“About that,” Irene began delicately. “The paying-tenant bit, I mean. Father didn’t pay. Laurie came to tell me this morning. But I can cover the week’s rent for you.”
“You can’t,” Harris insisted. “They have to go.” He looked at Irene’s mother, his drooping eyes doleful over the handkerchief pressed to his mouth. “You know you have to go, Mrs. Baird.”
Susanna regarded him calmly. “Do you want me to beg you? Here, I will fall to the floor before you. Step on me, but do not leave my son without a roof over his head.” She started to sink to her knees.
Harris looked discomfited. “Mrs. Baird, please.”
“Mama, your bad ankle,” Irene reminded her. “You shouldn’t strain it.”
“Fine, I won’t kneel. I’ll sit.” Susanna sat on the bottom stair, leaning against the side of the stairwell. “And I’ll get up when you give us another week.”
“You’re blocking the stairs,” Harris pointed out.
Susanna eased her stiff ankle into a more comfortable position. “Then I suppose no one can use the stairs anymore. Unless you want to give us another week, in which case I’ll get up.”
“That’s—” Irene snapped her mouth shut. Brilliant, she did not say, since Harris was listening and clearly annoyed.
Light footsteps sounded on the stairs just then. Laurie appeared, thirteen years old and wiry, clambering over his mother to stand beside Irene in the foyer. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Irene pulled him into a quick embrace. He was the spit of their mother but already taller than her. “Everything’s all right.”
Laurie struggled free. “Whenever you say everything’s all right, it means it’s not. Because if everything’s fine, then we know it, and we don’t have to say so.”
“Of course everything is fine,” Irene hedged. “You see Mr. Harris and Mama right here, discussing what’s to be done next.”
“So good of him,” Susanna said, “not to leave my boy without a roof over his head.”
The old man glared at both women.
Let him glare, if it softened his heart toward Laurie. Laurie hadn’t cluttered and crammed the rented rooms. Laurie hadn’t broken promises to clean them up. Laurie hadn’t borrowed the rent money, as their father had, or speculated with the savings for his school fees.
And Laurie hadn’t burned time pawning a ring. Laurie hadn’t stopped to help a dog that, judging from the joyful yelps outside, was so friendly she had no need of a rescuer.
Distress tensed Irene’s shoulders. “How much do you need, Mr. Harris, for one more week’s lodging?”
Before he could protest, she held up a palm. “Only one more week, and I will pay in advance. But you must realize that my mother needs time to find another place to live. And her rooms are being cleared, so the hoard won’t be a problem anymore.”
Promise now, sort it out later—though God only knew how. Irene would be teaching during the week, with no more salary until the next quarter day. And that was already promised to the banker in Barrow-on-Wye.
No matter; she’d arrange something. She’d tutor students or take an extra mission for the headmistress. Given time, she would solve the problem. She just needed time.
Harris was still hesitating. Irene took a coin from her pocket and turned it in her hand, letting the sun filtering into the dim foyer wink and play off the silver.
“One week.” She palmed that coin, took out another one. The moment was taut; Irene let it stretch tighter.
And at last: “One week,” Harris agreed, crabbed hand grabbing the coins as his other pressed the handkerchief against a new round of coughing. “But they must go at the end of it.”
“Fine.” Irene wouldn’t show her relief, but she could have capered with it.
“Fine,” said Susanna. True to her word, she popped up from her seat on the stair, then strode through the front door.
“And your mother isn’t to bring anything back into the rooms that I’ve had thrown out,” Harris added.
Irene’s urge to caper melted away. “Ah.” But what could she say? “Of course she won’t.”
Unfortunately, Susanna chose this moment to stalk back into the lodging house, arms full of papers and cloth scraps and…was that a fishhook? Irene shut her eyes, praying for a reprieve.
The raspy bark of a dog provided it. Then the scrabbling of claws and the thump thump of a busy tail.
Irene opened her eyes to the sight of her new companion, the puppyish creature, winding around Harris’s legs. Susanna peered over her armful of so-called treasures, curious.
“What’s this?” Harris waved a hand at the animal orbiting him.
“A dog,” Irene replied.
Amusement flickered on the landlord’s features. “From where? Whose is it?”
“No one’s, probably. I brought her with me. Some boys were throwing rocks at her.”
Laurie crouched to the dog’s level, letting the cold nose touch his own, and reached out to pet the shaggy fur.
“So you rescued her.” Susanna dipped her chin toward the items she held. “Because some things deserve better than to be tossed away.”
Irene sighed. “Mama. If you could assure Mr. Harris that—”
“No. I must reconsider,” Harris cut her off. “Mrs. Chalmers, another week will only allow your mother to—”
“Sorry to interrupt.” A masculine voice broke into the increasing clamor in the foyer. “But I believe I’ve located something of mine.”
That voice. That voice. It raised prickles on the back of Irene’s neck. It was a voice for sweet bottled days and secrets, and it didn’t belong here.
Slowly, she turned on her heel. And there he was, broad and sturdy as oak. Strong-featured and suntanned, with sandy-brown hair and intense hazel eyes. Calm and steady as if he’d always been there.
Irene noticed all this in an instant, and in another, her breath was gone as if she’d never stopped running. “You’re early,” she managed to say. “I didn’t expect you yet.”
Susanna lowered her armful of rescued scraps. “Who is this? Someone else come to take away my belongings?”
“In a sense.” Irene couldn’t look away from the hazel gaze. “Mama, this is Jonah Chandler. My husband.”
Chapter Two
Jonah Chandler wasn’t the sort of fellow who usually drew notice.
Sure, he was big and craggy, but he was quiet. Calm. Determined. The oldest of four offspring of an absent father and a mother who died young, he had spent his whole life wrapped up in obligation, in doing what was needed and making certain it was done right.
Was there a right way to blunder into a family argument, though? Was there a correct way to turn up early for one’s all-too-rare meeting with one’s wife to deliver an ultimatum?
From the way the four faces were staring at Jonah now, he guessed not.
You’re early, his wife had said, her usual humor gone flat with surprise. I didn’t expect you yet.
“I did come to London early,” Jonah replied to Irene. “Though it looks like I’m not a moment too soon. Unless it’s common in this street to toss things out of windows?”
No one answered him. Instead, questions rebounded upon him like galloping hoofbeats.
“This is your husband, Reenie?” This from the brown-skinned woman holding an armful of papers and random items. “I wondered if you’d ever let me meet him.”
“You’re not a widow, Mrs. Chalmers?” The sallow old man choked this out behind a gory handkerchief.
And from the boy crouching beside the enormous dog: “Hullo. Did you come in a carriage?”
Only Irene asked nothing, though Jonah expected her to wonder aloud why he’d broken their arrangement. Why, for the first time in four years, he hadn’t waited for the date and time she set forth for their next meeting.
“I am her husband, yes,” Jonah answered the older woman. “Since Irene called you Mama, you must be Mrs. Baird. I’m pleased to meet you.�
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Turning to the old man, he said, “She’s not a widow, much to my relief.” Then to the boy, he replied, “I didn’t bring a carriage. I rode a horse. His name’s Jake, and he’s tied outside. You can meet him, if you like.”
No one spoke. It was as if Jonah had used all the words in the little foyer, and now the others could do nothing but stare.
The old man was the first to break the silence. “I can’t be involved here. I’m sorry. You can have a cart sent for the furnishings, Mrs. Baird, but you must be gone by the end of the day.”
There was some unspoken story here that clearly had to do with the objects being tossed from upper windows onto the street. Or the fact that Irene had presented herself as a widow. Or both.
“What is going on here?” Jonah asked. “Mrs. Baird, will you tell me?”
Her head covered in a bright scarf of silk, the older woman nodded and addressed Jonah in a low voice of pleasant calm. “This man rents a flat to my son and me. And this morning—”
“Not only this morning!” the old man broke in. “For weeks, I’ve been telling you—”
“But you promised,” Irene interjected, “they’d have until noon today, and you didn’t honor—”
Amidst the chaos of overlapping explanations, Jonah gathered that the family lodged here and was being evicted. Forcefully. By having their belongings thrown out the window. The old man was the landlord, named Harris, and the boy was Irene’s brother, Laurie.
As the adults argued, the boy watched all. His brown eyes were wide and worried, but he never stopped petting the dog coiled on the floor. The dog, large and filthy, was the only one who seemed at ease, tail thumping like a dancing rope.
Jonah waited for a gap in the argument, then said, “The Bairds need a place to live, then. I can offer one.”
“What place? What are the terms?” Irene stripped off her gloves and pressed at her temples. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore, Jonah noticed with a pang.
Still, he answered calmly. “The easiest of terms. No charge. You may all come and live in the Chandler town house in Queen Anne Street.”
“Chandler,” said Harris. “Not Chalmers. Chandler.” He coughed into his handkerchief.
“Why do you offer this?” asked Mrs. Baird, clutching the armful of belongings that Jonah now understood she’d rescued—either from her rooms upstairs or from the street outside.
“It’s a family home. And you’re family.”
She mulled this over as Irene added, “I don’t live with them, Jonah. I live at my work.” She shot him a significant glance.
Right. Secrecy. To her family, she was merely a teacher of geography and history at Mrs. Brodie’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, an exclusive boarding school in Marylebone. Four years earlier, after a brief and passionate courtship, Irene had revealed to Jonah that she wasn’t merely a teacher, but a sort of spy. A thief. A secret agent. The headmistress of her academy had ties to prominent people across England, and she pulled strings to make sure their power was used for good. Irene was, when needed, the physical hand who did the pulling.
“But you’re almost done with the spring quarter,” said the young brother. “You could live with us during the summer break.”
“The boy has calendars in his head.” Mrs. Baird smiled fondly.
“And Queen Anne Street is close to your work, Reenie,” added Laurie.
“Maps in his head too, which I could use while teaching my classes,” Irene grumbled. “Jonah, you don’t understand what you’re offering.”
The landlord was all ears, all eyes, as he followed this negotiation. Which was none of his affair.
“Mr. Harris,” Jonah addressed him. “Do you keep a cook? If so, I would like to buy some radishes from your kitchen.” He loomed, letting the old man stew with curiosity before reluctantly agreeing.
“Radishes? Are you hungry?” asked Irene once Harris had shuffled downstairs toward, presumably, the kitchens.
“They’re for my horse. He’ll deserve a treat after waiting for me.”
“Where is he tied?” asked Laurie. “You couldn’t hitch him in front of the house while those men are throwing things out of it.”
“He’s as close by as safety permits,” Jonah explained. “I didn’t hitch him, because he’s trained to stay where I leave him. I drop a rein, and he stands still until I return and pick it up.”
The boy looked much struck. “That’s good training.” He unfolded to his feet, dusting his hands on neatly tailored long trousers. “What if I picked it up? Would he move?”
Had Jonah been that curious at Laurie’s age? Probably not. He’d already been drilled with all the answers thought suitable. “I hope you can’t. If he moves when someone else picks up his rein, then he hasn’t been trained correctly. And I’m the one who trained him, so that would reflect badly on my ability.”
He thought with a pang of Coneflower. The first of the Arabian mares to go into foal, the first mare Jonah had ever lost.
He wrenched his attention back to the present. “If you come and stay,” Jonah told Irene’s mother, “you can bring all your belongings.”
“All of them?” Irene spluttered. “You really don’t understand what you’re offering.”
The dog was sniffing at Jonah’s gloves, which were of thick leather and very battered. He tugged one off and gave it to the animal to chew. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand about this conversation. But if you explain them, then I will understand.”
Laurie grinned, a gap-toothed smile that gave Jonah the impression, finally, of welcome. “That sounds strange, but it makes sense.”
“I usually do make sense,” Jonah replied.
Her mother handed her armful of items to Irene. “Jonah Chandler. You may call me Susanna, if you like. I’ll just need to get my letters from upstairs.”
“They probably went out the window,” said Laurie. “Or they will soon. Those men upstairs said they’d clear out every scrap of paper.”
“Not these letters. They’re hidden.” Susanna began to mount the stairs.
Irene bit her lip. “Jonah, it’s…a lot. A lot for you to take on. I’m not sure how much I can help before the end of term.” She rounded on her mother, who still stood poised on the stairs. “Mama, maybe you can stay with Aunt Mellie. Just for a few days, until I find you some other lodging. She lives far from your work, but—”
“She’s busy with your cousins,” Susanna said. “Not a square inch to turn around.”
“Then you could live with Mrs. Catton for a bit?” Irene dropped the armful onto a stair. “I could pay her. I still have money from the sale of my ring.”
Ah. So that was where the wedding ring had gone. Jonah was relieved she’d sold it rather than cast it off as worthless—but was that really better? How long had she been selling off belongings so her mother and brother had a place to live?
“No rent,” Jonah said again. “Queen Anne Street. You are family.”
Jonah wasn’t as comfortable with people as he was with horses. Horses were easy to read; they showed their every feeling and intention in the way they moved.
But sometimes people did too, and seeing Irene reminded him of things he’d forgotten. The darkness of her lashes. The scoop of a dimple that softened her perfect face beneath high cheekbones. The tightness of the small muscles around her eyes and down the sides of her neck.
He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her worried like this. Irene was a woman of ideas and action, qualities he’d always admired. For too long, he’d hesitated to tell her how desperately he wanted her, someone with integrity and an unshakable sense of right and wrong. Emotion made his tongue thick and his words awkward.
Yet he was trying a bit of her method himself. Taking action, leaving the stud farm. Laurie would begin his studies at Harton in September, and whether or not Mrs. Brodie kept her end of the bargain with Irene, Jonah had kept his. He’d waited. And now he was done waiting. He wanted his wife to himself. His
own family, his own life.
That was why he’d agreed to the favor his father asked of him. It would allow him to travel to London two weeks earlier than expected. To see Irene. To talk to her, finally, about how they’d arrange their lives moving forward.
“Reenie,” Susanna said quietly, “this is a good suggestion. Neither of us will be paid again within the week. You, for far longer, and there’s nothing left to sell. Even an attic lodging would be too dear.”
Irene twisted her gloves in white-knuckled fingers. “Queen Anne Street is so far from the shop, Mama. You couldn’t walk it.”
Susanna folded her arms. “You think I can’t sort out my own way? Five shillings a week we pay here. I can spend that rent money on hackneys instead.”
“Or,” Jonah offered, “you could use the family carriage.”
A family carriage. A family home. It sounded nice, didn’t it? And with the Bairds in place, the descriptions would finally be true. Not just a wheeled conveyance anymore, not just a building to live in.
Laurie looked interested. “What kind of carriage is it?”
“There are three at the house. A curricle and a chaise and a landau. The landau would be the most comfortable for a lady.”
“What color is it painted?”
Jonah tried to recall. He hadn’t used the carriages since his previous visit to London. “Yellow on the doors, I think. And the rest black.”
Laurie looked disappointed, so Jonah added, “The wheels are yellow too.”
“Is it a glossy yellow or a flat paint? And is there a crest on the doors, or are they plain?” Laurie’s interest in carriages was clearly not an idle one.
Jonah’s, however, was. He generally gave his attention to horses, not to the conveyances they pulled. “If it’s all right with your mother, you can come look at it. And you can ask the coachman all the questions you like.”
Long-limbed and eager, the boy darted to the door. “Can we go now?”
A gimlet stare from Irene.
Laurie rolled his eyes. “May we go now?”
Susanna unfolded the protective cross of her arms. “All right. We’ll try it. Thank you, Mr. Chandler.”
His Wayward Bride (Romance of the Turf Book 3) Page 2
