Page 69 of Miss Dauntless
Tremont named a figure which was not at the limit of what he could afford, but which would set him back more than a few years.
Harry gave a low whistle. “His lordship must love you, Till, and I’m all for aiding the course of true love, but in this case, I simply can’t.”
Matilda crossed her arms. “You won’t. I know you are ruthless, Harry, and endlessly self-interested, but I never thought you were gratuitously mean. You worship the twin gods of Mammon and your own dunderheaded cleverness, so whywon’t you just once—after having wronged me repeatedly—give me what I want?”
Harry shot his cuffs. He rubbed his chin again, and Tremont knew exactly why the blighter was stalling.
“He cannot, Matilda, because it’s worth hislifeto keep his name out of the papers. Every person he’s swindled, every debt he’s run out on, every friend he’s double-crossed will recognize him as the supposedly dead husband of Matilda Merridew and come for him with pitchforks and warrants. I should have seen this. A man who will cheat his blameless wife will cheat half the realm, given the opportunity.”
“It weren’t like that,” Harry said, a note of some dialect creeping past his public school diction. “Tilly was miserable with me. Hated every minute of being my wife, and I knew the Puritans at St. Mildred’s would look out for her and the boy. I left the rent paid up and the larder stocked. The Puritans lent Tilly a hand, and now you want to look out for her too. She’s already said she didn’t miss me, so you can sod your sanctimonious—”
Tremont did not plan to snatch Harry up by his cravat and yank him to his feet, but one minute Harry was clothing himself in a martyr’s robes, and the next he was clawing at Tremont’s wrists.
“Cease. Lying.” Tremont shook Harry once, to emphasize the point, and let him go.
“He’s not lying,” Matilda said, “not entirely. That’s part of Harry’s arsenal. He dribbles a little bit of the truth into all of his dissembling. I was utterly miserable married to him—though the rent was coming due and the larders empty—and now I’m apparently to pay for his sins as well as my own stupidity. Pay with the rest of my life.”
“Sorry, Till.” Harry ran a finger around his collar. “I’d like to get my hands on that money, but more than the money, I’d like to live to keep my handsome body and tarnished soul together.I can’t have my name in the papers, and that’s the whole truth. You could come to America with me. I’m sure his lordship would fund your passage if you asked him to.”
The man was either very foolish or very brave. Perhaps both.
“Be quiet, Harry,” Matilda said wearily. “Your stupid, selfish schemes nearly turned me into a streetwalker. Your dear friends condoled me with one breath and propositioned me with the next. Tremont offers me an honorable suit, but I can’t… I am so angry with you right now that those creditors and betrayed friends may not be the worst danger you face.”
Harry was quiet for a moment. “You aren’t violent,” he said. “I spotted that right off. You disdained your pa for raising his hand to you, and… I noticed that. You won’t kill me to clear your path to the altar, Till, and his lordship won’t either. You could pretend to die, maybe wait a year, use some henna, and study up on a Yorkshire accent. That one’s easy—”
“Hush,” Tremont said, when he wanted to bellow profanities. “Matilda is in an untenable situation because of your damned schemes and lies. We won’t solve the situation with more falsehoods and farce.”
“Harry Merridew is dead,” Harry said evenly, “and that suits me well enough. With a bit more coin, I can book passage from Bristol to Philadelphia, and then my situation will be as tenable as I need it to be. Give me the money, Tilly—sell the house, charm the blunt off his lordship—and I will leave you and the boy in peace. That’s the best I can do, and you know that’s more decent than I usually bother to be.”
Matilda gazed at him the same way the Almighty must have looked upon Lucifer after the war in heaven.
“You will leave me in peace,” she said, “until you need more coin. Then you will come back around, having escaped hanging in Pennsylvania, New York, and probably New Jersey for good measure. You will wreck my life at regular intervals, my veryown remittance husband, and if I balk at your demands, you will threaten to take Tommie with you. I know you, Harry. You have better angels, but they gave up the fight years ago.”
Drees chose then to rap on the door. “Are we all through conferring? Glover, are you in there? Not the done thing to leave my client without the benefit of counsel.” He let himself in while a boy with a tea tray hovered behind him.
“I’ll just be going,” Harry said, pulling on his gloves. “The lady has heard my offer, and she’s said what she has to say.” He tapped his hat onto his head and nodded to Tremont.
“We are finished for now,” Matilda replied. “You will hear from me, Mr. Merry… I beg your pardon. I forget the name.”
“Easy to do with passing acquaintances.” Harry bowed to her and moved to the door, then paused with his hand on the latch, his expression distant and dignified. “I wasn’t always like this. Believe that if you believe nothing else about me, ma’am. Good day and best of luck.”
Tremont escorted Matilda back to the waiting coach, then took the place beside her on the forward-facing bench. He rapped once on the roof, and the coach rolled forward at the walk.
“I do not care for reconnaissance missions,” Matilda muttered, “if that one was representative. Harry has aged, but he has not changed his spots. If anything, he’s grown harder over the years. What did we learn, Marcus, besides the fact that we can never marry?”
“We learned that Harry Merridew-man-whatever values his life more than he values coin. We learned that his back is to the wall, probably as a result of whatever happened in Ireland. He cheated somebody in a position to press charges, or he’d never willingly take ship for America. We learned that his enemies are legion.”
They had also learned that, by his own peculiar lights, Harry had made an effort to deal fairly—if not honorably—with Matilda and Tommie.
“Oh, very well, then. We learned all manner of interesting things,” Matilda said, removing her bonnet, “but, Marcus, what are we todo?”
He put an arm around her shoulders and scoured his memory for some fortifying wisdom courtesy of the philosophers, the Bard, or poets. A protracted search confirmed that they were as inadequate to the occasion as Tremont felt, so he simply gave Matilda the truth.
“I don’t know what to do, Matilda, but I am certain that I love you.”
“And I love you.”
Matilda had stashed all of her first pay packet into the same bank account that held her meager savings. She retrieved the whole of her means when she ought to have been taking her final turn in the MacKay nursery.
