Page 128 of The Duke Undone

“Good heavens,” she said. “I’d have told Cook if I’d known we were having you to breakfast.”

She cast her eyes despairingly over the sideboard.

“Today of all days she crisped the bacon. But it’s easily remedied. We’ll send for ham and poached eggs. You do like poached eggs? I wish someone had mentioned this sooner.”

This last was aimed at Lavinia, who had edged around Anthony to stand beside her father’s chair.

“She didn’t expect me. But he did.” Anthony nodded at Yardley, who leaned back, shaking out his paper and folding it on his knee.

The last mail delivery of the day came at half past seven in the evening, the first of the day at half past seven in the morning.

Yardley would have received a letter from Jephson, if not yesterday then just now.

“I expected you,” said Yardley evenly. “But somewhat later in the day, at the office.” He sounded mildly reproving.

“Why the office?” A squall kicked up in Anthony’s breast, where the rage had been circling for hours, gathering force. “This is a family matter, after all. Your wife and daughter have every right to hear of it.”

“Hear what?” Lavinia frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“It turns out Effie was not enjoying sea baths on the French Riviera these many months.” Anthony looked hard at Yardley. “She was wearing leather mitts and howling, locked in a room at the Putney Asylum.”

Lavinia gasped, and Yardley stood, snapping the paper against his thigh.

“Have you no decency?”

That was enough to stun Anthony into silence. So. He was the fiend, for giving the delicately nurtured a glimpse of the inferno.

But what of him who had tended the flames?

“I don’t understand.” Lavinia squeezed her hands together.

“You don’t understand, because you were shielded from a truth that would have pained you to no purpose. Until yesterday, the situation was well under control.” Yardley shot his wife a dark look, and she rose hastily, gathering her canvas and thread.

Moira had always seemed a pettish, ill-satisfied woman, forever fussing and finding fault, with servants, with Lavinia. But Anthony had never known her to contravene her husband.

“Let’s take a walk in the garden,” she murmured.

Lavinia shook her head. She was looking at her father with horror, flinched when he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Euphemia was receiving the care that her condition requires,” he said to her, warm and reasonable. “She suffered the onset of a severe and very dangerous hysteria, which unleashed her tendencies to exhibitionism and . . . sensuality.” He cleared his throat. “In the throes of this disturbance, she formed an unwholesome attachment, and she ran off, but the man she called her husband soon tired of her. By the time she was taken to Putney, she had fallen into circumstances too degraded to recount. She was in desperate need of treatment.”

“No. She didn’t need treatment.” Anthony felt the snarl twist his mouth. She’d needed support, acceptance, an open door. “You wanted her out of the way, because she’d realized that our father was in medical danger, a state of vulnerability that suited your interests.”

He took a breath, hurling the allegation. “You were preying on his weakness.”

Yardley tipped his head, oddly expressionless. “Meanwhile,” he said, “you yourself were turning a blind eye to your father’s debility.” He released Lavinia’s shoulder, tossed his paper onto the wingback chair. “Why was your runaway sister the one to realize? Hmm? You were back in town and just down the lane. Did you come to your father when he suffered his fits? Did you consult with his doctors? No, you did nothing, you said nothing. You had no concern for him then. Now that he’s gone, you accuse me of predation. I wouldn’t be surprised if you claimed next I caused his fits with poison, like a wicked Italian in a Gothic romance. You need a villain, Anthony, you need one badly, so you do not have to look at yourself. I’ve willingly been many things to you, but I choose not to be your scapegoat.”

It was happening again, Yardley turning the tables, reframing the story, making it the familiar one, the one that had worn its grooves in his life until it seemed he had no option but to keep spinning along its track.

He opened his mouth, but Yardley wasn’t finished.

“When you visited the Putney Asylum, did you ask to see the admissions register? Did you look over Euphemia’s committal forms? If you had, it would have punctured your fantasy. I didn’t creep through the shadows to order your sister’s confinement. Your father signed the papers.”

Shame prickled through him, as it always did when he was confronted with his glaring errors of judgment, his foolhardy hardihood. He wouldn’t show it, wouldn’t bow his head. He glared at Yardley, whose gaze was mellowing as he sensed himself gaining the upper hand.

“You were in too much of a rush, like always,” said Yardley, shaking his head. “You didn’t even discharge her legally. You took her and paraded out, with two additional women besides, her accomplices from a failed escape bid, in front of dozens of people—doctors, nurses, tourists. I am shocked to find no mention of it in the paper. I assume the editors are saving their ink today for three-inch headlines tomorrow. I won’t be scrutinized, but she will be, and your family will be discussed again publicly in the vilest terms.”

“Lavinia.” Moira’s voice rang out, surprisingly sharp. “Now. In the garden.”