True Pretenses: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 2

by Rose Lerner

  I know how to behave in an Anglican church, he wanted to tell her. I made us go every day for the first three months we were on our own, to learn. Rafe hated it.

  So when that buzz of talk erupted, aimed right at him, fear and adrenaline blazed across his chest like fire licking up cheap paper. It was exhilarating, and he beamed up at the gallery and kissed Miss Reeve’s hand. She beamed too, looking absolutely thrilled at the prospect of being his wife, thrilled that he had kissed her hand, thrilled that she was important to this parish.

  Some people wouldn’t be able to afford mince-pie spices, come Monday. Ash could never forget that. But sitting beside Miss Reeve, who had spent her morning planning out exactly who she needed to speak to at church as part of her endless campaign to manage the supply and flow of mince pie and the associated pleasures and necessities of life in Lively St. Lemeston—he had always thought charity a small drop of warmth in a very large bucket of cold water. He still did, but today he thought also, It’s better than nothing.

  Children from all over the church raced out the doors the moment services concluded, bursting into the Stir-up Sunday rhyme. Ash loved how holidays grew, so slowly and inexorably that now pudding seemed like a sacred element of the human condition and forgiveness of sin smelled like ginger and nutmeg.

  One child, however, pushed her way through the congratulatory crowd outside to stand solemnly at Ash’s elbow. Mary Luff bobbed a careful curtsy, offering Miss Reeve a sprig of evergreen. There had been exactly one juniper among the bare trees on the path to the church, so she must have run and broken it off just now, or else held it in her hand all morning, waiting. “I wish you joy, ma’am, sir.”

  Ash wanted to compliment her on her shoe-licking—and caution her to be a little less obvious, but that would come with practice. “Thank you, Mary. What a lovely gesture.” He hid his smile.

  Miss Reeve did not. “This is the very first bridal gift I’ve received,” she said. “I’ll treasure it.”

  Mary glowed triumphantly.

  “How are you doing with Miss Tice?” Miss Reeve asked. The question was unlikely to be answered honestly, should the answer be very badly or Miss Tice mistreats me, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

  “Very well, ma’am. I asked Miss Tice if I could make a hat out of scraps for the Gooding Day auction, and she said I could. I want to be counted with the Pink-and-White ladies, if I may, ma’am.”

  Miss Reeve looked ready to burst with pride. Ash was bursting with pride himself. The kid had a future.

  Having thus prepared the ground, Mary asked, “Have you seen Joanna yet, ma’am?”

  It had only been half a day since she had last asked, but Miss Reeve’s face fell guiltily. “We’re going to visit her tomorrow. Babies always miss their families very much the first few days. By now we can see if she’s really settling in. We’ll come by directly after we’ve seen her and let you know. How’s that?”

  Mary bobbed a disappointed curtsy and tried to make a grateful face. “Thank you, ma’am. That would be lovely. And I’ll see her myself on my Thursday afternoon.” In her thick Sussex burr, the precise grammar sounded almost comical. Ash knew what that was like, to have to fight your own mouth. He was turning into a flat, because he said, “Miss Reeve, may I speak to you a moment?” She wore a bonnet, so he had to lean in close, their cheeks almost touching. “May we send your carriage to take her? It will be half her afternoon walking there and back, and I doubt she has a warm coat or good shoes.”

  She bit her lip. “It can’t be every week,” she murmured. “It won’t do anyone any good to make a pet of her.”

  “I know.” He glanced down at Mary, who had guessed they were talking about her and was standing on tiptoe trying to hear. Ash remembered the first time he had gone to prison, how he hadn’t been able to sleep for missing Rafe’s squirming and kicking in the bed with him. He looked Miss Reeve in the eye. “Please.”

  Her face softened. “Have you a warm coat, Mary?”

  The little girl thought before answering. “Warm enough,” she hedged. “But it’s got some holes.”

  Good answer. That way she couldn’t be told it wasn’t safe to go, but she left the door open for a little charity.

  “I will send a cart to take you then,” Miss Reeve said. “Just until Christmas, when you and the other children get your new coats.”

  The girl’s face lit up. “Really?”

  Miss Reeve nodded.

  Mary stood speechless, overcome by the unexpected success of her toadying. Then she remembered herself and began a barrage of thanks and kissing of Miss Reeve’s hand that was curtailed only with difficulty.

  You couldn’t make the world over like an old dress. But maybe you could patch it around the edges. The world was full of Mary Luffs, true. But he’d helped this one, a little, and that was better than nothing.

  “What a calculating little girl,” Miss Reeve said with some amusement when she was out of earshot.

  “Mmm. She must remind you of yourself at that age.”

  Miss Reeve gave him a shocked, severe look. “I should hope not,” she said primly. “I did not overact.”

  He laughed loudly enough that people close by turned to look, so he leaned in to speak in her ear again and give them something to look at. “Everybody overacts when they’re learning. But kids are strange enough anyway that people don’t realize what it means.” Eight-year-old Rafe had overacted with an intense, pleading-eyed earnestness that Ash had enjoyed no end.

  There were less than a hundred feet between them and the Market Square, and they had to stop and introduce Ash and be congratulated and inquire after someone’s health a couple of dozen times at least. He wished people would stop talking about Miss Reeve’s father: Lord Wheatcroft would have been so proud, and Did you know Lord Wheatcroft, Mr. Cahill? and Your father will be missed. Couldn’t they see she hated it?

  Well, very likely they couldn’t. Ash put his hand over hers, but she stiffened and pulled away, evidently not liking that he could see it. So he went back to pretending obliviousness.

  The next person to stop them was a queenly little woman of middle age with graying blond curls at her ears. Miss Reeve had already pointed her out as Lady Tassell, the chief Whig patroness. She’d been sitting alone in the pew opposite, her husband and eldest son being in London for the opening of Parliament, and her two younger sons, according to Lydia, ignoring her and in South America respectively since the November election. The countess held out her arms with imperious motherliness. “Oh, Miss Reeve! How are you? I have been thinking so much of your father these last days that I can’t imagine how hard it must still be for you.”

  Ash could feel the tension in Miss Reeve’s arm, but she smiled, disengaged herself from Ash, and gave Lady Tassell a gracious embrace. “He has done so much for this town, I imagine we will all be reminded of him pretty often for years to come. I miss him very much, but I’m better than I was, thank you.”

  “And how is your brother? My husband writes that he’s been too broken up to attend the opening of Parliament. He was always such a sensitive boy. I do hope his nerves don’t give way.”

  There was a pause. Ash had to admire the countess’s temerity, but he thought that was a low blow even for politics.

  “Jamie will be all right,” Miss Reeve said. “He needs time, that’s all. Only imagine how devastated your own sons would be to lose you.”

  Ash kept his jaw from dropping, but he couldn’t quite contain his smile. She was a cool hand, all right.

  Lady Tassell’s face reflected the blow, spasming a little. Her eyes darted to the side before returning resolutely to Lydia with a sickly smile. Ash followed the direction of her gaze and saw the back of the second son’s blond head. The young man stood a little farther down the path in conversation with the Sparkses, one arm around a plump woman in an ancient bonnet who must be his new wife. Ash didn’t
think it was a coincidence that his back was to them.

  People said family was forever and blood was thicker than water, but Ash had seen families come apart like dry pie crust more times than he could count. Everyone had. They just didn’t want to believe it, because they didn’t want to think it could happen to them.

  Miss Reeve looked as if she was already sorry for her words and would have liked to take them back. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you could take back; trying would only bring the awful thing you’d hinted at squarely into the light.

  “Quite so,” said Lady Tassell. “Will you introduce your young man, so that I may wish you joy?” And they all continued their conversation as if nothing were wrong at all.

  They spent most of Monday morning at the nurse’s, fussing over babies. Beth Pye, the nurse, was a responsible, hardworking young woman, but despite her best efforts Lydia had always found the place a little dreary. Its shabby cribs and cradles, dusty corners and dirty windows, and unadulterated smells of children were so different from the spotless, lovingly appointed nursery where Lydia had grown up.

  But Mr. Cahill seemed to see nothing wrong at all. He descended on the children with delight, glowing every time he coaxed a smile or gurgling laugh. In an hour he had discerned every child’s character and preferences and learned to cater to them. It was a talent that should not, perhaps, have charmed Lydia quite so much.

  All in all Lydia—fond enough of babies herself that their small faces could distract her even from Mr. Cahill—could not remember when she had spent a more pleasant morning.

  Mary seemed both relieved and disappointed to hear that Joanna was doing well. Lydia, very glad she’d agreed to send the cart on Thursday, hoped Joanna would be suitably overjoyed to see her sister.

  She tried to put it out of her mind during their afternoon of visiting Pink-and-White ladies in preparation for the Gooding Day auction. Mr. Cahill was endlessly, improbably willing to be interested, asking every lady in detail what she hoped to buy, why she wanted the Pink-and-Whites to win, and what she was contributing. He admired each unfinished project with unassailable sincerity.

  “Do you really care about all that?” she asked as they came out of Mrs. Howlett’s house, whom he had drawn out for nearly half an hour on every piece of worn linen in her home and how much replacements would brighten the place.

  Lydia had been listening to Mrs. Howlett’s ramblings for the better part of fifteen years and had consequently grown fond of them, but Mr. Cahill’s presence made her oddly self-conscious. It was hard to believe that a stranger, and a man, could really have enjoyed the conversation.

  He laughed. “I’ve been priming them to spend as much as possible, didn’t you realize? Encouraging them not to wander off and leave their needlework half-done, too. But I don’t find it tedious. Mundane details make me happy.”

  The revelation that he had not just been making conversation, but actually working at winning the auction for the Pink-and-Whites, left Lydia a little breathless.

  “Mrs. Gilchrist is a Pink-and-White, isn’t she?” he asked, still scheming. “He works for you, but her sister is the badly dressed one married to Lady Tassell’s son, isn’t she?”

  “She’s been Orange-and-Purple all her life. Do you think we can convince her to change?” Almost every woman they’d talked to was planning, despite party loyalty, to bid on either Mrs. Gilchrist or Mrs. Dymond’s quilt, two of the centerpieces of the auction for the last few years. The finicky geometric complexity of Mrs. Gilchrist’s patchwork always made Lydia feel as if she’d drunk too much coffee, while Mrs. Dymond’s sloppy, droll scenes from popular novels made her cringe. But people raved that art was in those girls’ blood and bid ferociously on both, and it was all very annoying.

  Mr. Cahill grinned at her, a martial light in his eye. “I know we can.”

  It was only with the greatest willpower that Lydia did not seize him by the lapels and kiss him then and there.

  She didn’t have to wait long, however. The evening was rainy, so she closed the carriage shutters and launched herself at him with an enthusiasm that would have embarrassed her if he hadn’t seemed so pleased by it. The parcels of pudding ingredients gave the carriage a spicy, fairy-tale atmosphere which the smell of damp straw from the floor could not extinguish.

  Before last night Lydia had thought a few convulsions would satisfy her hunger, but they’d only stoked it. Now she found she didn’t want to rush. She wanted time to go over Mr. Cahill slowly, for hours, without interruption. She wanted to take his clothes off—she couldn’t get at nearly enough of him. More than anything, she wanted to see his square-built chest and shoulders.

  Later she would think of a way to get that. For now she gave up and kissed him with slow, friendly kisses that led nowhere. He fidgeted when he kissed—he had traced the bones of her corset, that first time. Now he slid his finger inside her collar, ran his thumb over her buttons, bump bump bump, unfastened and refastened the frogging on her pelisse, explored the shape of her up-swept hair.

  Each touch seemed to say how much he liked her. It felt proprietary, as if they were married already and in and out of each other’s pockets, and she read him the paper every morning while he lay on the sofa with his head in her lap.

  Arriving at Wheatcroft was like waking gently from a nice dream. “Two weeks,” he murmured as he tied her bonnet strings.

  But the lingering warmth didn’t even survive the walk from the carriage to the front door. This desire was a double-edged sword. It would cause talk among the servants if she was always trying to be alone with him. Yes, it would make people believe she was in love with him, but it would do little to support the idea that he was in love with her. People would say he had seduced her for her money, and make jokes about gullible, frustrated old maids.

  Even his extraordinary kindness to the townsfolk would seem suspect. They would say it was too good to be true.

  They wouldn’t be wrong about any of it, which was a creepy-crawly thought.

  Wrenn was brushing Lydia’s hair when they heard the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats on wet gravel. A rider, at this hour? Had something happened in town?

  She went to the window. It was dark and the figure was still too far away to make out. “You’d better do a simple coil. Whoever it is, they’re in a hurry.” She was back at the window as soon as her hair was in place. The rider was close enough that—

  “Jamie.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wrenn looked over her shoulder. “Are you sure, madam? I can barely make out anything.”

  Lydia could barely make out anything either, but she was sure. Impatient happiness filled her like a balloon, even if he was riding too fast—and then she thought, He’s come because of my letter, and Mr. Cahill is upstairs alone. “Hurry,” she said. “As quick as you can, please.”

  So Wrenn rushed her into fresh petticoats and an evening dress, and Lydia put her slippers half-on and ran out into the corridor without any jewelry or perfume.

  She met Jenny coming to tell her of Jamie’s arrival. “Mr. Pennifold put him in the saloon with Mr. Cahill, ma’am.” Lydia thanked her and almost turned her ankle on the stairs in her haste.

  The door to the saloon was ajar. She heard Mr. Cahill say with his faint Cornish lilt, “I hope you had a pleasant journey.”

  “Pleasant enough,” Jamie said, shortly enough to be rude.

  Jamie was shy, but his manners were good. If he was being openly rude, he was very angry. Suddenly Lydia wanted to linger here eavesdropping, as if this weren’t her own life but a play for which she had no responsibility. She stopped to pull on the backs of her slippers.

  “You don’t like me much, do you, my lord?” Mr. Cahill said. That ruefulness of his could charm anybody. “Well, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t like a man who made such a whirlwind courtship of my sister either. But—”

  “Have yo
u got a sister?” Jamie did not sound charmed.

  “I haven’t, as a matter of fact.”

  “Mm. I didn’t know that. I don’t know a single thing about you, do I? Not one, and until I do, you aren’t getting a penny of Lydia’s money.”

  Lydia’s heart sank like a rock. She had not wanted to consider this possibility. She had very carefully not considered it. Jamie was trying to protect her, but—it was so very inconvenient. It was her money. Why couldn’t she have it?

  “Jamie!” Aunt Packham said weakly.

  “I suppose that’s fair,” Mr. Cahill said cheerfully. “What do you want to know?” She was filled with wonder at his sangfroid—wonder and protectiveness. Why should his ability to take lumps make her want to shield him from them?

  Any moment now Pennifold would come to announce dinner and find her listening. She pushed open the door and went in. For a moment, her dread vanished and she was simply happy to see Jamie. Angry or not, he gave her a great hug that lifted her off her feet.

  “It’s too cold and wet to ride from town,” she said, knowing it would set his back up and unable to stop herself. “You’ll”—she couldn’t say fall—“catch a chill.”

  His face set into an expression of fidgety resentment that always made her nerves jangle. “Don’t fuss, Lydia.”

  I wouldn’t have to, if you would all take care of yourselves. But she’d said that to him thousands of times, and it had never made any impression. She smiled stiffly. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not to. Has Aunt Packham already introduced Mr. Cahill to you?”

  “I did, dear.” Aunt Packham fluttered a little—evidently not wanting to be blamed for the room’s chilly atmosphere, as if anyone could blame her for anything when she never did anything.

  Oh, no. That had been a nasty thought. How had her mood soured so rapidly? She tried to find her adoration of Jamie poking out of her tangle of feelings, as Mr. Cahill had instructed her, but her chest was one great knot. She could only think that everything would be ruined—that her life was slipping away—when there was no reason to be so afraid. She wanted Jamie to like Mr. Cahill, she realized. She wanted it with startling desperation.