by Merry Farmer
“But—” Matty started.
Mother Grace shook her head to stop her. “I have seen this coming,” she said. “It is the best way to proceed.”
Matty stared at her. Marshall was left with the impression that the young woman didn’t believe Mother Grace’s fortune-telling any more than he did. But after a long, heavy pause, Matty nodded and broke away to head into the house.
She left him alone with Mother Grace.
It was everything Marshall could do not to break down into useless tears of rage in front of the woman. He met her eyes for half a second, then blew out a breath and turned away from her, walking closer to the stream that ran behind her garden.
“Tell me everything,” Mother Grace said, following him.
He could have pushed her away or shouted at her to keep her distance, to keep her salt away from his wounds. Instead, he sighed and let his shoulders drop as he stared at the flecks of sunlight glinting off of the stream bubbling over rocks and around corners.
“You were right. I lost the girls,” he said at last. “Clara’s family set me up, and like a fool, I took the fall like a blind man.”
“What exactly did they do?”
He was grateful that she didn’t reach out to him, didn’t lay a hand on him or try to hug him. He couldn’t have withstood it.
“They pushed a custody case through the High Court. Half of the Danforth clan are solicitors and barristers, and they have friends in high places. They managed to prevent notice of the hearing from reaching me, then went ahead with it without me, assassinating my character in the process.”
“And you went to London to stop that?”
Marshall shook his head and lowered it. He slipped his hands into his pockets. “No, like a hot-head, I went to London to demand my children be returned to me. I’m not entirely certain how I got there, seeing as I have no money and few friends. I went straight to the door of Percival Danforth’s house and banged on it in the middle of the night, demanding to see the girls.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “What a fool. I should have known it would do no good.”
“So you didn’t see them.”
“I saw them once.” He turned to her, certain pain was etched in every line of his face. He wanted to tell her about the agony in his girls’ eyes, about the restraints that were put on them. He wanted to explain the devastation of being so helpless to save the only thing that mattered in his life, the terror of imagining what lies Clara’s family would tell the girls about him. All he could manage was, “It wasn’t pleasant.”
Now Mother Grace reached out and squeezed his arm, her smile wistful. “Evil like that is powerful, but your goodness will win in the end.”
Marshall snorted and yanked away. “I am not good. I am far from it.”
It was her turn to laugh and shake her head. “Oh, my dear boy. In many ways, you are the best and strongest of my dear ones.” He whipped to face her, glowering and ready to protest, but she went on before he could speak. “Yes, though you have no confidence in yourself, you are a mountain of a man. You think that I favor Jason or Lawrence above you, but you are wrong.”
“Are you certain?” he challenged her, gut tight with the certainty that she was lying to placate him.
She let out a breath and lowered her eyes, her own pain and defeat lining her face. “I am more certain of my love for you than I am of anything in this world, Marshall.”
His heart squeezed in his chest at the thought. Sweet words from an old woman should not come as such a balm to him, but they were words he needed to hear.
“There’s more,” she went on after a long pause. “You are suffering from more than just the loss of your girls.”
He huffed a laugh. “As if that isn’t bad enough?”
She wasn’t deterred. “There’s more.”
The sharper, more shameful defeat of the morning circled back on him. He thrust his hands into his pockets and let his shoulders drop, staring at the stream. If the loss of the girls was like being burned alive, his confession to Alexandra was like being choked with the smoke of burning roses as the flames rose higher.
“You told me that I would be able to get the girls back if I helped someone else,” he began, barely above a whisper. “I’m no gullible sap. I don’t believe your predictions any more than you do.”
The comment was meant to sting, but Mother Grace’s expression never altered. She stood patiently to the side, waiting.
Marshall pivoted to face her, meeting her eyes. “I know that most of what you say is observation couched in storytelling. I know that you are far more aware of our lives and loves than we could guess, that you have your spies in town who tell you things about us.”
He paused, took a breath, swallowed.
“I know that you were talking about Alexandra when you made that prediction.” There was no use pretending his feelings for Alexandra were anything other than what they were by calling her Dr. Dyson. “For some ungodly reason, you want me to pursue Alexandra, even though Clara is hardly cold in her grave.”
“You stopped loving Clara before the two of you were even wed,” Mother Grace said.
The shock of hearing those words spoken aloud brought a flush to Marshall’s face. He nodded.
“You and Alexandra Dyson are perfectly suited,” Mother Grace went on. “Anyone with eyes can see that.”
“You’ve never met her,” Marshall said, frowning. “Have you?”
“I have not,” Mother Grace conceded. “But others see it too.”
“Lawrence?”
Mother Grace nodded. “And Jason, though he has never said so in as many words. I can see more than the observations he tells me. He is so blind to his own wants and needs that he cannot be expected to see the truths of others.”
Marshall laughed unexpectedly at the characterization of his friend. “Flossie will change that.”
Mother Grace smiled. “She will. If she can fight off Lady Elizabeth.”
Marshall arched an eyebrow. “If anyone can fight off Lady E., it’s Flossie Stowe.”
He paused. The brief subject change was only a mask for what he needed to say. There was no point in delaying.
“I told Alexandra that I loved her this morning,” he confessed in a near whisper.
“And she wasn’t ready to hear it,” Mother Grace followed.
Marshall shook his head, kicking his toe into the grass and remembering he’d bruised it earlier. “I’m certain she will want nothing to do with me now.”
“Are you?”
He glanced up at her. “What woman would? I’m a dour, cantankerous widower with more wounds than any soldier, and I blindsided her with a declaration of feeling she does not return.” He went back to staring at the grass. “She’s too good for me.”
“Nonsense.” Mother Grace swatted his arm, surprising him. “How many times must I tell you that?”
“It doesn’t matter how many. It isn’t true.”
“Why? Because I’m an idiot who can be led by the nose?”
She sighed. “You, my boy, are filled with love—love which you know how to express and put into action more than most other men. Love always triumphs over evil.”
Marshall snorted. “I don’t believe it.”
“You should.”
He was spared further argument as Matty stepped back into the garden, a small carpetbag in one hand. “I’ve packed everything I dare to take with me,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly keep some of those things you gave me. That ivory comb is too precious.”
Mother Grace shrugged. “I gave it to you, and so it is yours. But I understand if you wish for me to keep it safe here.”
“I do.” Matty smiled, then rushed forward to hug Mother Grace. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. I only hope—” Her voice broke with tears.
“Now, now, dear one.” Mother Grace squeezed her, then held her at arm’s length. “This is only a temporary parting. We shall be together again in no time, all of us.” She placed a h
and on Matty’s abdomen. It was still flat, but with Mother Grace touching her, Marshall could imagine Lawrence’s sweetheart round with his child. “Go now, and take my love with you. I will send every protective spell I can think of your way.”
“Thank you,” Matty said again, then stepped away.
“Are you ready to go?” Marshall asked, drawing in a breath and pushing his own concerns aside. Matty was the one who needed help now.
“I am,” she replied.
“Then let’s go face what we have to face.”
Jason
A nap was just the thing to restore a fraction of Jason’s energy and to improve his mood, but when he awoke to find Flossie hot with fever, in deep sleep beside him, his cozy mood spiraled down into pulsing anxiety.
“Flossie?” He shook her arm, propped himself over her, desperate for some sign that she wasn’t so ill as to be in danger. “Flossie, are you well?” He bent to kiss her forehead, heart rate shooting up at the heat that transferred to his lips.
She stirred, grimacing as she tossed on the bed and nudged him away. “Let me sleep.”
Jason pulled back. If that’s all she had to say to him before surrendering to her fitful nap, then she must feel awful indeed. He could remember too well how miserable he’d felt when the influenza had first smacked him a week ago.
Heart squeezing tight and body still weak from illness, Jason stood. Once he was steady on his feet, his dressing gown hanging heavily around him, he rubbed his face and stared at Flossie. He should do something, take some action to make her healthy again. Alexandra Dyson had been to the hotel earlier to check on him. Perhaps he should call her back, ask her to give some medicine or treatment to Flossie.
Then again, he was fairly certain he still had some of the pills Dr. Dyson had brought for him…somewhere. He turned and headed into the front room, tying the sash of his dressing gown as he went. There was no medicine in sight, nor any in the bathroom. It was possible Flossie had left it in his office or somewhere that other members of the staff who had been taken ill could have access to it. He remembered her mentioning a few of the maids and one of the bellboys had come down with the flu, and it would be so like her to think of everyone else.
He marched toward the door, throwing it open and stepping into the hall in his bare feet, night shirt, and dressing gown. It was his hotel, after all. He could walk around in it any way he damn well pleased, especially if Flossie’s health was at issue.
That thought fresh in his mind, it was no surprise when he reached the bottom of the stairs in the lobby only to have Samuel, two of the maids, the bellboy on duty, and a pair of hotel guests stare at him as though he’d walked straight out of Bedlam. He supposed he deserved that.
Keeping as much dignity as he could—and rubbing the overgrown stubble dotting his chin and jaw—he approached the front desk.
“Has Flossie left any sort of medicine, any remedies for influenza, down here for the staff to use?” he asked the same way he would have asked Samuel for a report of hotel earnings for the last month.
No one else in the lobby had moved. The two maids leaned toward each other. One, Dora, raised a hand to her mouth to hide whatever she whispered to the other maid, Agnes. Both of them watched him with wide eyes.
“Flossie has not left anything down here, sir,” Samuel answered. Jason turned back to him in time to see the man’s sour smirk. “In fact, she’s left nothing on the first floor at all. It’s all in your suite.”
An uncomfortable prickle raced down Jason’s spine that had nothing to do with a week’s worth of being under the weather. He was grateful for the short coughing fit that gave him a moment to study his concierge. The man had actually taken a crack at Flossie.
Jason would have been unreservedly angry, but for the woeful pinch of embarrassment at being caught out that needled him. He cleared the phlegm from his throat and put on as imposing a frown as he could in his current condition.
“Flossie has taken ill. I need to find some sort of medication for her.” He pivoted to look at the maids, who were whispering even more furiously as they continued to stare at them. “Tea at the very least,” he finished.
The two maids snapped straight, like schoolgirls caught misbehaving in class by the headmaster. Their faces were bright pink.
“Tea, Mr. Throckmorton?” Agnes asked.
A deep foreboding curled tight in Jason’s gut. Agnes couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She had large, innocent, brown eyes and skin that hadn’t seen much of the sun, or of a lover’s touch, if he wasn’t mistaken. She should have been intimidated by him, to say the least, but the note of hesitation in her question, the doe-eyed anticipation with which she waited for his answer was as far from intimidated as could be. It was almost as if she thought of him as…as romantic.
He glowered at the thought and snapped, “Yes. Tea. Now.”
Agnes gasped and pulled herself together, darting toward the door to the dining room and on to the kitchen.
“Sir.” Dora took a cautious step toward him. “How is Flossie feeling? Only, she looked a mite poorly this morning when she came in to the laundry to tell us we would be on our own for a few days.”
Jason’s brow rose at the young woman’s speech. He knew she was on friendly terms with Flossie, but the little mouse hadn’t spoken more than two words together to him since he’d hired her.
And why the devil had Flossie told them they would be on their own? He was recovered, more or less. He could manage something as trivial as ordering the maids about. It was his damn hotel.
“She has influenza,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Wonder how she caught that,” Samuel muttered behind him.
Jason whipped around, glowering and ready to bring the impudent man to his knees if he had to.
It was fortunate for Samuel that he came to his senses and cowered appropriately. “I…that is…there have been quite a few cases of influenza in town, but not as many at the hotel, and Flossie has been working so diligently here, that I didn’t think….”
“No. You didn’t,” Jason boomed. “But you should if you care to keep your position.”
“Yes, Mr. Throckmorton.” Samuel shrunk in on himself as he bowed, then sidestepped to busy himself with the reservation book.
Jason continued to glower at him for a few moments as he worked. Inwardly, his gut continued to twist. When he felt as though Samuel was under control, he turned back to Dora. She, at least, stood respectfully to the side, biting her lip and twisting her hands in her apron. The guests had moved on outside to the garden, but Frank, the bellhop, continued to gape at him as if reading a penny dreadful.
Jason had only been ill and resting for a week, but somehow, in that time shut away in his room with Flossie caring for him, his entire world had changed. He could see it in everything around him—in Samuel’s dangerous attitude, in Agnes’s moon-eyed romanticism, in Dora’s fearless questions about Flossie’s health. Without being aware—without even being conscious, in all likelihood—he had been toppled from his throne. He knew the look that still lit Dora’s eyes all too well.
It was the look of an equal.
Jason Throckmorton. Grubby, wily, disobedient orphan. Fatherless, motherless, nameless. The boy of no consequence, whose only distinguishing characteristic was the one whispered about behind silk fans and lace gloves. “He’s certainly good for a tumble, but he’ll never amount to much else.”
The echo of those words—overheard by a sixteen year old boy who felt so proud of himself after an assignation with an older, distinguished lady—stung even now. Everything he’d built up had just tumbled down around his feet by the same means, leaving him no better than the bellhop that gawked at him.
“Sir?” Dora’s soft question barely dragged him out of his stunned silence. “Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do for Flossie?”
Barely noticing, Jason answered, “Yes, of course.”
He stepped away from the desk as Dora smiled,
curtsied, and headed off down the hall. Everything he’d worked for against impossible odds, squashed not by the rumor of impropriety or the recklessness of impulses that couldn’t be controlled, but by an all-consuming love for the one person who had ever made him feel as though he was himself.
Was that who he was after all? The Brynthwaite boy who proved to be more clever than people expected, but not grand enough to take a place amongst the upper class?
“If you don’t shut your mouth, you’ll swallow a fly.”
Jason sucked in a breath, closed his mouth, and stood straighter at the sound of Lawrence’s voice. He wasn’t sure how he’d made it across the lobby to lean against the stair railing, but that’s where he was.
Lawrence’s smile faded as their eyes met. “I was about to say I’m happy to see you recovered enough to be out of bed, but you don’t look well at all.”
Jason shook his head, pressing the fingertips of one hand to his temple. “I’ve just had an awful realization.”
“Which is?” his friend prompted.
“That I haven’t changed at all.”
Lawrence laughed. Damn him, but the sound was reassuring. He slapped a hand on Jason’s back, letting it rest on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Jason arched his brow. “No?”
“You’ve changed as much as any of us.”
Of course, Lawrence had no idea why Jason had made the comment. His words could only be taken with so much weight. But weighty they were. If anyone knew what he’d had to struggle through to get where he was in life, it was Lawrence.
“Flossie is ill,” Jason said, lowering his voice and shifting to make his way up the stairs, Lawrence by his side. “Influenza.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Lawrence walked by his side, patient with Jason’s slow pace, up to the first floor and the door to his suite.
“She caught it because she took care of me,” he admitted, the guilt of it hitting him again. Was it his own illness-related weakness causing him to swim through seas of pitiful emotions today or was he that much of a sap?
