A Name Unknown

by Roseanna M. White

  “Or.” Penrose sat forward again. His face had gone hard. “I know it isn’t your usual way, Pete, but you could use that mill for England’s benefit. You could shut it down. Cut into the steel production, thereby stunting the outfitting of the German army.”

  Rosemary had to consciously tell her fingers not to grip the page. He could, of course he could—and England would thank him.

  But German mill workers couldn’t be so unlike English ones. They were just people trying to feed their families. Families that would go hungry if their work was suddenly taken from them.

  “No.” Peter didn’t even hesitate to let that option sink in. “Much as I . . . as I would like to hinder war, that mill em—employs hundreds of . . . of families. I’ll not . . . I’ll not be responsible for hurting them.”

  She looked up and over at him. And found him looking down at her. “You agree with me . . . don’t you?” he asked, quietly enough that she knew it was a question for her, not for his friends.

  His other friends. She was one too. And she nodded decisively. “Entirely. And if war does come, that mill won’t sit empty, no matter what you want. It would be seized, your efforts worthless, and who knows who would be in charge of it then? You’re right to give it to your family.”

  “Look at the other offers before you decide that,” Penrose advised.

  Peter obligingly handed her another sheet of paper, then leaned down to look at it with her.

  Her eyes slid over columns and figures and names. The first, from fellow Holsteins, was the lowest by half. Then came a handful of bids all in a similar range, their names nothing more to her than a collection of vowels and consonants.

  Then a final one at the bottom, quite a bit higher than the rest. Which made her scowl. “This AGD is the one that has been buying up stock?” She tapped a finger upon the name.

  Gryff nodded. “I know you have questions about that. But for all my research, I cannot link them to the Krupp or GHH. If they are part of a competing firm, they’ve hidden it well. And so we have no reason to think they’ll sack your cousins, Pete.” Penrose pushed to his feet and wandered toward Jenny.

  Peter stared at those numbers. “I don’t . . . I don’t like it. No one outbids . . . by so much. Without reason. And I . . . I daresay I wouldn’t like . . . like the reason.”

  “So pick one of the middle offers. Pray over it, as I know you’ll do anyway, and try to discern which will help the most people and hurt England the least. But don’t just sell to your cousins when they cannot afford the asking price.”

  Peter took the papers from her hands and folded them up. “But I . . . know my cousins. They are good men. And if I . . . if I sell to someone else . . . they will likely just sell out to . . . to AGD.”

  Penrose sighed and took his wife’s hand, tucked it around his arm. “Pete, you’ll be the ruination of all your legacy if you continually refuse to think of the bottom line, of profit, of your own gain. So if you won’t, I will. You’ll take a week or two to consider this, whether you like it or not, because I refuse to communicate a decision until then. And if you try to send it yourself—well, the postmaster and telegraph clerk like me better than you. They’ll hold it for me.”

  Had he said such a thing to Rosemary, she would have snapped at him. Peter, however, just chuckled. And held out a hand to her when Mrs. Teague cleared her throat from the doorway—all the signal they needed to know the meal was ready.

  “A week won’t . . . won’t change my opinion,” he said, helping her up and then setting her hand on his arm.

  Rosemary rested her other hand there too, atop her first. Silent support.

  Penrose grinned. “It might. You never know.”

  “Give it up, darling.” Jenny nodded, somehow making it a dismissal. “And let’s talk about something lighter over dinner, shall we? Rosemary, have you finished The Poison Belt yet?”

  Peter was leading her into the hall as the question reached her. She shook her head but held off answering until they’d filed into the dining room. “I’ve a chapter left.”

  “You ought to have a definite opinion by now, then.” Penrose and Jenny headed for their usual seats. Gryff’s brows lifted. “What do you think of it? I know it isn’t quite like Conan Doyle’s other Professor Challenger story, but I rather enjoyed the change of pace. Doom looming, but from one’s own home rather than some exotic locale.” He shot a glance at Peter.

  Peter pulled her chair out for her and loosed what sounded half like a laugh and half like that chuff he made sometimes.

  Rosemary settled in with a shake of her head. “It’s ridiculous, in my opinion.”

  “The premise may be . . . may be a bit farfetched, but . . .” Peter moved to his own chair and, once Jenny was situated, sat.

  Rosemary sent him a glare—the comfortable kind she’d never had cause to send anyone but her family before. “I don’t mean the premise—though granted, the idea of Earth passing through a belt of poison that will kill us all is absurd. I mean the fact that Challenger thought to warn and hopefully save all his rich little friends and yet he lets his servants pass out in the hallway without even a thought of concern for them.”

  Penrose frowned. “I hadn’t even noticed that. He did, didn’t he?”

  Peter’s expression mirrored his friend’s. “I suppose . . . he did.”

  “Typical thinking from gentlemen, if you ask me.” Rosemary opened her napkin half a second before Jenny did and smoothed it over her lap. She had gotten the hang of this fancy-dinner thing—but the minds of the so-called gentle class she would simply never understand. “And if Conan Doyle thinks anything like his character, happy I’ll be never to meet the man.”

  Peter’s lips turned up in a lopsided smile. “It’s only . . . a story, Rosemary.”

  She answered by lifting one brow in a lopsided arch. “What happened to fiction being how man expresses his deepest heart?”

  Penrose chuckled. It may have been the first time he’d chuckled over something she’d said. “Sounds like your words tossed back at you, old boy. I always knew I liked you, Miss Gresham.”

  A statement so obviously false that Rosemary couldn’t help but laugh too. “To be sure you did, Mr. Penrose. About as much as Mrs. Teague does still.”

  Peter signaled for the silver domes to be removed from the food. “I only mean that . . . Conan Doyle needn’t be . . . be judged based on his characters.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t judge him, would you? You’re so nice.” And she smiled, even as she shook her head. “I say that a man’s true thoughts likely come out in his stories. And if they do, then Conan Doyle is a snob.”

  “Rosemary.” Jenny’s voice may have carried a bit of horror, but it was overshadowed by a healthy dose of amusement. “Don’t be rude.”

  “Why not? He was. And frankly, I find it disturbing that no one else seems to have even noticed this about him. I mean, I know well you three wouldn’t treat your servants that way.” Peter had dashed into a burning building for one, after all. “But you still don’t recognize it.”

  She didn’t really mean it to be an indictment. But silence followed her statement, and her three companions all sat for a long moment as their food was served, staring at their plates and then at each other. Rosemary suffered it while Kerensa slid a plate of fresh greens in front of her with a mute grin, but that was as much as she could take. “Somebody say something.”

  Jenny opened her mouth.

  But it was Peter who spoke first. Quietly and with a smile. “I’m glad you’re . . . here, Rosemary. You . . . you make me see the world . . . differently.”

  It shouldn’t have warmed her. Or maybe it should have, given the look Penrose and Jenny exchanged, proving his statement an unusual one. Still. It was a strange realization. And stranger still to realize that she was glad of it too. And not just because of Mr. V’s pound notes. She was glad because . . . because otherwise she might never have known that a man like him existed. One with a full purse and a good hear
t.

  She wondered, after Peter blessed the food, as she ate, what he would do with the money from the German steel mill when he sold it—some sort of charity work, apparently, given Penrose’s statement about it. Had he really already done all those things Penrose had mentioned? Funding orphanages? Hospitals? He would do more charity work like that, she knew he would. Supporting missionaries, perhaps—that seemed like him. Spreading the gospel of Christ, as he would say.

  Something noble. Something good. And, hours later as she stood with him on the front steps of the manor and waved farewell to the Penroses, she voiced the thought that followed every one of those musings. “Why don’t you just tell people what you’ve done? With the money, I mean. From the steel mill. If you let them know how very good you are, they’ll stop suspecting you of being so very bad.”

  “Will they?” With a shake of his head, Peter lowered the hand he’d been waving and started, for some reason, down the steps. He paused at the bottom and held out a hand. “Come on. It’s . . . it’s getting dark. I’ll escort you home.”

  It wasn’t that dark. But she wouldn’t argue. Padding down the steps, she put her hand in his, expecting him to tuck it against his arm as he usually did.

  He didn’t. He just held it as he led her toward the garden path. And he sighed. “Broadcasting my . . . my good deeds . . . will only come off as . . . as trying to convince them. Like a Pharisee.”

  Two months ago, she wouldn’t have had a clue what that meant. Today, she could argue with it. “No one thinks that of you. You are many things, Peter Holstein, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them. I just don’t understand why you’re so secretive. I mean, you’re the one who hired a lawyer for Tim, aren’t you? Betty said a fancy one from London showed up the other day, offering to represent him at no charge.”

  Peter took to studying the sky.

  She rolled her eyes. “Who else would have done that? Penrose?”

  “He . . . he may have.”

  “But he didn’t. You’re the one who championed that boy. And everyone in the village suspects you’re the one paying for his defense now.”

  He went stiff beside her, and his fingers tightened around hers. “Do they?”

  “It’s a good thing, Peter, not a bad.” She squeezed his fingers back. Something she would have done to Barclay or Georgie, to Retta or Willa. So why did it feel so different? “The villagers are softening toward you. You only need to keep fostering that. I still say you should write a few editorials for the newspaper or something. Put that typewriter you so love to good use.”

  His thoughtful hum blended with the trills of a nightingale.

  Rosemary listened to the song for a moment, breathed in the riot of scents from the flowers that Mr. Teague tended so carefully. Fastened her gaze on the shadowy form of her cottage at the edge of the garden.

  No. His cottage, not hers. His world, not hers. So why had she become so comfortable there? It couldn’t be a good thing. It couldn’t. Because in another week or month or two, she’d complete her research on the Holstein family, she’d present her findings to Mr. V, and she’d be gone from this place. Back to London with its fire bells and bobbies’ whistles in place of nightingales. With its sewage and unwashed bodies instead of fragrant flowers.

  With her family, though. Which was what mattered.

  “I do, you know.”

  She looked over, up at Peter, and had no idea what he did.

  His smile said he knew well her mind had wandered. And he didn’t mind. “Put my . . . my typewriter to good use.”

  “Ah.” The sunlight had faded, the moon hadn’t yet risen, but there was still light enough to see his face. To see that silent question in his eyes. The one that asked if she believed him, and if believing him was enough.

  It shouldn’t have been. It wouldn’t be enough for Mr. V.

  But it was enough for Rosemary. She nodded. “I’m sure you do.”

  “Are you going to ask again?”

  The smile in his voice teased out a matching one on her lips. “Actually . . . no. Everyone is entitled to a few secrets, I think.” And his couldn’t be anything bad. They couldn’t be. Because he was Peter.

  “Intriguing. What are . . . what are yours?”

  She laughed. And yet didn’t feel like laughing. She felt—what was that she felt? Something heavy and dark and mournful. “If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?”

  The path led them out of the flowers, to her door. She’d left a light burning in the kitchen—it probably cost him a pretty penny in electricity, but he’d told her she could, on these nights when she was likely to be home late because he knew how she disliked the dark.

  They both came to a slow halt. His fingers still clasped hers. “We could trade. Our secrets.”

  The something inside started smoldering. Burning her from the inside, making her eyes want to tear up to put it out. She shook her head. “No, we can’t.”

  His thumb stroked hers. “Why not?”

  Because he was a gentleman. Because he was a good man. Because, more, he was what his Bible would call a righteous man. And she was . . .

  She was a thief. Sent here to steal his good name.

  Unable to meet his gaze, she focused hers on that cleft in his chin that Elinor would love. “Because if you learn mine, you won’t like me anymore.”

  The lips above the cleft didn’t quite smile. But they didn’t quite not. “Impossible.”

  She was set to argue. But his other hand lifted and rested against her cheek, and she forgot what it was she’d meant to say. Just as she forgot that she couldn’t look him in the eye. She did, and found those eyes, even in the twilight, to be what she’d come to expect—light.

  He just looked at her for a long moment, and he leaned a little closer, and she wondered if he was going to kiss her and if she should let him and what it would feel like to have his lips on hers. Would it be sweet, like the strawberries he kept requesting once he learned how she loved them? Warm, like his fingers around hers? Comforting, like the tea he’d had sent in for her one rainy, cool afternoon last week?

  Or perhaps blazing and exciting and . . . destructive, like a stable on fire.

  Probably the last. And yet, even knowing it, she still wanted to feel it.

  His lips settled on her cheek. Lingered in a way that made her pulse far too fast for something so very innocent. Barclay kissed her cheek all the time, as did Pauly and Georgie. But it wasn’t like this. They didn’t linger. And they certainly never then rested their forehead against hers and held her fingers tightly.

  “Impossible,” he said again.

  It was. But not like he meant.

  Twenty

  Have you given so much as a lick of thought to what you mean to do once she leaves?” Gryff leaned back in his chair, front legs off the ground in a way that would have made Jenny scold him had she seen it.

  Peter studied the sheet of paper in his hands and listened to the steady tick . . . tock of the clock in the corner of Gryff’s office. “Is that . . . really all he knows? He couldn’t . . . couldn’t follow the money anywhere?”

  “She isn’t going to stay forever. She can’t. She has to work to support her family, and unless you intend to make the librarian role a permanent one, she’ll be gone in another few weeks.” Flipping a pen between his fingers in a way that Peter never could master, Gryff drilled him with that lawyer-look of his. “You had better start preparing yourself for it. I know how you detest change.”

  And he hadn’t expected to feel the nip of panic when he’d walked into the library and realized Rosemary had been so quick and efficient about it all. Surely he could find something else to add to her list of tasks, to keep her here until . . . until he came up with another way to keep her here.

  He returned his gaze to the report from the London investigator. “So how do I . . . how do I know the money went where it should? What if it’s not . . . helping Olivia at all?”

  “Then you ask Miss Gresha
m outright and put it in her hands next time. Are you listening to me, old boy? I know you hear me, but are you listening?”

  “She would refuse it.” She was proud, was Rosemary. And stubborn and outspoken and bold and witty and clever, and she looked at things in a way no one else did. He needed her to stay. He needed to hear her opinions, her exasperations. He needed her to point out where his thinking wasn’t deep enough, the things he’d forgotten to question.

  He needed her.

  Gryff sighed and let his chair land back on all fours again. “Listen, Pete. Tensions could erupt on the Continent any moment. You know they could, and who knows what shrapnel will fall this way for you when it does? And if she up and leaves in the middle of it all, which she inevitably will—are you going to be all right? I need to know you will be. I need to know that you’ll still fight for your good name when she’s gone.”

  That might depend upon what she discovered about his name, mightn’t it? But after demanding a lesson in what was apparently family shorthand—he’d never really paused to realize that Petese had been learned from his father, but it must have been—she’d all but forced him from the library, saying she’d have something worth showing him tonight if he’d just let her work on the journals.

  He let her work on the journals.

  He tapped the sheet of paper. “This former boss—we’re . . . we’re sure he knew where to find her . . . her family?”

  Gryff, when Peter glanced up again, looked ready to growl. It was from concern, he knew that. Still, Peter was rather glad when a tap upon the door interrupted them. Gryff’s next appointment, no doubt.

  And Gryff obviously knew Peter’s relief—he pointed a finger at him. “We’re going to finish this conversation.”

  “Sure.” Peter grinned. “Dreckly.” He stood, ready to show himself out.

  Another tap on the door, and Gryff said through his blustery sigh, “Yes, Simmons?”