True Pretenses: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 2

by Rose Lerner

  He was examining the workmanship on the wrought-iron poker when she finally stood. He came to give her his arm out of the room, and she handed him a folded, sealed paper. “Read it later and see what you think about letters.”

  He was absurdly touched that she’d thought of it. Kissing the note reverently, he put it in his left breast pocket. Her brown eyes shone with amusement. He was going to have her. For six months he’d have her—morning, noon and night if he could make her want it badly enough. Six months was a long time, so there was no point thinking about after that. He’d have to find somebody else, that was all.

  Sitting opposite her in the carriage into town reminded him of last night. He wanted to pull her into his lap and make her laugh and moan—but this visit would be their first test. Miss Reeve was new at swindling, and this woman was her friend and had something real to compare the false to. So he asked about Caro Sparks. It was juicy gossip—illicit meetings between a poor Whig and a rich Tory, at the circulating library of all places, the suitor turned away by a stern father, a daring elopement, and Caro gone from living in clover to slaving dawn to dusk over a newspaper that, though she didn’t come right out and say it, Miss Reeve clearly regarded as a mouthpiece of Satan.

  “Do I need to hate this paper too?” he asked. “How friendly do you want me to be to this Sparks fellow?”

  She made a face just at the mention of his name. “You should be friendly. Then I won’t have to be.”

  “What about Caro Sparks? How intimate is your friendship?”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to decide what to say. “I would have said we were the best of friends.”

  “And she wouldn’t?”

  Miss Reeve shrugged. “I suppose I don’t know what she would say about much of anything anymore.”

  “Just because she fell in love with a Whig?”

  Her eyes flashed. Politics seemed to be the one thing that really made her angry. He’d seen this in other small towns: rival parties like street gangs, fighting tooth and nail over an inch of territory and demanding absolute loyalty. He didn’t understand why wanting to belong always had to go hand-in-hand with other people not belonging, and hating them for it.

  “She abandoned her friends in the middle of an election,” Miss Reeve said stiffly. “She was to have been hostess at a whole round of events that week.” She hesitated, evidently not wanting to seem petty, but Ash could guess to whom the work had fallen in her absence. “She left us for Jack Sparks, who’d like to make out we’re all either stupid or evil, who puts ideas in honest folks’ heads to make them discontented with their lots, who wants to turn tradition on its head and have committees of his own friends snooping into every corner of this town’s life. The things he said about my father…”

  Ash privately thought that most politicians were neither stupid nor evil. They were good at serving their own interests, that was all. They ran the country for themselves and their friends and made sure it stayed that way. He didn’t voice this opinion. To Miss Reeve, it was a question of loyalty. He could go along.

  When they reached the door of the printing office, Miss Reeve hesitated. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t like,” Ash said.

  She dismissed this with an abortive motion of her hand. “It isn’t that. It’s only—ordinarily I would have to ask if she’s receiving visitors, and send in your card to make sure she wished to be introduced to you.”

  “She doesn’t have a butler anymore.”

  “I know that. It seems rude, that’s all.” But she gestured at him to open the door, and preceded him into the shop. It amused Ash, how it confounded the gentry not to know which of their mazelike sets of manners to apply to somebody.

  Jack Sparks’s shop was a tidy little place, or as tidy as a printing office could be. The shelves were full of the odds and ends that seemed to accumulate in printing offices everywhere in the calm certainty that advertising was free—everything from patent medicines to mathematical instruments, and an inexplicable crate of lemons with a beautifully lettered sign reading 1/2d. ea. Then there were the racks of books and pamphlets, magazines and forms and prints.

  Ash knew a moment’s regret that he was too respectable today to ask to see the lewd pictures; it always reassured him to see how much of it was the same across England. He’d wager a half-crown this place had the same tired engraving of nuns flogging a priest that he’d seen in dozens of other towns and villages.

  Behind the counter were the press, the drying racks and several long tables, all as close to the windows as possible. The room was crisscrossed by strings from which dangled drying broadsides. A man and a boy worked the press while a thin young woman bundled in shawls sat at one of the tables going over stacks of correspondence.

  The woman looked up with a wary expression, and the man, a barrel-chested, fair-haired fellow, came to stand behind her chair. He glowered at them so fiercely, and crossed his powerful arms so emphatically, that Ash began to consider the possibility this visit would end with a pummeling. According to Miss Reeve, Sparks had recently beaten an earl’s son bloody merely for withdrawing his candidacy for Parliament at a politically inopportune time. Once Ash could have easily whipped the printer, but he’d softened up since leaving London, and Ashford W. Cahill didn’t fight dirty.

  Miss Reeve edged a protective shoulder in front of him. He should have expected it—she was a woman who took care of everybody—but he hadn’t, somehow. It made him feel a little raw.

  The young woman laughed. “Heel, Jack. How do you do, Lydia?”

  “Very well, Caro, thank you. And you?”

  “Splendid, thanks,” said Mrs. Sparks with a touch of defiance. “I believe you know my husband?”

  Miss Reeve gave a strained smile. “Mr. Sparks.”

  He gave an even more strained nod. “An honor, Miss Reeve.”

  Miss Reeve, evidently deciding that violence was not in the immediate offing, moved to the side. “Mrs. Sparks, I hope you will allow me to introduce Mr. Cahill? I have—I have recently agreed to marry him.”

  Mrs. Sparks gaped delightedly. “Mr. Cahill, it is a pleasure,” she said with aplomb. “Pray excuse my not being able to rise to greet you. Do sit down, both of you.”

  Miss Reeve seemed startled by this sudden warmth, but Ash had long remarked that most people were charmed by the merest hint of a betrothal. He felt it himself; it made the world seem a handsome place after all, where two people could find each other.

  “Please don’t apologize. It’s an honor to meet you.” Ash found the hinge in the counter and lifted the flap so Miss Reeve could pass into the back of the shop. She had warned him in the carriage that Mrs. Sparks used a wheelchair, and that he was on no account to stare or ask prying questions. He couldn’t help glancing over her chair when they got closer, though. It was a good one, with great big wheels that would have graced a farm cart. Ash suppressed a pang of bitterness at the memory of his childhood friend Mo, who’d pulled himself about on a board with four filthy, tiny wheels that would barely go over the uneven London pavement. Mo wouldn’t have wanted a chair that needed someone else to push it, anyway.

  Mr. Sparks put his hand on a chair as if to pull it out for himself and looked questioningly at his wife.

  “You don’t mind if Jack works, do you?” she asked. “He has several jobs to finish before dark.” The printer was moving away even before Miss Reeve’s gracious “Of course.”

  “But before I wish you joy”—Mrs. Sparks looked at Miss Reeve apprehensively—“I must offer you again my deepest sympathies for your grief.”

  Miss Reeve’s unconcerned smile was as good as a slap in the face. If you liked someone who offered you condolences, you showed them a little bit of your sadness. “Thank you. I was very glad to get your letter.”

  There wasn’t a trace of emphasis on letter, but Mrs. Sparks flushed. “I wanted to come. I—Lydia, I wanted
to. I’m sorry.”

  Miss Reeve hadn’t mentioned that. She hadn’t wanted to admit she was angry on her own behalf. Mrs. Sparks had presumably had her reasons, but in a fight between friends, a third party picked sides based on loyalties, not facts. Ash was on Miss Reeve’s side. He laid a hand over the fist she’d clenched in her lap where Mrs. Sparks couldn’t see.

  She glanced at him and straightened her shoulders. “Is that all you’re sorry for?” she asked, completely surprising him.

  Mrs. Sparks looked surprised too. “If you mean you had to take over hostess duties for me, ask my father for an apology,” she said after a moment. “I wouldn’t have had to run away, if he hadn’t shut me up in the house.”

  Ash thought that was pretty convincing, but Miss Reeve didn’t say anything.

  Mrs. Sparks tilted up her pointy chin. “I’m not going to apologize for loving Jack.”

  “Caro,” Miss Reeve said with faint incredulity, “I once saw him and his sister-in-law spit on the sidewalk outside your house.”

  The printer, across the room, flushed beet red, but Mrs. Sparks laughed. “You take things too seriously, Lydia.”

  Now there was a sentence that never got a good reaction. Miss Reeve’s face set. “Perhaps you take them too lightly.”

  Mrs. Sparks’s mouth twisted. “You would say that. I worked like a dog for the Pink-and-Whites, and it was never enough for you.”

  Miss Reeve frowned. “What do you mean? I think you’ve been a skilled hostess and a very effective campaigner. If I ever said anything to make you think differently—”

  Mrs. Sparks snorted. “Yes, a hostess and a campaigner, that’s all I was to you. You were my closest friend in this town, Lydia, and you never confided in me about a thing! You never thought I was good enough to really be your friend, did you? Not genteel enough, not serious enough, not a devout enough Tory, I don’t know. I tried so hard, but you saved it all for those letters you were always writing. You obviously don’t want to be here. Did my father ask you to come?” She threw up her hands. “I suppose the other Pink-and-White hen-hearts can’t be far behind now that you’ve deigned to give them permission. Wonderful, I’ve been missing those afternoon-long conversations about the vicar’s health and the weather! Can you blame me for wanting someone to see me as something more than a magic purse that is always full of dinner parties no matter how many it gives?”

  Ash wished he could blame Mrs. Sparks for the look on Lydia’s face. He wished he could be angry with her. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

  There was only one thing she was wrong about. You never thought I was good enough to really be your friend. Ash was sure Miss Reeve had thought they were friends.

  If he didn’t seem offended on her behalf it would be suspicious. He pushed his chair back. “Miss Reeve? Would you like to go?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry you felt that way,” she said slowly. “I am—I have—there was nothing in those letters that you didn’t know. My friendship might not have been to your taste, but it was sincere.”

  Conflicting emotions chased each other across Mrs. Sparks’s narrow face. “Did my father ask you to come here today?”

  Miss Reeve met her eyes. “Mr. Gilchrist did.”

  Mrs. Sparks’s laugh was half a moan. “Mr. Gilchrist? That lascivious little weasel had more weight with you than I did?”

  “He made some good arguments.” The words could have meant anything but Miss Reeve made them sound like, He made me see what an ass I was being, or maybe even, I wanted to see you. “Besides,” she said, and then she smiled a real, happy smile, and dropped her eyes to the table, “I suppose—even if there were some reason Mr. Cahill was a bad match for me, someone my family and friends could not approve—I think I should find it impossible to give him up.”

  Out of his welter of contradictory reactions, Ash picked out admiration and dwelled on that, in case Mrs. Sparks glanced at him. Miss Reeve had found stray fibers of truth—that he was beneath her, and that she had chosen to marry him anyway—and spun it into a fine lie that was precisely what her friend wanted to hear.

  Mrs. Sparks’s face softened entirely, and she beamed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that. I’m so happy for you, Lydia! Marriage is wonderful, you’ll see.”

  Lydia beamed self-consciously back.

  It amazed Ash how, seeing someone you’d known all your life behave completely against character, the simplest explanation was still She’s in love, and not She must be lying.

  “I’m sorry I made a scene,” Mrs. Sparks said. “I wanted us to be friends pretty badly. I suppose I took things for slights that weren’t.”

  “Oh, please don’t apologize,” Miss Reeve said. “It wasn’t much of a scene, and it’s always better to know the truth, I think.”

  Mrs. Sparks grinned. “Generous to a fault, as always.” That made Ash a little angry. Miss Reeve wasn’t a magic purse either. “Mr. Cahill—I hope you know what a lucky man you are.”

  He looked at Miss Reeve’s bashfully bowed profile and the creamy skin on the nape of her neck. “No. I don’t think it’s possible to wrap the mind around this much luck.”

  Mrs. Sparks made one of those delighted, cooing sorts of noises that women made at babies and kittens and other things too darling for words.

  Miss Reeve’s glance at him had a touch of skepticism in it. Was that real or part of the act? Ash had never agreed with Miss Reeve’s platitude—it was more useful to know the truth, but he loved this thrill of doubt better. It kept things full of possibilities.

  “Mr. Cahill has a silver tongue.” Ash’s chest hurt at the fond sarcasm in her voice. “Don’t let him twist you around his finger.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll save his fingers for you.” Mrs. Sparks’s smile was beatifically innocent.

  Miss Reeve rolled her eyes. “That was worthy of Mr. Gilchrist.”

  Mrs. Sparks snickered.

  “That’s my cue,” Ash said. “I’ll leave you ladies to talk, if you don’t think Mr. Sparks will mind showing me his press. I’ve never seen a cast-iron one at close quarters before.”

  Mrs. Sparks gave the contraption a glance of fond pride, clearly already looking on it as her own. “Jack loves that press. He’ll be happy to show it off.”

  So Ash learned all about the workings of a Stanhope press and was even allowed to pull the lever and see how easy it went compared to a wooden one, while Miss Reeve and Mrs. Sparks sat with their heads bent together whispering happily. When Miss Reeve finally rose, his reluctance at being pried from the machine was quite genuine.

  “How are you?” he asked quietly when they were once more on the street.

  “I think it went well, don’t you? Caro agreed to take Sparks’s apprentice from the workhouse, and wait until we’re married for the fee.”

  “Oh, yes, I think they were thoroughly convinced.” He tried to decide if she would like him more if he let it go tactfully, or if he tactfully pressed the point. “You shouldn’t take what she said to heart. Different folk look at friendship differently.”

  She sighed. “I knew she thought I was dull and stiff-rumped. But I didn’t mind her shortcomings. I thought she forgave mine.”

  “You’re like me.” It was a thing he said often. People liked to hear it, and he liked to say it. It shouldn’t feel significant now.

  He’d always had Rafe before, he realized. To remind him what was real, to keep the pane of glass between Ash and everyone who wasn’t his brother. They didn’t know it was there, but he did. He needed it.

  He didn’t like how important she felt to him. He didn’t like the idea that maybe he’d fasten on to the first thing he saw, like a barnacle. Rafe wasn’t just convenience. He wasn’t replaceable.

  “Like you in what way?” She was looking at him with concern.

  He thought about how much he liked the little furrow
in her brow, and that smoothed out his face. “I’m a friendly man. I like most people. If I choose to spend enough time with someone, I’ll feel an affection for him, consider him my friend. So my loyalty—it’s to my brother first, always. Then it goes by seniority, and my best judgment. Rafe, though, he’s choosy—he dislikes plenty of people. So he judges friendship by something else, some kind of intimacy, a feeling inside himself. He wants to fit with someone like a dovetail joint.”

  He interlocked his fingers to show her and tried not to think about the gaps inside him now Rafe was gone, like torn gums where teeth had been pulled. He remembered teaching Rafe to clean his teeth, so he’d never have to go to the dentist. He remembered having his own gold crown put in, so Rafe would have something to fall back on if he died.

  She didn’t say anything, only glanced up at him and knew about Rafe. Knew about everything. Her hand tightened on his arm, and he remembered her kissing his fingers, suddenly.

  “People who look at things that way think they have a right to you,” he said, surprised at his own intensity. “Your friend wants the two of you to treat each other’s minds the way I treated your desk drawers this morning. You don’t owe anybody that.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ash couldn’t see her face past the brim of her hat. “I knew she wanted me to tell her things,” she said at last, a little sadly. “Women always do. She wanted to hear about who I thought was handsome, my quarrels with my father, that I found political philosophy as dull as she did on occasion. I had no real reason to think she’d repeat any of it. But I couldn’t bring myself to risk it.”

  “Most people repeat things.”

  “Most people don’t have the discretion God gave a chattering magpie.” She gave him an assessing look. “You talk about things—personal things—all the time. How—how do you do that? Is it because you have no reputation in a community to protect?”

  “It helps, knowing I can disappear if things go south,” he said slowly. “But I had a reputation to protect when I was a kid. That’s how it started out. I had Rafe. I needed everyone to like me, so they’d let me keep him. So they’d help me out when I needed it. I needed every advantage I could get, and confidence and courage are everything in a gang. I learned sleight of hand, the way a sharper shakes his sleeve to show he’s got no cards hidden in it. Show enough to make it look like you’ve shown everything, and people will think the fear and sadness you’re hiding don’t exist. That’s a common enough trick for little boys. Gentlemen probably learn it too, if what I hear about those public schools of yours is even half true.”