Page 19 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

19

“You are quiet,” Thorne said as he set a cup of tea at Sadie’s elbow. She’d come home about an hour after Lucy left, arm in arm with Juliet, who had been surprised to find the shop closed. Thorne hadn’t given her an explanation. He’d simply taken Sadie upstairs and plied her with scones and honey, but she’d had little to say about her day.

Sadie shrugged. “You are quiet as well.”

“It’s not polite to tell adults what they already know,” he said.

She squinted as if hearing something other than his words.

“Why not?”

Thorne blinked.

“Because...” he hedged, looking around for a distraction. “It makes you sound as though you know better than the adult.”

“What if I do?” Sadie asked, a surprised hurt pulling down the corners of her mouth. “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t? Isn’t that lying?”

Thorne blinked again.

“There is a difference between not saying something so the other person won’t feel bad,” he said, “and not saying something to avoid telling the truth.”

That sounded quite wise. Thorne gave himself an imaginary pat on the back.

Instead of continuing her line of inquiry or arguing a point that would make his eyes cross, Sadie picked her fork up and began mashing the scone on her plate into a pile of crumbs.

Hmmm.

“Is something amiss, Sadie?” he asked.

At his question, the girl’s shoulders stiffened, and she bent her head to closer inspect the crumbs. Thorne waited, knowing Sadie could not stay silent for long, not if there were something on her conscience.

“If I don’t tell you something I know about, am I lying to you?” she asked.

Thorne reached over and touched the back of her hand. Sadie dropped her fork and looked up at him.

So much for patting himself on the back. Something was worrying Sadie and he’d almost missed it.

“I haven’t asked you directly about what you know, have I?”

Her eyes widened with relief. “No. So only if you ask me would I be lying?”

“Yes.” Thorne nodded. “However, if you see someone in danger or doing something bad and you don’t tell me? That isn’t a lie, but it isn’t honest, either.”

“If I were to tell you, I would be tattling on Miss Juliet.”

Ah. No one wanted to be a tattletale. Thorne remembered that vividly from his own childhood growing up with two brothers. Tattletales would find themselves sleeping on wet sheets or putting their feet into shoes filled with pudding.

“There is a difference between tattling to get someone in trouble, or to hurt them, and telling a truth to keep someone out of trouble.”

This seemed to appease her, because Sadie took another scone and drenched it in honey. In between mouthfuls, she told him what had happened on her walk after school the day before.

“D’you remember the man Miss Juliet was speaking to the day you came to walk us home?” Sadie asked. “I remembered that I’d seen him before. That night when the carriage stopped outside our window.”

Duncan Rider.

“Sometimes he comes and talks to her and asks after Miss Peterson. Yesterday, Miss Juliet asked for something back that she’d given him, and he said no.”

Thorne’s stomach sank. “How did she act when he said no?” he asked.

“She seemed sad at first. Then she told me to go back into Madame’s vestibule and wait for her.” Sadie paused. “I didn’t eavesdrop because I know that is wrong.”

Damn.

“I did peek through the window at the side of the vestibule that faces the street,” she said.

Excellent.

Eavesdropping was immoral, but spying was perfectly appropriate.

Thorne waited impatiently for Sadie to finish chewing.

“And then?” he asked.

“She talked to him some more and he laughed. That made her mad, and she shook her fist in his face like this.”

Scowling, Sadie made a fist and shook it in the air.

“Did she say anything afterward on your walk home about the meeting?” he asked.

“Umm-humm,” Sadie said around her last bite of pastry. “Miss Juliet said that men were not to be trusted, that no good deed ever goes unpunished, and that you can make a frog’s legs move after it’s dead if you pull on the plantaris tendon.”

Thorne ruminated on Sadie’s revelation.

There were, of course, other options than Juliet having given the formula to Duncan Rider. She could have given him papers relating to her clinic, perhaps a request for funding. Or she could be in love with him herself and have given him a packet of love poems or an embarrassing gift.

Thorne wanted it to be the latter, but he didn’t think this was the case.

Nothing in his investigations had pointed toward Duncan Rider having geared up to process a revolutionary croup salve. No patents had been requested, no excess of croup salve ingredients had been ordered by Rider and Son’s regular suppliers, and he hadn’t acted like a man about to reap a second fortune when Thorne encountered him at the cards table.

None of the other apothecaries Thorne visited had sold a croup salve containing ingredients that matched Lucy’s list. There were no instances of theft in the neighborhood. A perusal of the last few issues of the Guardians’ Gentlemen’s Monthly had made no mention of medications or salves—other than the fact that courtesans should be put in workhouses to repent instead of receiving treatment for their most common diseases or the correction of their menses.

David’s accounting system was a venal sin, but not particularly criminal. His payments to Mr. Wilcox might have something to do with that business of a cooperative up north, but in and of themselves were no evidence of his having done anything with the croup salve.

On the other hand, Sadie had witnessed the first piece of evidence pointing at someone having stolen Lucy’s formula, and that someone was her sister. Juliet had told Thorne outright that she thought Duncan should marry Lucy. What better way to force a proposal than offer a second fortune in return?

Even worse than giving Lucy the news that she had been cheated, now Thorne must tell her that he’d solved the case and witness her pain at the betrayal.

—

“You’ve been drinking.” Thorne’s words, ripe with disdain, smashed around her feet like rotting fruit.

Lucy stopped halfway through her workroom. Carefully, she turned around and met his darkened gaze.

“I’ve been drinking, yes,” she said.

By the time she and Duncan left the Lion’s Den, Lucy had finished two pints and was unsteady on her feet. Juliet had come home from Athena’s Retreat by then and reopened the shop. When Lucy swayed through the door, Juliet was standing behind the counter speaking with a pair of young women. Her sister said nothing, but Lucy knew from the pinch in Juliet’s brow that an explanation would be requested later.

In addition to the drink, Lucy was experiencing regret now that she was in Thorne’s presence. Not because she felt bad about having a drink, but because his mouth was set in a scowl. What was it about a man who scowled?

“Do you think that is wise, to come home drunk in the middle of the afternoon?” he asked.

“No,” she said, lifting her chin so she might stare beyond Thorne’s face to the wall behind him. “I think it was fun .”

Thorne’s hands turned to fists, and he set them on his hips, disappointment streaming out of him so strongly, she fancied she could feel it pool around her ankles.

Lucy did not care.

She did not care.

“Do you know what else I’ve done that was fun? Danced all night at a masquerade. Played cards. Looked at naughty postcards.”

Lucy refused to make the same mistake with Thorne that she had with Duncan—give her heart to a man who saw her as a woman unworthy of marriage.

She wasn’t, though. She wasn’t unworthy.

“You can do what you like,” he said. “I’m not here to judge you.”

Liar.

“Oh, but you already have,” she said, trying hard not to slur her words.

His shoulders dropped, and Lucy turned her attention from the wall above his head to his face.

His beautiful, ruined face.

“I am not a lady, Thorne. I can never be what you want,” she whispered. To him, to herself, to her stupid, stupid heart.

“How do you know what I want?” he asked.

“Duncan Rider asked me to marry him.”

Thorne’s head jerked as though Lucy had slapped him.

“Why...?”

Thorne’s question remained unanswered when a woman’s head poked around the doorway behind him.

“Can I help you, mum?” Lucy asked in what hopefully passed for a professional tone.

“I beg your pardon for interrupting,” the woman said. “The young lady out front told me I should come back here to speak with—”

Thorne spun around on his heel at the sound of the woman’s voice.

“Why, hello, Mr. Thorne.”

“Mrs. Merkle. What a lovely surprise.”

Lucy’s stomach hurt. Most likely from the drink, surely not from anything else. For a moment she watched Thorne tend to the skinny woman in a modest bonnet and a sour expression that turned her mouth into a warning.

A godly woman. That is what Thorne wanted. Someone who never would go drinking in a pub in the middle of the day or dance a reel on a whim.

Not like Lucy.

That’s what Thorne meant to say earlier.

Someone not like Lucy.

Keeping her spine straight and her steps steady, Lucy Peterson walked away from Jonathan Thorne.