Haunting Miss Trentwood

by Belinda Kroll

  Steele scooted closer to her. He placed a consoling hand atop her trembling one.

  “I fear he is determined to ruin her, Mr. Steele. I’m so very glad you have come.”

  Steele’s hand tightened its grip on her hand. “Rest assured, Mrs.—Durham, was it?—I have come with Miss Trentwood’s best interests at heart.” All right, so that wasn’t a complete truth, but he was hired to be her solicitor and walk her through her father’s finances. Though, why his employer insisted he explain such things to a woman, and a woman such as Mary Trentwood who already had rather odd notions of independence, was beyond Steele.

  Still, Mary was very pretty. She had a lovely smile and a rather seductive voice. Unbidden came thoughts of her voice speaking to him late at night, carrying a smile in its undertones, as she ran his fingers through her hair. He shivered.

  Surely if Mary can learn to like Quasimodo—Steele really was warming to that name for Hartwell—then she could learn to like Steele again. For he knew she had liked him, she had liked him very much. And he had liked her too, at the time.

  Mrs. Durham clutched Steele’s hand. “Thank you, Mr. Steele. I knew I could depend upon you. You understand, of course, that you must be very cunning. Mr. Hartwell is the definition of the word and will go to great lengths to disarm you.”

  Steele recoiled a little at the name. It hadn’t sounded familiar before, not until it was paired with ‘”cunning” as a descriptor. “How long has he been here?”

  “No more than a day.”

  “And he hails from...?”

  “London,” Mrs. Durham said, her lips stiff with an emotion Steele couldn’t name.

  No matter, Steele had his own emotions to handle. He pulled his hand from Mrs. Durham’s as a wave of nausea almost bowled him over.

  “Mr. Steele?” Mrs. Durham said, alarm making her squeak.

  “Mr. Hartwell of London, you say,” Steele managed, “he wouldn’t happen to be a barrister?” He could be someone else. He could be any number of Hartwells in London. Couldn’t he?

  Mrs. Durham waved her hands dismissively. “I suppose so, yes, I think Mary said something to that effect, perhaps.”

  Steele groaned. “I wish you had not given me the charge of protecting your niece from him.” He sneezed and dragged a handkerchief from his pocket. This was supposed to be a simple assignment. Go to the back of beyond. Read the details of a recently found will to a grieving daughter. Go back to civilization and the plump arms of his pretty doxy.

  “Why ever not?”

  Steele wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. “The only cases Hartwell has ever lost are the ones he intended to lose. Depend upon it, Mrs. Durham, if your niece is his goal, there will be little I can do to stop him.”

  Mrs. Durham stood, jerking her skirts away from him as if his presence carried a foul stench. “Then my brother-in-law was right, and you never deserved my niece.”

  Steele, mouth agape, watched her sweep from the room in as grand a manner as any opera singer he had seen. Just what was that supposed to mean? Steele sneezed again. Damn her if she thought he was going to give up that easily. Hartwell only lost cases he intended to lose, yes, but Steele had nothing to lose in this instance.

  And that, he thought smugly, makes me a rather dangerous man.

  ***

  SIXTEEN

  Hartwell rested his aching forehead in the palms of his hands, his elbows digging into his knees. He kept his eyes squeezed shut. Every time he opened them, they watered. His mouth was dry, his throat scratchy, his tongue leaden. The veins hidden by his scar pulsed sluggishly. His stomach flipped one moment, and flopped the other.

  “Might I offer you a cup of tea, sir?” Pomeroy said.

  Hartwell grunted, taking care not to move a muscle. He felt drunk. No, not drunk. He felt hung over. No, not hung over. He felt like death.

  Which didn’t make much sense; one moment, he was concerned about Mary—what in the world had made her ill, he had eaten every bit as much as she had at breakfast—then he was carrying Mary up to her bedroom, Pomeroy applying a cold compress on her forehead. Nothing in that round of events should have made him feel so wretched.

  “Might I ask what happened before I returned to the foyer, sir?” Pomeroy said.

  Hartwell sat on a chair just outside Mary’s bedroom. It was the chair from the writing desk in the guest bedroom; the thought of being in Mary’s room longer than necessary, even to drag a chair to sit, had seemed ill-bred. Pomeroy stood just before him, still dressed in layers to protect against the cold. He had arrived moments after Mrs. Durham had happened upon the commotion.

  Cool-headed as Pomeroy was, he hadn’t bothered asking hysterical questions like Mrs. Durham. He had disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, Hartwell assumed, and returned with a bit of wet, folded cloth. Pomeroy had administered the cloth to Mary’s forehead, and asked Hartwell if he would be so kind as to escort Mary to her bedroom, as she was obviously incapacitated.

  “Escort,” was the term Pomeroy had used, and it had made Hartwell smile at the slight formality. The hallway had begun to smell with the stench of Mary’s half-digested breakfast. Yet Pomeroy had helped Hartwell lift Mary and had prepared her bed so Hartwell could deposit her in it. The man deserved an explanation after all that.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Hartwell said.

  Pomeroy raised his brows. “Is that so?”

  Hartwell cleared his throat. He peeked through one eyelid, saw green spots, and clenched his eyes shut again. “You won’t believe me, I’m certain, but you’ll have to, Pomeroy old boy. Mary became violently ill, Steele said something unseemly, and you appeared soon thereafter.”

  “That sounds you know a great deal more than not having the ‘slightest idea.’”

  Hartwell scowled, and groaned at how that small movement made it feel as though someone was stabbing pins into the crown of his head.

  “Besides which, I figured as much, sir. I knew from the moment I saw you that you’ve been trained a little in the ways of a good fist fight.”

  Hartwell decided not to respond to that.

  “But I can’t see how Mr. Steele could have inflicted any damage upon you, sir, and that is where my confusion lies. What on earth is wrong with you?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” Hartwell moaned. “I wish I knew. I feel as though I’ve been beaten soundly, left for dead, and then trampled upon. Get me a brandy, will you, Pomeroy?”

  Pomeroy patted Hartwell on the shoulder. “Sorry, sir, but we haven’t any. You drank the last of it at dinner last night.”

  Hartwell was fairly certain he was going to cry. “How is Mary?”

  Pomeroy peeked into the bedroom. “She’s sleeping.” He shifted his weight, and Hartwell could sense a sort of embarrassment in the action. “Thank you for carrying her,” Pomeroy said, “I couldn’t have managed myself. Bad back.”

  “I hardly noticed her weight,” Hartwell admitted, leaning back, resting his head against the hallway wall. “In fact, I didn’t even feel it when I punched Steele. I’ve never felt so strong in my life. It was almost supernatural.” He squinted at Pomeroy. If he squinted, it didn’t hurt so badly. “I felt as if nothing could hurt me. As if I had nothing to lose. Isn’t that odd?”

  Pomeroy shrugged. “I had felt the same, back in my fighting days. I was a prize one, once upon a time.” He paused and smiled wistfully. “When Miss Mary found out, oh, how she laughed!”

  Hartwell opened his eyes fully and took measure of Pomeroy. “She said she isn’t one to laugh.”

  Pomeroy nodded. “She isn’t now, but once...”

  Hartwell pushed away from the wall. He took a moment to steady himself before attempting Mary’s bedroom door.

  Mary slept fitfully, a vicious frown furrowing her brow. Beads of sweat gathered at her temples and on the bridge of her nose. She was tangled in the bed sheets and seemed to be fighting her way out without much success.

  “You help her,” Hartwell said, �
�I’d frighten her if I did it.”

  With gentle hands, Pomeroy unwound Mary from her cocoon. “Why are you here, Mr. Hartwell?” he murmured.

  Hartwell joined him at Mary’s bedside and they watched as she drifted into a deeper slumber, one marginally more peaceful.

  “I’m not entirely certain anymore. I came to stop a crime. I suspect that’s still my reason. The crime, I think, has changed.”

  This time, Pomeroy grunted. After a moment, he brought the chair from the hallway into the bedroom. “I would stay, but there are chores to be done. I trust you will keep the door open?”

  Hartwell sank into the chair and nodded, hearing the quiet plea in Pomeroy’s helpless tones.

  “If she wakes screaming,” Pomeroy stuttered, “she’ll calm down if you take her hand.”

  Hartwell didn’t say anything as Pomeroy left him with Mary. He inhaled deeply. Unconsciously, his breathing slowed to match hers. Every time he thought he had her figured out, or her history, some new bit of information was thrown in his lap.

  He leaned closer so he could brush a strand of hair from Mary’s face. “What happened to you?”

  ***

  SEVENTEEN

  Mary dreamed she was sitting in her bedroom, reading at her window. She was playing with a lock of her hair, pulled back from her face with a ribbon, as her eyes sped across the page. Only the page was blank, yet she was riveted. Somehow, knowing in the way one knows the truth in dreams, Mary knew she was fifteen, though she looked her true age of twenty-seven.

  She was fifteen, she was reading a book in her bedroom, and her parents were still alive.

  Mary was reading Persuasion, her favorite book, though she was fairly certain she didn’t quite understand all the nuances Miss Austen had carefully inscribed. She did think it horribly romantic, though, that Anne had waited all those years for Wentworth, and that, at the last, Wentworth had not forgotten her.

  A part of Mary realized, dimly, that this was an odd thing to dream about.

  As dream-Mary turned the page, she heard a commotion that must have come from the front door. Doors were slammed, heavy footfalls rushed about, and her father was shouting for help.

  Mary dropped her book. She grabbed her skirts. She bolted from her bedroom, down the stairs, skidded to a stop at the sight of her broken, bleeding mother cradled in the arms of her father.

  Trentwood glanced at Mary, not seeing her. “Laudanum!”

  Mary stared at her mother, who stared at Trentwood.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” he shouted, “get her some laudanum!”

  Mary spun on her heel and stumbled up the staircase. She crashed into her mother’s bedroom. The door slammed against the wall. Blinded by the white haze before her eyes, she felt across her mother’s vanity for the little bottle saved for the worst migraines. She tripped over her skirts. She almost dropped the precious bottle. She clutched it to her panting breast and returned to her parents.

  Her mother was still staring at her father’s pale face. Her father had buried his face in her shoulder, sobbing softly.

  Mary held out the laudanum for Trentwood to take from her.

  Her mother didn’t blink.

  Mary dropped the laudanum. She didn’t flinch when the glass bottle smashed into pieces, when the liquid seeped into her cloth house shoes, when she stepped on the glass shards to close her mother’s unseeing eyes.

  “Don’t touch her.” Trentwood pulled the body away from Mary’s caress. “She had a migraine. She’ll be all right in a moment.”

  Mary bit her lip.

  Trentwood saw Mary standing on the shards and spilled laudanum. He inhaled. “You’ve broken it. You’ve broken her laudanum. She needs that! You idiot, she needs that!”

  Something in Mary snapped, and she was no longer fifteen. She drew up to her true height. “She’s dead, Papa, she’s dead.”

  Trentwood swayed, hugging the body close.

  Mary grabbed him by the shoulders. “Papa,” she screamed, “she’s gone. She’s dead.”

  This was a typical dream for Mary, when she did happen to dream. It was an exhausting dream, one where she seemed to scream in real life. Or so Pomeroy would tell her when she woke. This time, however, someone took her by the shoulders, wrenching her away from her inconsolable dream-father.

  “This is what you dream when you wake screaming?”

  Mary stared at Trentwood, not the dream one hugging her dead mother, but the one who had possessed Hartwell and punched Steele. Only this ghostly Trentwood was as real as she, and he didn’t reek of decay and peppermint, and his eyes were that same dull—once lively—brown, rather than an unnatural pale.

  “Marianne Ryan Trentwood, answer me.”

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked, shoving him away.

  “I wanted to know why you woke screaming,” Trentwood said. “You’re frightening poor Hartwell out of his mind, and there’s no one around to help him, Pomeroy’s in the kitchen helping Mrs. Beeton, and Mrs. Durham is tending Steele, or she was last I saw.”

  Mary shook her head. She looked behind her at dream-Trentwood, who smoothed her mother’s hair from her face.

  It had been an awful migraine that did it. Mrs. Trentwood had been taking her daily constitutional around the house, when a migraine hit her so badly that she tripped and fell down the stone stairs into the mouth of the garden. Later, it was estimated she had lain there for an hour before anyone found her.

  “You’re not real,” Mary said to the ghostly Trentwood. “You’re not real, you’re not in my dream.”

  “Would it be better if I left now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And wait for when you wake?”

  Mary shuddered. “Thank you, no.”

  “Well then.” Trentwood pulled out his pocket watch and swung it from its chain. “What say you to having a little chat about all this, hmm?”

  Mary turned her back to him. “I would rather wake up.”

  Mary started awake with a shuddering gasp. Someone was shaking her, she realized, or had been shaking her, for her head and neck ached, and she wasn’t settled against her pillow but rather half-lifted from the bed by a pair of strong hands. She looked up into Hartwell’s mangled face, shadowed by his long hair. She sighed. “You’ve no idea how glad I am to see you.”

  Hartwell’s chuckle was more than a bit strained. “Pomeroy said if you started screaming I should take your hand, but you wouldn’t stop and I didn’t know what to do.” His grip on her arms tightened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Mary nodded. She reached up, laid her hand on one of his. “Thank you.” She peeled his fingers off her arm and inched away. “Thank you for waking me. I’m terribly sorry Pomeroy put you in such an awkward position. He ought to have known better.”

  Hartwell’s shrug was rough, embarrassed. “There was no one else to do it, it seems.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Your resources have become very reduced, haven’t they, since your father’s death?”

  Mary pulled her coverlet around her shoulders so it made a thick, impromptu shawl. The warmth seemed to ward away the chill she was suffering, but slightly.

  Hartwell, seeming as though he needed to be doing something, began to tuck the other coverlet around Mary’s legs. It was a simple gesture, wordless and intimate. He looked at her, and she caught her breath. She could tell him everything, she knew, and rid herself of years of needless burden. She knew she wasn’t to blame for her mother’s death, but that initial response from her father...

  “Even before his death, we operated on a limited income,” Mary said.

  Hartwell reclaimed his seat.

  “When I was young, I knew we weren’t rich, but we were comfortable.” She swallowed. “I know there were funds put aside for me, but I haven’t been able to determine their location, or the terms of retrieving the funds. So I’ve had to let the servants go. All but Pomeroy and Mrs. Beeton, who insist on staying though I can’t pay them.”

 
; Hartwell nodded. “Sometimes a roof over one’s head and a bed of one’s own is enough. And the appreciation of a child you’ve watched grow into a loyal young woman.”

  Mary grunted, which made a smile peek from the corner of Hartwell’s mouth.

  “So this solicitor, then,” Hartwell said, “he’s to tell you where your funds are?”

  Mary nodded. “I’m afraid my father’s been a bit clever and made arrangements that I’m not to see the funds unless I follow his instructions.”

  “Would he have done such a thing?”

  “Don’t all fathers?” Mary turned from Hartwell and stared into the opposite corner of the room, where Trentwood stood with his arms crossed. “Don’t they?”

  ***

  EIGHTEEN

  A letter postmarked for London, March 1887

  MY DEAREST LADY KIRKHAM,

  It has been far too long since my last letter; I do apologize for the tardiness.

  Though I suppose you know the reason for my tardiness? Of course you do, I’ve been very amused by the thought of you petitioning your honorable brother to come to your unchaste rescue.

  Did you think I would not catch wind of his journeying from London in search of me?

  Did you think I would allow any of your family to move anywhere without my knowledge of it?

  Really, my lady, you ought to be ashamed. Sending your baby brother to clean up your mess.

  For this is your mess.

  You have made your bed.

  Revel in it.

  How is your darling son? He would be almost a year old, is that not correct? Does he have startling blue eyes and blond hair? Does the skin around his eyes crinkle just before he’s about to laugh?