by Kate Moore
As long as Lucy could remember, Mrs. Winifred Vell ruled the Tooth and Nail’s kitchen. She was a stout woman with a voice like a bagpipe and an appreciation for all things brown. She had two dutiful assistants in her twin children, Samson and Delilah, and was a great admirer of Vicar Rudd’s stern wife.
Today Mrs. Vell wore a checked gown under her pinny as brown and white as her menu. A roast shoulder of mutton invariably followed a round of beef. Her whole desire for color was satisfied by the bright threads of the biblical scenes she embroidered for the altar cushions of the church. If culinary imagination was not her strong point, she did produce a great deal of food with clockwork predictability. Every morning a breakfast for the passengers arriving on the Rocket’s night run, and later a dinner for the passengers on the afternoon stage.
She looked up with a frown at Lucy’s request for fish for the gentleman guest. “Fish can’t be had today. Too dear. And can’t get a proper supper on for the stage folk by time and satisfy some gentleman’s nice taste.”
“Well then. I’ll manage myself,” said Lucy.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz ʼolbrook, but this be my kitchen. Seven years I’ve put supper on for the stage passengers. Never missed. Never got it to ’em late. Yer papa and I, we had a bargain. ‘Hear the horn; serve the corn.’”
“Just so, Mrs. Vell. Carry on. A plate for one guest need not interrupt the regular flow of beef from the inn kitchen to the table.”
“Ye don’t fool me, miss. Ye’ve no respect for the old ways. Yer papa not two weeks gone and ye be talkin’ with gentlemen that be walkin’ ruin in a red coat and wantin’ to change things that ought not to be changed. If ye’ve no respect for gravy and biscuit and beef, then ye’ve no respect for Winifred Vell.” She dusted the flour off her hands, shed her apron, and gathered up a straw bonnet, short brown cape, and her bag of needlework.
The usual fare for the stage passengers was headed for the door. Samson and Delilah left their posts and followed their mother.
“Not you, too?” Lucy had a foolish impulse to block their way.
“Where Mum goes, we go.” Delilah bobbed a curtsy and followed Mrs. Vell. Samson shrugged and brought up the rear of the little procession of deserters. They marched out of the kitchen, Lucy trailing behind, past Adam’s bench and the tap and into the common room. Lucy tried to think how to avoid a disaster.
Mrs. Vell sniffed and stopped to tie an elaborate russet bonnet over her cap. “Driven from my own kitchen, I am.”
Lucy resisted an impulse to laugh. “Really, Mrs. Vell, I’m merely asking that you serve one guest a bit of fish. But if you cannot stray from the righteous path of beef, then thank you for your past service to the inn. You may expect a reckoning in the morning.”
Mrs. Vell’s cheeks shook, and she pointed a finger at Lucy. “Beware, miss. This is a respectable house. A girl in yer place to be wearing silks and talking with gentlemen in the private room—it be unseemly.” She looked around. “And Pharaoh’s lean kine et up seven years o’ plenty.” She strode toward the inn door, Samson and Delilah marching along behind her.
Lucy refused to glance at the bench sitters, witnesses to the little drama. Mrs. Vell’s leaving would be the talk of the high street before supper. She crossed the room to the slate and wiped out Beef Pork Lamb with the palm of her hand and turned back to the kitchen.
By the fire, Adam sat polishing a boot, the cat curled against his thigh.
“Thank you, Adam.”
“Geoffrey ran away.” He repeated the sentence that so agitated him the day before.
Lucy put a hand on his shoulder. “No, Adam, only Mrs. Vell and her children.”
“Adam must stay,” he said, nodding his white head.
Lucy passed on to the kitchen. Without Mrs. Vell and her assistants, the room looked empty and vast, but there was soup simmering and fresh bread cooling. She rolled up her sleeves, wrapped her apron around her, and took a quick inventory of the larder. Her gentleman guest first. Stage passengers next. As long as she had Hannah and Ariel, they would manage.
* * * *
In the end Lucy decided that fish must do for both the afternoon stage passengers and the gentleman guest. The inn’s benches were filled when she emerged from the kitchen at the sound of the stage arriving. No doubt news of Winifred Vell’s leaving her post had spread up and down St. Botolph’s high street, and anyone who could leave his business to run itself for half an hour had come to see how Miss Holbrook would manage by herself. Only Will Wittering was absent after their unexpected morning conversation.
Eight travelers filed into the inn and gathered round the table set for them with its spotless linen and gleaming flatware. A white-haired gentleman in clerical black and his thin, sharp-looking wife led the way, followed by a ginger-haired man with a yellow-dotted neckerchief, who smirked at Lucy. A pair who looked like farmers, and a sober, plain family, possibly Quakers, went straight to the table.
Lucy squared her shoulders and brought the soup round. Her guests prayed or began eating at once, as was their preference, except for the traveler with the ginger hair and loud neckcloth. He appeared to be in spirits and kept trying to snake an arm around Lucy’s person at every opportunity.
As she brought the fish to the table and bent to lay it down, Hannah appeared at the foot of the stairs, signaling Lucy to come. Lucy nodded to Hannah and took her eye off the flashy gentleman. At the touch of his hand to her bottom, she jerked. Her platter tilted, and the pike slid from its nest of greens into the lap of the clergyman’s wife.
There was an awful pause. Then the lady shrieked and jumped to her feet, dumping the fish to the floor, where it cast an accusing eye up at Lucy.
“You clumsy girl. You’ve ruined my gown.” The woman held up her skirt with the wide wet imprint of the pike, like a dark grin pasted across her lap.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You may be sure I’ll report this episode to the coach company. I will be compensated.”
Lucy drew herself up. “How much do you require?”
The guard entered and called for the passengers. The others stopped eating and began to gather cloaks and bundles, but the clergyman’s wife dabbed at her ruined gown with a napkin.
“My dear,” said the clergyman. “Come....”
“George, be quiet. I will be compensated for my gown before I take a step toward that stage.”
“But the stage will go on without us. You won’t want to stay the night in this inn.”
“Certainly not.”
The bench sitters began to murmur. “B’aint the thing to let Mrs. Vell go.”
“Nothin’ good can come of such a change.”
Lucy retrieved her cash box and drew out a stack of Bank of England notes. The bench sitters hushed. There wasn’t a person in the room who did not respect those notes. “How much?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Six pounds.”
A low whistle came from the benches.
Lucy produced the notes without a blink. “Sign this receipt.” She offered the woman a pen and paper, and the woman signed with a flourish.
“Don’t think you’ve heard the end of this, girl.” She swept out of the common room with her husband trailing after her.
Lucy stared at the pike. She had thought it would be easy to take charge. She felt the bench sitters watching, and judging. She could hear the continued murmur of commentary. She drew a steadying breath. First things first. The pike.
Queenie, the opportunist, padded over on silent feet, crouched down, and began to lick the pike’s imprint from the floor. Lucy shooed the cat away and knelt on the flagstones with the empty platter. She slid a pair of serving spoons under the fish to lift it. The malevolent pike promptly broke into three pieces. She emptied the spoons full of broken fish onto the platter and started again while Queenie mewed and circled around behind her
. An inconvenient ache made itself known low in Lucy’s back. She resisted the urge to press her fish-coated hand against the place.
“Trouble, Miss Holbrook?” said a familiar voice.
“Nothing I can’t handle, Captain Clare,” she said without looking up.
His hand gripped her arm and lifted her from the floor. “Blodget, get your mistress some help,” he ordered, his voice quiet but commanding.
“You...” she said, trying to frame some resistance to his interfering ways.
“I know. I’m giving orders again, and I will until you start giving some yourself.”
He led her to Adam’s bench, sat her down, and stood over her while Frank and Hannah dealt with the fish.
“Sorry about yer fish, miss,” Hannah said as she passed with the pike’s remains on her way to the kitchen. “It’s all that gentleman’s fault, too. He skipped, miss. That’s wot I was trying to tell ye. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, Hannah,” Lucy replied. “Save some fish for Queenie.”
She looked up at Harry Clare. “Satisfied?”
“It’s a start.”
“Well, you won’t like it if you teach me to give you orders.”
“Depends on the orders you give me.” He grinned, and she caught her breath at the change in his uncompromising face.
* * * *
Lucy Holbrook sat on the bench beside the sleeping Adam, the cat curled in her lap. It did not appear that they had moved since the incident with the fish. The old man looked so deep in sleep that Harry thought he could hazard a few of his questions.
“Your father’s death upset him?”
She nodded, her fingers stroking the cat’s white neck.
“Does he have a room or a bed somewhere?”
“He sleeps in Papa’s room.”
“Even now?” Harry could understand if Tom Holbrook had given the blind man a bed in the stable, but that Holbrook had kept Adam as close as family deepened the mystery.
“I... There’s a chair. I keep watch.”
“Not forever.” Harry had a momentary desire to take hold of her slumping shoulders and shake her. It was a youthful mistake to think she could shoulder the burden of the inn and Adam.
“Until I can make some other arrangement.”
Harry shook his head. “Wearing yourself out won’t help Adam. Come on. Let me help you get him to bed. I can sit up with him tonight.”
She looked up at him then, with more suspicion than gratitude. “You have no ties to Adam, no duty....”
“Let’s say, I want my breakfast in the morning and need my innkeeper to take her rest.” That was as much as he was willing to admit, but it gave her pause and made her take a longer look at him. He recognized that measuring gaze, the effort of a fighter to size up his opponent.
He knew what another man, a man like Richard, would see—a half-pay officer in a frayed and faded red coat, a man who’d seen action but not advancement, a down-and-out soldier, clinging to past glory. It was the disguise he had been wearing as a spy in all the low places where old soldiers gathered. He knew what some women would see in him, a hardness and a hunger that would be good to satisfy the itch created by conjugal sameness. He didn’t know what an innocent like Lucy Holbrook would see.
He offered stare for stare, unyielding. It was a test of wills. Hers was strong, but weakened by grief and fatigue, she was no match for him. Her gaze dropped. “Thank you,” she said. “Let me wake him. I know the trick of it.”
Taking one of Adam’s great hands in hers and speaking softly, Lucy coaxed the old man awake. He lifted his head and cocked it to one side, listening to the sounds of the inn, quiet now, with only Frank Blodget closing up in the tap.
“Who’s there?” Adam asked hoarsely.
Lucy squeezed his hand. “It’s me, Lucy, and Captain Clare. You’ve been sleeping. Let me take you to your proper bed. I’ve saved some pudding for you.”
“Adam likes pudding.” The old man turned with unerring instinct toward Harry. “You like pudding, Captain?”
“I do.” The old man might make a better witness than Harry had imagined, if his other senses could supply the deficiency of his eyes.
“Adam,” said Lucy, “put your left arm over Captain Clare’s shoulder, and he will help you to Papa’s room.” She lifted the cat from her lap. The creature raised its tail and strutted off with offended dignity.
Harry moved next to Adam on the bench. When Adam’s arms were positioned over their shoulders, Harry and Lucy rose, steadying the old man on his feet.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, and they began to move toward the hall at the back of the inn.
At the last door in the hall, Lucy stopped and turned the latch. “Can you hold him up?” she asked. “We need a light.”
“I can manage,” Harry answered. Adam was a large, rawboned figure of a man, but there was little weight on his tall frame.
She slipped into the dark and lit a lamp. In its glow a man’s room emerged with the inn’s golden yellow walls and dark beams overhead. Harry understood at a glance how Adam Pickersgill had remained hidden from the world for twenty years. Under the stairs at the back of the inn, the room was a sanctuary. Two tall wardrobes stood opposite a large oak bed. A worn Turkey rug and a faded red velvet easy chair by the stone hearth gave color. Harry took note of drawers, books on a shelf, and a painted wooden box at the foot of the bed, all the places where a man stowed the things that mattered to him.
“Adam sleeps there.” Lucy pointed.
Harry shifted his glance to a long low bed covered in a blue-and-white-striped rug tucked under the stairs. Together they maneuvered the old man to the edge of the bed, and he sank down.
Lucy turned promptly to Harry, in charge again. “Thank you, Captain.”
“You’re not finished with me yet,” he told her. “Remember, I offered to sit with him tonight.”
Her chin came up, and she shook her head. “Adam and I, we have a ritual.” It was plain she did not want Harry intruding on a private moment.
He bowed and withdrew. Tom Holbrook had gone to his grave with whatever secret made him hide Adam from the world. If any evidence remained of Adam’s past, the dead man’s room would be the first place to look for it. Harry would search her father’s room as soon as he could.
Through the ups and downs of the Season, the husband hunter must keep her female friendships in good repair. She must make time not only for morning calls, but also for visits of compassion, commiseration, and shared joy. Furthermore, she must keep up a regular correspondence with those friends from whom she is, on occasion, separated. A letter full of the little nothings of another’s life is by its nature, in its trust and close connection, restorative to the spirit. She will perhaps have few friends to whom she may open her heart entirely, but the alert female consciousness of a true friend is a powerful antidote to errors of feeling. Alone, without female friends, the husband hunter may come to depend on the attentions of gentlemen who seek her company only to gratify their own vanity or lust.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter 5
A letter came from Margaret Leach in Wednesday’s post. Her friends had not abandoned her. Lucy tucked the letter in her pocket, promising herself she’d read it the first chance she had. When she moved, the paper made a noise, reminding her that it was there and reminding her of the lost book, the gift her friends had given her. She’d asked Hannah and Ariel to look for it, but neither of the girls had seen it.
The mystery of the lost book bothered her when she had time to think of it, but most of the time she was simply too busy running between the kitchen and the public room, or seeing to it that the girls kept at their tasks. She was neglecting Adam, she knew, but once a day at least Captain Clare sat with him, stroking the cat and talking the way Adam liked to ta
lk about ale and coffee and cats.
When she finally had a moment, she would read Margaret’s letter and do a thorough search for the book. It must be somewhere deep under Adam’s bench. She would take a broom handle and reach back to the wall.
The clang of metal hitting slate brought her from the kitchen on the run. She swung around the tall back of Adam’s black bench and saw Queenie, her back arched high, hissing from the mantel. On the floor six brass candlesticks rolled wildly, but no Adam sat on the bench.
Lucy glanced across the common room. At first she saw only the usual crowd of bench sitters with their pipes and mugs. Then her gaze found Adam. A man in a flat-brimmed hat and long coat had Adam by the arm and tugged him along toward the door.
“Adam,” she called. “Stop. It’s Lucy.”
Adam halted and wheeled toward her voice, swinging the stranger, who clung to his arm, around to face her. “Adam stay.” He planted his feet in a wide stance and tried to shake off the man’s grip.
Lucy did not recognize the other man. She crossed the room with a quick stride. The bench sitters fell quiet. Face-to-face, the stranger was smaller than he first seemed. His clothes, from the wide-brimmed hat and greatcoat to the boots sagging about his ankles, looked too large for his frame. His face bristled with wild black brows and whiskers. His dark eyes were small and narrow in the pointed face of a burrowing creature. Lucy expected his sharp nose to twitch.
“Morning, miss,” he said, drawing himself up. “I’ve come to collect your madman.”
“Adam is not mad,” Lucy corrected him. “And who are you?”
“I’m Findlater, miss, the new parish overseer. I heard that this fellow gave you a great deal of trouble on Sunday.”
“Adam is not mad,” Lucy repeated. “And he troubles no one, Mr. Findlater. I’m sorry you’ve come on a fruitless errand. I will take Adam back to his bench now.”
Findlater shook his head. He had not let go of his hold on Adam’s arm. Adam stood stiff and unmoving, his head cocked to one side.
“Now, miss, I don’t want to quarrel with you, but this man doesn’t belong here. He’s not a St. Botolph’s man at all. No record of him being dipped in the font, is there?”