Page 61 of Unlikely Heroes
“Dios mio,” the count said. “Four doors from your house?” He looked at Ben. “Who is this Sir B?” Ben told him in Spanish.
Grace shook Meridee’s shoulder. “Youhave seen her, my dear. More to the point, so has Able.”
“Surely not,” Meridee said.
“Oh, yes.” Grace was in tears, so Meridee handed her an old sock past mending from the endless basket, clean but done for. “Remember when you were starting to droop at…at the funeral?”
“Yes. Able…” Meridee sucked in her breath, remembering. “He asked an older lady seated beside me if she would move over so he could sit with me.”
“That is Amelia Munro,” Grace said in watery triumph. She blew her nose on the stocking. “Amelia Munro ended up sitting next to her grandson, Able Six!”
They looked at each other in stunned silence. Meridee cleared her throat. “Count, I know where we are going first thing tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Meridee’s morning sickness kindly cooperated the next day, alleviated by tea and toast. Grace talked her brother, Headmaster Croker, into taking her morning class. “Thaddeus needs to exert himself a little more,” she said as she nursed Georgie in Meridee’s room, sitting so companionably on the bed, a far remove from the straight-laced spinster of earlier days. “He isn’t quite himself, since that last round of measles or mumps that passed through St. Brendan’s. My lads in lower math will do him good.” She frowned. “I hope.”
They decided to take along their own little lads. “I have seen Mrs. Munro out and about, but I do not know her,” Grace said. “Maybe she will see us as harmless, if we have our children along. After all, we have quite a story for her.”
Junius Bolt objected strenuously to staying home until Mrs. Perry fixed him with her squinty-eyed glare that even Able feared. “Leave it to the ladies,” she told him, turning each word into a thunderbolt hurled by Zeus himself.
After a debate – and finally a good look at Mrs. Perry in high dudgeon – the Conde de Quintanar agreed to wait in the carriage when they talked to Mrs. Munro. “I will not have you wounded any further,” Merridee assured him.
His eyes were as expressive as his son’s. Meridee saw the hurt that had lasted so long for this constant, honorable man who wanted to do the right thing from the start, but had been denied the opportunity.
“Grace, isn’t it strange,” Meridee said as they waited for the count to fetch his cape and join them. “Here we thought one thing all along, Able included, and the matter is quite the opposite. Mary Carmichael was no prostitute and the Count has mourned her disappearance all these years.”
“Maybe we should never judge a matter until we know the details,” Grace said. “Even then, p’raps we should not judge at all.”
“We only knew what the workhouse beadle told Able,” Meridee reminded her. She shook her head in frustration. “And the beadle knew nothing! He assumed; we all did.”
They were silent on the drive, the silence broken only by the call of sea gulls wheeling around the harbor on the air currents. Grace sighed when the coachman stopped in front of a rowhouse four doors down from the more elegant mansion where Sir B lived and died too soon.
“I don’t miss that house,” Grace said. “I hope you do not tire of me too soon. I would still rather be with you.”
“Never,” Meridee said firmly. “I’ll consider you and Georgie as Gunwharf Rats who need a good home. Oh! That does not sound so proper, does it?”
“It’s the kindest thing you could have said, my dear. I love being a Gunwharf Rat.” Grace turned to the count, who seemed to have followed the gist of that conversation. “Count, we should probably let Able explain the Rats to you. It’s complicated.”
The count managed an elegant bow, sitting there in the carriage. “You forget, Lady San Antonio. I have already met five of the Rats.”
“Why, yes, you have,” Grace said. She took a deep breath as the coachman opened the door. “Let us find out what kind of a lady Amelia Munro is, shall we?”
“I am not certain how to begin.”
“At the beginning, Meridee. I will introduce you.”
A freckled maid with red hair opened the door and took their calling cards. She ushered them into the front hall but no farther, and hurried away. She came back quickly. “Let me show you to the sitting room.”
Meridee prepared to take a firmer grip on Ben’s hand, but he was in strange surroundings and happily stayed close to her.
The maid opened the door and ushered them inside. Amelia Munro looked up from the card table, where she appeared to be involved in a game of Patience. She rose and held out her hand to Grace. “Lady St. Anthony, you’ve come to rescue me from cheating at Patience. How kind of you to call.”
Grace was up to every social nicety, from her curtsey of proper depth, to Meridee’s introduction, to her acknowledgement of Mrs. Munro’s attendance at her husband’s funeral in May. “I should have stopped by sooner to thank you for honoring him, but I am an instructor at St. Brendan School. With that and our son, I am occupied.”
Pleasantries, pleasantries, and then Grace gave Meridee the floor.Whatever happens, Able my love, I do it for you, she thought. “Mrs. Munro, thank you for letting my husband edge in beside me at the funeral.”
“I was happy to,” the woman replied. “I could tell you were struggling and needed a good man nearby.” She sounded wistful, to Meridee’s ears and heart.
