concerns had to do with his status as a landholder. Highgate House was in good repair, but your father desired to settle minor liens and generally ascertain whether keeping the manor was feasible; I am happy to state that he was doing very well indeed in Paris, no less than were his partners in London, and so my advice was, if the property gave him pleasure, to keep it. It was not only matters of his estate upon which he consulted me, however.”

Mr. Sneeves waited as my heart pounded a brisk martial beat.

“And these other matters?”

“Were matters to do with your mother.” His voice softened, and he smoothed errant grey wisps behind his ears. “Mrs. Anne-Laure Steele was such a woman as you do not meet twice in life, Miss Steele—beautiful, charming, and artistic. Sadly, not long after your first birthday, your father fell prey to an inflammation of the lungs, and your parents wished to know your precise legal standing in Britain should the worst happen. I was tasked with setting measures in place to ensure both you and Mrs. Steele were protected. You remember your aunt, Mrs. Patience Barbary?”

“Naturally.”

Mr. Sneeves, dappled head bobbing, made quick work of gathering papers. “She was very strongly against your and your mother’s residing at Highgate House—and your father proved to be ill with consumption at an advanced and virulent stage, so your parents were forced to act quickly. Here is the marriage license between Anne-Laure Fortier and Jonathan David Steele; here also is a special contract they devised to be signed by your aunt as a dowager, stating that Highgate House should be your sanctuary for life.”

I examined the documents. Rather than clearing the mists, however, the atmosphere thickened—sanctuary for life did not mean inheritance. For the first time, I examined my mother’s statements against the backdrop of what I knew to be true as an adult woman. Unmarried females scarce ever inherited, particularly when wills were disputed; my mother had assured me of my place time and again, but had never explained the whys or wherefores.

Meanwhile, supposing it was mine, why should Mamma and I have lived in the cottage, why not the main house, why should not Aunt Patience and Edwin have lived in—

“Miss Steele, do you know the man in this picture?”

I found myself holding a sketch from a French newspaper describing a series of audacious trades enacted at the Palais de la Bourse.

“Of course—this is my uncle,” I answered readily. “Richard Barbary.”

“That is your father,” Mr. Cyrus Sneeves said, “who for a time—when courting your mother in the guise of a rich gentleman of leisure—went by the name Jonathan Steele.”

“No, no.” The words emerged before I even had thought them. “That’s impossible.”

Mr. Sneeves made no answer; I stared at the artist’s rendering, all breath ripped from my lungs.

Richard Barbary’s portraits had occupied many places of honour at Highgate House before the arrival of Mr. Thornfield, and here he was in starkly inked miniature: a calculating businessman with an air of mischief about him. Effortlessly, I recalled how those portraits had beckoned to me, with their brown eyes like mine, their mocking half smiles, their air of roguish mystery.

I felt as if my bones were curling up inside my body.

“It can’t be,” I whispered, knowing it true.

Mr. Sneeves took a fortifying pinch of snuff.

“Mr. Richard Barbary was one of our best clients, Miss Steele, and when he informed us of the . . . situation, we strove in every way to accommodate him. Initially, he had only sought an affair with your mother, who was quite destitute save for the odd sou made from her street portraits and work as a cabaret dancer in Montmartre, which I believe is how the pair met. But when Anne-Laure Fortier and Richard Barbary had lived together for over six months and she informed him of her pregnancy, he impetuously determined that her pleas for wedlock be indulged, and he married her under the false name he had given, fearing to reveal all and lose her regard. This was no light task, but your father was a rich man, and so managed the necessary documentation—he avoided mentioning the fact, of course, that he had already left a wife and child behind in England.”

Fighting dizziness, I marked him, the words falling as lightly upon my ears as the patter of rain upon a window.

My half brother. Edwin, who tried to rape me, was not my cousin, he was my half—

“Here you are, Miss Steele,” a smooth voice intoned.

I drained the brandy Mr. Sneeves had thrust beneath my nose and watched as he poured another, setting it within easy reach. Memories untangled themselves before my eyes, twisting and contorting—Aunt Patience’s calling my friendship with her son family feeling, my mother’s open disgust for Edwin, my aunt’s visible loathing of me. Sickened, I tasted the spirits again.

“Tell me,” I rasped. “Everything. Please.”

Mr. Sneeves sniffed, not unkindly. “I fully intend to. Miss Steele, when your father first fell ill, another event threatened the tranquillity of his, ah, French family life: your mother found a portrait of Patience and Edwin Barbary amongst his belongings. These led to a frenzied quarrel, but your father soon fell into agreement with his illegitimate second spouse: he had no intention of abandoning you, not even in death, for a match begun in the sort of lies wealthy men tell had developed into profound mutual devotion. Mrs. Barbary, I ought to mention, was dealt a bad hand—she was an arrangement made by your paternal grandfather in the interests of money and pedigree, and though your father never loved her, I believe she loved your father, or so Anne-Laure Steele led me to conjecture.”