"What's that, my dear?" He put down his fork to turn a page.
"I have some ideas for the business. A few things I thought we might try, to encourage more customers."
That got his attention. "More customers?" He gazed bleakly through those smeared lenses. "Must we have more?"
Mary smiled. "If we mean to make this a viable, thriving business, we cannot continue to rely on the same few generous, elderly customers...and the occasional unexpected visit from somebody who only stumbles upon us. We must find and encourage new readers. Think of all the people who are missing out on these wonderful books."
"But Mary," his anxious breath pummeled the candle flames, "we manage well enough." Looking around the little room, he shrugged his narrow shoulders. "What more can we want?"
"We can want everything and anything, Mr. Speedwell. There are no limits, only possibilities."
"Oh, my dear, I do not like the sound of that."
She reached for the wine jug and poured for them both. "Someone— very successful in business— told me recently that we are not taking advantage of our potential."
"We are not?"
"Indeed. So there are just a few changes I'd like us to make in this bookshop. And if you ever feel it has gone too far, I shall stop."
Thaddeus closed his book. "You must be missing your sister, my dear."
"A little."
"Then that has brought this on?"
Mary chuckled. "No, Mr. Speedwell. A man has brought this on. Or rather, encouraged it out of me. Like a genie from a lamp."
His spectacles slipped down his nose. "I see. Then you must be in love."
"Love?" She sipped her wine. "You read too many novels, Mr. Speedwell."
Real life was much too messy, and nothing ever happened the way it did in novels.
* * * *
On Wednesday morning she returned to Deverell's house in time to greet Captain Justify's secret bride, who arrived promptly at the hour of nine. Smith was visibly relieved to hear her tell True Deverell that this visitor was a friend of hers and the gentleman, apparently satisfied with this explanation, returned to his study, leaving the ladies to talk in the drawing room.
Over tea and scones, Mary discovered that the lady's name was Anshula, which meant "Sunny"— a name that she preferred now she was in England, because "it makes people think of hope and summer, and they look less confused when I introduce myself". She was twenty-one years of age, could speak English rather well (but only when she wanted to), and she had been acquired by Captain Deverell at a bride sale.
"The Captain bought me for six pounds. Are you shocked?"
Mary had to admit it was not something she'd ever heard of, but Sunny looked respectable and her manners were polite— more so than those of many people who would consider themselves superior to a woman bought by a man for six pounds. She was well dressed in brilliantly dyed silk taffeta. Rather colorful for a winter's day, but quite beautiful.
"Captain Deverell purchased me out of pity. He has a kindness which is rare in men, so I find. But he had to go back to sea, so he asked his brother to look after me. I must come here once a week to let Ransom Deverell know that I am well. I am to tell him if I need anything, because he can then write to my husband for me. I speak the language, but I do not write it well."
"Ransom said you knew only a very few words."
She gave a guilty, but pretty smile. "Yes. I prefer it that way. Especially with the men. The less they know about me, the better."
Mary laughed.
"But this Ransom Deverell is a puzzle to me," Sunny tipped her head as she studied Mary. "I hear he is such a bad man, yet I do not see it."
"Quite. It is something of a riddle."
"And each time I come here, he gives me money." Her beautiful, deep brown eyes flared, the long black lashes sweeping languidly down and up. "It is most curious. Why does he do this?"
"Don't you need it? I thought it was to help pay rent for your lodgings."
"But I have money of my own." She drew back in astonishment. "He does not know this?"
"Apparently not. Neither does the Captain, if he asked his brother to pay your rent."
"I try to tell the little grey fellow who gives it to me." She pointed a gloved finger toward the door through which Smith had left them. "But he will not listen. He insists he has his orders and must follow them. And Ransom Deverell is often not here. Most often he is...away...here and there, I am told. Never in one place. He go here and he go there. But always the money is left for me. That he never forgets."
"Yes. That sounds very much like him."
Again Sunny's head tilted and she put a finger to her lips. "Now you are here, he will stay at home? You can tell him I do not need this money."
But Mary did not know what was going to happen, did she?
"I am glad you are here, Mary Ashford, for now we have met and I have someone to talk with when I come on Wednesday." The other woman leaned over and whispered, "Also you can tell the little grey fellow that he makes the tea too weak and his scones, they are dry."
"Ah, I do not think he is responsible for the tea and scones, he merely brings them to us. The cook is Mrs. Clay and she is usually very—"
"I should bring you my scones." she said firmly, nodding her head. "They are very good. The best scones. You will see, Mary Ashford!"
"Yes," she looked down at her tea, "but I don't live here."
"No?"
"I am a visitor. Like you."
Sunny's surprised voice was warm and rich, like a melting sauce of fudge and syrup, but with the sweetness cut by something hotter and spicier. "It is very strange that you do not live here. You look at home, as if you have always been here."
She thought of her portrait in his bedchamber. "In a way, I have."
* * * *
That bloody interring woman! Is this what happened to a man when he considered marriage to one of them? Suddenly she was taking over, making decisions, having him loaded into carriages and dragged off with complete strangers.
All Mary said to him was, "As you told me once, we must be forward-thinking."
He was furious for about twenty minutes.
Arriving somewhere in Mayfair, he was transferred from a canvas stretcher to a bed in what appeared to be somebody's study, full of wretched books and odd, unidentifiable equipment. He was offered food and drink— both of which he refused, demanding to be taken home again.
"But Mr. Deverell, our good friend Thaddeus Speedwell has asked us to look at your lungs."
"Why?" He seized the front of his nightshirt. "What are you going to do to them?"
He was poked, prodded and experimented upon by a group of fellows in wigs, who did a lot of talking to each other and very little to him. Indeed, when they addressed any remark at him, it was in a loud, hollow voice, as if he might be an idiot.
Oh, Mary Ashford would pay for this when he got his hands on her again.
"Where am I?" he demanded. "This is not a hospital."
One of the gentlemen explained, "We are professors of the Royal Institution, sir, and this is my study where I can administer advantageous therapia."
"I beg your bloody pardon?"
"Medical treatment, sir." He leaned closer and bellowed. "Therapy!"
"I don't want any of that, whatever it is." But when he tried to get up, they shoved him down again.
"Sir, we must auscultate your chest."
"You'll do no such thing. Whatever that is. Get your hands off me."
They calmly proceeded to ignore his protests, open his nightshirt, and listen to his chest through an instrument like an ear trumpet. He had not the strength he could usually rely upon, and some of his bruises felt worse today than they did yesterday, so in the end he lay rigid with anger and allowed these indignities to be committed upon his person.
Mary Ashford needn't think he'd let her get away with this. No indeed. He could imagine her watching over him, like that portrait, smugly enjoying herself with some
private joke. At his expense.
There followed considerable discussion between them all, leaving him utterly out of it.
Eventually a mask was put over his nose and mouth and he was told that he would be inhaling a mixture of pure and common air— whatever the deuce that was— and that he should breathe normally.
Normally. He'd forgotten what that was.
For the past few days he'd been breathing as he would in a thick pea-soup fog. Suddenly now the struggle eased. Blessed peace. Blessed air.
* * * *
Mary spent the next few days cleaning and rearranging the shop, an exhausting task that would have been overwhelming if Sunny did not come to help, bringing some of those scones about which she had boasted. They were, as she'd promised, extremely good and flavored by something delicious but unidentifiable— and apparently a secret that could not be divulged. Mr. Speedwell was soon enamored with them, and with Sunny herself. Making a great fuss of the old man, as if he was a pet, she spent more time talking to him, than she did wielding a broom or dust rag. But she was still far more use than "Violette" would have been.
While Mary washed the small square panes of the bow window one afternoon, she saw that it had begun to snow again. There were very few people walking in the street and it was a peaceful scene, lit by the glow of that single gas lamp by the arch. She often found her gaze wandering to that solitary lamp post lately. This was the post that had caused Ransom Deverell to bump his head and find her that chilly morning just a few weeks ago. Dear lamp post.
Violet would say she must be in love with it, for the amount of time she stood there pining over it.
She ought to decorate it with some pine bowers since they were only a few days from Christmas.
But just as she thought this, a tall figure emerged through the snow and stood in the patch of yellow light cast by her dear lamp.
Mary paused, her wet rag against the window. The man stood there, looking her way. Snow was collecting on his hat and shoulders he stood there so long and so still.
And then he moved, coming toward her shop.
Her pulse picked up from a canter to a gallop. Was it Ransom? Could it be possible that he was well enough to walk out in the snow already?
She had not heard from his father and did not wish to make a pest of herself by going there too often to ask if there was any news. Her one letter to Ransom, care of Professor Faraday at the Royal Institution, had not yet been answered, although she'd made it as harmless as she could, nothing romantic or gushy. Just a letter that one friend might write to another. Mary did not want him to feel trapped, as if she meant to put one of those despised leashes around his throat. And she certainly did not want him to think she'd helped him out of any ulterior motive, or that she waited for thanks.
She had helped him as he’d helped her.
And because...because...
Suddenly the man's face was clearer. He was opening the shop door, making the little bell ring. Mary dropped her rag into the bucket of water at her feet and felt her heart fall likewise.
It was not Ransom.
"Mary. Miss Ashford. So many years it has been." He swept off his snow-laden hat, but did not bow. Instead he stood there inside her shop, looking around with mild disdain. "I had heard you lived here, but did not believe it," he muttered awkwardly. "How are you?"
She smoothed her hands down her sides and then clasped them before her. After eight years and one broken engagement, all he could ask was How are you?
"I am well, Lord Stanbury. You have come a long way across town to visit. It must be something very important that brought you out in this weather."
Thank goodness Violet was not there. Mary could not have dealt with him so easily if her sister was there to scowl and make various noises of derision.
"It is something important," he agreed, stepping forward rather gingerly, as if he feared stepping on something unpleasant. "The news of your engagement to that cad Ransom Deverell is all over town."
Ah, of course it was.
She waited, watching him warily. George was still handsome, as she had noted in the street outside the haberdasher's, but the ugliness within had begun to take shape in the sagging of jowls that were rarely lifted in a smile, in lips edged with tight, deep lines from the constant expression of condemnation, and in the bulging of a spoiled lower lip. His eyes, once fine, could now be described as "beady", sunken into hollows beneath brows that, from the puckering skin between them, must be frequently drawn together in a scowl.
Once she, a naive, impetuous girl, easily led by the opinions of others, had been prepared to marry George Stanbury. What a blind fool she had been. How lucky she was that he married another. But eight years ago she was devastated by this man and his callous betrayal. Eight years ago she was not forward-thinking and could not see the future.
Why did he come there now? What could he want?
"I know you are all alone in the world now, Mary. You have no male figure to guide and counsel you." He cleared his throat and gestured with his hat. "Abandoned to this place, I'm sure you were desperate to get out. It is...understandable that you might take a wrong path. But I feel— forgive me if I overstep—I feel that I have some responsibility, in the absence of male relatives, to advise you against this terrible mistake you are making."
"You do overstep, Lord Stanbury." Passionate outrage was not a very ladylike or British emotion to express out loud, but she was certainly feeling it at that moment. With every fiber of her being. "What makes you think you have any such responsibility?"
"Our families were, at one time, close. I was a friend to both your brothers and a confidant of your father's. And," he looked down, unable then to meet her steady, angry gaze, "you and I were once engaged."
"Thank you for reminding me. I had quite forgotten. As did you, eight years ago."
"I believe your father would expect me to intervene if I saw you being ill-used, making a misstep of this caliber. You must break this off at once before any little bit of reputation you have left is irreparably damaged."
"Why, precisely, is my engagement to Ransom Deverell a misstep?"
He looked up again and there went the gathering of his brows, forming that well-hewn ridge in his brow. "He is a vile seducer. A rogue with every vice—"
"And your proof of that?"
"Proof?" he growled. "Oh, I have my proof, but I am not at liberty to share all that with you, Mary."
"Why not? You are at liberty to come here and tell me what I must do."
"It is a private, intimate matter." His sharp gaze bore down upon her, trying to frighten her.
He never did know her very well, did he?
"Suffice to say, that fiend lures wives into adultery, ruins marriages, and leaves his cuckoos in other men's nests, without the slightest apprehension of a conscience." His gaze tracked across the stained apron she wore over her gown, his mean, pinched eyes simmering with disgust. "To be sure you know of his reputation. How can any woman raised as you were, descend to his depths of sin and debauchery? Think of the honorable Ashford name. Of your proud father, who would surely turn in his grave."
And that was where he went just a step too far beyond his bounds.
"How dare you speak to me of the Ashford name and my father?" Her temper rolled and bubbled like a storm cloud about to burst over them. She curled her fingers into fists at her sides. "When was our honor and dignity ever a matter about which you concerned yourself? You never cared for anybody but George Stanbury. But I have forgiven you all these years because I understood why you did it, and I too am practical. You needed a wife with a dowry to maintain your estate. Your selfishness was, at least, understandable, and I could reconcile myself to the humiliation by thinking it was your only sound choice. That you had no other way. But you cannot now come here to me and suddenly pretend to care about pride and honor." The cloud burst, ripping apart at the seams, spilling her fury like hailstones, every word spitting out of her. "You cannot now tell me what I sh
ould do, when you have always done what was best for you."
He stepped back, knocking into a shelf. "There is no need to raise your voice, madam."
"There is every need. I have been meek and ladylike for far too long. And in the matter of you feeling any responsibility toward me, although I have no inkling of how you might have come by that idea, rest assured I absolve you of it. As far as I recall nobody I know has ever consulted me before they married, and I certainly have no plans to consult anybody before I take a husband. Whoever he might be."
His eyes narrowed even further. "Then you have not accepted Deverell?"
"I am not at liberty to share all that with you, George," she replied in the same arrogant tone he had used. "Suffice to say he is the most wonderful gentleman I know. And the most honest. At least he does not make promises he cannot or will not keep."
"You are mad, then. The man will not change his ways. I thought to teach him a lesson, but perhaps he needs another. If he comes near my wife again, I will take more permanent steps to be rid of him." After that he tried to leave, but, of course, the door stuck. The handle had been mended again since Ransom pulled it to pieces, but it remained just as begrudging as ever when it came to letting customers escape.
Mary watched George fighting with the door handle. "What do you mean? What lesson?"
He would not answer. Shaking with rage, he twisted the handle and cursed.
"Did you send those thugs to attack Ransom Deverell outside his club?" she demanded.
"The devil got what he deserved."
She felt sick. Her head ached.
"Let me out of this godforsaken place," he shouted. "I should not have come here."
Mary walked over, turned the handle and opened the door. "No, you should not."
She saw that he was not only enraged, but embarrassed, his face mottled with white and scarlet blotches.
"If I told the Deverells what you did, they would come for you and teach you a lesson, Lord Stanbury." Swinging the door open wider, she waited.
"I did what any other husband would do when he discovered such an act of treachery committed against him," he hissed, "with his own property."
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