True Pretenses: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 2

by Rose Lerner

  Lydia breathed in and out. He didn’t mean it. He was overset by Lord Wheatcroft’s death. He was overwhelmed by his new responsibilities. She had to be strong for him. She had to make his duties in Lively St. Lemeston seem ordinary and welcoming. Anyway, if she cried, Jamie would think she was trying to bully him.

  “I know.” She managed a smile. “But Jamie—”

  “Don’t call me that.” Jamie pushed his sandy hair away from his forehead. It flopped back into his eyes. “My name is James.”

  “Your name is Lord Wheatcroft now,” she reminded him gently. “Lord Wheatcroft has led the Tories in Lively St. Lemeston—”

  “For a hundred years, I know. But, Lydia, Father spent a fortune to do it. It’s two seats! The Opposition would need, what, fifty more seats at least to challenge the Tories in Parliament?”

  “It isn’t about the seats in Parliament. It’s about Lively St. Lemeston. It’s about these coats for the workhouse children. Our people rely on us.”

  “The home farm is fifty years behind the times.” Jamie turned away to fuss at a green-and-purple plant with a strange toothy fringe. Its name was something to do with a tiger, Lydia thought. “Our people are those who live on Wheatcroft land. I’m not saying Father neglected them, only it’s so much money to puff ourselves up in the town when…” He glanced nervously at her.

  Lydia felt as if she’d been struck. To puff ourselves up in the town, as if their father’s years of hard work, all the good he’d done, his noble calling were nothing. As if all her own work over the last fourteen years were less than that, even. A piece of vanity. Was that how he saw her? A pathetic old maid desperate to feel important? “But Advent is coming. Everyone will be expecting—”

  “Everyone always expects something,” Jamie muttered.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  His mouth set, that determined almost-pout he’d made ever since he was a baby that somehow conveyed, I am being reasonable and you are a pack of monsters. Despite everything, her heart turned over with affection. Why couldn’t they agree?

  “I don’t understand why we have to pay for votes,” he said. “If a man wants to sit in Parliament, let him pay his own way. And if the Tories are really the best choice, isn’t that a good enough reason to vote for them, without a bribe?”

  Was he joking? Lydia’s jaw ached from holding her face still. “That isn’t how it works,” she said patiently. “Anywhere.”

  Jamie waved aside the entire ancient edifice of British politics with an agitated hand. “Do you know how much Father spent on this election? Nearly a hundred pounds just for ale, Lydia.”

  Of course she knew how much Father spent. She knew to the penny. Lydia drew herself up, but it didn’t make her feel any more in command. It still astonished her how tall her brother was; it had happened behind her back. One year he had come home at Christmas precisely her height, and at Easter he was an inch taller. After spending most of that summer at a friend’s, he’d arrived back at Wheatcroft looming above her and enormously pleased about it. Lydia was no will-o’-the-wisp, but at five foot three in her stocking feet, she stood not a chance of seeming physically imposing next to her stocky brother. “Who do you think will take care of those people, if we don’t?”

  “Someone else will have to.”

  She had never noticed that people were particularly eager to take on work she couldn’t. “I know you don’t really feel this way. You’ve always wanted to continue Father’s political work. You’ve never said a word—”

  He couldn’t even let her finish a sentence. “What’s the point in telling you anything? You know how I feel better than I do.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Jamie, please.”

  “You were both so set on me being the next patron of the Lively St. Lemeston Tories. It would have been a great row for nothing.”

  Her voice rose. “So you waited for him to die?”

  Jamie looked stricken. Lydia wished she could take the awful words back.

  But it was true, wasn’t it? Her expectations and opinions, her disappointment—those didn’t sway him at all. It was so unfair. Ever since their dying mother had placed a squalling, newborn Jamie in her nine-year-old arms and said, You must look after him for me, Lydia had. She had doted on him, kept vigil at his sickbed, taught him to read and hired his tutors. When he went away to school, she’d written to him three times a week, every week. His holidays had measured out her years. What had Father done, exactly, besides give him an allowance and tell him to stop crying when he hurt himself?

  If only Father were here. Jamie would listen to him.

  His face twisted apologetically. “I miss him too. But, Lydia, we can both do as we like now. You don’t have to spend every minute of every day on Father’s hobby, bribing tradesmen and cooing over other people’s dirty babies and writing letters till your hands cramp.”

  Had he despised her letters too? “They aren’t bribes,” she said stiffly. “They’re patronage.”

  “Il faut cultiver son jardin,” Jamie said. “That’s what I want to do.”

  She frowned. One must grow one’s garden?

  “Haven’t you read Candide?”

  “When would I have read Candide, Jamie? Why on earth would I have read Candide?” I’ve been working while you’ve been enjoying yourself at school. She didn’t say it.

  Jamie scowled. “It’s an important book. It ends with Candide realizing that the world is too large and ugly for him to mend. But he can bring order and bounty to one small patch of earth, and that’s what he wants.”

  It was a pretty justification for turning one’s back on responsibility. They were part of a class in whose hands rested the welfare and the wealth of England. Surely her brother could see that was a privilege that must be paid for? “I know you like gardening, Jamie, but—”

  “It’s a metaphor!”

  “Well, you seem to be taking it literally.” She hauled Father’s careful, handsome ledger from under a pile of dirty knives and trowels and held it out accusingly.

  Jamie’s face flamed, and he shrank back like a little boy being shown the willow switch. “I was going to read it.”

  Lydia drew in a deep breath. “Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry. I know you’re doing your best. Here, let me look at that cut.”

  He hid his hands behind his back. “My best is never good enough,” he said under his breath.

  He was young, that was all. Too young to know what he wanted. He’d come to his senses in a year or two (before the next election, if God was merciful), and be grateful that she’d maintained the Wheatcroft interest for him. People in Lively St. Lemeston were counting on her. She refused to let them down. She refused to let Jamie down.

  But how was she to pay for any of it? Advent was coming, and Advent was expensive. She had no money of her own that wasn’t tied up in a settlement for when she married. Well, perhaps there was a way around that. She would send for the family lawyer and ask him about the terms of the trust. In the meantime she would warn their political agent, Mr. Gilchrist, not to make too many monetary promises.

  She tucked the ledger under her arm. Her smile felt like a death rictus, but Jamie either couldn’t tell or didn’t care. He smiled back in relief. Her heart smote her. “Of course it’s your decision, James. But…you’ll take your seat next week, won’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Parliament begins sitting next week.” You know that.

  “I…” He went a little pale. “It’s too soon. Maybe next year.”

  “Jam—es!”

  “I can’t.”

  Lydia swallowed her protests. She must make allowances for his youth and nerves. “Very well. Maybe next year. Do you mean to stay here for Christmas?”

  Christmas was their family’s time to be together—and, of course, to unite against the patrons of the local Orange-and-Purple W
hig party, the awful Dymond family, who descended on the town for the season. Jamie had always spent his Christmases at Wheatcroft, even after he had begun going to friends’ houses for the rest of his holidays.

  Jamie’s face contorted with remorse. “I’m going to Hal Whitworth-Perceval’s. Christmas at Wheatcroft without Father…I can’t. But it’s to be a mixed party. You could come with me. Please do.”

  Lydia swallowed. She would not cry. “I don’t think so. But thank you. Do me one favor, will you?”

  He waited, unwilling to commit himself until he’d heard what she wanted.

  “Don’t tell anyone you’ve decided to let the Wheatcroft interest lapse in Lively St. Lemeston. Just until the New Year. Give yourself this Christmas to change your mind.”

  He gave her an annoyed, guilty look, and nodded.

  The path back to the house took her through the Italian garden. She sat on a freezing bench for a moment to compose herself, her body so stiff with anger it should have cracked the marble. She brushed the dirt from Father’s ledger, removing one glove despite the cold and licking her finger to clean the embossing.

  There was no purpose to this rage. She breathed in and tried to relax. At once tears stung her eyes and panic closed her throat. She let the fury flood back so that she could breathe, and went inside to write their solicitor.

  Chapter Two

  Ash came into Lively St. Lemeston on the stagecoach. He preferred walking, but a visitor who wished to escape notice in a small English town had to avoid anything with a havey-cavey appearance. Country gentlemen such as he was pretending to be did not walk long distances, and Ash hated riding, so he had bought a trunk in Brighton and filled it with a few garments, a shaving kit, and a heavy blanket to make it seem full. It had been two weeks now since he and Rafe had parted company, and he hadn’t had even a whiff of a swindle big enough.

  He never stayed in coaching inns. If anyone was looking for him, he’d rather see them coming from a distance. So he paid the porter to carry his trunk down the street past the market cross—a canopied stone shelter topped with a spire—to a respectable-looking pub.

  He smiled up at the swinging sign painted with a cheery, haloed fellow quaffing a mug of something. It was a reminder that he was probably the only person in this town who wasn’t a Christian, but he was used to that now. Riots, cries of Christ-killer, his little brother coming home covered in bruises and pork fat—those fears were a minor itch when the shadow of the iron-and-gilt cross fell across his face. The fine thing about the country, unlike London, was that no one knew enough about Jews to know when they were looking at one. Give a false Christian name, and he was safe as houses.

  He took a room and sent his trunk up with a generous tip to the porter. It always paid to have servants on your side. Then he sat at the bar and chatted with the publican, keeping his story vague in case he needed to change it later.

  There were two gentlemen talking at a table not far from him, a middle-aged, professional-looking fellow and a young man of about twenty with a foxlike face and finicky tailoring. The young man looked and sounded upset, but over the noise in the room Ash could make out little. He wished Rafe were here; he had the gift of picking out words where Ash heard a dull roar.

  He waited, drinking enough local cider to pacify the publican and not enough to seriously compromise his wits. Eventually the older man left, and the other slumped down in his seat with his head in his hands. “What ails him?” Ash asked.

  The publican shrugged. “Is all well with ye, Mr. Gilchrist?” he called.

  Gilchrist stood. “All will be well, Mr. Stevens.” He thrust his hands in his pockets, his cocky grin strained on his young face.

  Ash felt a pang of sympathetic embarrassment. It’s not enough to smile, he wanted to tell the boy. You have to find a way to feel cheerful. “Here,” he called, “come and have a drink with me.”

  “I should be getting home to my wife,” Gilchrist said without conviction.

  His wife? Ash was getting old, because to his eyes the boy looked far too young to be married. He stood and went to him, saying in a low voice, “You look like an ill omen. Sit here and I’ll buy you a drink, and when you’re in a more balanced state of mind, you can go home and not frighten your wife half to death. Whatever it is can’t be that bad.”

  It took him three pints to winkle the story out of the boy, which in Ash’s experience made him more than ordinarily discreet.

  “I’m to lose my post,” Gilchrist said. “And it’s nearly Advent.”

  “What’s your post?”

  He explained that he’d worked for a candidate in the recent election and had been hired on as general political agent for the chief Tory family in the district. “You won’t tell anyone this, will you?” Gilchrist reached for his pint and missed.

  “I’m a stranger here. It’s nothing to me.”

  “Baron Wheatcroft died shortly after the election.” Gilchrist shifted his eyes in a way that made Ash think there was a story there too. “His son doesn’t want to maintain his interest in Lively St. Lemeston at all. Wants to settle down to farming his land.” He sighed. “Perhaps Mrs. Gilchrist will be pleased. She’s a Whig.”

  “Is there any chance of the new lord changing his mind?”

  Gilchrist shrugged, half cynicism and half hopelessness. “His sister wants very much to bring him round, but in the meantime she hasn’t any funds to keep the interest alive. It’s all tied up in trust for when she marries.”

  “Is she like to marry?”

  “I don’t understand why she isn’t married already. A diamond of the first water, that lady. I was half in love with her myself until I met Mrs. Gilchrist.”

  Ash hid a smile. He’d noticed this newly wedded habit of referring interminably to Mrs. So-and-so before. From what he’d seen, that first flush of bliss lasted about as long as an apple blossom and rarely developed into anything as sweet and nourishing as an apple, but that was all the more reason to savor it.

  “But I’m new to town.” Gilchrist waved the publican over. “Hey, Mr. Stevens, why isn’t Miss Reeve married, do you think?”

  “No man with a fondness for his own breeches would marry Miss Reeve,” Stevens said. “Her’d be wearing them before the week were out.”

  Gilchrist grinned. Now his troubles were off his chest, he was almost cheerful again. “A woman in breeches is a fine sight, I always say.” He gestured in a way that clearly suggested arse. “If it would not be disrespectful to speak so of a gentlewoman and my employer, I’d suggest that they would suit Miss Reeve admirably.”

  A pretty, rich woman with a nice arse, a mind of her own, and no sweetheart, trying to get her hands on money that was tied up for her marriage. Ash could feel his plan coming clearer. This bore looking into.

  Lydia sat in the window seat, hugging a cushion and staring down at the garden. The Wheatcrofts had never redone the grounds in the “natural” style or moved their public rooms to the ground floor, being very proud of the Italian garden they already had and the magnificent view of it from above. (Lydia knew the garden was French, really, but after the Revolution they had no longer wanted the association.) A formal garden looked particularly desolate in winter, wet green yews the only color and a stark barrenness to the angled walks and beds. Like a corpse with carefully arranged hair.

  She hadn’t been able to look at Father in his bier when he lay in state in the drawing room. She had knelt before him and prayed, but she hadn’t been able to look. Visitors kept telling her he looked as if he were sleeping peacefully. He didn’t. Strange, how the eye could discern the difference so adeptly. Was it the lack of motion? The pallor? Or could the earthly senses somehow, distantly, perceive the presence or absence of a soul?

  She had to stop being so morbid. She had to stop this. She could, if Jamie were here. But he had ridden away yesterday to stay with Hal Whitworth-Perceval and left
her alone.

  It began to rain outside. Only drizzling, until without warning the skies opened and torrents fell. Lydia liked the sound of it against the window, and the garden looked more lively with raindrops shaking its leaves.

  She should get up and go into town. She should visit the workhouse and the hospital and the voters, and pay calls on the Tory ladies. But they would want to know her plans for the Christmas season. They’d have favors to ask of her. Worst of all, they’d want to talk of Father, and she would cry.

  The road would be all over mud in an hour, she told herself. The carriage might get stuck on the way home.

  She ought at least to attend to her correspondence, then. Or read this week’s newspapers, waiting crisply on her desk.

  Wait—was there someone out in this downpour? She rubbed a clear spot in the window with her hand, but the water was so thick on the outside the garden blurred. It was a minute before she was sure: a man was running up the drive, still nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. He had an umbrella, but in rain like this that would only protect about the top two feet of him, and it was awfully cold.

  Lydia had been still so long that standing made her lightheaded. She leaned against the wall for a moment, then went to the bell and pulled it.

  “There is a visitor coming up the drive,” she told the maid. “Build up the fire, if you please, and bring tea and brandy and something hot to eat. Would you ask Mrs. Packham to join me?” Mrs. Packham, whom Lydia called “Aunt”, was in reality a distant cousin of her mother’s who had chaperoned her since she left the schoolroom.

  Who could be visiting her? It must be someone from Lively St. Lemeston. Had there been a political crisis? Did someone need an urgent favor? What could she sell to pay for it? Her jewels, perhaps. But she was very fond of all of them except the rubies, and those had been her mother’s.

  She would have liked to go downstairs and wait in the hall, but it wouldn’t be ladylike, so once he disappeared around the front of the house, she moved to a chair by the fire and listened for the sound of one of the heavy double doors opening. That was Pennifold’s voice…the visitor answered too quietly for her to hear. The door to the Little Parlor opened—but it was only Aunt Packham.