Page 24 of Lyon on the Lam (The Lyon’s Den)

A knock on her door sent Tavie curling under the bedclothes.

“Tavie?”

Matthew’s voice sounded as though someone had plowed a furrow through him overnight. She felt just as hollow.

“I have a headache.”

It wasn’t a lie. Crying into one’s pillow until the wee hours of the morning tended to make that happen.

The floor didn’t squeak. He wasn’t leaving. And though she ached to feel his arms around her, she had things to do and couldn’t lean on him every time things went wrong.

Like her husband trying to kill her.

“I need some time. Please.”

A moment passed. “I have business to conduct today, but Martin will be at the door while I’m out.”

She wasn’t certain if that was to keep Albert out, should he arrive, or to keep her in—should she decide to haunt him throughout the city.

After all, if a man planned the murder of his wife, she had every right to haunt him.

“Thank you.”

“I…I’m sorry, dearest. We’ll talk more later.”

Matthew left then, and the dark, cool room settled around her. The drawn curtains muffled the light and the noise from the street, leaving her floating in an inky expanse with only her aching head for company.

She could almost hear the I told you so in Matthew’s words. To be fair, he wasn’t overjoyed about being right. She had refused to stay behind and let him filter what she learned. As a result, she had been walloped from out of the blue. Again.

It had been worrisome to think her husband was a spy for France. Now she had gathered that her suspicions had been a side effect of being fed a steady diet of poison.

It had been shocking to learn that Albert had a separate family on another continent. But now she knew he’d wanted to get rid of her before his bigamy was revealed.

Or perhaps the bigamy didn’t matter. Perhaps he wanted to be rid of her anyway. Maybe it didn’t matter how hard she tried to be a good wife.

Her head throbbed. Her stomach rumbled.

“You can lie here and wallow, or you can move forward.” It was advice she’d given herself almost every day for the first year of her marriage. She’d had to do it less often lately.

One foot in front of the other, one evening at a time, one ball after the next. Life had become routine.

“Forward.” Tavie kicked free of the bedclothes and swung her feet to the floor.

She pulled the curtain back and tied them, letting in the pale yellow light that passed for sunshine in London. Pink geraniums filled the box under the window and bobbed in the breeze.

She envied them that color. It was one of her favorites, yet she could never wear it because of her hair. She went to the wardrobe and chose the next best thing—a simple dress in a hue that matched the sky.

It was a relief to dress and prepare for the day without anyone else underfoot. While Tavie could appreciate the practicality of having someone help dress her for a ball, dressing for a day around the house had always seemed foolish.

It took little time to wash, dress, and fasten her hair into a simple twist. As she placed the brush in the drawer, her bare ring finger gave her pause.

She forgot to wear her betrothal ring so often that it was laughable, so it hadn’t been a surprise to find she’d left the Mayfair house. At the time, she’d been relieved to avoid accusations of theft. Now she knew it was a deeper signal. She had wanted to leave her marriage.

She met her reflection. “You certainly do now.”

Once in the hallway, Tavie was struck by the peace of the house.

She’d never been in a house where the silence was companionable, even with no one there.

Perhaps because it wasn’t fussy. Good art and plain, well-built furnishings reflected Matthew’s tastes.

Wide windows brought the outdoors in. It made the world beyond look friendly.

It was a home she would like to live in. It was a home that deserved to be filled with children.

“Tavie?”

She dashed hot tears from her salt-raw eyelids and turned to face Matthew’s mother, who stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Good morning, Celeste.”

The older woman waited for her to descend and then scooped her into a tight embrace. “You’ve had a difficult time of it, haven’t you?”

It seemed like a lifetime ago when she had sat staring at Mother’s roses and imagined having Celeste Foster as her mother-in-law. Tavie collapsed into her arms and, like always, was amazed at her small stature. Celeste always seemed larger than life.

“The last few days at least,” Tavie replied. She would not fall apart on this thin, small woman’s shoulders. Not when Celeste was still in black, grieving a husband she’d lost three years earlier.

“Come have breakfast. We were about to send up a tray, but I’ll ask Cook to bring it to the dining room instead.” Celeste rang the bell while she was talking, and a maid—having heard most of it—reversed direction without a word.

Martin, who was guarding the door as Matthew had promised, nodded in greeting. His lopsided smile matched his arched brow.

Celeste kept walking. “Tea? Matthew prefers coffee in the mornings, and you may as well, but I think it would be too harsh on your digestion after last night.”

Tavie had never grown to like coffee, but she didn’t need to explain. Celeste was already pouring the tea and the cream and sugar were already on the table, conveniently near a chair. “He told you, then?” Tavie asked.

The older woman nodded. “He was in a right state this morning—didn’t appear to have slept a wink. And all he could do was prowl the floor.”

“Then it’s wise that he went to work.” Tavie nodded her thanks to the footman who delivered the breakfast tray. He wasn’t the same as the strapping lad from the coach, but they might have been related, given their similar features.

“Don’t frown so.” Celeste smiled a doting smile. “When he’s distressed, he plans a path through it. He always has. When his father died, he wore a hole in the carpet. And when you refused him, he didn’t sleep for days.”

Tavie’s heart squeezed until it was difficult to breathe. That night she had left the garden and wept until she made herself ill. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Celeste.”

The older woman was still smiling, but the kindness had faded from her eyes. “You forget that I have known your mother for most of my life. Dorinda is formidable when she feels it is necessary.”

“I see no purpose to my becoming a baroness,” Tavie said. Even if she had loved Albert, she was a poor choice for the role. “Unless you count greed.”

“Your sister-in-law’s family are the Pembrokes, are they not?”

Tavie nodded. “Matilda is sister to Baron Pembroke.” She paused. “You cannot mean that Mother is competing with Matilda.”

True, the two did not have an easy relationship. It was difficult for anyone to like Matilda.

“Perhaps she wanted you to be able to compete with her.”

Tavie could see Celeste’s point. Mother’s conversations always involved comparisons between their family and others. And when Matthew seemed keen to propose, he hadn’t the wealth to balance the scales.

“I would have rather competed over happiness,” she said.

James was a darling man, and a vicarage was the perfect place for him, but Matilda chafed at the loss of status. Tavie often wondered what had drawn the couple together.

Happiness was a contest she and Matthew could have handily won.

Though James is very much in love with his children. Would a marriage to Matthew thrive if children never arrived? Would his family accept the end of their lineage?

“We’ve talked enough of this. Eat.” Celeste motioned to the tray. “It will do you no good to survive poisoning only to waste away from starvation.”

Tavie barked a laugh and stuck her fork into a ripe slice of melon. “I hope that I have not interfered with your social calendar. I never meant to stay, you know?”

“One look at Matthew told me he wouldn’t let you be anywhere else.” Celeste plucked a scone from the tray. “I was planning a walk in the park this morning. Would you accompany me?”

Tavie used chewing as an excuse to compose her answer. She would love to be outside, but every gossip in town would be in the park searching for on-dits to serve with tea. “Tongues will wag.”

“Our acquaintance, or even your living situation, is not much of a scandal, considering everything else.”

The older woman’s blithe acceptance of innuendo lifted Tavie’s spirits, but there were several things to consider. “Albert may well claim that I left my marriage the night I fled London without my betrothal ring.”

“And there are others, fairer-minded, who will understand that he left your marriage the moment he decided to kill you.” Celeste stood. “I’ll ask Martin to gather our coats and hats. A walk will do you good.”

She paused at the door. “We’ll go to the Green Park. There is someone you need to meet.”

Matthew had loved the grain market since the first time his father brought him. The smell of grain and flour brought back memories every week of the father who had cast a long and loving shadow.

Though, truthfully, the market at home in Suffolk was his favorite. There, the farmers came in their working clothes and told stories of battling with the weather until harvests, wrangling their beasts over the threshing floor, or driving to mills that were too far away to be economical.

Here, there were no working clothes and no stories of working at all. Instead there were men who complained about farmers who tried to cheat them while they tried to cheat each other. Several of them hadn’t been to bed since the night before, and a few still reeked of alcohol.

“Foster.” One of the younger men gave him a mocking salute. “You look as though you’ve been through the wars.”

“A long night every so often is good for me, I’ve heard.”

A night of imagining how to punish Albert Wilton probably wasn’t good for him, but he had at least straightened his clothes and freshened his breath before he left the house.