Wedding Matilda (Redcakes Book 6)

by Heather Hiestand

  Ewan went to Redcake’s two hours earlier than usual the next day. He straightened his desk and packed away the few personal items that had accumulated over the years. Ewan wondered when he’d be able to leave his position. He had too much pride to simply walk out and never return, and he didn’t want to anger the Marquess of Hatbrook and his family.

  When he deemed the solicitor’s office to be open for business, he abandoned his box of possessions and walked to Chancery Lane, his brain churning with thoughts of the abduction rather than the flour issue. Could it be that the horse dealer had intended to kidnap Izabela the nanny to be his bride, and Jacob had merely been in the way? It didn’t matter what he thought because no one cared about his opinion. He hoped Greggory had found the tavern the night before and someone had told him where the Gipsy camp lay.

  At Norwich’s office, he found the man staring dolefully into his teacup, the brown bottle back at the edge of his desk. “Come in,” he said as Ewan rapped on his door.

  “Hullo, Norwich.”

  “Have you given notice? Decided on Lancashire or Hampshire?”

  “You sound raspy this morning. I thought you were going to try to keep me here.”

  “I am always miserable in the spring. The earl said no to London.” The man blew his nose in an already stained handkerchief.

  “You aren’t as miserable as the Redcake family.” Or me.

  “Do I care?”

  “It’s good gossip, what with a son of the family being kidnapped shortly after someone sold us—I mean, Redcake’s—adulterated flour.”

  Norwich raised a fluffy eyebrow. “Redcake’s prides itself on selling the best. It’s the one emporium where it’s said even a newborn would be safe eating its goods.”

  “Exactly. And guess who sold Redcake’s the adulterated flour?”

  “Who?”

  Ewan made a fist and pounded it once on the solicitor’s desk. “Douglas Flour.”

  The man’s half-mast eyes widened. “How dreadful. I hadn’t realized Douglas Flour was known to be the best flour purveyor, but it is one of those smooth-running businesses. Steady profit. No involvement on my part.”

  “I’d suggest you send me there, rather than to Lancashire or Hampshire. It must be worth a great deal of money, the prestige of supplying Redcake’s. With the family distracted by the kidnapping, I might be able to turn things around before Douglas Flour loses its best customer.”

  Norwich abraded his nostrils with the handkerchief again. “Yes, yes. I see your point.”

  “How do we make it happen?”

  “The earl left for his country seat last night, so he put me in charge. I think under the circumstances, temporarily at least, you make a fine point.”

  Ewan sat still. A position in London, or at least nearby in Southwark? He could not have done better for himself under the circumstances.

  Norwich straightened in his chair. “I will write a letter to Corwin Vare, the present manager of Douglas Flour. He will report to you now.”

  “I’ll need to draw a salary,” Ewan said. “I don’t have funds of my own.”

  Norwich turned away and opened a file cabinet with a key on his watch chain, then paged through some files. “We pay Vare three hundred a year. I’ll give you four.”

  Ewan blinked. He wouldn’t live like a lord on it, but at least he could live like a factory manager. “Very well. I should take on authority for all the associated businesses as well. Can you draw up a list and notify me, and them, of the details?”

  “Of course. I’ll have it to you next week.” Norwich called to the outer office for a secretary and, when the man came in, dictated a letter to Corwin Vare with all the details.

  Ewan was gratified to hear himself called regional director of Douglas Industries. He had come up in the world.

  When the secretary was gone, Norwich poured a dram of the brown bottle’s contents into his teacup and leaned back. “There, you’ve got what you wanted, at least until Fitzwalter returns. Now, tell me about this kidnapping.”

  Matilda paced her breakfast room floor, alone for a moment, too exhausted and nervy to eat any of the contents of the covered dishes her servants had put out. Everyone she’d seen so far that day had red-rimmed eyes and the air of a sleepwalker.

  Her mother, who heretofore had been more focused on Rose’s wedding than her grandson’s disappearance, came into the room and immediately opened her arms to offer a hug. Matilda accepted the embrace but pulled back when tears welled in her eyes.

  “I need to go upstairs,” she said. She shook her head firmly and turned to flee the room, almost colliding with her father as he entered.

  “Kippers?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The mere scent of them would turn her stomach when he lifted the dish cover, so she trotted out before he reached the sideboard.

  She climbed the stairs, blinded by tears, until she found herself in the nursery. Tucked under the eaves, it wasn’t the most cheerful of rooms in its natural state. It had a sensible cork linoleum floor and plain, hygienic white walls. The furniture had been old when Matilda was a baby, though she had a new modern chair for Jacob and the latest perambulator.

  Where had that gone? It hadn’t turned up in the park or on the street anywhere. If Izabela had abandoned it, the expensive, useful item had probably been stolen before any of the family searchers saw it. She wished she could believe the nanny was a victim, too, that she was cuddling Jacob, that Izabela and her son were in this together, that she was protecting the child. But it made no sense that some stranger would kidnap Jacob from a private park, that he would even know to do so without the nanny’s help.

  She picked up the stuffed bear Gawain had given Jacob for Christmas. It had been taller than her son at the time, but now they were equal in height. She hugged it against her chest, pretending it was her little boy. Would she ever see him again in this life? She pressed her cheek against the bear’s head. It smelled like hair and stuffing, but it also smelled like spoiled milk and powder.

  She took the bear to Jacob’s rocking horse, which had been Gawain’s during his boyhood, and bounced the bear on the horse’s saddle. She still loved to rock Jacob in the chair by the fireplace, the same chair where she’d been rocked to sleep, but her little boy loved the rocking horse best. Sometimes she was afraid he would break the springs, but they were free of rust and had held heavier children than he presently was. For a moment she stood there, allowing herself to pretend he was bouncing away on the horse, the springs squeaking in a headache-inducing ruckus, in counterpoint to the childish laughter that was an unending source of delight.

  He’d shriek, “More, Mummy, more!” when Izabela went to remove him so he could eat his bread and milk. Sometimes she would send the nanny off to her mending and sit on the chair next to the horse while he played. But she hadn’t done that nearly enough.

  And she had trusted the wrong person. She went to the wall and stared at the family portraits there. Her other lost boy, her brother Arthur, had died from a lung complaint at twenty.

  He’d be thirty or even thirty-one now. Funny; she couldn’t remember his birthday. She’d been working so hard this past year, and sleeping so little as a result, that certain details of her childhood had slipped from her memory. Why hadn’t she named Jacob for Arthur?

  His second name was Michael, named for Alys’s husband, who had allowed her to hide away at his farm while she waited for the shameful birth. Jacob Noble was her uncle, her mother’s brother, who had done precisely nothing for her then. She must have had hopes at the time that her mother’s Noble kin would be of use to her, more so than a dead brother. So practical after being so foolish.

  “Watch over him, Arthur,” she whispered, staring at the picture of the solemn and much too thin youth staring so seriously out from his portrait. His hands were too large for his arms, and his coat in the photograph was slightly too short in the sleeves. Gawky and not full grown.

  The thought that some other Redcake, a decade
or two in the future, might look at the studio portrait of her own darling boy in the nursery on a day like this, and not know who he was or what he’d meant to her, made her head swim. The room spun around her. She sank to her knees in front of the trivet where Izabela had heated Jacob’s milk.

  Someone had pulled the fender away from the fire. It was meant to protect Jacob from the flames. Had someone been hoping he would injure himself, or had a cleaning project been interrupted?

  She put her hands to her head and let it sink to the floor. The cool linoleum felt good against her cheek. She closed her eyes, but the darkness behind her eyelids swirled with dizzying colored shapes. Not sleeping last night would cost her.

  Time passed in a dull haze. She could hear the telephone ringing floors below, and wondered how the sound could carry, but couldn’t rouse herself enough to wonder if it was news about Jacob. It was likely to be Redcake’s business.

  A couple of minutes later she heard footsteps on the stair. Mrs. Miller appeared in the open doorway. Matilda tilted her head slightly to see her housekeeper’s red face. Her chest heaved with the effort of hauling her bulk up all those stairs.

  “Jacob?” she asked. Her voice sounded rough to her ears.

  “Family news,” Mrs. Miller said. “I’m sorry, lamb.” She put her hand to her mouth.

  Matilda pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Miller. I don’t mind you calling me ‘lamb,’ not today.”

  “Such a special boy,” Mrs. Miller whispered. “And you all alone up here. You should allow your family to comfort you, but”—her gaze swept the room—“I understand why you would be happiest here. When my little Victoria died, I slept in the nursery for months, just to feel I was closer to her.”

  Matilda knew Mrs. Miller had lost her entire family a decade before to tainted meat.

  “I don’t want my family,” Matilda said. She knew she sounded petulant, but the only person who had comforted her at all was Ewan Hales, and he’d turned out to have feet of clay. How could he have gone from that demonstration of quiet competence and help in London—not to mention his show of attraction to her—to accusing her, behind her back no less, and to her own brother, of having a lover who had absconded with Jacob?

  Chapter Six

  Matilda never wanted to see Ewan again. He’d been more practical than she could tolerate in his inquiries, his a mind with no hint of feminine sensitivity. She might have appreciated that under ordinary circumstances, but not when she was frantic with grief.

  She held out her hand so that Mrs. Miller could help her up. “Do you know what happened to the fender?”

  Mrs. Miller clucked when she saw the fire was open to the room. “That Daisy. She’s a bit overwhelmed. I’ll find it and have it returned to its proper position,” she promised.

  Matilda nodded. “Have we heard anything from Greggory about the White Horse tavern?”

  “No word yet, but news came from Sussex. The family is in the parlor waiting for you.”

  Alys. She’d probably had the baby, been delivered of the Marquess of Hatbrook’s perfect male heir, while her sister was prostrate with grief and loss. Just how their lives had turned out.

  She swallowed hard, refusing to give in to self-pity. She patted her housekeeper on her sleeve. “I’m sorry you lost your daughter.”

  “It was a long time ago,” the housekeeper said absently, straightening a table covered with pencils and paper. “None of my children lived.”

  “I’m sorry,” Matilda repeated, then went downstairs, holding tightly to the railing. She was still dizzy and didn’t trust herself. How she hoped she wouldn’t soon have something so tragic in common with her housekeeper. The thought of having a child no longer living was beyond her capacity to understand, now that she was a mother herself. Yes, children died, but not her child.

  Arthur had died, but at twenty. He’d had a life, even though it had been a short one. Gawain had nearly died, but he’d lived, was married with a child of his own now. His wife, Ann, had lost her first child, a stillbirth just after her first husband had died. But her mother and Ann never spoke of their lost ones. Perhaps the sadness was too much to share.

  If she lost Jacob, though, how could she never speak of him again? But she’d have nothing to share: no new tales of achievements or funny little stories. Every memory would be encased in amber, a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. Soon all her stories would be told and no one but her would care to hear them again.

  She had to write it all down. Swaying on the steps, she grabbed for the railing again and slid down along the wall, digging into her pocket for a pencil. That first time Jacob had felt sand against his bare toes last summer. The first Christmas present he’d opened last year, just old enough to understand it was a secret only to be opened by him. The way he chortled when he chased his puppy, Sir Barks, who he had named himself.

  Where was Sir Barks? Matilda blinked. She hadn’t remembered the puppy. Too much else going on with kisses and disappearances and upset servants and family bounding around the place. And the bloody flour issue.

  Gawain appeared on the stairs, quite from nowhere. “What are you doing? You need to come.”

  “I don’t. It’s just about Alys’s baby.”

  “It’s a boy. He’s a courtesy earl. Not sure of what. I had no idea Hatbrook had multiple titles. I should have thought of that.”

  “I expected he’d be a viscount if he was a boy.” How jealous Theodore Bliven would be. Back when they were courting, he’d told her he’d be an earl by fifty, when the old unmarried men ahead of him were dead. But then one had married a twenty-year-old girl, and she’d produced an heir within a year.

  “Yes, well . . . look, Matilda, you need to pull yourself together.” He squinted, which made the scars under his bad eye more pronounced. “There’s a note just come for you.”

  “Where is Sir Barks?” Matilda asked, not really hearing Gawain’s words.

  “Who?”

  “Jacob’s puppy.”

  “He’s downstairs,” Gawain said, rubbing at the scar under his eye. He still had headaches sometimes, though he’d regained enough vision to stop wearing his old pirate patch.

  “The puppy?”

  “Yes. A boy brought it. He had a note tucked into his collar.”

  She shifted, pressing her back to the wall. “Where did the boy find him?”

  “Running around the park where Izabela was meant to take Jacob.”

  “It’s been two days.” She rubbed her forehead, willing her brain to function.

  “Yes. They must have taken the dog with them.”

  “In the rain?” No. That wasn’t right.

  “It was deliberate, Matilda, obviously. Izabela took Jacob and the dog out on a rainy day quite deliberately. No one was watching out their windows for kidnappers.”

  “How is it Friday already? How is it that I have a kidnapped son?” She reached out, grabbed Gawain’s sleeve. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Gawain shook his head and plucked her hand from his sleeve, then held it between his large hands. “You’re too cold, Matilda; you need a good cup of tea.”

  “You would say that, being a tea merchant.” She vaguely noticed his smile, though she hadn’t meant to be funny. She didn’t mean much of anything. Jacob had been kidnapped.

  Someone spoke down below. She didn’t really hear the words, but Gawain yelled down, “Order a tea tray, would you, Mother? I’m bringing her down.”

  Gawain reached underneath her. Matilda thought she shrieked at the unexpected arms under her knees, around her back, but he hefted her without so much as a creaky joint and slowly walked downstairs, steady despite his damaged hip.

  She didn’t demur. What was the point? In a few minutes, Gawain had her deposited on the sofa in the parlor. Her father silently wrapped a plaid blanket around her.

  “This room is for guests,” Matilda said. “I don’t spend time in here. Where did this old raggedy blank
et come from?”

  “It was in a chest in the room we are staying in,” her mother said. “I remember it.”

  “Alys used to use it as a picnic blanket. She’d read under that apple tree in the garden on Sundays,” Gawain said. “I remember because Arthur hit her in the face with a ball once when we were playing catch around her. She screamed like a banshee.”

  “Arthur,” Matilda said. “Mother, you never speak about him. Why not?”

  Her mother stared at her blankly. “I suppose there is so much else to speak about when we see you, dear. It is not like I see any of you often, except Rose, and she is about to move to Liverpool.”

  “Alys isn’t so far away. You aren’t abandoned,” Matilda said.

  “No, dear, of course not.” Ellen’s arms crossed her body and her hands clutched at her flowing sleeves. “But, dear, Arthur has been gone over a decade now. I do think of him every day, of course, when I say my prayers.”

  “Do you pray to him, or about him?”

  “Matilda.” Her father spoke sharply, as if she’d blasphemed, but her mother smiled.

  “A little of both,” her mother said with a soft smile.

  Her father frowned.

  Gawain had left the room. Now he came back just behind Daisy, who carried a silver tea service on a large tray. He held the brown-and-white–spotted puppy, distinguishable instantly from any other by the octagonal white patch around his left eye. Matilda wasn’t sure quite what breed he was, given that his sire was unknown, but she would always recognize him.

  Gawain dumped the puppy onto Matilda’s blanketed lap and then held out a scrunched, rolled-up piece of cheap paper. “It was in his collar.”

  Matilda ran her hand along the puppy’s back. “He’s damp.”

  “Raining again,” Daisy said. “Shall I pour, Miss Redcake?”