by Merry Farmer
“None,” Lawrence replied.
Crimpley leaned forward, as if expecting him to say more. When Lawrence kept as silent as a stone, Crimpley went on.
“Word has gotten around to me that this young woman arrived here most mysteriously,” he said. “One rumor even claims that she has no memory.”
“What an interesting rumor that is,” Lawrence said.
Crimpley bristled, his moustache twitching. “I demand an answer, Smith.”
“To which question?” Lawrence played coy.
“To the question of this girl, you filthy gypsy.”
Lawrence smiled. It was bound to come around to this eventually. Most every conversation he had had with Crimpley since they were schoolboys had come around to this.
“Do you suppose I stole her away in the middle of the night, as we gypsy-folk do?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Crimpley sneered. “Who is she? Where did you snatch her from?”
“That doesn’t concern you,” Lawrence said.
“It most certainly does concern me. I am the mayor of this town.”
“An accomplishment that I did not contribute to, I must confess,” Lawrence smiled. “But it has nothing to do with a private citizen choosing to spend their time at a place of business.”
“You will not talk circles around me, you pagan rascal.” Crimpley quivered with rage.
The more he quivered, the more Lawrence enjoyed himself. He let his weight rest on one leg and planted his hands on his hips. “What do you really want?”
Crimpley surprised him by coming out and saying, “The girl.”
The joke was over. Matty scurried up the steps and into his room, out of sight.
“Well, you’re not getting her,” Lawrence said in no uncertain terms.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crimpley scoffed. “She has no memory. I know that. You can’t hide it. She might be a missing person, otherwise you wouldn’t be checking. And rumor has it that she arrived here in deplorable condition. She should be housed at the hospital under Dr. Pycroft’s care.”
“That option was discussed and discarded,” Lawrence said. “As will be any other option you suggest.”
Crimpley ignored him. “Then she should be housed with a good, Christian family until such a time as her memory can be restored and she can be returned to her people, not with a heathen like you.”
“It just so happens that Matty would prefer to stay with a heathen like me for the moment,” he said. “She feels safe here, and who am I to deny anyone their sense of safety?”
“But it is not done,” Crimpley railed. “It is simply not done. A single, young woman under the roof of a disreputable man? The scandal will be—”
“Don’t you think there’s enough scandal surrounding me that a bit more wouldn’t make a lick of difference?” Lawrence laughed. As long as Matty chose to remain with him, and as long as Crimpley didn’t show up at his doorstep with the constable, it was all a joke.
“Why…you….” Crimpley puffed and blustered, but he couldn’t come up with a single argument that would change anything. Finally, he sucked in a breath and drew himself up to his full height. “So you refuse to comply?”
“Comply with what?” Lawrence scoffed. “I have a guest under my roof. She’s a woman who has lost her memory. What do you have to do with any of that?”
Crimpley turned red, then growled in disgust. “You will pay for this, Smith,” he said, turning to go. “Mark my words, you will pay for this.”
“Pay for what?” Lawrence walked after him, throwing his arms wide. “Pay for having a guest? Enjoying the company of a woman?”
Crimpley whipped to face him, aghast. “So you are enjoying her, then? This girl without a memory who showed up in distress on your doorstep? That is how you are treating her?”
“No,” Lawrence laughed. “But I can assure you, if I was, she would enjoy herself a lot more than if you and Mrs. Crimpley were to invite her to tea.”
“Insufferable!” Crimpley snapped. “You and your pagan ways will suffer, Smith. I am quite certain that you will burn in hell.”
Lawrence shrugged. “I’m a blacksmith. I’d likely make something useful out of the fires of hell.”
With one final huff of indignation, Crimpley pivoted and marched off. And good riddance to him. Lawrence shook his head and returned to the forge.
“It’s all right,” he called out for Matty, and for Oliver as well, who had retreated around the side of the building and stood rocking from foot to foot, just out of sight. “He’s gone, and I doubt he’ll be coming back anytime soon.”
He picked up his gloves from the bench where he’d left them and slid them on, mentally retracing his steps to figure out where to begin again. When he caught sight of a pale and timid Matty inching down the steps, he changed his mind.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, taking his gloves off and walking to meet her at the bottom of the stairs. “Crimpley is full of fuss and nonsense, and not much else.”
“You won’t let him take me away from here, will you?” Matty asked, looking as young as Mary Pycroft.
“Of course not,” he promised in as tender a voice as he could manage. “If you want to stay here, then you shall stay here.”
She still looked terrified, so he did the simplest thing he could think of to cheer her. He stepped close and pulled her into an embrace, closing his arms around her and holding her. She may have looked like a frightened child, but she had the body of a woman, and she felt good in his embrace. Well, if the mayor wanted to be scandalized, then he’d give him something to be scandalized about. If Matty was willing, he would have no problem having her stay under his roof as his lover. It wasn’t something he would push or press, but he wasn’t beyond bringing it up when the time arose.
Jason
The garden was still only half finished. The new curtains had yet to arrive, and the tablecloths that had been hung as dummies would forever bear the marks. Some of the staff were complaining about their rooms having electricity instead of the gaslight they were used to, damn them. And he had yet to find a qualified cook who was up to the task of replacing the one who had run off to be married.
Jason slouched through the lobby of his hotel, glad to be there anyhow. He was also glad that every member of his staff was off doing something else. Even pointy-nose Samuel, the man who had sworn to him that his years as first footman at some town house in Liverpool had qualified him to be the concierge, was elsewhere. It was a relief. He hadn’t been forced to drag himself through such a miserable day since moving back to Brynthwaite.
For a moment, he stood in his lobby, turning to survey everything he’d built. It was a beautiful building. He loved architecture. The lobby’s high ceiling and electric chandeliers loaned an air of refinement that Brynthwaite didn’t often see. The richly-colored carpet leading up the grand staircase to the guest rooms was sumptuous by any definition. The wood paneling and the white marble floor were subtle in their richness. He had sunk more money into this hotel than any of his others, even though it was a fraction of the size. Whether it was a success or not, he had built this oasis in the wilderness as more than an investment—he had built it as a home.
Already, that home was threatened by grief and darkness. With a heavy sigh, he continued on to the far side of the room and around the front desk to his office. The funeral had been a sorry state of affairs on every level. The only reason Clara Pycroft deserved to rest in peace was because she was human. In every other way, Jason hoped that she was as aggravated in death as she had aggravated Marshall in life. Marshall was a good man, the best of their lot. He had deserved so much better. It wasn’t even the knowledge of how viciously Clara had vexed him in life, it was the look in his friend’s eyes as they had lowered her casket into the grave—the look that said she would continue to vex him in death—that Jason found so unforgivable. Marshall deserved to have peace, but that seemed unlikely to happen.
And
what about himself? Lady E. had ignored him after the funeral. She might not even have seen him, for all the attention she showed him. He closed his office door, hanging his hat on its hook, and dragged himself across the room to flop into his desk chair. At least the room was clean and organized now, he thought as he sprawled, arms and legs spread as though he were a child in a meadow. Flossie had seen to that. Beautiful, competent Flossie, who’s eyes saw right through him and whose body tempted him with every movement she made. Even the unflattering, black uniforms with their starched white aprons that he’d given his staff to wear couldn’t conceal the tempting shape of her.
Jason didn’t even try to stop his body’s reaction to the mental image of her, the memory of her scent when she stood close. He closed his eyes, letting out a breath, and contemplated just letting himself reach a hand into his trousers to relieve the pressure. Lord knew he’d contemplated Flossie’s lovely visage enough times while doing just that in the last week. He reached for the buttons on his coat.
A knock on the door stopped him cold. His eyes flew open and it felt as though lightning jolted through his veins. He gritted his teeth and scooted his chair closer to his desk, hiding him from the waist down.
“Who is it?” he barked.
“Flossie, sir.”
“Oh God.” He lowered his head, squeezing his eyes shut over the shame that washed through him. Flossie, who he had been inches away from abusing himself over, who he was quite certain could see his thoughts.
He took in a breath. “Come in.”
As the door opened and Flossie stepped inside, Jason forced his back straight and his limbs rigid. He could make it through this interview. He would hear her concern, then send her on her way, even if he had to be rude to do it.
Flossie shut the door. Jason began to shake. He was trapped with her. Her uniform was crisp and tidy, her cap in place over jet-black hair, but the soft pink of her cheeks flared to a deep red, and she kept her eyes downcast. Dear God, she was anxious. Flossie was never anxious. Flossie faced the world head-on, as immutable and undeniable as the earth itself. If she was unnerved, he couldn’t possibly survive the interview.
“What?” he snapped in the desperate hope it would make her go away.
She stepped as though walking on needles to the front of his desk. Once in place, mere feet away from him, she cleared her throat and raised her eyes to meet his. “Sir.”
His palms began to sweat. His groin ached. God help him, the bottom two buttons of his coat were undone. His shaking grew worse, and he rested his hands on his desktop to steady them.
“Well?” he growled. Please. Please let her leave before he unmanned himself.
She took a breath, those clear blue eyes of hers sharp and intense. “Sir, Mr. Throckmorton, I was in the churchyard earlier, after the funeral.” Her color peeked and her eyes shone. “I received a letter from my sister, you see, and I…I was reading it in the hedge maze.”
He had only a split-second of warning, like the buzz just before lightning struck.
“I overheard your conversation with Mr. Smith. All of it.”
His entire world came to a complete, screeching stop. His heart stopped beating and his lungs stopped breathing. Time stood still.
Then, all at once, like the hand of fate pushing him hard off a cliff, his heart thundered and every emotion he had fought to hide from and suppress slammed into him at once.
“Oh God,” he croaked, slumping forward and hiding his face in his hands. He would have climbed under his desk and hid from her entirely if he could have. His secret was out, and his life was over. Flossie—Flossie—knew.
“I want you to know that I do not hold it against you,” she went on as he continued to hide his face, wishing more and more he could dissolve into the floor. “I heard everything you said, including that this is some sort of illness. It’s not your fault.”
He heard a swish of fabric and felt her move closer to the edge of the desk, closer to him.
“I can only imagine the sort of pain you must be in. It breaks my heart to think about it.”
Breaks her heart? How could she even think to weep over the monster he was?
“But it occurs to me, sir, that we are in a unique position to help one another,” she finished.
“Help one another?” he asked, face still in his hands. He would rather die than meet her eyes in that moment.
“Yes.” She came closer still. “The letter I received from my sister,” she continued in a breathless rush. “My family is in trouble. My nieces and nephews were ill and it drained their savings. They are desperate for money, or else they may lose their home and my nephew may be forced out of school to be sent to work.”
“Are you bribing me?” he asked, sounding more like a wail, still hiding in his hands.
“No! No, sir, I would never dream of that. You misunderstand,” she rushed on. “No, I…I am proposing that you take me as your mistress in exchange for an increase in my wages.”
For the second time in a handful of minutes, it felt as though the air had been sucked from Jason’s lungs and the world had stopped turning. He jerked to look up at her, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. There was no possible way that he had just heard what he thought he’d just heard. Flossie—bold, imperturbable Flossie—offering herself as a sacrifice to his lust? His jaw worked, but he couldn’t force a single word out.
“Please hear me out, sir,” she rushed on, leaning even closer. Her face was bright red now and her breath came in short gasps that pushed her chest against the black of her dress. “I know that what I am proposing is scandalous and shocking, but you posed the question at the churchyard, and now I must answer it.”
“Question?” His voice was hoarse and distant. His mind was just as distant, as though the scene unfolding around him was a dream.
“You asked what kind of woman would become your mistress, what kind would be willing to be at your beck and call,” she pushed on, gaining steam. “I am that kind of woman.”
She was not. Nothing about her was base enough to take him on. She was intelligent and quick. She could have any man she wanted. Honorably. She was wrong.
He was still too stunned to tell her so.
“I have secrets of my own, sir,” she said, rocking back and lowering her eyes. “You need not worry that you would be spoiling an innocent or desecrating the morals of a good woman. I am not innocent and I am not good.”
Yes you are, he wanted to shout at her. He wanted to order her to leave the room and save herself, but he couldn’t. He was mesmerized by the pain in her eyes when she glanced up to him once more.
“I have no qualms about offering myself to you in exchange for money, because I have done the same before.” She snapped her eyes down as soon as her confession was made.
No, she couldn’t have. She must have been mistaken somehow. Flossie was not the kind of girl to make herself a whore for any man, not even for him.
But that was exactly what she was saying, what she was offering.
“Explain,” he said, barely able to put breath behind the word.
She nodded, and dragged her eyes up to meet his. Jason watched as resolution settled over her. She stood straighter, strong.
“My family has been in trouble before,” she confessed. “A few years ago, when my sister’s husband was dying and she was close to giving birth to their youngest of five children, money was tight. There was little they could do. I was sending home as much as I could from my wages at Crestmont Grange, but more was desperately needed.” She swallowed. “That was when Mr. Orwell, my lord’s valet, whispered in my ear that he would give me a shilling if I showed him a good time.”
Jason would kill the man. He would track him down and make him rue the day he touched Flossie.
“It was the easiest shilling I’ve ever made,” Flossie went on with a twist of a smile that quickly died. She spread her hands, and Jason saw that she too was trembling. “It became a regular arrangement. A few of the footmen
found out about it…and I came to arrangements with them as well. Then Edward, my sister’s husband, died, and Betsy and the children moved in with my parents. The need wasn’t there anymore, so I stopped. But the offers and the suggestions,” she took a breath, “the occasional demands that I was not in a position to say no to, continued.”
She paused. He wanted to say something. He wanted to desperately to defend her and call every one of those men blackguards and bastards to take advantage of her, but his throat had closed up. He didn’t dare to condemn the men who had done the very thing that every fiber of his being wanted to do now.
“You asked me when I first came here why I would leave a good job in service to work at a hotel,” she went on, the gravity in her voice making her strong in spite of what she was saying. “That is why. I wanted to get away from all that, to start over. But I failed to take into account that the problems which beset me once before could beset me again. Only this time, even though I can find no solution to my family’s woes but the one that nearly destroyed me before, this time I feel as though my desperation can, in some small way, bring hope and respite to another.” She took a step forward, resting her hands on the desk. “Please, sir. Please take me up on this offer. I can’t bear to see the way you suffer. I saw it from the start, long before I overheard your confession in the churchyard.”
She had. He was certain she had. He had seen it in those eyes of hers, peeling back every defense he had worked to build up.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I knew there was a way that I could help you, but did nothing. And you may be the last hope I have of security for my family. Does it not cheer you somewhat to know that the misfortune of two such as us could be the solution to the problems of a few, well-deserving others?”
If he wasn’t already speechless, that would have knocked every word right out of his head. Jason wasn’t sure if he should run in terror from the woman in front of him or if he should fall at her feet and worship her as the goddess she was. He should send her as far away from him as he could, pay for her passage to Australia, if it would save her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t for one simple, devastating reason. He wanted her. More than anything.