He barely noticed that the flames had long died out with a pitiable sputter, that the library had grown cold and that the white light of day had since taken on the reddish hue of old bloodstains.
Barry and Roy had left for Ely with the portrait of Donna in the hopes that someone could offer information about the Smoaks, and Diggle was off to see his contact from the War Office.
She was still gone.
Sinking into the chair she had used, Oliver ran a hand over the smooth grain of her desk. The admonishment that Diggle had given him about taking care about himself rang true, as did the reminder that there was no real reason for him to be so fixated on the matter of her safety, given that the Duke of Starling had only met Miss Felicity Smoak a week ago.
But he was not. He was inexplicably worried for Felicity, sick with want for the knowledge that she was safe, and everything else seemed secondary.
Again he pulled open the drawer where his father's papers had been stored, stared at the bottom of the drawer and the emptiness that it portended. Could she have been taken on account of the papers?
Oliver frowned, reflecting on the state of his leads before he had word of her presence in Cambridge. Prior to his complete reliance on her skills in his investigation, he had spent numerous evenings watching the ton from the space of his observation room, in the hopes that surveillance would point to a greater perfidy than debauchery. Perhaps it was time to reconnect with his father's old friends again, even if it was merely to find out if anyone would have a motive to abduct her.
He rose to his feet and set her workspace to rights, before he made for the entrance hall, with the intention of heading to his club for the night. Standing in the hall was his sister, decked in a frock of pale pink satin he had never seen before.
"Why haven't you dressed for dinner?" enquired Thea. "Mother will be down soon and we are leaving for the Spencers' together, aren't we?"
As he took in her lovely face, fresh with the youth and innocence he could no longer pretend to, he felt a sharp sense of alarm. If Felicity could be abducted from his house without anyone's knowledge, how safe would his family be when they ventured beyond the house?
"Ollie, are you all right? You're looking at me very strangely and you haven't said a single word since I began this conversation…" Thea trailed off, her curls tilting to the side with her head as she regarded him with concern. "Which reminds me, whatever has become of Miss Smoak? I've not seen her at home for the entirety of today."
He could not ask his family to stay at Starling House, not without launching into a lengthy explanation about his true capabilities and Felicity's past. He could not leave them here without even Roy's knowledge of the streets to guard her, let alone Diggle's proficiency with weapons and fighting skills.
To Thea it was probably the height of thoughtlessness when he raised his hand to her head and so mussed her coiffure, but he ignored his sister's small cry of pique and shot her a wistful smile as he said, "I'll come to dinner. Wait for me."
"And Miss Smoak?"
He did not want to answer as of yet, and so he offered the first thing that came to mind. "She left to attend to an urgent family matter. I do not know when she will be back."
Before Thea could ask more questions he returned to the duke's bedroom and stepped into the garments prepared by Diggle as quickly as he could. There was no time to shave his jaw properly, or even to ensure that his cravat was immaculate but he was not overly concerned with impressing anyone with his appearance on such an anxious evening.
It was as he adjusted his sleeves that he sensed the presence of an intruder in the bedroom next to his. The sound of footsteps crossing the floor was too heavy to belong to a woman, and he could detect an aura of menace in the air.
Turning towards the connecting door at the side of his room, he gripped its knob hard and burst into the duchess's bedroom.
She traced the pearls she wore, every dip and swell of the lustrous string adorning her neck. The woman that was looking back at Moira in the mirror wore a layered gown of silver embroidered gauze and gilt, and her curls were swept into an intricate mass on her head, secured with a silk ribbon.
That Duchess of Starling did not appear as if she had just sent a woman to her death, and so the duchess on this side of the mirror likely did not look guilty as well.
It had to be done, she thought fiercely, peering at the reflected image of the chest at the foot of her bed, which was now securely locked and in selfish possession of its secrets, as it should.
If she had allowed the woman to live, by merely firing her or arranging for her to be sent to Newgate on some trumped up charge, there was a chance she would talk of what she might have seen, and Moira did not even trust her own maid with that particular secret, devoted as Loring was to her mistress.
Moira trusted no one with it, which was why the unforgivable act of prying into one's employer's private affairs resulted in that woman's unfortunate demise.
With a sigh she rose from her seat, only to freeze with the awareness that she was no longer alone in her room.
A hooded figure garbed entirely in black stood in the open window, the curtains billowing out behind him as the cool air of twilight rushed into the room.
"Moira," greeted Malcolm, pulling off his mask. "I thought it would be suspect if the earl paid a call in such quick succession following my last visit to Starling House."
She forced herself to remain calm, the reflection before confirming that her efforts were outwardly successful. Malcolm did not know, she told herself, even though her dread grew as the man crossed the floorboards to stand by the foot of her bed, dangerously close to the chest.
His appearance as such was not just consideration for their reputations, but meant as a warning to her, a reminder of how dangerous he truly was.
"You're getting very careless, Moira, if you feel the need to invoke 'Tempest' so easily. Your request has been taken care of, though I must confess I'm not quite sure why you saw the need to arrange for a mere housemaid's murder."
Tempest had been their secret code word, the term used when one needed to call upon the other for a favour. Moira knew she owed Malcolm now, but she was not about to divulge a secret she was working to conceal to begin with.
Particularly when she was certain Malcolm would not react kindly to the fact that the secret in question indicated a lack of belief in his word.
"She pried into my private affairs." Her voice sounded even, and the brow she raised imperiously further underscored her point.
"Indeed. Before I shot her, the poor girl was nattering on about how she was very sorry for opening your private chest, and that she didn't see a thing besides the 'bloody gown', which I presume to be the outcome of your decision regarding Miss Smoak last night… That brings me, of course, to the question: of what chest is she speaking? And what does said chest contain besides that gown, given that you have never been given to histrionics and would only have resorted to sending that note if your interests were severely threatened?"
As he spoke Malcolm looked her reflection intently in the eye, his hand resting idly on the chest he stood next to.
They were easy questions, and she had prepared answers for the eventuality of such questions being asked, from the day she first decided to keep this secret. Moira opened her mouth, but the sound of the connecting door opening caught her attention and she whipped her head round in time to see her son charging into the room.
Oliver's face was forbidding, a cold expression on the precipice of rage and savagery. His eyes were locked on the open window, where the chill of the evening air hung as the sole reminder of Malcolm's visit, the man having disappeared before her son entered.
"Your window is open," her son finally said, his voice sounding raw, almost guttural.
"Yes," said Moira slowly. "I thought the air too still and had Loring open a window whilst I dressed for ready for dinner. Is everything all right, Oliver?"
Oliver opened his mouth, but there was a palpable pause before he said, "I believe there is something you wished to say to me from this morning?"
He was standing in the doorway that connected her room with the duke's bedroom as he asked that question, filling its small frame with his own large one.
Once again she saw shades of her late husband in the man that her son had become. Robert had once stood in the very same place, to inform her that he would not be coming to her room that night, or indeed ever again, if she was wont to continue questioning his comings and goings with every single female he came into contact with.
She had never been able to convince Robert to act in any way he did not already desire to, and she rather doubted her persuasive abilities in respect of her son now. She needed Oliver to be honest, more honest than his father or indeed his mother ever had been.
"I wanted to speak to you," she began, resisting the urge to clutch the edge of the vanity desk behind her for support. "It's about your father."
"Father?"
She could see him freeze slightly, sense him recoil.
"Yes, your father. We've never spoken of what happened that night, Oliver, and it…occurred to me recently that I need to know. Please."
That last word contained a wealth of unutterable truths, ones that she did not dare to broach unless he made the first move. She watched his forehead crinkle, the creases an echo of the man she now asked him to remember. She saw the usual intensity of his pale blue eyes ebb away, and his voice was small when he finally replied to her query.
"It's a difficult memory for me, mother. I don't think I quite remember all of it, or if my mind even wants to."
"Did he suffer?" she asked, judging it a suitable prelude to the more pressing question about whether Robert had charged Oliver with any specific mission before he died.
Oliver looked her in the eye as he said, "No. Father's death was instant – right after the wheel of our carriage came off and we lurched to the side. He did not suffer."
He was lying.
That was indeed the official account of what had befallen the previous duke and his heir five years ago – that the axle of the Queene carriage had been faulty. Malcolm had said as much to Moira, when he had first held himself out to investigate the accident while she grieved, but the evidence Moira had quietly amassed of the carriage's remains, which presently lay in the locked chest at the foot of her bed contradicted this account heavily.
The purported accident resulted in the overturning of the Queene carriage. Its door to had been crushed, which suggested that another contraption of comparable size and weight was rammed into its side to instigate the accident, though of course no other vehicle had ever been reported found at the site of the accident.
For the past five years she had known that there had been no deaths when the Queene carriage first overturned, for the state of the debris indicated that the impact of the carriage's overturning was not large enough to crush its passengers, and it was unlikely than men in the pink of health as her husband and son had been would have perished by the mere fall of their vehicle to its side. More importantly, she had also known that Robert had been murdered, and that her son likely the unfortunate casualty of his father's sins.
Only she never thought that the extent of Robert's taint on her son's life would stretch this far, and indeed possibly further.
She did not want to give up on her son as of yet. Folding her arms across her chest, she asked for truth once again. "Did your father say anything to you before he died?"
Something that he needed his son to accomplish, perhaps?
There was a multitude of dread accumulating in her heart in the precious seconds before Oliver's reply, and she felt the weight of his regard as he studied her reaction to the words he said.
"Responsibility," said Oliver, and she tried very hard not to flinch. "Father spoke of my responsibilities, given what had just passed at Starling House before he came to fetch me… He thought I was remiss in my duties as a Queene, mother, and I have to say that he is still right, given my recent behaviour since I've returned.
"I've not been helping Thea with her first Season, and I've been fixated on my own life. Let me come with you to dinner, mother, and I'll start showing my face in society again."
It was an answer any other mother would have been ecstatic to hear, but all Moira had established was that her son lied as easily as she did, and that her son held secrets, possibility as many secrets as she did, whether one of them was a clandestine mission that Robert had entrusted him with.
The clock chimed then; she was reminded that they were long due at the Spencers', and she rushed him downstairs where Thea was waiting impatiently.
Her inquiry had not resulted in naught, she thought, as her children entered the Queene carriage and they began the short ride towards their plans for the evening. With Oliver's decision to remain close to them she could keep an eye on her son, and so discern his true purpose in returning to London.
At the first bump of the wheels on a rather uneven road Oliver appeared uncomfortable in the seat across hers, turning his head to the side to focus on the world beyond the window paneling in the door. He raised a hand to his mouth then, and the glint of his signet ring caught the soft illumination of the moon for a brief instant.
Starling, Moira thought.
It was the Starling legacy that she sought to preserve, to steer away from the perverted path that Robert had sent it down, in his demise and decay.
The hooded blue eyes meeting her own as the blindfold was ripped off her face were a cruel reminder of the tricks fate loved to play on that quintessence of dust.
Felicity stared into the face of the man she had once loved. For all her regrets about the memories that they shared, never had she thought to think of what would pass should Leander Cooper Seldon would appear before her once again, and yet there he indubitably was, from the sardonic twist of his lips to the mole to the left of his mouth.
He was leaning against a little table at the side of the room, his posture indolent, as if he had been waiting for quite some time. The flames in the fireplace by their side crackled; all the while his eyes never left hers.
It was not possible.
She did not notice whom it was that untied her, or the blood that flooded into her numbed limbs as the bonds that once restrained her were cut away. As her captors stepped away to leave the room, Cooper shifted slightly forward and she could hear the floorboard under his foot creak, which meant that he was indeed corporeal and not some demented figment of her imagination.
She opened her mouth, but "You died…" was all she could say, the dryness of her throat producing a scratchier timbre than her normal voice. "They told me..."
The corners of his mouth lifted to reveal his teeth – a grin – but she instinctually studied his eyes for the evidence of his mirth.
There was none.
Her mother had once said that those eyes had a bit of the devil in them; certainly Felicity could see no goodwill for her in the intensity of his regard now, not even the slightest sliver of joy at their reunion.
"Cooper," she breathed, reaching towards him before the waves of her doubt could crash overhead and induce her withdrawal of that hand.
He caught her fingers with his own before she could touch his face, the grip he used vise-like. It hurt her, but the pain confirmed what she needed to know. That he was alive. That he had not died for her sake like she had believed him to.
At last he spoke, and the voice she had already recognised in the hack intoned, "They also say you never forget your first love, poppet."
Poppet. The term of endearment he had used, now cast out as an epithet of disgust.
If ever any person enquired of her how she would feel upon seeing him again, after he had gone to die for her in 1809, she would have responded with guilt, with relief, with happiness, not the shock and confusion that were washing over her person at present.
"Wh-How…" she began, her mind reeling in her attempt to understand how it was he could be alive and standing before her now in the place of her abductor.
The sound of a throat being cleared interrupted her, and at the door behind them stood the man that had taken her from Starling House, dressed in an evening coat of dark blue, and bearing a handsome cane made of mahogany she recognised from her time at his house in Cambridgeshire.
"How kind of you to join us at last, Felicity," Slade said in his distinctive rasp, sauntering into the room as he perused the scene with bemusement.
He had worn the same expression then, when he snatched Oliver's papers out of her hands last night and threatened to burn them had she not walked out of the house with him at that very instant.
Presently Slade tucked his cane under his arm as he came to a stop before her. "Did you enjoy your journey?"
With a cry, Felicity twisted her body round to stand between the men, even though her right hand was caught in Cooper's. "Stay away! Cooper, you have to leave at once – Slade Wilson is not to be trusted!"
A moment of silence rang in the air at the close of her impassioned plea, and the alarm she had first felt when Slade entered the room dissolved into horror as Slade's single eye flashed with wicked humour.
From behind her, her hand was twisted up against her back, and sharp pain ran up her arm. She had not even the presence of mind to react, so great was the consternation that she felt as every finger of Cooper's free hand closed hard over her shoulder.
His breath brushed her ear as he intoned, "Now, now, poppet. It's very uncharacteristic of you to speak poorly of others. Particularly when they are my friends."
This chapter took a lot of rewrites, because I've been experiencing difficulties with the arrangement of my plot points and ensuring that things flow. When I first drafted this chapter it actually included a Laurel point of view (excluded for tonal reasons) and picked up the Stellmoor thread where we left of. Obviously this did not pander out but I feel happy about giving Moira's thread a better end before I turn my attention to something else.
I had a lot of fun dressing the women for this. It should be noted that I intended Thea to wear a string of coral beads round her neck when Oliver first runs into her; it has been omitted because I reckoned he wouldn't actually notice these things unless it's Felicity wearing the necklace.
A question I think everyone will be asking is why Moira arranged for the housemaid to be killed, if the chest only contains rusty carriage remains. Or does it? When I planned this I didn't expect as many people to (1) think that it was Felicity whom she arranged to have killed, (2) react with such shock. Moira's a very morally grey character and I think I envisioned her interpretation of this course of action as necessary. Blackmail would have been a more logical first course of action, though blackmail is only as good as the amount of information you possess. Moira could have threatened the housemaid, but I was a bit lazy about giving her a backstory (sorry) to create blackmail material, didn't want to detract from the subplot, and I guess I can spoiler you all now and tell you that the maid isn't dead at this point of the story. Moira and Malcolm were first shown not to be buddy-buddy with each other and there is good reason for it - they do not trust the other, though they happily work together when necessary. What makes them fascinating to write is the way they wield the defence of necessity for their misdeeds.
'Poppet' became a thing because I thought 'babe' was a bit too modern. Did anyone guess that Slade was bluffing when he came to Starling House to see Oliver? I threw in a Hamlet reference in this chapter, and I spent a good hour of my life trying to find a quote from The Tempest to fit into the chapter, to no avail, mostly because I took out a section that I didn't think fit into this chapter. In any case, because I don't throw away drafts (the document where I keep all these extracts stretches 82 pages as of today) I may get to indulge in more Shakespeare! The next chapter will probably be out before Christmas (I'm going on holiday for 2 weeks in December, which is when I can get a lot of writing done because I'm not supposed to work when on holiday and I get very inspired when I travel), so I hope you enjoyed this and that you have a lovely November! :)
