Haunting Miss Trentwood

by Belinda Kroll

  “Calm down,” Trentwood cautioned, “or you will make them wonder what is wrong.”

  A valid point. Mary exhaled, having not realized she had been holding her breath. She closed her eyes. “Go ahead, Jasper.”

  “Well,” Steele began slowly, “it seems you may be a rather rich woman, Miss Trentwood.”

  Mary opened her eyes. “May?”

  Hartwell cleared his throat. “According to these papers, your father had a trust set aside for you. There is no one left in your family, no male heirs anyway, and so the house has been left to you. He took advantage of that new law and put it in your name should he die.”

  Mary swallowed.

  “Yes,” Steele said, cutting Hartwell off from saying any more. “Mr. Trentwood set aside a trust for you, it’s true. But there are provisions to your access to the trust.”

  “Of course there are,” Mary said.

  “Watch your tone,” Trentwood said.

  “You watch your tone,” Mary snapped.

  “I beg your pardon?” Steele said.

  Mary colored. “I—what are the provisions to the trust?”

  Hartwell leaned back from the papers. It was as though he had lost interest in them. It seemed they told him everything he needed to know: Mary was poor for the time being, but as soon as she knew what she needed to do to access her trust, she would be provided for. There was no reason for her to blackmail his sister.

  And if Hartwell were as smart as he seemed to think he was, he might have figured that out sooner rather than later. In the meantime, his attention was focused on Mary. The way his eyes settled on her face made her squirm in her chair.

  “Stop that,” Trentwood said. “You’re not a school girl.”

  Ready to retort, Mary caught sight of Hartwell’s brows rising. She snapped her mouth shut.

  Steele shifted in his seat. He looked more than a bit discomfited. “The provisions are that you will have access to all the monies, as long as you have the key.”

  Mary sighed. Of course. Wait, what had he said? “What key?”

  ***

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mary pressed the heel of her hand against her throbbing temple. “What key?” she repeated through gritted teeth.

  “I’m not certain,” Steele said.

  Mary looked at Trentwood from the corner of her eye. “What key?” she demanded.

  Steele sputtered a bit. “Miss Trentwood, I assure you, neither I nor my barrister know of any key, or why, it seems, you haven’t its possession.”

  “Don’t think she was talking to you, chap,” Hartwell muttered.

  Trentwood lounged in his chair, his whitish eyes meeting Mary’s flashing ones calmly. “The key to your mother’s lock box.”

  “The key to my mother’s lock box?” Mary said, incredulous. She put the heels of both her hands to her temples.

  “So you knew of the key listed here?” Steele said, leaning forward with obvious relief.

  “Of course not,” Mary snapped. “I only just realized I needed a key. How could I possibly have known?”

  Her jaw working as she watched Steele and Hartwell exchange glances, Mary managed to bite her tongue. Her father was right, she wasn’t a school girl anymore. She couldn’t go around boxing the ears of everyone who annoyed her, though she had so very little patience left for this farce.

  “So then, your mother’s lock box?” Steele said.

  “Well, apparently it’s the key I want.” Mary spoke slowly, as though he was hard of hearing.

  Hartwell leaned forward then. “Who told you that?”

  Her mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t come out. My father did, you idiot. She felt her mouth make the motions, but her voice failed to make a sound. She looked at Trentwood. Her eyes widened.

  Still don’t know enough about these Londoners, she heard Trentwood’s voice echo in her mind. No need to let them think you’ve gone mad.

  “Perhaps I have gone mad,” Mary whispered.

  “I’m sorry?” Steele said. He had been gathering the papers with a furious frown, muttering about not understanding why his employer had sent him out to this back of beyond village for something he could have written in a letter.

  “She thinks she’s gone mad,” Hartwell offered.

  “I didn’t ask you, Quasimodo.”

  Mary’s mouth dropped open. Hartwell burst into laughter.

  “Quasimodo? Really? Is that really the best you can do?” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “No wonder you’re only a solicitor.”

  Steele shoved the papers into his satchel and stood. “Beg your pardon, Miss Trentwood, but my duty has been fulfilled.”

  Also standing, Mary said, “You must stay the night; the roads will be dangerous with the rains.”

  Steele looked as though he wanted to tell her she was as mad as she feared, but Hartwell stood just then and seemed to scare off the words. “Of course, thank you, that is most kind.”

  “Too kind,” Trentwood said. “You ought to let the idiot freeze in the snow after what he said about you. You owe him nothing.”

  Not wanting to respond, Mary was glad that Pomeroy chose to enter just then with the mail.

  “Two for you, sir,” Pomeroy said, handing two poorly-addressed letters to a shocked Hartwell.

  “They’re both from my sister,” he said in monotone.

  “Nothing bad, I hope,” Mary said quickly, watching Hartwell scan the little pieces of paper.

  His expression was grim. “More blackmail. And now a kidnapping threat.”

  “Oh,” she said, her voice weak.

  “Blackmail?” Steele exclaimed.

  Mary sank into her mother’s chair. “The information about my finances... Alex thought perhaps I was blackmailing his sister. But I would never threaten a baby.” She waited until Hartwell tore his tormented eyes from the paper clenched in his shaking hand. “I would never threaten a baby.”

  Hartwell blinked away tears of a different sort. He nodded and cleared his throat. “I believe you,” he said, his voice rough.

  “Would someone tell me what is going on here?” Steele snapped, looking from one to the other. He jumped when Hartwell grabbed his shoulders. “Unhand me,” he said, sounding calmer than he looked.

  “You’ve stumbled into quite the story,” Hartwell said, his voice sounding a bit crazed. “I came here determined to find out who was blackmailing my sister, and now I’ve no evidence, no information. But you’re a solicitor. It’s your occupation to find information. I’ll enlist your services and you’ll stay here until you find evidence that the blackmailer has something to do with this house.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mary said, “I just proved I’m not the blackmailer!” She shivered beneath the glare Hartwell aimed at her.

  “Which leaves everyone else.”

  ***

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mrs. Trentwood’s bedroom hadn’t been opened since her death. With the unexpected guests, there had been no other choice but to place Mrs. Durham there for as long as the Londoners saw fit to stay in Compton Beauchamp. Mrs. Durham knew that couldn’t have been an easy decision for Mary. Why, the girl practically worshipped the memory of her mother, however mistaken she was in believing her mother deserved such piety. The way Mary clung to that silly pendant from her mother made Mrs. Durham want to rip it from Mary’s thin neck.

  No, no, that’s not what Mrs. Durham wanted to do. She wanted to understand why her sister was so loved, when she was so alone.

  No, no, that wasn’t true either; it made her sound too pitiful, and Mrs. Durham refused to be considered pitiful by any means.

  She was a survivor. She had survived her husband falling out of love with her. She had survived losing what riches she had. She had survived living on her brother-in-law’s begrudging generosity.

  It was only natural, therefore, that Mrs. Durham assumed she could survive her niece’s temper tantrums about opening a room or two. Or three. And if not her niece’s temper tantrums, th
en her tantrums by proxy, also known as Mary’s new lap dog, also known as that upstart Hartwell.

  It was as if Hartwell didn’t realize Mrs. Durham had seen him in his swaddling clothes, once upon a time. She had known him before his face had been mangled, such was her history with his sister Lady Kirkham.

  Mrs. Durham stopped her pacing. If she wasn’t careful, she would wear a path through the already fragile rug that covered the majority of Mrs. Trentwood’s bedroom. She shuddered.

  The room still smelled of her sister. Rose water and laudanum. Thankfully, her sister hadn’t been brought up here after her death for the funerary preparations. Mrs. Durham knew she wouldn’t have been able to stay the night, if that were the case.

  Everything was as Mrs. Trentwood had left it on her morning constitutional around the garden. Her hairbrush with golden hairs still caught within its bristles laid carelessly at the edge of the vanity. A discarded newspaper crumpled at the foot of her bed. The curtain pulled open an inch, allowing a ribbon of sunlight into the room. Her afternoon tea dress pressed and waiting, coated with a layer of dust.

  Had there been servants available to strip the room down to nothing but a skeleton of furniture, Mrs. Durham would have ordered it done in an instant.

  It was one of many things Mrs. Durham would have liked to have done.

  “This is all your fault, Henry,” she muttered to her reflection in the vanity mirror. She sat at the vanity and began to brush a lock of her graying hair with her sister’s hairbrush. She wondered how her husband would have responded.

  “This is as much my fault as it is yours,” he probably would have said, smoothing his mustache. He was always smoothing his mustache, even though he had enough wax in it to keep it in place for years at a time, Mrs. Durham had always thought.

  Once upon a time, when he had been in love with her, that implacable mustache had been one of his many charms.

  “My fault!” she would have replied. “Was it my fault you fell out of love with me?”

  He would have sighed and shaken his head, and given her a look of affectionate annoyance. “Why you insist I’ve fallen out of love with you, I’ll never know. You have everything you could need. I don’t know what more you could want.”

  “And what do I need?”

  “A home to care for, a husband.”

  “A child?”

  He would have frowned at her then. He probably would have turned his back to her. He would have picked up his hat and cane. He would have announced he was going for a walk. He would have left even as she begged him to stay, even as she clung to his arm, apologizing hysterically.

  “I couldn’t help it,” Mrs. Durham would have told him.

  “Yes, you could have,” he would have said, shutting the door in her face as he left for his club.

  Mrs. Durham kept brushing the lock of hair. She continued brushing even as she ripped hairs from her head. She felt no pain. Her hand moved mechanically. She stared into the mirror. She was lost in the reflection of her eyes. Her husband had once called her eyes bewitching. She wondered if it was true, if she could bewitch with her eyes. Or was it just another one of Henry’s lies?

  Mrs. Durham was fairly certain she would never know.

  ***

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Hartwell towered over Steele, his fingers digging into Steele’s thin arms. It never occurred to Mary that Steele was a thin man. Not lanky, just... delicate. That is, he looked delicate compared to Hartwell, who, while not brawny, had more to his frame.

  Hartwell seemed grounded even while in an obvious panic. His hands didn’t shake, his voice was even. The only indication of his distress was his hair falling before his eyes, and the way he clutched Steele. Mary envied Hartwell’s ability to maintain control.

  “You could maintain control if you learned to breathe once in a while.”

  From the corner of her eye, Mary saw Trentwood inch just out of view. There were matters to be dealt with. “I’m going for a walk,” she announced. “I’m going for a walk, and you two shall have to do without me.”

  “What?” Hartwell snapped. He dropped Steele to the sofa as if he were nothing more than a child’s toy.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Mary said, rising. She still had her thick shawl draped around her shoulders, and her walking boots—good heavens did they put her in bed with her boots still on?—and if she moved quickly she could grab one of her father’s old jackets she kept tucked away in a back corner of the library.

  Hartwell blocked her path.

  Mary refused to look him eye-to-mangled-eye. She stared at his muddied boots and fitted breeches that flattered his muscular calves. For a barrister, he was surprisingly fit.

  “You may not be the blackmailer, Miss Trentwood, but someone is,” Hartwell growled.

  She arched her brows. “Might I remind you, Mr. Hartwell, that you are a guest in my home? I didn’t take to hearing your accusations that I am a blackmailer lightly, and I certainly don’t take to hearing accusations of anyone in my household, either!”

  “Be that as it may,” Hartwell said, “someone in this house is blackmailing my sister and I’m determined to find the cause of it.”

  “Why are you so convinced of this? Why can’t you just pay this blackmailer and leave me and my family be?” Mary said.

  Hartwell’s mouth dropped as he staggered back a step.

  Steele took this moment to join the conversation. “If what he says is true, my dear Miss Trentwood, then he couldn’t simply pay off the blackmailer. Such characters are never satisfied. They will come again, ever stronger.”

  Mary resisted the urge to shrug. How that was her problem, she didn’t know. She wasn’t the one being blackmailed.

  “Forgetting all that, how can you feel safe living in a house with a mind bent to criminal activity?” Hartwell stepped closer. “How would your father have liked it?”

  “He’d have disliked it, and you know it,” Trentwood said in Mary’s ear, making her flinch. “Listen to him, he speaks sense.”

  Which one? Mary asked. Which one am I to believe? The one you possessed, or the one you dislike?

  Distracted by her conversation with Trentwood, Mary didn’t notice Hartwell’s hand coming toward her cheek until it was too late. She froze as the very tips of his fingers brushed against her skin. She caught her breath as her flesh flared with a bold heat that betrayed her embarrassment and... was it possible? Her eyes flickered in Steele’s direction.

  “Honestly,” Hartwell said softly, though his tone carried every morsel of his annoyance, “do you think any honorable man would allow you to be victim to such a person, if he knew it was in his power to protect you?”

  Hartwell’s fingertips moved from her cheek to smooth an errant hair behind her ear. Mary swallowed. A chill ran down her back. Such reactions were for schoolgirls, not mistresses of the manor. She pressed her lips together and blinked rapidly in a vain attempt to break her gaze from Hartwell’s dark eyes.

  Really, when one got used to his face and felt the effect of his smile, there were only his eyes of which to truly take note. Dark though they were, Hartwell’s eyes spoke promises that made Mary feel hot and cold in turn.

  “I haven’t asked for protection from anyone,” Mary said with a falter. “I don’t need protection.”

  Part of Mary wanted Hartwell to take her in his arms so she could outright bawl. Part of her wanted to run away so she could sort through her jumbled thoughts and emotions alone. Still a third part wanted to lean so her cheek rested in Hartwell’s hand.

  “I shall stay to ensure whatever harm could come your way will not come from Mr. Hartwell,” Steele said, jumping to his feet to slap Hartwell’s hand away from Mary.

  “Finally,” Trentwood said, “the boy shows some gumption.”

  Mary’s nod was terse at Steele, glad he had been strong enough to do what she could not. The way her stomach had fallen to her feet, no, not to her feet, but to the basement below, made her quite certain tha
t if Steele hadn’t been in the room, Hartwell might very well have kissed her. She wasn’t entirely certain she would have pulled away. What would her father have said at such behavior?

  “Agreed,” Hartwell said, his tone crisp and business-like. He smiled, brightening her mood as daybreak brightens the night. “Do forgive me, Mary, if I’ve overstepped my bounds. I’m certain you’ve seen I think you’re a funny little thing.” He shrugged. “It’s been what, a day? Not that time matters when it comes to such odd circumstances as these. The fact is I don’t want to see you get hurt. I’m not certain how much more you could take.”

  “I’m not some delicate piece of china, Alex.”

  Hartwell nodded. “Of course you aren’t. China doesn’t have feelings, Miss Contrary. Or stomachs.”

  “You’re impossible,” Mary said.

  “Indeed,” he said, grinning.

  After a very unladylike grunt, Mary muttered, “I’m going for a walk. Tell Pomeroy to not wait for me if I don’t come back in time for dinner.”

  “Why Miss Trentwood,” Steele exclaimed, “you can’t be thinking of walking alone.”

  Hartwell shook his head with a little laugh. “You’re going to lose this battle, friend.”

  “Jasper,” Mary said, her voice deceptively sweet, “stick your nose back in your papers.” She turned on her heel to face Trentwood, who looked far too pleased for a man who had been dead for a month and more. You are coming with me.

  Trentwood snorted. As if I’d have it any other way.

  By the time they reached Wayland’s Smithy, it had begun to rain. It was the kind of loud rain that spoke of the end of winter and the coming of spring. Mary had been forced to jog that last one hundred yards to the black opening of the Saxon tomb. She had slid on the slick rock floor covered with decaying leaves, and Trentwood’s tight grasp on her arm righted her. She jerked away from his unnatural touch.