Page 16 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

They’d taken a hack instead, since there had been no way to explain Mercy’s presence to the coachman, who had expected her to be in bed with some mysterious ailment. But the driver of the hack had asked no questions other than their destination and whether they had the coin to pay for his services, and so they’d been off immediately through the streets of London, on their way to Cheapside.

Though there had been plenty of room within for Thomas to sit beside her, instead he’d cast himself into the rear-facing seat and stretched out his legs instead, propping his booted feet upon the seat beside her. The glow of the gas lamps lighting the streets outside flickered off the lenses of his spectacles in little flashes as they passed. “Stop that,”

he chided, nudging her hip with the toe of his boot.

“Stop what?”

Mercy asked, feeling the hint of a frown purse her lips.

“Touching your lips.”

“I wasn’t.”

Had she been? She hadn’t thought she had. But her lips tingled still, with the memory of that kiss. Perhaps she had been touching them, just to test the bounds of that strange sensitivity that had been left upon them.

“You were. Don’t do it again.”

What an utterly unreasonable demand! “Whyever not?”

she inquired tartly.

“Because it makes me want to kiss you again, and if that happens, you will arrive at the tavern looking distinctly as if you’ve been ravished in a carriage, which would not be ideal.”

She felt her brows pinch together. “Why would I look as if—”

Her mouth snapped shut abruptly, teeth clicking together. Oh. Because she would have been ravished in a carriage.

Probably she had concussed him, after all, for the only other explanation was that he’d gone a bit…feral. Perhaps she’d knocked the starch straight out of him when she’d fallen atop him—again.

Did twice a habit make? Could a man be driven to madness by such a thing? She lifted her fingers—

“Don’t.”

It was a visceral growl, and Mercy swallowed hard and let her hand fall to her lap once more, considering that perhaps she had tempted fate quite enough for one evening.

Which wasn’t to say she was particularly opposed to being ravished in carriage. But the workings of such a thing escaped her. Of course one would have to disrobe, and there seemed to be little enough room for it. Where was one meant to put one’s feet? Could one stretch out upon the seat of a carriage? Three could sit upon one seat, but not comfortably. Surely such considerations would have to be managed, somehow.

“Sweet Christ, I can practically hear you thinking,”

he said, with a low laugh as he tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Yes, it can be done in a carriage. No, it should not be done now.”

“Have you ever?”

Mercy blurted out, fascinated. “In a carriage?”

“No.”

Oh. Perversely, she was disappointed. If he wanted to speak of carriage ravishment, then one of them ought to have some experience with it. “Have you ever—at all?”

“Yes.”

Mercy slanted him a frown, folding her arms over her chest. “That’s hardly edifying.”

“That is all the edification to which I am disposed. It’s poor form to discuss one’s former lovers.”

He braced one palm against the wall of the carriage as the driver took a turn a bit too quickly.

“I would discuss mine, had I any to discuss.”

“But you haven’t any, so it is immaterial.”

The right corner of his mouth had hitched up in a smile, and his voice was warm with amusement. At last he heaved a sigh, touching the back of his head to the seat. Capitulation, she thought—like he knew already that since she had found the thread, she would find it impossible to let go of it until she had unraveled it in its entirety. “There have been a few women with whom I enjoyed the occasional liaison,”

he said. “No one you’d be likely to meet, and there were never expectations of anything more than that. I’ve never kept a mistress, nor offered marriage to any woman.”

“Why didn’t you?”

she asked, her fingers knitting in her lap. “You could have married years ago.”

Probably he should have done.

“There were few women who would have met Father’s impossible standards, and I could sustain an interest in none of them. And then, after he died, I poured all of my energy into the barony, into Marina and Juliet. I supposed there would be time enough to find a wife after I’d seen them properly settled.”

“Don’t…don’t tell Marina that, if you please,”

she said softly.

His head tilted to the right, inquisitive. “Why?”

“It’s her fourth Season,”

Mercy said, her shoulders lifting in a tiny shrug. “She’s rather sensitive about it. All of her friends are married already—”

“Except you.”

“I don’t count. I was never going to marry.”

What would I do with a husband? she had asked more than once at Marina’s gentle prodding. A deflection, even if it had been offered with incredulous laughter. She had ceased to entertain the notion so long ago, that the question itself had become purely rhetorical, unanswerable.

Only now, so very suddenly, that unanswerable question had acquired an answer at last.

Love him.

∞∞∞

Mercy knew Thomas’ sisters better than he did. He supposed it should not have surprised him—probably it was not half so easy to discuss one’s insecurities with one’s brother as it was with one’s friend. And they had always been that, no matter how he had once resented it. It seemed so small and petty of him now, in retrospect.

He’d never known Marina had struggled so. He would never have pressed her to bring a gentleman up to scratch with all haste, and it had never mattered to him whether or not she had found a suitor in any particular Season. Before Fordham had run off with the family funds, he could have afforded any number of Seasons for the girls. There was no reason for them to marry in haste, when they might repent at leisure for an ill-made match.

But it had mattered to Father. He’d left his marks upon each of them in turn. Possibly Juliet had been spared the worst of it, since Father had had little interest in children and less interest in female children especially. But Marina—Marina had been old enough, before Father had died, to catch the sharp and cutting slice of his tongue. Old enough to bear at least a fraction of the scars that Father had inflicted upon him.

And he’d never asked. Never told her it was perfectly acceptable for her to find a suitor in her own time. Never once considered that a woman now three and twenty years of age might struggle with the feeling of having been left behind by the peers who had gone to the next stages of their lives before her.

But Mercy had. Even though she’d been old enough to reject the idolization of two little girls who had followed her around, as Mother had said, like little chicks, she had instead taken them both beneath her wing. Become the surrogate older sibling they had needed, when he had failed them.

No wonder Mother had always loved her. No wonder the girls had adored her. She’d saved them, after a fashion.

She’d saved him. From the cold, spiteful man he’d been well on his way to becoming. He had needed her every bit as much as they had, and he’d fought so fiercely against it, when he might have embraced the chaos of her years ago.

Mercy was going to make an utter wreck of his carefully-regimented life, and only a few weeks ago, the thought would have appalled him, horrified him. But he’d brought a little order to hers, he thought, and that—that was good. There was a balance they had found between them, halfway between his order and her chaos, and it was the best of both of them.

She had not yet come to this conclusion herself, however. It was written in the lines of her face, curiosity and trepidation both. It was in the fidgeting of her fingers, which had fallen once more to her lap.

She took a breath and pursed her lips, her gaze flickering nervously over him. “Regarding that lecture—”

“It’s coming.”

But not now. They’d probably no more than a few minutes before they reached the tavern, and what he wanted to say—to do—would be imprudent before they had concluded their business.

“I’d really rather—”

“Mercy. Later.”

He let his feet fall to the floor of the carriage once more, sat up from his indolent slouch. “We’ve precious little time. You did well to dress as you have. Now you must act the part.”

“The—the part?”

“Ladies do not go to taverns to socialize,”

he said. “The women that frequent taverns for purposes other than to keep to their rooms are not ladies. It is unlikely that we will encounter anyone who would recognize either of us—I have not, on the occasions I have been—but it would be deleterious to your reputation were your name to be bandied about. So for the evening, you will be Mrs. Armitage. My wife.”

“Your wife! Is it acceptable, then, for a man to take his wife to socialize in a tavern?”

“No,”

he said. “But it is worlds away better than letting anyone present believe you to be a woman of negligible honor and light morals. At least you will be somewhat shielded from censure. The judgment, if any, will fall upon me for bringing you rather than you for being present.”

He planted his feet firmly upon the floor as the carriage began to slow. “Now give me your hand, darling. We’re here.”

She did, with startling alacrity. “Have you got a pocket watch?”

she asked, chewing at her lower lip. “Your mother said she would check in on me when they returned. And time tends to get away from me.”

“Yes, I know.”

His fingers closed around hers. “I’ll have you back home before you are missed, Cinderella.”

The carriage stopped at last, and Thomas shoved his free hand into his pocket to retrieve the fare as Mercy climbed out after him with his assistance. She paused there upon the street, her fingers tightening in his.

Across the street, beneath the halo of a lamp, a woman was climbing down from a carriage. Her dark hair was elegantly styled, pinned up in a cluster of artfully-arranged curls, gleaming sable in the light. She wore a gown of rich silk brocade, in a pattern that could only be one of Mercy’s. As Mercy watched, enthralled, the woman retrieved a key from her reticule and disappeared through a door, no doubt to her residence on the upper floor above the shop on the street level.

Hell. Mercy had just gotten a glimpse of one of London’s most famous courtesans. “Pay her no mind,”

he said, with a gentle tug upon her hand. “You’re not meant to notice women of her stamp.”

Mercy jerked from her daze as if he’d struck her. “Whyever not?”

“She’s a courtesan,”

he said. “A professional mistress.”

A sharp breath whistled across her lips, nearly shrill in the silence of the street. “Have you ever—”

“No,”

he said as she fell into step beside him. “Nor would I. Suffice it to say, should you ever encounter her, you should pretend as though she does not exist.”

“I don’t think I could ever be so cold,”

she said softly. “Whatever her sins, she is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister.”

The pitch of her breath suggested an odd disquiet. “She is someone.”

“She is. And if you acknowledged her, you would be judged just as guilty by association. It isn’t fair,”

he said. “But society is often cruel. You know that much already. Here we are,”

he said as they rounded a corner and arrived before a tavern glowing from within with candlelight.

Mercy jerked to a halt beside him, resisting his hold on her hand. “Fordham frequents this tavern?”

she inquired, her voice vibrating across a few octaves.

“He does.”

“I can’t go in there,”

she whispered in a rush, the words tripping over one another.

Thomas paused, turned, stared down into her face. “You’ve been here before,”

he said slowly, comprehension dawning. “How many times? The first night you sneaked out of the house alone, or any of the others?”

She gave a little start, her eyes going wide, shocked. “How—”

“You’ve been leaving your shoes on the staircase for weeks,”

he said. “I’ve always been an early riser. It wasn’t difficult to deduce your comings and goings, which nights you had sneaked from the house, when it was clear that your shoes had to have been discarded there sometime between midnight and dawn. Why do you think I placed that note upon the stairs for you?”

And those occurrences had always followed a letter delivered from C. Nightingale. It had taken him some time to notice the pattern, but eventually it had become impossible to miss. Several times he’d considered cracking open that wax seal and violating her privacy. At the time, he’d just been glad that she had taken her damned key rather than shimmying down the trellis, that her late night adventures had remained the secret she had clearly intended them to be.

Now, he simply had hope that she would share her secret when she was prepared to do so. Whatever it was, he was reasonably certain it was not an affair, but that did not mean it posed no threat to her reputation or safety.

Her fingers twitched in his, and a shadow of a blush slipped over her cheeks. Some manner of shame, he thought, to have been caught out so unexpectedly. “You never said.”

“What could I have said to dissuade you? If I had attempted to stop you, you might have taken to climbing the damned trellis again—as you did tonight.”

He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a soothing gesture meant to convey that she had not earned his ire for her clandestine little escapades. “Will you be recognized?”

he asked, jerking his head toward the tavern.

“No, I—I don’t think so,”

she said. “I don’t know. I can’t be certain.”

“Have you been here more than once?”

A quick, decisive shake of her head. “Never the same tavern twice,” she said.

Good. That was good. Not perfect, perhaps, but then he could hardly alter what had already occurred. The tavern was busy enough, and her last visit distant enough, that he liked their odds. “Did you give anyone your name?”

“Of course not,”

she said. “I’m not a fool, Thomas.”

“Good,”

he said, and pulled her once more toward the door of the tavern. “Here’s hoping you think quickly on your feet, Mrs. Armitage.”

∞∞∞

The tavern was just as Mercy remembered it; loud and raucous and filled to the brim with gentlemen a bit too deeply in their cups to give much thought to propriety. Thomas, to his credit, wrapped an arm about her waist and tugged her close to his side, shepherding her safely through the crowd and toward the bar. “Sit,”

he murmured in her ear, as he pulled out a chair. “Away from the window. We don’t want to be seen from the outside.”

Mercy slid into the chair he offered, turning her face away from the window. “Could I have a drink?”

“Naturally. It would be noticeable if you did not.”

He took the chair beside her and lifted his hand to attract the attention of the man behind the counter; a portly gentleman of some forty years with a thick mustache and an affable air about him.

“Back again, I see,”

the man said as he reached for a pair of glasses. “This yer missus?”

he inquired, with a nod toward Mercy.

“She is.”

Thomas said, slinging his arm over her shoulders.

The barkeep chortled to himself. “Can’t keep yer ‘usband at home, then? Three nights a week at least ‘e’s at my tavern.”

To Thomas he inquired, “Did she burn the roast this evening?”

Thomas chuckled. “No; she’s yet to burn a roast, bless her. But we’ve two little ones at home, and now that we’ve hired on help, it seemed only fair to offer my wife a bit of a respite from them herself.”

“Oh? And how are the little ones, then?”

the barkeep asked, inclining his head toward Mercy.

“Delightful,”

she said promptly, and hoped it was the answer he had been expecting of her. “Most days. Evenings…less so.”

The barkeep threw back his head and laughed. “Aye, I suppose I recall those days well enough. Dare say ye’ll be wantin’ something a bit stronger than ale. Whisky, then?”

“Please. For the both of us,”

Thomas said, and his fingers squeezed her shoulder as if in praise as the barkeep turned to retrieve a bottle. He passed over a few coins and placed Mercy’s glass before her. “Sip it slowly,”

he cautioned as the barkeep turned his attention toward other patrons. “It’s not half as fine as your father’s brandy.”

Even half as fine would have been a vast overstatement, Mercy thought as she sipped the liquor and resisted the sudden urge to grimace. It could have stripped the varnish from furniture. But Thomas had had no apparent trouble masking his distaste, and so she did her best to school her features into something bland and pretend as though this was an ordinary occurrence, or at least an unremarkable one.

The creaking of the door hinges became a constant refrain, the tavern growing only more crowded by the minute. It had offered relative anonymity when last she had been here, when she had been tucked away at a table near the rear of the tavern, well out of sight of the windows. She’d experienced only a few untoward comments from a few drunkards, but it had been a simple thing to brush them off. They hadn’t truly been interested in her, besides.

“Don’t do that,”

Thomas chided in a low voice.

“Don’t do what?”

“You keep turning whenever someone comes in,”

he said near her ear. “You wouldn’t recognize him even if you saw him, but if you continue to watch the door, you’ll give the impression that we are waiting on someone.”

“We are waiting upon someone.”

“We don’t want him to know that,”

Thomas said. “Should he make an appearance, we don’t want to send him fleeing the instant he walks in the door. Let him come in, make himself comfortable, settle in for a pint.”

Oh. She supposed that made a certain amount of sense. “And then…apprehend him?”

“No,”

he said, brusquely. “I might have taken on the risk myself, but not with you present.”

“But if he should get away—”

“Mercy. He’s been effectively invisible for weeks already. If he should put in an appearance, we’ll quietly take our leave, I will send you home in a hack, and then I will follow him on my own. I don’t need to apprehend him personally. I only need to discover where he is hiding.”

He glanced down at the glass in her hand, from which she had taken only the tiniest of sips. “Can’t manage it?”

“I’m afraid not,”

she said weakly. “It is truly foul.”

“It’s rotgut,”

he said, exchanging his empty glass for hers. “We’ll not insult the proprietor with the suggestion that his spirits are substandard. I’d offer you an ale, but you won’t find it any more palatable.”

He cast back half the whisky remaining. “No need to be quite so anxious. You’re meant to be a harried wife out for a rare evening of leisure, you know,”

he said, and his fingers trailed down her arm in a soothing stroke.

“A mother of two,”

she murmured mildly. “Have our invented progeny got ages? Names?”

“Uncertain. They’ve only just been invented. Should anyone ask, you’ve my leave to call them whatever you like.”

Perhaps a quarter of her nerves vanished with the sudden urge to laugh. “Very well,”

she said. “Florentia, I think. She’s just two.”

“Florentia,”

he uttered beneath his breath, producing a grimace that even the rotgut liquor hadn’t managed to win from him. “Good God. I’m having regrets already.”

“And Sherborne,”

she said, biting back a smile as he coughed with his next sip. “The apple of his father’s eye, naturally.”

“I take it back. Florentia is somewhat less appalling than Sherborne. I’ll confirm it, if asked, but do not ask me to be happy for it. I don’t know that I’d trust you to be responsible for naming anything of more import than a cat.”

Mercy chuckled to herself, smothering the sound with her fingertips as the barkeep wandered back in their direction to reclaim their now-empty glasses.

“Another?” he asked.

“No, thank you,”

Thomas said. “Unfortunately our time is limited. Another half an hour or so, and we’ll have to be getting back to our—er, little ones.”

His lips puckered as if he could not bring himself to say the names she had offered him.

“Ah,”

the barkeep said. “At that age, then, are they? Can’t be away from mummy for too long?”

“Quite so.”

Thomas fished into his pocket and retrieved a coin, sliding it across the countertop. “Regarding that bloke I once made mention of—”

“Slipped me mind,”

the barkeep said, snatching the coin off the counter with such alacrity that Mercy suspected that it hadn’t so much as slipped his mind as it had been deliberately withheld until proper payment had been offered. “’E were in some hours ago. Said ‘e’d come into some money and bought the whole tavern a round o’ me best. Seemed to be on ‘is way out of town.”

Thomas stiffened beside her. “Did he happen to mention why?”

“’E were wiv some toffs. Welsh, I think, by accent,”

the barkeep replied. “Said they were headed northwest. Didn’t say why, nor where. Weren’t my business to ask, so long as ‘e was a properly payin’ customer.”

“And he did pay?”

Mercy blurted out. “With coin, or—”

“Banknote,”

the barkeep replied. “Weren’t cheap, ye know, a whole round. ‘Course, it weren’t worth a fiver, which is what ‘e gave me. Told me to keep the change, if ye can believe it,”

he added, as he flipped the coin Thomas had offered into the air and caught it in his palm as it fell.

Thomas dug once more into his pocket, retrieved another coin. The gold sovereign glinted in the candlelight as he held it up. “This, if you tell me at which bank it was drawn upon,” he said.

With a grin, the barkeep snatched it straight from Thomas’ fingers, tucking it away into his own pocket. “Bank of England,”

he said. “And what’s more—yer bloke said ‘e’d be back fer another round in a week’s time.”