Will looked away. At his hands. No. At the sofa cushion, a blue brocade faded and worn thin enough almost to show the stuffing in places.
“He may not have left a picture, but he did leave a good sum of money for when the boy comes of age. Not many children are so fortunate.” This was the other Mrs. Talbot, wife of Talbot’s brother and mother of several children who had not been so fortunate as to lose their father and gain the prospect of an early independence. “It’s a pity he didn’t arrange it so Mrs. Talbot could get at some of the money to help with the rent and other expenses. I’m sure nobody with any pride likes living on charity.”
“Indeed I should have asked him to do that, if I’d known of the investment.” The widow Talbot was blushing, her gaze averted to the floor. “But we weren’t in the habit of discussing such matters.” Her stick-straight posture alone spoke volumes. She had probably not relaxed for two seconds since coming into this house, where she must be reminded at every turn of the burden she and Jamey made.
He looked again at the worn cushion, and dragged a fingertip over one flower in the damask pattern. Lord, how he hated the feeling of helplessness. She needed to be taken out of here, delivered into a home of her own, and he didn’t have the power to do it and couldn’t say when he would.
The remainder of the call centered round the topic of small children and their ways, with particular emphasis on when teeth might be expected, and at last the fifteen minutes were through and it was time for him and Martha to take their leave.
“How did her husband die?” said his sister as he stepped up into the curricle. To keep his footing suddenly required a conscious effort.
“At Waterloo. I don’t … ah …” He sat, gathering up the reins, and angled his head to face her indirectly. “I can’t imagine you want to hear the exact nature of his wounds.”
“Wounds.” She considered the word. “Not an immediate death?”
“Not immediate, no.” No need to trouble her with more information than that. Better she should be kept in ignorance of just how long a man could linger, a wretched bit of refuse that neither Life nor Death felt much moved to claim. “Though I’ve told Mrs. Talbot otherwise.” He flicked the reins and the horses started off, their heads bobbing in steady rhythm.
You did what you could, the surgeon had said. The outcome might very well have been the same. He’d repeated the words to himself so many times. Why could he never hear absolution in them?
“That’s very good of you.” Like sewing pins poked into him, his sister’s words of praise. “She was grateful for the call, I could see. I expect it’s rather a dismal existence, in such close quarters with that disagreeable sister-in-law.” Sidelong he could see her turn her frown on him. “How is it she must rely on family charity? Shouldn’t a war widow have some sort of pension?”
“Talbot wasn’t an officer.” He settled his feet, one forward and one back, and eased his clutch on the reins. “The army tries to keep married men out of the enlisted ranks, and it doesn’t provide anything to the widows of such men.”
“Then he knew the risk he took, I suppose. Only it’s unfortunate that a widow should suffer for choices her husband made.”
He suffered too, Martha. Believe me, he suffered beyond anything you can imagine. And thank God you can’t. He’d been fighting a black mood since halfway through the call at Mrs. Talbot’s, and of a sudden he was tired of fighting. Let them come, the sorrow and anger and bleakness and oh, the tireless self-recrimination that swirled up from the pit of his stomach like plumes of coal dust. He was nothing if not accustomed to their company.
“Unfortunate, to be sure,” he said in as light a voice as he could manage. “It’s a pity nobody’s undertaken to establish some policies for the welfare of widows.”
Here was just the sort of topic to consume his sister all the way back to St. James’s, with little need for him to contribute anything beyond the occasional grunted assent. Indeed by the time they were approaching High Holborn she’d proceeded from the plight of the military widow to the fundamental unfairness of the commission system to God knows what else. He’d lost the thread, somewhere along the way.
But a change in her voice hauled his attention back. “Look at those poor women.” She reached across him to point to the near side of the road. “I think one of them is hurt.”
Will looked. If the women had been facing away, he would not have recognized her. Nothing in her posture or her person was familiar. She wore a plain, high-necked dark blue gown, and she walked slowly, one arm about the waist of a girl who was leaning on her and taking every other step on the ball of her foot. Her face was bent near to the girl, and she was saying something. Words of encouragement, no doubt, or whatever words could just move them one step nearer to wherever they had to go.
He breathed in, deeply. He could feel the fragile burden of that girl’s arm as though it lay across his own shoulders. He knew everything about how another person’s weight took your balance off center. A person carried on your back required you to cant your posture forward. A person carried in your arms meant you must sink your center of gravity down into the pelvis. A person at your side would no doubt leave you with an aching spine and shoulders.
He exhaled. “I know that lady.” Was this an acquaintance he wanted to acknowledge before family? Too late; he’d just done so. “The taller one. At least I’ve met her.” Already he was steering the team to the side of the road. He was helpless to do otherwise.
She doesn’t like you, said a coal-dust-tainted voice in his brain. She won’t welcome your aid. And don’t go thinking this is a chance to get right what you got wrong with Talbot. That voice could go to the devil. She was in need, and nothing else mattered.
His heart pounded with unexpected resiliency as he leaned over the side of the curricle, and called her name.
Chapter Four
MISS SLAUGHTER!”
Lydia looked up. Stopped at this side of the moving traffic was Mr. Blackshear, in a lacquered curricle, with a young lady at his side.
Heat raced into her cheeks. She should certainly never have spoken so freely with him, in their last meeting, if she’d known there was a young lady in the case. An exceedingly pretty young lady at that, dark-eyed and slight-figured, in a fawn-colored gown with a matching pelisse.
He swept off his hat, the reins clasped tight in his other hand. “May I present my sister, Mrs. Mirkwood?” he said, and suddenly the resemblance was obvious. Lighter-colored hair, to be sure, peeking out from under the bonnet, and no hint of mischief about the mouth, but those eyes had unquestionably come from the same stock. “Martha, this is Miss Slaughter.” He nodded toward Jane. “Has your friend hurt herself? Can we be of some assistance?”
As though she weren’t ashamed enough already of what she’d imposed upon the girl. “No real injury. Only I’m afraid I’ve made Miss Collier walk a long way today, and she’s raised a blister on her heel.”
The sister leaned forward. “Where are you bound?”
“To Clarendon Square, in Somers Town.” A spark of hope kindled, irrationally. The curricle wouldn’t hold another person.
“Why, we’ve just come from that way. We’ve been calling on an acquaintance in Camden Town.” She said something to her brother, who answered at the same unintelligible volume. Then he put the reins in her hands and jumped down.
“Would you be so good as to let Mrs. Mirkwood drive you there?” He spoke with a self-conscious formality, miles removed from the man who’d trailed his hand down the wallpaper and accused her of cheating at cards. “I’ve rather been craving a walk, and that would make room for you both, if you don’t mind a bit of crowding.” He waited, still and poised but for the fingers fidgeting on the brim of his hat.
Jane’s arm tensed across her shoulders. Was she hoping for a ride, or was she shy of these strangers? “May I have a word with Miss Collier?” Lydia said, and Mr. Blackshear stepped backward with a bow.
“I think you ought to go with h
er.” She pivoted round to shield their conversation from the others. “I don’t care for crowding and I don’t mind the walk, but you ought to ride. The sooner you’re at home, the sooner you can sit in an armchair and put your foot in warm water.”
“They’re worthy people, aren’t they?” Jane threw one anxious glance back toward the curricle. “I shouldn’t like to go with a stranger, unless you’re sure of them.”
That the girl should trust her to render judgment on the worthiness of such obviously respectable people sent a bittersweet pang straight to Lydia’s core. She did deserve better. “I’m quite sure of them. I wouldn’t countenance your going unless I were.” She caught the maid’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Do your best to be discreet in speaking to her, but I don’t suppose it’s any disaster if she learns a gentleman pays my bills. I’m not likely to see her again.”
Jane nodded, and Lydia turned them both back about. “You’re so kind to offer. I’d be greatly obliged if you would convey my maid home. I shall walk, myself.”
Mr. Blackshear stepped forward at once and the green-liveried groom sprang down from his perch at the rear. Together the men boosted Jane up to the seat, from where she surveyed her surroundings with not a little satisfaction. The brother and sister made some arrangements for meeting again, and then she lifted the reins and took the vehicle smoothly out into the road, the groom back aboard and Jane turning to wave over one shoulder.
“That was very good of your sister.” They stood side by side, watching the curricle pull away. Now she would say what needed to be said if the effort killed her. “Even better of you, everything considered.” She could see how he turned his head to regard her though she kept her own eyes fast on the receding carriage. She drew a breath. “I thank you for not allowing any prior unpleasantness to stand in the way of your aiding a lady in need.”
He looked away from her to his hat, which he still held in his hands and now rotated several times. “It pleases me to be of use,” he said after a moment. Then he pivoted to face her and restored his hat, one hand at the front and one at the back angling it just so. “Somers Town, you said. Shall we set out?”
A jolt of surprise raced through her limbs, and then a jolt of self-impatience because she had not foreseen this misunderstanding. “I beg your pardon.” She put a step of distance between them, and her voice put half a mile. “I intend to walk alone. I ought to have made that clear.”
“Come now, Miss Slaughter. You cannot expect me to allow that.”
It was exactly the wrong thing for him to say. And it was exactly the thing she needed, the rope she could seize and climb to escape the slough of unwelcome sentiments in which she’d floundered all day. The panic at being recognized by that clerk. The vexation at failing in her errand, at failing to take proper care of her maid. The shame, in that instant when she’d believed Mrs. Mirkwood to be something other than a sister. All these she could leave behind, if she clung instead to outrage at yet another man’s presumption.
She swung to face him square, and wrapped her reticule-strings another turn about her wrist. “It is not for you to allow or disallow anything where I am concerned.” Without even a curtsey she spun and started walking.
She must not have taken him aback for so much as a second. All at once he was there, just as shadow-quick by daylight as in the dark, filling up the place where she’d intended to be, albeit at a respectable daytime distance. “I chose my words poorly.” He inclined his head to grant her this point, but raised it with undiminished purpose gleaming in his coffee-dark eyes. “What I mean to say is I will not send you off on your own through the streets of London. I can’t believe you supposed I would. I should never have agreed to spiriting off your maid, if I’d known this was your intent.”
No. Don’t you dare have a care for me. “I’m sorry you should have misunderstood.” An inhalation brought her the faint scent of starch: he’d taken extra trouble with his cravat today. Or perhaps with his shirt, whose crisp linen rose and fell with his breaths under a copper-colored waistcoat and—
Never mind. She gave herself a quick shake, on the inside. “If you reflect for two seconds I’m sure you’ll agree that to be seen walking with another man, particularly another man who has already brought himself to my protector’s notice in a pointed discussion of me, can be nothing but detrimental to my interest.”
Mistake. Mistake. His eyes widened and his jaw went tight and he loomed, somehow, taller and broader than he’d been an instant before. He reached across to catch her by the shoulder and then drew his hand back again, abruptly as if he’d touched hot iron. “Does he—” Up and down her face he looked, combing for clues. “Do you mean to say you have something to fear from him?”
Her insides all writhed under the ferocity of his attention. He had no right to ask, or to look at her so. He was utterly mistaken in his assumptions and this was not his business in any case. “He doesn’t beat me, if that’s what you imagine. But if he thought me unfaithful I could lose his protection. That’s more than adequate grounds for fear, I assure you.”
He studied her the way he must often have studied unreliable soldiers, his thick black brows pushing low over the bridge of his nose as he weighed the probable veracity of her words. “Very well,” he said at last. “I shall follow you, six paces behind. No one will see that I’m with you.”
“A block behind would be better.”
He shook his head once, adamant. “A block is too far for me to be of use.”
“I don’t know what use you’re imagining I—”
“Your purse,” he said, though his eyes never left her face. “From the way you’re holding it I suspect you’ve got more than a fan and a handkerchief in there. Any thief with half a brain is likely to draw the same conclusion. And I can run down a man with a six-pace head start, but I shouldn’t like to try a whole block.”
He looked capable of running down the fastest entries at Newmarket, with his muscular build and his fierce determination. More than capable of running herself down, if she attempted to bolt. She lowered her eyes to her reticule, and repositioned the strings.
“I’m sorry, Miss Slaughter.” These words came in a lower pitch. “I know I sound peremptory, and I can see how that offends you. But the long and short of it is you will not dissuade me from seeing you safely home. And the longer we stand here arguing, the greater the risk of our being seen together, as you feared.”
She glanced up and caught a flicker of some stark emotion in his eyes. He needs this. The knowledge floated in, delicate as thistledown. A disreputable lady developed a skill for divining the things men needed, and not only the fleshly things.
She walked. He moved nimbly aside and, one must presume, fell into step six paces behind. Among the many boot heels sounding about her, she couldn’t be certain of his.
It wasn’t so much a question of concern for her, then. He was one of those men who must always be concerned for someone or something, who went racing out to tilt at dragons wherever he could find them. He’d shown his colors that first night, hadn’t he, when he’d broken into a conversation that was none of his concern to stand in defense of a lady he didn’t even know.
Of course, not an hour later he’d stood in the library darkness, having a good long look at what was not for his eyes. More man than noble knight in that moment. She’d do well to remember.
And so she did remember, when she finally turned the corner into Clarendon Square. The sinews in her shoulders tensed. If he had untoward intentions—if he expected some sort of recompense for his chivalry—now was when he’d make the fact known. With a few long strides he’d catch up to her and show his gentlemanly solicitude to be a sham. And she’d answer his presumption with the blistering contempt such falseness deserved.
He didn’t come. On the doorstep of her house she finally glanced back and saw him, halfway down the square, his attention seemingly on the grand polygon buildings in its center. One, then another of her shoulder-sinews relaxed.
Then all of them.
She made a small gesture, fluttering the back of her hand at him. Very good. You’re free to go. He answered with a rolling motion of his own hand, and a jab of one finger. Finish. Open the door. Go inside.
So she did. On her way upstairs she stopped at the first floor and went to the front of the house. Out the window she spied him, a distant figure in a charcoal-gray coat, starting his long journey back to wherever he lived. Eastward he went, along the square’s southern edge until the polygon buildings blocked him from view. A thought slipped in just as his shape quitted her prospect: not once had he mentioned the hundred eighty pounds.
Lydia touched a knuckle to the pane of glass that had last framed him. Then she gathered her skirts and hurried up the next flight to see to Jane.
I DARESAY YOU could poach her with a bit of effort.” Lord Cathcart slouched on the Beecham’s ballroom wall, arms across his chest and one boot-heel up. He nodded toward the place where Miss Slaughter was working her way through the set, as though Will’s attention were not entirely engrossed there already.
“You’re wrong. I sense she’s taken a dislike to me.” He folded his own arms. “Besides I haven’t the means to keep her. And if I crossed Roanoke in that way, I suspect I’d be unwelcome here altogether.” He shook his head. “Not worth the risk.” Truly, it wasn’t.
“Beecham’s is but one club among dozens. You’d find another.” Cathcart changed feet, shifting his weight and putting his opposite heel against the wall. “You might try one of the higher-stakes houses, if only for the sport of it. I expect I could get you into Watier’s some night. Or we could visit one of the truly down-at-heels properties, if you’ve got a taste for adventure.”
The prospect had its temptations. Nine days into the month of March, his third night now at Beecham’s, and between wins and losses he’d gained only sixty pounds toward the three thousand he needed to hand to Fuller by the end of April. One good night at a high-stakes hell and he could have the full amount.
A Gentleman Undone Page 6