Page 49 of Miss Dauntless
“You are quiet,” Marcus said as they walked along arm in arm. “Do you fear the men are using your home as a gambling den?”
“No. The place was appropriately dusty, and I saw no signs of recent habitation. The hearths are clean, the andirons as polished as I left them. The dustbin empty.”
“You did say the men are keeping secrets of some sort.” Marcus drew her back from the street when a passing coach would have splashed her skirts. “You are upset. That business with the key upset you.”
“Frightened me,” Matilda said. “You see before you a woman who wants desperately to believe in a happy future with a wonderful man, but who lacks confidence in her dreams. I did not move that key, you did not move that key, and Tommie did not. The only other person who’d know where to find it was buried years ago, but what if Harry passed the secret on to some criminal friend? He had plenty of those.”
The rest of that speculation was too fanciful—and dreadful—to be voiced aloud.What if Harry Merridew isn’t dead?
“I’m being ridiculous,” Matilda said, glad to see the porchlight of her new home come into view. “There is doubtless a logical explanation for the key being moved. Will you stay for dinner?”
Marcus held the door for her, then accompanied her into the foyer. “I will stay for supper, though I realize we forgot the blasted account book. I don’t suppose you’d like to retrieve the ledger in person the day after tomorrow? I must meet with the solicitors in the morning, else I’d extend the invitation to call for the crack of dawn.”
He peeled her cloak from her shoulders as impersonally as if they had, indeed, spent the afternoon poring over figures and tallies.
Matilda passed him bonnet and gloves, and his fingers stroked over her knuckles.
Ah, well, then. When Matilda took his cloak, she brushed the wool against her cheek and sneaked a little whiff of the lapel. Marcus smiled, winked, and offered his arm.
“To the library with us, before we commit improprieties that would shock Mrs. Winklebleck herself.”
“What a delightful thought.” Matilda returned Marcus’s smile and greeted an ebullient Tommie upon entering the library. She was treated to a detailed description of every article of furniture that had been moved to the lumber room and interrogated regarding the precise offerings on Aunt Portia’s tea tray.
Marcus engaged himself in conversation with Biggs and Bentley, and all the while Matilda was admiring the line of Marcus’s shoulders and listening intently to Tommie’s recitation, she was also plagued with worry.
The key had been moved. Who had moved the key and why? Nothing in the house had been missing, and a thief would have replaced the key where he’d found it. Perhaps Marcus could get an explanation from the men, because Matilda needed that explanation.
Badly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“When Tilly walks out with her earl,” Harry said, tossing half a scoop of coal onto the hearth before Sparky could waste a whole scoop, “she hangs on his arm. Doesn’t just put a hand on his sleeve and mince along next to him.” As she had with her lawfully wedded husband. “She’s running that soldiers’ home for him, if the talk in the pub can be believed. Has the boy with her.”
“This time of year, the walkways are messy in the Old Smoke,” Sparky rejoined. “She’s yerwidda, ’Arry. Ye can’t begrudge her her freedom.”
The fire was slow to catch—did nobody clean the flues in this place?—and Sparky’s comment sat ill.
“I married her when she badly needed marrying. She ought to have a care for my memory.”
Sparky sat forward and held his hands toward the desultory flames. “She probably thanks God nightly for yer demise. Pass a fellow a flask, why don’t ye?”
Harry obliged. Sparky had ceased maundering on about returning to Ireland, and the situation with Tilly still wanted some extra eyes and ears.
“God, ’Arry. This stuff’ll kill ye for sure.” Sparky passed the flask back. “Had a letter from me Mary. She misses me.”
Oh, for pity’s perishing sake. “She’s taken any other handsome lad to her bed she pleases in your absence, and she misses having you to fetch and carry for her.”
The fire ate at the fresh coal, though a reprise of the Great Fire itself wouldn’t warm up Harry’s lodgings.
“Being dead disagrees with ye. Ye never used to be so ’ard-hearted.” Sparky pulled his chair closer to the fire. “So yer missus has caught the fancy of an earl. She’d probably be happy to let ye have the house and all the memories in it if ye just stay dead. Love has a way of making people daft.”
“You would know.” A daft idea—a daring idea—was germinating in Harry’s brain as he watched the feeble flames. All the best rigs had an element of daring. An element of art. Harry would have the house and the proceeds it fetched at sale.
What if he could have more? A good rig had a touch of daring, but the best rigs bore a hint of brilliance.
“Tilly will get money,” Harry said slowly. “If Tremont makes her his fancy piece. If she can get him to marry her, she will have pots of pin money.” That was the bolder prize—to coax not only the house but also a steady stream of coin from Matilda. She needed Harry to stay dead rather desperately, after all.
“And if ye try to bilk her out of her coin,” Sparky said, “her fella will have the means to put ye on a transport ship or worse, ’Arry. Tremont served in Spain.”
