Page 17 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

17

On a narrow lane lined with soot-stained buildings, their decorative lintels carved of Portland stone nearly obscured by the layers of grime that clung to the structures like a snake’s scaly sheath, one building sat sandwiched between the next, slightly bowed in over the cobbled street below.

Having been here before, Thorne barely registered the imposing set of bronze doors fronting the offices of Dawson and Company, Banking and Lending Institution.

A uniformed clerk welcomed him at a small stand in the center of the lobby, upon which lay a visitors’ book and an inkstand. Thorne’s hand hesitated as he took up the pen, but in the end, he signed the book as Jonathan Thornwood. He made his request to the clerk and walked across a cold marble floor, stopping to stare at a wall full of portraits while awaiting a reply.

Jacob Dawson, founder of the bank, stood out in the portraits, hung in the center of a long line of serious faces encased in carved frames of gilt and oak. The personality of the man inhabiting the canvas was so powerful it came through the frame despite the mediocrity of whatever artist had painted it. An attempt had been made to present Dawson as a wise and steady man, dressed in black except for a white shirt and dark blue cravat, one of his spindly hands resting upon a Bible, and the other pointing toward a map of India.

Thorne suspected Dawson might have hired someone to stand in for him, as the man had been unable to remain stationary for any length of time. A famed explorer, he’d retired from the seas after losing a leg and made a second fortune as a shipping magnate. From there it had been a short step to opening a bank, funding the sorts of expeditions he once led.

When Thorne had been a boy, Dawson had come to stay for a fortnight at Longlake Abbey. Thorne’s mother had retreated to her rooms with a megrim almost immediately after the first dinner with the old sailor, while Thorne and his brothers had spent every moment possible in Dawson’s company.

Never had Thorne heard such language—colorful in every regard. Yes, he learned some mammoth curses, curses he pulled out only in the rarest of cases and that had never failed to impress, but that wasn’t all.

For the first time, Thorne heard a white man speak approvingly of foreign cultures. Rather than project disdain for the natives of the countries he visited, Dawson spoke reverently, and with respect for the people he’d encountered and the sights and sounds of his journeys.

The rest of Thorne’s family politely hid their disbelief behind hands of cards or linen napkins, but Thorne wanted to hear more. More about a world outside of the estate and the banality of the British schoolroom. More about life and how it could be lived differently in faraway places.

One might have expected that he’d sign up to serve on one of Dawson’s ships, but Thorne didn’t need to travel abroad to learn of different cultures or hear a cacophony of languages. He’d found those in his years of traveling the prizefighting circuit. In each corner of the British Isles, Thorne had encountered a panoply of ethnicities, religions, and beliefs as foreign to him as any he might have found in the Indies.

What Dawson did was to cement Thorne’s fledgling ideas that there was more to life than the rigid confines of the aristocracy. The old sailor flung open a door to the idea that other ways of life might be just as good, or preferable even, to what Thorne had experienced so far.

Their contact ended when Thorne left his family to become a boxer. By that time, Dawson had begun to turn his back on society and even his own company.

“Mr. Thornwood? This way, please.”

Thorne winked up at the painted Jacob and followed a middle-aged clerk with a small, humped back into the depths of the building. They passed row upon row of narrow desks occupied by silent men bent over their parchment.

“Mr. Dawson? I have Mr. Thornwood with me.”

The clerk opened an office door and stood back so Thorne could enter first. Rising from his seat, a gaunt man around ten years older than Thorne leaned one hand on the desk and reached out with the other. Jacob Dawson had been a large man, large of voice, large of vision, and fond of excess whether in food, drink, or laughter. His son, Rudolph, was the opposite, for he was a man of moderation. In voice, appetite, and dress, Rudolph disdained excess.

Except for his own excess of wealth. Rudolph had no quarrel against that.

“Thornwood. How can I help you?”

Thorne had met with Rudolph a few times after his father, Jacob, died, once even performing an inquiry for the bank. As such, he knew the blunt words were not rudeness, but simply a manner of speech that was devoid of any small or frivolous talk.

However, Thorne had not lost the genial habits instilled in his youth.

“Good day, Dawson. I hope you and your family fare well.”

Rudolph blushed and cleared his throat in a moment of chagrin. “They are quite well, thank you.”

“I am here asking for a favor,” Thorne said.

The slight twitch of Rudolph’s eyebrows was the only hint of interest. “Hmmm. A favor for an agent of Tierney and Company. That might be worth something down the road.”

“Indeed. I will owe you a favor in return,” Thorne said.

Steepling his fingers together, Rudolph put Thorne in mind of a praying mantis. Intimidating insect, but it could always be stepped on.

“Tell me about Mr. W. R. Wilcox.”

Before Winthram had left for up north, he’d discovered that the moneys paid to Mr. Wilcox by David had ended up in an account at Dawson’s bank.

A tiny puff of disappointment escaped Rudolph as he sat back and folded his hands in his lap.

“Huh. If you are looking for skullduggery, you’re looking in the wrong place. W. R. Wilcox is one of the Earl of Yarmouth’s sons, Willem, the fourth in line, I believe. Do you know the family?”

Thorne shook his head.

“Rather lofty ideals, the lot of them. Mother and daughters are on dozens of committees to help the unfortunate, or find homes for foundlings, or what have you. Father is frail, fell ill from an apoplexy, but the sons seem devoted.”

Rupert glanced down at his hands and Thorne wondered, did Rudolph miss Jacob, despite the differences between father and son?

“Wilcox is involved with a group of textile weavers in Rochdale who’ve formed some sort of cooperative credit union,” Rudolph continued.

“A cooperative credit union?” Thorne was unfamiliar with such a union. “What is that?” Thorne asked.

The other man lifted his hand as though to brush the idea away into the ether where it belonged, distaste puckering his lips.

“Groups sell shares to members, then use the capital to buy goods at lower prices. They then sell on the goods at a profit and the savings go back to the members. Every member gets a vote in what they’ll buy and an equal return on investment. Democratic nonsense, if you ask me. No way to make a true profit.”

Rudolph’s father, Jacob, had made huge profits first through his trade expeditions, then as a shipping magnate and banker. The more money he’d made, however, the more he despaired. Trade with England had changed the nature of the places and people he had so admired, and slowly their way of life disappeared. Eventually, Jacob was turned out as president of his own firm for railing against the British government’s actions in India and his insistence on fair trade.

Thorne believed all men bore some imprint of the man who raised them. So had Rudolph resented his father’s progressive beliefs and reacted against them out of spite, or was he simply greedy? Or was the truth something in between?

How much of his own father did Thorne carry with him? The memory of his father’s eyes as Thorne left with Sadie so many years ago—Thorne had assumed the disappointment he’d seen there was with the way he had chosen to live his life. Could there have been some sympathy in that gaze as well?

For all that Blackstone stayed away, Thorne had never gone near home again.

“Right. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” Thorne said now. He pushed his chair back and caught sight of a copy of the Gentlemen’s Monthly Magazine , the mouthpiece for the Guardians of Domesticity.

Pointing to the magazine, Thorne asked, “Are you a follower of Victor Armitage and his group?”

A fierce snort of disagreement trumpeted from Rudolph’s nose, and he drew a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the leavings. “Not a follower of anyone, but certainly not Armitage. Man has the subtlety of a night at Astley’s theatre.”

Refolding the square of linen, Rudolph motioned his chin toward the magazine. “He’s an idiot, but he holds real power between his roving gangs and the propaganda he prints. The articles are almost unreadable, but it behooves me to know what he’s saying.”

Thorne reached over and pulled the magazine toward him, squinting at the cover. He couldn’t read a thing without his glasses.

“Why is it important for you to know what these men say? They aren’t involved in shipping or banking.” He peered over the top page, watching Rudolph’s reaction. “Seem more interested in hectoring women and maligning foreigners.”

Rudolph hesitated, then answered slowly. “Times are changing, Thornwood. The aristocracy is losing its grip on power as everything in the countryside is upended by these new harvesting machines and failing crops.”

A line appeared on Rudolph’s forehead as he, too, gazed at the magazine cover. “Uncertainty breeds chaos. Groups like those Guardians are appealing because they offer an alternative to uncertainty. Anger and prejudice are no good for my bank account, but they are preferred by the populace to insecurity and despair.”

Thorne scratched his chin. “I cannot tell if you approve of them or not.”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is how a movement like this can affect the economy.” Rudolph shook his head. “When people are scared, they make illogical choices and see conspiracies where there are none.”

“What did Aristotle say?” Thorne asked. “?‘Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.’?”

“Easier said than followed.” Rudolph stood and held out his hand, a not-so-subtle message that their meeting was over. Thorne assumed Rudolph was less an adherent of Aristotle than he was of Benjamin Franklin, who admonished folks to “remember that time is money.”

They took their leave of each other on good terms, but Rudolph’s words rattled around in Thorne’s head for the rest of the day.

When people are scared, they make illogical choices and see conspiracies where there are none.

Lucy Peterson was afraid. She was exhausted by her workload, and her sister was absent doing important work, her brother wanted to be anywhere but the apothecary, and she had the likes of the Guardians to worry about on top of it all.

Mr. Wilcox was the child of a wealthy and philanthropic family who cared for one another, not some villain who would have an interest in undermining the apothecary. Had Lucy concocted the scheme whereby Duncan Rider snuck into the apothecary and stole the formulas in order to keep herself from looking too close to home?

Thorne needed to speak with Lucy.

—

“I have learned Mr. W. R. Wilcox’s identity.”

Lucy frowned and kept her back to Thorne as she wiped the dust from a shelf. He’d come into the shop after lunch and said nothing to her, simply closed himself into the office for an hour or so. She’d had no peace since then, picturing him at the desk with his spectacles perched on his nose and his cravat loosened. She knew now what he looked like beneath the layers of respectability, beneath the gloves and the jacket and waistcoat, the way his body moved like a wave when he entered her.

“I see,” she said to the dustrag in her hand. “You’ve spent your time investigating David when you were supposed to be finding out who took my formula.”

On the one hand, Lucy did not believe her brother would do anything to hurt her. On the other, she trusted Thorne implicitly.

Why, though?

Why should she trust him? Because they had made love? The son of a baron, the drunken prizefighter, or the father whose life revolved around his work and his daughter—which Thorne was real? What if he were none of them?

Lucy got down from her step stool, then turned to look at him, crossing her arms like a barrier.

Ten feet apart. They could be twenty or even fifty feet apart, and the desire between them would still be as palpable.

Lovemaking with him had been a revelation. That he knew to tie her down was to hold her up still astounded her. Lucy didn’t have any experience other than Duncan. What Thorne did with her, she’d never imagined that could be done, or done with such tenderness.

They had been tender with each other. What lay between them was more than simple desire.

Thorne must have seen something on her face that hinted as to the directions of her thoughts, because his eyes darkened, and his fingers clenched into fists. When she bit her bottom lip, he cleared his throat and she squeezed together her thighs.

“No one is home,” she said.

Thorne did not pretend to look surprised. “Sadie told me she was invited to a tea by your sister. It will be at Athena’s Retreat, where one of the members is giving a lecture on ornithology.”

They wouldn’t be back for hours.

The memory of his taste flooded her mouth, and Lucy swallowed. It was daylight. She would be able to see his body much clearer in the light. Running her fingers across her chest, she set down her cleaning rag and took a step toward him.

The front door burst open, and Katie rushed in.

“Miss Peterson, I...”

The young woman stumbled into the shop with uncharacteristic clumsiness, not even bothering to wipe her shoes, no coat or mittens despite the aching cold that had settled on London. Katie’s hair had come down from her topknot, and her face was blotched with red spots, her eyes pink from crying.

Lucy hurried over to the girl and put her hands on her shoulders. Katie’s teeth clattered and her whole body shivered, but somehow Lucy knew this reaction wasn’t from just the cold.

Thorne quietly walked over to lock the front door and came to stand beside them.

“Did someone hurt you, Katie?” he asked.

Katie, who had buried her head in Lucy’s shoulder, flinched at his words. A yawning despair tugged at Lucy.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Katie...”

Katie still shook and pressed her head even more against Lucy, as though she would bury herself in the embrace.

“Mr. Thorne, if you would please close up the shop and put away the till?” Lucy stared into his eyes and willed him to understand. “I need to speak with Katie.”

Lucy led Katie into the treatment room and helped her into the chair, then found a stool and stood on it to reach a blanket from the high shelf and wrapped it around Katie’s shoulders.

For a long time, they remained that way, Lucy holding Katie’s hand, Katie burrowed into a blanket, tears drying, eyes staring blankly ahead.

Eventually Katie let out a long sigh and dropped her chin to her chest.

“What do you do when you know a man loves you, but he hurts you anyway?” Katie lifted her head to ask, eyes blinking as though she were trying to focus on something far away.

What should Lucy say? Was this a time for comfort or for truth? She felt wholly unprepared as she gazed at the huddled figure before her.

“I think... we hurt people we love when we don’t feel equal to them in some way,” Lucy said. “Men, when they are unsure of women or do not feel equal to them, one way they tell themselves they are powerful is to overwhelm a woman.”

The silence pushed at Lucy’s lungs, and the brown clouds of damp and dirt crowded at the windows.

“Is that what happened, Katie?”

“Miss Peterson, I don’t know what to do,” Katie whispered.

Lucy didn’t know what to do either in that moment other than hold the young woman close and promise her that she was safe, she was loved, and everything would somehow be all right.

Words that women have given to each other over the centuries in the aftermath of such trauma; offers of assurances, promises of healing. As well-meant as these sentiments were, both she and Katie knew the way Katie moved through the world would be forever changed.