Page 24 of Anything But a Duke
“Perhaps, a few.”
He began to shiver. Not from the cold, but from desperation. Answers had eluded him for too long.
“You shouldn’t return here, Mr. Iverson. There will be too many questions if you do. May I call on you?”
“Soon, Mrs. Tuttle.” Before all good sense fled and he stormed Wyndham House and turned the place over brick by brick. He lifted a calling card from his waistcoat pocket.
She hesitated for what felt like an hour, her gaze darting from the card to his eyes, his nose, his chin. The paper of his card began to grow soggy between his fingers.
“Aye, you’re her boy,” she finally said. “I’m sure of it the more I look.”
“Then assist me.”
With trembling fingers, she reached for the card and the money, but she didn’t immediately pull away. Her hand came down on his and she held him for a moment before letting go.
“Mary did love her children.”
Then why did she send us to hell?
“Next week, Mrs. Tuttle?”
The woman shook her head vehemently. “I must request permission for a half holiday and wait for the mistress to grant the time.”
“As soon as you can.” Aidan tipped a meaningful gaze down to where she clutched his card and five-pound note. “Good evening to you.”
He watched her return to the house, her lamp flame guttering in the evening breeze. Then, just at the threshold, she turned back.
“Mr. Iverson? You might check the lodging house in Lambeth. Close on the river. Off the Belvedere Road. Number fourteen, if memory recalls.”
“When would she have been there?”
In the lantern glow, he saw the woman’s mouth tilt.
“How old areyou, young man? She brought you into this world in that lodging house and I held her hand the whole long night. Three decades past?”
“Eight and twenty years.” Long enough for the lodging house to have changed owners or to have been demolished completely. Likely too long for whoever had known his mother to remember her or anything about her fate.
“I shall visit you soon, Mr. Iverson.”
“Bring everything you have, Mrs. Tuttle. And hurry. I’m not a patient man.”
Chapter Eight
Aidan arrived at the office early the next day. He’d hoped to find word from Mrs. Tuttle that she’d received her half holiday and would soon be on her way to him with his mother’s journals and letters.
But there’d been no messages. Only a diary full of appointments, a day filled with talk of new business projects, and the impending weight of marriage.
Now, as the clock on the wall ticked toward six in the early evening, he found himself shifting in his chair, desperate to find a comfortable position from which to engage in the most uncomfortable of activities.
Asking others for help fit him like an ill-tailored suit, pinching here, squeezing there. But the past months had proven that this decision was necessary. His own attempts at meeting and wooing a noblewoman ranged from ineffectual to downright comical.
He’d decided to defer to an expert.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Iverson.” Professional matchmaker Mrs. Bertha Trellaway offered a loose handshake before seating herself in front of his desk.
She was older than he expected. Prim, petite, and nervous, judging by the way her fingers danced back and forth across the edge of the leather folio in her lap.
He’d worked off his own share of nervous energy by pacing his office before her arrival, but he was better at masking unease. It was a gambler’s skill he’d honed over many years of practice.
