Page 8 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

Ruby wiped her eyes, then used the back of a spoon to check her looks were not spoiled by swelling lids.

‘I know, I know, it’s not going to work.

I had to try. And the girl Mr Thomas has hired in your place?

She’s terrible! We all know it. And she’s a bitch.

She was the one who told him about my, you know, predicament… ’

‘It was going to be obvious before long.’

‘But I would’ve been able to choose a better time, make plans, instead he gave me an ultimatum– and I don’t appreciate those.’

Dora could well imagine how that went. Mr Thomas would have been furious that he looked set to lose the second girl from his once winning combination of Dora and Ruby, having to bring on less popular understudies. ‘He likely regrets now not giving you more time to decide.’

‘Well, he can go hang for all I care. My concern is for this baby and me, not bloody Midsummer Night’s Dream in Newcastle.’ She said the last in a sonorous tone meant to ape Mr Thomas’s Welsh accent.

‘Ruby, why are you here, really?’

Ruby shrugged, though her eyes said she was at the end of her tether. ‘God knows. Why should you help me when you’re set fair for life?’

‘Don’t be like that. You couldn’t expect me to come back, not for this reason. It would never work. A child doesn’t belong on the road with the actors– the life is too harsh. You remember what winter is like, don’t you?’

Ruby crumbled up her crust. ‘But it’s summer now.’

She always had been a grasshopper to the ants of the troupe.

‘This isn’t something you can avoid.’

‘I know– and I bloody hate and love this… this inconvenience. I bet she’s going to be the most beautiful baby ever.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

There came a knock at the door. For a retired cottage in the Lakes, Jacob’s cottage was annoyingly popular. Dora wiped her hands on her apron and went to answer.

‘Keep that question in mind. I’ve got to get the door.’

A man and a woman stood on the step– well dressed, of the educated classes. Neither looked in immediate need of medical assistance.

‘May I help you?’

‘Is your master in?’ asked the woman. Diminutive, with greying hair tucked under a cap, she looked to be in her forties, but her motions were active and quick, like a wren nipping along a stone wall and between the twisted ivy.

Her vowels had a northern inflection though with none of the dialect heard from the Cumberland lower classes.

‘He’s not my… Dr Sandys is not at home. Family emergency. Who should I tell him called?’

Consternation dampened the sparkle in the woman’s eye. The man beside her also appeared distressed by the news. He revolved his straw boater in his hands, doing great damage to the brim.

‘Will he be gone long?’ the lady asked. ‘We do so need him.’

‘I’m not certain, Mrs…?’

‘Miss Dorothy Wordsworth. And this is Mr Barton. We are friends of the doctor. Mr Barton has a summer home on Windermere.’

Dora opened the door a little wider. ‘Oh, Miss Wordsworth, of course! Dr Sandys has spoken very highly of you and your brother. Please, come in and rest for a moment. It is a fair walk from Grasmere.’

The lady bit her lip, amused. ‘A fair walk? Indeed, it is beautiful but no great distance if you are a walker like me.’

‘Perhaps you would like to leave him a note? I can send it on to where he is staying.’ Dora was excited to see the sister of the local poet, a woman of learning according to Jacob’s tales about her. Dorothy featured in several of her brother’s poems as an inspiration and muse.

Dorothy cocked her head to one side. ‘You are not a servant.’

She was astute too. Dora laughed. ‘What gave me away?’

‘Your complete lack of subservience and your vocabulary.’

‘Guilty as charged. I have gone into business with Dr Sandys.’ That was better than saying she was his lover.

A maiden lady would not want any association with her if that was her reputation locally.

‘Please come into the kitchen and I’ll fetch some paper.

’ One unexpected benefit of Ruby’s presence was that at least there was an appearance of a chaperone.

Ruby was dozing in the chair by the fire, head lolling. She got up as the guests arrived.

‘Mrs Ruby Plum, an old friend of mine,’ said Dora by way of introduction, adding a respectable marriage to Ruby in view of her condition. ‘I’m Dora Fitz-Pennington.’ She repeated the names of their visitors.

‘Miss Wordsworth. Mr Barton.’ Ruby nodded with genteel grace. Dora could tell she was already sizing up the gentleman as a possible catch.

Dorothy, by contrast, looked around the kitchen with the eye of a woman who knew her way around a stove. Her gaze landed longest on the podded peas. ‘What kind of business are you in together, Miss Fitz-Pennington?’

‘We’ve opened an agency in the West End investigating cases for select clients– the return of stolen goods, finding missing persons and so on.’ Not to mention foiling plots meant to destabilise the government, but that seemed absurd to mention in a Cumberland kitchen.

The man spoke for the first time, fanning himself with excitement.

‘Oh, oh, you are just the person then.’ He had an effeminate manner, fly-away blond hair, and the neat clothes of one who fancied himself a dandy, signals that might exclude him from Ruby’s list of targets.

Her friend resumed her seat, disappointed as she preferred manlier men.

‘When I confessed my problem, Miss Wordsworth mentioned that Dr Sandys had made a name for himself as one who can solve puzzles.’

‘My brother was in London at the same time as the assassination of our unfortunate Prime Minister,’ explained Dorothy. ‘He picked up some gossip about Dr Sandys at a dinner party and I now realise you were the lady who also came in for praise in that affair. Do I have that right?’

Dora placed the blank sheet of paper on the table for the proposed note. ‘I imagine so, though I was hoping to keep out of sight. If I’m to do my work properly, the less people notice me the better.’

Dorothy nodded. ‘Very wise. It is the small things that matter the most and you have to be attentive to notice them, not engaged in fighting off a crowd of admirers.’

‘Please, do tell me what you wished to say to Dr Sandys. If I can, I will do my best to stand in his place.’

Making a decision, the lady moved the paper in front of Dora. ‘Then perhaps you should be the one to make notes. It began with my brother lending Mr Barton the manuscript of his greatest work and ends with it being stolen.’

‘I’m such a fool!’ said Mr Barton. ‘When I praised the sections he read me, he entrusted me with his autobiographical poem– the one he describes as the prelude to his life as a poet. I meant to sit down and study it– I really did– but there were so many visitors this last month or so, and what with boating, fishing, the ball at Rydal Hall, I neglected my work. When I opened the box I was keeping it in, I discovered it had gone. Vanished. I can’t bear to tell him. It would be a crushing blow.’

Dora looked to Dorothy for confirmation. ‘Is it that valuable?’

Dorothy spread her hands helplessly. ‘It’s unpublished– the work of his heart– and I consider it his masterpiece, though he means it to be only a step on the way to The Recluse .

It is true that he and I could reconstruct it from the earlier drafts given enough time, but this stroke of ill luck might discourage him from the attempt and deter him from ever getting to the great philosophical poem he had long been planning. We are all in very low spirits.’

‘About a lost poem?’ scoffed Ruby from her seat by the fire.

Dorothy glared at her. ‘No, young lady, about the death of my niece, Catherine.’

‘Oh, lord,’ murmured Ruby. ‘I’m so very sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘She was but three. I had to bury her without either of her parents being able to get back in time for her final illness last month.’ Dorothy’s voice cracked. ‘It has been a blow to the roots of our little family.’

‘What terrible news. Please accept my condolences,’ said Dora. Without even knowing the child, she could feel the force of the lady’s grief like sensing heat when an oven door stood open. The loss had been devastating.

‘My brother and Mary are in mourning. I cannot– cannot – trouble them with this.’ Dorothy turned to her hostess. ‘Will you help us, Miss Fitz-Pennington?’

Naturally, Dora grieved for the family, but she wondered at this panic over a missing poem that could be recovered by other means. Considering the one who lost it, he was likely to find it under his sofa or stuffed in his stocking drawer if he only conducted a proper search.

‘Will it not simply turn up in due course?’ she asked, reluctant to emerge from her quiet valley. Jacob would prefer his neighbours didn’t know she was living with him.

‘I don’t think you understand the urgency, miss,’ said Mr Barton. ‘Wordsworth’s a great man– he represents the very spirit of our age. It would be like losing one of Shakespeare’s plays– Hamlet or whatnot– if we can’t recover it.’

Steady on , thought Dora. Wordsworth was generally considered an odd fish, attracting mockery for his poems about mad mothers and idiot boys.

He was certainly no Byron or Scott. Jacob had begun to convert her to an appreciation of Wordsworth’s verse, but she had so far liked best his very practical Guide to the Lakes .

Jacob had given her a copy to read along with a sketch map as a way of finding her bearings in the area and it had been very helpful, proving Wordsworth a man who knew his area inside out.

But perhaps the right question was what would Jacob want her to do?

The answer came instantaneously. Help these friends of his, no matter the gossip that would follow.

‘I will do all I can to help. Let’s start by going over when you last saw the poem.’