“Drat.” Erran rubbed at the soiled hat that Hartley handed him, rattled the barred gate, and kicked an errant stone.
Not tall enough to see over the panel, Hartley tried to peer between the cracks. “Why were they throwing rocks at her?”
“It’s a puzzlement,” Erran said, scowling at the damage to his boots. “I’ve not seen so much as a ghost in the place all week. At least we now know there are servants in there, even if they don’t answer the door.”
Even as he said that, Erran wasn’t convinced he hadn’t seen a ghost. She had glided with the elegant grace of a lady, head high, steps delicate, skirts swaying with expensive layers of petticoats. But no lady would have brown skin, wear an ugly black cloak, or use the servants’ entrance. It was all a puzzlement.
It was his own damned house he was trying to get into.
His whole accursed life had become a mystery, even to him. He blamed his brother Theo for marrying a witch—although Lady Aster had merely been a thorn in their collective sides at the time the courtroom incident had happened.
Her family research had simply prompted the notion of inheriting the bad strains of prior generations. Just because Uncle Sylvester had persuaded hundreds of thousands of pounds out of the hands of wealthy investors didn’t mean Erran had inherited his relation’s deceitful streak. He was a man of education and science, not a superstitious peasant—or a thief.
But with judges unwilling to take his cases, he was an unemployed man of education.
“How will we get the house back for Father if we can’t move out the tenants?” Hartley inquired anxiously. Hartley was the worrier of Ashford’s illegitimate twins. The catastrophic summer had turned the boy’s usual cheerful smile upside-down as the weeks passed and it became evident his father would never be the same. “We’ll never persuade him into town otherwise.”
Erran had his doubts that they’d persuade the marquess to town even if they gained the townhouse, but the family home was the only suggestion his newly-blind brother had shown an interest in. It should have been a simple task to find the tenants new accommodations and help them to move out. Unfortunately, the tenants had been remarkably unavailable for moving.
Legally and morally, he could do nothing to evict them. The tenants had a proper, paid contract and no obligation to open their doors to him. He had been hoping to persuade them by offering a better house in recompense. He might have more success battering down doors, but that would make him as evil as the landlord he’d taken to court.
These days, he was working hard to stick to a moral, as well as a legal, path, in hopes he would one day be employable again.
“It’s time to make more inquiries,” Erran concluded, steering his nephew toward the tavern now occupying the former stable.
In this street just off St. James Square, the once formidable stone and granite mansions built in the prior century were showing signs of deterioration. Many had been subdivided and turned into shops and taverns or bachelor flats. The Ives town house, however, remained a solid square occupying the entire space between the street and the mews.
“Hunt down those ruffians and find out why they’re throwing stones at our tenants’ servants,” Erran ordered. “I’ll be in the tavern making inquiries. Don’t take too long. We have to return for dinner at Theo’s.”
Obediently, Hartley ran off to find the neighbor lads. That there were vast differences in their stations didn’t occur to the son of an actress and a marquess. Well, for all Erran knew, the ragged ruffians could have been the bastard sons of dukes. The Crown owned half the property around here.
He entered the smoke-filled dark room to put his lawyerly skills to work—praying he would have no use for the dangerous Courtroom Voice that had caused him to lose his profession and question his sanity.
***
Celeste Malcolm Rochester removed her muddied cloak with a trembling hand and hung it on a hook by the back door. She’d had enough experience at these misadventures lately that she no longer collapsed beside the door, shaking and crying. She’d learned to take deep breaths and go on.
But the gentleman—he was a new development, and he’d rattled her badly. She hurried up the stairs to find a window overlooking the mews. Rubbing her elbows, trying to calm herself, she peered through a gap in the drapery.
The formidable gentleman who had followed her wore a fashionable gray frock coat, the kind with a redingote collar. He’d topped it with a handsome black muffler and an expensive tall hat. He was no ruffian, although she questioned the origin of the child to whom he was speaking. Were they the instigators of these episodes?
The boy ran off while the gentleman studied the windows where she stood. Dark curls and slight sideburns framed an arrogantly square jaw and high cheekbones, before he slammed the hat back on his head and retreated to the tavern, out of her sight.
“Why do they hate us?” she asked, attempting to expel her fear and despair. “We have harmed no one.”
“People fear what they do not know,” her African nanny said prosaically, glancing up to verify Celeste was unharmed, then returning to pedaling the machine they’d brought with them.
Nana Delphinia had been with them for as long as Celeste could remember. The older woman had loyally accompanied them to London, leaving behind her own grown children in the process. Therein lay the true tragedy of their lives, and another reason Celeste spent her sleepless nights in tears.
Their faithful servant’s hair was turning gray, and lines of worry marred her face, but Nana had lost none of her strength of character. “What happened this time?”
“They’ve escalated to mud flinging. I’ll have to scrape my cloak once it dries. I’m not certain what the gentleman had to do with the attack, if anything.” Celeste dropped the old velvet panel back in place. “If he’s a solicitor, he’s more elegant than the others they’ve sent. I may actually have to talk to him.”
Celeste’s younger sister hurried to look and frowned at seeing only the empty alley.
Her younger brother glanced up from his schoolbook with alarm. “Unless we’ve miraculously found the coin to hire a solicitor of our own, talking to him isn’t wise,” Trevor counseled. At seventeen, he was the image of his great-grandfather in the portraits their great-grandmother had painted—tall, dark-haired, brown-skinned, and handsome, now that he was growing into his bones.
“The lease is ours,” Celeste assured him, trying to convince herself. If they lost the roof over their heads along with everything else, she didn’t know what she would do. “They can’t take away our home. We’ll have a solicitor of our own soon enough. I have a new order for shirts. Sewing in the pleat has proved popular. Young gentlemen lack servants who can wield crimping irons.”
“Popular, but tedious,” Sylvia complained, returning to her chair and her hand sewing. Unlike her older siblings, Sylvia was blond and petite, more like their mother than their father. “I was so hoping for grand parties and elegant gowns and . . .” She let her voice drop off at Celeste’s pointed glare.
“We’re in mourning, and you’re still too young.” And Celeste was too old and too unsuitable, but their father had cheerfully refused to acknowledge that. He had paid for his foolishness with his life and quite possibly the lives of others, but that couldn’t have been predicted at the time. “Your time will come, but first we must earn the funds to find a good lawyer. Be grateful for what we have.” Celeste hunted for her sewing basket.
“Be grateful for a cousin who has usurped our inheritance?” Trevor asked bitterly. “Or for a half-sister who won’t acknowledge our existence? Or for our father’s unfortunate demise on a miserable ship that nearly took our lives?”
“For being alive with an excellent situation and food in our bellies,” Nana scolded. “You have seen how those back home fare. It will be your duty to help them one of these days. Now study.”
It would be Trev’s duty to save the servants—like Nana’s family—from their cousin’s greed was the admonishm
ent they all heard. Trev paled and dipped his head back to the schoolbook.
Celeste swallowed back tears and picked up her own sewing. If only she’d been born a boy . . . But it would be four more years before Trevor would be of a legal age and could assume their father’s estate. Four years in which their father’s cousin, the Earl of Lansdowne, could sell off all their father’s assets, along with the people who had served their family for decades. Free people, not slaves—although without access to their father’s papers, no one could prove that.
Celeste couldn’t imagine any English court of law giving a woman the right to take care of her family, not any more than she could imagine them giving Nana her freedom if the Earl of Lansdowne chose to challenge it. A solicitor was just one small weapon in their puny arsenal.
Hiding for the next four years didn’t seem like a brilliant plan, either, but it was the best she had. It wasn’t all she had, but anything else was built on fairy dust and magic.
***
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