Page 70 of Scandal’s Daughter

Chapter 28

“Wherein madness is inevitable.”

As Sebastian headed up the steps of the house in Grosvenor Square, his harassed looking footman, powdered wig askew, emerged from the front doors. Forcing on his hat as he closed the doors and shrugging into his coat as he ran, he was clearly on some errand of urgency. His face cleared in an almost comical manner as it landed on his Master.

“Oh, your grace!” he said, with such obvious relief that Sebastian was struck with an immediate sense of foreboding.

His staff never exclaimed nor expressed curiosity or any emotion unbecoming in a member of his household. So, the footman’s lack of propriety could only mean something of a very grave nature had occurred. “I was just on my way to find you.”

“What is it, Benson?” he demanded, ushering the shaken looking fellow back inside the house before anything could be made of it by anyone else.

Once the door had closed Benson seemed to remember his position and straightened himself.

“It is the dowager duchess, your grace. But I assure you we had no idea she would ever ... I mean to say, your grace ... As you know it is her habit to stay in her rooms until noon so the staff, none of us expected ... that is to say ...”

“Say what? Are you half-witted man? I never heard anyone say so much and tell me so little!” he exploded, fearing the worst.

His fears seemed to be confirmed by the grave look in his servant’s eyes.

“We were unaware that her Ladyship meant to visit the breakfast parlour, your grace. If we had known, we would of course have taken pains to have removed ...”

“She saw the morning papers,” Sebastian supplied for him with a grim expression.

The footman nodded, his face one of terrified pallor. “I-I must take full responsibility, your grace. I should have ...”

“Nonsense,” Sebastian replied. “I may be exacting, Benson, but I don’t believe I have ever demanded my staff to have second sight.”

The relief of the man in front of him was palpable and marked.

“Thank you, your grace,” the man replied, with deep sincerity.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sebastian said his face grim as he put his coat and hat into the care of the second footman. “It means you’re still a member of this household and in a situation which may yet be our undoing. How is my mother now?”

Benson blanched a little as a crash of china came from above stairs.

“Never mind,” Sebastian said, his heart sinking to his boots where he had no doubt it was likely to remain for the rest of the day at least. He began to run upstairs, calling back to Benson. “And call Doctor Alperton. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

He had just reached the top when there was a scream and Lady Rush, his mother’s companion, flew through the doors as though pursued by the devil. She ran helter-skelter down the corridor to her own rooms, wailing hysterically all the while as Sebastian cursed and ran to his mother’s door.

She was pacing and muttering, her long grey hair loose and dishevelled about her shoulders, her black bombazine skirts crumpled. Seeing him enter the room, her febrile gaze turned to one of fury and she ran for the mantelpiece and snatched up a Staffordshire china dog, one of a pair that had been in his family for generations.

Not for much longer though as she lanced it with considerable force for a woman of her meagre frame. With surprising accuracy too, as Sebastian was forced to duck as the vacant-faced canine missed his head by a hair’s breadth and exploded against the wall.

“Devil!” she screamed, running to snatch up its china companion and throw it in the same manner. “How dare you!” The china dog shattered at his feet this time as she looked for another missile. “How dare you come from your whore to me? You’d ruin us for that red-haired witch, that slut ...”

To his astonishment she gave up her search for a weapon and flew at him instead, scratching at his face, trying to claw at his eyes as he was forced to hold her off.

“Mother!” he shouted. “Stop this!”

“Wicked, wicked man ... oh, Sindalton, Sindalton, how can you ... with that evil ... evil creature! Do you not care for your own son?”

With growing horror Sebastian realised that it wasn’t him she was seeing but his dead father all those years before. She subsided as he held her wrists in his strong grip and she crumpled to the floor. Sobbing and raving, she cursed his red-headed whore with vicious and crude words he had never believed his mother even knew.

By the time Doctor Alperton was shown into his study some hours later, Sebastian had managed to find a measure of tolerable calm.

His mother’s behaviour had become increasingly erratic and volatile as the years passed, but this had truly shocked him. By now though, he was composed enough to face the man who had delivered him into this world and knew as much of their family scandal as there was to know.

A short and rather portly man with a terrible and frivolous taste in waistcoats for a doctor, Sebastian had always thought him a rather frippery fellow. But he was always very solicitous and if Sebastian felt he rather indulged his mother’s fits of anxiety, he was grateful beyond measure for his discretion and the quiet dignity with which he now spoke.