by Rose Lerner
Actually, I heard you and Will Sparks not get along so well, on a number of occasions, Lydia thought. The Sparkses having a row in the street had once been a familiar sight in Lively St. Lemeston. She affected a distant frown. “Now that you mention it, I suppose I do remember hearing something like that once.”
Mrs. Dymond’s mouth twitched, as if she thought that was funny but was too nervous to actually smile. “I married him right after my father died. I mean right after, as soon as you. I thought I loved him. Oh, I did love him, but—I—” She drew in a deep breath. “He was a good man and I loved him, but I didn’t do him any favors marrying him. He made me forget and I thought it was on account of a sympathy between us, but you know—on his side, he couldn’t have understood quite what he meant to me. I thought he was comforting me, but really it was half not being alone that made the difference, not—not him. On his side, he was just walking out with me. I don’t—I don’t want you to make the same mistake. I know it’s awful and lonely, but it’ll get better, I promise, and staying at home can’t be so bad, can it? Your brother seems nice.”
Unlike your mother, Lydia thought, but there was no sting to it. She was suddenly, terribly afraid that Mrs. Dymond was right. What had Mr. Cahill said? Grief clouds the judgment; that’s how undertakers make their money. Her own judgment could not be trusted, other people knew better, she was making a terrible mistake—after a girlhood spent making adult decisions, those fears wrapped around her like a comfortable cloak.
She had told herself Mr. Cahill could be trusted. That he wouldn’t cheat her, that he wouldn’t blackmail her, that he wouldn’t demand things from her she didn’t want to give. What evidence did she have for any of it? Just a feeling, a grief-addled feeling.
If he was lying, he could hurt not only her but also Jamie. He could take money from Wheatcroft. She felt sure in her heart that the idea was absurd. But all of his victims must have been sure.
Then she caught sight of him, bareheaded, leaning much too far out an upper window of the Drunk St. Leonard and waving to her. He was a hundred yards away and he’d picked her out of the crowd. She lit up with happiness. It would be unladylike to wave back, but she raised a hand slightly to show she’d seen him. He kissed his hand to her and disappeared back inside.
“Thank you,” she said to Mrs. Dymond. “I appreciate your candor, and your kindness. I hope you will not think too badly of me if I don’t take your very wise advice.”
Mrs. Dymond shrugged resignedly. “I didn’t really think you would, ma’am.”
The woman’s manners were appalling. Just to point that out, Lydia said graciously, “Please, allow me to wish you and Mr. Dymond every joy.”
For the first time, Mrs. Dymond smiled. “Thank you, ma’am…I wish you the same,” she added, somehow making it clear that she did wish it, only thought it unlikely.
Wednesday morning Ash slept like a stone. The streets were flooded with carts and people going to market, jostling and shoving and cursing each other. When he finally woke at eleven o’clock, a little groggy, he wanted to see Miss Reeve. He could sense the black cloud of melancholy hovering somewhere near the ceiling above his head, but it hadn’t descended yet. He shaved and dressed hastily, trying to keep ahead of it, and when he spotted Miss Reeve out the window, he seized his hat and hurried downstairs. Stepping out the door of the Drunk St. Leonard, he found himself in the midst of a country market day.
He froze.
Rafe loved market days. When they first left London, the brothers had used to specialize in working small swindles at country markets and disappearing into the crowd. They still did when they needed a few pounds in a hurry, but they went after richer flats. Now Rafe liked to scatter largesse by losing a shilling or two to the thimble-riggers and the pin-and-girdle men. Sometimes, if the brothers were particularly flush in the pockets, Rafe would even let the Jewish peddler who seemed to crop up at every market sell him a cheap watch for more than it was worth.
I liked hearing his accent, he’d say if Ash teased him about it. We can always sell it again ourselves later.
So Ash would say, You overacted your surprise when the pea was under the wrong thimble, and Rafe would laugh, and Ash wanted his brother back. Maybe if he left town now, he could still find him.
Ash had built his life on the principle that when a man disappeared into the highways and byways of England, there was no good way of tracking him. It wasn’t fair that even a simple, comforting truth like that could turn on him.
It was December, and rainy; there wasn’t really enough of a crowd to attract petty swindlers. But when Ash rounded the Market Cross, hoping to spot Miss Reeve, he came face to face with a Jewish peddler, who said, “Ribbons and lace, good sir, watches and buttons,” and thrust the box that hung around his neck into Ash’s chest.
Ash avoided other Jews unless he was in a particularly reckless mood. Eventually one of them would give him away—maybe by word or sign, maybe merely by sharing a physiognomy. When he’d had Rafe, this eternally optimistic hawker’s cry with its thick accent—Dutch, he thought—would have been pleasant enough, but hardly magnetic. Now it sounded painfully like home.
Rafe had wanted to keep on speaking Yiddish when they were alone. Ash had flatly refused. It was dangerous, a bad habit to get into, an unnecessary risk. He didn’t know if the overwhelming temptation to speak Yiddish to this peddler was homesickness or atonement.
How the fellow would stare! Ash was getting old, because the peddler—in his early twenties and with a week’s growth of beard—looked like a child to him, too young and too scrawny to safely walk the highways in winter. Rain misted in his blond curls. Ash wondered where he’d sleep tonight, and if he’d sold enough on this slow chilly day to buy dinner and a bed.
Of course he must be tougher than he seemed, and his coat and shoes looked free of holes, at least. Ash should let him go about his business. He should stop standing here waiting for someone to notice the family resemblance. But the strong lines of the young man’s face—after so many years of English folk, to talk to someone who looked like the people Ash had grown up with!
Maybe I should go back to London. But he hadn’t wanted to be in London when he was in London. It was a peculiar trick of the human mind to want something simply because you’d shut yourself off from it.
“I’d like a blue ribbon,” he said. “Blue like the sky.”
The man probably didn’t speak enough English to understand anything but “ribbon”, but he tapped his finger on the bottom left drawer of his box. Inside were ribbons of every hue and texture. Ash selected one of pale-blue velvet sewn with tiny glass beads. “How much?”
The young man eyed him consideringly and held up two fingers. “Two shillings.”
It was highway robbery. The peddler himself looked a little disgusted when Ash paid it. But recognizing a flat when he saw one, he said, “Very fine lady’s watch,” and indicated a watch that Ash knew from experience would probably stop ticking the first time it was dropped. He almost bought it because Rafe would have, but he looked over the jewelry instead.
It was mostly pinchbeck and paste. Ash thought it friendlier and gayer than the real thing, but Miss Reeve would be mortified if her necklace stained her skin with green. He picked out a string of malachite beads that tied with black satin ribbon, and ignored the string of coral beneath it, twin to the one he’d given Rafe as a baby to ward off illness. Paying about ten times the necklace’s worth, he slipped it into his pocket.
Two people walked by with a copy of the new Intelligencer. Mr. Dymond had another article in it about the horrors of enlisted life, apparently. “Those poor lads, stung so bad by mosquitoes they couldn’t open their eyes!”
Rafe wouldn’t really have joined the army. He was too smart for that.
It’s his life, Ash told himself. His to enjoy, and his to throw away if he likes to. Every bone in his body resisted the i
dea.
There Miss Reeve was, on the other side of the square. Relief lanced through him like pain, only backwards. The deep, even black of her coat stood out against everyone else’s drabs and colors. He couldn’t see her hair, which was a shame—could only see, in fact, the slight curve of her cheek and chin below the black brim of her hat. That one line was as confident and splendid as the charcoal sketch of an old master. Running wasn’t respectable, but Ash walked towards her so fast he had to hold his hat on with one hand. When she turned her face towards him, he was already grinning at her and didn’t know when he’d started.
“How did you get your eyes that color?” he asked her. “Perhaps you can sell the secret at the Gooding Day auction and make a fortune.”
She laughed and grimaced at the same time. “Don’t remind me. I still haven’t started anything for the auction.” She looked a little on edge. Maybe a present would cheer her up.
Ash pulled his purchases out of his pocket, dangling the beads before her. “For you.”
She made a moue. “I don’t know if it’s proper to accept jewelry before we’re married,” she said slyly, reminding him a-purpose of the things they’d done without being married. Those hands in their black leather gloves, demurely holding the strings of her reticule, had been on his cock.
“It’s traditional among your set to give one’s bride-to-be a family heirloom or two, isn’t it?”
She laughed. “You bought that half a minute ago from the Jew peddler. I saw you.”
He didn’t say anything, but she glanced from him to the peddler, and maybe there was something on his face or maybe she was just clever, but he saw her realize that this was the closest thing to a family heirloom he’d ever have—that silly as it was, he almost meant it. She took the necklace with a half-smile and ran it between her fingers.
“How did you know green was my favorite color?” she said in that voice she had for flirting, as though she didn’t mean a word of it but was willing to play the game if it meant they could get to the good part later. It was the most seductive thing Ash had ever heard.
“Is it really?”
“No. Lavender is. But I’m very fond of wearing green.”
“I thought you must be. Redheads always wear green.”
“I’m not a redhead,” she said, surprised and evidently stung. Her lower lip pouted a little, stubbornly. He’d noticed her brother did the same thing.
Ash knew abstractly that red hair wasn’t elegant. It always surprised him when people really believed it. He supposed it was too Jewish, or too Irish, or something, and that its beauty meant nothing in the face of that. He took a moment to make sure his voice wouldn’t sound flat when he teased, “You’d better take your bonnet off so we can decide for sure.”
“I know what color my hair is. It’s auburn.”
Ash felt sad at all the stupid things people had to worry about. “So that I won’t make the same mistake again, maybe you could give me a lock of it?” He held up his blue ribbon, feeling a little shy.
She gave him a pleased, startled smile. “You want a lock of my hair?”
He laid his hand over his heart. “I’ll carry it here.”
The smile spread. “Give me the ribbon. Wrenn will help me cut it for you.”
He handed over the ribbon. “Can I cut it myself?”
“Only Wrenn and I are allowed near my hair with scissors.” She put the ribbon in her bag and tied the malachite around her neck, tucking it beneath her pelisse so she wouldn’t break mourning. Ash felt a deep sense of satisfaction as she took his arm.
But now that they were silent, that edgy look settled on her face again. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
She started, looking almost guilty. “It’s nothing.”
I’m fine was the lie people most wanted to get caught in. “I see,” he said with clear skepticism. “Nothing.” It was all right if she didn’t want to tell him, but maybe she only wanted a little encouragement.
She glanced at him. “Mrs. Dymond said I shouldn’t get married so soon after my father died. She said it was clouding my judgment.”
Ash’s heart sank. If she threw me over, that would be all right, he told himself. I’ll go to Brighton and fleece tourists and marry a mermaid. He believed it for the second it took to say in a neutral voice, a voice that would let her do whatever she wanted, “I told you the same thing.”
“She was nineteen when her father died, though. I’m thirty. I know my own mind.” She was trying to convince herself, not Ash. She wasn’t sure.
Ash didn’t trust his voice, so he put his arm around her and hoped she’d interpret his silence as wordless understanding.
“Do you mind if I don’t invite you for dinner tonight?” she said after a little bit. “I don’t want Jamie to feel left out.”
Coming out of her room the next morning, still feeling unsettled, Lydia’s eyes fell on the silver tray that held the outgoing post. Had she remembered to put her congratulations on the birth of Lady Saunders’s grandchild with the pile, or was it still sitting on her desk? She flipped through the stack—and saw a letter addressed in Jamie’s neat hand to The Viscount Prowse, the Priory, near Kellisgwynhogh, Cornwall.
Chapter Nineteen
Lydia’s stomach turned to ice. Why was Jamie writing to Cornwall? What should she do about it? She was tempted to steal the letter and burn it, but if Jamie found out later it had never arrived, he would know. Worse, he might notice it gone from the salver before the post was taken into town.
Jamie came through the front door fresh from a morning ride, looking flushed and relaxed. Lydia’s chest seized with worry. He had inherited their father’s love of going very fast. Was he riding safely? “Good morning,” he said. “Lord, riding past those empty barns makes me wild! We’ll keep twice as many cows next winter, and feed them on turnips. I know Father was old-fashioned, but planting fallow fields with clover and turnips is barely an innovation anymore.” Then he caught sight of the letters in her hand, and the slack went out of him like a rope pulled taut. “Are you looking for something?”
He was investigating Mr. Cahill, then. She could confront him and start an argument, or she could pretend she hadn’t seen the letter. She dropped the post back in the salver with a tranquil smile. “I was making sure my note to Lady Saunders is here. Did I tell you her daughter was brought to bed of a healthy boy?” Jamie’s relief was obvious, which meant her lie was not. How could they be so close, so connected, and yet so distant from each other?
“Will you help me go over the guest list for my wedding breakfasts today?” she asked to distract him entirely. She was having one breakfast in town and one at Wheatcroft, for the convenience of guests without carriages. “I’m terrified of leaving someone off.”
“Guest lists are an unadulterated horror,” he commiserated, making no promises. “Are you inviting Caroline Jessop—Caroline Sparks, I mean? I like her.”
Lydia sighed. “Yes. I hope Jack Sparks doesn’t start a brawl.”
“Might liven things up, anyway.”
She frowned at him. “My wedding breakfasts are going to be delightful!”
“Not if Mr. Pilcher bakes the wedding cake.”
“Mr. Pilcher baked the cake for your christening, young man.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have to eat that one.”
Lydia laughed. “Mr. Pilcher’s cakes aren’t bad. Only…lackluster.” She enjoyed them. They had the unmatched flavor of childhood.
Jamie’s face turned serious. “You deserve better than lackluster, Lydia. In everything. Don’t marry Mr. Cahill.”
“Mr. Cahill isn’t lackluster.” She sounded absolutely smitten even to her own ears. She hoped Jamie would take the breathlessness in her voice for wide-eyed adoration, not the sure and certain carnal knowledge it was.
He scrunched up his face. “Do you think he rumples his
jacket like that in advance, or does it happen naturally when he puts it on?”
“I like how rumpled he is,” she said, flushing. “I think it—er—” She didn’t know why she liked it. Was it because it drew attention to the shape of his body? Because there was a boyish sweetness about it? Because it looked as if she could tumble him into bed right then and there and he wouldn’t mind a bit?
Jamie frowned at her. “You really do love him, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“This isn’t about the money for you.”
Her heart pounded. This was her chance. She should ask him not to send the letter. Maybe, while she was at it, she could ask him all the questions she never had the courage to: Why don’t you ever bring your friends home? and How have I failed you? and Do you love someone?
“It was never about the money.” It sounded true because it was. It was about her brother, about Lively St. Lemeston, about protecting what she loved.
If she did nothing and that letter ended by exposing Mr. Cahill—if anything ever exposed Mr. Cahill—that would be the ruin of it all. The end of her influence and her respectability. The end of her life as it had been. She had been thinking of it ever since her conversation with Mrs. Dymond yesterday.
But right now she honestly didn’t care enough to change her course, and even more fiercely than she wanted Mr. Cahill, she wanted to hold on to not caring. She wanted there to be, at last, something in her life more important than what other people thought, something no one but herself could measure the worth of.
Jamie shook his head. “His story won’t hold water. You must see that.”
“What’s so suspicious about being from Cornwall?” It didn’t sound convincing because she knew exactly how right Jamie was. She paused and thought about her lessons.
There was nothing wrong with Mr. Cahill. She didn’t want him slighted. There. That was true.