by Diana Davis
When they lived in the apartment.
The same apartment she’d gone to today —
“Did you know?” Temperance whispered. “Did you know he didn’t love me?”
Mama moved on to the other side of the gown. “I worried,” she admitted.
She unpinned Temperance’s stomacher, untied her petticoats and pulled the lace out of her stays, one hole at a time, as if she were a very small child. Temperance pulled her arms free of her stays while Mama untied her garters and pulled off her stockings. Mama took out the few pins that remained in her hair and brushed and brushed and brushed.
“Is it better to know?” Mama asked, her voice feather soft and razor sharp.
“I don’t know.”
“Can I bring you anything?” Mama offered. “Broth? Bread?”
Temperance shook her head, curling into a ball on the bed. Mama tucked the coverlet around her. “What he did is no reflection on you, my dearest child.”
Temperance said nothing, letting the tears slide across her cheeks.
“Sleep now, dearest,” Mama murmured.
“You, too.” Temperance clasped her mother’s hand. Mama needed the rest more than she did.
Temperance let herself cry until her eyes were too swollen to open, and still she was no closer to sleep.
She’d known her dreams were dead. Today she’d watched them burn, turn to ashes, dissolve on the wind. She’d understood that’s all they’d ever been. Ephemera.
For years, she’d pinned all her hopes on him. He would give her the life she wanted.
Winthrop could never have given her what she’d really wanted. She would have married him if he’d ever intended to ask. She would have ended up safe in the Morley household — and a fool to all the world. That was no security.
By dawn, her face had stopped swelling. Her eyes had stopped crying. Her heart had stopped hurting, for the moment.
She would never again shed a tear for Winthrop Morley.
And she would not waste her life pining away because she couldn’t have him.
She’d been wrong about Winthrop Morley — so very wrong — but she’d been wrong about everyone else, too. Certainly there were few single men with as much prestige and power and money as Winthrop had had. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t find someone who could provide for her, care for her, not make a fool of her.
She would marry as soon as humanly possible and put all this ghastliness behind her. Temperance Hayes always got exactly what she wanted.
And once again, Owen held the key to her happiness.
Owen resisted the urge to get up and pace the green rug in front of his client in Hayes’s study. Ambrose Sibbald certainly wouldn’t appreciate Owen succumbing to his nerves about Temperance.
How was she? Hayes hadn’t been in before Congress this morning, and Lord David hadn’t heard anything from his wife’s family. Owen had been the last to leave the Hayeses’ home last night, waiting until Hayes himself suggested he go.
Did Temperance blame Owen?
Shouldn’t she?
“Well, my boy?” Sibbald said, pulling his attention back to the present. “Sit up straight.”
Was he not? Owen straightened. “Yes, sorry, I’ve been doing research for your case, and I think we should be able to triumph over Vanost.”
“Good. The Whig deserves it.”
Owen tried not to frown. This case was motivated by a violated contract and not personal politics, wasn’t it?
The motivation wasn’t his affair. A contract was broken, and he aimed to correct it. “Well, we can’t violate our contracts.”
“Yes, unless you’ve a good lawyer.” Sibbald leaned very far forward to clap Owen on the shoulder. “Whom you’re paying handsomely.”
Owen tried to ignore the flush of pride or the fantasy of what a “handsome” payment might be able to do for his mother and sisters. Hayes was the most generous employer to an apprentice in town, and still they couldn’t afford anything more. Paying clients of his own were the only way he could give them a home where his sisters didn’t have to sleep on pallets on the floor.
Sibbald snapped his fingers and gestured at Owen’s hands. He found he was fiddling with the too-short cuffs of his coat.
“Sorry,” he said, lacing his fingers together. “I will —”
“Shall.”
“I shall speak to the clerks and see that the case is put on the docket. We’ll have Vanost served as soon as possible.”
“Good lad, good lad. Say, if you’re not busy Thursday night, we’re having a kick-up. Bring Beaufort, if he can pull himself away from the Congress.”
“That may prove difficult; I understand they’re debating very serious issues.”
Sibbald waved the idea away. “Well, bring someone. Better still if you can find some ladies to join us. We never seem to have enough partners for dancing!”
Owen had never learned to dance — wasn’t required around the stables — but if it would help his case or build his own clientele, he’d oblige Sibbald however necessary. Except humiliating his own sisters. “I shall endeavor to try, sir.”
“Good lad. Do watch your manners, though.” Sibbald stood, and Owen walked him to the door. When was he supposed to demand payment? Hayes’s tutelage had covered the finer points of the law but less so the business of lawyering. He wasn’t sure he was in a position to demand anything right now.
Owen bid his client goodbye, but his focus immediately shifted to the woman coming up the street: Temperance Hayes.
He studied her carefully. Her features hardly seemed swollen. Her hair was freshly, fashionably styled. Her striped robe was covered in crisp ruffles. She appeared to have both shoes, so Mercy must have found the other one and returned them to her.
Most of all, she was smiling.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice tentative. He stepped out of the office, hoping the clerks wouldn’t cluster around the door to eavesdrop — as he and Temperance had done to Hayes and Beaufort and his wife only two days ago. “I want to reassure you I had no idea what was going to happen here yesterday,” he hurried to say.
She looked directly into his eyes and took his hands. Why did she always have to take his hands? “Thank you, Owen. I didn’t think you could have — but it’s good to hear it from you.”
“If I had known —”
“You would have spared me the truth?”
Owen nodded.
“And then I would have never known.” Her gaze drifted away. “It’s better to know. To live in the real world. Don’t you think?”
How was he supposed to live in the real world when she insisted on taking his hands? “Yes, of course.”
“At least Lord David didn’t stay to gloat.”
Owen agreed. Lord David — er, Beaufort — had said the same thing as they’d paced in front of the Hayeses’ fire yesterday, hoping Temperance might come down. It would have been too painful for Temperance to have Beaufort or his wife there witnessing her humiliation.
A small mercy for a very cruel truth.
“I’m grateful for the truth,” Temperance said, as if she’d heard his thoughts. “And for whatever you did to help me understand.”
“Very little,” Owen admitted.
“Now,” Temperance said, “I do think you are rather still in my debt.”
Owen raised an eyebrow, but as she tucked her arm in his and directed him back toward her father’s study, he found he had no voice to question her.
The clerks all watched him pass, Temperance on his arm, but he sent them a quelling look. “Hayes needs New Jersey done by Friday,” he called, although he probably didn’t.
Temperance took her place upon her leathern throne, and Owen closed the door as far as he dared for propriety’s sake. “What can I do for you?”
Temperance looked down at her hands, elegantly folded in her lap. “Yesterday — or this morning — I came to realize something. W
ith your help.”
“Yes?”
Pain laced through her brief smile. “For far too long, I spent my life fixed upon a single dream.”
“Winthrop?” He said the name gingerly, as if handling a broken looking glass.
She met his gaze. The pain hadn’t left her features, but her eyes were clear. “Yes, Winthrop. But he was never who I thought he was. Who I hoped he was. He never would have made me happy.”
Owen swallowed hard and paid absolutely no heed to any traitorous thought in his mind. But if Temperance Hayes was hunting a husband, that changed —
“I shan’t be sentimental about this, Owen. I intend to marry.”
That word, sentimental. It was a signal, a red flag. He would not like whatever followed, even if she proposed marriage to him this very day.
Because even if it wasn’t sentimental to her, it was to him. It had always been.
“Yes?” he finally managed.
“What qualities do you think are important for a husband?” she asked.
He shifted in his chair and laughed. “I can’t say I’ve ever tried to find one myself.”
Temperance gave a tight smile. “I’m a bit out of practice.”
“Well, I would think you’d need . . . someone who could support you.”
She considered this and finally gave her approval. “In every sense of the word.”
Yes, hopefully one would not marry someone one found insupportable. “And you intend to find someone to support you?”
“I already have.”
She didn’t mean him. He couldn’t support her. He knew she knew that. And still, Owen forced air into his lungs, forced his features to remain frozen in pleasant expectation, forced his hopes to stay exactly where they were.
“You mentioned you’d be working for a Mr. Sibbald, didn’t you? Ambrose Sibbald?” Temperance continued.
“Yes?” That old codger? He had to be twice their age. Owen tried to act as though the idea wasn’t a dagger to the heart. “He’s a bit old, isn’t he?”
Temperance gave him a quizzical squint. “No, no, he has a son. Godfrey.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“Yes, his only surviving child. Godfrey is nearly twenty-one now.”
Owen nodded as if he knew this, though Sibbald had never mentioned his family. Furthermore, simply because one reached the age where one could marry without parental consent, it didn’t automatically follow that one would be hoping for such a union right away.
“That would make him three years younger than you, wouldn’t it?” Owen pointed out.
“No matter. Certainly a more acceptable match than his father!” She laughed, the sound musical and light.
He’d despaired of ever hearing it again yesterday, but somehow it didn’t warm his heart quite as much as he’d thought.
“Well,” Temperance said, “since our last scheme didn’t go quite as planned, I was hoping you might be able to introduce me to Godfrey.”
Introduce them? He forced himself to nod as if the idea didn’t spear through him. “Certainly. If you’re not engaged this Thursday, Sibbald said I should bring some ladies for dancing.”
“A ball? My, you’re efficient! If lawyering doesn’t work out for you, you ought to consider helping eligible young ladies meet rich men.”
Owen edged out a chuckle. Precisely what he needed, another stab: constantly being reminded he couldn’t care for anyone, financially or romantically.
He had to get over this ridiculous childhood infatuation.
“Thank you, Owen.” Temperance said it with such sincerity, looked at him with such earnestness, crossed the room and kissed his cheek with such tenderness. “I’m so grateful to have you to depend upon.”
She rested her hand on his arm and he covered it with his own. “Always, Temperance. Ever since we were children.”
She pulled her hand away. “That was so long ago.”
“Do you remember how we would sneak in here in the evenings to play three-in-a-row?”
“With my father’s paper, and we were soundly punished.” Her voice had sharpened.
Ah. She did remember, then.
She continued, “Your friendship was the pinnacle of that epoch of my childhood, but please understand: I never wish to remember my years here. I wouldn’t come here now if I could help it.”
The hurt in her expression was slow to dissolve. She really meant that.
Of course she did. Temperance was the oldest daughter of the city’s most prominent lawyer. She could have her choice of men, and she had no intention of choosing anyone who couldn’t support her in the manner to which she was accustomed now. That was perfectly within her rights.
“How does your family?” Temperance asked, moving the conversation along.
“Well,” he said. Relatively speaking, that was true enough. Mother’s joints were arthritic and ached constantly, but she still did the washing. The younger three worked all hours at the mending she took in, and Meg had her job at the bakery. Between that and his pay, they had just enough to keep themselves fed, clothed, sheltered and warm. But they would all be working this hard for two rented rooms and too few beds until they died — unless he could fit more clients like Mr. Sibbald into his docket.
“Just ‘well’?” Temperance turned away from the fireplace and looked at him, truly penitent. “I’ve injured you.”
“No.”
Her expression communicated an entire paragraph of feeling: of course she had, she didn’t buy his protestation for a minute, and she genuinely felt awful.
She was playing him like a spinet, and he had gone right along.
He couldn’t allow that — and furthermore, someone had to take care of her, here. “Temperance, are you certain you’re ready to be thinking of this now? So soon after . . . yesterday?”
She faced the fire again. “Yesterday was difficult; I’ll not pretend otherwise. But now I see the truth. The person I thought I loved never truly existed. I have wasted years of my life on that lie. I cannot countenance another minute.”
Owen agreed, but he couldn’t imagine immediately pursuing someone else she knew just as little of would be the solution to her heartache.
Then again, what did he know? He hadn’t been on friendly terms with Temperance since they were, oh, ten? Perhaps she knew much about Godfrey and merely needed the opportunity to make it clear she was available and interested.
Owen tried to soldier on. “I suppose you and your sisters ought to join us Thursday, then.”
She turned back to him, beaming brighter than the sun. “Thank you very much. I knew I could count on you.”
He assured her she could. Temperance crossed to him and took his hands. “Do stop fidgeting.”
He certainly couldn’t help that in her presence — but Sibbald had taken issue with it as well. “Temperance, could I ask a favor of you?”
She brightened, eager and ready to help.
“Mr. Sibbald is an important client, and I wouldn’t want to . . . offend him at his party.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine. It’s just a party, like every other —”
“I don’t go to parties. Often,” he amended, hoping not often was close enough to never to count without forcing him to endure too much shame.
“Oh, well.”
Owen’s mind suddenly dredged up every moment he’d made a fool of himself with rich and powerful people in this city, especially Beaufort and Sibbald over the last few days. He couldn’t jump his horse, he lived in a veritable hovel, he hadn’t the manners Sibbald wanted — “Please don’t let me make a fool of myself.”
The instant he’d asked, he was fairly certain it was too late for that, but Temperance merely tilted her head to the side. “Certainly, Owen. Though I’ve never thought you foolish.”
She obviously didn’t know the vagaries of Owen’s stupid heart.
“I would appreciate the help,” he said.
He echoed the sentiment and went through the motions of taking his leave, seeing her out, agreeing to meet again Thursday afternoon to work on his manners.
Asking for her help was incredibly unwise if he couldn’t focus his mind a little better. He had to accept that he was never, ever going to be the kind of man Temperance Hayes would give a second look, no matter how many Beauforts and Sibbalds he impressed.
Thursday afternoon, Temperance took her own dinner early before heading to Papa’s office. There, she paced across the pebblestone street from the brick building until Lord David left again, back to the Congress or wherever he might be wasting his time today.
Some part of her was actually grateful he was married to her cousin. She could only imagine what she might have done were he still single. What a fool she would have seemed.
Once he was out of sight, Temperance crossed the street and walked into Papa’s office. She didn’t spare a glance for the clerks, marching straight back to Papa’s study. The fire was warm, and her old favorite chair was waiting for her. When they’d lived upstairs, this was the one room that was always a refuge. She could come here to be alone, have time with Papa, just sit in silence.
She had never appreciated solitude so much until her family had cramped into a four-room flat.
Owen finally appeared at the door. “I spoke to Beaufort’s valet.” He pointed at Papa’s desk, now perfectly set with a full place setting.
Of course it had to be Lord David’s. Temperance swallowed a sigh and gestured for Owen to sit in Papa’s chair. “If they serve supper tonight, it won’t be formal.”
“Ah.”
“But I’m happy to teach you how to act at the table.” By the time Temperance had listed off five of the most important rules — not even touching the flatware yet — Owen’s eyes were wider than the saucer in front of him.
This was not going to be easy. Temperance stood and clasped her hands behind her back, pondering how best to help Owen. He couldn’t possibly memorize a lifetime of etiquette in one afternoon. What were the main, most important things to know?