Declan spread his hands on the dirty sheets, looking at them as if he’d never seen them before. “Somedays, it all seems so pointless. Getting out of bed, even.” He looked up. “Do you think it’s this way for everyone?”
Was it? Gareth opened the door in his mind where he kept the things he didn’t want to think about. The woman was the first of those things to sneak out, flooding his mind with the sight, scent, and feel of her. Was she restless and miserable and only part of a person? He didn’t think so, although he had often sensed that something dark lurked beneath her laughing eyes and light-hearted ways. But what did he know? When had he ever applied himself to the emotions of others and how to read them? Or to his own emotions, for that matter.
“I don’t know,” Gareth admitted. “But I do know I don’t want to live that way—hating my life so badly I will hasten its ending—not if I can help it.” His words didn’t surprise him, even though he’d never thought them so clearly before.
“Gare?”
Gareth looked up.
“About the woman—”
“Never mind about that.”
“No. I want to say I’m sorry. I never should have said the things I did. I was wrong.”
As clear as painting in a museum Gareth saw Serena kissing her lover, as he’d done countless times since. He shook his head and looked away. “You weren’t wrong about her, Dec. About her, you were dead on.”
Chapter Eighteen
Serena wished, not for the first time, that she was in Gareth’s sumptuous carriage rather than the mail coach. But using his coach all the way to Dover would have been outrageous, even for a person who was still very angry with Mr. Gareth Lockheart.
But she had used his carriage as far as Sittingbourne; she’d had no other choice. She’d told Jessup she would arrange a post chaise for the return trip, even though that would eat up a chunk of her wages. The mail coach had cost her a half guinea each way, which was—to her way of thinking—highway robbery, especially as they’d already had to get out once to walk over a wretched section of road because the coach couldn’t get over it.
When she’d purchased her fare and inquired as to the schedule the innkeeper at the posting inn had boasted the coach would make the trip in five hours, his eyes dismissing her as unworthy to travel on it in any case, being a woman on her own.
But Serena had not been able to take Nounou and leave Oliver unprotected. Already it had been difficult to leave him. More than once she imagined Etienne arriving at Rushton Park, either to check on her progress in Dover, or to squeeze more money out of her. Travelling alone was a risk but she could not afford twice the fare and Nounou would have slowed her down.
The coach left Sittingbourne at seven o’clock, which meant she would need to pay for lodgings in Dover, if there was any respectable place that would take her.
As it turned out, after two hours stuck in a ditch and another hour to fix a problem with a wheel, they didn’t arrive at the Dover posting inn until after three in the morning. Serena was bone-tired, every muscle and nerve abraded and jostled from eight hours either crammed cheek-by-jowl or clambering over ragged and steep terrain.
On top of her physical exhaustion, her anxiety over Etienne’s incessant demands, Gareth’s inexplicable behavior, and the prospect of confronting a group of English smugglers, had all combined and taken its toll.
The inn was accustomed to odd comings and goings and the preparations were already being made for the outgoing coach, which departed Dover at four every morning—a delightful trip Serena hoped to be making tomorrow morning.
For once, she’d not brought the full contents of her satchel. She’d left her marriage lines and the precious miniature tucked beneath the tools in her big wooden toolbox, which she kept locked in the tack room. She’d brought her sketchbook, in which there were dozens of pictures of Oliver, and, of course, all but one of those she’d drawn of Gareth. Jessup had advanced her money from his housekeeping money on the bank draft, which she’d had no time or opportunity to take to a bank. As a result, she carried only so much as she’d estimated she would need for this journey.
She ordered a hearty breakfast and ate in the common room, which was bustling with passengers showing up to claim a spot on the next coach. The inn was far too busy for anyone to pay her much mind and she ordered a second pot of tea after finishing the first one.
The light was breaking over the cramped streets of Dover when she paid her shot and headed for the establishment where she might find the men she needed to talk to.
“Smuggling isn’t their only lay,” Etienne had told her. “You’ll find two of them down by the docks, where they make a decent show of running a string of crab pots. The third is a cobbler with a shop off the Marine Parade.”
Serena decided to try the cobbler first. After all, a cobbler would have to keep regular hours. The other two might be out on the water for days plying their pots or nets.
Serena learned from a shockingly youthful postilion that the distance from Snargate Street to the cobbler’s shop was only a few minutes’ walk. People were moving around and already the fish sellers were setting up stalls when she reached the harbor. She was rather stunned to realize the cobbler was situated within shouting distance of the customs house. Wasn’t that odd for a smuggler?
Serena did not like the look of the shop, which was dark-fronted and mean, its single window crowded with old shoes and a faded wooden sign. A dim light glimmered beyond the filthy, fly-specked glass, indicating it was probably open for business.
She entered to find a narrow room with a man at the far end. He appeared to be her age and looked up from a boot he was mending. “Aye?”
“I’m looking for Derby.”
“Are ye?” He turned his attention back to the boot, filing something with a short rasp. “And who might choo bey?”
“Etienne Bardot sent me.”
The dull rasping sound stopped. “Da!” he called out loudly enough to be heard at the customs house across the way. He resumed his filing.
The blanket shifted behind him and a hunched, older man came out. The two consulted with each other in low voices, eying her with hard looks. Just when she was beginning to wonder if she should leave and try one of the others on her list, the older man waved to her.
“Come on beck.” He disappeared behind the curtain.
Serena swallowed; he wanted her to follow him in there?
The cobbler kept working on his boot, not paying her any mind. She did not want to go through a door covered with a blanket in a cobbler’s shop that smelled of mildew and boot blacking, but what else had she expected?
She picked her way past piles of ragged footwear and gave the young man a wide berth. On the other side of the blanket was a cramped living space smelling strongly of cabbage and unwashed bodies. It was everything in one room—kitchen, scarred table covered with dirty crockery, two cots with twisted lumps of blankets, and a small coal fire that barely cut the damp.
The old man was already seated in one of the room’s two chairs and motioned toward the other one.
“Bardot sint ye?”
It took her a moment to decipher his words, spoken with a Kentish accent that was even stronger than those around Rushton Park.
“Yes. I’ve come to warn you to abort your plans for the next shipment. You might know Mr. Bardot’s last shipment was intercepted?” He continued to stare. “I believe two men died and one is in jail.”
The old man smoked his pipe and regarded her through the smoke. His face like a mask of cured leather.
“And Bardot sint ye?”
Serena wondered if he’d even heard what she had just said.
She spoke more distinctly this time. “I am here to make sure none of you get caught by the excisemen. It is possible they might know of the shipment from the man they are holding.”
He sucked the stem of his pipe.
Serena sighed and stood. “That is all I came t
o say. I wish you will tell your associates. I hope I have spared you some trouble.”
She turned and walked back through the curtain. The young cobbler had gone, and a tattered yellow shade had been pulled down over the window. When Serena tried the door, she found it was locked. She pulled again, harder, thinking she must not have turned it the right way or pulled hard enough.
The scuffing sound of a boot on grit came from behind her, right before a bright light exploded, accompanied by a sharp pain and the sound of her own voice.
“What—” She wanted to say more, but that was all that came out.
The last thing Serena thought as she slid to the floor was that she should have told Gareth she loved him.
Chapter Nineteen
Gareth quickly realized he couldn’t simply pack up Dec and leave. The man had been abusing himself for weeks. He was half-starved, weak, and had developed a terrible thirst for spirits. Without discussing the matter outright, the Irishman had tacitly agreed to the removal of anything stronger than the inn’s homebrew.
The first night had been bad, but the next two had been even worse. By the fourth night Declan was able to sleep most of the night, even if Gareth was not.
The dream came to him almost immediately when he laid his head on a pillow. It had been years since he’d been tormented by it night after night. He’d been grateful that his yelling, which had woken him on two occasions, could not possibly be heard beyond the empty rooms that surrounded him. And on his other side was Declan’s suite, and his friend was in no condition to hear anything beyond his own agony.
They spent most days playing cards, dozing, or reading. Only in brief catnaps did he find any sleep and rest. When he couldn’t sleep, he worked the problems in the journal he’d brought with him. As Dec began to feel better, he spent most of the afternoon reading a cherished novel loaned to him by the innkeeper’s wife.
By the fifth day without drink and with regular meals Declan was looking pink-faced and almost healthy. This morning the man who Gareth had engaged as a temporary valet had assisted the Irishman with a bath, a shave, and had given him an acceptable haircut.
He was dressed in a clean nightshirt and banyan, lounging in a chair beside the window, reading the wretched novel, Emma. He was enjoying the book immensely and had already interrupted Gareth a dozen times to read choice lines.
“Here, now, Gare—listen to this one: Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.” He laughed and slapped his thigh.
Gareth gritted his teeth and stared at the nearly blank page in front of him. While he was grateful for the book’s capacity to entertain his friend and keep his mind off more destructive thoughts, he’d developed an abiding hatred for the relentlessly interfering Emma Woodhouse, her hen-witted friend who fell in and out of love more often than most people changed their stockings, and the fawning Mr. Elton, whose unrelenting obsequiousness only reaffirmed every suspicion Gareth had ever held about vicars and clergy.
Now that his friend appeared to have regained some of his health and good spirits Gareth no longer felt consumed by worrying over him every minute. Instead, he now had plenty of time to worry about his other concerns. While Declan slept and convalesced, Gareth increasingly thought of reasons why it was imperative he go back to Rushton Park. He told himself he didn’t need any excuse—it was his house—but he hated to think how foolish he would look haring back after the letter he’d left her.
Remembering the letter made him grimace, although he reassured himself that he’d said nothing cruel or cutting in it. He tried to picture her kissing Bardot and generate some anger to excuse his cold missive. But he’d found the jarring mental image had dimmed the longer he’d been away. It had been replaced by more pleasurable images—the memory of her body sheathed by her wet, translucent chemise, or her arms above her head, her body vulnerable to his ravaging hands and mouth.
He closed his eyes in disgust when he realized he was, yet again, as hard as a pikestaff.
“Here, then, Gare. Isn’t that one of your grooms?”
Gareth looked up. “What?”
Declan was leaning over and looking out the window, which overlooked the back of the inn.
“Yes, I swear that is the fellow called Timkins. And that looks like one of your new horses—the one the boy named Lightning.”
Gareth came from behind the desk to look out the window. Yes, it was Timkins, and he was talking to the innkeeper and following him inside. What the devil?
There was a knock on the door a few minutes later.
Timkins and the innkeeper stood in the hall.
“Ah, Mr. Lockheart. This gentleman says he has a message for you. I thought I would accompany him and make sure it was—”
“Yes, he is my employee. Thank you, Mr.Trencher, come inside, Timkins.”
Gareth closed the door on the innkeeper before he could recommence talking and turned to the young groom. “What is it?”
“Mr. Jessup sent me, sir.” Timkins, familiar with his master’s preference for brevity, handed Gareth a thick envelope.
He looked at his grit-covered servant and realized he must have started out quite early to have arrived here before noon. “Go see to your needs. I have engaged every room on this floor and those above, take one of them for yourself.”
Timkins nodded and left without a word.
Gareth realized Declan had risen from his comfortable chair and was staring at the letter in his hand.
He opened it and found two separate sheets of paper. The first bore Jessup’s elegant script:
“Mr. Lockheart:
This letter was found at first light by one of the servants, wedged between the main doors (the letter bore today’s date) and addressed to you. You will notice the word “urgent” written on the face of the message and your name. Given the nature of its unusual mode of delivery I thought it worthwhile to send Timkins with it first thing. I would have consulted with Mrs. Lombard, but she has made an unexpected journey to assist a sick friend in Dover.”
Respectfully,
M.J. Jessup”
Gareth’s eyes snagged on the last sentence, which was glaringly un-Jessuplike. Why would he have consulted Mrs. Lombard about such a matter? The answer to that was simple: he would not have. Jessup did not speak of Gareth’s business to anyone. He was a paragon of discretion. If he added this sentence, it was to indicate—in his inscrutable way—that something was not right.
Gareth looked up and met Declan’s impatient stare. He handed him the letter and opened the second, smaller, envelope.
“To Mr. Garth Lockhart, he that is a sucksessful man of bisness. We have some one who is nown to You and are keeping her safe now, but cant promise she will keep being safe. If You are wanting to make shur of her good helth You will come with no heel dragging and bring £2000 as reward four owr hard work. Come only with Your Self to the Ship Hotel in Dover and tell the hed-drawer you want to by a grey horse. We will wait only until the new moon.”
Gareth read the letter three times, but it still made no sense. The new moon was four days hence. He had four days. He looked up to find Declan holding the letter with a perplexed look on his face. His eyes drifted to the one in Gareth’s hand. “Well?”
Gareth re-folded the letter. “I’m afraid it is a matter of some urgency. Mrs. Lombard’s Italian marble has become mired in customs in Dover.”
Declan’s expression was comical. “Marble? All this about some rock?” Amazement vied with skepticism.
Gareth would have to tread carefully—yet another thing he was not good at—if he was to keep his friend out of this. “You are not a sculptor, nor am I. It seems, however, this is rather singular marble she has been waiting for. She’s gone to Dover to try and sort out the problem, but they are proving. . . resistant. I will need to go and assist her.”
“And what can you do?”
“They want to see the original paperwork. You k
now how these excisemen have become. Recall that trouble we had with the part we needed for the mill in Manchester?”
“But that was during the War—and from America.”
Gareth tucked away the letter and shrugged. “What can I say, Declan, they will not release the marble until they have seen the documents.” He turned toward the desk and began assembling his books and papers.
“I’ll go with you.”
Gareth grimaced at the desk. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Why not? Or don’t you want me to come?”
He let out a slow breath before turning, his mind scrabbling for a convenient, convincing lie. Lying was yet another of his weak points.
So, he thought of the truth, and turned. “I hate to ask you, Dec—”
Declan’s forehead wrinkled. “Hate to ask me what?”
“I wouldn’t ask you, if I didn’t think it necessary. But with Mrs. Lombard gone, there is nobody to supervise the thirty-odd men working on the grounds. Do you suppose you might stay for a few days—just until I return?”
“You want me to supervise your garden project?”
Gareth knew he would do it—wanted to do it—by the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was always what gave Declan away at the card table when he had a good hand.
“It would only be for a few days.”
Dec nodded slowly, chewing his lip as if considering the matter. “I’ll admit I’ve begun to chafe at lying about all day.” He glanced up and smiled, looking more like himself than he had since Gareth had arrived. He rubbed his stomach. “I’ll also admit I’ve been missing your cook’s excellent meals and too-tempting cream cakes.”
Gareth forced himself to smile and act normally, even though inside he felt like he was crumbling.
***
The Dover road was as execrable as Gareth remembered. Even his traveling chaise, a conveyance of unparalleled quality and design, could not protect his body from the tossing and jolting.
A Figure of Love Page 23