Earl's Well That Ends Well

by Jane Ashford

  He arrived at the time when the workers generally stopped for their nuncheon. Teresa turned her back and concentrated on a branch of autumn foliage she was tinting. Though the perfect shadings of yellow and crimson didn’t matter for the action of the play, she prided herself on the details of her landscapes. They added to the audience’s experience even if people didn’t realize how.

  She heard Macklin’s voice as he greeted Tom. Moments later, she felt it when the two of them came over to stand behind her. “Got a notion,” Tom said. “Good one, I think.”

  “I must finish this,” Teresa replied without turning. After yesterday, she didn’t want to meet Lord Macklin’s gaze.

  “Looks first rate as it is to me,” said Tom.

  “Lovely,” said the earl.

  The word, his voice, set something vibrating inside her, like a plucked harp string.

  “Good day, Señora Alvarez,” he added.

  She had never been more conscious of another person, even though she was still not looking at him. She had to turn around. And there he was—tall but not looming, elegant but not supercilious, gazing but not ogling. What was he thinking after her blurted claim? Without quite noticing, she’d worn a gown rather too fine for painting today, and earrings that sparkled with tiny sapphires. Had that been for him? Or to bolster her own confidence? “My lord,” she murmured.

  “Come outside for a few minutes,” Tom said. He gave her one of his engaging grins.

  There was no escape. Consequences must be faced. She put down her brush and followed them out to a table in the courtyard.

  “Here’s the thing,” said Tom when they were seated. “I reckon his lordship could be a deal of help looking for Odile and Sonia and Maria.” As usual, he recited all the missing dancers’ names like a kind of incantation.

  Teresa glanced at Macklin. He looked as surprised as she.

  “He knows the base barnacles who hang about the theater to leer at the girls,” the lad went on.

  “I wouldn’t say know,” the earl put in.

  “Their sort,” amended Tom. “And you can go to the clubs and other places where we can’t.” He nodded at Teresa as if she’d been a party to this scheme. Would Macklin think so?

  “Señora Alvarez can talk to all the girls in their own tongues,” Tom continued blithely. “She knows ’em best, and they might tell her things they wouldn’t say with a feller around. And me, I can sneak about with the best of them. Follow people around town and see where they go. I got friends who can do the same.” He gestured around the table like a magician completing a clever trick. “I reckon we’d make a champion team to find out what happened.”

  “Team,” said Teresa. Part of her vehemently rejected this idea. She’d vowed never to be dependent on the aid of an aristocratic patron again. The idea filled her with repugnance. But she did want to find Odile and Sonia and Maria, or at the least make certain they were all right. She very much feared they were not. And the earl, like all his kind, had power in the world.

  “Of course I will help,” said the earl. “Anything I can do.”

  Teresa blinked, amazed that he agreed so easily. What would he demand in exchange? In her experience, there was always payment. He mentioned nothing, however, and she couldn’t spot the sly deception she expected on his face. How would it be to have the resources of the nobility on her side without making any promises? Revolutionary, if true. “Very well,” she said, keeping her tone cool.

  Tom rubbed his hands together, looking altogether pleased with himself. “Right, then. So first of all, I went back around to the lodgings of all three dancers and talked to the landladies and everybody else in the houses. Nobody knows noth…anything. Those girls walked out their doors just like usual one day and never come back. They didn’t take anything with them. Not a scrap.”

  This made no sense. As Teresa knew from bitter experience, the less one owned the harder one clung to it. More than anything else, this convinced her that Odile and Sonia and Maria had not meant to leave.

  “And then I heard from Nancy that Maria boasted about driving out to Richmond Park,” Tom went on. “In the company of a fine gentleman. I’m thinking we should ask some questions along that road, see if anybody remembers them.”

  “And so you are needing a carriage,” replied the earl with a smile.

  “If you please, my lord.”

  “Tom is not fond of horses,” Macklin told Teresa. “He sees riding as a form of torture.” The earl offered his smile to her. “Too bad. It is a pleasant ride to Richmond, which you might have enjoyed.”

  Did he understand that such remarks were a bid for more information about her? As if she was a partial picture he was determined to fill in? Or was it simply the way he spoke to everyone? Well, she wasn’t going to tell him that she’d loved riding as a girl nor that she’d had a spirited Arab mare she loved dearly. Her current situation must make it obvious that she could not afford to keep a horse. So she said nothing.

  “Is tomorrow suitable for you?”

  Her scenery would be finished by then. She had no other engagements, pressing or otherwise. Teresa nodded.

  “That’s settled then. We should go in the morning to allow plenty of time.”

  “I’ll see about a day out,” said Tom. He rose. “Should be all right.” He walked away, leaving the two of them at the table.

  “We interrupted your work,” said Lord Macklin.

  Irrationally, Teresa found his consideration annoying. Were they going to ignore what she’d said at the theater yesterday? Was this some new way to toy with her? Lord Macklin was disrupting her carefully ordered life. This man turned things to a muddle whenever he was near, and she hated that. They must be clear, particularly now that they were to be a team. “At the theater yesterday, I spoke up as a joke,” she blurted out.

  He looked inquiring. Or disappointed? Surely not that.

  “It meant nothing,” she added. “A silly jest.”

  “The humor being…” He let his sentence trail off to encourage explanation.

  “Because the idea is so ridiculous,” said Teresa.

  “The idea?” His blue-gray eyes glinted with…something infuriating. Was it amusement? Or worse? How was anyone to say?

  Teresa grew conscious of a wish to box his ears. “It was merely a matter of convenience,” she added as carelessly as she could manage. “In case you acted as escort on other visits. So that you can come and go backstage without…irritation.”

  “Ah. Irritation.”

  “Must you keep repeating my words? You might as well be a parrot!”

  “I beg your pardon. Parrots can be annoying, can’t they?”

  Were they actually talking about parrots?

  “It was very kind of you to think of my…potential unease,” he added.

  A spate of words died on her lips. Teresa felt as if she’d stepped down and found a stair missing, leaving her teetering in the dark. Was that all? Was there to be no taunt or innuendo?

  The earl smiled at her. The expression was warm and alluring. Remembering the anger that had shaken her at the theater, Teresa realized that she hadn’t been driven by anything like kindness yesterday. Some inner part of her had leapt like a tiger on Nancy’s query. To save the dancers from another exploitation, she told herself again. But honesty forced her to acknowledge that her motives had been more complicated. She hadn’t wanted to see him with Nancy or any of the others—for her own sake as much as theirs. She hadn’t wanted him to be like the other aristocratic men she’d known. He had to be; earls were bred so from infancy. But this one seemed so different.

  She sprang up. He rose politely. Teresa started away, then turned back. He stood there beside the table, a few feet away. He didn’t rake her body with his eyes or mock her with knowing smiles. She’d been prepared to stave off sly comments for as long as necessary, but none had c
ome.

  “Until tomorrow then,” he said. He offered a small bow and walked away, heading for the door.

  She watched him go. She couldn’t help it. She had better admit straight out that she was attracted to Lord Macklin, Teresa thought, in order to guard against the feeling. The earl seemed to possess so much that one would want in a man, and that made him a very cunning trap. She’d known men who were soft-spoken, beguiling—until they got what they wanted. That was the way it went. Once the prize was won, they flaunted their victory, their dominance. They didn’t care how this hurt. Hadn’t she seen it often enough to learn? Men with power over others exerted it. They simply did. One’s only defense was not to be under their control.

  A picture flashed through Teresa’s mind—the Earl of Macklin standing in her tiny, bare home, avoiding any comment on its poverty, perhaps complimenting her painting to ingratiate himself. He wouldn’t mock. He was too charming, too skilled for that. Perhaps he was even too kind, actually. But hot humiliation washed over her nonetheless. She’d lost so much that he possessed—position, wealth, the respect of society. They had no real common ground.

  She did, however, have her hard-won independence. Nothing would take it from her, certainly not this silly idea of a team. She would join Tom in using the earl’s resources and influence to find the missing dancers and do whatever they could for them, and then she would have nothing more to do with Macklin. Which was not a melancholy idea, she thought as she went to pick up her paintbrush again. Not in the least.

  * * *

  Arthur walked toward his London home with a jaunty step. He wondered if Tom realized what a great favor he’d done him with this notion of a team. Probably not. The lad was concentrated on finding the missing dancers. He was always ready to spring to the aid of friends.

  But Arthur felt as if he’d won a victory with the señora’s agreement to the drive. From the expression on her face, he’d feared a refusal. But she’d consented. He’d wanted to find a way to become better acquainted with her, and he now had it. There would be any number of occasions when they must meet and plan or discuss their progress. There was no need to rush back and make certain. She’d promised. He knew somehow that she was a woman of her word.

  When the señora had “claimed” him at the theater, Arthur had experienced a thrill more intense than anything he’d felt in years. He’d wanted to pull her into his arms and carry her off then and there. Except—she’d looked angry, furious really, as she spoke. It had obviously been no time for tender declarations.

  He still didn’t see any reason for her to be angry with him. Their evening had gone smoothly. He was sure he hadn’t offended her. But she’d been irate, and he knew as well as he knew anything that she was not a person to be pushed.

  It had to be the plight of the missing opera dancers, he decided. The possibilities were enough to make anyone angry. He was glad to aid them, particularly in the company of the lovely señora. He turned his mind to ways of making their outing to Richmond a pleasure as well as a task.

  She and Tom met his carriage at the workshop early the next morning. Señora Alvarez hadn’t wanted it to call at her house, which Arthur understood. Tom took the rearward-facing seat for the drive of more than ten miles, leaving Arthur and the señora side by side on the other. Her silken skirts frothed about his feet.

  “What do you plan?” she asked as they set off.

  “We will stop at any likely point and ask about Maria and her escort,” Arthur replied. “Hoping that someone can describe the man so that we can look for him.”

  “Why would they remember?”

  “Maria is right pretty,” said Tom.

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “And I got Nancy to make a likeness.” Tom unfolded a sheet of paper and showed them a sketch of a dark-haired girl with a haughty expression.

  “That’s very well done,” said Señora Alvarez. “I didn’t know Nancy had such talent.”

  “She never told you so?” Tom grinned. “She has everybody else.”

  “Perhaps she recognizes Señora Alvarez’s superior artistic skills,” said Arthur. The look he received in response made him wish he’d kept quiet. He nearly said he hadn’t meant the comment as empty flattery. But he decided silence was the better part of valor in this case.

  Their progress was slowed by their inquiries on the road, none of them successful, and they did not reach Richmond Park until midmorning.

  “It is a wilderness,” the señora exclaimed as they approached.

  “It’s never been farmed,” said Arthur. “Not since the 1200s at least. King Edward the First established the hunting park then and stocked it with deer.”

  “There’s some of them now,” said Tom, who was hanging out the carriage window to get a better view. He pointed to a group of deer leaping away.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” cried Señora Alvarez. She was pointing to a glade carpeted with bluebells.

  “We should go look,” said Tom. “The señora loves flowers,” he told Arthur.

  “By all means, let us walk a bit,” said Arthur.

  “We have no time for that,” she objected.

  “There is time.” He leaned out and told his coachman to pull up.

  Tom jumped down first and turned to hand down the señora. Macklin followed and would have offered his arm, but she was already three steps ahead of him, moving toward the bluebell wood.

  It was a lovely spot. The carpet of blue blossoms wound back into the trees like rivulets of color, beckoning one deeper into the shade of branches in new leaf. A stream ran nearby, the gurgle of water blending with birdsong. The blossoms’ sweet scent filled the air.

  Señora Alvarez turned in a circle to take it all in. “Maravilloso!” She held out her arms as if to embrace the landscape and laughed.

  It was the first time Arthur had seen her really laugh, and he found it glorious—the musical sound, the flash of her dark eyes, the joyous gesture, the curve of her lips. She seemed lit from within, as if a shadow had been whisked away and the brilliance inside revealed. This was how she should always be, he thought, glowing, carefree. To be the thing that made her happy—that would be an achievement!

  “I have been meaning to take up some cobbles behind my house and make a place for a garden,” she said. “Why have I put it off? I must do it at once. This is…comida para el alma. Food for the soul.”

  Removing a few cobbles sounded meager. Arthur had gardens galore at his estates. He wished he could give her one. But a garden wasn’t like a jewel, to be handed over. Even if she would easily accept gifts, which she would not.

  “I think Mr. Dolan would be glad to pull them out,” she went on as if the plan was unfolding in her mind.

  “Dolan?”

  Señora Alvarez turned as if she’d forgotten he was there. “One of my neighbors is a builder.”

  “Ah. Friend of yours?” He was not, of course, jealous. That would be ridiculous.

  The query seemed to arrest and then amuse her. “He is, along with others on my street, ever since we rid ourselves of Dilch. That canalla bullied Mr. Dolan’s son.”

  And she had stopped it. Arthur had never known a woman so self-sufficient. She had a life he knew nothing of, a network of friends. He felt he wasn’t quite one of them, and this galled.

  “People talk and do small favors for each other now. It is pleasant.” She walked deeper into the wood, looking right and left as if to drink everything in. She was enraptured, and Arthur found himself envying a swathe of flowers. The idea made him laugh.

  Señora Alvarez looked over her shoulder at him. “You find this amusing? That people should be kind?”

  “Not that.”

  She raised dark eyebrows.

  “I was laughing at myself.”

  “You were?” She sounded surprised.

  “Why shouldn’t I? In parti
cular.”

  “You are an earl.”

  “And that means I cannot be ridiculous? The title conveys no such immunity. Alas.” He smiled at her.

  For some reason, she looked uneasy.

  “And I have found laughter the remedy for a great many ills,” Arthur added. Señora Alvarez seemed mystified, or…annoyed? That couldn’t be right. Why should she be? Just a moment ago she’d been delighted. “Is something wrong?”

  “You puzzle me…sometimes.”

  “But I am the most transparent of men,” he joked. He was so pleased to learn that she thought about him that he added, “What do you wish to know? I have no secrets.”

  Her expression revealed his mistake. Señora Alvarez didn’t care to discuss secrets. She had too many of her own. “I ask nothing of you,” she replied, turning to walk on.

  Disappointed, with her and himself, Arthur followed. Tom had wandered off, as he tended to do. There’d been no sign of him since they left the carriage. They were alone in a world of color and birdsong and scent. Perhaps the peaceful beauty of the place would soothe her temper, Arthur thought. But he didn’t know what would gain her confidence.

  The gurgle of the stream grew louder, and then there it was, a thread of clear water tumbling over rocks. Bluebells, ferns, and mosses bent over the banks. Soft moisture wafted through the air. Señora Alvarez breathed it in. “Hermosa,” she said.

  She was, but Arthur was not foolish enough to voice his opinion. He could not resist stepping closer.

  A partridge erupted out of the bracken with a violent whir of wings. Arthur started, twisted one bootheel on a stone, missed his footing with the other, and stumbled toward the stream.

  She caught him with an arm about his waist, stopping his slide to a certain dunking. They teetered together on the bank. He held onto her shoulders to regain his balance. Though she was much smaller, her grip was strong, her footing solid. She could hold her own and more. Her body felt soft and supple against his as they came safely to rest.