A Lady's Formula for Love

by Elizabeth Everett

  “’S what I said, innit?”

  “Has anyone from the household seen you arrive?” Letty asked.

  “Why would that matter?” Arthur said as he stepped out from behind the carriage house.

  Mrs. Pettigrew squeaked in surprise, but Letty scowled.

  “It matters because I don’t want to worry Lady Greycliff’s staff with a minor inconvenience,” she snapped.

  Arthur crossed his arms, letting his disbelief show. “Is that it, or have you something planned with these chemicals for Thursday night? Something combustible?”

  “Comestible,” corrected the driver.

  “Oh dear,” murmured Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “Unless you are trying to keep Lady Greycliff from completing her formula by diverting her supplies?” Arthur took another step closer, examining Letty’s expression for signs of guilt.

  “What on earth?”

  Even Arthur gave a slight start of surprise at Violet’s query. He hadn’t heard her come outside. He’d been too busy pretending his anger was due to some scheme rather than his own despair.

  There was no victory to be had when Letty paled and Mrs. Pettigrew pulled her hood down even further. The sight of Violet confronting her friends’ deception twisted his insides with sympathy. Alice must have taken her in hand, for her cap was now straight and the hair beneath fixed into a tidy bun. She pinned each of them in turn with her stare.

  “There’s nothing to be done but come clean, Caro,” said Letty.

  Beneath the hood, Mrs. Pettigrew whimpered but offered no resistance when Violet tipped her head toward the house.

  “Follow me.”

  Arthur followed, in case they tried to slip away as they trooped through to the club’s office. Violet took a seat behind the desk, while Mrs. Pettigrew and Letty stood, hands folded and heads bowed in penitence before her.

  Arthur settled between them and the door. They appeared to be chastened, but appearances were deceptive.

  “It was my fault, my lady,” Mrs. Pettigrew burst out.

  “Now, Caro,” Letty said, “there’s no need to be dramatic.”

  This was the outside of enough. “Admission of attempted murder is indeed reason to be dramatic,” Arthur sneered.

  “Murder?” Mrs. Pettigrew gasped.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Letty cried. “We didn’t try to murder anyone—except one another when this all went cockeyed.”

  “Surely that is too strong a charge, Arthur,” Violet remonstrated, leaning over to catch his gaze.

  “What do you call throwing bricks, or setting off bombs and lighting fires?” he said. He pointed at Mrs. Pettigrew. “Even if you weren’t trying to kill Lady Greycliff, you’ve betrayed her trust and endangered everyone around you.”

  “Throwing bricks? No, no. When I said it was my fault, I meant my head,” she said, pointing to the hood. “I used up all our supplies trying to get the formulaic proportions right. The night of the fire, I went to borrow some of your acacia gum, my lady, and that’s when I saw the smoke. I meant to get you more before you noticed it was gone, I swear.”

  Violet threw her hands up in frustration. “Formulaic proportions and acacia gum for what?” Her confused gaze shifted between the two women. “What have you been keeping from me?”

  Mrs. Pettigrew glanced at Letty, who signaled her permission, then pulled off her hood.

  Violet gasped, and Arthur leaned forward. Though overcast, enough daylight lit the room that they could both see the remarkable . . . transformation in Caroline Pettigrew’s hair.

  “It looks . . .” Arthur circled the woman, peering at her head from all sides, and tried to find a descriptor. At least it wasn’t pink.

  “Solid,” Violet said, finishing the sentence and setting a hand to her cheek in shock. “Caroline, what have you done to your hair?”

  Mrs. Pettigrew’s hair was dressed in a coiffure more suitable for the ballroom than the daytime. It was parted down the middle, with four or five barley curls hanging on either side of her face. The back was braided and twisted into an elaborate design.

  The style was not itself out of the ordinary. What fascinated Arthur was the fact that not a single hair was out of place. Caroline’s entire head reflected the light, as if she wore a helmet of polished marble.

  God save them if Mrs. Pettigrew tried to invent something for internal use.

  “Ahem,” Letty said. “If I may?”

  Arthur went to stand next to Violet, one hand behind his back. He’d a clever little folding knife secreted there, handmade by the sole female bladesmith he’d encountered. She lived in London, and Arthur had considered introducing her to Athena’s Retreat.

  After today, he decided against it.

  Letty began, “Imagine never having to worry about your hair if the wind blew your bonnet, or your hat, from your head.”

  “Imagine,” Arthur repeated, trying to remember if he’d ever wondered about that. Since he began this assignment, outlandish scenarios had become commonplace.

  Letty gestured to Mrs. Pettigrew’s head with her palm facing the ceiling, a trace of obsequiousness in her manner. With a wave of her hand, she’d transformed from Athena’s competent club secretary to a Piccadilly shopgirl. “If a lady’s hair remained as lustrous and shapely at the end of the day as in the morning,” she said, “she’d save hours of time when dressing for dinner or a party.”

  “What does any of this have to do with Lady Greycliff’s supplies?” Arthur said, interrupting Letty’s recitation. “The two of you are still hiding something, and it isn’t Mrs. Pettigrew’s head.”

  Violet said, “You’ve used the aerosol deliver system to spray—”

  “Hair lacquer,” admitted Mrs. Pettigrew. Red spots of shame stood out against her wan skin. “We are perfecting a formula for hair lacquer to sell at Fenley’s Fantastic Fripperies. I never meant to keep this secret.”

  “I did,” Letty declared. “Blame me.”

  Violet and Letty shared a glance that, as angry as Arthur was, he envied. They’d history between them.

  “I didn’t think you would approve, my lady,” Mrs. Pettigrew explained.

  “Approve of your hair?”

  “Approve of making money from it,” Letty said. “The bylaws state that our work is for the advancement of knowledge. When I suggested we add the words ‘wealth and benefit of the members,’ you and Lady Phoebe voted me down.”

  “We need the mixture perfected by Thursday,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “The night of the event,” Arthur pointed out.

  “Thursday’s when my father places orders for the beauty selection,” Letty explained. “If we are to sell the hair lacquer before the season, the materials must be ordered now.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell me?” Violet asked, hurt written on her face.

  The grim set of Letty’s mouth softened, and Arthur moved as close to Violet as he could without touching her.

  “We couldn’t involve you in such a mercantile project, my lady,” Mrs. Pettigrew said. “A gentlewoman doesn’t sell cosmetics or household cleaners.”

  Letty continued. “We wanted to split the profits with Fenley’s Fantastic Fripperies and put our half of the earnings back into a fund for our members.”

  “A fund?” Arthur said. “For what?”

  “Not all our members have means.” There was a hint of apology in Mrs. Pettigrew’s voice, but Letty simply crossed her arms. “They must pay for supplies or hire childminders for the hours they come here to work.”

  “I never thought . . .” Violet bit down on her bottom lip as she considered Letty’s words. “I never considered the matter from any point of view other than my own—as a woman with means.”

  “Who else knows of this project?” Arthur asked. “Any of the club members? Lady Phoebe?”

  “O
f course not. Imagine what Lady Phoebe would say if it were known the social club was being used for commerce,” said Letty. “Why, it would be an even larger scandal than experimenting with science.”

  Violet shook her head. “You do Phoebe an injustice. She is in favor of women supporting themselves.”

  Letty scoffed. “She spends more money on a bonnet than entire families spend on coal for a year, and that’s after her papa has halved her pin money.”

  Violet turned to Arthur. “Would it draw too much attention if we allowed our members to sell their inventions?”

  Arthur considered the question, pleased she’d asked for his counsel. “I suppose it depends on where they sell them,” he said. “Perhaps a discussion between your members is in order? The nature of Athena’s Retreat means you will always be balancing the greater good against the desires of individual members.”

  He hadn’t meant for it to be a reminder of his and Violet’s own predicament, but the echo of his words hung between them as Violet asked the ladies to hold off on producing more of their wares until they called a meeting of the entire club.

  Arthur and Violet were free to make whatever choices they wanted. Today’s discovery served as a reminder, however, that the consequences of their choices would affect everyone else around them.

  20

  YOU DON’T TRUST them, do you?” Violet asked.

  She didn’t believe her friends were responsible for any of the mischief Arthur had accused them of, but she admitted to being disappointed that neither woman had included her in their plans.

  Arthur had been contemplating the threadbare rug in front of the desk since Violet ushered Letty and Caroline out into the hall.

  He answered her now. “They tell a compelling tale, but, no, I don’t trust them. Do you think it is coincidence that Mrs. Pettigrew’s aerosol invention resembles the one used by the Omnis in their riots?”

  “Often, scientists develop similar work without having contact with one another,” Violet replied. “Think of how Leibniz and Newton discovered calculus at the same time but in different countries. Caro Pettigrew is a member of Athena’s Retreat. She made a vow never to reveal the secret of the work we do behind the oak door.”

  “A vow?” Arthur scoffed.

  The man who had gifted little Alice with memories of home was nowhere to be found. Instead, the cynical enigma from the night they’d first met had reappeared. From the moment Grantham had accused Arthur of negligence, he had begun to retreat, readying himself for another loss.

  Not this time.

  “You know how important this club is to the members,” she argued. “You’ve seen them working all hours of the night on their creations. If you cared—”

  “I don’t care,” he blurted. “Worrying about aerosol pumps or pink teacups is not my job. This assignment—”

  “You do.” Violet marched over to him and stood toe-to-toe. “We are not assignments any longer. We are people who care for you, and you care about us as well.”

  “What do you think happens if I become involved in the lives of the people I am meant to protect?” The syllables fell from his mouth, dense and wooden with despair. He lifted his eyes from the floor but didn’t look at her as he spoke. “What if I grow to care about them or, conversely, not care about them?”

  It didn’t take long for understanding to dawn.

  Arthur’s shoulders inched up in discomfort while his gaze rested on the curtains behind her. “Most of my . . . assignments were horrible men. Men with black souls and no conscience. Some molested their servants and cheated other men out of their fortunes. Some beat their wives.”

  What must it feel like to live cheek by jowl with such men? Daniel had never been deliberately cruel, but his disappointment had worn her down, seeping into her skin and bones. Might Arthur have kept away from ordinary people for fear of contaminating them with the ugliness of the men he served?

  “If I had become involved, I might not have been willing to do anything to keep them safe. Those men would be dead. That would have been on my conscience. Worse. Their deaths would have had dire consequences for the country—and in some cases, the entire continent. I protected them, and by extension, I am complicit in some of their deeds.”

  Violet raised her hand to offer comfort, but he shook his head.

  “A bodyguard cannot feel anything for the people he is protecting. He cannot hate them, and he cannot . . . What Grantham said was true. A man died because my focus was not on him. My focus was on his wife.”

  She stiffened at the slap of his words, and the space between them filled with ice. Still, hadn’t she wanted him to explain what Grantham had meant?

  “On my first assignment, I committed the ultimate betrayal of my duties,” Arthur confessed. “The first time I went into the field, the man I was supposed to protect was murdered.”

  She said nothing as she turned Arthur’s words around this way and that.

  His chin dipped to his chest, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I knew better. I had been trained to avoid any entanglements. I did it anyway. I never made that mistake again. Until you.”

  For every word spoken aloud, a thousand more shouted out to her across the silence that followed.

  “Was it love?” she asked.

  “What?” He stared at her as though she’d spoken another language. Perhaps she had.

  “The woman with whom you . . .” Violet didn’t know what to call her. “Did you love her?”

  “Love,” he repeated. The word sounded awkward in his mouth, as though his tongue could not find the shape of it. “Yes. No. I was . . . fascinated by her.”

  A tiny coil of jealousy unwound itself in the pit of Violet’s stomach. Fascinating, eh? “Was she poised and beautiful?” she asked.

  His brow raised in query. “I suppose? I had little experience with females, other than my wee sister and mam. I missed them every day.” He sighed. “Her name was Maria Bellingham. She wasn’t just beautiful; she took notice of me. That’s all it took for me to lose my mind a little. A woman’s kindness.”

  While he searched for words, Violet studied his profile for traces of the boy he’d been. Once, he’d been inexperienced and unsure of himself. Difficult to imagine Arthur as anything other than invincible. The mantle of command he wore and the aura of leashed power surrounding him often obscured any trace of uncertainty.

  Tilting his head upward, he studied the shadows on the ceiling. “I’m hard-pressed to describe Maria as anything other than devastatingly compelling to a young man who should have known better yet wanted to be needed. To be essential.”

  Ghosts hovered between them. Uncertain as to how she might dispel them, Violet remained silent and gave them their due.

  “We were seven assigned to the Bellinghams. He sold guns to the Greeks—not a nice man but not a brute, either. Out of all those men, she took an interest in me. We recognized the loneliness in each other. Sympathy rather than love, but no less powerful.”

  Violet shifted her weight from one foot to the other, torn between wanting to console Arthur and wanting to stay clear, so that his words might flow undisturbed.

  He studied the shelves full of books and files as though they contained vital secrets.

  “I didn’t love her, did I?” he said finally, sounding surprised. “How could I? I never said more than a handful of words to her. I fancied myself Lancelot. She was Guinevere. At the time, I hoped she saw something special in me. I imagined myself giving comfort, giving succor.”

  Humility flashed across his face. “On the afternoon I was to meet her for our first assignation, I asked another man to take my shift. I’d a bad feeling all day, but I ignored it—thought it was guilt. I was impatient. Instead of waiting for him to relieve me in the parlor, I left as soon as I heard him in the corridor outside. He was almost to the door when we heard glass breaking. By the tim
e we got there, it was too late. I was too late. Bellingham was dead, and the man who’d replaced me took a bullet in the leg, trying to stop the assassin.”

  Facing her at last, Arthur tilted his palms outward in supplication. “Distracted. Dead.”

  “And since then, you have made certain never to repeat your mistake?” Violet asked, careful to keep any judgment from her voice. “Never allowing affection for the people you protect or anyone around them?”

  “When my sister died, the memory stayed with me, so sharp and clear. I hoped by saving others, I could blunt the pain. The first time I had the chance, I failed.” He set his fingertips to his lips, as if shocked by the flow of words.

  “You did not invite the assassin in, Arthur. There were six other men assigned to the house. You didn’t even have an affair with her.”

  When he shook his head, shadows filled the hollows beneath his cheeks. He stared at the floor as though Bellingham’s body lay in front of him even now. “I was . . .”

  “Yes. You were distracted.” Violet’s voice cut through the darkness, surprising them both. “A young man, with all the feelings and flaws inherent at that age. You made a mistake.”

  “When I lost my family, there was such a hole . . .” Arthur pushed the words out as though they burned his mouth. “I tried to fill it with Maria, but she was the wrong shape. Then everything went to hell. Bellingham is dead, and in all these years it stayed empty.”

  “Our lives are not the product of the mistakes we’ve made and the wrongs we committed.” Here, in this place she had created to escape her own failures, Violet spoke to her younger self as well as Arthur. “Our lives are what comes afterward. The journeys we take in search of forgiveness. The lessons we learn along the way.”

  “Forgiveness?” he whispered. “There is no one left to forgive me. They’re all gone.”

  “There is yourself, Arthur. If it were anyone else, might you allow them absolution?”

  * * *

  FORGIVENESS?

  What a large and unwieldy concept. The syllables wrapped themselves like soft wool around old wounds.