David

by Grace Burrowes

  “Are you dressing me?”

  “Somebody had better,” David muttered as he whipped the linen back into an elegant knot, “or Letty will have to fix it when she sees you. There.”

  In no time, he and his guests were tucked into the carriage, snug and dry, the floor tiles giving off a pleasant heat.

  “Am I to understand,” Banks said, staring out the window, “that Letty was at no time a member of your household?”

  “She was a guest.” And the boy was listening to every word, even as he peered out the window, his nose pressed to the glass. “Further details should be requested directly of her.”

  “I was told she was your housekeeper.”

  Told by whom? Did Letty perpetrate that fiction? Told when? And how had Banks discerned Letty was not a housekeeper?

  “Was she a guest in your household when she was stabbed?” Banks asked in the same toneless voice.” The child whipped around to look sharply at Mr. Banks.

  “She was not. She was stabbed in defense of me, and I owe her my life.” In many ways, David owed her his life.

  “She really is well?”

  The question planted a seed of liking in David he did not want to feel for Banks, liking and sympathy.

  “She lost a lot of blood, but she healed quickly and has been taking good care of herself. The wound may still pain her occasionally, and she will have weakness in her arm for a while yet, but she is substantially recovered.”

  From the knife wound.

  Banks asked no further questions, and because the distance between Letty’s house and David’s was only a mile, they soon found themselves turning onto her street.

  “Before we go inside, Banks,” David said, taking his turn staring out the window, “you need to know I have offered for her, and I will offer for her again, but she will not have me.”

  Banks brushed a hand over the child’s hair, which in ten minutes of travel had somehow regained a state of complete disarray. “She will not…?”

  “Will not, and yes, I love her.” To say that felt good, also a bit pathetic.

  Perhaps it was a measure of Banks’s preoccupation with David’s latest revelation that he allowed David to carry Danny up the steps to Letty’s door. David rapped loudly, and the door swung open to reveal Letty herself standing in the front entry.

  “Daniel? Danny? David? What on earth…?”

  “May we come in?” The sight of her, the simple, lovely, soul-gratifying sight of her, set something back to rights in David’s chest. She was still in need of more weight, but she looked… so very, very dear.

  “Come in.” Letty stepped aside and shooed at them. “Please, yes, all of you come in. Danny!” David relinquished the child into Letty’s arms, and she held the boy tightly for long moments before she set him on his feet. “Oh, Danny, how you’ve grown, and how very good it is to see you!”

  “We came on Zubbie,” Danny informed her. “And it was cold and wet, but Zubbie likes to play in the puddles.”

  Letty beamed at the child, her smile unlike any she’d ever bestowed on David—or the patrons of The Pleasure House. “He does, doesn’t he? He’s a very naughty boy sometimes, but he has a good heart, and he brought you all the way here from Little Weldon, didn’t he?”

  “I never fell off once.” Danny beamed back at her, the sight doing queer things to David’s insides.

  “And Daniel.” Letty held out her arms to Mr. Banks, who enfolded her in a quiet, snug embrace.

  Daniel? The name registered in David’s mind with a shock, and it wasn’t until then that he realized Letty’s brother was the vicar. Vicar Daniel, to distinguish him from his father, likely, who would have been Vicar Banks.

  The child looked like both Letty and her brother, which told David nothing. But the sober regard in Banks’s eyes, and the light of battle dawning in Letty’s, suggested that some truths were about to be aired.

  “Letty? Might I suggest that Danny make his way to the kitchen for a cup of chocolate while Mr. Banks and I join you in the family parlor?”

  The child commenced dancing in place. “Oooh, chocolate. May I? Papa? Aunt Letty? Mister Viscount? Please?” Despite the situation, all three adults smiled at Danny’s misconstruction of the title, and he was sent off to the kitchen.

  David didn’t trust himself even to put a hand on Letty’s arm, but he was standing close enough to catch a whiff of her rose scent. “I’ll excuse myself if you prefer, Letty, and wait in the front parlor. You should know the gentlemen are welcome to bide with me if you’re not up to guests.”

  Banks made no reply, while Letty patted David’s lapel. A single, presuming, familiar gesture, which Banks also observed—and did not comment on.

  “His lordship is my friend,” Letty informed her brother. “What we have to discuss affects him too. He will join us.”

  David felt no sense of victory, for Letty’s decision turned Banks’s expression unreadable, and “what we have to discuss” might not be what David sought to discuss. And yet, a declaration of friendship was a far cry from a solitary tray in the front parlor.

  “Shall we wait for tea?” Letty asked when she’d taken a seat in one of the rocking chairs in her small parlor.

  “I’ve had my fill for the present,” Banks replied. “Lord Fairly was most gracious.” The vicar made “gracious” sound like a one-way ticket to the ninth circle of hell.

  “So you went to his lordship’s house, looking for me?”

  “Where else was I to look for you? I’m told things that aren’t true, and then I receive correspondence that I cannot fathom. I wanted to come sooner, but the rain arrived in a deluge, and then I had to get here, hang the floods—”

  “Perhaps,” David interrupted, “you could tell us about that correspondence? And, Letty, may we sit?”

  “Please.” Her tone told him she would not resent his efforts to steer the conversation; her eyes told him—lovely woman—that she’d missed him and worried for him. David took the other rocking chair, leaving Banks the small settee, onto which he dropped with a weary sigh.

  “Olivia—my wife—has been called to her mother’s sickbed—possibly her deathbed, though I’ve had little news yet on that score. In Olivia’s absence, the church has received two letters addressed to the Ladies’ Charitable Guild, which organization my wife founded and directs. The first epistle, Letty, was from you, and included an astonishingly sizable bank draft.”

  Banks paused, while from the direction of the kitchen, a child’s laughter rang through the house.

  “Imagine my surprise,” Banks said softly, “when I went to the banker over in Great Weldon and found that the Ladies’ Charitable Guild is wealthy enough that I could soon retire on its assets. All these years, I have counted among my blessings a wife who is clever with figures, one whom I’ve allowed to copy my signature on any bank drafts, sparing me—she said—tedious bookkeeping, so I might have more time for the Lord’s work.” He paused again, looking at his hands as if expecting to see them filled with pieces of silver.

  Letty went utterly still in her rocking chair. “That money was for Danny. Olivia was to save that money for Danny. That was our arrangement.”

  David laid a quieting hand on her arm when Banks blinked at her in confusion.

  “The second piece of correspondence?” David prompted.

  “That missive,” Banks said, “had been penned to my wife by Mrs. Fanny Newcomb. Mrs. Newcomb cheerfully related that because Letty’s current protector was every bit as titled as the last one, and much, much wealthier, the Ladies’ Guild could expect a great deal in the way of remuneration. Mrs. Newcomb hinted that Letty might bring this gentleman up to scratch, which would cost her the position of madam at his brothel—‘A pity, that’—but would ensure the greatest gain for the Guild in the end. Viscounts, Mrs. Newcomb noted with appalling authority, are particularly susceptib
le to blackmail.”

  Banks had a beautiful voice, one that likely beguiled his parishioners to services for their weekly dose of scripture and gossip, but he also had beautiful eyes, and those eyes were devastated.

  “My dearest sister, what have we done to you?”

  ***

  “You alluded to an arrangement, Letty,” David said into the strained silence. “What was that arrangement?”

  Brother and sister shared a look, and some communication beyond David’s ken passed between them.

  “Tell him,” Banks said. “I’ve never been comfortable with the deception, and I see little point to it now.”

  A pure white cat came strutting into the parlor. It hopped onto Letty’s lap, and David felt a spike of resentment for the beast and its presumptuousness, until the cat gazed at him with one blue eye and one green eye.

  “The money I sent to Olivia,” Letty said, stroking the cat’s back, “was for the support of my son, and to buy Olivia’s silence. She implied, Daniel, that you knew the money was coming in, but I wasn’t to bring up any particulars in your presence, lest your pride be offended.”

  Letty’s admission was made softly, and she did not so much as glance at David when she spoke. He wanted to take her in his arms, to shout with relief, to toss Banks from the room and kiss the lady senseless, because her secret no longer stood between them.

  Instead, David twitched the crease of his breeches and prayed for wisdom.

  Banks was apparently not a man made for bitterness, but neither did sorrow look well on him. “My pride is in tatters, Letty, that you could think I would ever ask for money to support my own nephew. I love that boy, and I love you, and I never asked you for money.”

  “Olivia did.” Letty lifted the cat to cradle it against her shoulder. “She made my own home a hell for me, with her veiled insults, her hints, threats, and false piety, and then, when I resolved to leave, she told me I’d pay a price for that as well.”

  “I don’t understand,” David said as the cat began to purr. “You lived with your brother when Danny was born?”

  Letty did not reply, her silence an echo of the same silence David had been enduring from her for months.

  Banks provided the answer, regarding his sister with such compassion, David suspected the man qualified for sainthood.

  “Letty found herself with child when she approached her seventeenth birthday. The child’s father, Uriah Smith, had been our father’s curate, and while Father was hardly fair to Letty, he was properly incensed with Smith. Smith departed for parts unknown in the dead of night, though we later learned he took a post in the North and perished of influenza. I became my father’s curate, and then replaced him when, shortly after the whole situation erupted, Papa died of a heart seizure.”

  Letty cuddled the damned cat, while David wanted to pitch the beast through the window and draw her into his arms.

  “Olivia and I,” Banks went on, “had not been blessed with a child in the five years of our marriage, but it still surprised me when she suggested raising Letty’s baby as our own. Letty was willing, however, so at the appropriate time, the ladies went on an extended holiday and repaired to the home of Olivia’s mother, where Danny was born.”

  “And the vicar’s beaming wife,” David supplied, “came home with his son in her arms, just like that.”

  Letty set the cat down. “This scheme was a chance for my son to be respectable. To have a gentleman for a parent, not a slut—”

  “Letty,” Banks remonstrated her, but it was David who passed her his handkerchief.

  “So what went amiss?” David asked, picking the cat up, despite how easily white hairs would show against excellent tailoring. “You could have remained in the vicarage household, a significant figure in your son’s life, and he in yours. The situation would not be ideal, but I suppose something like it happens more frequently than we know.”

  “Letty decided to leave,” Banks said. “She could not bear watching the child refer to Olivia as Mama or see him crawling up to Olivia for comfort and reassurance.”

  Letty abruptly stopped dabbing at her eyes. “I did no such thing. Olivia told me to go when I’d weaned Danny and it became obvious he still viewed me as his mother. The day Olivia overheard him call me Mama was the day she started campaigning for my departure.”

  The cat in David’s lap purred contentedly, while brother and sister regarded each other with bewilderment.

  “Campaigning? Olivia assured me you wanted to go.”

  “For God’s sake, Daniel, I never wanted to leave my son. What kind of mother do you think I am?”

  David thought she was a heroic mother, a mother who’d stop at nothing to see her child safe and well cared for.

  “Then why did you go?” Banks asked.

  “To earn the money,” Letty retorted, tears tracking down her cheeks. “To earn the damned money and to keep Olivia quiet.”

  “Quiet, how?”

  The question took courage. David rather wished Banks hadn’t been able to ask it.

  “Olivia became convinced she needed to confess our situation to the bishop, much as Uriah Smith had been smitten by the need to confess. You were involved in a monumental deception, Daniel, and allowing a woman without virtue to live at the vicarage, among your congregation. Olivia implied, amid much reference to Christian duty and my immortal soul, that if I did not leave and begin producing the money you had admitted would be a welcome contribution, then her conscience would continue to plague her.”

  The irony of Letty’s fate, ending up in a brothel as a result of the selfishness of a curate and a vicar’s wife, had David on his feet, the cat vaulting to the floor and scampering for the door.

  “I’m sorry, Banks,” David said, “but your wife is a scheming, conniving, heartless, unfeeling, unnatural—”

  “Bitch,” Banks concluded wearily.

  “But clever,” Letty added as the cat stopped in the doorway, sat, and curled its tail around its haunches. “She made the choice easy: I could leave, allowing my son to grow up as a gentleman, while I contributed to his welfare and provided a blessing Olivia and Daniel had given up hoping for. In the alternative, I could live in constant fear that Olivia would expose my brother and my son to scandal, while every day Olivia hurt me through the people I loved most. The decision was simple.”

  “It was not easy,” David said, but this tale smoothed all those small puzzle pieces into a single image of sacrifice and sorrow. Letty had protected first her son, then her brother, and then—humbling realization—David, too.

  Viscounts being particularly susceptible to blackmail—in the opinion of some.

  “Living apart from my son was miserably difficult. It still is.”

  “So you did not decide to leave of your own volition,” Banks said. “You were blackmailed into leaving.”

  Ugly word, though the man’s fortitude was impressive.

  Letty regarded David’s handkerchief—one she’d embroidered with pink roses—rather than meet her brother’s eyes. “I can’t blame Olivia for the fact that, having surrendered my virtue, I chose to trade on that lapse to make my living on my back.”

  “Oh, can’t you?” David said softly. “Let me speculate here, and suggest Olivia fixed for you a sum you had to regularly remit, lest she bring her fears to the bishop, and such a sum would never have been within the ambit of a woman in service even in London, though you likely didn’t know that when you agreed to her scheme. When you left the shires, your sister-in-law’s carping was fresh in your ears, insisting you could not expect decent men to take an interest in you, and you would be well-advised to use your venery to support your son. Am I right?”

  The cat hopped into Banks’s lap, which meant more of David’s own fine tailoring would be sporting white hairs. “And,” Banks said, stroking a hand over the presuming cat, “Olivia recruited Fa
nny Newcomb to keep an eye on you, or maybe their collusion was a simple, rotten coincidence.”

  Letty folded David’s handkerchief into quarters on her lap, probably adding cat hair to that too. “I’ve wondered how Olivia knew where to find me. She sent letters to The Pleasure House when I worked there, but I never indicated to her where I was employed, or in what capacity. She just knew.”

  “And exploited the knowledge,” David added. “Does Olivia at least love the boy?”

  Banks found it expedient to scratch the cat’s chin. “He does not go hungry or want for clothing and hygiene, but she is not warm toward him—toward him either, truth be known. When he was a baby, she delighted in showing him off, but now that he’s older, she seems to resent him. I love him,” he added quietly. “I love him like he was my own.”

  David guessed Banks loved the boy like a man who had no children would love the only youngster ever to come into his keeping.

  “It grows late,” Letty said, tucking David’s handkerchief into a pocket. “I am sure you have more questions for me, Daniel, but you’ve had a long, trying day, and I should see about supper.”

  When she left the room, Banks cradled the cat against his shoulder, exactly as Letty had. “Does your offer of marriage still stand? Knowing my sister bore a child out of wedlock, would you still have her for your viscountess?”

  A brother was entitled to ask. “I knew months ago she’d borne a child.”

  “She told you?”

  “She didn’t need to. But yes, of course I would still offer for her. The issue is, will she have me?”

  ***

  Letty returned to the parlor to find both men rocking silently in the chairs near the hearth. They were not at each other’s throats, but then, on what grounds would one castigate the other? David had slept with Letty—albeit with her enthusiastic consent—while Daniel had failed to protect her from his own wife, in which arrangement, Letty had also been complicit.

  What were they thinking of her?

  “I propose we share a simple meal here,” she said. “Daniel, I have an extra room for you and Danny, though Lord Fairly has also offered his hospitality.”