Page 31 of Miss Dauntless
Tremont posed his question dispassionately, which made answering him easier. “Not particularly that. I learned that if I simply acquiesced to Harry’s overtures, he soon lost interest. He married me for my money and my respectability. Part of himenjoyed exercising his marital rights with me—he liked the idea of a vicar’s daughter disporting with a rascal—but another part of him could not handle being passively tolerated as a lover. Toward the end, he left me alone.”
Tremont’s town house came into sight, though Matilda could have done with more walking and more talking. The past was easier to discuss when she and Tremont weren’t facing each other over a teapot.
“Did you miss Merridew’s attentions when he withheld them?”
That question, too, was posed without any particular weight. “No. Not in the least. On my worst, most bleak and hungry days, I am still glad to no longer be married to that man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What have you to be sorry for?”
“I’m sorry, Matilda, that even in the most basic comforts the married state is intended to confer, your husband failed you. That doesn’t explain why you had to keep him in sight at all times.”
No, it didn’t. Matilda gave the matter some thought. “He didn’t strike me.”
“We have established that he did not need to strike you when he could instead threaten to send your child to a baby farm or foundling home.”
And that observation was offered with exquisite dispassion.
Matilda resigned herself to sharing another sordid truth about her past. “Harry stole things. From me, from Tommie. Aunt Portia somehow put together the coin to gift Tommie with a silver rattle. He loved it. He shook that thing by the hour, fascinated with the sound, with how sunlight gleamed on the surface. Harry pawned it or sold it. He pawned my best boots to buy me a fancy cloak, as if people wouldn’t notice my worn boots because fancy hems were draped over my frigid toes. My littletrousseau—a tea service, some linen, bride clothes, and so forth—didn’t last a year.”
“And let me guess,” Tremont said, escorting Matilda up the steps to his town house. “When you asked your husband if he’d seen the rattle, he turned an innocent expression on you, or—if he was vexed by some detail of the day that had nothing to do with you—he’d chide you for not taking better care of your son’s toys. Merridew would ask you where your good boots were and then mutter that clearly you could not be trusted with any item of value. For a long, desperate moment, you’d wonder if he was right and if you were losing your wits.”
Tremont held the door for her, and Matilda passed into the quiet and warmth of his home. “That’s it exactly. I began to doubt the evidence of my own eyes, and keeping a vigilant watch over Harry became necessary, though by then, I had nothing left to steal. He had shaken me from my passive tolerance, though, and that was likely his objective.”
Tremont set aside the ledger he’d carried and unwrapped the scarf Matilda wore instead of a bonnet.
“And still,” he said, undoing her frogs, “you watched Merridew, because by the smallest shifts of expression, by the look in his eyes and the tilt of his head, you learned to know the sewer that passed for his mind. It’s a blessing all around that your husband no longer draws breath. Were I to meet him, I might have a relapse of violent impulses, and I am a dead shot.”
“You aren’t boasting.” Did Tremont ever boast? Matilda turned so his lordship could lift her cloak from her shoulders.
“I was told my father was a dead shot, and I felt it incumbent upon me to uphold his tradition. I later learned that he was only agoodshot, and only with long guns, but because he’d been the earl, and he’d gone to his reward, his skills were embellished by fond remembrance. Others idealized him in memory, just as Idid. Papa couldn’t manage a pistol to save himself, but my own skills extend to every sort of firearm.”
“Because when you set your mind to a thing, you never give up.”
“Because,” Tremont said, passing her his hat, “when practice is all that stands between me and an objective, even I can generally achieve the possible. Brilliance has been denied me, but persistence is my consolation.”
He spoke as if reviewing lecture notes. Tremont wasn’t lamenting a lack of mental agility, nor was he insulting himself. He merely reported what he believed to be true.
“Have you made a study of kissing, my lord?”
He paused in the act of hanging up his own cloak. “I beg your pardon?”
“Kissing.” Matilda audibly kissed the air. “Because if you bring to that endeavor the same focus you turned on your marksmanship, I must ask that we postpone our examination of the ledgers.”
The words surprised her. That was the old Matilda talking, the Matilda who’d disgraced herself and her father, who’d seen Harry Merridew’s glib charm as a suit of shining armor. The Matilda who’d yielded to impulse at the expense of common sense and decorum.
The Matilda who had caused so much trouble was stirring back to life, and she had apparently caught Tremont’s attention. He was smiling again, and this smile would have done justice to the most buccaneering pirate ever to storm a seaside castle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The idea that Matilda had been so distrustful of her husband that she’d had to watch the blighter at all times made Tremont furious. How dare that varlet steal from his own wife, much less from a helpless baby? How dare he subject Matilda to freezing toes for the sake of his vanity?
Tremont’s usual means of corralling rage—a handy quote from the Stoics, a pithy Shakespearean observation, a determined examination of any unexpected good that had flowed from harm—were unavailing.
And in the midst of Tremont’s mental tirades at Harry Merridew, Matilda had flourished her question about kissing and marksmanship.
“You befuddle me on purpose,” Tremont said, managing to get his cloak onto the nearest brass hook. “You know that I am vexed past all bearing by the behaviors of your late spouse, so you distract me with an outlandish question.”
