by C. J. Archer
"Hope," Patience whispered. "Please, stop. I can't stay while…"
Both Hope and Charity looked sharply at me. Patience continued to focus on the tiles at her feet.
"Stay if you wish," I told her as I headed for the stairs. "I'm going out to look for your aunt."
Charity snorted again. "That mad old bat could be anywhere by now."
I spun around. "Precisely. She could be confused or hurt or upset. The sooner we find her the better."
"I'll search for her too," Patience said quickly. "You two go home without me."
Hope swanned past her and out the door. "Do as you wish, I don't care. But you know how Aunt Letitia dislikes you, Patience. She'd never go looking for you, if you went missing."
Patience's face fell. She bowed her head again but not before I saw the tears well in her eyes. A satisfied look passed between her sisters.
"She doesn't dislike you," I told Patience. "She just didn't know you very well until recently. You've always been in your sisters' shade, so your own light has never had a chance to shine. She does like you now, very much." I didn't wait to see her reaction. I picked up my skirts and headed to my room to fetch my gloves and hat.
I took a hackney to all the main railway stations and asked at the ticketing booth, but none could recall selling a ticket to an elderly, well-to-do lady early that morning. I drove around to the shops I thought Miss Glass might visit, but no one had seen her. I returned home in the late afternoon, deflated and overwhelmed.
It was an immeasurable relief to find her sitting on the sofa, a cup of tea in hand. Matt sat beside her, holding a plate of cream puffs.
"Eat another," he urged her.
"Are you trying to make me fat?" She spotted me and sheepishly took another cream puff off the plate.
"Where have you been?" I asked, embracing her. "We were so worried."
"There was no need." She nibbled on the cream puff.
"Well?" I prompted. "Where did you go?"
"Here and there."
"She's refusing to say," Matt said. "She was here when I got back."
"Tea, India?" Miss Glass asked.
"I need something stronger." I poured myself a glass from the sherry decanter on the tea trolley. Bristow was the perfect butler, knowing in advance what we might need.
"I came home to see if anyone else had any luck," Matt said. "And she was in here, being fussed over by Mrs. Bristow and Polly. I've been trying to find out where she's been all day but with no luck." He glared at his aunt. "It seems she wishes to keep it a secret."
"It's no secret," she told him. "I simply can't recall. There. Are you happy now?"
"No. That's even worse." He sandwiched her hand between both of his. "Aunt, you can't leave without telling anyone where you're going. You had us all worried. I even sent word to my uncle."
She wrinkled her nose. "You shouldn't have bothered him."
"You gave me no choice."
She sniffed. "He wouldn't have cared."
"He sent his daughters here," I said. "That's how concerned he was."
"Don't confuse duty with concern, India," Miss Glass said. "He was only worried about his friends finding out."
"Patience was worried," I said. "She wanted to help look for you."
"She, at least, is a good girl."
"Are you implying that I am not?" Perhaps it was a little too forthright, but it had been a trying day. I'd been at the end of my rope on the way home after a fruitless search, only to find her already here, eating cream puffs and unwilling to say where she'd been.
She turned her face away.
"Something is troubling you, Aunt," Matt said. "What is it?"
"You're going away. Both of you. It was horrible enough to find out that India no longer wishes to be my companion, but to have you leave too, Matthew… It's too much." She threw the half-eaten cream puff on the plate. Blobs of cream splattered across the table.
Matt looked to me. I nodded. It was time to tell her. "Aunt—"
She pulled her hand free of his. "I know I'm old and useless, but I'm not a piece of furniture that can be left behind and forgotten." She lifted her wobbling chin and turned her face away.
"We'd like you to come with us," he finished.
She turned huge eyes onto him.
"We were going to tell you on Friday, but since the topic has come up now, I thought you shouldn't be left wondering another moment. You can come with us, if you want, but you must promise not to mention it to anyone. That means no goodbyes in person, only letters that Bristow can deliver after we're long gone."
"Leave?" Her trembling voice was barely above a whisper. "With you?"
"If that's what you want. It will mean leaving your friends and all this behind."
"All this?"
"The house, London, the places you're used to seeing every day. The weather." He smiled.
She simply stared at him then turned to me. She showed not a flicker of emotion. Perhaps her mind had wandered off.
"We're leaving on Saturday," I reminded her. "If you do decide to come, you'll need to choose what to take and what to leave behind."
"Saturday," she repeated dully.
"I know it's not very long, but it should be enough time. But please don't tell anyone else. Understand?"
I dipped my head to look at her better but still couldn't gauge her thoughts.
"Promise you won't betray us, Miss Glass." I didn't think she would, but it wouldn't hurt to elicit a promise from her. "Don't tell Lord or Lady Rycroft about our departure. Don't tell your nieces or your friends. Don't even tell the servants. Miss Glass? Will you promise?"
She clasped her hands to her chest and looked to Matt. "You won't leave me behind this time, Harry?"
My heart lurched. I patted her arm. "It's me, Miss Glass."
"Veronica, yes, I know."
Matt sighed. "Perhaps you should lie down, Aunt."
She stared at his hands as he took hers and helped her to stand. "I do feel tired."
He put an arm around her and steered her to the door. She paused, however, and looked back at me. "I have something to tell you, Veronica. Harry has asked me to leave with him. I didn't want to go last time. I couldn't leave…you know who. But now that business is over, I am finally free. You will come, won't you? You will keep me company?"
"Of course," I said, playing the role of her maid from years past. "Of course."
I went in search of Polly, all the while wondering if it mattered that Miss Glass never actually promised to keep our secret.
Matt returned ten minutes later. He sat in the same spot on the sofa and pressed his fingers to his forehead. "It's been some time since her last episode. I thought she was getting better."
"I don't think she'll ever get better." I sat on the sofa arm and kissed the top of his head. "She can't cope with confrontation or difficult matters. They cause her to lose focus and slip into the past."
He leaned into me and reached around my waist, holding me in place. I stroked his hair, and he sighed deeply. "We did the right thing in telling her," he said. "We couldn't put it off any longer."
"Not if she's going to wander off like that."
"Do you think she did it to punish us because she thought we were leaving her behind?"
"I don't know," was all I said, even though I suspected he was right.
"I wouldn't put it past her," he went on. "She can be as manipulative as her brother when she wants to be."
I fell into his lap and circled him in my arms. "At least she seems keen to come with us. I feel better about going now." Although I was still worried about hurting Patience.
"I think you were right and she sees this as a second chance to escape." He touched his nose to mine then teased me with light, pecking kisses.
I wanted to clasp his face in both my hands to force him to kiss me properly, but the reminder of my earlier encounter with Patience suddenly came to the fore. She'd looked miserable, and I couldn't attribute that to her sisters'
company. She was miserable because she knew her marriage would hurt me and because she knew she was marrying a man who could never love her.
The misery she felt now would pale in comparison to what she'd experience when Matt broke off their engagement.
I couldn't think about that. I couldn't think about her, and what we were going to do, or I might abandon our plans.
I pulled away from Matt just as Cyclops entered, holding the card Charity Glass had left for him.
"She's persistent," I said.
"Bloody-minded, as you English say," Cyclops said, passing the card to Matt upon his request.
Matt read it and passed it back. "Will you go?"
"Not even if my life depended on it. She scares me."
Matt chuckled. "If only Catherine Mason had written it."
Cyclops tossed the card onto the tea trolley. "Wouldn't matter. We're leaving Saturday."
"What if we weren't?" I asked. "Would you meet Catherine if she asked you to?"
Matt tilted his head to the side and frowned at me.
"Something I should know about our departure?" Cyclops asked, glancing between us.
"No," I said quickly. "I was just speculating. Don't mind me."
"India," Matt began, only to be interrupted by the blustery arrival of Willie. Duke followed in her wake.
"Where is she?" she said, hands on hips. "Where's the woman who made us walk all over the city only to come back here?"
"So you heard of her return," I said.
"Bristow told me. Where is she? I'd like to tell her how much my feet ache." She threw herself onto the sofa with a groan. "Maybe I'll just show her the blisters." She reached down to remove her boots but was met with a barrage of protests from the four of us.
"Not in the sitting room," I begged her. "Why not have a soak in the bath?"
"I ain't some pampered lady, India."
"No one will pamper you."
"Or mistake you for a lady," Duke added.
"After a drink. That sherry?" she asked, pointing at the decanter on the trolley. "Pour me a glass, Duke. A big one."
He picked up the decanter in one hand and Charity's card in the other. He read it and smirked. "I've got to get an eye patch."
"Why?" Willie asked.
"Ladies like pirates." He handed her the card.
Willie slapped her knee and whooped with laughter. "You have to go, Cyclops."
"No," Cyclops growled.
"Aw, go on. Meet up with her. We're leaving in a few days, so what does it matter? Go and have some fun on your last days in England then leave with no regrets."
Cyclops snatched the card off her and tore it in two. "No regrets? You live in a fantasy world if you think I wouldn't regret meeting Charity at that hotel."
"Hotel?" I asked. "As in the restaurant of a hotel?"
"As in a room," Duke said, grinning. "At a hotel near Kings Cross station."
"And Patience is the one with the reputation in that family," Willie muttered with a shake of her head.
"Patience's mistake was getting caught," I told her.
"And the gentleman was indiscreet about it," Matt added.
Duke passed Willie a glass of sherry. "He weren't no gen'leman then."
Willie took the glass in one hand and Duke's waistcoat front in the other and pulled him down to her eye level. She pecked his cheek and patted it as he stared back at her, unblinking. "Sometimes you say just the right thing and I remember why we're friends," she said.
He flushed and stepped away, flattening a palm down his waistcoat. "And here I thought it was because I'm so handsome."
"You'd be more handsome with an eye patch." Cyclops punched Duke lightly in the arm as he passed. "If you ever want to try it, I've got a spare."
Duke chuckled and returned to the trolley to pour another glass of sherry.
"You could meet Charity at the hotel instead of Cyclops," Willie said to Duke. "See if the patch works. Just don't go near Catherine Mason or Cyclops'll get jealous."
Cyclops narrowed his eye at her. "You ain't funny, Willie."
"Then why's Duke laughing?"
Cyclops glanced at Duke, catching him grinning. He quickly sobered beneath Cyclops's withering glare and handed him a glass of sherry. "Drink this and forget about your women troubles. We'll be gone soon so it won't matter." He sat with a sigh and stretched out his legs.
"You don't sound particularly happy about leaving," I said.
Duke shrugged. "I got used to it here. Except for the weather, London ain't so bad. There's lots to do and see, different places to go and ales to try."
"And you like having servants at your beck and call," Willie added.
"So do you."
She lifted her glass in salute. "True, but I can admit it."
"Ain't no one trying to kill us here," Duke added. "Well, not anymore. Back home, your family wants revenge for your grandfather, Matt."
"And Cyclops has his own problems," Willie added.
"Do any of you want to leave?" I asked.
"I do," Cyclops said.
"No you don't," Willie shot back. "You just say you want to, but you really want to be near Catherine." She put her fingers in her ears when he protested. "I can't hear you."
Cyclops rolled his eye. "I do want to go. I do." He focused on the contents of his glass and drank it all in one swallow.
Matt sat forward and eyed each of his friends in turn. "So nobody wants to leave?" he prompted.
Willie lifted a shoulder. "I'd like to stay longer if it were possible, but it ain't, so there ain't no point to this conversation." She finished her drink and set the glass down on the trolley. "I'm going to soak my feet in the bath, right after I tell Mrs. Potter to make me two helpings of whatever she's serving for dinner. I'm half starved."
"And I'm going to check on Miss Glass," I said, rising.
Matt followed me out. "You're having second thoughts about leaving, aren't you?" he murmured in my ear as we walked up the stairs together.
"No."
"India," he purred. "I know you're questioning our decision to leave."
I stopped on the landing and turned to face him. I took his hands in mine and made sure he was looking at me before speaking. "You're right, I don't want to leave London. This is my home, and I'm a little scared that I might never set foot here again. But I want to be with you, Matt. I'd give up anything—everything—so we can be together."
He pressed his forehead to mine. "We will come back one day. I promise you."
I did not mention my concerns for Patience. There was no point. It changed nothing. Of course I worried about hurting her, and I hated that our happiness would cause her humiliation and sorrow, but I couldn't sacrifice myself for her. I just couldn't. I wasn't selfless enough.
Yet even as I told myself that, I knew it would haunt me for some time and would leave a stain on our relationship. The more I tried to ignore thoughts of her, the more I couldn't stop thinking about her. As I lay awake, I kept picturing the way she studied the floor, how she wouldn't look at me, how her sisters bullied her. That bullying would only grow worse after Saturday.
Matt went out to see his lawyer in the morning, giving me the perfect opportunity to pay a call of my own in secret. I'd spent a sleepless night considering what to do and kept coming up with only one solution. I had to speak to Lord Coyle, and I had to do so without Matt's knowledge. As much as I hated lying to him, I would never forgive myself if I didn't do everything in my power to convince Lord Cox to marry Patience. The only way to do that was to use the information Lord Coyle had against him. Matt would never approve.
I told Bristow to inform the others that I had gone shopping and walked to Lord Coyle's Belgrave Square house. I almost stopped and turned back a dozen times, but something convinced me to keep going. Perhaps it was the look on Patience's face when her sisters teased her, or perhaps it was my own desire to remain in London. By the time I reached Lord Coyle's house, I'd convinced myself that I was doing the right
thing. If only my stomach would stop churning.
"This is an unexpected pleasure," Lord Coyle said, greeting me in his study. It smelled of cigars and was filled with the smoke from the stub of one wedged between his fingers. He indicated I should sit. "Tea?"
"No, thank you. I can't stay long." I waited until his butler left before I sat.
Lord Coyle's ponderous features softened a little as he regarded me with curiosity. "While I'm always glad to see you, Miss Steele, I doubt you would say the same for me."
I looked down at my hands, clasping my reticule. Inside, my watch lay silent. This man was no physical threat to me. At least, I didn't think so. However, I would have liked to know if this new watch was capable of saving me, if necessary, as my old one had.
"You once told us that you had some information that could be used to convince Lord Cox to marry Matt's cousin."
He sucked on the cigar then blew out the smoke slowly, all the while watching me as if he were trying to decipher my thoughts. It was unnerving, but I managed to hold his gaze.
"The information will convince Cox to do anything," he finally said. "If you want to use it to force him to propose to one of Glass's cousins, then I'm sure it will work."
"How sure?"
"One hundred percent." He plugged the cigar back in his mouth and clasped his hands on the desktop. He leaned forward. "You are aware that the information comes at a price, Miss Steele."
"What price?"
He bit down on the cigar and his lips stretched around it in a distorted smile. "A price that I will determine at a later date."
"That isn't fair."
He removed the cigar and pointed it at the door. "If you don't agree, you're free to leave."
I clutched the reticule tighter. "I'll speak a spell into one of your clocks or watches."
He chuckled a throaty, phlegmy chuckle that ended with a cough. "No, Miss Steele. That won't be enough. Not for this information."
"An extending spell then," I blurted out before I changed my mind.
He considered it. "Perhaps. I'll let you know when the time comes for you to repay me."
"That isn't fair," I said again.
"Those are my terms, Miss Steele. You can choose to take them, and I'll tell you what you want to know about Cox, or you can leave." He put the cigar back in his mouth, crossed his arms and waited.
