Page 14 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Dinner probably had not been held over for him, Thomas reflected as he walked in the door at last, well past weary. The butler took his hat and coat, and handed off a stack of correspondence that had been delivered while he had been out. He turned toward the stairs, resigned to a few more hours yet of business, and paused at the ripple of feminine laughter that slid through the drawing room doors.

No engagement tonight, at least—no ball or dinner party for which he would have to hurriedly change his clothing and dash off to. Did that also mean there would be no billiards?

Good God, he hoped not. He’d grown rather fond of that hour or so in which he had secured Mercy’s undivided attention. And with his new spectacles, he might stand a chance of beating her at last.

As if of their own accord, his feet turned about and headed for the drawing room instead. He’d spent the whole of the day fruitlessly searching for a man who seemed to have become a ghost. There was little more he could accomplish—but he might have earned a half an hour or so of respite.

Still that laughter hung in the air as he crossed the threshold to find Marina and Juliet seated together on a couch, Mother with her embroidery spread across her lap, and Mercy—Mercy was draped dramatically across a chair, her legs hanging over one arm and her back braced against the other, smothering her fading snickers with one hand, her sketchbook resting in her lap.

“Thomas!”

Juliet leapt to her feet, smiling. “We did not expect you, or we would have held dinner.”

Well, there went the hope, however faint, of anything hot. “No need,”

he said. “I heard you laughing as I came in. What has so amused you all?”

“My complete lack of social graces,”

Mercy said, abashed, her shoulders sinking as she slumped deeper into her chair. She shaded her eyes with one hand and heaved an exasperated sigh. “Today was our at-home day.”

Oh. “And were there many callers?”

“I have got the calling cards,”

Mother said, setting aside her embroidery as she rose to her feet. “If you would like to see them.”

“I would, in fact,”

he said, tucking the mail beneath his arm. Just to ensure that they were the sort of men he’d approve of calling upon his sisters. Mother had done an admirable job thus far, but nobody knew a man quite like another man. He’d wager he’d strike more than half of them right off, just on simple experience gained from places where women were not permitted to tread.

Mother dug into her pockets, withdrawing a stack of cards from each. “These called for Marina and Juliet,”

she said, handing over the first stack. “And these for Mercy.”

The tiny note of hesitation in her voice as she thrust a stack of at least a half dozen cards gave him pause.

“Mercy received callers?” he asked.

“Well, you needn’t sound so surprised,”

Mercy drawled, her voice inflected with annoyance.

“Whyever not?”

Marina said around a giddy giggle. “You were.”

“Oh, Lord,”

Mercy groaned, ducking her head. “I tell you, I didn’t know! I didn’t intend to leave the poor man waiting!”

“For nigh on an hour,”

Juliet confided to Thomas. “I swear to you, there was a queue forming in the foyer.”

Mercy threw up her hands. “Well, how was I to know? I thought he’d called for one of you, and the butler was off in the kitchen requesting tea cakes when he arrived, so I put him in the drawing room and handed his card over when the butler returned.”

“This would be…”

Thomas thumbed through the cards. “Lord Elkridge?”

Mercy shrugged. “I suppose.”

Well, he wouldn’t be calling again. He was a damned earl, and rather full of his own consequence despite the fact that it was well known he had quite a gambling problem and pockets to let because of it.

A recurring theme, he realized, as he perused the cards. Good God. He supposed Mr. Sumner—or else Mr. Fletcher himself—must have let the size of Mercy’s intended dowry be made public information. Every damned one of the men who had called upon her today was known to be somewhat less than financially stable. His stomach lurched with the advent of nausea as he realized he was going to have to tell her. To save her from unscrupulous gentlemen who didn’t give a fig about anything more than the funds with which she would come, did one of them condescend to take her to wife.

But as he lifted his eyes to hers, he saw the faint vexation lingering within her coffee-dark eyes and realized…she already knew. And yet it did not comfort him, that understanding—because she deserved to be wanted for herself.

She deserved to be wanted the way he wanted her.

As he got round to passing out the mail at last, and he handed over to her yet another damned letter from C. Nightingale, he whispered, sotto voce, “Billiards?”

And there was the slightest flicker of relief in her dark eyes as she whispered the word back to him.

∞∞∞

Mercy strolled into the billiards room, dinner tray in hand, to find Thomas quite a bit more disheveled than usual, pouring himself a rather large glass of brandy.

“It’s not so bad as all that, is it?”

she asked as she set the tray upon a corner of the billiard table. “Here. You should eat something.”

“Dinner,”

he said, scrubbing his hand across his mouth as he came up from his drink. “Thank God; I’m half-starved. I thought it was not held over for me?”

“It wasn’t.”

In fact, she’d had to send a footman out to find a tavern nearby with a good, hot meal available. “But you looked so devastated to learn it. I thought it was the least I could do.”

And cook had managed to dress up the thick slice of steak and kidney pie and half a roast chicken with a slice of bread and a few wedges of cheese, along with a serving of the trifle that had been left over from dessert.

There was a conflict there upon his face, some manner of guilt lingering in the severe lines of it. Through the lenses of his spectacles, his dark eyes held traces of shame. And rather than reach for the tray, his hands flexed at his sides. “Mercy, I—”

“I’m not hurt,”

she said, and it was mostly true. She’d been confused, yes, but not particularly wounded. “I didn’t imagine myself to be suddenly in demand, I promise you. I don’t know what happened, precisely, but I can hazard a guess. If it had been only one or two, perhaps it would have been different, but…one can tell from seven unexpected callers, I think.”

But the confession had not relieved that queer expression upon his face. “I couldn’t decide which would have been better,”

he said. “If you knew, or if you didn’t know. They’re both a tragedy in their own way. You should have callers who are genuine in their intentions. And I—I didn’t want to rip that away from you.”

“Truth suits me better,”

she said. “I know well enough how the game is played in the Ton. I simply choose not to play it myself.”

With the tips of her fingers, she nudged the tray toward him. “I truly did not know that Lord Elkridge had come to call upon me,”

she said as he took the hint and picked up his utensils at last. “I wouldn’t have accepted him if I had. He was dismissive and rather rude all around when your mother sought to introduce us some evenings ago. It’s the same with the rest of them,”

she said lightly. “They’ve never so much as asked me to dance. What reason might they have had to call upon me, other than money?”

“Any number of reasons,”

he said between harried bites, and she guessed that he truly was near to starving. “You’re pretty, and clever, and witty. You play billiards better than most men, and you’re a competent artist. You’re kind, even to people who have been less than kind to you in the past. You have so much more to recommend you than money.”

She shouldn’t have let the praise warm her as it had. But it did, nonetheless. “I’m pigheaded and stubborn,”

she reminded him. “A menace.”

Halfway through the kidney pie, he laughed. “Yes,”

he said. “You do menace me. I think you always will.”

The tines of his fork came down, skewering the roast chicken upon his plate with a sort of violence she’d not thought him capable of. “I hate that those gentlemen—and I do use that term loosely—came calling for other reasons. I hate that you knew it already.”

“Would you have told me, if I had not?”

“Yes,”

he said. “And I would have hated that, too. But you deserve better than to be used in that way. There are a good number of impoverished gentleman in London. I wouldn’t allow any of them to court my sisters. I won’t let them court you, either.”

A little shiver raced up Mercy’s spine at the assertion, which had sounded significantly less brotherly than she suspected he had intended. And she thought, perhaps it had not been so much the quality of the gentlemen who had presented themselves to her. Perhaps it had just been the fact that they had.

“I can only assume your father—or his solicitor—managed to drop a word in some choice ears regarding your dowry,”

he said. And then, with a little shrug of his shoulders, he admitted, “I was meant to do it myself.”

“But you didn’t.”

Somehow, it surprised her.

“I didn’t.”

He shoved himself away from the billiard table and poured himself a fresh drink. “I didn’t,”

he repeated, grimacing at the burn of the liquor down his throat. “Christ,”

he said. “Do you remember some time ago, I offered you a deal? You wanted to know what I had been doing in Cheapside.”

It had been only a cheap ploy, really, to throw him off of his game as he had thrown her off of hers. “Yes,” she said.

“You refused it.”

“I still won’t tell you,”

she said, with a lift of her chin.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you anyway.”

Down went the last of his liquor, and he set the glass back upon the table with a solid thunk. “I want—I need—you to know that I’m not one of them.”

“One of—of them?”

A little laugh trickled up from her throat. “You’re not impoverished. And you’re not courting me, besides.”

“I am impoverished. Temporarily. I hope.”

He yanked at his cravat as if it had begun to strangle him, and it came free slowly, in a long pull of snowy fabric. “My solicitor embezzled from me. Everything, near as I can tell. Near as anyone can tell, presently.”

“Everything?”

she echoed, and groped for the arm of the nearest couch, bracing one hand upon it as she sat down—hard.

“Everything. Bank accounts, investments. My sisters’ dowries. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d managed to get his hands on my mother’s widow’s jointure.”

A horrible little laugh wrestled its way from his throat, and he plunged his fingers into his hair, ruffling the cool dark strands. “I hadn’t even enough money left over to pay for the girls’ wardrobes. The truth of it is, we wouldn’t even have made it to London this Season without your father’s support.”

And she had been the price of it. “That’s why your mother sponsored me,”

she said softly.

“She sponsored you because I asked it of her, and she was pleased as punch for it. They don’t know, Mercy, and I need you not to tell them. I am going to find him and reclaim what I can—but I need time to do it. Already there have been some whispers, some rumors which could prove ruinous even if I do manage to reclaim our funds. It is so easy to destroy a reputation. I can’t let my poor judgment of a man’s character ruin my family alongside me.”

“That’s why you’ve been gone so often,”

she said weakly. “Why you arrive late to events.”

Oh, Lord, so many tiny things had begun to make sense. The Armitages had a townhouse of their own, which they typically let for the Season—or had had one. She supposed it, too, must be gone.

“That day that you fell out of your hot air balloon,”

he said, “I had only just discovered the truth of what had happened. The whole of my funds amounted to a handful of coin, and it could buy little more than a few pints of ale at the village tavern. I spent the evening there, got myself sotted, and couldn’t even manage to make it home again.”

And she’d fallen from the sky straight atop him after what might well have been one of the worst evenings of his life. “Probably it would have been more comfortable to drink at home,” she said.

“Probably. But someone would have noticed, certainly.”

A weary sigh drifted from his lungs, and he collapsed upon the couch, bracing his elbows upon his knees. “I have got an investigator,”

he said. “And your father’s solicitor has been most helpful. I am going to find the villain, Mercy, and reclaim what is ours. But I wanted you to know.”

“Why?”

Her hands knotted in her lap, fingers tangling.

“Because I am not them, and I don’t want you to imagine that I am. I don’t want you to look upon me with that same suspicion.”

Perfect, polished Thomas had become something else entirely in these last few minutes. A wreck of a man—or perhaps a wreck of the man he had once been. And she wondered at it, at the changes he had weathered in these last few weeks. At the changes he had wrought in her. At the changes he had made in himself.

He danced along the edge of some admission, and she was dreadfully afraid that she knew what it was. But he kept those words tucked back firmly behind his teeth as if he hadn’t the right to speak them, and held his head in his hands.

He had not feigned an enjoyment of her company. He had not pretended at some manner of affection to keep her complacent, to curry favor with her or her father. He did not want to be considered insincere in the same way that she had judged those gentlemen who had come to call upon her. He had made the confession of this, his most closely guarded secret, because he thought she deserved to know it. To draw her own conclusion.

It didn’t matter. Her heart had drawn one already for her, with or without her consent. Scored his name across itself.

But she, too, kept those words tucked behind her teeth, in the full breadth of her own knowledge of how ruinous they might prove, how very cruel in the end. Instead she said, “You must let me help you.”

∞∞∞

It shouldn’t have surprised him, the offer she had made. But the fact that it had been rendered without censure, without judgment, without even the slightest, most oblique suggestion of blame or fault, had. “The fault is only mine,”

he said. “It’s my responsibility to manage.”

“Thomas, you cannot blame yourself for becoming the victim of an unscrupulous man,”

she said, and her cool, soft fingers landed atop his hand with gentle pressure, as if she could impress the words into his very flesh and force him to accept them as truth. “Gentlemen in your position—they contract the services of such men every day, rely upon them to manage their affairs with all due diligence. You could not possibly have known that he would betray the trust you bestowed upon him.”

“I placed too much trust in him,”

he said. “I should have—”

“What?”

she interjected, and her fingers squeezed his in silent reassurance. “Tell me. What might you have done differently? What action might you have taken? What have you done that was in any way beneath what ought to have been expected of you?”

Thomas fell silent, and for the first time he considered, absent the guilt and shame that he had heaped upon his own shoulders, that perhaps he had attributed more blame to himself than he had deserved.

“My father receives quarterly reports,”

Mercy said, “from his own solicitor. Did you not receive the same, or fail to request them?”

He had. Of course he had. “I received them,”

he said, almost begrudgingly. “I read them, always.”

As it had been his responsibility to do. “But they weren’t legitimate. Or at least they weren’t always legitimate. At some point, he must have begun to provide me with false accountings, and I—I hadn’t the slightest idea.”

“How could you have?”

she asked. “Papa has got far too many business interests to oversee himself. He relies upon his solicitor to provide him the relevant information. Thank God Mr. Sumner has proved himself indispensable in that regard, for his careful attention to Papa’s finances. But if he were a less principled man than we know him to be,”

she said slowly, “I imagine it would not be a simple task to uncover it. Could you have known your solicitor to be less than principled?”

“He was my father’s solicitor before he was mine,”

Thomas said. “Father had been satisfied with his services; I saw no reason to deprive the man of his office simply because I had inherited the title.”

“No complaints? Not even the smallest suggestion of something amiss?”

“No,”

he said, and then managed an odd little laugh. “He did once attempt to convince me to fund some madcap investment scheme regarding the potential of a gold mine, which I declined to do. But my debts were always paid on time.”

Until they weren’t. “Any funds I had requested to settle household accounts were always delivered promptly.”

Until they hadn’t been. “My first indication that something was amiss was when our butler informed me that the requested funds to pay the staff their quarterly wages had never arrived. I never knew it; not until he told me perhaps two weeks after they had been due to be paid. I suppose he must have given me the benefit of the doubt,”

he said ruefully. “I have never before failed to provide him with the funds necessary to pay the staff.”

Mercy winced. “But once it had been brought to your attention,”

she said, “you took action, yes?”

“Of course,”

he said. “I wrote to my solicitor at once to demand an explanation. I wrote also to my bank, thinking it would be wisest, given the circumstances, to apply directly to the institution for the funds necessary. From my solicitor, I received no response.”

“And from your bank?”

“I received a letter informing me that my accounts had been closed—at my solicitor’s request, on my behalf, allegedly—some weeks earlier. That my solicitor had informed them I intended to take my business to a new institution.”

Somehow his fingers had ended up interlaced with hers, seeking a comfort which could only be provided by the delicate pressure of those soft fingers in his. “I have been trying,”

he said, “to unravel the muddle I have made of my finances. Half the documentation I have got is full of falsehoods and half is blatant embezzlement. Investments that were never made as requested—though funds had been requisitioned for them—or investments already made then sold off piecemeal, a bit at a time. I’m certain I’m not yet through the half of it. My guess is that he had been stealing from my family for quite some time,”

he said. And he hadn’t noticed. There had been no obvious discrepancies, nothing overtly concerning. He had not even managed to determine when, exactly, genuine accountings had become false ones.

Mercy inclined her head, edging closer to his side. “Have you received an accounting from those places?”

she inquired. “Your bank, and those institutions at which you were meant to have funds invested? They certainly must keep such records. You will need them, for evidence.”

“No, I—”

Thomas shook his head, momentarily perplexed. “I spent so much time in ascertaining whether those things had ever existed to begin with, so much time trying to track down the villain, that I never thought to ask for a proper accounting. I should have done, shouldn’t I?”

A rough laugh scraped out of his throat, and he scraped his free hand over his jaw.

“Were I you, I would make it a priority to revisit those places,”

she said. “And request of them whatever records they might have on hand. Even a signed acknowledgement that no such funds were ever tendered beneath your name will be useful, you understand—sworn testimony, as it were, that your solicitor did not conduct the business he had promised to on your behalf.”

Fraud, she meant to say. It would be proof of fraud, provided he had the proper documentation. “All the proof in the world will avail me nothing if I cannot find him, I’m afraid,”

he said. “The investigator has come up with a few leads, of course. Some regular haunts Fordham has been known to frequent, though he has not been seen publicly for some time. I’ve—spent rather more time there than I would have preferred.”

“Cheapside,” she said.

“Yes. The last place he was seen. His office has been closed; his home has been abandoned. To the best of our knowledge he has not yet left the country, but—”

“It would behoove him to do so swiftly,”

she said pensively, fretfully. “It’s almost certain that he knows you’re in London. He’d be a fool to remain for long. What about banknotes?”

Thomas blinked, startled. “What about them?”

“Unless I miss my guess, he’s got a not-insignificant fortune at his disposal,”

Mercy said.

“My fortune, in point of fact.”

“Yes, but—Thomas, he’ll need somewhere to keep it. No one is fool enough to keep a fortune in coin in their home. He has got to have a bank. The nobility might live on credit,”

she added, “and have their men of business pay the bills when they come due, but most everyone else will pay in ready cash. Coin is well enough for small purchases, of course, but for anything more than a few pounds he would need—”

“Banknotes,”

he said. Of course. Too much coin could become cumbersome quickly. Banknotes—issued by the bank at which the bearer held an account—were far easier to carry. Easy to spend predominantly in London, where they could be exchanged at the issuing bank for the coin designated. “I hadn’t even considered it.”

“I didn’t expect you would have done. I’d wager you have accounts practically everywhere you shop. But if your investigator can determine where your solicitor might have done business, and if the proprietors of those businesses can tell you the provenance of any banknotes he might have passed there, then you’ll know where your funds are being kept.”

Thomas let out a sigh and squeezed her hand. “Thank you,”

he said. “You’ve no idea how much you have helped me already. I’ll send a note round to the investigator and ask about banknotes at the tavern Fordham is known to frequent when I go tomorrow evening.”

Mercy sprang up from her seat. “I’ll go with you,”

she said in a rush. “I can take notes—”

Ah, hell. “Mercy,”

he said with a sigh.

“Perhaps I could produce a sketch,”

she continued, undeterred. “Or conduct interviews—”

“Mercy. You can’t go with me.”

She paused, her brows drawing together. “I could be an asset to you,”

she said, wringing her hands. “Please, Thomas, let me be of use.”

“You already have been,”

he said, and reached out for her hand once again. “But you cannot go to a tavern. Do you know what is said of women who frequent taverns?”

“I beg your pardon,”

she said dryly. “Women stay in taverns often enough.”

“Yes,”

he said. “When traveling, and they keep to their rooms. Ladies do not stay below, in the public rooms.”

That little pleat between her brows deepened, and she opened her mouth to dissent— “You are a lady in every way which matters,”

he said, hoping to avert that argument before it could begin. “I will not risk your reputation to save mine, nor will I risk your safety for any reason.”

Another consoling squeeze of her fingers, and her shoulders fell as she looked down at their joined hands. “Besides,”

he added, “you have got an engagement tomorrow evening.”

With a plaintive little sigh she wilted once more to the couch, slumping back against the upholstery. “I suppose I had forgotten,”

she admitted, and turned her cheek into her hand as she faced him once more. “Has anyone ever told you that you are no fun at all?”

she asked in dry, doleful tones.

“Yes,”

he said, with a half-smile. “You. Frequently.”

But one of them had to be reasonable. To weigh the risks and act appropriately according to them.

“Have I, then? That was not well done of me, I suppose.”

“But true,”

he acknowledged. “I have never been tempted to repair a hot air balloon and take to the skies. Probably I never will.”

“I don’t know,”

she said softly. “You might surprise yourself one of these days.”

He already had. He’d surprised himself more in the past few weeks than he had in the whole of his life. She had changed him in ways he had never expected, could not have anticipated. And he looked down at her long, elegant fingers entangled with his own and wished he might keep hold of them forever.