He apparently had no reply for that, for he sat and gazed at her for what seemed minutes. Finally he said, “Very well. I withdraw my suit. I no longer wish to marry you. But I do not withdraw my offer to keep you safe within my abilities to do so.”
She nodded. “That suits me. May I have my dagger back?”
He looked at the knife in his hand, then handed it to her handle first. “’Tis a good weapon. Learn to use it against an opponent, and perhaps I’ll become a mite more sanguine about your wanderings through London.”
She accepted the weapon and returned it to its scabbard in her muff. “I think I can agree to that without misgiving.” She rose to leave, and he stood also. “I must go now.”
His expression said he wondered why, and she couldn’t reply with the truth. The truth was that she didn’t trust herself to stay longer, lest she succumb to the urge to let him seduce her. He said, “I have food coming.” A glance at the door indicated how late the boy was in delivering it. “There should be enough to share, if you would like to stay for a while.”
“Thank you most kindly, but I have things to attend to and must leave.”
He nodded, clearly unhappy she was running away. He followed her to the door more than escorted. For her it was an escape. But he caught up with her when she reached it, and held it closed for a moment. He stood close. She felt the warmth of his body at her back, and liked it very much. It was difficult to refrain from leaning her head against his chest, but she didn’t do it. She only turned her head a little to hear him speak in a low voice.
“I wish you all good luck in your dealings with the world. And I hope it treats you better than it does most souls.” Then he leaned down to kiss her, and she raised her face to let him. The kiss was warm and soft, and in that moment she wondered what it might be like to be married to a man like that. She wondered what it might really be like to be married at all, the way she’d wished for it when she’d been young.
Before releasing the door and opening it for her, he said, “I’ll come to the theatre tomorrow, to see how your arm is healing.”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
* * *
OVER the next week the death of Cawthorne felt to Suzanne as if a canker had been removed from the city of London by the wave of a healing hand. A murderer had been eliminated, and the lives of everyone who knew Jacob Worthington had been freed of palpable evil. The Duchess of Cawthorne had justice for the death of her beloved son, and without damage to her own reputation. The truth of Lord Paul’s proclivities was quashed well enough for it to never become rumor among the upper classes, even though it was rampant among the workers, beggars, and thieves of Bank Side. Nobody of importance ever attended to that sort of scurrilous, unfounded talk among the lower classes. Since the duke had died without trial and the crown was not interested in trying him posthumously, the duchess’s other beloved son succeeded to his father’s title and their lives proceeded without the ruination that would have resulted from a conviction.
Suzanne no longer feared repercussion. Daniel no longer was pressured to influence the magistrate. Constable Pepper had credit for solving the murder of a son of nobility, regardless that the murderer had been nobility himself, and in spite of the fact he’d done nothing at all in aid of learning that fact. Even the duke’s memory suffered little, for nobody at court wanted to admit in any public way that one of their own had the capacity for the sort of brutality Cawthorne had owned.
It was as if the entire existence of Jacob Worthington had gone up in smoke, and the hole he left in the surrounding society closed over instantly without a scar. The privileged were exceptionally deft at smoothing over problems in public, and so the plastering was expected and accepted.
* * *
A week after the case was settled, Suzanne thought about that as she walked to the rooms of the astrologer who had set her on the course of finding Lord Paul’s killer. She’d thought of the duke as an encompassing evil, so large and influential that to let him go without punishment would have brought sickness upon everyone and everything in his vicinity. It was heartening to see the world around him heal itself so quickly and so well. Life went on, and there seemed little damage to those still living.
But then when she thought of the little boy who had died, her heart clenched and tears rose to her eyes. She shoved her hands deeper into her muff, hugged it to her belly, and lowered her chin into the collar of her cloak as she made her way across the bridge. She remembered Paul’s bright, joyful eyes. His wide smile and outgoing ways. She’d only seen him once, and that for only a few minutes, but for that brief time she’d seen a bright, graceful soul that should not have been taken from the earth so soon.
When she arrived at the astrologer’s shop, she handed Esmeralda a silver half crown and thanked her for her help in the investigation.
“But you’ve already paid me for it.” The woman held the coin in her palm, as if it might bite her if she closed her fingers around it.
“I only paid you for a reading. You did far more than that. Your visit to me moved me to an effort I might not have made otherwise. Together, we removed a blackened soul from the earth, and for that you should be rewarded.”
Esmeralda thrust her hand out to give back the coin. “With all due respect, mistress, it seems to me that what we did should be something we do without expecting reward. We all should remove blackened souls from the earth at every opportunity, even when there be no money in it. And I daresay you had no reward for yourself beyond the satisfaction of knowing evil had been vanquished.”
It was true. Pepper would keep his promise to not harass her Players, but expecting him to offer cash would be absurd. Even if he had it in excess, he was far too close with his money to give any of it to her, even as an investment in his reputation for successfully pursuing criminals. Suzanne, on the other hand, knew that cash was an excellent way to show appreciation for a job well done and to encourage such work in future. She wanted Esmeralda to have the money. “Then,” she said, “if you want to feel you’ve earned this, let me have another reading.”
In an instant the coin disappeared into the astrologer’s pocket. “Why, yes, of course I’ll be happy to give another reading! Have a seat!” She gestured to the usual chair and hurried to gather her ephemeris and other tools. “What would you like? Future, or personality?”
“Near future. The next year or so, I think.” It would be nice to know whether the theatre would be successful enough to not fold before the next season.
Esmeralda searched down the chart she’d drawn up on Suzanne’s first visit, and spread it out on her table. This time the reading took very little time, and she quickly was able to crow with glee.
“Oh! I see grand things for you in coming months! I do love when it’s good news!”
Suzanne sat at the edge of her seat, eager to hear. “Do tell.” This was rather fun, to hear that good things were to come.
“I see love. Much love, from a Taurus. Do you know any who are Tauruses?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what a Taurus is.”
“Someone born in May. Strictly speaking, anyone whose birthday falls between April twenty-second and May twenty-first.”
Daniel leapt to mind. His birthday was on May eighth. He would be thirty-nine in the spring. Her heart fluttered a bit, and for a moment she didn’t know how to feel about this.
Then she remembered a comment Ramsay had made about his age. Not long ago he’d mentioned he would be thirty-three sometime in May. Her mouth fell open. “Both of them are Taurus.”
“Both of whom?”
Suzanne shifted in her seat, not entirely comfortable speaking of this to a near stranger. Her history with Daniel was long and troubled. She had almost no history with Ramsay, and did not want the same sort of trouble with him. She said, “I like my life. I don’t think I want love from any Tauruses.”
�
��’Tis a terribly strong indication. Strong enough to suggest marriage one day.”
Suzanne frowned. “Marriage?” She’d spent many long years regretting her refusal to marry. Raising Piers with no family for herself and no father for him had been singularly difficult. Now she was independent in ways she’d never before imagined possible. The theatre supported her in a modicum of comfort, and there was promise of even better. To her, a master was someone who beat and ridiculed. She’d been bullied half her life, and these days she looked upon marriage as an institution suited for weak women who needed a master to tell them what to do. As she’d told Ramsay last week, she abhorred the thought of being under the control of any man, though she’d not told him it was because she couldn’t imagine any man having her best interests at heart. None ever had, not even him. She asked, “Are you certain?”
“Naught is ever certain, other than death, and that comes when it will. I can only see what I’m shown.”
“Do you see any violence?” A small voice in the back of her mind wanted to know whether she’d made the right choice in rejecting Ramsay.
A puzzled look crossed Esmeralda’s face. “Violence? I told you, what I see is love. Much of it.”
“How do I know which one loves me?”
The astrologer frowned down at the chart, still puzzled. “There’s no telling, by this. It would be one, or both. Did I know the exact time of each birth, I might be able to see the stronger indication. But from this I can only say that at least one of them would give up his life for you.”
Ramsay. His bravery in her defense showed her that, though his inability to see her as a competent adult also showed he didn’t have her best interests at heart because he didn’t know what they were. As for Daniel, Suzanne would wish for him to love her that much, but she knew there was very little he would give up for her. Certainly not his life. Surely Ramsay was the one indicated by the chart. She stood. “Is that all you can see?”
“I would say this is a wealth of information. You have the sort of friend most women would pray to know. I suggest you treasure him.”
“Thank you.” Suzanne fell into deep thought, and barely noticed her surroundings as she bade Esmeralda good day and left the astrologer’s shop.
Love was something she’d thought had passed her by a very long time ago. Her parents had certainly never loved her, and her brothers and sisters had largely ignored her as well. If Daniel had ever loved her, he’d stopped doing so long ago. Of course Piers loved her, and his regard was what had always sustained her. The idea that Ramsay could come from nowhere and be the man she’d always longed for but had learned could never exist seemed to her a fantasy as wild as the faerie tales that ended with a kiss from a prince. Impossible. Absurd.
So deep in thought, her feet took her to Dunning’s Alley and her father’s former house. She finally came to herself as she stood before it, next to the gnarled oak tree. That old tree had changed a great deal since the days it had both shaded her and taunted her. “You can’t climb me,” it seemed to say. “You will never climb me.” She tried to imagine herself removing her pattens and shoes and finding a toehold and finger hold to pull herself up and make her way to the upper branches. If she tried she would fall, she was certain. Or else she would find herself stuck there, unable to descend. Then she would look like a fool. A silly old woman trying to be a girl again. Who had never really been a girl to begin with. She wondered who she had ever been. What had her father thought she was? What about her had made him dislike her so? What had she done—or not done—to deserve the treatment she’d received?
And now, what about her caused Ramsay to love her? Or even notice she existed? What quality had attracted him? What had she done—or not done—to deserve his regard? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was at a loss to understand what he could see in her, for he plainly did not know her.
From the corner of her eye she saw a figure standing at the entrance to the alley. For a brief, panicky moment she thought she saw her father. Standing hipshot, one hand leaned against the corner of the brick to his right.
But when she looked she found Daniel. He gazed at her with a look of puzzlement. The cold winter wind blowing through the alley into the close tossed the feather in his hat so that it switched like a horse’s tail, but he ignored it. He peered at her as if trying to see into her.
She said, “What brings you here?”
“I was leaving the Exchange, and saw you were headed here. So I followed.”
“Why follow? Why didn’t you speak to me there?”
“I knew you were coming here. I didn’t want to distract you.”
It struck her that of all the people she knew anymore, Daniel was the only one who would have known what this place had been to her. “Again, then, why follow?”
“I wanted to make certain you were well. You’ve been through a harrowing experience, and I worry that it might have a lasting effect.”
She drew her hand from her muff and held out her bandaged arm. “It’s healing. It will continue.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean here.” He touched his breast over his heart. “Sometimes the heart takes more effort to repair than the body.”
“Indeed.” For a brief, fantastical moment, she felt the same warmth she’d once felt when she’d believed Daniel loved her. The depth of his gaze was as it had been when they were both so very young and the ugliness of the world had appeared as something that could be vanquished. When she could dream of a time when evil did not reign and a place where she could be safe from harm. In that moment, she wanted to believe that the man indicated in her chart could be Daniel.
He gestured to the alley behind him and said, “May I offer to carry you to the theatre? My carriage awaits. The new production opens tonight, and you don’t want to miss it. Little Wally, I’m told, is beyond fabulous as the mother of Coriolanus.”
The spell was broken, and Suzanne took a deep breath. “Of course he is. We should hope the king’s men never hire him away from us.” She went to him, and he hugged her shoulders as they entered the alley together.
“Oh, you shouldn’t wish such terrible things for his career. He deserves better than the likes of us.”
Suzanne laughed, and was glad to be free.
The Twelfth Night Murder Page 27