The Last Word

by Samantha Hastings

  Lucinda fought the urge to roll her eyes; he was more handsome than she remembered. In the four years since she last saw him, his face had lost some of its youthfulness. Thick brown sideburns now ran down each side of his face, elongating his square jaw. His light brown eyes looked at her in surprise, and he stood up. He was one of the few men who were taller than Lucinda, at least six feet tall. It felt odd to look up to speak.

  “Is there something I can help you with, ma’am—miss?” he asked in a pleasant tone.

  He clearly didn’t recognize her.

  “I have never thought highly of your intelligence, Mr. Randall,” Lucinda said, “but really, you should be able to remember your partner’s only daughter.”

  Lucinda felt pleasure in seeing his eyes widen and his jaw drop. She smiled and took a seat. She gestured for him to sit as well. He obeyed, perching on the edge of his chair like he was on a social call instead of sitting in his own office.

  “There is something you can help me with since my father is not here,” Lucinda said. His jaw dropped slightly lower. “Do not worry, it does not require any great effort on your part. I need you to accompany me to a publishing house and get me an appointment with the editor.”

  “A publishing house?”

  “Yes, the place where they publish things,” Lucinda said, as if he were a small child.

  David did not respond immediately, but blinked at her as if he thought she was an apparition caused by the excessive heat.

  “As much as I would like to assist you, Miss Leavitt,” David said at last, “I am afraid that I have far too much work to do today.”

  He pointed to the stack of ledgers on his desk.

  “I should not wish to keep you from your work.” Lucinda turned in her seat to look at the door where Mr. Murphy was standing waiting patiently. “Mr. Murphy, would you be so good as to tell my coachman, Simms, to take Mrs. Patton home and then return here for me?”

  Lucinda turned back to David as Mr. Murphy disappeared to do as she asked. She placed her magazine on his desk, then removed her gloves and bonnet. “Which one shall I start with?” she asked, smiling brightly.

  He did not immediately reply, so Lucinda took the ledger from the top of the stack and picked up David’s pen. She flipped to the last page and carefully began examining the columns, adding the numbers in her head.

  “I have already done that one,” David said as he pulled another pen out of his desk drawer and placed it on the ledger he’d been checking when she walked in.

  “I know,” Lucinda said, circling the third line over. “But you missed a mistake. The clerk is off a farthing in this column.”

  “Thank you, Miss Leavitt,” David said dryly. “A quarter of a penny matters a great deal to our company’s financial success.”

  Lucinda shrugged and muttered audibly, “It’s still a mistake.”

  She handed the ledger back to David. He took it and then handed her another.

  “I am grateful for your assistance,” he said in a tone that sounded anything but thankful.

  “I’m sure you are,” she said. She loved numbers. She loved adding the impossibly high sums in her head with no other assistance but her mind. She checked the next ledger. Then the next. And finally, between the two of them, they had completed ten ledgers. She handed the last book back to David.

  “I daresay, Simms has probably returned with the carriage by now,” she said. “It is only a few blocks to my home and back. Shall we go to the publishing house?”

  “The place that publishes things,” David clarified with a small smile.

  Lucinda wished to slap it from his face, but she was on her best behavior. So instead, she nodded and said, “Precisely.”

  Lucinda pulled on her gloves and bonnet, then picked up her magazine as David put on his coat and his tall beaver top hat.

  She could not wipe the smug look off her face. She didn’t even try to.

  Two

  DAVID RANDALL HATED RIDING BACKWARD in a carriage. It always made him feel sick. But he’d rather feel sick than sit next to Lucy—Miss Lucinda Leavitt now. Although sitting across from her gave him ample opportunity to view her alarming transformation from gangly girl to grown-up woman. He could hardly believe they were the same person. That is, until she opened her mouth; then David had no difficulty discerning his partner’s outspoken daughter.

  Gone was the stooped, overly tall girl with untidy braids. In her place was a woman who embraced all of her inches. Dark brown curls—nearly black—framed her oval face. She had large, startlingly light blue eyes with thick black lashes and brows. She was certainly an attractive young woman, but her expression was smug and self-satisfied.

  David felt a twinge of annoyance. Lucinda’s smug look reminded him of the expression on his father’s face whenever he had made a mistake. His father had always made him feel foolish. Incapable.

  “What is your business with the publisher?” David asked impatiently. “And, yes, I realize what a publisher is.”

  “I would love to gratify your idle curiosity, but I prefer to keep you in suspense,” Lucinda said archly. “We require a few moments of the editor’s time, a Mr. Thomas Gibbs.”

  David nodded and did not venture to speak again until they arrived at the offices of Wheathill’s Magazine. The black building was tall and narrow, like a small book pressed between two larger ones, with a sign hanging above the door.

  David waved aside the footman and hopped out of the carriage. He turned and offered his hand to Lucinda, who took it and carefully stepped down.

  He could not help but notice that she smelled nice. Like flowers. David shook these irrelevant thoughts from his head and entered the building behind her. A bald clerk with thick sideburns gave a deferential nod to David and Lucinda.

  David took out his business card and gave it to him. “I am Mr. David Randall, of Randall and Leavitt, and I require speech with your Mr. Thomas Gibbs immediately.”

  The clerk took the card and bowed again. “Yes, Mr. Randall. Just one moment, sir.”

  He disappeared through the door.

  “Bravo,” Lucinda said with a grin, and clapped her hands. “That was positively imperial.”

  Despite his efforts, David couldn’t keep his lips from forming a small smile.

  A few minutes later, the clerk returned with another gentleman. He was a head shorter than David, with red curly hair and even thicker sideburns than his clerk. The editor shook David’s hand and then began to bow to Lucinda but stopped midway to ogle her. The editor must have realized he looked too long, because he straightened his posture and reddened right up to the roots of his hair.

  “I am Mr. Thomas Gibbs. I assume I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. and Mrs. Randall?” he asked.

  “No,” Lucinda said. “I am Miss Leavitt. Mr. Randall is my father’s business partner, and he kindly agreed to accompany me here. And I can assure you that the pleasure is all mine. I am a great admirer of your magazine, sir.”

  “Um, thank you.”

  “And I know a true connoisseur of literature like yourself would be only too ready to assist me in my quest to discover the true ending of Mrs. Smith’s story.”

  David shook his head in disbelief, but Mr. Gibbs swallowed Lucinda’s flattery like pear-drop candies.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Thank you so very much, Mr. Gibbs,” she said. “Now, I would like the deceased Mrs. Smith’s forwarding address, her first name if you know it, and the names of any surviving kin.”

  Mr. Gibbs’s eyes widened, and he sputtered, “Ex-excuse me?”

  Lucinda gave him a condescending smile. “Mrs. Smith, the author of She Knew She Was Right, the book you serialized in your magazine.”

  Mr. Gibbs blinked several times. “Of course, I would be only too happy to help you, Miss Leavitt. It is a pity the Lord took Mrs. Smith too soon.”

  “A great pity,” Lucinda concurred. “Would you like to take us back to your office so you can retrieve the r
equested information?”

  Gibbs blinked several more times. “Y-y-yes. This way, Miss Leavitt.”

  Gibbs opened the door for Lucinda and then followed her through it, allowing it to swing closed. David sighed. The fellow had forgotten his existence. He opened the door and found Lucinda leaning over the editor’s desk. Gibbs flipped through a file, then took out a sheet of paper and handed it to her.

  “We sent Mrs. Smith’s last two payments to a Mrs. B. Smith staying in the boarding house at number fifteen Laura Place, Bath.”

  “Do you know what the B stands for?” Lucinda pressed.

  “I’m afraid I do not,” Gibbs said, shaking his red head. “No one in our office ever met her in person.”

  “I see,” Lucinda said as she perused the paper again. “What address did you previously send her pay to?”

  Gibbs riffled through the file for several minutes.

  “My clerk must have misplaced it,” Gibbs said at last.

  “May I keep this paper?” Lucinda asked.

  “Of course, Miss Leavitt,” Gibbs said, his face reddening by the moment.

  “And may I ask you another question, sir?”

  “Anything.”

  David snorted.

  Lucinda gave the editor a fulsome smile. “When was the last time you heard from Mrs. Smith?”

  Gibbs riffled through the file one last time and pulled out a sheet of paper with the tiniest handwriting David had ever seen. “The last time I heard from her was in March, Miss Leavitt. Someone else sent these last two pages of the story, as well as a letter notifying me that Mrs. B. Smith had died.”

  He handed her the sheet of paper, and David leaned closer to hear Lucinda whisper underneath her breath:

  “‘My feelings are like a tangled web, Miss Emerson,” Lord Dunstan said as he clasped her delicate hand between his two large ones. “And only you can unravel them.’”

  She mumbled more lines that he could not understand before she said:

  “‘Miss Emerson,” Mr. Thisbe said, “I believe that the Lord above ordained us for one another. Will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?’”

  “It’s the last scene you published,” Lucinda said as she looked up at Gibbs. “Who notified you of her death?”

  The editor pulled another letter from the file, but the handwriting on this page was entirely different from the first. Each word was completed with a curvy flourish at the end, and the letter was one of the shortest he’d ever seen. Gibbs handed it to Lucinda and pointed to the bottom, which was conspicuously missing a signature.

  “Here is the letter. Not signed, as you can see.”

  She shook her head and read aloud: “‘Mr. Gibbs, I regret to inform you that the author Mrs. B. Smith died on March 3, 1861, from an internal complaint. I’ve included the last pages that she gave for me to read. Yours.’ Unsigned. How very frustrating.”

  David pried both pages from Lucinda’s fingers and handed them back to Gibbs. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Gibbs. If we require any additional assistance, we will let you know.”

  “Very good, sir,” he said, and smiled as he added, “Miss Leavitt, it has been a very great pleasure making your acquaintance. It is a delight to meet a young lady who is as passionately fond of literature as yourself.”

  “You are too kind, Mr. Gibbs,” Lucinda said, but her expression was forlorn.

  David bowed to the editor, then took Lucinda by the elbow and escorted her out of the building. She did not pull away, but walked as if she were dazed. David handed her into the carriage and then nodded to Gibbs, who had followed them to the front door. He tapped his cane against the side of the carriage to signal the coachman to drive.

  “That was rather abrupt, Mr. Randall,” Lucinda said, rubbing her elbow. “What is your hurry?”

  David rolled his eyes. “I have real work to do, and I could not stand to listen to him fawn over you any longer. Why did you encourage him?”

  “Why shouldn’t I encourage a man of comfortable circumstances to compliment me?” Lucinda asked, back to her sharp self. “Is it not a young woman’s purpose in life to find a suitable man to marry her, and take on all of the worldly cares that are too difficult for her delicate constitution?”

  “Yours is anything but delicate,” he retorted, knowing full well she was needling him.

  “Well, you should know,” Lucinda said. “We’ve been acquainted since childhood and I have not altered.”

  “In some ways, you haven’t,” he said, looking her up and down. “And in others, you most definitely have.”

  “And you haven’t changed one bit,” she said, folding her arms across the silly magazine that she’d carried around all day like a doll.

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be a compliment.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  Lucinda pursed her lips and eyed him with a fastidiousness that made him squirm beneath her gaze. After moments of contemplation, she finally said, “Shall I drop you off at the office or shall I take you home?”

  “The office is fine, Miss Leavitt.”

  She did not speak again until the carriage pulled up in front of the red brick building. He exited the carriage and turned to tip his hat to her. She nodded and said, “Good day, Mr. Randall. Thank you for your assistance with the publishing house.”

  “The place that publishes things,” he said gravely and bowed to her, then turned to enter the countinghouse, not waiting for nor wanting to see her reaction.

  Back upstairs in his office, he found that enough work for three men had been left on his desk. David sighed, taking off his hat and untying his cravat. He needed more air and more time.

  Three

  “HOW WAS THE OFFICE TODAY, Father?” Lucinda asked as she sipped a spoonful of mock turtle soup.

  “Adequate,” her father said, not bothering to look up at her from his own bowl. He continued eating as if Lucinda and Mrs. Patton were not even in the room.

  Mrs. Patton raised her eyebrows and said in a chipper voice, “Lucinda and I had a wonderful day. We finished embroidering the most beautiful cushion, did we not?”

  “Oh, we did,” Lucinda said with false enthusiasm. “All afternoon.”

  “And Mrs. Randall left her calling card,” Mrs. Patton continued. “I had hoped she would actually come in and visit, but she didn’t.”

  “I wish she had as well,” Lucinda said. “I’ve never actually seen Mrs. Randall. I am not sure I believe she really exists. Have you seen her, Father?”

  He glanced up from his bowl of soup, but did not look at Lucinda. “I have had the pleasure of dining with her and Mr. Randall at least a half dozen times. And I can assure you that she does indeed exist.”

  A half dozen dinners in more than twenty years of doing business with their family did not seem like many to Lucinda.

  “I have also seen Mrs. Randall at a party,” Mrs. Patton added. “But I didn’t make her acquaintance there. It was such a crush, the house so full of guests, all from the very best families.”

  Neither Lucinda nor her father responded to this remark, leaving an awkward silence around the table. Lucinda’s lineage was anything but noble. Her father began life as a street sweeper, and through his natural talent with numbers and hard work found a place as a clerk in a countinghouse. Her mother had been a nursery maid to a middle-class family in Kensington before she married her father. But her mother had wasted away from consumption when Lucinda was only eight years old, and her father never truly recovered from it. He removed everything that reminded him of his wife—her portrait, her embroidery, their furniture—and he and Lucinda moved to a new house. He threw himself entirely into his work and rose to a partnership in the same countinghouse. Then David betrayed her confidence, and Lucinda began to resemble her mother too much for her father’s comfort, so she was sent away to school. As if she were just another dispensable reminder of something he’d lost.

  The awkward silence was broken when Mr. Ru
ffles and the first footman took away their soup bowls and set out plates for the next courses: pheasant, oyster pâté, lamb cutlets, asparagus, bread au jus, and a roast saddle of mutton. The dining room was soon entirely silent except for the scraping of silverware on plates.

  Lucinda slowly chewed her bite of oyster. Before she’d gone to finishing school, dinners had been much more casual affairs. They didn’t change their clothes, and they never ate in the formal dining room, but rather in the much smaller breakfast room. And she and her father had talked—really talked—about things that mattered to him. Mostly about his countinghouse, because his work filled his entire life.

  A life that grown-up Lucinda no longer seemed to fit into.

  Once they were finished with the main course, Mr. Ruffles and the footman removed their plates and the tablecloth, then served champagne and a pudding for dessert. Desserts always made her think of her mother—she had loved dessert. Chocolate mousse was her very favorite dish. Lucinda wished for the thousandth time that her mother were still alive. Still with them.

  But all she had left of her mother was a small cameo brooch likeness of her. She’d kept it hidden from her father all these years. Even as a child, she’d been afraid he would take it and consign it to the attic with her mother’s portrait, to gather dust and be forgotten. But Lucinda hadn’t forgotten her mother, even if she couldn’t remember the exact details of her face. She remembered how loved she always felt when her mother looked at her. And how much she wanted to feel that love now.

  “I was wondering if I might, perhaps, have my mother’s portrait to hang in my bedroom?” she asked, taking a sip of champagne. “It is only gathering dust in the attic, after all.”

  “No,” her father said.

  Lucinda swallowed and pressed on. “But if I keep it in my bedroom, you won’t have to see it … and I have almost forgotten what she looks like—”

  He stood abruptly and dropped his napkin on the table.

  “Where are you going, Father?” Lucinda asked, rising from her seat.