by Beth Byers
Georgette recapped all she’d learned, and then Joseph said to her rather wearily, “Where is Charles?”
“I left him at the library,” Georgette replied innocently.
“I might believe that wide gaze of yours if I wasn’t aware how clever you are and that Charles is worried over you.”
“Why?”
“There’s a killer on the loose, Georgette. And you’re interfering in the investigation.”
“I already knew it wasn’t the three that I visited.”
His look was utterly exasperated as he demanded, “And Mrs. Baker?”
Georgette tried to look apologetic. When that didn’t fly, she said, “I wasn’t going to eat or drink anything.”
“If Mrs. Baker had been the killer, Georgette, you would have been at risk regardless of whether you consumed anything. If poisoning you didn’t work, there could have been any number of ways you died, and then I would be dealing with two murders, a heartbroken uncle, a heartbroken love—if she’ll ever give me a chance—and my own guilt. Bloody hell, woman, at least drag Charles into danger with you.”
Georgette blinked stupidly at Joseph. Had he…had he…said what she thought he had said?
“Don’t look so shocked,” Joseph said. “Why else would he be here?”
“For peace and quiet,” Georgette suggested quietly.
“In Bard’s Crook?” Joseph laughed heartily, but it didn’t last. “No more of this putting yourself at risk,” he commanded sternly.
Georgette paused, biting her lip.
“What the devil are you up to now?”
Georgette gave him wide, weepy eyes, but it seemed that her tricks wouldn’t work on him. She scowled and he only grinned in reply. “There is no scenario, my dear Georgette, where I risk the wrath of my uncle for you to get your way.”
“I want to talk to Mr. Thornton.”
“He’s our most likely suspect,” Joseph groaned, shoving his hands into his hair. “Absolutely not.”
“Not Jasper. By Jove, Joseph, I’m not an idiot. Mr. Thornton. The father.”
“The father?” Joseph asked. “I understood he was away.”
“He’s only just returned. And he’s very…inclined to want to solve a female’s problems. To step in and take care of things. He’s entirely honorable. There is no chance I’d be in danger.”
“Then take Charles with you.”
Georgette quickly shook her head and Joseph groaned again, shoving his hands back into his hair. “This is the one who met Charles? At the publishing house?”
Georgette nodded. Joseph took Georgette’s arm and led her away from Mrs. Baker’s house. “You’ll go home immediately after? You won’t leave your cottage unless one of us is with you? Until the killer is found?”
Georgette considered long enough to have Joseph scowling at her again.
“Charles will need to come every day to walk the dogs with me and Marian.”
“Speaking of Marian,” Joseph said, “you’ll keep her with you too.”
Georgette finally agreed simply to get on with the next step.
She was going to have to cry, she thought. Weep on Mr. Thornton’s shoulder and manipulate him into knowing what she knew. In her bones, Georgette was certain that the loud, brash, angry, generally ill-natured and cruel Jasper Thornton had poisoned Miss Schmitz. She just needed Mr. Thornton to recognize it as well because she didn’t think they’d catch the son all that quickly if the father didn’t help.
18
GEORGETTE DOROTHY MARSH
The Thornton house was, possibly, the largest in the village. It was brick with heavy double doors, a large garden, a wrought iron fence, and it had the little touches that screamed wealth. The best of everything. Surely, Mr. Thornton had lost money in the decline of the economy. They all had, but it seemed that if you started out with enough, you were still quite wealthy even if you were less wealthy.
Georgette found Mr. Thornton sitting in his garden with a book on his lap. She approached him politely, making sure to keep herself as demure as possible. She said as quietly as possible while also being loud enough for him to hear her, “Mr. Thornton?”
He snuffled, jerking away from his snooze, and looked up. His bushy eyebrows lifted rather dramatically in surprise. They seemed to shuffle about his face of their own volition as Georgette asked, “May I speak with you?”
“Of course, my dear, of course.” He waved her onto the stone bench where he had been half-snoozing. “What can I do for you?”
For some reason, his face seemed rather solemn and down. Was she reading into his expression what she was about to do to him? Perhaps she wasn’t all that clever and only as observant as the average person.
“I—” Georgette found she couldn’t lift the handkerchief she’d prepared to her eye and pretend to dab away a tear. This was a good man in front of her. She twisted the handkerchief in her lap, gaze fixed on her hands. “I fear that I need to speak with you about something you’d prefer I didn’t.”
Mr. Thornton cleared his throat. “You don’t need to coddle me, my dear.”
Georgette met his gaze and once again, she felt as though he already knew what she was about to say. Was it possible? There looked to be a melancholy knowing in that gaze, or perhaps she was, once again, seeing what she felt should be there.
“I attended Miss Schmitz while the poison was hitting her. I helped to find her cousin, Mrs. Dogger.”
Mr. Thornton nodded. His face was white, and Georgette was suddenly sure that he did have an idea of what this was about.
“May I be rudely straightforward with you, Mr. Thornton?”
He nodded again, looking ill.
“Miss Schmitz was acting like a character from the Harper’s Bend book because she wanted to be something other than what she was. In the process of it, she listened at doors and ferreted out secrets and tormented people about those things. It was wrong.”
Mr. Thornton met Georgette’s gaze, and she saw that deep sadness once again.
“But she wasn’t an evil woman.”
“No,” Mr. Thornton agreed. “Laurieann is a good woman.”
“And yet,” Georgette said, “because someone is blackmailing people from Bard’s Crook with secrets they’d prefer to hide and Miss Schmitz was behaving foolishly, she was mistaken as the blackmailer and murdered because of it.”
Again, there was no surprise in that gaze.
Georgette reached out and took Mr. Thornton’s hand. “Miss Schmitz knew a secret about your son.”
“I know,” Mr. Thornton said. “I know she did. I talked to her. She said her conscience could not allow her to keep silent.”
Georgette leaned back and bit her lip as she realized they both knew what had happened. They were both entirely aware of the murder and who had committed it. She needed, however, Mr. Thornton to help them solve it as quickly as possible.
“She worked for the library on one of the days that Miss Hallowton took off and Miss Schmitz read some of the mail, including a letter from a one-time paramour of my son who needed money for their child.”
Georgette gasped, holding her mouth.
“Miss Schmitz rightly guessed that I wouldn’t let my grandchild go hungry simply because she was illegitimate and that Jasper was hiding the child’s existence from me to avoid being removed from my will.”
Georgette pressed her hand harder to her mouth to hold back another gasp and stared with wide, shocked eyes on the man.
Mr. Thornton cleared his throat, avoiding Georgette’s gaze. “It’s my fault she is dying. I didn’t confront Jasper. I left Bard’s Crook and went to meet my grandchild. I saw my own eyes staring back at me in that little girl’s face. Then I went and visited my nephews. I wanted to see if they, at least, were what they were supposed to be. They are, you know, they’re good men. Working hard. Doing right by their families.”
Georgette had no idea what to do or say, so she held her silence to keep herself from saying the wrong thing.
“Why are my sons villains and my brother’s sons so good? How did I ruin my boys? All that can be said of Heathcliff is that he isn’t a murderer. I can’t recommend him to the world, Georgette, and he’s my own boy.”
“It has been repeated to me rather a lot lately that we are not responsible for the choices of others. You were present, Mr. Thornton. You set a good example. You were involved in their lives. I don’t know what else you could have done, but I am certain that their choices are not your fault, and I am also certain that your daughter is a good woman.”
Mr. Thornton laughed bitterly. “I always neglected her, you know, for my boys. I am a foolish and blind man and too old now to do anything more than regret my life.”
Georgette took his hand again. “No! You are a man mourning for his children and the choices they made. You have a daughter who loves you and a granddaughter who, I am sure, wants to love you and time enough to make up for what has passed. Don’t let what happened ruin you.”
“My son killed that poor woman to hide his crimes from me for money.”
Georgette took in a shuddering breath. “Are you certain?”
Thornton nodded, that sick expression back again. “I haven’t done anything yet. But I’ll have to turn him in, won’t I? Laurieann is not dead yet, but she’s as good as. She saved little Cordelia and she ruined Jasper.”
Georgette shook his hand hard and hissed, “Jasper ruined himself.” She paused. “How do you know he did it?”
“It wasn’t hard to discover. I talked to Wilkes and found out the details, and then I backtracked knowing it was Jasper. He took the chocolates Nancy bought her mother. He took the strychnine I kept in the cellar for the rats. Easy enough if you’re a devil. Maybe if I had been here instead of researching my nephews, I’d have known. I’d have been able to stop him.”
Georgette closed her eyes to block the pain on Mr. Thornton’s face.
“Do you know what the worst of it is? I wouldn’t have objected to him marrying Cordelia’s mother. My own wife was a former factory worker. I’m not so old-fashioned that I would turn away a pretty farmer’s daughter. Jasper did so because she was nothing to him. Just like the baby was nothing to him. None of this had to happen if Jasper weren’t a snobbish, spoiled malcontent who thinks himself better than he is. He’s just the child of a man who was lucky and a woman who once was as poor as could be. There is nothing important about us.”
Georgette didn’t know what to say, so she just held Mr. Thornton’s hand, eventually handing over her own handkerchief as he wept silent tears. They sat long enough that Joseph eventually appeared at the gate. He waited in silence while Georgette rubbed Mr. Thornton’s back and then when Mr. Thornton finally noticed Joseph, Georgette whispered she’d take care of the rest.
Georgette walked Mr. Thornton to the door and regretted bitterly her portrayal of him in her book. If only, she thought, she could go back and just write pure fiction. If only she could have trusted herself and not set off this domino of tragedy.
CHARLES AARON
He could tell by the look on her face that she was sick at heart. Gone was the snapping skirt and the clenching and unclenching fists. Instead she walked slowly, as though her body were heavy, and when she reached him she asked, “Do you know what I thought?”
He shook his head, taking her hand and placing it on his arm.
“I thought, if this were a book, I would make Jasper the villain. Rude. Mean, really. Always a bit worse than you’d have imagined. He got sent down from school and no one ever found out why. He doesn’t work. Manipulates his mother and is cruel to his sister. There, I thought, of all the people is the villain.”
Charles walked Georgette into her own garden and sat with her on the chairs near the willow tree at the back.
“I didn’t think about his father, about everyone who would be ruined by his actions. I just watched a man I know to be kind weep into my handkerchief because his son is in fact a villain. I watched him hand over the evidence to arrest his firstborn because it was honorable, and then I held his wife as she cried.”
“Georgette,” Charles said gently.
“It’s not even my fault. Laurieann read the mail when she worked for Miss Hallowton at the library. I didn’t have anything to do with that. Or with Laurieann’s determination to ensure that the grandfather knew of his grandchild. Or of the fact that anyone who had met Mr. Thornton would know that he would disown his son for abandoning a woman after taking her virtue.”
Charles lifted her hand and pressed a kiss on the palm. Her sad, honey brown eyes fixated on his face, and he said, “You’re right. None of this is your fault, but you can take credit for being the one to hold both of those parents while they cried, and you can take credit for helping Mr. Thornton give the evidence to convict his son that he was—I am certain—tortured over giving.”
Georgette slipped her fingers through Charles’s and let him hold her hand. It was the first time that Charles thought she might realize why he was here and utterly the wrong moment to speak what was on his mind. They sat outside until Charles realized Georgette was shivering. He stood, lifting her into his arms, and carried her inside. He took her to Eunice, who met his gaze with lifted brows.
“I fear she is making herself ill.”
Eunice’s lips twitched but it didn’t lessen Charles’s worry. Instead he carried Georgette to the Chesterfield in her parlor, covered her with a blanket, lit the fire, and told Eunice, “It wouldn’t be a bad thing, I think, to give her some tea with laudanum or a sleeping pill.”
Eunice took a sleeping pill from a bottle in the cabinet and carried it to Georgette.
“You need to rest, Miss Georgie.”
Rather obediently, Georgette took the pill and curled onto her side. She was, he thought, far, far too good for both Bard’s Crook and him. It took her only minutes to fall asleep, and he certainly didn’t miss the few tears that made their way down her cheek.
“Out with you,” Eunice ordered.
“May I return?”
“I’ll be very upset if you don’t,” Eunice said as Bea leapt onto the sofa and curled up next to Georgette’s head and the other two struggled for space at Georgette’s feet. “Go on now.”
19
If the goddess Atë had turned her wily gaze on Bard’s Crook often over the previous days, no one would have been startled. Only the most minxish of creatures would have been interested to see Miss Schmitz slide from sleep into her final rest. Or would want to watch as Mrs. Dogger inherited all that was left of Miss Schmitz’s meager fortune and received a very generous donation to start again in another village. Mr. Thornton purchased the little cottage himself to see Mrs. Dogger on her way and then paid for the help in moving her just to ease her passing out of his day-to-day life.
It wasn’t those actions that gathered Atë’s heart. Neither was it to see the good Scotland Yard detective throw himself at Marian Parker’s feet and beg for her love. A romantic goddess, Aphrodite, perhaps, or Guinevere or Psyche might have been interested in that story, but not Atë. Not even when Marian Parker dropped to her knees and cried into the detective’s chest a series of yeses, recriminations about not finding her in London, and demands to actually and truly love her.
No, no—what intrigued Atë was when the established and comfortable bachelor walked up the little path to the little stone cottage and found his love, just recovered from her cold, sitting in the garden. Atë gazed with utter hope on the couple as Charles said, “Georgette, surely you know that I love you? That I have come back to Bard’s Crook to beg your affections, to plea with you to lay your burdens at my feet, and to wish for your hand?”
Georgette stared at Charles in shock. “I had no such idea.”
“How can that be so?”
Georgette took in a deep breath. “Charles, no one has ever loved me or wanted me, not like you’re claiming to do. How can I believe this…this…nonsense?”
“Because no one else has had the wit, does
that mean it is not possible for me to love you?”
“It means that I am flummoxed,” Georgette admitted with an averted gaze. “I don’t know how to feel or what to think, and I am certain that I have been living in a fog only to escape into this surreal haze of just beginning to create my own fate. I barely am comfortable with being happy with what I have to expect more. I don’t even know what I want for the future. I keep expecting my present happiness to burn away.”
Charles took her hand. “So you don’t want me?”
Georgette glanced at him, her baffled feelings clear. “Don’t you see? You’re Mr. Darcy. You’re handsome and kind and clever and you helped me to save myself, and I feel as though I am Charlotte Lucas and you’re seeing Elizabeth Bennett. I am not Lizzie, Charles. I am certain you will only be disappointed in me, and then we’ll both knock about in misery, regretting this moment forever. I can’t do that.”
Charles laughed. “I am no Mr. Darcy.”
“I find you occupy the same place in my mind as Mr. Darcy, Charles, and I can’t imagine that we would fit.”
“What do I have to do to convince you?” he asked, shocked to find himself being turned down.
“I need to believe,” she told him honestly, “in my heart of hearts that you see all of my Charlotte Lucas-ness and you want me all the same.” She paused, and she tried to find the words for the rest.
Charles seemed to understand her because he waited for her to finish.
“And,” Georgette said quietly. “I have to believe that we will be happier together than we are apart. I only just found happiness and peace with my life, Charles. I’m afraid to rock my own boat and find myself capsized.”
He cupped her cheek and leaned forward, leaving a kiss on her forehead. “You know, neither of us are characters in a book, but if you need time to believe that I love you and will continue to love you, I will give you that time.”
She dabbed a tear away from the edge of her eye, terrified she’d ruined all the chances she would ever have at love. She stared at him, uncertain of what to say, but found that gentle smile and warm gaze fixed on her face as though she weren’t a plain old-maid.
