Ashton could not afford to indulge Matilda’s stubbornness, not when her life hung in the balance.
“I have to go somewhere,” she retorted. “The thief-taker has seen me twice just a few streets over. He’ll ask enough questions, give pennies to enough crossing sweepers, and sooner or later, one of them will point him here.”
“I don’t intend that you stay here waiting for the warrant to be served on you. I intend that you be provided sanctuary until we can sort the whole mess out and see your in-laws held accountable.”
She put her face in her hands, reminding Ashton of Alyssa three years ago. “I don’t want or need anybody held accountable. I want to be left in peace. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be left in peace.”
“You’re lying to yourself,” Ashton said, sweeping her hair back from her shoulders. “You want to be left in peace, but you also want to live long enough to see your younger sister grow up, safe and happy, and without the scandal of a murderess in the family blighting her life.” The child had to be her younger sister. That explained the resemblance and the attachment.
Matilda glowered over at him. “I hate you.”
She was so fierce and so alone. “Understandable, but will you move to the Albany with me anyway?”
“I cannot move to—the Albany? Gentlemen bide there. Of course I can’t move to the Albany. I can’t go to the Low Countries, because I’ve already been there, and France is the next logical place, so I shouldn’t go there either.”
She rose and plucked the lone shard of glass from the windowsill. “Lisbon is supposed to be lovely and not too expensive. The difficulty will be getting to Portsmouth to take ship, but Pippa can remain here for a few days, wearing my cloak and bonnet, attending to my usual errands. I assume you will look after Helen for me, and I can write a character for Pippa if you’ll sign it.”
Matilda had indulged her bout of sentiment and thrown Ashton a crumb of trust. The instinct to flee was rising in her before his eyes, and if he didn’t intervene, she’d be gone before sunset.
“Matilda.”
She set the shard of blue glass before the daffodils sitting all askew in their makeshift vase. “My real name is Maitland, but everybody has always called me Matilda. Not even my husband knew that, or he forgot it if he did know it.”
Ashton withdrew his knife from his boot and joined her at the sideboard. “You’re telling me your real name because you’re preparing to run and your guilty conscience wants to leave a token behind.”
“You’ll cut yourself.”
He trimmed up the flower stems, one after another, and pitched the leavings out the window. “Your flowers,” he said, lifting the bouquet beneath her nose. “Was your maiden name Bryce?”
“Even I know better than that. My maiden name was…”
While Ashton watched, her eyes filled with tears. “Matilda? Or do I call you Maitland?”
“I haven’t spoken my own true name for years,” she said, taking the bouquet from him. “I was born Lady Maitland Marie Bronson Bellamy and am the oldest daughter of the late Earl of Kittridge. My sister is Lady Catherine Marie Kitts Bellamy. She’s called Kitty, and Drexel manages her inheritance too.”
What a cruel irony that Matilda had been born a lady and had left her honorific on Drexel’s back stairs, while Ashton had been reared as a bastard and now wore the title like an ill-fitting coat.
“Matilda, you cannot flee to Portsmouth. Not now.”
“And you cannot tell me what to do, Ashton Fenwick. I don’t care how wealthy you are, or how respected your title. To stay here is to court death for a crime I did not commit.”
“I didn’t mention it earlier, because I hadn’t made the connection, but on my way back from Mayfair, as I came through Piccadilly, I saw handbills advertising a reward for the capture and conviction of a suspected murderess. The likeness was poor, and no name was mentioned, but somebody is clearly still looking for you.”
She set the flowers down hard on the sideboard. “Perishing, rubbishing, dashed, deuced perdition.”
Ashton took her in his arms, and she came to him. He recalled telling her that the lady of his dreams cursed when the occasion called for it, and took encouragement from Matilda’s foul language.
Because the situation definitely called for it.
* * *
“You’re wearing breeches now,” Helen said. “You can’t walk like a girl. You have to walk like you got the world’s greatest treasure tucked up your arse.”
“Or tucked behind your falls,” Pippa added earnestly. “You want to walk smug and randy, as if everybody ought to look at you for the sheer pleasure of it and the world is lucky you strut about.”
“The world is lucky to have me,” Matilda replied. “How’s this?” She sashayed across Ashton’s sitting room, trying to put arrogance where for more than two decades only modesty had dwelled.
“No,” Helen said, popping off the windowsill. “This is you.” She flounced across the carpet, nose in the air, skinny hips swishing. “Don’t be a streetwalker on the stroll, be a flat who knows for a bit of coin he can do as he pleases with dozens of women.”
“What an ugly source of pride.”
“That ugly source of pride keeps many a bird from starving,” Pippa said. “Try again.”
“Think with this,” Helen said, patting her crotch. “You’re the king of the world, and that’s your golden scepter.”
Helen’s determination to help broke Matilda’s heart, but the child got the point across. With Stephen Derrick in mind, Matilda paced the room again. No hurry, no concern about somebody looking at her wrong, no fear for her bodily safety, no apology for moving too quickly or too slowly, no smile handy for any gentleman to whom she’d been introduced.
“Better,” Pippa said. “In those clothes, you’ll pass well enough if you don’t say much.”
“The longer you do it, the easier it gets,” Helen said. “Once you learn to smoke, drink, scratch, and spit, you’re a bloke and nobody looks at you twice. I don’t care for spitting, but that’s men for you.”
“Swear under your breath a lot,” Pippa suggested. “God’s cods, St. George’s hairy arse, that sort of thing. Burping helps and the occasional cheeser. Then act like it’s hilarious no matter how bad the stink.”
Cheeser being…?
“A right, ripe fart,” Helen offered. “Begins with f. I like to leave God and the saints out of it. Bloody sodding shite, miserable damned blighter. If I can learn my letters, you can learn to swear.”
“A fine attitude,” Ashton said, coming through the sitting-room doorway. “And I’m happy to help you. Cherbourne’s attire is a bit loose on you, which is good. Your wig.”
He closed the door to the stairway and passed Matilda a box. The wig within was auburn, which suited her coloring, and longish for a man.
“This is well made,” she said, “not simply a theater costume.”
“Only the best for my manservant, Matthew,” Ashton said, taking the wig from her. “We’ll need to braid up your hair. Ladies, if you’ll excuse us, Matthew and I have a few details to discuss.”
“Maddie might do,” Matilda said, as Pippa herded Helen out the door. “My father allowed my mother to put Maitland on the baptismal lines, because it was a family name, but I’ve been Matilda all my life—or Maddie.”
Ashton led her by the wrist into his bedroom. “Are you thinking to cut and run on me, Maddie?”
The old nickname sounded wonderful, coming from him.
“Why would you think that?” Matilda had been thinking that. Had been planning on how to get her emergency bundle from her house to his apartments unnoticed.
“I can see it in your eyes.” He patted the back of the vanity stool. “Have a seat and explain to me why you’ll leave just as you’ve found an ally with some influence.”
Sitting in breeches was different—easier. Everything was easier without skirts to maneuver, and Matilda felt safer in breeches, despite having the conto
urs of her legs more or less on display.
Easier for her to run, harder for anybody to trifle with her. Was that why men were horrified by the thought of women wearing breeches?
“You are forever taking pins out of my hair,” Matilda said. “Perhaps I ought to cut it.”
“Perhaps you ought to trust me,” Ashton said, getting to work. “It will take you much longer to grow your hair back than it will for me to confront your in-laws and hold them accountable.”
He was a competent lady’s maid, damn him. Matilda hadn’t had anybody tend her like this for years.
“You asked for my plan,” she said. “I will hide until the law pronounces me dead. Hiding with a man who mingles among the very people my in-laws consider friends might work for a few days, but by this time next week…”
He drew his fingers through her unbound hair. “You’ll leave me? You’re giving me one week to slay dragons who’ve been besieging your castle for years?”
Maybe not even a week. “I want to live, Ashton. You can slay dragons while I’m taking the air in Sicily.”
Though Sicily was so very far from London, and Kitty, and everything Matilda knew.
“Do you speak Italian?”
“No.”
“Then Italy will not do for a woman alone without significant means. America makes more sense, but because it’s the logical place to go other than France, you shouldn’t consider it. You could marry me.”
Matilda bent forward, resting her forehead on her folded hands. “A marriage is a documented, public undertaking, particularly if you’re having banns cried. Whether by special license or not, I’d have to use my legal last name, which at this point is Derrick. If you did find a way to make me your countess, I’d still be a commoner, and commoners hang.”
But oh, to be his countess. To have this fierce, wily, kind man for her husband. Italy wouldn’t be nearly far enough away to preserve Matilda from the temptation Ashton offered.
When her hair was in disarray about her shoulders, Ashton knelt beside her so they were almost eye to eye.
“You have been afraid for so long, and on your own for so long, that nothing I say or do will have any merit in your eyes when it comes to putting your situation to rights. It’s not fair that I should have more influence and credibility than you, it’s not just. I’m sorry for that, but all I can do about it is put my resources at your disposal.”
He brushed out her hair in silence, while Matilda wrestled with the instincts clamoring to send her pelting for the docks in her newly acquired men’s attire. Beneath the compulsion to run, though, was a weariness she hadn’t been able to admit and a loneliness so vast she could drown in it.
“Two braids will be easier to put a wig over,” she said. “Like Helen’s cap.”
“She’s another one who needs some dealing with,” Ashton muttered, starting on the right braid. “If you leave, what will become of her?”
“She’ll be better off for having learned a few letters and some manners, and you will look after her.”
He tied a brown ribbon around the first braid, then started on the second. “You trust me to look after a street thief who will likely steal from me before the week’s end, and yet, I’m not to have seven days to do my best for the woman I love?”
The wretched, awful, shameless… A man would have better curse words, but those were the best Matilda could do over the thumping of her heart.
“Keep your flirtations to yourself, my lord. Hanging is a terrible, undignified way to go. It’s not your neck that will be in the noose.”
“Nor will it be yours. I promise you that.”
He dispatched the second braid as quickly as the first, and Matilda cast around for any way to put some distance between herself and the man trying to prevent her flight to safety.
“Are you adept at braiding hair because you’ve loved many women, my lord?”
“My lord, my lord, my lord. You are as relentless as the Hebridean wind. I’m good at braiding because I’m a horseman. A braided mane and tail are less likely to get caught in the brambles and burrs. Have you consulted a solicitor regarding your situation?”
Ashton was the relentless one, like a warrant that never expired, and yet, Matilda was inordinately relieved to know his expertise had been gained in a stable.
“How could I meet with a man of law? Do I explain that I’m wanted for murder, but please keep my little problems just between us?”
“If he were a barrister, he’d have to keep your confidences, like a priest. I can ask hypothetical questions, changing a few details to obscure the truth. Might do just that.”
“Please don’t. Asking questions, poking your lordly nose into scandals, and threatening the hold Drexel has on my fortune will only create curiosity, which is the last thing I want or need.”
Ashton had the knack of pinning her hair without gouging her scalp, which skill the horses might also have taught him.
“You are the bravest woman I’ve ever met,” he said, settling the wig over the braids. “That includes my sister-in-law, who had the courage to marry into the Fenwick family. But you can’t see straight, Matilda. You’ve been ridden hard for too long. Your wind is broken.”
“Now you insult me,” she said, shooting to her feet. “For God’s sake, don’t hold my chair. I’ve managed on my own for six years, and one more year isn’t that long. Less than a year, in fact. I will accept your aid so that my next journey is well planned and discreet, but don’t expect me to hand you control of my life. Abdicating responsibility for myself to the nearest man hasn’t gone well, ever.”
From Papa, to Althorpe, to Drexel, each one had put his self-interest ahead of Matilda’s well-being. Admitting it aloud solved nothing, but with nobody to contradict her, it felt good.
“So be responsible for yourself,” Ashton said, “and listen to me. You can be declared dead next year and your funds disbursed to your in-laws, never to be returned to you. Your troubles will have become only more complicated if you allow that to happen.”
“Not if the warrant for my arrest is withdrawn.” Why couldn’t he see that?
“Do you know what a statute of limitations is?”
Matilda moved away, lest she smooth Ashton’s lapel or fluff his cravat—any excuse to touch him.
“Something legal and therefore onerous.”
“Actually, no,” Ashton said, sitting on the bed. “The idea behind a statute of limitations is, if a long enough span of years goes by and a criminal isn’t brought to justice, then clearly, he or she has learned not to get caught committing any more crimes. The law turns its attention to more recent wrongdoing.”
“Where there’s a hope of collecting a reward.”
“Perhaps, but the result is that after a time, the law essentially forgets, even if it doesn’t forgive. At common law, for many serious offenses, that period is twenty-one years.”
“And you know this, how?” He knew too many things—how to braid a woman’s hair, how to teach a child her letters. How to steal a heart that ought to be un-stealable.
“Because I had a fine education, and many a younger son or by-blow has found a career in the law. I didn’t, but not for lack of exposure to its concepts. The problem, Matilda, is that after you’re declared dead, if somebody finds you—you, who think you are safe at last—then you’ve perpetrated a fraud on the crown. The warrant is reinstated, and you’re tried not only for murder and fleeing the king’s justice, but also for fraud. That’s your idea of a solution.”
Matilda sank to the bed beside him, her knees simply refusing to bear her weight. Ashton would not lie to her. He probably wouldn’t lie to anybody, for any reason.
“The warrant can be reinstated? Even after I’m dead?”
“Your in-laws might be planning on that very course.”
Drexel was that devious, and Stephen that tenacious. The gnawing terror that had gripped Matilda immediately after Althorpe’s death threatened to claim her. Fear once again became a physi
cal misery, destroying her ability to concentrate, making her weak and queasy.
She wanted to run, but honestly could not think of where or how. “I’ll go to the Albany with you and give you time to do what you can without making the situation worse, but you must promise me one thing.”
“Name it.”
“No matter what happens to me, you must promise me that you’ll look after Kitty. God knows what Drexel has planned for her when she comes of age, and if anything happens to Drexel, then her care falls to Stephen. Girls can be legally betrothed long before they reach their majority. Stephen is greedy enough to marry her for the fortune she might inherit from me.”
Matilda waited to hear Ashton’s assurances that Kitty would be well provided for, that Kitty should be the least of her worries.
He put an arm around Matilda’s shoulders. “I’ll do my best, but your safety comes first. I can’t marry a dead woman.”
Chapter Twelve
“I was told you’re the best, Samuels.” Stephen had been assured Samuels wasn’t too particular about how he caught a fugitive.
“I am the best,” Samuels replied, blowing the foam off a tankard of ale and making an urchin at the end of the bar hop away. “For six years, nobody has seen hide nor hatpin of your fine lady. Now you want me to find her overnight on the basis of old gossip and an older miniature. If she was so precious to her family, why hasn’t she turned to them for help?”
Samuels belonged in the Goose, an establishment that exploited its proximity to the theaters in one direction and thriving shops in the other. Sometime in the last two hundred years, the Goose had acquired venerability, which to most of the populace counted for more than respectability. Not all of the women who patronized the place were for sale, for example, and the ale was decent.
Stephen considered himself a connoisseur of ale, as every good Englishman ought to be.
Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) Page 19
