“Last day of May.” Nanny peered over her spectacles. “How do we stand?”
Probably she referred to the lease, but a different matter was foremost on Rowena’s mind. “Simon has left.”
“Ah.” Nanny sank against the back of her seat. “That’s a shame, that.”
“He was always preparing me for it. He promised that he would.” Rowena swallowed, her throat tight. “He kept every promise he made to me. That one was no different.”
“It’s all right with you, then?”
“Of course it’s not all right. I wanted him to stay. Forever.” Boneless, Rowena sank to the floor at Nanny’s feet. They had sat this way on many evenings throughout Rowena’s childhood, as one read to the other, or as they talked about matters light or difficult. It seemed impossible that Rowena would not always be able to sit before this chair, pick at the threads of this carpet, confide in Nanny.
Just as Nanny had on hundreds of occasions before, she ran a gnarled hand over Rowena’s hair. Stroking the thick locks, a soothing gesture. “You love him. Does he know?”
“He does. Nearly. I…admitted as much, then tried to take it back.” How embarrassing, to share one’s heart and have it not matter in the slightest. “I can’t make him stay. I don’t want to be an obligation to him.”
A lease of ninety-nine years in human form. A building too large, too costly to manage. From the first, Simon’s presence in her life had been tied to the fate of Fairweather’s. She had hoped to keep them both.
“We’ve lost the lease,” Rowena admitted, closing her eyes as Nanny continued stroking her hair. “Lifford was offered four guineas a week. There is no way I can match that.”
“Ah,” said Nanny again. “So the temptation was removed, then.”
“Temptation?” She lifted her head, looking up at Nanny curiously.
“Yes. Temptation.” The comfortable old face smiled. “The temptation to invest in something when its time was past. The temptation to give too much of yourself to something you don’t love.”
“To Fairweather’s,” Rowena realized. “As it is now.” She hadn’t thought of it as a temptation, but as a burden. Perhaps those were two sides of the same coin—a coin no one wanted to receive, as it represented unbearable obligation.
Nanny nodded. “How long have we before we need to leave?”
“A few days. Lifford said he’d give us until week’s end.”
“Not long,” mused the old woman. “But not impossible to work around. What will you do?”
Rowena looked around at the familiar parlor, with its worn furniture and scattered family portraits. She thought of the workspace—its grand table, its racks of wood, its tidy tools. The smells she’d known all her life—the sweet cut wood and the oils for her tools and lamps. She’d never lived anywhere else. She’d never wanted any other life.
In a few days, all of it would be gone.
Her father would have hated this, grieved this. He had wanted her to persist, for Fairweather’s to survive just as he’d known it. But she was the last Fairweather, and she was alone, and she couldn’t manage anymore as she had when there were two of them.
But just because all would be gone didn’t mean all was lost. Now that change was forced upon her…it was fine. In a way, she was relieved.
“I have an idea,” she told Nanny. “Even though I’m on my own, I think it will be all right.”
“That’s my girl.” Nanny smiled, resting a hand on Rowena’s head. “And you’re not on your own, you know. You have me and Alice and your friend Edith. And a sometime cook.”
“And Cotton,” said Rowena. “Five women and a hedgehog. How are we not ruling the world already?”
She laughed, because the alternative was crying.
In truth, there were blessings on the reverse of most misfortunes. If Rowena had not been born with a little hand, Nanny might not have fought so fiercely for her to learn the family trade.
If Edith had never been left to her own devices, she’d never have come to work for the Duchess of Emory as a companion—and Rowena would never have met the truest friend she’d ever possessed.
If Simon Thorn had not been blackballed as a horn player, he would never have returned to Fairweather’s.
And if Lifford had never raised the rent beyond Rowena’s ability to pay, she would never have attempted to live a life other than the one laid out for her ninety-nine years ago.
Simon had been wrong, after all. Sometimes giving up was the right thing to do. Sometimes trying a different approach wasn’t the answer; walking away was.
Because sometimes an ending gave way to the beginning of something even better.
Chapter Eight
“It is a duke’s privilege always to be in the right! While you or I, gentle reader, cannot navigate the cataclysmic currents of life without often pleading for pardon.”
From How to Ruin a Duke by Anonymous
After four long, jolting, weary days, Simon descended from the coach on a street that seemed hardly to have changed in thirteen years. There was the grocery, there the butcher, there the dressmaker and milliner. And the church at the far end of the main street, its steeple freshly painted white.
Simon had spent his early years in the small vicarage behind the church, the only child of his parents. They were buried in the churchyard, and he strode in that direction to pay his respects.
Was he postponing his visit to the tinsmith’s workshop, or to Howard’s house? Probably. But he also owed his respects to Father McCrone, the widower who now served Market Thistleton as vicar and who had been Simon’s only correspondent in the village for years. To Father McCrone, he sent money for Howard. From the vicar, he received bits of news.
He was pleased, as he pushed open the gate to the churchyard, to see the vicar there. The churchyard was peaceful and green, with headstones both new and worn with age. Flowers adorned many graves, while ancient trees shaded the space, leaves whispering comfort in a slight breeze.
McCrone was clipping at a vining plant and didn’t notice Simon until he’d drawn near. The old man, still hale and strong, squinted at Simon from beneath an unruly thatch of white hair. “Help you?”
“You already have,” Simon replied. “I’m Simon Thorn, Father.”
“Simon Thorn.” The vicar dropped his clippers. “In the flesh. Well, now. This is a surprise.”
“It surprises me too. But it was time.”
“Past time, I think.” Stern gray eyes regarded him for a long moment, then McCrone clapped Simon on the back. “Yes, past time. Sorry I didn’t recognize you, but then, you’ve changed a fair bit since you were last here.”
“You haven’t.”
“I know, I know. I’ve looked old my whole life. Now my years have caught up to my looks.” With a grace that belied his statement, the vicar stooped to retrieve his clippers, then trimmed off another leaf with a flourish. “Come to visit your parents?”
“And a few of the living.” Simon took a deep breath. “Father, can you grant me absolution before I call on the Howard family?”
McCrone examined a rogue bit of vine, then clipped it off. “You’ve always had it for the wanting of it. Is your heart finally ready?”
“I think it is. It might be.” Simon told McCrone about the letter from Howard. He left out Rowena’s role, though the merry twinkle in the old man’s eyes showed he suspected there was more to the story.
“I heard about that,” said the vicar. “I hear about everything, and Howard doesn’t get a lot of mail from London.”
“Did he write the reply himself?”
“He did indeed.” McCrone pushed at the clippings with his foot, making a neat pile of them. “Going to see him next? At this hour, you might find him at the workshop.”
Simon blanched. “The…tinsmith’s workshop?”
“Well do you know it.” McCrone eyed Simon narrowly. “Will you permit yourself that absolution or not?”
Hell. Simon had never wanted to return
to the tinsmith to whom he’d been apprenticed. He didn’t want to see Howard there, struggling with tasks that had once been simple for him. He didn’t want to be faced with the contrast between what was and what had been.
But he hadn’t come all the way to Market Thistleton only to turn back. “I’ll try,” he told the vicar.
McCrone didn’t look entirely pleased by this, but he didn’t press the matter. “Your parents’ roses are blooming well,” was all he said. Gathering up the clippings, he bade Simon a good day and left the churchyard.
Alone amongst the sun-dappled graves, Simon made his quiet way to his parents’ plots. They had both died of a fever, separated by only a day, and they rested now beneath the same stone. Behind it, a sturdy rosebush leafed and bloomed.
“It’s still here.” Simon set down his satchel, reached out a forefinger, touched a ruffled red-pink flower. He had planted the bush when it, and he, were no more than sprouts. “I’m glad it’s been with you this whole time. Mum. Dad. I wish I’d been able to be here too. But…I’m not sorry about the way matters turned out.”
He wouldn’t have made a good vicar, but he’d tried to be a good whatever-else-he-was. He told them about Rowena, about her shop and the letter she sent. Why he was here now.
In the gentle breeze, the roses nodded, listening.
The loss of his parents was so old that it had faded, grown comfortable. He could shrug on the missing of them like a familiar robe, wrapping himself in memory—then lay it aside again fondly when it was time to leave. “I love you,” he told them both. “Wish me luck, all right?”
When he left the churchyard to turn toward the shop where he’d once been apprenticed, he felt more peaceful. This was how his life had progressed: the vicarage, the churchyard, the tinsmith’s workshop where Glennon Lines had taken in an orphan and tried to make a metalworker of him. Simon had failed at that, but he’d found other successes in his life. It was time for absolution.
From the front, the tinsmith’s shop looked like most others: a neat window displaying shining wares and a counter and shelves within to display yet more. At the rear of the store, these items were forged and formed, and it was to this workshop that Simon went.
The metallic odor was strong, as was the blast of heat from a forge as large as a blacksmith’s, hot as the maw of hell. Here sheets of tin were formed into cooking vessels and storage containers. Tin was punched into lanterns and tugged into kettle spouts and brushed in a molten layer over iron pots. It was snipped and sheared and soldered and hammered. Tin, tin, tin.
The workshop, with all its organized clutter and myriad tools, reminded him of Rowena’s. He’d always admired the skill of those who worked with their hands; it was proof that they had something to offer the world. This was why he’d been so willing to apprentice himself to Lines.
That, and the fact that he’d had nowhere else to go.
At the benches and tables, people worked using everything from massive hammers and anvils down to the most delicate nippers and narrow chisels. One of the workers, a stripling boy, was unfamiliar to Simon and was likely an apprentice. Lines himself, a man bulky from labor, had grown a luxuriant mustache. It, like his hair, was the exact shade of the silvery metal with which he worked.
Lines came forward when he noticed Simon. “Thorn! I heard you might be coming back to see us. Or have you come back to finish your apprenticeship?”
Simon reared back in dismay. “God, no. No. That’s not why I’m here.”
Lines laughed, scratchy and belly-deep. “And that was always going to be the answer, accident or no. You’re not a things sort of person, Thorn. You’re a people sort of person.”
Simon frowned. “That’s vague.”
“Not to the people you work with.” Lines looked about his workshop with satisfaction, then clapped Simon on the back. “Not everyone needs a kettle, Thorn. Sometimes people just need the help of another person.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” He hadn’t even come looking for forgiveness and understanding from his former master, but here it was. “I do intend to pay you back the apprenticeship fee,” Simon assured the older man. “Once Howard is cared for.”
“Hmm.” At this last statement, Lines looked skeptical. “Howard is already cared for, but you needn’t take my word for it. He’ll be back from an errand in a few minutes and you can see for yourself. As for the fee, I let that go when you left. I reported to the justice of the peace that I’d agreed to the ending of the apprenticeship.”
Simon blew out a tense breath. “Thank you for that. You had every right to come after me for the remaining years of my service.”
“Thorn. Please. I never intended to prosecute you for the accident, which it clearly was. And”—amusement crimped the old stern features—“you weren’t that good of an apprentice. If you’d stolen or embezzled from me, I’d have gone after you, but all you left with was the clothes on your back. I couldn’t begrudge you that, after all the work you’d done for me.”
All Simon could do was thank him again, heartily and heartfelt. There was no time to do more than this before a silhouette filled the doorway.
“Howard!” called Lines. “Here’s your visitor.”
“Hullo, Thorn,” came the voice from the sun-shadowed figure.
Until this moment, Simon wouldn’t have thought he remembered the sound of Elias Howard’s voice. It was easy to let memory blur with time and distance, so that a former friend and almost-brother became no more than the embodiment of guilt. But when Howard spoke Simon’s name, it was as if a stored safe of recollection was unlocked, and the contents that spilled forth almost brought Simon to his knees.
Sandwiches shared during a quick break from work. Howard’s comforting hand as Simon, newly orphaned, cried out his grief. A patient, corrective word in the absence of Lines. Taking the top bunk because Simon was restless and might fall out of bed.
“Howard.” Simon almost choked on the word, it was so weighty.
“Come out and speak with me,” came the familiar voice, and there was no question that Simon would obey.
An old wooden bench stood against the outside of the workshop. Here Howard settled, and Simon sat as far away as possible, settling his satchel beside the bench. Then he let himself stare, his first look at Howard in thirteen years, since the man’s fight for survival had been joined by a physician.
He had never been handsome, but he had a good face, kind and pleasant. It had hardened and roughened, but he still looked like himself, thank God. Oh, the hair was thinner, the eyebrows thicker. But mostly the change was to his right arm. In the rolled-up shirt-sleeves that all the tinworkers wore, the scarring was obvious. The hand had a cramped, frozen look, the fingers contracted.
“You’re staring at my arm,” Howard said.
“Yes.” Simon didn’t try to deny it. “I hurt you. I need to know how badly.”
“You did hurt me. But you can’t always tell how badly someone is hurt just by looking at his body.”
All right. He’d ask. “How badly are you hurt?”
Howard sighed. “Simon Thorn, you puppy. My hand’s in a sad state. It hurts me every day, and I have to see a physician for it, and someday I might have to have it amputated. But I can still work with tin; I’ve sorted out my own way. And I still became the person I wanted to be.” He shot Simon a sideways glance. “I hope you haven’t brought more guilt money.”
Simon thought of the bills he’d brought along, the money from selling his horn before Rowena bought it back for him. “It’s…not guilt money. It’s helping money.” And he had to ask another question. “How have you been able to do what you wanted to?”
“Time, hard work, the love of a good woman. I married Ellie Schofield as soon as I arose from my sickbed. Surely the vicar told you? McCrone’s been keeping you informed, hasn’t he, when you send him money with your newest address?”
“He has. But I thought…”
“But you thought Ellie couldn’t possi
bly have wanted to marry me still?” Howard’s voice went hard. “That there was nothing to love about a man with a damaged arm and hand? That she’d have married me out of pity?”
Simon thought of Rowena. “No. There’s as much to love as ever. A person’s worth doesn’t come from their hands.”
In Rowena’s case, her hands created beauty, and that gave them a beauty all their own.
He’d thought that any man who had Rowena and left her was a fool, and the man who left her bed was the greatest fool of all. Well, what did that make him? He was four days away from her now, and…and by God, he loved her. He’d been waiting for years to love her. How had he never realized it?
“I’m a fool,” Simon murmured.
Howard grunted. “Good of you to realize it,” he said, but sounded mollified. “You’re not only talking about me, are you?”
“I’m not. But that’s the most urgent right now. Howard, I just couldn’t believe I hadn’t ruined everything. You were like a brother to me, and I wanted you to be well and happy, but…”
“You thought you’d ruined my life. Thorn, you ass.” Howard chuckled. “You don’t have the power. I suppose I could have let the accident ruin my life, but that would have been my doing, not yours.”
“Do you forgive me?” Simon’s voice sounded hoarse and slow to his own ears. “I haven’t earned it. I could never earn it.”
“Forgiveness can’t be earned, you sapskull. It’s a free gift.”
This was what Rowena had said about love, and Simon had not believed her. He should have. He wished he had, that he’d agreed with her at once.
Howard continued, “Now, a body might be more likely to give it based on how you act. If you’d never shown a bit of remorse, I might have been far angrier. But you were a child doing your best. It was an accident. You never meant to cause harm.”
More likely to give it based on how you act. He had acted as if he wanted to be forgiven; he knew that. It had always been the deepest, most impossible desire of his heart.
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