“An oversight,” Frost said, coughing into his fist. “Purely an oversight, I assure you—the paperwork must have been, ah…misplaced. There will be no more mishaps like this now that you’ve brought the matter to our attention.”
“No,” John said. “There won’t.”
Eliza hadn’t spoken the entire time. But she raised her chin now and glared at the gentlemen. “You lot should be convicted and beaten about the square,” she said passionately. “I can only think about how I’ve worried this last year. An oversight. It was nothing of the kind. You saw your chance to make a profit after a sad bit of business, and you took it. At my son’s expense. I will see you publicly brought down.”
“Now, now, Mrs. Tallant.”
John could have told the man that condescending conciliation would only make matters worse.
Eliza stood, slapping her gloves against the table. “Don’t you take that tone with me, sir. You stole from a widow and a seven-year-old child. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“No need to make a fuss,” Frost said. “It’s been a dreadful ordeal. I think this all demonstrates that it’s more than past time to liquidate the partnership and divide the proceeds—taking into account, of course, the amounts that we have already—I mean, that have already been paid to some parties. To the third owed to you, Mrs. Tallant, I should like to put in an additional five hundred pounds—for your trouble.”
“And from mine,” Lawson added hastily.
“You think you can buy me off with mere money when I’ve scarcely been able to concentrate? When I couldn’t even eat, wondering what would become of my son?”
Now John knew that Elizabeth was acting. The day his sister stopped eating would be an alarming day indeed.
“Seven hundred pounds,” Frost said uneasily, glancing at his partner, who nodded.
“I won’t have my father’s—my husband’s—memory so despoiled,” she said. “Their spirits cry out for vengeance, not compensation!”
“A thousand pounds from each of us,” Lawson said, looking green. “And that little strip of land near your husband’s house—the one he always wanted to buy? I’ll give you that, too.” He licked his lips. “And that will leave Frost and I far the worse off.”
“Come now,” John said to Elizabeth, “don’t you think a thousand pounds each is enough to pay for their sins? After all, it was only a little embezzlement.”
“My nerves,” Elizabeth moaned, which nearly set him off laughing. His sister had nerves of steel. “I can’t be sure. What…oh, John, what do you think that this means? I don’t think I can sort it out myself. Perhaps we ought to call the constable and have him figure out the best way to proceed.”
“Twelve hundred each,” Lawson said immediately, while Frost nodded vigorously beside him.
Eliza sniffed.
“We’re dreadfully sorry,” Frost put in. “More sorry than you can know.” He licked his lips, looking calculating rather than sorry. “And if you’re looking for revenge, do think about what this will mean to the both of us. After our deductions, we’ll take just two thousand pounds apiece—when we put in that much five years ago. We’ll barely be getting out with our capital intact.”
Mary stirred on the other side of the table. “Really, Frost. How do you figure that? As I do the math, the partnership owns seventy-five hundred in assets, and there have been three thousand, five hundred in unauthorized deductions.”
Mr. Frost was only just beginning to frown. But John already knew where Mary was headed.
“Plus the proceeds of last year’s sale,” John continued on. “Don’t forget those.”
“Divided four ways,” Mary said, “and you’ll be taking a lot less than two thousand pounds a piece.”
“Four ways!” Lawson said. “You can’t mean to suggest…”
“It is not a suggestion,” Mary said. “You’re forgetting—how did you put it? Yes. You’re forgetting about Chartley’s bitch of a daughter. You thought you’d be safe from accusations of theft if you lodged the account in the name of the partnership. How do you suppose I got the bank to provide me with such detailed information? My father was never removed as partner, and I inherited his share on his death. The bank gave my solicitor the accounting because I am legally part owner.” She set her hands flat on the table. “Legally speaking,” she said, “you stole from me, too.”
“Yes,” Mr. Lawson said, his voice beginning to shake. “Divided four ways. Of course. And you’ll accept, ah, an equal share.” He looked almost green.
Perhaps this was what the ladies had been waiting for—for these two criminals to offer them everything. They exchanged glances.
“Shall we accept?” Eliza said. “They certainly could not offer us any more.”
“That’s true,” Mary said. “And yet something in me revolts at the prospect. It doesn’t seem right, if we let them go and they then proceed to do some other unsuspecting folks out of their fair share by unscrupulous means.”
Mr. Lawson and Mr. Frost stood at once, looking about the room in terror.
Mary brushed off her hands. “After all, the court will divide the proceeds. I’m sure it will do a fair job of it—and I don’t ask for more than fairness.”
“John,” Eliza said, “do poke your head outside the door and see if the constables have arrived yet.”
John stood and opened the door. “Ah,” he said. “What a coincidence. Here they are.”
THE NEXT HALF HOUR SEEMED to pass in a whirl. John made angry, accusatory noises when the constables entered the room, and Lawson and Frost were brought in on charges of theft and fraud. Eliza watched them go with a nod of sharp self-satisfaction. When they’d been conveyed to prison for the evening, Eliza offered her arm to Mary.
John watched in horror. “Wait,” he said. “Where are you two going?”
Eliza turned and cast him a glance over her shoulder. “I’m taking her home with me,” she said, as if he should have guessed this. “If you should like to come to supper, you’re invited.”
“But—”
“Come, Mary,” Eliza said.
But Mary didn’t move. She was looking at him—simply looking, but her eyes glistened.
“You can’t go with him,” Eliza said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone will see you, and they will all talk. There will be enough talk to get over as it is.”
“Eliza,” John said, “that’s enough. I’ll take her to wherever it is that she’s staying.”
“With me.”
“Good. Then it’s scarcely a mile. We’ll walk. In public. Nothing untoward about that.”
“But—”
John folded his arms and looked at her. He simply looked—and she sighed, shaking her head, and stalked away.
That left the room at the public house empty except for the two of them. It was hardly private. They could hear the other guests in the main room, and the maids went past the door every few minutes. Still, for the moment, they were free from prying eyes. John walked up to Mary. He didn’t know what to say. She was here in Southampton…but then, she’d had business with Frost and Lawson. Perhaps she’d come only for that.
She was looking up at him, her eyes so clear and guileless that he didn’t know what to make of her.
And then, she stood on her tiptoes, set her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him so hard that he staggered back a pace and had to reach out a hand to steady himself against a wall. One breath to get his wits, the other to regain his balance, and a third to kiss her back as she deserved.
“Thank God,” he murmured against her lips. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. Promise you’ll let me make you into a respectable married lady.”
“No,” she said passionately, still kissing him. “Never.”
“Mary.” He pulled away from her, but she was smiling. She didn’t look as if she were refusing to marry him, and so he held out a hand to her.
She placed her fingers against his palm. “Not a lady,” she said. “A
lady wouldn’t have gone to London and discovered the circumstances of the money. A lady doesn’t plot to help women get divorces. A lady doesn’t force her employer to pay wages by enlisting the help of a viscountess. I’ll never be a lady.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. “I think…I rather think I’m something better.”
He pulled on her hand. “And the rest of it?”
“I’m afraid I won’t help you with the respectable part, either. There was my precipitate departure from town. With Frost and Lawson going to trial, the details of my father’s embezzlement will come to light. And if that isn’t bad enough, before you arrived, I inquired at the public assembly hall. They’ve officially asked me to play the pianoforte. And”—This last came out quite defiantly—“They’re going to pay me two guineas a month.”
“I see.” But he didn’t. He was even more puzzled.
“I’m officially going to be paid for my labor. And I don’t intend to limit myself to playing at assemblies. That’s just a start. Respectable married ladies do not do such things, and so I refuse to be a respectable married lady.”
She hadn’t let go of him.
“I see,” he said again, with perhaps a little more understanding this time. “But that leaves married. What of that?”
“I will never be just your wife.”
“Why would you, when you have so much more you could be?”
He’d wanted her the moment he saw her. But the way he felt now, he was beyond want. She wouldn’t just be a beautiful possession to trot out to prove his luck to other fellows. Mary was more than a pretty picture to hang upon the wall and gaze at lovingly.
She was going to do amazing things. And he was going to help her do them.
“There’s only one way to be respectable.” She leaned her head against him. “But there are so, so many ways to be married. I think we’ll find a thousand variations on a theme of marriage, John. All of them magnificent. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He kissed her, long and slow. And because that wasn’t enough, he kissed her a second time, and a third, and more, until he lost count of all their kisses, until a maid came into the room to clear away the dishes and gasped out loud at the sight.
And just to be sure that they’d caused a scandal, he kissed her again.
Epilogue
Forty years later, on the road to Doyle’s Grange
THE EXMOOR HILLS SHIMMERED on the horizon, indistinct in the morning haze.
It had not been so much of a struggle to climb the hill to Doyle’s Grange all those years ago. Now, Mary could feel the strain in her back, her hips. Nothing uncommon, just age taking its usual toll. But then, what age took, age returned. There was no need to hurry now. Doyle’s Grange wasn’t going anywhere, and they had all the time they wished to explore. She stopped at the rise just before the path dipped into the windbreak and turned to look around.
John squeezed her hand in his. “I’m not going too fast for you, am I?”
“No. Just my back again.”
They’d walked more than a mile from the railway station, but she hadn’t really felt the exercise until they’d reached the hill.
“That’s a shame.” He set his arm around her waist and pressed his fingers into the small of her back. After all these years, he didn’t need to ask where it hurt. He simply rubbed his thumb in a circle right where the tension had gathered, pushing lightly until the gathered pain began to dissipate.
“That’s nice,” she said. “It’s quiet here.”
In comparison, it was. There were no trolley cars, no sellers hawking oranges or flowers. There was only a farmer plowing a field off in the distance and a kestrel circling overhead. It was louder than it once had been—there’d been an actual stand of cabs waiting at West Aubry—but still quiet.
“Quiet is nice.” John smiled. “For now. It’ll be loud enough once we’re in Vienna.”
“It’s different. Not the way I remember it.”
She didn’t remember it being so bright, for one. The spring air had only a hint of a bite to it. It was too quiet here, too quiet at home. Caroline, George, and Jacob were long since out of the house. Even Caroline’s children were off at school. Aside from a few last students, Mary had too little to do. So when John had suggested that they retrace their most important moments together as a second honeymoon, she’d jumped at the chance.
“Ready?” he asked.
Maybe he was asking about her back. Or maybe…
This, the first portion of their journey, was the only part she’d fretted over. Doyle’s Grange brought to mind a darker time, one she’d been glad to leave behind her. She feared that visiting this place again would bring back all those long-settled memories. But she shrugged and started up the hill again.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see when she came through the trees. Doyle’s Grange was the same—and yet so different. Someone had planted a hedge of shiny green leaves between the house and the lane. The drab front shrubberies had been torn out and replaced with beds of dark soil, sprouting the green beginnings of spring flowers. And in the meadows that surrounded the property, growing amidst the new grass, were crocuses—thousands of them.
And then she heard a sound—a shriek; not one of horror or pain, but a child’s excited squeal.
“You can’t catch me!” someone taunted. Another shriek, and the taunter tore into view, dashing across the road and into the tall grass across the way.
“Hyacinth!” came the return shriek, from far off. “You had better hide well.”
She and John exchanged amused looks.
“Well,” Mary said with a sigh, “you were right, after all.”
“About what?”
“I’ve got forty good years behind me. This—” she waved her hand at the cottage “—this is nothing in comparison. I’m bigger than it now.”
He smiled. “You always were.”
This place wasn’t a box, to hold her worst memories. It was only a bright, sunlit house—a place of happiness for a new generation.
And the last forty years had brought quite a bit of happiness. From here, they’d go on to London. With the money Mary had recovered from the partnership, they’d spent a few months of their first winters there. She had played in salons, enough to get her name out. From London, they’d move on to Vienna. She’d never played at the grandest halls—living in Vienna only during the winters, when the farm was quiet, had restricted her choices—but she was the only musician she knew whose husband never missed a performance.
There had been no professional reason to visit Paris, which made those few weeks in 1870 all the more memorable. She was looking forward to seeing that new tower they’d erected. After a week there, they had passage on a steamer to Boston—that was where John had displayed his new, more efficient water turbine, the one that had truly secured their future.
It had been a good life.
She took his hand again, and together, they started down the hill. Halfway to the station, though, she heard a noise—a faint little whimper, so high-pitched that she almost didn’t hear it.
“What’s that?” she said.
John shrugged. “What?”
She listened, turning her head to one side. “That noise—there it is again.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
Mary shrugged this off. Likely, the noise was too high for his ears. He couldn’t hear half the notes on the upper register of her piano anymore. She turned to the side of the road and rustled through the early summer foliage of the hedge.
“I knew I heard something!” she said, leaning down and moving branches aside.
“What is it?” He had come up behind her.
It was a dirty burlap sack, the end tied in a knot. Under the fabric, something moved.
“Oh, no.” Mindless of the branches that snagged her sleeves, she reached in. Her fingers closed around the edge, barely gripping, and then yanked the burden high—eliciting a high-pitched yip from the residents of the sack. Sh
e sank to the ground. Her fingers tore into the knot, her hands shaking.
And when the sack was opened—
“Oh, John.” She’d scraped her arms rescuing the bag. But she could scarcely feel those scratches for the feeling that almost overwhelmed her. The bag contained two tiny puppies—tawny all over, barely palm-sized, their eyes still creased closed.
“Oh little ones,” she crooned. “Who would do this to you? We’ll have to get you something to eat. John?”
He was looking at her with a small smile on his face.
Maybe another man would remind her of the expensive hotel that awaited them in Vienna, or the long voyage to America that would follow. Another man might have mentioned that puppies needed to be trained, or he might have made noises about needing his sleep at night.
John simply smiled. “Well. I guess it’s not going to be quiet any longer.”
Mary hugged the puppies to her and stood. She had forty good years behind her—a life that anyone would be lucky to live. Was it selfish to be glad that it still felt like the beginning?
“I wonder who’s at Beauregard’s farm now?” he said. “I think they’ll have milk.”
John put his arm around her and she snuggled up against him.
“I think,” she said, “I’m going to need another forty years of you.”
Thank you!
Thanks for reading What Happened at Midnight. I hope you enjoyed it!
• Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at www.courtneymilan.com, follow me on twitter at @courtneymilan, or like my Facebook page at http://facebook.com/courtneymilanauthor.
• Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.
If you’d like to read an excerpt from The Duchess War, the first full-length book in the Brothers Sinister series, please turn the page.
What Happened at Midnight is linked to two other novellas, all set at Doyle’s Grange: One Starlit Night, by Carolyn Jewel, set in the Regency period, and A Dance in Moonlight, by Sherry Thomas, set in the Edwardian era. Short excerpts from both of those books are also included.
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