Page 61 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
“Small penance, my dear,” he said, wishing she would turn her marvelous, incandescent gaze on some other man.
She grinned even wider. “Faith, my lord, he’s an Irish priest.”
He burst into laughter, forgetting where he was. Heads turned, parishioners glowered. He rested his long legs on the prayer bench and sank down lower in the pew, stifling the laughter that still threatened, and thinking suddenly of Clarissa, who wouldn’t recognize a joke if it said hello.
The Mass began. He nudged her. “You know, Emma, we’re very much alike,” he commented.
She digested this, her attention divided between him and the priest at the altar. “Oh, we are?”
“I drowned myself in bitterness and alcohol, and you let yourself be captured by guilt. Such foolish damage we have done ourselves.”
She nodded and sighed. “I probably would have taken to the bottle, my lord, but I had no money like you.”
“Ah, my dear, the toils of the too wealthy. . .”
The parishioner in the pew in front of them turned around and put a finger to her lips. Lord Ragsdale winked at her, and she turned back swiftly.
“D’ye know, I think I will seek out the man I hate the most and give him the contents of my wine cellar,” he whispered to Emma. “And my first choice is the porter at the Office of Criminal Business.”
She laughed this time, and the priest paused momentarily, glaring at her. “Hush, my lord,” she insisted. “You are a bad influence on me. In another moment, I really will have something to confess, and it will be your fault.”
Lord Ragsdale behaved himself for the rest of the Mass, marveling at the prescience of the priest to deliver his homily on forgiveness. He watched, great peace in his heart, as Emma took the sacrament at the altar, then returned to kneel beside him. He knew she was crying, and he kept his hand on her shoulder for the remainder of the service.
“Well, my dear, can we face the porter now?” he asked her in front of the church as he helped her into another hackney.
“I can face anything,” she assured him.
“It may be that we learn little or nothing,” he warned her. “We may come away feeling worse.”
“I know, my lord,” she said quietly. “But at least we will know we are trying.”
Her hand tight in his, they approached the porter in the Office of Criminal Business, who practically threw himself off his stool and asked in unctuous, kindly tones if they would like to see Mr. Capper.
“Indeed we would,” Lord Ragsdale said. “You must want to keep your job.” He looked the cowering man in the eye. “Do you know, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to getyoutransported.”
To his grim amusement, they found themselves hurried into a cluttered office. “Mr. John Henry Capper,” the porter announced and then beat a hasty retreat.
Capper stood and motioned them into chairs in frontof the desk. He took a few swipes at the piles of paper surrounding him, gave up, then seated himself.
“I am Lord Ragsdale, and this is my servant, Emma Costello,” he began, gesturing to Emma. “She has a story for you.” He sat back then, and let Emma tell it all again, leaving nothing out. He watched the clerk’s face, wondering if such a man in such a job would be moved by her words.I wonder if it is possible to become hardened to such wretchedness, he thought and then decided it was not. Capper listened intently, asking questions quietly but not disturbing the flow of her narrative. Several times he passed his hand across his eyes, but his attention never wavered.
When she finished and blew her nose on the handkerchief Lord Ragsdale kept handy, Capper looked from one to the other, his lips set in a tight line. He asked her the names of all her family members and scribbled them on the pad in front of him.
“Your mother, Miss Costello. Do you think she is yet alive?”
Emma shook her head and reached for Lord Ragsdale’s hand again. “She was so sick when I was taken out for torture in Prevot.”
Capper drew a line through her name, and Emma flinched.
Lord Ragsdale tightened his grip. “And here, your little brother, Timothy?” he asked, his pencil poised over the next name.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “He is the only one I am certain of.” Lord Ragsdale felt his own nerves tingling at the pencil’s brief scratch.
Capper quickly drew a line through Eamon’s name. “I suspect he was hanged, as you fear. You say he was separated from you after his confession?”
Emma nodded, her face pale. Capper sighed and drew a circle around the two remaining names. He stared at them a moment, as though wishing the names would turn intoinformation, then reached behind him to pull down a ledger. He searched through the pages, then opened it on his desk.
“Miss Costello, you must be aware of one thing that might render any search futile. A great number of those Irish insurrectionists were never tried but were sent directly to Australia or Van Diemen’s Land. I am telling you this because there will likely be no record of them in any Home Office or judicial files.”
