True Pretenses: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 2

by Rose Lerner

  Lydia couldn’t think of anything better than her own life. But she took his meaning loud and clear. Don’t pity me. She knew people hated to be pitied; usually she hid it better than this. But a child, in the resurrection trade—never mind. She smiled back. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  His eyes lit with warmth, and that little grasping baby squid of pity turned to something leafy-green that twined around her heart and reached out tendrils towards him.

  “Rafe would.” He smiled at her for a moment, a spasmodic curve of the lips, as if that would keep her from seeing how he felt. Lydia remembered that smile on her own face, speaking to her father’s friends across his coffin. “He’d rather anything than what I gave him.”

  She quashed the impulse to reassure. Contradicting rarely helped the way one hoped it would. “How did you meet?”

  “One of our tricks was to keep an ear out in the workhouses. If a pauper dies with no family, the expense of burial is the parish’s. The parish would rather save their money, so a respectable-looking person who presents himself as a relative can generally claim the body without much trouble. I was the only one in Izzy’s gang who spoke English without a foreign accent.” He spread his hands. “And I’m persuasive.”

  She snorted, ignoring him to unwrap a sandwich.

  He grinned at her, then looked at his hands. “I shouldn’t be able to laugh. Not so soon.”

  She glanced up in surprise from removing her gloves. She had thought him more tolerant of human frailty. “What would you say,” she asked, “if I said that to you?”

  He watched her, considering. Some people, in a conversation this personal, avoided their companion’s eyes, while some watched for the other’s reaction. He was one of the latter. So was she, as it happened; she didn’t like the idea of people seeing her in an unguarded, private moment. But that wasn’t a bond between them. There was no bond between them. She took another bite of sandwich to hide her self-consciousness.

  “I would say the heart can’t feel any one thing for too long,” he said. “Nature made us that way a-purpose, to keep us sane. I would say not to worry, grief will be back soon enough.”

  She took a satisfied swallow of tea. “Well, there you go.”

  “Would you find that convincing, if I said it to you?”

  “I think I would.”

  “I suppose the difference is that I should believe it, if I were saying it to you. But I’ve been tolerant of myself too long. I don’t like to dwell on things. People torture themselves, you know—they put themselves through a regular Spanish Inquisition, and nobody asked them to do it. Nobody enjoys it but themselves.”

  He took a sandwich and began to peel off the paper. Lydia felt a thrill of triumph. “I told myself it didn’t matter, because we were brothers just the same and what difference did it make?” He ate in great mouthfuls. She tried to imagine him a small, dirty, hungry child. The image was—darling, she thought, and was ashamed of it.

  “One day, when I was nine years old, we heard about a woman dying in St. Mary’s workhouse. No family at all, except a baby. We waited for days while she died, afraid someone would get in ahead of us, but in the event I was the first to present myself. I said she was my mother’s cousin. The man was suspicious, I could see it. ‘Bring over my little cousin,’ I said. ‘He’ll know me. You’ll see.’ My nerves were eating me up on the inside. If the truth came out, I didn’t know whether they’d send me to prison or keep me there. I didn’t know which was more terrifying.”

  She recalled with painful embarrassment her own speech to him on the subject of workhouse children.

  “Well, he brought out Rafe. He wasn’t crying, but the next best thing to it, that sort of whining sniffling noise that means they’re thinking about a real scream.” His voice was terribly fond. She remembered that noise. She could almost feel Jamie’s warm heavy weight in her arms, thinking of it. “I went up to him bold as brass. ‘You’re all right now, coz,’ I said. ‘I’ve got you. Remember me?’ And I picked him up.”

  “What did he do?”

  Mr. Cohen smiled, shifting in his seat. For a second his tears caught the light from the lantern, his brown eyes blazing gold. “He had the thickest eyebrows I’d ever seen on a baby, and he gave me a frowning look like a little beardless rabbi, as if he knew I was trying to put one over on him. Then he giggled and grabbed my hair and babbled some baby talk. I was faint with relief. He sat in my lap all the way home.” His smile twisted. “He’d no notion his mother was in the back of the cart. He started to wail and scream fit to wake the dead when they unloaded her—only the dead can’t be woken, can they? Not if that heartbroken screaming couldn’t do it. ‘What did you bring the child here for?’ Izzy asked me. ‘He’s louder than a church-bell. Go and drop him somewhere.’”

  Lydia gasped.

  “It happens every day,” he said simply. “But it didn’t happen to Rafe. I went out to drop him, and I never went back.”

  “But—but where did you go? You were a child!”

  He smiled. “Clever boys of eight or nine are in great demand in London. They make the very best thieves—so small, they can get in anywhere. I went to another Jewish gang in another part of the East End, made up a new name, spun them a tale about the workhouse trying to take my brother away. At first I worried all the time that Izzy would come after me, but London is a big place and I probably greatly overestimated my importance to him. After a few years I had grown so much I doubt Izzy would have recognized me.”

  “But your brother—he’s blond, surely that would have given you away.”

  He laughed. “Blond Jews are more plentiful than you imagine. We’ve lived among Europeans for centuries, after all. I said his father was a Gentile. No one questioned it. He didn’t question it either.” He ate a morose bite of sandwich. “He was so upset, to find out he wasn’t born Jewish. He’s more Jewish than I am. He won’t eat pork, if you can believe it.”

  “Do you?”

  He waved his ham sandwich at her.

  She cringed. She hadn’t thought of that when she’d ordered them. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I love ham. But Rafe—he took a bad beating once. Ten years old and he’d rather die than eat pork when some boys tried to make him. I said God would want him to be safe, and he said—he said I wasn’t God, and it wasn’t about God anyway. He never touched pork again.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “He told me that I thought he had honest blood. What’s blood got to do with any of it? Swindling doesn’t sit right with him because I grew up lying, and he didn’t. I brought him up to expect what was inside him to matter to someone. I suppose I brought him up to leave me.”

  “Don’t you want someone to care about what’s inside you?”

  He made a face as if he’d bit into a lemon. “Never in life. When no one’s looking at you, you can do as you like.”

  Lydia privately agreed. “And what do you like to do?”

  “Damned if I know.” He exhaled, sounding exhausted. “Everything I’ve done since that day, I did for him. I don’t know how people go on, who haven’t anyone. I’m like a watch—I need winding. I’d have stood in the road all night if you hadn’t fetched me.”

  Lydia remembered how empty she had felt at seventeen when Jamie left for Eton. How the days had stretched out like an unrolling ball of yarn, infinite and thin. The only thing she had wanted to do was write to him, and she’d sat at her desk unable to think of anything interesting to say. That was when she’d taken up politics.

  She thought Mr. Cohen would laugh at her if she said, There are always plenty of people who need to be taken care of. So she didn’t say it. She knew it herself, and she was going to take care of them. Whatever it took.

  They had been watching each other so long it was like the reverse of saying a word out loud until it lost its meaning. Each feature of his face seemed full of significance.
“If it was only ever a swindle, why was it so important to you that it be Rafe who married me?”

  He leaned forward, elbows balanced on his knees, and spread his hands wide. Even now, telling her things he must never have told anyone else, his brother gone, tear-tracks on his cheeks, he seemed physically comfortable in a way that startled her.

  Your father always said you could smile when the world was ending, dear, Aunt Packham had said, and Lydia had felt self-conscious and wrong. He would understand.

  “It was never only a swindle for me.” He gave her an apologetic smile with a hint of self-mockery in it. “He said he might go in the army, or emigrate. I thought if I could find him a better prospect…I thought in a few weeks you’d be sure to fall in love with each other.” His mouth compressed, a sudden hard edge. “It would have worked if I hadn’t mucked it up by letting you see I was attracted to you myself. He might do anything, now. He could enlist.”

  The idea of someone enlisting as a common soldier whom Lydia had entertained as a guest, whom she had considered an equal, appalled her. She could not think of a single comforting thing to say; the Lively St. Lemeston Intelligencer had been publishing a series on the terrible conditions among the enlisted men in the Peninsula.

  Of course it was nonsensical to assume that, without her attraction to Mr. Cohen, she would unfailingly have fallen in love with Mr. Raphael. But there was no use in saying so. He would only want to argue about his brother’s merits. “It is possible to get enlisted men out, with the proper influence,” she said at last. “If you ever need that sort of help for Mr. Raphael, you must come to me.”

  The movement of the coach changed. They had gone over the bridge and were driving on clinkers now. That meant they were in town. She didn’t have much time.

  There was an edge of cynicism in his fond smile. “You can’t resist someone who needs help, can you?”

  She blushed, more because of the smile than the words. “I would prefer to say that I see no reason to withhold help I can easily give. But in your case my motives are quite selfish. I still need my money, so I still need a husband.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You can’t mean me.”

  She meant to think of tea—but she thought of their kiss. Calm filled her. “I do.”

  “You can’t like me that much.”

  “Liking is beside the point,” she said, although it wasn’t. Her liking for him, foolish as it was, was what made this feel safe. Or not safe—obviously it wasn’t safe—but something she could do. She had kissed those lips. They’d been soft and warm. She had thought she would recognize the sound of his breathing anywhere. How could she be afraid of him, after that?

  “I am a Jew,” he reminded her. “I am a bodysnatcher.” She flinched at the word, and he smiled, so gently it made her shiver. “My mother was a whore, and my father could have been anybody. I’m a swindler and a thief. You can’t seriously mean to marry me.”

  A thought struck her. “But—how did you mean for Mr. Raphael to do it? The banns must be read in your home parish, and you haven’t one!”

  He waved a hand. “There’s a pastor in Cornwall who’s made a profession of having lost all his records in a fire about twenty years ago. He’s our home parish now. I have a banker there too, who provides me with letters of reference upon request.”

  Lydia knew she shouldn’t be so shocked. She had seen plenty of graft in the Church of England. It was a repulsive bias to find small crimes worse than large ones.

  “Look at you,” he teased. “You’re thinking of turning him in to his bishop right now. You can’t enter into a false marriage.”

  She could smell his wet coat, just as she had when she kissed him. She inclined towards him a little, breathing in. “It wouldn’t be false. Once the vows are read and the register signed, it will be a real marriage. Your history only makes it easier for me. You will know how to look upon it as a simple transaction. You won’t expect anything from me.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “You shouldn’t decide this now. Grief clouds the judgment; that’s how undertakers make their money. You’re making yourself a target for blackmail.”

  For a moment she felt cold. He could come to her at any time and threaten to expose her, for the rest of her life, and she would have to pay him. In politics, blackmail was the ultimate terror. She had worked hard all her life never to do anything that would justify it.

  But it hadn’t been for its own sake. She had done it so that she might protect her family’s interests, and be in a position to help Lively St. Lemeston. There was little use to her spotless reputation if the Wheatcroft interest were let to lapse. It was unlikely anyone but her, Mr. Cohen and his brother would ever know what she had done. Mr. Raphael had used blackmail only as a threat for self-protection. She didn’t think Mr. Cohen would try it unless he was in some terrible need, in which case she would certainly help him regardless.

  After all, in exposing her, he must expose himself. She thought, with calculation and a sneaking sense of shame, of Mr. Raphael saying, If that filthy slander gets out in the town, they’ll hang Ash to a lamppost. But she wouldn’t need to threaten him with that. He had been a bodysnatcher. That alone was a public revelation a man couldn’t hope to survive.

  She chose to run the risk. She knew her father would have hated the idea, alive, but perhaps in Heaven he wouldn’t blame her. “If you don’t wish to make the bargain, say so. But I find all these scruples unconvincing, when you planned for me to marry your brother in earnest, whose background is equally scandalous.”

  He leaned forward, eyes kind. “You don’t owe these people this. Don’t sell yourself so cheaply. You’re worth more. I thought you would be happy with my brother.”

  Tears pricked unexpectedly at her eyes, that he would say that. She blinked them away. “I’m glad you think you know how to set a just price on me,” she said dryly. “But I don’t consider that I am selling my self at all. I am choosing to do what I must to get what I want. I don’t want a real husband, who’ll ask me to arrange my life to suit him. Even if I contracted a marriage of convenience with a gentleman of my acquaintance—and I cannot think of any who would suit—who’s to say he might not later desire more? Expect more? And it would be very awkward to refuse him. I think I can trust you to be practical. Do you agree?”

  He leaned back against the squabs, legs spread. His brown eyes glittered as he considered her. There was admiration in his face, and what she thought—hoped—was desire. For a moment she entertained a silly fancy that he would say, I don’t feel very practical right now. He’d pat the seat beside him, saying, Come here, and she would, because where was the harm? It was no worse than anything else she meant to do. Then he’d kiss her, desperately but with a touch of wonder.

  But he only blinked, the desperation and wonder in his eyes vanishing so completely she wondered if she had imagined them. There was nothing there but sadness, now. “You can trust me to be practical,” he said. “Very well.”

  Chapter Nine

  Miss Reeve showed no sign of relief at Ash’s acquiescence. He had never before thought how near trained aristocratic reserve could be to swindling. She leaned forward to continue bargaining, and it put the flickering light of the lamp full on her composed face. She was calmer than he was, and he didn’t like it. “I would need you to stay here a half-year afterwards,” she stipulated. “There must be no hint of scandal. It must seem to be an ordinary marriage, and then we can come up with some excuse why you’re obliged to go away.”

  Six months here with her, pretending to be married? He ought to leap at the chance. Three thousand pounds for half a year’s work was more than he had ever made in his life. But…it felt like disloyalty to Rafe to take what was to have been his the moment he left the scene. How would it sound to Rafe, if he heard of it? It would seem as if Ash didn’t miss him. “Half a year is a long time to expect me to pass as a gentleman. The longes
t I’ve ever managed was a month or two.”

  “You were then found out?”

  “No,” he allowed. “Then the swindle was done. But I’ve had some close shaves.”

  A smile split her face, startling him. “Not recently.”

  He blinked, confused, and then rubbed his fingers over his rough cheek with a grin.

  She swallowed visibly, her eyes tracking the movement.

  He was flooded with heat, of a sudden. It felt wonderful, after how cold he had been. After how cold his heart still felt.

  But Ash’s inability to resist temptation was what had ruined Rafe’s chance at this. So he resisted, this once. “I shaved just this morning,” he said as if he hadn’t noticed her reaction. “Close as you please. My hair grows fast. I’ve to have this cut every couple of weeks as well.” He put a hand instinctively to his close-cropped head, and tried not to think about how her hand would feel there.

  “Yes, if you wish to keep it so short.”

  “If I don’t, it curls and makes me look the Jew.” He’d had a mop of curls when he left London at twenty-one. He still remembered them falling silently to the floor in some barbershop in Brighton. He had grinned to show Rafe he didn’t mind.

  The grin had been real later, when he’d barely recognized himself in the mirror. Ash had known his limits; he hadn’t been sure he could make it outside London. But in that moment he’d realized he was going to get away with it. He was getting Rafe out, and no one could find them, and there was no telling what that stranger in the mirror might be able to do.

  Then she said—her face reflected nothing but kind concern as she did it—“Your brother might come back.”

  That hurt like a thousand spikes being driven into his body. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider that.

  “If you leave, he won’t be able to find you.”

  Rafe wouldn’t come back. Ash knew that. But Rafe might want to know that Ash was all right. If there was to be a crash, if he was going to stop like a watch someone forgot to wind, it couldn’t be for another year or two, until he was sure Rafe wasn’t watching any longer. This would keep him going while it lasted.