The Dark Enquiry by Deanna Raybourn

clothes. Of course, he also managed perfectly well by himself without a valet when necessity demanded it. On our honeymoon, he had availed himself of hotel valets and shipboard stewards to see to his clothes, but I had seen him just as impeccably turned out whilst camping at an archaeological site in Turkey or pursuing a murderer in the Himalayas as in any London ballroom.
    Aquinas went on. “Furthermore, Mr. Brisbane and I discussed the matter this morning, and I suggested a pair of footmen for messages and carrying packages, with the notion that one or both could serve as valets as needed.”
    “And he was amenable?” I asked.
    Aquinas whisked away invisible crumbs from the tablecloth. “Not at first. He pointed out that he is accustomed to living rather more simply, and did not immediately grasp all of the advantages to keeping a pair of footmen on staff.”
    “Advantages?”
    Aquinas took up the empty pan of eggs and retreated as far as the door, giving me a smile that was almost, but not entirely, correct. “As it is the custom for fashionable ladies of rank to take a footman with them upon leaving the house, I pointed out to Mr. Brisbane that it would be far easier to ensure your ladyship’s safety with a footman in attendance at all times.”
    I gave a squawk of protest. “Aquinas, tell me you did not!”
    He straightened himself to his full—if diminutive—height. “I do not think that my lady fully comprehends the depth of regard in which she is held by every member of this establishment,” he said firmly. “Her safety and comfort are our highest duty.”
    With that, he took his leave, and I could not scold him. I knew Aquinas was deeply affected whenever he resorted to addressing me in the third person. Besides, I mused as I crunched into a piece of toast, it was rather better to have one’s husband and staff devoted to one’s safety than the opposite, but I could not like the feeling that I was being slowly bound up in chains. Velvet chains, but chains to be sure.
     
     
    After a hasty breakfast, I summoned Morag and the town coach and made my way to the house of my dear friend, Hortense de Bellefleur, in the pretty little neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood. Her elderly maid, Terese, admitted me and carried Morag off to the kitchens for a good gossip. Hortense—Fleur to her friends—rose and greeted me with alacrity.
    “Julia!” she cried, her lilting French accent rendering my name something lovelier than it usually sounded in English. “How happy I am to see you.”
    I went to her and kissed her cheeks, feeling suddenly ashamed of myself. I had not seen her in such an intimate setting in far too long. Our friendship had been a prickly one. I had come to terms with the fact that she had once, many years ago, been Brisbane’s mistress, and I knew their friendship was nothing more than a deep affection on both sides. She was almost twenty years his elder, and the attraction had been easy enough to understand. She had been a glamorous widow, a lady of the world, both exciting and kindly for a very youthful Brisbane. She had cared for him when his migraines bedevilled him, and she was one of the few, the very few, who knew the story of where he had come from and how he had made his way in the world.
    No, I had learned to look past her affaire with my husband in his youth. It was her liaison with my father that had raised my hackles. They had met when I was convalescing at my father’s house after nearly losing my life at the conclusion of the investigation into my husband’s murder. To my astonishment, they had struck up an immediate friendship, and then something more. By the time I had returned from a six-month sojourn in Italy, she had become his paramour. The relationship was a terribly discreet one, but the family were still scandalised. Fleur had made her way in life as little better than a courtesan, taking up with men of power and influence and wealth. Some of them she had married, some