Mr. Smith listened intently, almost raptly, as if every word out of her mouth was fascinating. To her relief, he did not pose probing questions about her late husband and life in Boston, and with a little encouragement, he began offering information of his own.
“You have a younger half brother, you know,” he told her.
“Yes. Edmund.” She considered her next comment carefully before speaking. “He is under the impression you dislike him.” Immensely.
“And no wonder, as I did for a time.” He sighed heavily, the sound a wheeze in his chest. “I am a very old man, Miss Walker. I’ve had a great many years to make a great many mistakes. I have amassed a fortune in regret. But none weigh so heavily as the loss of my family.”
“We are not all gone.”
“Indeed not.” He tapped his cane once in emphasis. “Indeed not. You are of noble stock. Did you know?”
She shook her head and smiled a little at the very idea. “Am I?”
He waggled a hand at an enormous book lying atop a small table. “There. There. The Bible. Bring it here.”
She retrieved the tome and laid it in his lap. It looked to be at least a century old. Its binding was cracked, the pages thin and frail. Inside, the names and dates of births went back three hundred years, the earlier entries obviously copied from older records.
“Do you see?” He tapped his finger at the top of the page and she took a seat beside him. “Second Earl of Silsbury.”
“In the year of our Lord 1531.”
“The title reverted to the crown many years ago. But it was ours for a time. You are a blue blood, Miss Walker.”
The very palest of pale, pale blues. The second earl appeared to have had only daughters. There was a long line of titleless entries after that, spanning several pages, and with the surname changing every so often when the male line ran out again. The last few entries carried the decidedly undistinguished surname of Smith. Her father’s name was the final entry.
Mr. Smith pointed to one of the entries. “Your great-great-grandfather was a naval captain of some renown. He dined with some of England’s finest families. Even King George, himself.”
“I see.” She didn’t really. It was almost impossible to imagine a blood relative of hers keeping company with royalty. Unless it was to steal from them.
“It costs a fair amount of coin to keep up with royalty and nobility,” Mr. Smith continued. “There was little left over for his son, my father. And he left even less to me. I had a decent education, and when my father passed, sufficient funds to go into business for myself.”
“You were a grocer.”
“Yes. A common grocer.” He trailed his fingers down the list of names. “We were a mighty family once.”
“So it would seem.”
“We took pride in it. I sold my goods in Spitalfields, and elsewhere, but I refused to live in rooms above a shop. Like my grandfather and father before me, I spent on my vanity what I should have saved for my boy.”
“I doubt it did my father harm to have been raised in a better neighborhood,” she ventured.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “Even the mighty fall,” he murmured. He tapped the page gently, almost reverently. “But we do not care to admit it.” He sighed again. “George and I had a terrible row. A falling out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He took a path I could not condone. He dishonored the family.” With great care, he closed the Bible. “But I am not blameless in our estrangement. He came to me one day and told me he was to marry a Miss Thatchum. Edmund’s mother. I knew who she was, and I knew of the boy they’d had out of wedlock. Just as I knew he’d sired a daughter as well. Miss Thatchum was a seamstress. Her mother had been a woman of ill repute.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Did one express sympathy for having a prostitute attached to the family tree?
“A doxy in the family,” Mr. Smith continued. “It was not to be borne. But you…” He wagged a finger at her. “I heard a rumor that your mother came from good family.”
“Oh. Er…” Her mother had been the only child of tenant farmers somewhere in the north. At least that was the story she’d been told. “They were respectable, I believe.”
He bobbed his head. “I thought, if I could arrange a reconciliation between my son and your mother, he might throw off the other woman.”
“Mr. Smith, my mother was married.”
“At the time, I believed that a dalliance with a married woman of respectable stock was preferable to a permanent alliance with Miss Thatchum. To that end, I hired a man to find your family.”
A man? “What man?”
“A private investigator. He gave me an address in Kent. I wrote your mother introducing myself and indicating my intent to see her reconciled to my son.”
“In Kent?” The Walker family had never lived in Kent “How long ago was this?”
“Oh, ten years or so.”
“I’m afraid you must be mistaken, Mr. Smith. My mother passed away sixteen years ago.”
His mouth hooked down thoughtfully, then he made an impatient sound. “Bah. I am an old man. Dates and details occasionally escape me. At any rate, we wrote for several years. Though she would not agree to renew contact with my son, she did keep me apprised of your accomplishments. And I kept her informed of my son’s current residence, should she be interested.”
“You told her where to find your son?”
“It would have been near impossible for her to do so otherwise. The boy was constantly moving about, never staying in one spot for more than a year at a time. Often no more than a month or two.”
“My family was much the same.” Criminals were like that, she thought. Terribly jumpy.
He nodded absently, not really seeming to hear her. “I have never seen my boy so angry as the day he discovered those letters in my desk. He left London shortly after and refused to speak another word to me for the rest of his life. I was so angry with him. And so bitter at the loss of him. When Edmund arrived at my door four years ago, I blamed him.” He gave that terrible wheezing sigh again. “I alienated my own son and discarded my own grandchild out of pride. I have long wished to make amends, but I have lacked the courage.”
“But now I am here,” she offered quietly.
“Yes.” His face brightened. “Yes, you are here. Like an unexpected and undeserved present. And a pretty little present you are, as well. You’ve a bit of your grandmother about the mouth, I think.”
“Have I? I should like to know all about her. But first…” She retrieved the engraved pocket watch from her bag. “Do you recognize this?”
Mr. Smith’s face brightened at the sight of it. “I do, indeed. It was my father’s. Benjamin Smith. I gifted it to George on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday.” He patted her hand. “Keep it. A child should have something to remember her father.”
“A father’s watch should go to his son. Were you aware your son married Miss Thatchum?”
He absorbed that information quietly for moment. “I have often wondered,” he murmured to himself. Then his gaze fell to the Bible in his lap and his pale lips curved up in a slow smile. “Would you be so kind as to fetch a pen and ink, my dear?”
She did as he requested and watched as Mr. Smith painstakingly added Edmund’s name to the list of entries.
When he’d finished, Mr. Smith blotted the ink and nodded approvingly at his work. “Ah. The mighty may fall, but the resilient will always rise up again.”
She returned the smile he offered, genuinely happy for him, but she inwardly winced when he set the pen aside.
Her name would not be recorded in the family Bible. Mr. George Smith might be happy to receive her, even acknowledge her as his granddaughter, but she was not a true Smith. Not a legitimate member of the family. She was…not quite good enough.
; She shook off the sense of disappointment. There was no point in dwelling on it. And she still had so many questions. There were pieces to his story that didn’t quite fit, even if he had managed to remember exact dates incorrectly.
“Mr. Smith, may I inquire how long you continued to write to my mother without receiving a reply?”
“I wrote twice without answer as I recall. Three months, I suppose?”
“Is that all? Are you certain?”
“More or less.”
That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t possibly be right. The letter in the desk had been written five years after her mother’s death. “You didn’t attempt to write her again some years later?”
“Certainly not. I’m not one to press a lady. And I had my pride, of course.”
“Of course,” she murmured, careful to hide her astonishment. If Mr. Smith’s final attempt to contact her mother had been made only months after he’d received her last letter, then that meant… Mr. Smith had been corresponding with a dead woman for years.
Esther’s mind whirled with all the possible explanations, but it kept returning back to one. “Did you happen to tell her of your falling out with your son?”
“I did.”
And then the letters from her dead mother had ceased. Will Walker had taken her to burglarize the house on Rostrime Lane at nearly the same time.
She swallowed around a lump in her throat. “Who was the private investigator you hired to find my mother in the beginning?”
Mr. Smith absently rubbed the handle of his cane. “I don’t recall. I only remember that he came highly recommended and that he did not earn his commission. It was an upstart competitor of his who found your mother for me. He approached me with the promise to deliver your mother’s address within a week in exchange for a moderate reward and letter of reference. I agreed and he delivered.”
“What was his name? The upstart?”
“Ah, yes. His name I remember.” He smiled a little in memory. “Hernando Gutierrez. Quite the charming young Spaniard. And exceedingly obliging. He saw to the delivery of the letters himself.”
Hernando Gutierrez. Uncle Hernan. Her father’s favorite alias.
Oh, Will Walker, you tremendous bastard.
Nineteen
“Will Walker used my grandfather to keep track of my father.” Esther relayed this bit of information to Samuel the second she stepped back in the carriage and shut the door. “He wrote to Mr. Smith pretending to be my dead mother.”
It was probably a testament to how often Samuel encountered the truly bizarre in his line of work that he met this revelation with just one raised brow. “Sounds like something Will might have done.”
“It’s appalling.” Which, yes, meant it was something Will would have done.
He made a prompting motion with his hand. “Tell me what all was said.”
As the carriage rolled toward Belgravia, Esther provided Samuel with a detailed recounting of her conversation with her grandfather. She pulled the timeline she had created from her bag and used it as a visual guide in her explanation. She told him about Uncle Hernan and her grandfather’s correspondence with her long-dead mother. She mentioned the fictional residence in Kent and pointed out that the burglary on Rostrime Lane had occurred near the same time Will Walker would have received news that no more information about the younger George Smith would be forthcoming. But she didn’t mention the Bible. She had her own pride.
Samuel rubbed his chin thoughtfully at the end of the telling. “Will must have heard that Mr. Smith was searching for the Walker family and decided to take matters into his own hands, introducing himself as a private investigator.” A corner of his mouth hooked up. “He must have relished being paid to find himself.”
“And paid to deliver letters to himself.” That was the only part of the story that made sense to Esther. “Pretending to be a private investigator to throw off a search, I understand. But why not simply inform my grandfather that my mother was dead? Why continue to write to him for years? Merely to keep track of my father? Was he routinely burglarizing the young Mr. Smith? Did he seek revenge against all my mother’s lovers in such a manner?”
“Will wasn’t above getting back a little of his own.”
“Will wasn’t above much of anything,” she muttered, remembering the way he had laughed in the tavern while she’d stared at her coins. She folded up her paper and put it back in her bag. “I suppose it was all just a game to him.”
The man had loved his games, the more challenging and sordid, the better.
“I’m sorry. But yes, I imagine it was.” Samuel reached out to slide his hand over hers. “Are you all right?”
She stared down at their hands, just as she had in the station, with a confusing mix of fear and longing.
“Yes,” she replied quietly. “It all worked out for my benefit in the end. If Will hadn’t written my grandfather, I wouldn’t have found the letter in the desk. I wouldn’t have come to London and met my brother and grandfather.” And she wouldn’t have had this time with Samuel. She turned to him, shifting her feet a little as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of his house. “Events may not have played out exactly as I imagined, but I’m glad I came.”
Whatever happened between them going forward, she would never regret the week she’d spent with him here.
Samuel’s assessing gaze tracked over her face. “I’ve an errand to run. And there’s a man I want to try to find this evening. Someone who might be able to tell me where to find John Porter and his friends. We’ll talk when I return.”
* * *
As evening fell, Esther wandered Samuel’s house, checking windows and door locks. In the past, she had often sought solitude when her thoughts troubled her. She preferred the privacy of her bedchamber, where she could work through her problems without distraction. Tonight, however, her body felt as restless as her mind, and she was glad for the excuse to stroll about. She drifted from room to room, absently smiling at staff and silently cataloging every inch of the house. She wasn’t aware she was doing the latter until she caught herself scrutinizing the faint signature on an uninspired watercolor in the downstairs hall.
Shaking her head, she moved on, meandering into the parlor. Why on earth did she feel compelled to memorize every detail of the house? Was it because she would leave tomorrow and never return?
Was she leaving tomorrow?
She’d taken her extra day and found her grandfather. Was she supposed to leave now? Expected to leave?
Everything was still undecided. It all felt so uncertain. Only days ago, she’d been happily dreaming of a future with Samuel. Now that future seemed hazy, ill-defined, and a little frightening. She didn’t know what came next. She didn’t know what should come next. Their argument had been smoothed over, but the doubts it had produced remained entrenched.
She felt as if she was standing on that precipice, still waiting on Samuel for…something. A clearer indication that he’d been listening, perhaps. A sign or reassurance. Maybe if he decided she could stay one more day, or promised he still meant to see her in Derbyshire in a fortnight, or told her…
Suddenly aware of the appalling tenor of her thoughts, she came to a clumsy stop, her slippers catching against the parlor carpet.
Good Lord, she was doing it again. She was waiting for someone else to make decisions for her.
For all her grand talk of taking control of her own life, in the end, she was waiting for Samuel to decide their fate. No, not just decide, she realized. Insist upon. She was waiting for him to take complete charge of their future. She wanted him to talk her over the edge of that precipice so she wouldn’t have to take the risk for herself. She wanted him to cajole and persuade, and make promises. And she wanted all that, she realized, because then only Samuel would be responsible for what came after. If he changed his mind later, she could always co
mfort herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t at fault for his disappointment. She’d warned him. The affair had been his idea. He’d insisted.
And that was rubbish, expecting Samuel to soothe her insecurities as if she were a child, expecting him to make all the decisions, take all the risks, accept all the responsibility. And she would just…let herself be dragged along.
That was cowardice.
She needed to make her own choices. She would decide for herself what to risk and how much.
And for Samuel, she thought with growing determination, she would risk everything.
Hands clenched at her sides, she resumed her directionless walk, heading into the library.
Perhaps Samuel did see her differently than she saw herself. Maybe his life would be simpler, calmer with an obedient wife at his side. But neither of those possibilities altered the fact that life would be better if they were together.
Nothing changed the fact that she loved him.
She was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Samuel Brass. The man who had chased her all the way to London out of concern for a friend. The man who had played a silly game with her in the park. The man who argued with her, laughed with her, teased her, and tempted her. How could she not love his wicked hands and his kind, crinkle-at-the-eyes smile? God help her, she even loved his arrogance and overbearing protectiveness, his gruffness and clumsiness with words. She adored him.
And she would fight to keep him. That was her choice.
And as soon as he…
Passing the open door to his study, her gaze flicked over a scattering of papers on his desk.
She froze, then slowly turned her head for a better look.
Not papers. The letters from his mother. And they had been opened.
She walked into the room slowly and stood over the desk to stare at the stacks of correspondence. Without thought, her fingers came up to lightly brush the edge of one envelope.
Several emotions assailed her at once. There was fear for Samuel, because there was no telling what the missives contained, no telling how much it might have hurt him to read them. And there was humbling wonder, because he had read them for her. He had been listening.
A Gift for Guile (The Thief-takers) Page 27
