A Flaw in the Blood

Fitzgerald rose from his chair by the fire.

“If you mean Miss Armistead—”

“I don't care what her name is! The insult, to Mama! Parading your mistress at Shurland with brazen disregard for everyone in the household—” Theo wheeled. “Do you know what they're saying in the servants' hall? Did you never stop to think how we might feel ? No! You simply suited yourself, with your usual appalling—”

“Theo.” Fitzgerald set down the roll of charts he'd been scanning. “Lower your voice, for the love of Mary. Miss Armistead is not my mistress. She's in the way of being my ward.”

“Your—”

“Ward. Placed in my care on her guardian's deathbed.”

Theo barked with laughter. “I don't believe it. She's thirty if she's a day!”

Fitzgerald paced toward him in a sudden gust of anger. “She is six-and-twenty, look you, and I'll not have her insulted.”

“Tell me another story, Father,” the boy said mockingly. “You always contrive so delightfully. But I suppose I should not be shocked. You've kept your light-skirts for years, haven't you? How else could Mama have come to the state she's in?”

Fitzgerald stopped dead. “What in the bloody hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean you gave her the pox that's ruined her life.”

“Did she say that?”

“She doesn't have to,” the boy retorted. “Do you think we're all stupid? All blind? How you have the gall to come here— Uncle Charles would take down his gun, did he know of it, and run you off the place—”

Fitzgerald shook him savagely; Theo's teeth rattled together. “How old are you, boy?”

“Se-seventeen,” he stuttered, pale but defiant. “Eighteen next summer. Old enough to—”

“—Blister your parent with bitterness?” Fitzgerald released him. “Then you're old enough to know the truth. You've been sheltered too long.”

“I. Sheltered.” Theo's lip curled in contempt. “Have you no idea how boys rag each other at school, Father? Of course not. You've never been near Harrow. You can't imagine the vicious things people say. I'm the half-bred whelp of an Irish bastard—didn't you know? Never mind that my grandfather's an earl; I'm the mongrel with a wild Celt's blood in his veins.”

“Very well,” Fitzgerald said furiously. “If you want brutal, I'll give it to you. Your mother got syphilis from a stranger when you were a bit child, Theo. That's why you were packed off to Harrow at seven. Because she was bound for Paris, and her first trial of mercury. We thought it might kill her.”

“Your fault!”

“No. I've been spared her curse, God help me. I do not carry the disease, Theo. I shan't tell you how your mother contracted it; that's her story, the only one she has left. Perhaps she'll spin it for you one day.”

“She's long past making sense,” the boy spat out. “Which means you can tear her reputation to shreds, without the slightest possibility of argument. You vile, unfeeling blackguard— If I weren't your son—”

“What?” Fitzgerald reached for a decanter of brandy, poured himself a glass. His mouth was filled with bile and his stomach churning; for all he loved Theo body and soul, their meetings always ended like this. Dust and ashes and the two of them screaming at each other. “You'd put a bullet through my heart, like the noble lad you are? Watch the cur die and avenge your Mama? Don't be a fool.”

He tossed down the brandy in one gulp, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“Talk to a doctor, Theo. Read a medical book, while you're idling away at university. You're safe from her illness—she was free of it when she had you—but you need to know what's coming. Maude looks to be in the last throes of the disease and I don't think her frame could stand another treatment. You'll have to cope with her dying in a very few weeks more.”

There was an ugly silence. The rage had fled Theo's face, to be replaced by uncertainty; he looked suddenly too young for Oxford. As indeed he was. Theo had always rushed his fences.

“Madame duFief—” he said.

“Is paid to look after your Ma, but she's not a nurse. Get Thornton from London when Maude starts to rave. He's helped her in the past.”

“You won't be here.” Theo's hands balled into fists. “You'd desert her at the end?”

Fitzgerald sank down wearily by the fire, and put his head in his hands. Theo. She had named him for faith, after all, at a time when they both still had some; and the boy would be loyal to his mother to the death. He had to believe in something. It had never been his father.

“When do we get the newspapers?” Fitzgerald asked.

“Coultrip fetches them from Sheerness—they're sent across on the ferry. Why?”

“You'll know already of the Consort's death?”

“Of course.”

“I'm forced to leave England on a matter of business,” he said slowly. “No telling when I'll get back.”

“And your ward goes with you?” Theo taunted, his contempt on his face. “Where are you bound, Father—for Paris?”

“That's why I spoke of your Ma as I did,” Fitzgerald persisted. “You'll need help.”

“I shan't attempt to reach you, if I have news,” Theo said curtly. “I'm done with you. For good.”

Fitzgerald started out of his chair. “Hate me or no, Theo, I'm your father forever, lad. When Maude goes —”

“I'll have no reason to see you, ever again. Uncle Charles is naming me heir to the earldom—all he's turned out is girls—and as far as I'm concerned, you've nothing to do with my world.”

Fitzgerald grinned derisively. “You'd need an Act of Parliament to follow Monteith, lad. You're descended on the distaff side.”

“Uncle will get one,” Theo retorted, his lips white with anger. “He's already had me change my name.”

“You're to be a Hastings?”

“Fitzgerald-Hastings,” Theo corrected self-consciously. “Mama insisted.”

“I shall have to thank her for that,” Fitzgerald said bitterly.

“Don't,” Theo tossed over his shoulder. “Don't go near Mama. Just leave Shurland. We've never wanted you here.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

. . . hope this letter finds you improved in health and spirits, relative to when I saw you last. You will know by now, my dear Septimus, that our chambers were exceedingly disordered by the rogues who saw fit to strike you down. I suspect that I was the unwitting cause of both the disorder and the attack upon your person, viz., that it was me they meant to strike—the violence due to my refusal, while at Windsor on the night of the fourteenth last, to sign a forced confession of willful deceit in the ancient and near- forgot matter of Edward Oxford. . . .

Fitzgerald frowned, and set down his pen.

He had no idea whether Septimus Taylor had regained consciousness—or ever would. His words, like prayer, traveled straight into a void.

. . . Miss Armistead being encompassed in my troubles, I thought it best to quit London before further violence was done . . .