A Modest Independence

by Mimi Matthews

  “Undoubtedly. They were half-naked.”

  “Nonsense. You sound as prudish as Mrs. Plank.” Jenny thrust her veil back into the basket, her hand briefly touching Tom’s as he simultaneously reached for the flask of lemonade. “By the by, in future, I’d prefer you not convey messages to me through your young lady.”

  His gaze lifted to hers. “You’re referencing Miss Plank, I presume.”

  “Who else? She had the nerve to say that you’d sent her to look after me. As if I weren’t a grown woman of eight and twenty and she the veriest chit.”

  “She’s not my young lady, as well you know.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. As your sister, I’d have to object to her.”

  “And as your brother, I’d be curious to know why.”

  “For obvious reasons. She’s not at all the right type of female to be your wife.”

  Tom’s lips quirked. “Jealous, Jenny?”

  “Why should I be? We’ve already established that I have no wish to marry.”

  “And yet you consider yourself an expert on what kind of lady I should take to wife.”

  “Not an expert, no, but I daresay I have a better grasp of your needs than most.”

  He gave her an ironic look, even as a faint flush of color crept up his neck.

  Jenny felt her own cheeks heat. She was vividly reminded of the kiss they’d shared on the Indus. “I didn’t mean anything untoward. I only meant that I understand what sort of man you are.”

  “Do you?” He offered her the flask of lemonade. “Pray enlighten me.”

  She took it from him and poured them each a small glass. “I certainly won’t. Not if you’re going to laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing.” And he wasn’t. Not anymore.

  Outside the windows of their compartment, the flat Egyptian landscape rolled by. On the right was a brown strip of desert, Lake Mareotis glimmering in the distance. On the left was a prospect of the Mahmoudia Canal, a waterway of the Nile which flowed through Alexandria and out to the Mediterranean Sea. There was nothing more to see, save the occasional short palm tree or Egyptian villager traversing the sands on his donkey.

  “Very well. If you really wish to hear it.” She handed him his lemonade before settling back into her seat with her own. “You’re a serious man, devoted to your work. You’re at the office from dawn until well past dusk. Some evenings you don’t go home at all. Do you deny it?”

  “There’s no reason to. It’s the truth, more or less.”

  “Which is precisely why you shouldn’t marry a woman who will make unnecessary demands on your time. What kind of life would that be? Trying to get on with your work, when all the while, your new bride was troubling you with her megrims? You’d never bear it.”

  “You paint a grim picture.”

  “So it is. But you wouldn’t be the first gentleman to ruin his life by marrying a girl just out of the schoolroom.”

  “Miss Plank is twenty, I believe. Hardly a child. And I’ve no wish to marry her or anyone.”

  His words stung. Jenny couldn’t understand why. Hadn’t she expressed the selfsame sentiment to him? It shouldn’t hurt to hear it directed back at her. Shouldn’t make her feel as if she was being rejected.

  She forced herself to finish her lemonade. “Your wishes are of little matter when a determined lady has set her sights on you.”

  “I’m not troubled by the prospect.”

  “Why not? Do you think you can’t be caught? When I was Helena’s companion, I saw dozens of girls like Lydia Plank, and dozens more of their calculating mamas. They’ll have you standing in front of the vicar so quickly your head will spin.”

  “If Miss Plank is capable of that, she has more depth to her than I’d realized. Perhaps I should marry her after all.”

  “I’m glad the idea brings you so much amusement.”

  “It amuses me because it’s so damnably unlikely. I mean it, Jenny. When it comes to dealing with calculating females, you may trust that I know what I’m about. I’ve no intention of being trapped.” Tom’s mouth hitched in a lopsided smile. “But it warms my heart to know you care.”

  “Of course I care.” She took his empty glass and returned it, along with hers, to the hamper. “You should be in no doubt of that by this point.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he admitted. “You were cross with me when we left Cleopatra’s Needle.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were. You scarcely said five words to me during the drive back to the hotel. And you were equally quiet at dinner.”

  “It had nothing to do with you. I was just…lost in thought.”

  “Anything you’d care to share?”

  “Only that I thought myself prepared for this adventure, for seeing all the sights and encountering all the people. I read so many books and travel guides. But now I’m here in one of the most fascinating countries in the world and I realize…” She gave him a rueful look. “It’s nothing like a plate in a history book, is it?”

  “Would you rather it was?”

  Jenny considered the question. “Do you know, I don’t believe I would. Because then…then it wouldn’t be real. And it’s the reality of it that makes it so magnificent. The city and the people and Cleopatra’s Needle. There’s a sense of history here. Of something almost magical.” She flushed with embarrassment. “I’m putting it badly.”

  “Not at all. I expect anyone of sensibility would be similarly affected by their first trip to Egypt.”

  “Has it affected you?”

  “To some degree. It’s made me want to know more. About the history and the culture. There’s a great deal to learn here if one has the time.”

  “A very great deal. It’s all rather overwhelmed me,” she confessed. “The journey and the people and all the changes in my life. There are times I feel completely at sea.”

  “You’ve struck me as being rather determined.”

  “In some respects. I know what I want and what I don’t want. I suppose I’ve always known that. As for the rest…”

  “What else is there?”

  “Only the entire world. I have to discover my place in it. To figure out how to move about here without becoming like every other British female who barges in and tramples all over everyone.”

  “There’s no chance of your doing that. For one, you’re not like other British females. None that I’ve ever known.”

  “In other words, I’m an eccentric oddity.”

  “In other words, you’re perfect just as you are.”

  Jenny’s heart swelled, the beat of it becoming almost painful in her chest. “That’s very sweet of you to say, but—”

  “There’s nothing sweet about it. It’s the truth. I realized it not long after meeting you. You’re the most imperfectly perfect woman I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Imperfectly perfect.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t. “I haven’t the slightest idea what that means.”

  “It was you who found Thornhill’s advertisement in the Times. You who arranged for Lady Helena to escape from London. I daresay some might call it managing. I call it downright heroic. You take care of people. You help to solve their problems.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “The difference being that I’m paid for it. Very well paid by people who often don’t deserve to be helped.”

  “Did Mr. Thornhill pay for your help?”

  “No, but—”

  “Yet it was you who placed the matrimonial advertisement in the first place. You who determined the method for saving Helena and her fortune from her uncle.”

  Tom frowned. “That was different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “What I did for Thornhill I did for a friend. A man who’s like a brother to me. A decent, honorable fellow who deserves a chance
at happiness. The rest of my clients are neither decent nor honorable.”

  “Not all of your clients fit that description, surely. What about Ahmad? What about Mr. and Mrs. Jarrow’s son?”

  “Those cases were different, too.”

  “Different how?”

  “Out of the common way. Not representative of the bulk of the cases I take.” Tom briefly removed his spectacles to massage the bridge of his nose. He looked suddenly tired, his blue eyes even wearier than they normally were. “Several years ago I began to become somewhat disenchanted with the work I was doing for Fothergill. In the main, I didn’t like my primary client.”

  “The gentleman engaged in the land dispute?”

  Tom nodded. “His case and its various offshoots had come to form the bulk of my practice and…I was tired of it. I decided then that I’d start taking on additional cases of my own. That I would use the skills I’d learned from Fothergill, employ the knowledge he’d given me, to help those who actually deserved to be helped.”

  “A laudable goal.”

  “Fothergill thought it foolish. Especially as the cases I took on usually involved the poor. Those stuck in untenable situations. I could often solve things for them with a letter or a word dropped in the right ear. It was no great sacrifice of my time.”

  “Still, it’s very generous of you.”

  “Hardly. Helping people like Ahmad and the Jarrows’ son is selfish. I do it because of how it makes me feel. Since Fothergill’s retirement, I’ve taken on more cases like theirs. Some days, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

  “Do you dislike your client so much?”

  “What I dislike is being used as a weapon.”

  Jenny’s brows shot up. “Is that how you view the work you do for him? I thought you loved the law.”

  “I do, but there are aspects of my practice that have little to do with it.”

  “What aspects?”

  Tom settled his spectacles back onto his nose. At first it seemed as though he wouldn’t answer her; however, after a weighted pause, he finally spoke. “I told you once that in the orphanage I learned that there was strength in knowledge.”

  She remembered. It had been the night he came to Half Moon Street. “You said that you’d developed a propensity for keeping secrets.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s why Fothergill chose me. He recognized the habit in me. Because he was the same, you see. He listened to everyone. He accumulated scraps of information. People’s darkest secrets. Their deepest desires. He used the knowledge to make himself powerful—and to help those who could afford his fee.”

  Jenny moistened her lips. On the train from Marseilles, she’d hesitated to voice her suspicions. She’d been too afraid of offending him. Of harming their friendship. But now, after all they’d been through together, it seemed foolish to remain silent. “You’re speaking of blackmail.”

  Tom’s brow creased. “No.” He shook his head. “Never that. He didn’t need to resort to such foul tactics. It was enough that people knew that he knew. By the time he took me on, he’d developed a reputation. He was a man to be feared. People called him the spider behind his back. Though nothing was ever truly behind Fothergill’s back. He knew very well what was said about him. I daresay he liked being thought a spider, one with a vast web stretching out over London and beyond.”

  Jenny suppressed a shudder. “He sounds a dreadful man.”

  “He is. And he’s as responsible for saving my life as Thornhill or Archer. He taught me all he knew. Molded me in his image.”

  “I don’t believe that. You’re nothing like the man you describe. You’re your own person.”

  “What I am is his successor.” A dry smile edged Tom’s mouth. “Though no one’s assigned me a moniker yet.”

  She managed a faint smile in return. There was nothing of humor in it. “Thank heaven. If anyone started calling you the spider, I’d have to cut your acquaintance.”

  “Jenny…”

  “Do you know, I always suspected you were dangerous in some way. It’s the way you carry yourself. So purposefully unremarkable.”

  “I’m hardly dangerous. Certainly not to you.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why are you looking at me that way? As if I’ve suddenly become a stranger?” Tom didn’t give her an opportunity to answer. “He’s dying, Jenny. Wasting away from the inside out. He won’t last another year.”

  His face was taut, almost cold, but Jenny detected a flicker of genuine sorrow in the depths of his gaze. She softened immediately. Whatever his secrets, this was no stranger. This was Tom. Her Tom. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

  “He’s an infuriating old devil. I can’t help but think I’ve let him down.”

  “How could you have?”

  “By having doubts. By occasionally doing what was right instead of what was necessary.”

  She stretched out her hand to him over the hamper. He took it without hesitation. Neither of them was wearing gloves. Their fingers threaded together in an intimate clasp. “What will you do?”

  “When he’s gone? I shall continue as I am. And one day, if I hold fast to my resolve, the worthy cases will have replaced the unworthy ones entirely.” Tom raised their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I must confess, I’m heartily looking forward to it.”

  Jenny’s pulse skittered. She watched, a little breathless, as he kissed her hand once more before drawing it to his cheek. He’d been clean shaven when they arrived in port this morning, but it was nearly six in the evening now. His jaw was shadowed with stubble. It tickled her skin in the most thrilling way. “Tom?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you bribe the railway porter?”

  He regarded her steadily. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to be alone with you.” His thumb moved over the curve of her finger. “Do you disapprove? Would you rather we’d forced Mira and Ahmad to remain with us? Or been obliged to share the compartment with the Hardcastles or the Planks?”

  “No indeed, but…”

  “But?”

  “The more time we spend together like this, the harder it’s going to be to say goodbye.”

  Tom went still, his Adam’s apple bobbing on a swallow. The weight of his gaze conveyed both so much and so very little. “What would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shall I refrain from touching you? From holding your hand or—”

  “No.” She squeezed tight to his hand, refusing to let him go. “I don’t want any of this to stop. Unless you—”

  “I don’t want it to stop either, damn me.”

  “Shall we agree not to think of it? The end of things, I mean.”

  “You’re proposing we suspend reality. That we pretend—” He broke off abruptly. “For how long?”

  “Until we find out what happened to Giles. And then…we must agree to part as friends.”

  “As if none of this ever happened.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t plan to forget a single moment. I’ll always remember—”

  “And that’s what you want from me? To help you to create a memory? Some colorless shadow you can look back on fondly long after I’ve gone?” Tom’s voice was rough with something very like anger. “I could never be content with such a bloodless version of what we’ve shared. Never.”

  She stared at him, uncertain what to make of his tone. “You’d prefer not to remember at all?”

  “I won’t remember. Indeed, when we part, I intend to make a concerted effort to forget you, Jenny. If we ever meet again someday in London or Devon, it shall be as common and indifferent acquaintances. Make no mistake. I won’t waste my time pining for something I cannot have.”

  His words skewered the most vulnerable part of her with r
uthless precision. It was all she could do not to jerk her hand from his. “Why would you pine? You don’t want me. You said yourself you’d no desire to marry. It isn’t as if I’d be rejecting you, nor you me. We neither of us have any wish to become entangled.”

  “I know that. But this attraction between us. I’ve never—”

  “You’ve no cause to be angry with me over it. I made it clear from the beginning—”

  “I’m not angry. I promise you.” He pressed another kiss to her hand. “I just…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like being out of control of things. Feeling so bloody powerless.”

  “Well, I don’t like it any better than you do. But I don’t see what can be done about it. Either we part ways now and try to forget each other or…” She laughed bitterly. “I suppose we could marry and settle down to a brood of children. Wouldn’t that be shocking?”

  Tom looked at her, an expression his eyes that was hard to read. “Yes. Terribly shocking.”

  “We’d both be miserable. And God help our poor offspring. What sort of mother would I be? Always feeling trapped. Always dreaming of running away to some far-off land.”

  Tom didn’t reply. He merely held her hand against his cheek as the train rattled on toward Cairo.

  They reached the railway station in Cairo at a quarter past eleven. There, they were obliged to break their journey for the night. Ahmad and Mira seemed in far better spirits than Tom was himself. Especially when given the opportunity to purchase skewers of spiced meat from one of the crowds of Egyptian peddlers shouting out to them in Arabic and broken English.

  Jenny, by contrast, gravitated to a peddler selling sweet cakes. Her purchases were wrapped swiftly into a handkerchief. “How does one say thank you in Arabic?”

  The peddler answered, “Shukraan.”

  “Shukraan,” Jenny repeated in tentative accents.

  The peddler grinned broadly, rewarding her pronunciation with another rapid string of Arabic.

  Jenny smiled at him in return. She was still smiling when they climbed into the carriage Tom had hired to take them to their hotel. “One day, I shall come back here and stay a good long while.”