She’d remembered the letters, though, and hidden them so well that no one knew of their existence but her. No one ever had, save for the man who’d written them. After all these years, she kept them as insurance—or a millstone.
Irene knew everything else about Susanna’s life, poking into each corner to make it clean and contouring every bump to make it smooth. But there was no tidying the fact that Susanna had been with child when she met Victor Baird and that he’d given her unborn babe his name. When he claimed Irene as his own daughter, he made her legitimate, her existence blessed by married parents.
Susanna owed Victor for that, and neither of them would ever forget the fact. But Irene must never know the truth of her parentage. Her post as a teacher, her marriage to the son of a baronet, were respectable. She must live her own life free of burdensome secrets.
“Mrs. Baird! What are you doing here?” A familiar voice. A wet, hacking cough.
The pause crashed like a weight as Susanna tried to decide how to respond.
Slowly, she turned, looking down at the landlord who stood on the landing below her. Harris, spare and frail as ever, regarded Susanna with hollow, suspicious eyes.
“Good evening,” she said as pleasantly as she could. “I came to fetch something I left behind in my rooms.”
“You left nothing. I saw to that. Mrs. Baird, I don’t mean to be unkind, but you can’t be here. I’ve already let your old rooms.”
Her face went hot. Her fingers went cold. “Already? There’s another family there? Right now?”
“Well, not right now. They’re still at their places of employment.”
Good enough. “I only need a minute. Two minutes.” She tried to climb the remaining stairs, to grasp the door handle, but Harris flung himself upward and caught her skirts in a crabbed hand.
“No! You’ve no right to go in there. I don’t trust you.”
“I’ve left…something…behind.” Susanna strained, her teeth gritted—and then the fabric of her skirt ripped. Not a big rip, nothing she couldn’t repair, but it horrified them both.
Shamed them both. She and Harris froze for an instant, then he pulled back. She gathered her skirts; he clasped his grisly handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” Harris said through choked-off coughs.
“No, please. Pardon me. I…I shouldn’t have come.” I’ll damn well come back, but I’ll make sure you’re not here. “I’m glad you’ve found another tenant.” I hope they’re slovenly. And not at all inclined to look behind the walls. “I’ll be going now.”
With all the dignity she could muster, Susanna swept by her former landlord, returning the way she’d come. Descending the stairs before Harris’s watchful eye seemed to take ten times as long as climbing up had. Leaving the building and walking the length of the narrow street took a tiny eternity, as faces that had once been familiar peered from windows with naked curiosity.
At the end of the street, where it crossed the main thoroughfare, the landau waited. Thank God.
Susanna’s halting step caught on a stone, and she faltered. Righting herself, she saw that it wasn’t a stone at all. She’d slipped on a bit of broken glass. Unusual glass, thick and wavy like the sort in very old windows. Picking it up, she turned it in her hand, mindful of the sharp edges, and slipped it into a pocket.
At once, the feeling of tension ebbed. The trip hadn’t been a waste, after all. She’d rescued this glass from being crushed. Now it could be appreciated.
As fine as this felt, retrieving her letters would feel even better. Next time, she’d try something different. She’d have a new plan in place, and she’d get everything back that she’d been forced to leave behind.
***
Victor Baird had once thought to make his fortune from rabbits, with his money the only thing multiplying more quickly than his animals. He’d been sure the rabbitry scheme would work, providing meat and fur to villages up and down England.
But the little creatures were frail. One wondered how they ever survived in the wild. And in the end, it was easier to gamble his way to profit—or to attempt to do so—than to raise capital a penny at a time with labor and sweat.
Still, the notion had been a good one. He’d flashed a few prints of well-tended animal pens, some charts with ambitious profit forecasts, and English bumpkins had all but thrown their money into Victor’s pockets. But word from the disappointed investors of Barrow-on-Wye traveled even faster than a man who offered opportunity, and he’d finally exhausted that particular plan.
Thus, for Dolwich, a town of a few hundred a half day north of London, he had become Victor Babbington, seller of musical instruments.
“Indeed, I’d be glad for some tea,” he agreed when Thomas Kelp, the local squire, sat down with him. “Traveling is thirsty work.”
After the servants left to retrieve tea things, Kelp frowned at him across a fussy expanse of drawing room crowded with fine old furniture and rugs. “Why haven’t I heard of one of these bands you profess to form?”
Victor adopted an offended expression. “If you haven’t traveled on the Continent, you can’t blame me for your ignorance of my reputation. I have letters of testimony from nobility in three different countries.” Of course he had. He had written them himself this morning.
“What good does it do, teaching boys to play musical instruments?”
“It keeps them away from loose women and gambling,” Victor said piously. “The wreck of many a family fortune, as men of the world know.”
Kelp mulled this over. “And you teach the boys to play? Yourself?”
“Do you doubt my word?”
“I doubt that one man can play every instrument.”
“I play every instrument with equal skill,” Victor boasted. This was true, as he couldn’t read or play a single note. “Perhaps you’d like to read the testimonies.”
He handed over the letters he’d carefully folded within his inside coat pocket.
Kelp cast a glance over them. “If they were written in three different countries, why are they all on the same sort of paper?”
Victor cursed himself. He’d used different handwritings, but all three letters were on the foolscap provided by the inn where he’d stayed. Thinking quickly, he condescended, “You must not be acquainted with the epistolary preferences of the European elite.”
Kelp harrumphed, backing down, and scanned the letters.
So the squire was a question-asker with a shrewd mind. They were the worst. For a moment, Victor considered storming away to the next village.
No, he’d spent too much on loose women and gambling. He needed to fill his pockets again before returning to Susanna.
Or did he? They kept in contact, his woman and himself, and she’d sent him a note that they were moving households. Victor had received the letter only a few minutes before leaving for this meeting with Kelp, which had taken a damned lot of persuading to arrange. He hadn’t been about to give up a sure thing, this meeting with the squire, for a mere possibility.
But Susanna mentioned that they were going to stay with Irene’s husband—one of the Chandlers, and everyone knew how deep the Chandler pockets were. In the face of Kelp’s skepticism, maybe Dolwich was the possibility and Victor’s own family was the sure thing. Why, he was full of loving and kind feelings already.
He was a kind man. Victor dealt in dreams and promises, finding out what someone wanted and making them think they could have it. Sometimes those dreams even became reality. But the dreaming was the best part, the anticipation that all of one’s problems would be solved.
Along the way, Victor got what he wanted—money. An arrangement that benefited everyone.
Maybe it was time to leave this life behind. England was too small for a man of vision, but there were too many in America who remembered the, ah, visions that Victor had had there. He’d blazed through big cities and small towns, changing nothing but his game.
Now he could change it again. He was fifty-five years old. A qu
iet retirement might suit him.
A quiet, luxurious retirement, with his woman and son at his side.
Irene and that man she’d married, that Jonah Chandler, wanted a family. And why couldn’t they finally have it? Why not? Why shouldn’t her father be a part of her life, as Victor hadn’t been for years?
Yes, a man’s family was as sure a prospect as he’d ever encountered.
By the time a servant brought in the tea things, Victor had made his decision. He stood, shaking out his trouser legs as if removing metaphorical dust from them. “I admit I’d hoped for a better reception. But I see Dolwich isn’t the cultured place I was led to believe. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ll suit.”
Kelp blinked up at him from the letters, suspicion melting into bafflement. “What about the band? You wanted to establish a band here.”
Victor snatched the potentially incriminating letters from Kelp’s hand. Always control the evidence, then destroy it as soon as possible. “I’ll find better opportunity in London. I regret that we won’t do business together at this time, but really, you wounded me with your doubts.” He patted the squire’s cheek in a fatherly manner. “If you don’t have your good name,” said Victor, “you have nothing.”
Grabbing a scone from the tea tray, he sauntered from the house. On to his family, on to his fortune.
Chapter Nine
Jonah thundered down the stairs on Saturday afternoon, adjusting his cravat as he descended. Dress well, Irene had told him, so he had changed from the rough clothes he’d worn in the stable this morning. Now garbed in snug buckskin breeches, a well-tailored coat, and a cravat starched high enough to scratch the underside of his chin, he’d look fashionable for today’s mission. Whatever it was.
In the foyer, a slim figure in elegant trousers and coat awaited him.
“Hullo, Jonah.”
It was Irene’s voice, but the person waiting for Jonah in the foyer looked nothing like Irene. He had to squint to find his wife under the masculine garb, a stripling buck of fashion. False side whiskers hid the delicate line of her jaw, and a coat with padded shoulders swathed her curves in thick wool. Her legs were shapely in trousers, her curly hair sleek with oil and pinned up tight under a hat.
“Quite a disguise. I can hardly spot you under all that manly frippery.”
“I don’t particularly like disguise, but a woman at Tattersalls would draw far too much notice.”
Tattersalls. All right. So they were heading to Hyde Park Corner, to the premises of the noted seller of horseflesh. Jonah retrieved his walking cane, the only male accessory she lacked, and handed it to her. “For something you dislike, you are remarkably good at it.”
“Needs must.” She shrugged. “Don’t you want your cane?”
“I’ve promised the grooms I’d walk Mouse today. If it’s all right with you, I’ll do that now. They’re weary of her. She runs them off their feet.”
Irene shifted the cane from hand to hand, experimenting with different grips. “She won’t do that to us?”
“She might. It’s all part of the fun.”
“Fun, you say. I hope you think it is.” Her lips curved. “As missions go, this is a simple one. Our target is suspected to be selling stolen horses today. With the money he gets, he’ll procure girls from the country and sell them on to brothels.”
Jonah’s jaw dropped. “This is a simple mission?”
“One pocket to pick in a public space, with an accomplice to serve as distraction. I call that simple.”
“I’m an accomplice?” Jonah tried out the word again. “An accomplice. All right. Though if he’s a horse thief and a male bawd, why can’t we call a constable on him?”
A pitying look. “You seem to think the law works for everyone. Who’d believe an uneducated young whore over a man with plenty of cash for bribes?”
Jonah shut his mouth. No one would, he knew.
“Taking his purse is a temporary solution,” Irene continued, “but it’ll protect girls for a short time. That’s why we’re going in the middle of the afternoon. If any cash has exchanged hands, he’ll be holding it.”
“Once we take that from him, he’ll get more.”
“And I’ll take it again, as often as I must, while others gather evidence against him.”
One man preying on women. One pocket to be picked. It seemed small, not enough, but it was better than doing nothing at all.
Just as it was better to help one dog, one child, than to throw one’s hands up and do nothing.
Well, hell. He was beginning to think like Irene and her mother, wasn’t he?
Which reminded him as they left the house and descended the front steps. “You sent me a stable boy, but Eli is actually Ellie. Or Eliza.”
Irene missed planting the cane on the next step. “A girl?” Softly, she whistled. “A girl. Well, of course she’d be safer on the streets pretending to be a boy.”
“We’ve been trying her in the kitchens. She doesn’t like it.” This was putting the matter mildly, as the little girl had broken more dishes in a day than a good kitchen maid broke in a year, but Jonah hadn’t given up yet.
At the bottom of the steps, Jonah accepted Mouse’s leash from a weary-looking groom. The servant whipped away as soon as Jonah took the deerhound in hand, as if afraid that Mr. Chandler would make him take the dog back.
Mouse was in fine fettle this morning, her black nose like a wet coal sniffing at everything, her long tail wagging with glee. The weather was fair and cool, with a humid breeze that surely carried an orgy of smells to the dog’s nose.
Jonah wrapped the leather leash around his hand, shortening it so Mouse would walk at his side. “You must be sweltering in that coat, Irene. Or should I call you Mr. Tweedy, as you did me?”
She gave the cane a practiced spin. “It wouldn’t be manly of me to complain about my discomfort.”
“Haven’t you ever been around a man with a rheumy cold? Complaining is extremely manly.”
She shot him a look of amusement. “You’re catching on.”
She wasn’t fitting beside him as she usually did. Finally, Jonah realized why. “Are you taller than you ought to be?”
Another spin of the cane. “A few inches. My boots have lifts and heels.”
“Ingenious. This isn’t your first time walking the streets of London as a man, is it?”
Irene snorted. “Could you make it sound less as if I’m a strumpet? And no, it’s not. There are places a woman can’t or shouldn’t go, but perception is everything. People see what they expect.” Her mouth twisted. “I learned that from my father.”
“You use the skill for good.”
“I try. Now, tell me more about our Ellie.”
“She only wants to be called Eli, and she doesn’t want to wear dresses. Said her mother told her before dying that it was safer to be a boy than a girl.” He shot a sidelong glance at his companion. “From your apparel today, I’d guess you’d agree.”
“Rather. What’s fine for a little boy is suddenly too dangerous for a girl of the same age. The difference between safety for men and women? We won’t even speak of it.”
“It’s not fair, is it?” Jonah replied. “I’m trying to keep her safe, though I’ve no idea what to do with her in the long term. She can sleep in the servants’ quarters, but if she doesn’t want to work in the kitchen…”
Irene thought for a moment. “I’ll speak with Mrs. Brodie about taking her at the school. She’s too young to be a student, but she could do some light work for her board and even a bit of pay. She’ll be safe there.”
She looked up at Jonah, her brows knit. “I should have thought of that at once instead of bringing her here. Sorry. I know you aren’t used to children.”
“I could become so.” He chuckled. “At one point, she said I was a swell but that I was nice.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“Ah. Well.” Jonah let his free hand brush against Irene’s. He’d hold it if he could, if she
weren’t in disguise. “I promised to show her how to clean hooves. She was excited about that.”
“You’re a soft touch, Jonah Chandler.”
“I could show you too. You said you’d try learning about horses.”
“All right.” She smiled. “Sometime soon.”
“Today,” he said. “When we get back to Queen Anne Street.”
For he had a mission of his own: He wanted Irene to love his work, just as she loved hers. They’d find a horse to help, and he’d make helping a horse seem so wonderful that Irene would fall in love with the idea of life at the stud farm.
To be frank with himself, he could use a reminder of what was wonderful about that life. It was rewarding to shape the behavior of horses, teaching them to be confident and well-behaved. But it was lonely. To suit his father’s plan for his life, he’d gone from home to school to the stud farm. Horses, horrible boys, then more horses.
It was time to diverge from that path. Not a lot, but somewhat. There weren’t enough good people in his life.
There wasn’t enough Irene.
He’d find a horse for Irene to help that could also help him. A solid cob like Jake, maybe, but not a gelding. A stallion that could serve as breeding stock for the steeplechase horses Jonah wanted to develop. Runners and jumpers, hardy and hale. Horses that would unite the Newmarket branch of the family with the Irish one; with Jonah’s twin sister, Kate, who was a fine steeplechase racer herself.
The trio of man, disguised woman, and deerhound walked the mile and a half to Tattersalls, cutting through the streets of Marylebone and Mayfair. They must look eccentric, on foot with a waist-high dog, but their neat dress was reassurance enough to passersby that they were left unbothered.
What would it be like to have maps in one’s head? To know other parts of England besides Newmarket? He tried to see the city as Irene and Laurie must. Knowing that behind neat buildings of trimmed stone crouched crumbling warrens of poverty. Knowing that when one lived on a street for years, one made friends—and enemies. Finding the bakeries and public houses and inns and haberdashers that suited one’s tastes and purse. There was so much to learn, he’d never master it all.
His Wayward Bride (Romance of the Turf Book 3) Page 9