by Darcie Wilde
I will deal with it all in its place, thought Rosalind as she said her farewells and closed the door behind her. I must keep my mind on the matters immediately in front of me. On the death of Fletcher Cavendish and its ties to the Seymore branch of the family.
Rosalind thought again of Lord Adolphus and Miss Vaughn. What would Lady Bertram do when she found out? Was she the reason the engagement, as it seemed, must be kept a secret?
Or was it Lady Weyland who would object? Rosalind frowned at this idea as she unknotted her bonnet ribbon.
“Oh, I am sorry, miss!” Mrs. Kendricks exclaimed as she hurried up the passage from the kitchen. “I was just putting supper in the oven and did not hear you.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Kendricks,” said Rosalind. “I am still capable of taking off my own hat.”
Her housekeeper looked skeptical, and despite everything, Rosalind smiled. “Did anything noteworthy happen while I was out?”
Mrs. Kendricks’s face tightened. “Mr. Harkness stopped by, but I told him you were out.”
Their eyes met and Rosalind did not have to ask the question poised on her lips. You told him I was with Devon. Because you’re worried . . . because you think . . .
“He left you a note,” said Mrs. Kendricks. “I put it on your desk.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kendricks.”
But when Rosalind picked up the note in question, she frowned. She had seen Mr. Harkness’s writing. She was no expert in the analysis of such things like Miss Onslow, but she would swear on her life that Adam was incapable of writing her name in such exaggerated copperplate script.
Neither would he ever use a seal that particular shade of rose pink.
Rosalind broke the seal and unfolded the letter and read it. Her knees shook, and failed her, and she sat down hard in the chair.
The note was a short one, written in the same elaborate slanted writing as her name had been.
Miss Thorne, it said.
You may call if you choose. Tomorrow at noon.
Cynthia Sharps
Cynthia. There was an address. It was in a fashionable square, not too distant from where Rosalind sat. Barely half a mile, in fact. Half a mile and a world away.
Charlotte.
My sister.
Devon had made inquiries, but it was Mr. Harkness who had found her. Of course it was, because it was what he was trained to do.
Her hands were shaking. Tears pressed behind her eyes, but she could not tell whether they were for relief or shame. Or fear.
“Are you all right, miss?” Mrs. Kendricks had come in without Rosalind hearing.
“Yes,” she lied without turning around. “I just . . .”
But at that moment the doorbell rang. Rosalind looked up with an attitude very close to despair. Was there not to be a moment’s peace?
Mrs. Kendricks set her jaw and marched out into the foyer. A heartbeat later, Rosalind heard the exclamations of a familiar voice. She rose, trembling, to her feet and turned just as Alice burst through the door.
“Rosalind!” Alice cried, darting forward to grab Rosalind’s hands. “It’s a Sunday miracle!”
“What’s happened?”
“I’ve found her!” Alice bounced up and down on her toes like a schoolgirl.
“Who?”
“Margaretta’s mother!” Alice shouted triumphantly. At the same time, she noticed the crumpled paper in Rosalind’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” replied Rosalind. “Nothing at all.”
• • •
“The wedding was at St. Margaret’s-by-the-Lane,” Alice told her as they climbed into the hackney cab she had kept waiting. “The church register gives the bride’s name as Margaret Coyningham, with her parents listed as John and Mary Coyningham, formerly of Number 16, Simonds Lane, but now both deceased.”
“Margaretta said she was an orphan.”
“Margaretta has said a large number of things,” Alice reminded her. “Now, I talked with the curate, and he was able to point me to Simonds Lane and there . . .” Alice stopped, her eyes sparkling.
“There, what?” demanded Rosalind.
“You’ll see,” said Alice.
“Alice!”
“Oh, no. For this once, Rosalind Thorne, I’m going to be the one with the mystery.”
As it happened, it was easy to see what led Alice to believe she’d found the right place. In fact, it appeared in the form of a large written notice affixed to the freshly painted door of an otherwise unremarkable house:
HOME OF THE LATE FLETCHER CAVENDISH,
OF THE ROYAL THEATER
ALL PERSONS WISHING TO SEE THE ACTUAL ROOMS MAY APPLY TO
MRS. COYNINGHAM, NO. 16
FOR ADMISSION
3D.
“Oh, dear,” murmured Rosalind.
“Actually, it’s very encouraging,” said Alice. “Some people do not like to talk to the newspapers. This tells us she will be more than willing to spread the word of her connection, to Mr. Cavendish at least.”
“Will she be giving tours on a Sunday, though?” asked Rosalind.
Alice gave her a pitying look. “Perhaps, though, it would be best if we did not mention Margaretta right away.”
“Because if the daughter has disavowed the mother, the mother may not be in any hurry to acknowledge the daughter?”
“Exactly.”
Rosalind nodded. “I shall stand back and let you lead us.”
Alice curtsied in acknowledgment and together they hurried across the rutted street.
Number 16 proved to be a brick and timber residence with deep eaves. Its door was also freshly painted, but was very much dented and chipped underneath the brass knocker. Alice plied that knocker smartly enough to leave a few new scars on the wood. A slightly grubby boy opened the door and peered out at them.
“Is another party, Mrs. Coynin’ham!” he shouted back into the house.
“Now what have I told you? No shouting! You come and get me!” A woman, presumably Mrs. Coyningham, hurried up the dim passage. She cuffed the boy, but turned a broad smile on Rosalind and Alice. “Good morning, ladies. Come to see the rooms of our very dear late lamented Mr. Cavendish?”
Mrs. Coyningham was a plain, stout woman. Her hands had been hardened by years of work. Rosalind found herself looking closely at her. She had dark hair, now mostly iron gray, and large, dark eyes. But there was nothing of Margaretta’s beauty about her, and nothing of her sophistication. For a moment, though, Rosalind thought she saw the same flash of calculating intelligence in this woman’s eyes that she had spotted in Mrs. Seymore’s.
Did this woman give birth to Margaretta? Or was it Lady Weyland? Rosalind tried to compare in her mind this woman with the beautiful, sophisticated, calculating dowager, and found she could not tell.
“Yes, of course, we are here to see the rooms,” Alice was saying. “But we were hoping to speak with you as well, Mrs. Coyningham. I am Alice Littlefield, and I write for The London Chronicle.”
“Them papers,” sneered Mrs. Coyningham. “Tramping up and down my stairs, wanting a look for free. You can take your papers and—”
“We would not expect you to waste your time,” said Alice immediately. “I cannot speak for other establishments, but the Chronicle will of course pay the admission, and compensate you for any additional time.”
This may or may not have been true before the landlady opened the door, but it hardly mattered. Rosalind, to prove she and Alice were there in partnership, opened her reticule and drew out a coin. Mrs. Coyningham squinted at it and, apparently satisfied, tucked it into the pocket hanging from her apron. “If you ladies will wait here one moment, I’ll go and get the keys.”
Good as her word, Mrs. Coyningham returned with a bunch of keys in her hand a moment later and led them both bac
k toward Number 20.
“It was in the good old days that Mr. Cavendish came to us,” Mrs. Coyningham said with the air of someone beginning a familiar recitation. “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was summer then, like it is now, and just as hot as ever could be. ‘Madam,’ he said to me, ‘I have worn out three pairs of shoes searching for a place where I might lay my weary head, and nowhere throughout the city have I heard more praised than the rooms of Mrs. Coyningham.’”
Having heard Mr. Cavendish speak, Rosalind found herself believing he might actually have said this, or something close to it.
Mrs. Coyningham led them up a set of fresh-scrubbed stairs, which creaked badly under their shoes, to a passage that smelled of damp and coal smoke. A black and slightly wilted funeral wreath hung on the door at their right.
“Here we are, dears.” Mrs. Coyningham opened the door and stood back so Alice and Rosalind could walk in. The flat they entered was notable for being scrupulously clean. Otherwise, these were of the plainest possible kind of rooms, sparsely furnished with whitewashed walls and bare, splintered boards.
“This is the very front parlor to which Mr. Cavendish returned every day after another success on the boards. ‘The boards,’ you see, is what a professional actor calls the stage or the theater,” Mrs. Coyningham added. Alice nodded vigorously. She also brought out her notebook and pencil and began taking notes in rapid shorthand.
“He wore a blue cloak in them days, and he always hung it here on this peg.” Mrs. Coyningham touched the peg in question. “Always in a rush, was our Mr. Cavendish. I cannot count the number of times I had to fly after him to take him his hat.” She fondly smiled at the pegs, and the memory. “I always kept a good fire going for him.” She moved to stand by the hearth. “And lor’ what it did cost in coals. ‘Never mind that, Mrs. Coyningham,’ he’d tell me. ‘Just you keep my room good and warm.’ ’Twas for his voice, you see. He couldn’t risk taking a chill or a cold, bless him, or he’d be out a night’s wages for the performance.”
From here she went on to point out the very chair, the very stool, the very table, the very window, the very washstand and basin, and the very table where Mr. Cavendish performed such remarkable feats as sitting, lacing his boots, washing his face, and eating his supper.
“It always had to be piping hot, he was that particular. But he was ever such a gentleman, it was a real pleasure to see him enjoy a good meal. Nothing fancy for Mr. Cavendish, not like some. ‘Mrs. Coyningham,’ he said. ‘A good plain joint of English beef gives me more pleasure than all the feasts of the emperors!’ Roasted was his preference. He did not care for boiled.”
Rosalind looked about the room and tried to imagine Fletcher Cavendish as a young man in these bare rooms, running in and out at odd hours, returning with friends, male and female. Dreaming of the future, hoping for a part and a decent payday.
Then, she tried to picture the dazzling Margaretta here as a little girl, and she failed utterly.
“Did you ever get to see him perform?” Alice was asking Mrs. Coyningham.
“Oh, you couldn’t stop him performing!” the landlady laughed. “Many’s the evening he’d come down to my little kitchen and recite his new speeches.”
“A private performance by Fletcher Cavendish!” gasped Alice. “Thousands would envy you!”
“He always asked my opinion, too. ‘Now, Mrs. Coyningham, you’ve a sharp eye,’ he’d say. ‘Tell me what you think and be honest now.’ Always so anxious to improve, he was.” She sighed. “I knew it was only a matter of time before he’d leave us for the wider world. You cannot hide such a light under a bushel, no indeed, you cannot.”
“I imagine Margaret enjoyed his readings?”
“It was more like her reading to h—” Mrs. Coyningham stopped, and Mrs. Coyningham turned. “Who is Margaret?” Mrs. Coyningham’s dark eyes narrowed at Alice. “I don’t know any Margaret.”
“I was referring to your daughter, Margaret,” said Alice calmly. “Now Mrs. William Seymore, the noted poetess.”
“You’re wrong,” said Mrs. Coyningham flatly. “And you’ve had your look. You’ll be leaving now.”
Alice did not budge. “I’d be sorry to have to leave so soon, Mrs. Coyningham. Because you see . . .” Alice opened her reticule and pulled out two gold sovereigns. She held them up for the woman who gave three-penny tours to admire. “I’ve brought these for the mother of the celebrated poetess, Mrs. William Seymore. I have two more if she’s willing to talk with me about her daughter.”
The internal war that was waged behind Mrs. Coyningham’s eyes was fierce, but it was brief. She held out her palm. “I didn’t realize you was talking about my girl,” she muttered.
Alice laid one of the coins in her palm. “Then you do have a daughter named Margaret and she is now Mrs. William Seymore?”
“That’s right. Not that she ever cared to let me know it.” The woman pocketed the sovereign. “I didn’t find out she was married until Mrs. Cheetham up the way showed me a notice in the paper.”
“What happened? Did she run away from home?” asked Rosalind.
“’S right.” Mrs. Coyningham folded her arms. “I was away helping my brother, and put her in charge of the houses. I came home, and she was gone. Left me ten pounds on the kitchen table. Ten pounds! For nineteen years of raising her and teaching her and making sure she had everything I could give!” For a moment Rosalind thought the woman was going to spit. “Now she’s a fine lady with her books and her poetry and all the upper crust singing her praises, and she tells them she’s an orphan.” Mrs. Coyningham glowered at Alice. “You write that, if you please! You write and you tell the whole world she’s an ungrateful daughter!”
“When did this happen?” asked Alice.
Mrs. Coyningham shrugged. “Fifteen years ago, twenty maybe. She was eighteen or nineteen, I think.”
“Why have you never told anyone?” asked Alice.
“Did Mr. Cavendish leave at the same time?” asked Rosalind.
Mrs. Coyningham’s jaw tightened, and that was all the answer either woman needed.
“They did leave together,” Rosalind said.
“And you assumed she disgraced herself,” added Alice.
“An’ what was I supposed to ass-ooom?” drawled the landlady. “I saw the way ’e was with women. I thought my Margaret was too smart for that, but ’e got her in the end. That’s why the tours. Figured I should get something back for all he took from me. She was always a good girl, a hard worker, very good at her lessons. Mr. Elliott lent her poetry books and told ’er she should go out and sell ’er writing . . . a girl can only be flattered so long before it gets under her skin.”
Elliott? thought Rosalind. Who is Elliott? Then, of course, she knew.
Alice, in the meantime, had contrived to look entirely shocked. “I’m sure there was nothing improper between them, Mrs. Coyningham. But genius does recognize genius. You said it yourself, a light cannot be hidden under a bushel.”
Mrs. Coyningham snorted. “A light doesn’t deny the candle, does it? A light doesn’t say the candle’s dead and forget that candle slaved for years and never send a coin or a bit of anything to help get her through the winter.”
“Perhaps she will now,” said Alice. “Perhaps with all the troubles she’s been through, she’ll have a change of heart.”
“She may do as she pleases.” Mrs. Coyningham sniffed. She lifted her chin and turned her head, and the light from the window caught her profile, and Rosalind saw it. Under the weight of years and hard work and strain, she finally saw the resemblance. It was in the shape of her eyes as well as their color, the rounded line of her jaw.
This was Margaretta’s mother. Rosalind’s hope that she had uncovered the core of the troubles crumbled away.
But then why does the dowager remind me so strongly of Margaretta? Rosalind asked herself as she str
uggled to resettle her thoughts and pay attention to what was going on in front of her. There must be some reason behind so marked a resemblence.
“Now, I’ve answered your questions,” Mrs. Coyningham was saying. “You give over what you promised and you take yourselves out of here.”
“Of course.” Alice brought out the remaining sovereign. Mrs. Coyningham snatched it off her palm and stuffed it into her pocket.
“Do you have any message for Margaret should we see her?” asked Rosalind.
From the anger in Mrs. Coyningham’s features, Rosalind feared the message would be unrepeatable, even for Alice. But that anger faded slowly. “You tell her I have never forgotten her,” she said. “You tell her I have never stopped praying . . .” She hesitated. “You just tell her I’m still here.”
Oh, yes. This woman was indeed a mother, and she was pining for her missing child, whether she wanted it known or not.
“We will tell her, Mrs. Coyningham,” said Rosalind. “And thank you.”
Rosalind and Alice curtsied to the landlady and moved to take their leave, but Rosalind stopped when she reached the door.
“Mrs. Coyningham, a moment ago you used the name Elliott to refer to Mr. Cavendish.”
“Well, that’s the name he gave back then, isn’t it? Malcolm Elliott. I expect he thought Cavendish would sound better from the stage or some such.”
“I expect so. Thank you, Mrs. Coyningham.”
The only answer she gave was to raise her chin.
Rosalind and Alice left her there and closed the door behind themselves. But as they walked down the creaking stairs, they did both pause, to look to each other and silently acknowledge the sound of weeping from the room at the top of the stairs.
“Well,” sighed Alice as they emerged into the muddy lane once more. “It looks like it was your common or garden-variety scandal after all,” said Alice. “Young Mr. Cavendish ran off with young Miss Coyningham, and after a while, they both went their separate ways. It’s nothing to do with the Seymores or the dowager marchioness.”
“No,” said Rosalind. “That doesn’t fit. Even if Margaretta was a naive young girl at the time, she isn’t now. She understood the man she was dealing with. She would know he could not be expected to help her simply because they’d once been in love. There’s something else.”