Page 1 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Kent, England

April, 1830

It was the scream that woke him. It had been a short, sharp, shrill one, rather like a songbird being strangled, and it pierced both Thomas’ ale-induced slumber and his unfortunate eardrums, allowing him only a half second to be rudely yanked from the ill-advised nap—or, more accurately, the unplanned drunken stupor—into which he had fallen in a field on his long walk back from the village pub evening last to his house upon the hill.

Of course, a half second was not nearly enough time for a brain so clouded by a surfeit of ale to rouse to full wakefulness. It wasn’t even enough time to roll out of the way before the woman who had fallen from the sky landed atop him in a jumble of skirts and limbs, several of which had managed to plant themselves firmly in various areas of his limp body.

The air sailed from his lungs on a startled, pained whoosh.

Mercy. It was the first truly coherent thought that flashed through his brain, and not just because an unaccountably pointy elbow was still lodged in his solar plexus.

It was because it had to be Mercy. Miss Mercy Fletcher, the pampered, eccentric daughter of his nearest neighbor, and the only woman he could think of who could have managed to scrounge up the temerity, the unmitigated gall, the absolute fucking audacity to fall out of the goddamned sky.

Thomas closed his eyes once more, praying for a swift death as the wretched woman dug her elbow still more deeply into his midsection in her efforts to right herself. A shadow passed over his face, blotting out the bright morning sun for a moment or two.

Mercy gave a cough, a wheeze, and then— “Oh, no. My balloon!”

Balloon? Thomas cracked one eye open. Fought for what scant shreds of breath he could convince his lungs to draw around the relentless digging of that elbow into his middle. Wrenched a few strained words from the largely breathless pit of his stomach. “Would. You. Get. Off.”

There was a crashing sound not too very far in the distance, as of something large and awkward blundering its way through the brush. “My balloon!”

Mercy cried again, with a frantic edge to her voice. And then: “Ouch. My hair is snarled in the buttons of your waistcoat.”

Of course it was. Bloody damned hell. “You are a goddamned disaster,”

Thomas snarled. “What the devil are you doing on my land, anyway?”

He’d warned her off it at least a half dozen times in the last year alone, given explicit instructions that she was not to trespass upon it absent an invitation.

“I don’t,”

Mercy said, in frosty, prim tones, “control the direction of the wind, my lord. I might ask what you were doing, sleeping in a field?”

He hadn’t been sleeping so much as lying where he’d fallen after altogether too much ale. “None of your damned business,”

he snapped, seizing her shoulders and yanking her—and himself—upright. The action wrenched several strands of dark hair loose from her head, and an accompanying yelp from her lungs. His head swam. Still drunk, then.

“You reek of ale,”

Mercy said with a disdainful sniff.

“Get. Off.”

Where were his damned spectacles? Thomas patted at his clothing, found them at last tucked into his coat pocket, and experienced some sliver of relief that he had had the foresight to put them away for safekeeping. He slid them on, but they sat awkwardly upon his face, one earpiece decidedly bent. But then, not even the most talented prognosticator could have foreseen Mercy Fletcher.

Blinking blearily into the distance, he watched a large basket tumbling about the field, attached, however precariously, to a billowing length of fabric. “What the hell is that?”

“It was my hot air balloon,”

Mercy said, a tinge of regret in her voice as she gingerly picked herself up, tugging at the disordered locks of her chestnut-brown hair, which had gone flying every which way.

“You fell from a hot air balloon?”

The words sounded ludicrous even as he spoke them, even though he had personally witnessed the debris of it tumbling into the distance. “Have you gone entirely mad?”

“I didn’t fall by design,”

she said, with an over-exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Naturally, I was trying to land it.”

She gave a sigh, plunking her hands upon her hips and narrowing her eyes at the striped red and white fabric that tossed in the breeze like the sail of a ship. “I underestimated just how quickly I would descend once I had snuffed the fire, and failed to account for how difficult it would be to relight it in the wind. Next time—”

“Next time!”

Good God, he’d never had the misfortune to meet anyone half so harebrained, so reckless, so absolutely head in the clouds—quite literally, in this particular circumstance—as this infuriating woman. “There had better not be a next time. Most certainly not on my goddamned land!”

Mercy turned. Blinked placidly. Notched that firm little chin an inch or so higher, as if he was being deliberately obtuse. “I don’t control the wind, my lord,”

she repeated. “Your spectacles are crooked. Did you know?”

“Because you fell on them!”

His fingers itched to throttle her; a sensation which was, regrettably, not unfamiliar to him.

“Well, yes,”

Mercy said, still in that supercilious tone that suggested he was not quite bright. “When I realized I was going to come down harder than I would have preferred, obviously I attempted to find some place to break my fall other than the ground. You seemed a marginally softer target.”

Thomas’ teeth were bound to crack if he clenched his jaw any harder. “You are not suggesting you aimed for me.”

“I didn’t know it was you until it was too late,”

she said, pursing her lips into a pout of distaste. “Had I known in advance of my jump, certainly I would have reconsidered. I invite you, my lord, to change your mind in your choice of targets in mid-air from nearly twenty feet up.”

Twenty feet! No wonder she’d knocked the wind out of him. She was damned lucky she’d not broken a bone into the bargain. Or any of his. “Get yourself—and your damned balloon—off of my property this instant,”

he snarled. “And God help you if this should happen again!”

“It won’t,”

she said, with a dismissive wave, turning back to survey the wreckage she’d left in the wake of her tumble from the heavens. “I’ve got it now; I’m sure of it.”

Which sounded offensively like she intended to attempt this preposterous undertaking again. Thomas swallowed back an avalanche of frustrated pejoratives of the sort that tended to coat his tongue whenever he happened to be unfortunate enough to be subjected to Mercy’s presence for longer than a few minutes at a time.

In all the years of their acquaintance, he could count on one hand the number of occasions on which more than five minutes had elapsed before he’d been nigh overcome with the urge to toss her into the nearest lake. It was a bloody miracle he’d not snapped before now.

“So help me,”

Thomas said in a grim monotone as he climbed unsteadily to his feet, “if that balloon should cross the boundary of my property again, I will damned well shoot it down irrespective of whether or not you happen to be in it.”

“It won’t,”

Mercy said blithely, as if he’d not said anything much worth noting. “Though, of course, it would be prudent of you not to go about sleeping in fields—”

“They’re my damned fields, and I’ll sleep in them if I please!”

Thomas threw up his hands, though even that motion made his head ache and his gut churn. “Get that damned thing off my property! At once!”

“Yes, yes,”

Mercy muttered beneath her breath, plainly distracted, her attention diverted by the balloon still rolling off into the distance. “As soon as I—where are you going?”

“To have a word with your father!”

Thomas snapped as he stalked off in the direction of the Fletcher house. Again. For all the good it had ever done.

Because Mercy Fletcher was about as controllable as the wind on which she’d sailed in.

∞∞∞

In retrospect, Thomas conceded he likely ought to have at least made his way home for a bath and a change of clothing before he’d stormed into the Fletcher house to demand a meeting with Mr. Augustus Fletcher. At some point during the night before—though he was not quite certain when—he’d lost his hat. His coat had become unforgivably wrinkled. He reeked of cheap spirits and cheaper ale. And one of the buttons of his waistcoat now had a number of silky strands of dark hair coiled round it, no doubt those he’d accidentally wrenched free of Mercy’s head when he’d shoved her off of him.

The damned footman kept making some sort of subtle motion with his fingers as they both waited outside Mr. Fletcher’s study door for admittance, running his fingers across the bridge of his nose as if to suggest that Thomas ought to reposition his spectacles. Not that it would do him any good, with how badly the earpiece had been bent.

At long last, there was a clearing of a throat beyond the closed door of Fletcher’s office, followed by a surly, “Come in.”

The footman sprang into action, leaping for the door before Thomas could reach it.

Behind the massive desk situated before a window, Mr. Fletcher pressed his fingertips to his greying temples, rubbing as if he’d found himself in the grips of a terrible migraine. “What’s Mercy done now?”

he inquired, his voice threaded through with exhaustion.

Thomas paused, halfway to the desk. “I beg your pardon?”

“Twice a month at least, like bloody clockwork, you storm into my study to complain of my daughter,”

Mr. Fletcher said, leaning back in his chair. “So what is it this time? Has she set something afire? Caused a disturbance in the village? Gone riding without the company of a groom?”

It hadn’t been the lack of a groom’s company that had precipitated that particular complaint, per se, though it had, of course, been a contributing factor. It had been that she’d done it in her nightgown in the dead of night, straight past his bedroom window, her dark hair streaming loose like Lady Goddamned Godiva.

Even if she hadn’t, precisely, been naked, the thin linen of her nightgown had left little to the imagination.

“She’s trespassed upon my land again,”

Thomas said flatly.

“I see.”

By the nonchalant tone of voice Mr. Fletcher employed, Thomas was given to understand that he hardly thought this worth complaining of, especially when one considered that Thomas’ mother and sisters invited Mercy over with distressing frequency.

“In a goddamned hot air balloon,”

Thomas added in a seething growl.

For a moment there was only a stunned silence between them as Mr. Fletcher’s bushy brows crept steadily toward his hairline. The old man had finally been rendered speechless by his daughter’s reckless pursuits, or so it seemed.

“How in hell did she acquire one?”

Thomas asked, with an aggravated gesticulation of his hands, rather as if he were emulating a deranged conductor of an unseen orchestra. But then this particular melody was hardly new to him. Mercy was always into some nonsense or other, and he—like clockwork, as charged—was obliged to come sing the same shrill tune to her father as he had a thousand times before, to little effect.

Mr. Fletcher heaved a sigh, his shoulders slumping as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Never got a clear answer on that,”

he said, his voice hinting at an exhaustion Thomas could only guess at, given that despite her predilection for making Thomas the unwilling victim of her myriad trespasses, at the very least he did not have to live with the damnable woman. “Suppose she must’ve gotten it when last I went away on business.”

Another sigh, this one low and beleaguered. “It was in a dreadful state. Never thought she’d be able to repair it.”

Yes, well, he ought to have learned by now that Mercy had ten times the amount of raw determination than she had good common sense. “She did repair it,”

Thomas said. “And sailed it onto my property. And crash-landed it in one of my fields, directly atop me.”

Mr. Fletcher’s bush brows scrunched together in a frown of confusion. “What were you doing in the field?”

“That’s hardly what is at issue here!”

The peculiar stridence of Thomas’ voice was enough to lift Mr. Fletcher’s brows yet further, until they threatened to collide with his hairline entirely.

“I ask,”

Mr. Fletcher said, pitching his voice lower, no doubt to avoid his own voice carrying through the door to the footman stationed outside, “because I’ve heard some troubling rumors of late.”

Thomas felt his shoulders slump, the fine hairs prickling at the back of his neck. No—not yet. It was not so dire as all that just yet. Quarter day had barely passed. It wasn’t uncommon, precisely, for wages to be paid a bit late, due to the negligence or else the general apathy of one’s employer. It was just that he had never made a particular habit of such a thing.

Then again, he’d never before been in dire financial straits. “I’m not certain what you mean to imply,”

he said, striving to keep the caustic tone from his inflection, even as his mind worked to sort out from whence those benighted rumors might have originated. As with most country estates, the vast majority of his servants were from the local village. But then again, so too would Mr. Fletcher’s be. Blast it, just how damned many of them might come from the same family? Perhaps a housemaid might share the fact that she had not yet been paid this quarter’s wages over the dinner table, and then that word might well spread from one household to another with appalling ease.

“I mean to say,”

Mr. Fletcher said carefully, “that the rumor is that you’ve not presently got the blunt even to pay your staff. And if you haven’t got that, then…”

He let his voice taper off in solemn suggestion.

Yes. Yes, that was the crux of it. Besides the approximately two pounds fifty he had in coin to his name, he had also an estate in desperate need of repair, and two younger sisters both expecting to leave for London in approximately a week for the Season.

Sisters who had ordered new gowns he now hadn’t the means to pay for, whose dowries were now nonexistent, and who could hardly hope to catch suitable husbands without either.

There were words he’d practiced well over the past few days, withering ones designed to cow whoever heard them into backing down from whatever subtle challenge might have been issued, to grant himself a few more days—perhaps weeks—to recoup that which had been lost. Words that had never before had to cross his lips, because he’d always been a man who paid his debts, who treated those within his employ well, and who had never thrown around the weight of his title to gain subservience.

Words such as ‘my finances are none of your concern.’ And, ‘take the matter up with my man of business.’ Even in his head, they echoed in the supercilious tones of his father’s voice rather than his own, as so many things did.

Nevertheless, those words would avail his creditors precisely nothing, since it had been his man of business who had bankrupted him in the first place. Embezzled, as near as he could tell, damn near everything. He’d have to go to London to get a clearer picture, but of course, first he had to get to London. Which was a problem in and of itself.

Thomas drew in a breath, firmed his shoulders, and said, “My finances are none of your concern.”

Mr. Fletcher barked out a surprised laugh. “Who was that meant to convince, boy? Me, or yourself?”

Boy. A tedious, obnoxious appellation—and one that had been thrust upon him since Fletcher had purchased this property twenty years ago. But then, Thomas hadn’t come into his title until his father’s death a few years ago, and Fletcher had been calling him boy since he’d been one.

“I—I—I—”

Blast and damn. If he could not get his disquiet in check, then he’d devolve once more into the stammer that had plagued him since childhood, rendering his speech unintelligible until his tongue untied itself. Spit it out, Thomas, you blithering fool. It was an effort not to shake his head to rid himself of the lingering echoes of Father’s sinister voice. Exhaling through his nose, he said through the grit of his teeth, “Gossip is a nasty business.”

“Indeed it is. And sometimes truer than one might prefer.”

Mr. Fletcher bent forward, steepling his fingers across the polished mahogany surface of his desk. “What happened, then? I’ve never known you to default upon a debt.”

Curiously, he heard no judgment within Mr. Fletcher’s voice, almost as if—as if the man had already divined that whatever had gone amiss, it had been none of Thomas’ doing.

Which was correct, in a generous assessment of the situation. However, still it was his responsibility.

“I won’t know for certain,”

Thomas said carefully, “until I get to London next week.”

“Can you get to London?”

Mr. Fletcher inquired, tilting his head in open curiosity.

Probably. Possibly, though not comfortably, per se. He had a coachman—for the moment. Impossible to tell today if the man would keep his position despite the fact that his wages had not been paid. Every day, his situation grew more tenuous.

“I have a carriage,”

Thomas said. But it was in need of repair, and God help them all if it snapped an axle on the journey to London. And with the whispers already floating round, he was unlikely to find someone in the village to make the necessary repairs in advance of the trip on credit alone. “I simply haven’t got the money—at present—for the Season.”

“Investments turned upon you?”

Mr. Fletcher asked. “Overleveraged yourself, perhaps?”

Ah, hell. Fletcher would have it from him one way or another. And if not from Thomas’ own mouth, then he’d cull what information he could from wherever it might be sourced. Gossip. “Worse,”

Thomas said, surrendering to the inevitability of it all. “My man of business seems to have made off with the bulk of my funds.”

“Really?”

Those brows waggled in interest. “Your accounts?”

“Emptied,”

Thomas said. “And closed. I had investments—or thought I had. At least, I authorized the money for them. But given the circumstances, it’s unlikely that they were ever made.”

Though his man of business, Mr. Fordham, had most certainly taken the monies for them from his accounts, nearest as Thomas could tell from here, there was no firm evidence that any such contracts had been executed on his behalf.

Without the investments and without the funds that rightfully ought to have been within his accounts, he was in a hell of a bind. Estates could be sold—but not swiftly. And the vast majority of his property was entailed, precluded from sale regardless.

“It occurs to me,”

Mr. Fletcher said, in a suspiciously idle tone of voice, “that perhaps we could help each other.”

“How so?”

Even as the words left his lips, a great sense of unease came over him. A vague nausea; an eerie prickle of the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. A sense of impending doom, as it were.

“You have the need for a great deal of money,”

Mr. Fletcher said. “Rather swiftly, I assume. And I have got a daughter who is getting a bit long in the tooth—”

“No.”

Jesus God, no. Not even if it was his damned neck at risk instead of just his reputation, his future finances. “I am not marrying your daughter. There isn’t enough money in the damned world.”

Mr. Fletcher choked on an incredulous laugh. “Good God, no. You’d kill each other inside of a week. I’m desperate, boy, but I’m no damned fool. Besides, I think Mercy can do better than a measly baron. I want you to get her married. Take her with you to London. Have your mother sponsor her for a proper Season.”

Thomas’ wits had scattered so abruptly that he hadn’t even the wherewithal to be offended to be termed a ‘measly baron’. A proper Season. In Mercy’s company. Surely there were worse fates, Thomas thought. It was just that none sprang immediately to mind. Other than marrying her, that was to say. Still, he was vaguely surprised he had not broken out into hives at the very thought. Mercy managed to be disaster even buried out in the countryside. She’d nearly killed him—and herself—with a goddamned hot air balloon. He could just imagine the havoc she would wreak within a ballroom. If he agreed, it was entirely possible she’d scandalize the whole of London with her wanton disregard for propriety.

If he didn’t—well, then, he would be staring down the barrel of ruin. Not only for himself. For his sisters. For Mother.

“A Season is…an expensive undertaking,”

Thomas said tactfully. “I’m not even certain my former man of business has renewed the lease on our townhouse.”

Though it was a good bet that he hadn’t bothered.

Mr. Fletcher sniffed. “Hardly an obstacle. You’ll use ours.”

“You’ve got a London townhouse?”

“Of course I have. Got to have a place to stay on the occasions business takes me to London.”

With one hand he rifled through his drawer and withdrew a blank sheet of paper. “Money is no object at all, mind you.”

“Then why don’t you take her to London?”

“Because while I have the money to provide for my daughter—generously, I might add, and so you should make it known to any suitable matches—what I lack is social influence. I haven’t the clout to gain her access to the best homes, or to garner invitations from the best people. But your mother is well-respected. I imagine she receives a fair few invitations.”

Mr. Fletcher gestured to the paper before him with the point of his quill. “However much you require for Mercy, and for yourself and your family to see you comfortably through the Season, I’ll write you a bank draft for it here and now. Furthermore, I’ll inform my solicitor in London to grant you more should you require it.”

“I should refuse.”

It would be the wisest course of action. Even if it might lead to his downfall. There was something worse than mere financial ruin, he was certain, and he saw its very shadow looming over him even now. A nameless spectre, ominous and dire and breathing right down the back of his neck. One he was certain he would come face to face with before the Season was through.

“My dear boy,”

Mr. Fletcher said, and Thomas fancied he saw a sliver of pity shimmering in the old man’s eyes, “I think we both know you have no choice.”