Once Again a Bride

Seven



Three days later Alec knocked at Anne’s bedchamber door just before noon. Invited in, he was startled to find her dressed and sitting in the armchair by the fire with a book. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I’m feeling so much better the doctor said I could sit up today.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Well, I am not to run up and down the stairs. But I’ve been sleeping wonderfully. No coughing. And I feel stronger. He said Charlotte’s potion is a wonder, and he intends to recommend it to his other patients.”

Alec hardly dared believe it, but Anne did look better. Some color had returned to her cheeks. She no longer had that frightening languid air, as if the least effort was beyond her.

“I like her.”

“Who?”

“Charlotte, silly!”

“Oh, yes.” He took the chair on the other side of the hearth and continued his scrutiny of his sister. He’d been worried about her for so many weeks; it was difficult to trust the improvement.

“She has actually gotten Lizzy interested in maps and exotic places on the globe. Lizzy has decided to become an intrepid explorer. I warn you, she wishes to purchase a sword stick.”

“What?”

Anne gave him a look. “You are not listening to me.”

“Yes, I am. Lizzy… Lizzy is learning geography?”

“Charlotte has been teaching her.”

“She needn’t do that. She is a guest here.”

“They both seem to be enjoying it.”

“Really?” He couldn’t picture his boisterous sister enjoying any type of study. “I’m still in Lizzy’s bad books, I suppose?”

Anne shrugged. “Until you release the cat from ‘prison.’”

“The storeroom is not…”

“I was teasing, Alec. You’re not really going to get rid of Callie, are you?”

He grimaced. “Anyone would think I’d threatened to drown the animal. I wager it would actually be happier if I sent it down to the country. If you could see the reproachful looks I get if I happen to pass the kitchen.”

“I heard that Callie managed to ingratiate herself with Cook. I can’t imagine how.”

“She caught a mouse in the scullery. And presented it to Mrs. Dunne with due ceremony. Devious creature. She has the instincts of a Russian diplomat. She’s turning the whole household against me.”

Anne laughed. “But Alec, you’ll let her out eventually?”

“If Lizzy promises… Oh, what am I saying? Lizzy will promise, and then she will ‘forget’ or imagine that some situation requires that she break her word.” Frances had been right about that much. Alec felt a rising sense of unease. He had never had to oversee his willful little sister here in town, where she was surrounded by strangers and pitfalls she knew nothing about. And Anne, whom he’d always trusted to prevent Lizzy’s most distempered freaks, was in no condition to do so.

“She doesn’t mean…” Anne began.

He had to move; he really could not sit still any longer. “Do not overdo and exhaust yourself,” he said over his shoulder. He shut the door upon the concern in her face, and tried to do the same with his own. In fact, he knew just how to divert his mind from his own problems. He went to his study and immersed himself in correspondence.

By luncheon, the mood had passed, and when Charlotte answered his summons at three o’clock, Alec had recovered his equanimity. “The Bow Street Runner is due, and he has asked that you be present,” he told her as she entered the study. For some reason, she frowned. “If you do not wish to speak to him…”

“Of course I wish to speak to him,” she answered snappishly.

Alec wondered if trying to teach Lizzy was irritating her nerves. A knock on the study door put the thought from his mind, however. Ethan opened it and said, “Your caller, sir.” He ushered the fellow in and closed the door behind him.

Alec faced an odd little man, unremarkable in every way. Mid-sized, with mouse brown hair, gray-blue eyes, and forgettable features, he wore a long gray coat that would pass unnoticed in most parts of London. Not outside this house, perhaps, but in a wide variety of other neighborhoods. “Good afternoon, Mr…?” Why hadn’t Ethan announced the fellow’s name? Or taken his coat, for that matter?

“Jem Hanks, sir, lady.” As if in answer to Alec’s thought, he added. “I don’t tell me name to just anyone, ye ken.”

The words came with a darting observant glance—sharp, evaluative, some might have said impudent. It was strange. The Runner came from the servant class, but he was nothing like a servant. He was, in fact, unique in Alec’s experience.

He pulled a notepad and stubby pencil from his coat pocket. “I talked to Mr. Wycliffe a time or two already. And looked about a bit. I had a few questions for the lady.”

“Of course,” said Charlotte. She sat on the small sofa under the window. Alec returned to his desk chair. “Do sit down, Mr…”

“I prefer to stand, thankee, sir. Now this gent as called on you, Ronald Herriton, what can you tell me about him, ma’am?”

Charlotte sat straighter, hands folded before her. “Well, he said he was an antiquities dealer, and he wished to purchase my husband’s entire collection. On the spot. For what he called a very good price. He evidently expected me to take his word for the value. As if I wouldn’t have the sense to consult several experts about such a sale. He also claimed that Henry had promised him the opportunity to buy after his death. Clearly a lie, considering Henry’s will. He was loud and unpleasant. My maid and I had a good deal of trouble getting rid of him.” She paused, thinking. “He is very fat.”

A corner of Jem Hanks’ lips twitched. “That he is. Did you tell him that you en’t allowed to sell, ’cause of the will?”

“No, I didn’t wish to reveal anything to him, or talk to him any longer than I had to. He…” Her shoulders shifted. “There was something… unsettling about him.”

“Was there now?” The Runner’s sharp gaze flicked up from his notebook and down again. He wrote something on the page. “I looked through your husband’s papers at Mr. Wycliffe’s office. There’s a pile of letters about this or that pot or coin or statue. Were you acquainted with any of the writers?”

“No. Well, except…” She stopped.

“Yes, ma’am?” The Runner’s pencil was poised.

“My father,” Charlotte continued in a low voice. “They corresponded for several years about ancient Rome. But my father died six months ago.”

“Very sorry to hear that, ma’am.” Jem Hanks waited a moment, then said, “So the others…?”

She shook her head. “On the very rare occasions when my husband had visitors—always to look at his collection—I was not… invited.”

Alec wondered if his uncle had actually been off his head. The more he learned about his life, the less he thought of his reclusive relative.

“Too bad. I would like to find those gen’lmen.”

“Have you talked to Holcombe? I would say, of the household, he knew Henry best. I don’t imagine that my husband… confided in him.” The idea was unimaginable. “But Holcombe liked to poke his nose into everything.”

“Who’s this Holcombe?” Hanks leaned forward like a hound on the scent.

“My uncle’s former valet,” Alec replied. He was feeling rather left out of the conversation. “He was dismissed right after my uncle’s death.”

“And no one told me?”

“I thought you had received a list of the servants from Wycliffe.”

“He missed one, seemingly. First name?” The Runner’s pencil hovered over the page.

“Uh…” Charlotte looked blank, then chagrined. “I have no idea.”

The pencil drooped. “No matter. I’ll find ’im.”

“So what have you discovered so far?” Alec asked. “Have you anything to report?”

“It’s early days yet, sir. But one thing I know. Twarn’t your common garden-variety criminal as broke into the house. How would they know about this ‘collection,’ fer one thing? And it en’t the type of stuff they can sell easy, is it? Old coins and papers and the like. Second thing I know—there’s no word on the street about the job.”

“That’s why you’re wondering about Henry’s fellow collectors?” said Charlotte. Most astutely, Alec thought. “But surely none of them would…”

Jem Hanks shrugged. “By what I’m hearin’ some folk are close to daft about this old jun… these ‘antiquities.’ Go to just about any length to get their hands on ’em.”

“It’s true there is a great rivalry amongst collectors,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “Henry used to positively gloat when he beat someone out on a purchase.”

“Yes, ma’am. And if they’ve heard they can’t be buyin’ these perticular ones…”

“They might try to steal them?”

“Send someone to do it, more like.” Hanks nodded to himself. “There’s just the one thing…”

“What?” said Charlotte and Alec at the same moment.

“Well, some as I’ve talked to say this Henry Wylde was fooled and cheated a good deal. Paid too much for poor stuff or fakes. So…”

“It needed only that!” Charlotte exclaimed. “He didn’t just spend my money, he wasted it.” She pounded the arm of the sofa with a closed fist. Jem Hanks watched her with an interest that Alec found unsettling.

“Have you any other questions?” Alec said.

“Only one, sir.” He turned to Charlotte. “Is there anyone your husband mentioned in perticular? Friend, enemy, person he envied? Anybody at all that I should concentrate on, like?”

Charlotte frowned, took her time. But in the end, she shook her head. “Not that I remember. Henry talked mostly about things, you know—things and their history—not people. He didn’t much like people.”

“Ha.” Jem Hanks closed his small notebook. “Well, I’d best get back to it. More than likely I’ll have other questions as matters develop. You let me know if anything comes to mind. Anything at all. Don’t matter if it’s small. Thankee, ma’am, sir.” He nodded, turned, and slipped out of the room without waiting for a response.

Silence descended. Charlotte frowned at the carpet. No doubt she was unsettled by the encounter.

“An odd sort of man, Mr. Hanks. But he seemed to know his business,” she said.

“He came highly recommended,” replied Alec. She rose, took a step toward the door, stopped. What was this awkwardness that rose between them, Alec wondered? First the breakfast table, and now here. He generally found conversation untaxing; he was known among his friends for smoothing over sticky encounters. But something about this young woman paralyzed his skills. And yet he didn’t want her to go.

“You have a great many letters,” Charlotte observed.

“Estate business.”

“Do you have many estates? My father never received so much correspondence.”

“It’s the times.”

“The…?”

“The current state of the country.”

“What do you mean?” She grimaced. “I’m horribly ignorant. Henry didn’t take any newspapers, as my father used to do, and he refused to let me subscribe to the circulating library.”

“What the deuce was wrong with the man?” burst from Alec.

“Just selfishness, I think.” Her expression was sad now rather than outraged. “Complete and utter selfishness. Tell me about things in the country.”

Unlike his sisters and brother—or Frances, who actually seemed to blame their tenants for his father’s death—she seemed sincerely interested. “You’ve heard of the new textile machinery?”

“Some. Where I grew up it was all agricultural.”

“Well, machinery is changing the world, and for the worse, right now, for many families. People on my land, or in nearby villages, who used to sell what they wove on their home looms have been put out of business by cheaper goods from the factories.”

Charlotte nodded. She didn’t appear bored.

“Some leave their homes to work in the mills, but those jobs are backbreaking, and still don’t pay a living wage. So either way, they starve.”

“Couldn’t they just… do other things?”

“Such as?”

“I… I don’t know. Grow more food?”

Alec sighed. He was all too familiar with the futility of explaining this problem to members of his own class. “Most of them were already growing all they could. A few go into service or join the army. But this is a massive change. And by and large, there are no other things for them to do.”

“Can’t they be offered assistance, to find new…?”

Alec’s bitterness overcame him. “Our government feels that protest equals treason, and we should hang those who object to these conditions.”

“Surely not!”

It was always the same, Alec thought. Now she would recall that she had urgent business elsewhere. A cup of tea, perhaps, or a thrilling novel. He waited, but Charlotte merely gazed at him as if waiting for a solution to the intractable. “You like to read?”

She looked startled. “Yes.”

“You’re fond of Lord Byron, perhaps?”

“I have read some of his…”

“But not, I imagine, his work about the plight of the weavers, and the fact that the government is, yes, hanging young Englishmen for attacking the new machinery. Frame breakers they call them.” Alec shuffled through the papers on his desk. “Here.”

Charlotte came to join him. She leaned over the page and read aloud:

Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,

When Famine appeals and when Poverty groans,

That Life should be valued at less than a stocking,

And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.

If it should prove so, I trust, by this token,

(And who will refuse to partake in the hope?)

That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken,

Who, when asked for a remedy, send down a rope.

She turned to look at him, her coppery eyes intense with feeling. “But what can be done to help them?”

Those eyes were very close, and the anxious sympathy he saw in her face was such a relief and a revelation. No one close to him had been moved by the emergency he felt rising around him every day. No one seemed to want to hear or understand, while Alec felt the world was teetering on the brink with so few—so very few—people straining to save it.

He was suddenly aware that their shoulders were touching. Hers was warm against his coat sleeve. Under the dowdy black stuff of her gown was a slender, rounded body. She was lovely, he thought. He hadn’t quite realized. It had taken the touch of her warm and ardent spirit. Such a small shift would put his arms around her; a mere bend of his head would set his lips on hers.

Shocked, he stepped back. This young woman was living under his roof and his protection, in company with his sisters. “I’m doing all I can for my own people in Derbyshire.” It came out rather stiffly.

“That’s what these letters are about?”

“Yes.” He didn’t mean to be dismissive, but her nearness was deeply unsettling.

“There are so many. Do you need help? Perhaps I could…”

“I believe I have matters well in hand,” Alec lied.

Charlotte drew back at the undeniable snub. “I mustn’t keep you from your work then.”

“Thank you.”

She turned and strode out with a rustle of skirts. Alec sank into his desk chair and grappled with his entirely inappropriate impulses. Charlotte Wylde was alone—without family or any other protector—and under his authority as executor. She was extraordinarily appealing. She was recently bereaved, though how she could be mourning his reprehensible uncle he could not… She sometimes seemed even younger than her age—nineteen, he had discovered in his uncle’s papers… Of course, she was not a total innocent. She was a widow not a deb… one of his most agreeable liaisons had been with a widow. An utterly different case!

They were barely acquainted. She had entered so readily into his concerns… the quick sympathy in her eyes… for the workers, not for him. She was his aunt, for God’s sake! He snorted. This was maddening and pointless. The best thing would be to banish all thought of her from his mind. Alec returned to the letters awaiting his attention, and struggled for some time to follow his own excellent advice.

***

Ethan watched the houseguest storm up the stairs and wondered what had happened in the study to make her angry. Not likely to be Sir Alexander; he was never impolite. Must have been the visitor. There was a strange little man—refused to give his name, glared at Ethan like he was a thief when he tried to take his coat. They’d never had a caller like him before.

Ethan was suddenly reminded of Harry Saunders. Everybody back home knew Harry was a poacher, though nobody could prove it. He had the same half-furtive, half-sly, and insolent air about him as the man just gone. Harry was a sneak, always popping up where least expected and slipping a few rabbits or even a deer out from under the noses of the gamekeepers. He enjoyed it, too; wouldn’t trade the poaching for honest work despite some run-ins with the magistrates. The visitor was like that, only on the other side seemingly. Somebody—Mrs. Wright, maybe?—had said he hunted down criminals for pay.

Ethan tried to imagine tracking quarry through the wilds of London instead of the forest. You’d have to know where to search, where to lie in wait, but he couldn’t picture such places. He didn’t even want to—surely they’d be dark, filthy, and treacherous. He couldn’t shake the conviction that city dwellers were meaner and more crooked than country people. Look at some of the footmen he’d met from other households; all they seemed to think of was how to extract larger tips for tasks they were supposed to do anyway, and then wasting their money on drink and tailors and other useless trash.

Ethan wondered if her mistress’s bad mood would help him out with Lucy. He hadn’t made much progress there. She still avoided him, though he’d been as charming as he knew how to be. Now and then, he fancied he caught a gleam in her eye that said she wasn’t immune. But as long as she kept away from him, nothing could follow from that. And it was becoming more and more important to him that something did follow. Maybe he’d just go and tell her that her “Miss Charlotte” was upset. She’d want to know. It was part of the job to keep track of the moods of the gentry. Sometimes—mealtimes, for instance—you even had to listen at doors to get a jump on their requests.

Before he could go looking for Lucy, though, Miss Cole came down the stairs, a small envelope in her hand. “Ethan, would you take this note to Lady Earnton’s house?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Right away.” He wondered why she hadn’t rung for him to fetch the note. But Miss Cole had been flighty and unlike herself for quite a time now.

Nodding her thanks, she went back upstairs. Ethan fetched his coat and gloves and told Mrs. Wright where he was off to. It was a cold, raw March afternoon, the sun already slanting down, but Ethan didn’t mind. An errand was a chance to move. Delivering notes and packages and escorting the young ladies about was the best part of his job here in town. Nothing to compare to his long rambles in the woods during his time off at home; but for all he didn’t like London, there was always something to see. He spent far too much time kicking up his heels in the front hall, or setting tables, serving meals, then clearing off the tables again. Ethan liked to accomplish things, and none of that felt like an accomplishment.

He walked fast. He knew the way to Sir Alexander’s aunt’s grand place; he’d been there several times before and could be quick. He’d take the chance and look in on his grandparents on the way home. They were visiting his Aunt Liv, and her house wasn’t far out of the way. Aunt Liv was one family member who liked London; after being up to town a few years as a housemaid for the Wyldes, she’d married a local grocer and stayed on living here. No one would be the wiser if he spent a quarter hour or so at her house.

His grandad always had good advice, and he could talk to him about his plan for the future and how to get on with it. Everything was in place. Old Elkins was more than ready to give up his place and move to his daughter’s farm in Cornwall. The joint ache this past winter had like to done him in. He’d taught Ethan most all he knew. There was just the last step, the trickiest one, of asking. That and dealing with his dad’s disappointment. The second part was what kept him quiet when everything else pushed him to act.