Page 25 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Thomas stared down at the note that had been delivered not ten minutes ago, from one C. Nightingale. This time, addressed to him rather than to Mercy. The first missive—the first of many, he expected—from Mercy’s half-sister. And this time it had arrived with a return address. She was expecting a reply, then, this woman who would soon be his sister-in-law. Or half of one, anyway. He edged his thumb beneath the wax seal, prying it free of the paper, and unfolded the letter. Like the other he’d read, it was concise and to the point.

I have got your betrothed here with me. What am I to do with her?

- Charity Nightingale

Thomas snorted. Well, at least he now knew for certain that Mercy was safe and, most likely, being cared for. He retrieved a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer in Mr. Fletcher’s desk, and dabbed a quill into the inkwell near his elbow to scratch out a response.

Dear Miss Nightingale,

My apologies for the intrusion. You may have noticed that, on occasion, Mercy has the tendency to act before she thinks. I’ll be round to fetch her as soon as I’ve attended to some urgent business. If you might extend to her your hospitality until I’ve come to collect her, I would be most appreciative.

Sincerely,

Thomas Armitage

He folded up the letter and sealed it with a dab of wax. Possibly it was a great deal to request of the woman. But she had asked, after all.

Letter in hand, he jogged down the stairs to deliver it to the butler for the next penny post, and instead ran directly into the path of his mother and sisters, who lingered fretfully in the foyer, dressed to go out.

Belatedly, he realized he had not yet told them. Not any of it.

“Mercy’s not come down,”

Marina said, wringing her hands in distress. “We were meant to go to the bookshop this afternoon, and she’s not come down. She’s not usually so late.”

Hell. “She’s not coming down,”

he said. “She’s not here to come down.”

Mother produced a quizzical frown. “Whatever do you mean?”

she asked. “Where else could she possibly be?”

Thomas heaved a sigh. “Into the drawing room, if you please,”

he said, waving his arms to herd the lot of them, like wayward sheep, into the room. “Sit. It’s past time for all us to have a proper chat. It’s been a long while since we’ve last had a good talk.”

And so many things had happened in the interim. He’d lost the family fortune and acquired a betrothed. Then lost the betrothed. Juliet had acquired half a dozen suitors she didn’t intend to accept. Marina had fallen in love with a bookseller. No—a publisher.

Like colorful birds they perched upon chairs and couches. “Thomas,”

Juliet said. “Truly. What is this all about? We were meant—”

“To visit the bookshop,”

he said. “Yes, I know.”

And he turned to settle his gaze upon Marina. “The next time you go, I want you to tell your gentleman that he is to come and make himself known to me,”

he said. “If he wishes to court you, he will do it properly. There is to be no more of this skulking about. Is that understood?”

Marina jerked in her chair, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle her gasp. “How—how—”

“Mother,”

he said. “And Mercy. And you are damned lucky for it, for if I had noticed before they had, I might well have dismissed him out of hand. Almost certainly I would have done, had they both not championed you.”

In his arrogance, he might have stuck firmly to his convictions, misguided as they had been.

As tears glittered in her blue eyes—tears of joy, he hoped—he realized that without Mercy’s guidance, without Mother’s, he could very well have destroyed Marina’s happiness along with his own. He had always meant to take care of his family, and he had, until now, thought he’d been doing a fine enough job of it.

He might have seen Marina married off to a perfectly suitable gentleman, one of her own class, with the proper bloodlines and title, and still she might have been miserable. And he knew he didn’t have to ask her to consider those things she would be surrendering to pursue her happiness. She had already considered them, and dismissed them just as he had. Because there was nothing so important as love.

But there was also Juliet to consider. She had no bookseller—publisher—waiting in the wings to marry her. She loved the whirl of the Season, the romance of it, the fawning attention she had received. And there would be more of it in the years to come, until she deemed herself ready to be married at last. At least, there would have been.

“I have a question to ask of all of you but before I do I have some explanations of my own to make. Mercy is not present today because we quarreled evening last. She has gone to stay with her sister.”

Just as he had, in the exact same baffled tone, Juliet said, “But Mercy hasn’t got a sister.”

“She has,”

he said. “More than one, in fact.”

Possibly more even than two. “Half-sisters, through their shared mother. The woman is not quite so deceased as we had otherwise been led to believe. It seems that her marriage to Mercy’s father was somewhat less than legitimate, when one considers that at the time of that marriage, she had a living husband and two daughters already.”

“Oh, poor dear Mercy,”

Marina said on a gasp. “I cannot imagine how it must have hurt her to learn it.”

“Do you know, I think she was less hurt by her illegitimacy than she was happy to discover she had sisters,”

Thomas said. “She will not give them up, and I will not ask her to do so. Just as I would never abandon either of you, so too would it be unfair and mean-spirited to demand it of Mercy. And one of those sisters,”

he added, “is a rather notorious courtesan. Miss Charity Nightingale.”

“Oh, dear,”

Mother breathed. “And the other?”

“I haven’t the faintest,”

he said. An unknown quantity, Felicity—impossible to say whether or not she would come with her own share of scandal. “I know her given name, and little else. To my knowledge, Mercy has not yet met her.”

“But she has met Miss Nightingale?”

“Yes. And she means to continue to do so. I am telling you all first and foremost that I intend to marry Mercy”—he paused, heartened by the giddy squeals of glee issued by Marina and Juliet both—“irrespective of whatever bit of scandal that lies in her past. But I cannot deny that there may be consequence beyond my control. I have already made my decision, and now you must make yours.”

“What are you saying, Thomas?”

Juliet asked, her brow knitting.

“I mean to say that as with any scandal, there are social repercussions. And they will not reflect only upon the two of us, but upon all of you. So I am asking you to decide for yourselves what you are willing to bear. Whether we weather it together and accept what judgment society sees fit to bestow, or whether Mercy and I retire to the countryside and let ourselves fall out of society altogether.”

Mercy would like that, he thought. She was most herself out in the countryside, happiest when she was tromping through fields. “An imperfect solution at best, but so long as the Ton doesn’t see us, they can’t cut us. Provided we do not give them cause to call us to mind, it is likely that you will be somewhat insulated from consequences. I will not lie to you,”

he said to Juliet. “There is every possibility that the scandal, should one arise, will harm your matrimonial prospects. When and if you judge yourself ready to find a husband in earnest, you may find your choices…somewhat more limited than they might otherwise have been.”

For a moment there was only silence as the three women considered the possibility he had laid out before them, the consequences they might well face from a situation not of their doing.

At last, Mother said in a small voice, “I have had to confront some unpleasant truths this Season already. That the people I thought I knew were significantly less kind than I had imagined, more judgmental than I had thought, more given to snobbery and conceit than I would have believed. If we are to find ourselves cut by those people whom I have so misjudged, then I will count it no great loss.”

She had, Thomas recalled, been furious and hurt and baffled at Mercy’s initial snubbing. And there would likely be more of it. Probably, he thought, it had bothered Mother far more than it had bothered Mercy, who had not been hurt so much as embarrassed that her exclusion had been made so obvious. Mercy would not miss the Season. Neither would Marina, who had a gentleman waiting in the wings for her. But Juliet…

“And you?”

he asked of her.

With a quizzical pleat etched into her brow, she said, “You are asking whether I would prefer for you to remain in the countryside during the Season?”

“It would be easier for you,”

he said. “Of course, Mother will join you in London. And if Marina is to marry her bookseller, she will likely be in London throughout the year. Naturally, I will maintain a London residence for you. You’ll have a proper wardrobe and all that goes along with the Season.”

“But you wouldn’t be here,”

she said pensively. “And neither would Mercy.”

“No. But Mercy prefers the countryside, besides. Mother is perfectly capable of guiding you through the Season on her own. You will not suffer for our absence, I promise you. It is your decision.”

“Oh,”

she said. And then, as if the proposition he had put before her had required no more than a cursory examination, she said, “I choose you and Mercy, then.”

Thomas stilled. Cleared his throat. Tried again to impress upon her the severity of such a decision. “Juliet, this matter should not be taken lightly. Do consider—”

“I have,”

she said, with a serenity and unflinching resolve well beyond her years. “Thomas, marriage is still years away for me. What could ever make you think that I would choose some nameless, faceless gentleman I do not yet know over you and Mercy, whom I do? When I am ready to marry, I intend to choose someone I will love. I could never love someone who would snub either of you.”

Hell. Thomas swiped one hand across his face and blinked back the odd burn of grateful tears that stung his eyes. “Juliet,”

he said gruffly, his voice gone hoarse and tight—not with the advent of a stammer, but rather with a surfeit of unexpected emotion, “At times like these, I think you might be the best of all of us.”

Certainly the kindest. Perhaps even the wisest.

A canny glint came into Juliet’s eyes. “Of course, once Mercy is my sister-in-law, I’ll be permitted to take a ride in her hot air balloon—”

Thomas gave a snort. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, but Thomas—”

“Not until I have ascertained that it is sufficiently safe, at least,”

he amended. And then he heaved a sigh, some terrible knot of tension in his chest beginning to untangle itself at last. “Thank you,”

he said. “All of you.”

But he realized he hadn’t had to thank them. Mercy had always been their family, too.

∞∞∞

“No,”

Charity said as she idly flipped through the pages of a newspaper, her voice pitched to an irritating sing-song inflection.

Mercy ground her teeth together, struggling to rein in her inconvenient bout of temper enough to keep a civil tongue in her head. “I was not asking,”

she said. “I was, in fact, telling you that I would be leaving immediately.”

“And I am telling you,”

Charity said, evincing no reaction other than the minutest arch of an elegant brow, “that to do so would be so ill-advised, so foolish, that I will not allow it. One does not avoid one scandal by starting another. And besides, I have had a letter from your baron, and he has instructed me to keep you here.”

“Instructed!”

Mercy huffed, in tones of increasing fury. “Instructed! By whose authority does he instruct you, then?”

“Do you know,”

Charity said, turning a reflective glance toward the ceiling. “I rather think he believes it to be his own. But in fact it is mine.”

Another flick of the page. “Give it up, dearest. I do agree with him, in point of fact. The sun is only now beginning to set. You cannot be seen to be wandering Cheapside unaccompanied at such an hour. Most especially not leaving my home. You would be…”

She paused, pursed her lips in consideration. “Whatever it is that is worse than ruined.”

Mercy flounced down upon the couch in a dramatic snit. “You are the most disloyal of sisters,”

she accused.

“And how would you know?”

Charity inquired tartly. “We’ve been sisters for all of half a year!”

“We’ve been sisters my entire life and most of yours, you miserable shrew!”

“Shrew!”

Charity cast aside the paper, which landed with a sharp thwack upon the table beside her elbow. “Say that again. I’ve won a fair few scraps in my time; I’ll not pull my punches on account of shared blood.”

Mercy’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Why, you vicious little—”

A snort disrupted her diatribe, and she attempted to smother it with her fingers. And she might have succeeded, if not for the chuckle that followed swiftly upon its heels. But another followed that, and then she was laughing in earnest.

With a caustic sound, Charity snatched her newspaper up from the table once more. “What could possibly be so amusing?”

she inquired.

“It’s just that—I have just realized—”

Mercy paused to draw a steadying breath. “We sound like Marina and Juliet,”

she said at last. “When they’re in the midst of a sisterly squabble.”

By the uncomprehending look Charity slanted her direction, she guessed that this was in no way remarkable or at all uncommon. But then, Charity had always had a sister.

And Mercy had, too. But she had never known it.

“Do they squabble often, then?”

Charity asked.

“Mm, no,”

Mercy said. “At least rarely in my hearing. Usually they are the best of friends. But when they do fight, oh, it is brutal.”

She settled her hands in her lap. “Do you think we’ll squabble like that?”

Like sisters, she meant to imply, and by Charity’s indulgent glance, she thought she had been understood.

“If you call me a shrew with any degree of regularity,”

Charity said, and aimed a whack at Mercy’s head with her newspaper, “it’s practically a certainty. Now calm yourself and be good. You must stay until your baron comes to fetch you.”

Mercy startled. “He’s coming to fetch me?”

“He said he would,”

Charity drawled. “I’ve no particular reason to doubt him. And he was really rather polite in his letter, much more so than I had expected.”

“Did he say when?”

“No,”

Charity said. “He only asked that I extend to you my hospitality until he comes to collect you. He mentioned, too, that you’ve a remarkable tendency to act without thinking. Given the argument we’ve just had, I’m inclined to believe him.”

She gave a blasé shrug. “So I’ve hidden your shoes.”

Mercy glanced down at her feet, which peeped out from beneath the hem of her dress. Bare, but for her stockings. Damn. “It’s just that I have already acted without thinking,”

she said. “Or—without thinking clearly. I shouldn’t have left.”

“I would tell you that I hate to say I told you so, but that would be a lie. I really, truly love it.”

Mercy cast Charity a glare—in the spirit of good-natured, sisterly spite—and said, “It’s just that you were right.”

“I am, generally. You should contrive simply to agree with me at all times. But in this circumstance, I shall allow you to expound upon exactly how I was right.”

“Magnanimous of you,”

Mercy said, and there wasn’t even any heat to the words. “I decided I would rather be an idiot in love.”

Her own epiphany, and it had come quietly, with the singular realization that she simply could not do without him. That perhaps she would complicate his life, complicate the lives of everyone close to her. But it wasn’t for her to decide what he ought to be willing to bear. It was only for her to trust him to know his own heart.

Thomas knew all there was to know, every detail of her life. Every scandal and secret, every queer habit and idiosyncrasy. And he wanted her anyway.

“I have to tell him,”

she said in a frog’s croak of a voice. “I have to tell him I love him. I never have, you know.”

Once, she had thought it a kindness. That when they inevitably parted, he would be the better for it. But there was no kindness in withholding love, no mercy in the unjust separation of two kindred souls.

“And you will,”

Charity said. “When he comes to fetch you, and not before. You have made your bed in your madcap dash for freedom, and now you must lie in it and wait for him to come retrieve you.”

“Ugh.”

Mercy cast her head back against the back of the couch with an enervated sigh. “I swear I wish he did not know me half so well.”

“I think it’s lovely,”

Charity confided. “I have been hard for too many years to ever make myself vulnerable,”

she added, “but sometimes I think…it must be wonderful to be known. Truly known by another.”

“It is,”

Mercy said. “Except when it’s dreadful. Now, for instance.”

Charity chuckled over the pages of her newspaper. “You have only yourself to blame, dearest.”

“But it is ever so much more satisfying to blame someone else,”

Mercy declared, folding her legs beneath her as she settled in for a long wait upon the couch.

A fierce pounding upon the door filled the room, floating up from the stairs which led to the door upon the street below, and Mercy startled at the sound. “Already?”

she asked. “But it’s—it’s still daylight.”

Charity cast down her paper and unfolded herself from the couch. “Stay,”

she said, gesturing to Mercy with one hand as she headed for the window that overlooked the street below. Peeling back a corner of the sheer curtain, she peered out. “Mercy,”

she said, “your baron is not…a greying gentleman of some advancing years, is he?”

“Thomas? No,”

she said, and her brow furrowed at the question. “He’s just thirty, and his hair is quite dark.”

Against Charity’s order, she popped up, striding across the floor. “Do you not recognize your caller?”

“Not in the least,”

Charity said. And then, as Mercy approached, “Dearest, don’t. You shouldn’t be spotted here, even from the window.”

But Mercy had wedged herself there already, peeking through the lifted curtain to gaze out onto the street, at the gentleman standing there, his fist raised to pound upon the door again. Her breath sailed from her lungs as if someone had planted a fist into them. “Oh, Lord,”

she said in a squeak. “That certainly isn’t Thomas. That’s my father.”