Page 13 of Submitting to the Widow
Bath, England
The Saracen’s Head in Bath on Tuesday evening was a welcome change from the tavern at the Combe Down Inn. Once Stephen’s eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw Henry waving him over to a secluded table in a dark corner.
After the day he’d had, he was grateful to see a friendly face. “Henry—it’s been too long.”
“Sit down. Tell me what’s on your mind. I’ve ordered beef stew and two pints.”
Stephen slung himself onto the second wooden chair and heaved out a sigh. Instead of a long, detailed description of the tangle he found himself in, he smoothed out the now-wrinkled list Captain El had given him of the men she wanted investigated.
Henry whistled low. “I don’t know why you’re looking into these four, but I’d tread lightly if I were you.”
“Are any of these men dangerous enough to try to warn me off with a thorough tossing of my room?”
Henry squinted through his glasses at the list in the tavern’s low light. “Well, the Combe Quarry owner’s dead, but his son would defend his father’s name, and he’s a vicious competitor in business. You don’t want to cross James Hawkins, the younger.”
Squire Pinchot is an ailing old man, but there are still rumors floating around of what really happened to that poor young woman. Dr. Smythe is harmless enough, but you must wonder what he might have done to end up on her list of despicable men.
A bar maid delivered their food just then, and both men tucked in, silent for long moments. Stephen was the first to speak again. He leaned back and took a long pull on his pint of dark beer. “Which one of those men do you think is most likely to have ripped apart my room? And what the hell was he searching for?”
Henry answered without hesitation. “Hawkins…I can’t be certain, of course, but he’s the most mean-spirited of the lot.” He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “If they’ve heard about your valet asking questions about them and their old cronies around Combe Down, they probably suspect you’re on to whatever it was they might have gotten up to in the past. That’s the way of small towns.”
“But what did they hope to find in my room? Nobody at the inn remembers seeing anyone out of the ordinary lurking in hallways while I was gone.”
“Maybe what they saw didn’t seem out of the ordinary to them at the time.”
* * *
Stephen rodehis hired roan back toward Combe Down in the early shadows of a unusually warm early spring dusk. The road he chose took him back past Combe Quarry where he was in time to ride past workmen trudging home, swinging pails that had probably been full of their lunches earlier in the day. Their boots and clothing were yellow from quarry dust, and he wondered if their lungs were coated in a similar shade.
He shook his head to clear out the cobwebs and took a deep, restorative breath, thanking the gods for his own relatively peaceful profession, one which he intended to keep as long as possible despite all the dangers to that very livelihood from his current predicament. Failure was not an option.
Just then, a curricle with two fine grays exploded out of the quarry gate. The grays were being given a heavy dose of the whip by the driver who was dressed in the latest and finest dandy’s apparel. The equipage swung out of the gate, nearly tipping in the process, before turning back toward Combe Down. Dust from the road swirled in thick clouds and blanketed the workers walking along the road.
Stephen coughed violently for a few moments before realizing he must have just seen the passing of Hawkins the younger.
* * *
Monday,April 24, 1826
Crescent Terrace
Bath, England
Jane’s maid lit the gas lamps in her bedchamber off the first-floor landing of her crescent townhouse in Bath. She usually took a minimum of time with her toilette, but she wanted tonight to be special. She was determined to totally disarm the barrister Stephen Forsythe. She didn’t want him to be able to even contemplate ending the game she’d started between them.
Pleasure alone was theraison d’etreof their limited time together, and she wanted to enjoy to the fullest what he offered. She knew he would never have given her a second look on the street if she hadn’t taken possession of the journal pages that could ruin him if exposed to English society at large. And no, she wasn’t sorry.
She’d had his highwayman’s costume delivered to the inn so that he could prepare for their next exchange of journal pages at his leisure.
Raj slid silently into the room behind her. “Are you sure it is wise to continue this game when you may have lost your sense of detachment?”
“How can you accuse me of losing my sense of detachment when you’ve clearly lost yours?”
“I’m much older, and wiser, at this game than you are.”
“Really?” Jane stood so that her maid could apply the finishing touches to her simple coiffure of long curls cascading from beneath a pirates scarf wrapped around the crown of her head. She used a soft brush to add a bit of rouge to the tops of her breasts straining against the low-cut neckline of her dress.
“Then why did James have to deliver Barrister Forsythe’s exhausted valet to their rooms this afternoon?”