Page 2 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Mercy ambled into the dining room at least thirty minutes late, flexing her sore fingers and sighing as she collapsed into her chair. “Papa, I need more silk.”

“Silk?”

Papa paused, his spoon hovering over his bowl of soup. “I would swear I received a bill only last week for two bolts of it.”

His brows scrunched as if it had only now occurred to him that it had been an extraordinary amount of fabric.

“It’s for my balloon,”

she said as a footman placed a bowl of white soup before her. “There was an incident today—”

“Ah, yes,”

Papa said placidly. “Lord Armitage made some mention of that.”

Mercy stifled a wince. “I suppose he must’ve done.”

She’d not seen Thomas so incensed since—well, since the last time she’d offended his delicate sensibilities, she supposed. Possibly all peers were like that, though his family was the only noble one with which she had had more than a passing acquaintance. His mother was pleasant enough, and his sisters were lovely—but Thomas had had a stick up his arse since childhood, or so it had always seemed to her. “Unfortunately, the wind turned as I alighted,”

she said. “And I ended up upon his land. I managed to land safely enough”—give or take a few bumps and bruises—“but my balloon was not so lucky. It’s got a dreadful tear straight through a panel, and I shall need to replace the silk.”

And it would have to be fine stuff indeed. As fine as any that could be got in London. Fine as the finest produced by Papa’s London silk mill.

“Sweeting, I can’t imagine you’ll find much silk in the village. Not a lot of call for it in the countryside.”

“That’s just it,”

Mercy said, striving to keep her voice light and innocent. “I’m certain there’s not enough left in the village to suit my needs. I thought—well, I thought, it has been so long since we’ve been to London—”

Papa’s brow furrowed deeper, pleating a crease right there above the bridge of his nose. “You want to go to London for silk,”

he said, his voice inflected with no small measure of disbelief.

No, of course not. It had just seemed a convenient excuse. “I only thought—”

“You hate London.”

Not true. Or at least, not entirely true. It was more that London seemed to hate her. There was nowhere she belonged within its rigidly-segmented strata. Too genteel to find a place within the common merchant class; too common to be welcomed amongst the Ton. “I haven’t been to London often enough to have formed an opinion,”

Mercy said. “Though I do prefer the countryside.”

Where she was largely left to her own devices, without much of anyone to cast judgment upon her for her numerous and extensive peculiarities.

Except for Thomas, of course.

Still Papa squinted in her direction as if she’d been suddenly replaced by some manner of unknown and potentially volatile creature. “I seem to recall that you once swore that you would die before you willingly set foot in London again.”

“Papa, I was eighteen.”

A nasty girl a few years her senior named Lady Frances had been just awful to her at the modiste, and she’d taken it perhaps a little too much to heart. At that tender age, Mercy had privately nurtured the idea of making friends, having a proper entrée into society, and perhaps even finding a husband. She’d even had a debut, of a sort. As much of one as a girl could have without the social connections required to merit a presentation to the Queen.

It was just that those coveted invitations she had so anticipated receiving had never arrived. At-home days had come and gone without a single caller. It had taken only a fortnight for Mercy to come to understand that there wasn’t a place for her in London, and to beg her father to return to the countryside, where she would not have to suffer the rejections of those who ought to have been her peers day after miserable day.

She had had no one at all in London. Then.

Surreptitiously, she slid her hand beneath the table, found the pocket in her dress, and slid her fingers within to touch the folded letter within, taking comfort from the letter that had been read and reread so often that it had softened to a fabric-like quality.

“I have got some new fabric patterns to deliver to the mill, besides,”

she said. “It would save you the trip, were I to deliver them myself and acquire the silk I need all at once. And perhaps…perhaps while I am in London, I shall give the Season another go.”

It was a convenient excuse, with the added benefit of naturally extending what otherwise might be expected to be a short trip. Nigh on a decade had passed since her prior Season; long enough to make a change of heart a credible concept. She was no longer so young as to require constant chaperoning, and she hadn’t much of a public reputation, besides. At best, she would be an unknown quantity. At worst she would be the same as she ever had been—a provincial nobody; a pretender to a class above her own; an unwelcome intruder.

“Hm.”

Papa waved away his soup, and a footman replaced the bowl with a leafy green salad liberally flaked with lemon zest. “If you truly wish to go to London—”

“I do.”

Mercy suppressed a wince over her own salad, and reassured herself that it was not, in fact, a lie. She did want to go—only, not for the purposes of husband-hunting. But then, Papa would not be surprised if she came home without one. Perhaps a little disappointed, but not surprised. He had never pressed her to marry, never insinuated his spinster daughter had long overstayed her welcome beneath his roof. It had been just the two of them for years and years, and she thought that her presence had brought some comfort, some life to a house that would have been altogether too large for one man. That he would have been lonely without her. “Of course, you need not accompany me,”

she said. “I’m certain I can get along with a lady’s maid.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,”

Papa said. “You’ve got to have a proper chaperone. A woman to sponsor you, one who knows her way around society. The baroness will do nicely, I think.”

“The…baroness.”

The word clunked off of her tongue as heavily as if she’d dropped her silverware instead. Thomas’ mother? “Papa—”

“And you’ll have the company of the girls, naturally,”

Papa said. “I understand the oldest has been through a few Seasons herself.”

He must mean Marina. She was three and twenty, out in society for her fourth Season. Followed by Juliet, on her first. “Papa, you can’t mean to suggest what I think you are suggesting.”

“I can,”

he said pleasantly. “And I do.”

“I’m seven and twenty, and common as dirt besides. No one will expect me to behave as a girl newly out in society. I can manage my own social calendar.”

“I’m certain you can, but Lady Armitage can gain you entrée to homes we’d never be welcome in otherwise. It will be some weeks until I can spare the time to join you, but Lady Armitage will see you well settled until then.”

A footman whisked away the salad before him, replacing it with a fresh plate adorned with tiny medallions of duck breast slathered in a rich cream sauce. “This year will be a better one for you, mark my words. And besides, you’ve grown up alongside the girls. You’re practically sisters.”

Practically, Mercy thought as she brushed the folded letter in her pocket once again with the tips of her fingers. But practically was not the same as factually.

∞∞∞

There’s been a change in plans.

The words hovered there just at the tip of Thomas’ tongue between sips of wine, but with each moment that passed they seemed to grow heavier. Unless he let them out quickly, they might well land straight upon the dinner table with an ominous thud instead of the light, nonchalant delivery he would otherwise have intended.

Mother patted at the corner of her mouth with the edge of her napkin, her dark brows pinching together as she directed her gaze his way at last. “Thomas, dear, is there something on your mind?”

There’s been a change in plans. He could say those words now, of course, and just have done with it. There would be questions, no doubt, ones which he could not anticipate nor reliably answer even if he could. “Nothing much, no.”

Another sip of wine and the words grew heavier still. He would have to say them eventually. If not now, then damned soon.

“It’s just that you’ve been unusually quiet this evening,”

Mother said as she waved away her plate, and a servant stepped toward the table to remove it. She had to have noticed by now that there were fewer than there once had been, that their table was attended now by only two instead of the four that generally waited upon them.

Perhaps she’d simply reasoned it away. Perhaps she would continue to do so until the situation had become too dire to ignore. A body could explain away all manner of things—for a time.

Luckily, the servants knew who it was who paid their salaries. Even the ones that had left would not have taken their complaints to Mother.

“Well, I have got a great deal upon my mind, Mama,”

Juliet interjected, and Thomas could have sighed with relief to have Mother’s attention diverted to her youngest daughter. “We’ll be just the very last to London for the Season at this rate. Are we not meant to be leaving soon?”

They should have left already, and by the quizzical glance Mother slanted him, she well knew it. Probably she could not imagine what had delayed them so late this year.

“Well, we cannot leave without proper wardrobes,”

Marina said. “And they’ve yet to be delivered. I have half a mind to write a properly scathing letter—”

Ah, hell. If she did, she’d swiftly receive an equally-scathing letter in return first demanding payment for the garments that had been ordered. “They’ll be delivered to us in London,”

Thomas blurted out.

Mother’s head swiveled, her gaze sharpening. “They will?”

Fucking hell. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I thought it expedient,”

he said. “Since we need not wait upon your wardrobes to be delivered to us here, we need be delayed only a few more days.”

Now. It had to be now, to change the course of the conversation. “There’s been a change of plans. Miss Fletcher will be joining us for the Season.”

“Miss Fletcher? Do you mean to say Mercy?”

Juliet’s eyes widened. “But I’ve never seen her in London. I can scarcely imagine it.”

Nor could Thomas. “Of course it is a dreadful imposition—”

“Oh, never say so,”

Mother chided. “Mercy is a lovely girl. Of course we shall be delighted to have her company for the Season.”

“She’s not a girl, Mother. She’s seven and twenty at least.”

On the shelf, by any standard. Another drink, his tongue now blessedly unburdened by those dreadful words. “Even her father understands the imposition—which is why he’s offered us the use of his carriage and his London house for the Season.”

God willing, no one who mattered would notice the state of disrepair their own carriage was in, when it would be used only to bring up those things to London that the family could not do without.

“His townhouse?”

Marina inquired, with a curious cant of her head. “But we’ve room enough in ours, haven’t we?”

“Of course.”

Though he’d not managed to confirm whether or not they even had the let of it presently, so it hardly mattered. “But Mr. Fletcher insisted, and it’s quite a fashionable address. We’d be foolish to decline so generous an offer.”

And would be a grander home by far, owing to the fortune Mr. Fletcher had made in the textile industry.

“That is generous indeed,”

Mother said, though the pinch of her brows only grew more pronounced. “Though I wonder at your acceptance. To my knowledge, you have never been particularly fond of dear Mercy.”

Dear Mercy. Thomas hid a wince behind the rim of his wine glass.

“He thinks she’s too flighty,”

Juliet confided as she popped a bite of chicken into her mouth.

“I don’t think she’s too flighty,”

Thomas protested. It hadn’t a thing to do with his perception of her; she simply was too flighty. Sometimes quite literally—in a hot air balloon, for example. “I think she’s…”

Reckless. Uncontrollable. Mystifying. Too damned opinionated for her own good. “Eccentric,”

he concluded weakly.

“Eccentric,”

Mother murmured. “Hmm.”

That sharp gaze slid over his face as if she might spot secrets lurking within the lines of it. “And you are aware, are you not, Thomas, that eccentricity is rarely limited to the countryside?”

“It is my hope”—his fervent hope—“that our social schedules in London will simply be too full to allow Miss Fletcher to come to much mischief.”

Marina tittered behind her fingers. “I imagine that Mercy can find mischief anywhere,”

she said, though the words sounded inordinately fond.

“Well, we shall all have to see that she does not,”

Thomas said. “We owe it to Mr. Fletcher to see that his daughter comes to no harm.”

Through her own reckless actions or otherwise. “He wants his daughter to find a husband.”

“A husband? For Mercy?”

Marina blinked. “She doesn’t want a husband. She’s told me so at least a dozen times.”

Well, she was getting one, or so her father had determined, even if Mercy had never seemed particularly in want of one. Probably, Thomas thought, rather uncharitably, she would exasperate the poor man into an early grave. There was a part of him that was tempted to believe that any man foolish enough to take Mercy to wife deserved his fate.

Still, given the tight rein they would all have upon her, it was unlikely that the man would understand the magnitude of his undertaking until it was too late.

Thomas stifled a sigh. Poor bastard—whosoever he might be.