Open Writing

Beth watched him silently. She loved him dearly, always had since she had rubbed her snotty nose against his sleeve, and she would not settle for the friendship of a brother when she wanted the love of a man.

Unless their relationship changed, she would leave Burke's Music Hall before her popularity waned and her ambition was blunted. After Christmas, she would make serious plans. If her hopes regarding Robert remained unrealistic, she would go to London.

Robert Dyce, you are a handsome man, she thought, but your honour makes you blind and is likely to break my heart. She smiled to herself, for she could clearly see the similarities between him and his brother. They came from the same tree but had been carved and fashioned differently, one rough hewn and the other smooth.

Their upbringings must have been difficult. It was not hard to understand reasons for resentment on both sides. Harry said he had whipped his brother because he had wanted Robert to feel pain. A strange reason, unless he had himself felt pain at spending most of his childhood apart from his father and his home.

Perhaps both men would prove to be honourable in their own way. Perhaps Robert would put the past behind him and realise she could be his future.

*

That night, Harry Simms sat in his father's study at Musgrave Hall and completed writing the letters he would send to Helston to be posted the next day. Rain splattered against the windows outside, but he was warm from the heat of the banked fire, a glass of brandy and the knowledge that he was making progress in plotting the downfall of Robert Dyce.

After his meeting with the delightful and sympathetic Jenny at the music hall, he had spent the night at a hotel in Bradfield and the next day had made enquiries at the inn which Cosmo Pinkerton used as his town residence. He had ensured his enquiries would remain discreet by paying handsomely and had learned that the small American had sent letters to, and received letters from, Chicago and South Carolina in the United States.

Such exotic locations had wet the interest of the chambermaid and waitress, the pot boy, the cellarman, the landlord, his wife, the groom and the stable hands, to such an extent that they had discovered that the letters Cosmo had sent to Chicago had been to the Pinkerton Detective Agency, whilst in South Carolina, he had corresponded with a gentleman of the name of Tyler. They even had an address for Mr Tyler upon a discarded piece of paper.

Harry had counted his money well spent and his own letters, in whose composition he had taken great time and care, were addressed to the Pinkerton Agency, Mr Tyler, and the mayors of Stockton, Red Dog and Skunk Gulch in California.

Each was an individual work of fine duplicity with which he hoped to procure information about the time Robert Dyce had spent in the United States of America. He had hopes, particularly as a detective agency was involved, of finding sufficient leverage to either have Dyce arrested and returned to America to answer unspecified charges, despatched to Australia in a convict ship, or driven from the valley and from England.
Fortuitous circumstance was on the horizon. He felt it in his water. And he was ready to take full advantage.

*

His brother sat astride a horse on a hillside within sight of the hall in the dark and rain. He didn't feel the cold or the discomfort of his wet clothes. Light from lamps lit windows and he guessed at the rooms within and their occupants. A flicker of illumination that passed two ground floor windows was probably that of a candle carried by a maid.

Robert stared at a sliver of light upstairs where a curtain had not been closed properly and he imagined Jane inside, perhaps reading a book, perhaps at prayer for the soul of her brother. A window on the ground floor spilled strong light and he knew that was the Colonel's study. Harry was working late. Working out how to squander his wife's property?

Almost five years before, Robert had left the valley. He had grown from boy to youth to man during four lonely years in a strange country. He had been told in a letter, that was three months late in its delivery, of his mother's death.

Four years of loneliness, with the hogs of Idaho, the miners of the rush, the savages of the frontier, the cut-throats of New Orleans and the whores of a dozen towns throughout the west and the south.
He had needed a dream and he had chosen Jane. Not as a real person, but as the golden-haired creature he had known in the land of childhood. He recognised now that it was time to let it go.
The decision released other memories and he found himself smiling at how Beth contrived to rub her runny nose against his sleeve. His smile widened as he remembered her smug expression of satisfaction at having completed the mission.

He recalled the sweetness of her voice as she sang the morning he awoke in her bed and he remembered her grin, that was both worldly and childlike, that made him want to grin in response and hold her safe in his arms from the cruelties of life. His heart lifted in surprise for he realised that, as his love for Jane had changed, so had his love for Beth.

The wind howled down the valley from Lumb Top and rain gusted against him like pellets from a shotgun and the smile faded. The hall remained and so did Harry Simms.

Robert turned the horse and allowed it to make its own way towards the turnpike and the ride to Thonglea House. There was little to choose, he reflected, between a rainswept hill and the empty rooms of his new home.

**
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