A Fine Gentleman

by Sarah M. Eden

She had spent so much of the past few years studying people, searching out the small clues they offered as to their character, finding those things about them that they kept hidden. Doing so had kept her and her family safe during the long years of war. Thus, she knew precisely what she was seeing in Mr. Jonquil. He was hiding some aspect of himself, though what or why she could not say.

  Underneath the exterior he put forth, who was he? Was he angry or amused? Harsh or lighthearted? Though she did not know for certain which it was, she truly hoped to discover that he was jovial and charming and pleasant.

  “Have you a room with a table or a desk where we might review the documents you left with me?” he asked.

  “We have a book room.” She didn’t move in that direction.

  Mr. Jonquil watched her expectantly.

  She remained in place, hoping the ridiculousness of the situation would pull a smile from him.

  “I would be very much obliged if you would lead the way, Miss Thornton.” Mr. Jonquil’s jaw clenched tight enough to affect his words.

  How long could she tease him before his carefully constructed façade crumbled? And, more to the point, would he break into a grin or simply break her neck?

  Mariposa’s heart skipped at the challenge ahead of her. Settling her own dilemma was, of course, her first priority. In the meantime, however, she would see if she couldn’t discover what kind of man Mr. Jonquil truly was.

  o

  Miss Thornton addressed her butler as she led the way out of the sitting room, “Black, do send word to my grandmother to join me in the book room.”

  “Your grandmother?” Jason struggled to imagine a termagant such as Miss Thornton having something as sweet and homespun as a grandmother.

  “Sí. You met her at your office.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Jason nodded, a few puzzle pieces falling into place. “The lady who twitches.”

  The slightest of smiles passed over Miss Thornton’s face. “The poor dear is rather sensitive about her condition, so you would do well not to mention it.”

  “Do you expect her twitching to resurface this afternoon?” Jason made a mental note to keep a safe distance.

  “I can guarantee her twitch will be frequently present.” Miss Thornton sounded almost amused at the idea.

  Strange. He followed her inside a small room with several shelves of books and an old, weatherworn desk.

  “Abuela—that is, Grandmother—should be here momentarily.” Miss Thornton pulled back a curtain to let in what little sunlight penetrated the heavy cloud cover outside.

  Jason began laying out his paperwork. “Your grandmother wishes to hear the details of your father’s will?”

  “No,” Miss Thornton answered. “She is coming so that I am not forced to marry you.”

  Jason dropped every last sheet of paper in his hand. After quickly recovering the breath her words had robbed him of, he said firmly, “Do not even say such a thing.”

  She gave him one of her nursemaid smiles. “Your concern for me is quite touching, Mr. Jonquil.”

  “Concern for you?”

  “Oh dear. You are repeating things again.”

  Jason clamped his jaw shut and began collecting the papers. Concern for her? Did she think he objected to the idea of marriage on her account? Then again, perhaps Miss Thornton had reason to be concerned for herself. Jason knew full well he’d throttle the harridan within moments of any union between them.

  “Mi abuela will be here in a moment, so there is no reason for worry. She will prevent any whisper of scandal.”

  “But can she prevent me from strangling you?” he said under his breath.

  A fleeting look of amusement passed through Miss Thornton’s brown eyes. The unexpected sight caught him up short. The only way she would find his comment amusing was if she herself realized how exasperating she was. He looked more closely at her but saw nothing in her eyes other than her usual look of innocent vacuousness.

  Mrs. Aritza hobbled in a moment later. Her eyes, nearly identical to her granddaughter’s, shifted between him and Miss Thornton. A quick exchange in Spanish passed between the ladies before they both sat.

  “I have read your father’s will, Miss Thornton.” Jason assumed his most professional air. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he’d agreed to take Miss Thornton on as a client; barristers rarely handled matters of inheritance and wills.

  “And were you able to recognize all of the words, Mr. Jonquil?”

  Before Jason could even begin to reply, Mrs. Aritza’s foot smacked into her granddaughter’s leg with such force that Jason actually heard the two make contact. Miss Thornton gave her grandmother a frustrated look as she rubbed at her shin.

  “You have inherited a portion of your late father’s estate.” Jason preferred seeing to the matter quickly so he could go on his way. “Also named are Angelina Thornton, whom I assume to be your mother, Marcos, and Santiago Thornton.”

  The expressions that flitted across his client’s face were intriguing, to say the least, a strange mixture of sadness and longing. These insights passed so quickly Jason hardly had time to register them before she spoke again. This time, her tone was more subdued.

  “My older brother, Marcos, was killed during the Battle of Albuera,” she said. “My mother and younger brother, Santiago, were lost during the war. My father and grandfather died near our home, close to Albuera. So, you see, I am all that remains of my family, other than my abuelita and her twitch.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss the heaviness of the words she had only just spoken, but a look of sadness remained in her eyes.

  “I offer my condolences for your losses.” Jason felt the inadequacy of his words. He’d heard much the same sentiments after his father’s death and knew how insufficient they truly were.

  Miss Thornton shrugged off his proffered empathy.

  He returned to the subject at hand, feeling remarkably uncomfortable with the unbidden surge of empathy he had momentarily felt for the exasperating lady. “A portion of your late father’s estate reverts to his birth family, to any siblings he may have had. You have some property and funds to claim from his estate as well, enough to see you comfortably settled.”

  She listened, silent for once.

  “In order to claim it, you will need to contact the solicitor employed by your father’s family.”

  Miss Thornton sighed. “Ah. A solicitor. Por supesto. I knew I would need to set my sights higher. A barrister is simply not adequate.”

  Why did the infuriating woman continue to insist that a solicitor was a step up from a barrister? It made absolutely no sense.

  Jason stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “If you will give me the name and, preferably, the direction of their solicitor, I can make inquiries on your behalf.” Why had he made that offer? He might have been able to wash his hands of the troublesome Miss Thornton.

  “I do not know who this solicitor is.” Miss Thornton shrugged a shoulder again. “That is why I have you, no?”

  “No,” Jason answered. “A barrister does not fetch solicitors.”

  “Oh dear.” Miss Thornton rose to her feet, a certain wobbliness to her tone that made Jason wary. “I had so hoped I wouldn’t need to fire you again. Not when you have been doing so well.” She began a fluttery pacing in front of the desk Jason had commandeered. “You have hardly repeated yourself at all since you have been here. I thought that so very promising. But I certainly do not have any connections in the world of law—I could never locate this awe-inspiring solicitor of whom you speak. It seems I must find someone who can.”

  “Miss Thornton, locating this solicitor would be a simple matter of inquiring of your father’s family.”

  “Oh.” She turned her large, innocent eyes on him. Too innocent, in fact. “Do you know where my father’s family is?”

  “Do you not?”

&nb
sp; She shook her head.

  That would make her quest difficult indeed. “Do you at least know who they are?”

  “The Thorntons, I would think.”

  One corner of Jason’s mouth twitched without warning. He immediately clamped down the unexpectedly amused response. Miss Thornton, after all, was not jesting. She needed help, and he had agreed to offer it.

  “There could easily be dozens of Thorntons in England,” he warned. “Can you not at least identify their home county?”

  “I could tell you my home county,” she offered.

  “Is it in England?” he asked doubtfully.

  “No.” She answered with that same lack of understanding he’d come to expect.

  “Then that information will likely not prove helpful,” he said. “Unless the Thorntons have relocated to your home in Spain.” He spoke the last word almost as a question, though he was relatively certain he had guessed her homeland correctly.

  “Spain,” she confirmed. “But they will not be there.”

  A falling out between families? Did the late Mr. Thornton’s family disapprove of his marriage? The late Mr. Thornton’s will had been rather boring, truth be told, but here was an intriguing mystery. Jason had never been one to walk away from a puzzle. No true student of the law lacked curiosity. “If you know your father’s parents’ names, I should be able to identify his family,” Jason said.

  “I know his birthdate,” Miss Thornton said. “And I believe he was born in northern England.”

  “That is a start, at least.”

  “I do not wish to overtax you, Mr. Jonquil,” Miss Thornton said, facing him straight on. “I would hate for you to revert to repetitions and blank looks again.”

  Jason merely raised an eyebrow at such a ridiculous remark.

  “And I would dislike firing you when you are beginning to show so much promise.”

  “Send to my office any information you have about your late father and his family, and I will look into it,” Jason said, hurriedly gathering his things.

  “I will come by and give you all the information I have—”

  “Send it, Miss Thornton,” Jason insisted. “Send it to my office. You need not come in person. A simple letter will suffice.”

  With his almost desperate instruction hovering in the air, Jason quickly made his way from the room and, with any luck, Miss Thornton’s vexing presence for good. Solving a mystery was only worth so much aggravation.

  As he approached the front entryway, he could hear someone singing an off-key tune in a voice made loud with enthusiasm. “We despise your sullen thinkers, and fill the tavern with our noise.”

  The song stopped abruptly as Jason reached the front entryway and the butler finally took note of him there. He gave Jason a curious look. A well-trained butler would have opened the door, perhaps handed him his top hat and walking stick, and would have done so silently. He certainly wouldn’t be singing a soldier’s ditty in the doorway. What else should he expect in an establishment Miss Thornton oversaw?

  “Are you any relation to Lieutenant Jonquil of the Thirteenth?” The man’s brow creased, his one-eyed gaze not shifting in the slightest. Apparently the question was an important one to this odd butler.

  “He is my younger brother,” Jason said. “He was made a captain just over a year ago. You are acquainted with him?”

  The butler puffed out his chest, stuck his left thumb—it being the only thumb he possessed—into his chest, and said with the deepest pride, “Served under him, I did. Fine lieutenant, he were. Served under him till Orthez.”

  “He was injured at Orthez,” Jason acknowledged. Stanley had been badly injured, in fact, seriously enough to require that he be sent home to recuperate.

  “Was injured then, m’self,” the butler said, no lingering sadness or regret in his tone, merely a statement of fact.

  Jason wondered which of the man’s maimings had occurred in that onslaught. Perhaps all of them. Stanley, though left with significant weakness in one arm and recurrent fevers, had at least emerged intact.

  “Your brother’s the best lieut—cap’n in the whole deuced army,” the butler said. “Best blasted man I ever knowed. Owe ’im my life, I do. A fine, fine genl’man.”

  “Yes,” Jason drawled, plopping his hat on his head. “They all are.”

  Every last one of them. Jason had six brothers who were the best blasted men anyone had ever known. And it was a deuced nuisance at times. He heard them praised to the skies at each and every turn.

  He worked hard. He had distinguished himself in his profession. He was a fine gentleman. But who noticed?

  “Next time ye see old Cap’n Jonquil”—Old Captain Jonquil was a decidedly ironic way of putting it. The butler must have been on the other side of forty years old, and Stanley was not even four and twenty—“tell ’im Jake Black offers a shake of his hand.”

  “Captain Jonquil is preparing to embark for the Continent with his regiment,” Jason said.

  “Still with the Thirteenth?” the butler asked.

  Jason nodded.

  “Fighting them blasted, cussed French, is he?” The butler seemed to approve.

  Someone needed to tell the unfortunate man that, if he did not curb his somewhat vulgar tongue, he might just find himself out of work. Not even the odd Miss Thornton would approve of such lower-class expressions in the doorway.

  “Fine genl’man. And he’ll be a fine cap’n.”

  It was praise, indeed, and came from someone Stanley had worked on behalf of, someone he’d led in battle. And what did Jason’s clients, the people he worked on behalf of, say of him?

  That he was simple.

  And repeated himself.

  Well, Miss Thornton would eat her words. Just see if she didn’t.

  Chapter Four

  Mariposa walked the floors of her bedchamber long after the darkness of night had descended upon London. Her circular path never varied. Neither did the topic foremost in her thoughts.

  “What am I to do, Papá? Nothing is working as it should.”

  The empty room offered no response.

  She stopped at her closed bedchamber door and leaned her weight against it. “I did what you told me to do,” she whispered. “But everything is falling apart.”

  With perfect clarity, her father’s voice repeated in her mind the words she’d long ago committed to memory, instructions he’d given them all as Napoleon’s blood-filled conquest of her homeland had descended upon them. “If we are separated or if we find ourselves in danger, we must make our way to England, individually if necessary. We will reunite at the home of my family.”

  She was trying to obey his directive. Heaven knew she was trying.

  “You never told me how to find them.” She’d never imagined having to make this journey on her own, so she hadn’t thought to ask him for more information. “I can’t find them. I am misleading an unsuspecting gentleman, attempting to trick him into finding your family’s solicitor. What if that can’t be done? What if these lies don’t work?”

  Of course there was no answer. She’d been surviving more or less on her own for years. Coming to England had not changed that.

  Mamá had never been entirely convinced the plan would work. “Will we be safe there?” she had asked. “What if England falls to the Corsican as well?” Years of warfare had only deepened the worry that had been etched in every line of her face.

  “Mi amor,” Papá had said. “Napoleon may wrest control of the entire Continent, but he will never conquer England. And we will always have a place with my family there. Far from war. Far from danger. On England’s shores, we will finally know peace.”

  But they’d waited too long. War and danger had found them in their tiny corner of Spain. Thousands of French soldiers had descended on Albuera, only a few short miles from their home. Vengeful
French soldiers had murdered her father and grandfather. The rest of the family should have fled—Mariposa should have insisted—but Mamá had been overcome with grief, spending her days staring out the windows of their home. Abuela, in the wake of losing her own husband and son-in-law, had been in no better state of mind.

  “I was only fifteen,” Mariposa whispered to the dark room. How often she had tried to convince herself that her struggle to assume control of her family had been understandable in one so young and untried by the world.

  Hooves clomping and the press of wheels on cobblestone echoed up from the gas-lamp-lit street below. Mariposa had come to know the sound well, having spent a great many long nights awake and pacing since her arrival in London. Too many nights had found her still awake when the delivery wagons had begun making their earliest morning stops.

  She crossed slowly to her window, forcing slow breaths, trying to clear her mind. The more tired she became, the more forcefully her most difficult memories pressed on her heart.

  Her current view of the street below gave way in her mind to rows and rows of British army tents erected on the acres surrounding her childhood home. The occasional sounds of movement outside didn’t overshadow the long-ago voices of the officers who had used the front parlor as their headquarters.

  She dropped onto the window seat, turning her back to the window. She rubbed at her weary eyes. Too much had happened. There was too much worry and pain. She needed something to restore her hope.

  “If only Mr. Jonquil can find Papá’s family.”

  She’d heard his abilities praised so often by his brother, and Stanley would never mislead her. He’d shown himself a good-hearted and reliable companion, a friend in the truest sense of the word. He’d helped her and supported her through the aftermath of the battle of Albuera, a battle from which her brother had not returned alive.

  Lieutenant Jonquil, along with a great many of his fellow dragoons, had helped her tend to the wounded and dying who were brought to her home to receive care, including Frenchmen left behind by their fleeing comrades. He had done a great deal to boost Mariposa’s sagging confidence in the wake of so much loss. He, of all those around her, had seemed to understand how lost she’d felt and the enormous weight of responsibility she’d carried for her broken and grieving family.