The lady. That was the phrase that had caught Irene’s ears, accustomed as she was to dismissal from strangers. But Suspicious Man ignored the words in favor of the speaker’s horse.
“Is that Bridget’s Brown?” He dropped Irene’s wrist, awed, and stepped closer to the leggy colt held on a lead.
“The very one.” The man holding the racehorse was large, with rugged features that were not quite handsome. “He’s raced well today and earned himself a walk and a rubdown. Earned you some money, I hope?”
“If this person hasn’t taken it.”
“She is a lady,” corrected the new arrival. “I know her. And she’s helped you. You should be grateful.”
As the people around them shoved by, some staring curiously, Suspicious Man counted his coins. Finding them all there, he grudgingly granted that Irene had done nothing wrong.
The taller man blocked Suspicious Man’s path before he could move away.
“What?” barked Suspicious Man.
“I’m waiting for you to thank her. For preventing your purse from being stolen.”
“I’m Miss Baird,” said Irene, wanting her defender to know her name.
“Thank you, Miss Baird,” mumbled Suspicious Man, then melted off.
By this time, so too had Victor, likely leaving a trail of empty pockets behind him. Irene craned her neck, trying to spot her father in the crowd.
And then, “I’m Jonah Chandler,” said the big man, and Irene’s mind locked like ill-fitting gears.
Chandler, he’d said. Sir William’s elder son. Was it only chance? Had Irene’s mission been suspected?
“Why did you say you know me?” she ventured. Why did you call me a lady? The term was readily applied to white women, but men were stingy with it when addressing women with complexions in any darker shade.
“I hope you can forgive my liberty. You’re the sort of person I’d like to know.” Jonah Chandler’s eyes were a warm hazel. “I’ve seen many pockets picked at this track. I’ve never seen them unpicked.”
When he called her a person, it felt far different from the way Suspicious Man had used the word. That man had declined to respect her. Jonah Chandler had affirmed her humanity.
And he’d stood up for her. No one stood up for her. At best, someone like Mrs. Brodie stood behind, or Irene’s mother beside.
“Thank you,” she faltered.
“’Twas my pleasure.” He touched his cap to her. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Baird. I’ve got to take Bridget’s Brown back to the stables now.”
“I hope you will come back?” she asked. Bold of her, as bold as an unmarried woman could be with a stranger.
Yet abruptly not a stranger, as he’d thrown his good name—and his horse’s—to her defense. She wanted to see what he’d meant by it.
Then he smiled, slow and sweet. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”
And he’d done as he promised.
You’re early, she had told him today, but really he’d been just in time to save her family. He’d a knack for being where he was needed, doing what was needed.
That summer four years ago, she’d soon learned that Jonah was exactly as calm and determined as he seemed, and she fell for him with startling swiftness. Still, his proposal had come as a surprise, offered bluntly. “My father wants me to marry the daughter of his friend. I’d rather marry you.”
“Are you asking for my hand?”
He’d thought about it. “Yes.”
So she had thought about it too. He hadn’t said he loved her, but the air sparked between them. He found her beautiful, but he’d first noticed her because of her actions.
More practically, linking her family to his would offer security. Jonah was heir to a wealthy baronet. Marriages had been contracted on the basis of far less than fondness and lust, defiance and security.
Besides all this, she wanted him—for herself, for always. So there had been only one possible answer. “Yes. Though you ought to know some things about me.”
With Jonah, she did what she’d sworn never to do: she revealed the truth about her work. Not everything, but enough. Because she trusted him, and she wanted him to trust her, and that trust wouldn’t be worth anything if he didn’t know who, what, and why she really was.
“If we wed,” she’d then explained, “I’ll need to continue my work for four more years.” She’d promised to work for Mrs. Brodie’s Academy until Laurie was thirteen, at which time the influential headmistress would promote Laurie’s acceptance into Harton College. The expensive, exclusive school had molded most of England’s leaders.
The school had admitted a few Anglo-Indian students before, but never a black one. The trustees had agreed to consider his application, though. If successful, the connections gained would change Laurie’s life. Maybe even the fortunes of the extended family, hardworking but far from secure.
“I have to see this through,” Irene had stressed to Jonah. “So if we wed, we won’t be able to live together for four years. We’ll see each other only occasionally. Is it worth it?”
“Are you worth it, do you mean?” Jonah had turned the question around. “Yes. Am I?”
She hadn’t had to think about her answer at all that time. “Yes.” And finally had come words of love, and promises, and so much more.
Of course, she hadn’t told him about her mission to collect information about his father, about the baronet’s presence in Spain in 1805. Instead, Irene wrote to Mrs. Brodie to decline the mission—the only time she’d ever done such a thing—and used her holiday from school to revel in a wedding by license and a too-brief honeymoon.
“Clearly, you have met a man,” came Mrs. Brodie’s reply. “Do I need to know more?”
No. The headmistress definitely did not need to know more. But somehow she found out anyway. Irene was hardly Mrs. Brodie’s only informant.
When Irene returned to the academy later that summer, married, Mrs. Brodie had only asked if she was ready to return to work. “And what name would you like to use?”
Irene had settled on Chalmers—close to her married name, but not dangerously so. “I’d probably best be a widow while I’m at the academy,” she had decided, “since none of the other teachers are wed.” Mrs. Brodie had agreed.
Irene had got back to work, and ever since, she’d seen Jonah far less often than she saw her students. Her mother and brother. Even her dratted father.
Now, four years later, Jonah was still tossing his reputation and resources to her aid. And Irene was still breathless, counting the moments until he returned.
She dipped a hand into the tub of water, dribbling rivulets over Mouse’s narrow head. “I don’t want an annulment,” she said abruptly. “But I don’t see how I can leave my work. If I’m not teaching and completing missions for Mrs. Brodie, I’m not the woman who first caught your notice.”
Jonah was silent for a minute. “I’ve had about twenty-five haircuts since we married. Am I still the man you wed?”
“Not the same thing.”
“I’m not working with racehorses at the moment, but I was when we first met. Do you still love me?”
Her hands slashed the air, impatient. “Of course.”
“Then how can you doubt that I will love you no matter what you do?”
“But if we aren’t sharing in meaningful work, is love enough? Won’t we stop being the people we used to be?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had the chance to try it.”
The silence that fell was wary, but not uncomfortably so. It was like being dressed in something new and still a bit stiff.
“It’s not as if I even know what a normal marriage is like,” Irene excused. “My father’s from America and is a swindler, and my parents are different races. My mother keeps the family together, or tries to. I know some men are steady providers, but I didn’t grow up with one.”
“You married one.”
“I know. But I can provide for myself too.”
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bsp; “I know,” he echoed. “And I think we get to decide what sort of marriage we want to have. But we’ve got to agree. When will you be ready to give up your work?”
When Laurie started the term at Harton in September. When her mother was happy again, not hoarding scraps. When her father started helping the family instead of siphoning every resource. When the old debt to Barrow-on-Wye was paid.
When women across England didn’t need help from Mrs. Brodie and her agents anymore, because they were equal under the law.
It wasn’t that Irene didn’t want to live with her husband; she did. She missed him every day. But how could she cease her work? How could she stop helping, knowing there were so many people in need of help?
It had been easy to promise away her future when she’d wed Jonah, when four years had seemed like a forever that would never come. Now it had passed, and if she asked him to keep waiting, she would lose him.
“I wish we could keep on as we have,” she said. “Just us together. Like this.”
Jonah stirred the water in the washtub with the flat of his palm. “We’ve got used to a cocoon.”
“What’s wrong with that? Cocoons are lovely. Some of them are made of silk.”
He trailed his fingers through the short fur on Mouse’s crown. “They’re stifling. Nothing can grow beyond their small dimensions.”
Ugh. Irene should never have let the metaphor go this far, because she knew the next step was a butterfly. They could only grow if they changed.
She lifted a shoulder. “I only know London and missions and teaching. I hardly know anything about horses. What could I do, living at the stud farm?”
“You could learn. Horses could be your new students. Do you think you could like helping them? Teaching them?”
She had to laugh. “I can’t be sure I wouldn’t. But I can’t be sure I would. What if I didn’t?”
“We can try it out,” he decided. “Here in London. We’ll find a horse to help, and you can see what you think. And if you don’t like it…” He sounded bleak. “I hope you like it.”
Because for neither of them would this marriage in two places, in careful pieces, work anymore. Each good-bye was more difficult, and each greeting trailed a good-bye at its tail.
Jonah scrubbed gently at the pad of Mouse’s paw. The dog seemed to understand he was helping; as soon as he released that paw, she extended a different one. What a loving beast she was. Maybe she’d been waiting for someone to be good to her so she could hand over her whole heart.
Irene could understand that.
The water was thoroughly dirtied now, so Irene coaxed Mouse out with the dog’s beloved glove. Jonah emptied the tub and refilled it from the water butt. “This’ll really get her clean, now we’ve got the tangles out of her fur.”
“And the smell,” Irene agreed.
Again, Mouse jumped eagerly into the tub. For a few moments, Irene and Jonah dribbled clean water over the soapy coat.
“After all this time,” Jonah said, “your brother will soon be going to school at Harton, won’t he?”
“In September. With all the sort of boys who expect to be prime minister one day. Yes, he thinks so.”
“Thinks?”
She grimaced. “He’s been accepted. But the school fees aren’t paid yet.”
“Irene, I could—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t put us further into your debt. I’ll never be able to repay you.”
He picked up the knife and carved at the block of soap. One long, slow slice, then another. “You call it debt.” Slice. “When we’re one family and one flesh. I’m not keeping account.”
“You must want family very badly to put up with so much.”
“Yes.” He set the knife down, the soap beside it, then gathered up the shavings and made a neat pile of them. “I do. Have you a plan to pay his fees?”
“I’ll think of one.”
When Jonah looked at Irene, she had always felt seen as never before. Naked in her proper garb, bared to the heart.
He was looking at her that way now, through every shield to the worries beneath. “I’ll let this pass,” he said, “but only for the moment. If your brother’s position at Harton is endangered, then I’ll bring up the subject again.”
“Fine,” Irene agreed.
“Fine.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, and he returned his attention to Mouse. “This dog’s nearly clean, wouldn’t you say?”
“It took some doing, but yes. I think she is.” Irene poked him in the side. “Now, time to spill your secrets. Who are you trying to find in London?”
“Ah. That.” He picked up a shred of soap and flicked it into the washtub. Mouse chased it with her tongue, losing it under the surface of the water. “I’ve a young half-sister, it seems. The product of an affair my father had some thirteen or fourteen years ago.”
“What a dog he was.”
Mouse barked, indignant.
Jonah’s mouth twitched. “Rather. Though my mother had died a few years before, so at least he wasn’t being unfaithful. He didn’t know of the girl’s existence until fairly recently, and he’d like me to locate her.”
“Where does she live?” Irene asked. “With her mother?”
“With a couple that has told her she’s their own. Her mother would know how to find her. But neither my father nor I know how to find her mother.”
“Parents and their burdens.” She squinted into the summer sunlight. “I could help you, maybe. I know the neighborhoods of London well.”
He flicked another sliver of soap. “Your brother’s not the only one with maps in his head.”
“Nor calendars,” she said softly, and when she smiled, he smiled back.
“I’m glad you were at the races four years ago.” She rubbed the bare spot on her finger where the wedding ring belonged. “Jonah. I could stay here overnight, just this once. To help my mother and brother settle.”
She’d have to send a note to her chamber-mate at the academy, fellow teacher Rebecca Carpenter, so Rebecca wouldn’t worry.
Jonah accepted this. “I’d like that. I’ve been staying in the largest guest room, but if you’d like it for your own, I’ll change.”
“You don’t expect me to stay with you?”
“Should I? Would you like to?”
Within the cocoon, they always fell into bed at once. Outside of it, there was time to wait, to explore the new, to test the boundaries of their marriage now that family encroached, when they had been used to being left blissfully alone.
She considered different replies, finally settling on, “Eventually. Thanks.” Which wasn’t exactly what she meant, but as it encompassed I appreciate you leaving the decision to me and I appreciate you welcoming my brother and mother into the house, it served the purpose.
And then she said what she hadn’t for four years. “I’m sorry.” Which wasn’t exactly what she meant either, because she wouldn’t wish to undo a single completed mission. But she was sorry for the distance she’d built, for tearing his heart—and she thought, from the softness in his hazel eyes, that he understood.
“Thanks,” he said too.
For a moment, they sat side by side in the afternoon sun. Mouse’s tail thumped the edge of the washtub, and somewhere farther away, endless hooves clip-clopped across the city.
These were the moments they missed by having a marriage in separation. There was time only for the dire and dramatic, never for the ordinary.
She liked the ordinary. Craved it, after growing up with her father’s schemes.
She liked the ordinary even when it heaved out of the washtub, splashing her, and shook out its fur and sprinkled her all over. When her husband gave a rare laugh, wiping her face with sure and gentle fingers, she liked it even more.
Maybe too much.
She’d told him she was staying for a time. So she was, so she would.
But she was terrified that she would lose herself if she did, and him if she didn’t.
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Chapter Four
By Sunday night, family seemed as bad a profanity to Irene as other notable words beginning with the letter f. And her soul was surely in a dingy state, considering the amount of profanity she’d indulged in—mentally, mostly, though an occasional impoliteness had slipped out.
And all because of her mother’s hoard of rescued items, now definitely rubbish after their sojourn in the street outside Harris’s lodging house.
The hoard kept coming. And coming. And with each cartload, each trip to Susanna’s new chamber by a servant, Susanna looked calmer and Irene felt more annoyed. They had the chance for a fresh start, all of them, and it simply wouldn’t happen.
The moving and arranging lasted long past sundown. The care and attention Susanna gave to these scraps made Irene feel as if her mother’s heart belonged to them. Not to Laurie, who’d lost his home today along with his mother because of the damned belongings she wouldn’t discard. And certainly not to Irene.
By the time Irene begged off, she was so tired and dirty that she simply took the guest room Jonah had given her, grateful for the night’s solitude. She shut the door on the world and fell into bed.
When she woke in the morning, feeling stiff and grimy, she noticed that Mouse had nosed into the room while Irene slept and had curled up before the hearth.
“At least you feel clean and rested,” Irene muttered. Without lifting her drowsy head, Mouse thumped the floor with her shaggy whip of a tail.
After she’d had a quick wash and spent a dutiful hour in church, Sunday was more of the same. More arranging of the ruined scraps, more of Susanna’s insistence that everything had to stay, and, on Irene’s part, more frustration. She had conquered extraordinary difficulties over the years, whether locating the letters that proved the legitimacy of a duke’s daughter or coaxing a roomful of fifteen-year-old girls to stop gossiping about handsome footmen and interest themselves in geography. Surely it should be easier to convince her bright and kind and elegant mother to stop bringing rubbish into the house.
But it wasn’t. And she was the only one who seemed at the edge of losing her calm. How could Jonah stand this, seeing Sir William’s neat house strewn with items supposedly making their way to Susanna’s chamber? How could Laurie sit in his bedchamber and calmly read a book about wood carving when his mother was doing exactly what had got them evicted from their last home? How could the servants bear to clutter a fine house until it wasn’t usable?
His Wayward Bride (Romance of the Turf Book 3) Page 4
