Page 34 of Miss Dignified
Brook remained by the window, gazing through the grimy glass to the alley below. “Captain was on reconnaissance yesterday not two streets over.”
“Blast and damnation.” If Dylan Powell found Marcus, Marcus would likely not live to see another sunrise, and yet, returning to Shropshire was impossible.
“He weren’t lookin’ fer you, my lord. He were lookin’ for me. Seems everybody’s lookin’ for me of late. The lads gave the captain enough wrong directions that he got proper turned around, but he won’t make that mistake again.”
Powell seldom madeanymistakes, damn him. Dunacre had delighted in trying to outsmart the captain and had failed unless Powell—for reasons Marcus had never entirely grasped—had wanted Dunacre to succeed. Even when Powell had lost his major’s rank, Marcus had suspected that had been Powell’s objective.
All very complicated and deadly, when the French were supposed to be the enemy. “Who would the lads choose, if they had to fight for me or for Powell?”
Brook speared him with a look that was anything but respectful. “You and the captain keep clear of each other, and there won’t be any fightin’. Be a lot easier to keep clear of him if you’d just leave Town until he goes back to Wales. His sisters won’t bide here much past June, and by then, he’ll have given up on me.”
“I tried leaving Town. Villagers all know who the outsiders are, and even the posting inns on the Great North Road know who’s a regular and who ought to be just passing through.” This stinking, gloomy little room had come to represent safety, which made no sense at all.
“Go to Scotland,” Brook said. “Take a coastal packet, skip the inns, bide in Edinburgh. My cousin says it smells even worse than London.”
The Old Town part of Edinburgh did. The New Town was quite nice. Marcus had visited there with Mama when he was twelve.
“If I’m in Edinburgh, I can’t keep an eye on the solicitors.” Or on Lydia, who’d had no business leaving Shropshire. “Then too, I make money here in London.” In St. Giles and the East End, the ability to read and write was worth coin. The tavern owners paid Marcus—in pennies, pints, and plates—to read the newspapers aloud to the patrons.
The patrons paid to have any mail read to them and to have replies penned when necessary. Skills Marcus had mastered by age eight were supporting him adequately, which called into question what all that other schooling—and drinking and whatnot at university—had been in aid of. The great Marcus Aurelius had said that drunkenness pained both the body and the purse, and he’d been right.
As usual.
“Sooner or later, somebody will slip, my lord. Somebody will mutter into their beer about a handsome young peer hiding in the stews. You should go home.”
“I cannot go home.” Powell could call Marcus out and observe the standard rules in any ensuing duel, though a peer really ought not to be dueling with a commoner. The contest would be nominally fair. In Shropshire, Marcus would get a noose slung from the nearest oak, or worse—arrest, trial, and then the noose.
“You cannot bide here forever, sir.”
“Many do.”
“Many are not perishing earls, trying to fool family into thinking they’re dead.”
That had not been the plan, not at first. It still wasn’t the plan. The plan was for Uncle Reggie to die, Wesley to become the heir, and Marcus to dwell in Italy on quiet remittance—presumed dead, proved dead, it didn’t matter if Uncle was gone—until Wesley could take over the earldom. In an ideal world, Wesley would marry Lydia, and nobody at Tremont need ever mention Marcus’s name again.
Uncle was not to be trusted, but Wesley was resourceful and loyal. He’d proved that beyond any doubt. Perhaps it was time to contact Wesley? That decision wanted thought—a lot of thought.
Marcus did not dare prop a hip on the rickety antique that served as his desk. He instead took the lone chair in the room, a hard, ladder-back article missing half its rungs.
“What you aren’t saying, Brook, is thatyoucannot bide here forever. You have more than repaid any debt you ever owed to me in even a theoretical sense, so decamp for the shires whenever you are so inclined.”
Brook shook his head. “You talk like that, sir, and a stumbling drunk whore will know you for a nob. The innkeepers already do, unless I miss my guess, but you keep folk comin’ around to hear the news, so the publicans don’t ask questions. You ain’t safe on yer own. Not here.”
“Not yet,” Marcus said, “but I’m learning. I’m not completely hopeless.” He had been completely hopeless when Dunacre had first got hold of him. Then Marcus had taken to studying Powell’s tactics, listening to the men grumble at mess call, and chatting up the other officers.
“What are my orders, sir?” Brook ambled away from the window and made for the door. “I’ll keep mum about your situation, but I’d like to let Bowen know he needn’t worry about me.”
“Family is supposed to fret about us.” Though Lydia coming to London to work as a housekeeper was the outside of worrisome. She would never abandon Mama unless matters at Tremont were growing dire. “Subtly indicate to Bowen that you yet enjoy good health. I will carry on as before, but I must ask you to do something for me.”
“I’ll not betray the captain, sir. I don’t like causing him extra worry, come to that.”
“This has nothing to do with the captain. You will go to the Haymarket and procure a bouquet of speedwell, if you can find it this early in the year, but any pretty posy will do. Have the flowers left on the captain’s back stoop along with this note.”
Marcus used a pencil to write six words on a scrap of paper, then passed the note and a coin to Brook. “Secret the note among the flowers, and mind nobody steals the bouquet.” As soon as he’d heard that Lydia was in Town, handing out sandwiches and shortbread at Powell’s back door, Marcus had pondered what to do.
Lydia needed to go home, bless her, the sooner the better. Of all the households she could attach herself to, Powell’s was the worst choice in the whole of London.
“Nobody would steal from the captain’s back stoop, sir. The men wouldn’t allow it.”
