I say nothing, cannot remember a time when Aidan behaved differently, but then I suppose men do not behave the same with each other as they do with women.
‘We didn’t say much, then, but I made a point of running into her the next morning.’ He lowers his voice. ‘I delayed our departure by five days, ruined the schedule but it was worth it.’
‘Aidan can’t possibly know?’
‘Oh, no. Even when he was a friend, even then he’d not have approved of me courting his sister.’ He shakes his head ruefully. ‘You remember? When he wasn’t as he is now?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I say honestly. ‘My family… the O’Malleys are the source, the core, and all those offshoots like the Fitzpatricks… aren’t proper O’Malleys, do you understand?’ The look he gives me says not. ‘They’re lesser for all they’ve got more money than us. It’s the name, you see, the name that carries value and no one’s ever thought twice about making the non-O’Malleys feel bad about their lack.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s stupid, I know, and it’s caused a lot of resentment. What I’m trying to say is that we’re not close.’
‘But didn’t you see him and Brigid growing up?’
I shake my head again. ‘Very little. Or rather Brigid for a while but… my grandmother didn’t like that.’ I purse my lips, think about Aoife destroying my only friendship. ‘My grandparents kept me very isolated. Tried to make sure I was… untainted.’
‘And how did that work?’
I think of the green-eyed footman. ‘Rather less well than expected.’
He laughs and I continue, ‘Aidan never paid me any mind until my grandfather died... after that Aidan and my grandmother made a deal. Oh.’ It strikes me for the first time that perhaps Óisín’s death was all they were waiting for. Perhaps that was what he and Aoife argued about in his last days, when I could hear the shouting falling down the tower like water, but couldn’t make out the words. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been telling me that the marriage was for everyone’s good because he was the one preventing it from happening... ‘Oh.’
Ellingham doesn’t notice my distraction, talks on. ‘Aidan was always ambitious but for a long while he was fun, and a good man to have on your side. He didn’t walk over everyone and anyone to get what he wanted.’
‘Then what happened?’ The idea of an Aidan who could gain friendship let alone loyalty without paying for it strikes me as ludicrous. But as I’ve just told Ellingham, I didn’t know Aidan much at all before all of this, so I should listen and learn.
‘The first time I noticed the change was a couple of years ago when we returned to Breakwater to perform, he came to the theatre as he always did, but he wasn’t so friendly. It wasn’t like being greeted by an old comrade, but like he thought he was better than me. He spoke sharply to his sister and I could see she didn’t like it either, wasn’t used to it. When I asked Brigid later what had happened, she said he’d made a large investment and it wasn’t doing well. He was stressed, she said.’
‘Then?’
‘The next year we returned, and Brigid was no happier. She said his financial crisis had passed, but only because he’d taken a loan and as far as she could tell it was costing him more than he could afford. Brigid had asked to go away, to a finishing school somewhere like Lodellan.’ He licks his lips. ‘He told her she wasn’t going anywhere beyond his reach. She was as much a currency as anyone else in this world, and she’d be married off when he could make best advantage of it.’
‘Did he take the loan from Bethany Lawrence?’ I think of the blonde woman at the theatre, the way she looked across at me. At Aidan.
‘Brigid didn’t know for sure, but that was her guess. That the woman offered him a bargain and he’s been beholden to her ever since.’ He shrugs. ‘It changed Brigid’s life, not for the better, and she says she lost her brother though he still walks the house, eats meals with her, speaks with her.’
‘I wonder what the deal was?’ I look at him curiously.
He laughs. ‘How would I know? You’re his family. I only remember that he no longer wanted to meet for a drink at the taverns when I arrived. Brigid and I got much sneakier then for neither of us wanted to consider what he might do if he found us together, friendship and family be damned.’
‘And she won’t run away with you?’
‘No, whether because she can’t bear the idea of the life of a lowly travelling player or because Aidan would surely hunt her down, I cannot say.’ He pauses. ‘I don’t think I want to find out.’
‘It’s because he’d hunt you down, Mr Ellingham, trust me.’ It’s important to me that he know the truth, that he doesn’t think the worst of Brigid. I’m unaccountably sad for both of them. Ellingham’s not finished, though.
‘All I know is that since Bethany Lawrence took over Breakwater, Aidan’s coffers are overflowing. Woman’s got her knife at the throat of the city, no commerce comes in or goes out that she doesn’t get a cut of… and she sends her minions into the world to make sure she cuts a cut of whatever dark business goes on there too.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Ah, you know what happens when no one owns the truth: rumour swirls up like poisonous fog. Some say she’s from Lodellan, the cathedral city. That her family was a good one, but there was some scandal with her sister. They say the woman burned to death on a prison hulk in Roseberry Bay. A family destroyed, a fortune lost, a
