Page 77 of Miss Dauntless
“Of course, if I must, which will be the carrot, but I also need a stick. Mrs. Winklebleck, what else can you tell us about the man’s past?”
A few bits and bobs of information emerged from a general discussion. Harry was a confidence trickster of some renown, but had few friends. He eventually left any accomplices in awkward circumstances, and women soon realized he was more parasite than protector.
While the talk eddied and a second decanter was emptied, Tremont realized that Harry Merridew must be a profoundly lonely man. No home, no friends, no family… Harry, while telling himself London was his own personal patch, was lost in the stews of vice and deception.
“Who are his people?” Tremont asked. “He has family somewhere—cousins, an auntie, somebody. What do we know of them?”
Silence crept over the library.
“He never mentioned family,” Mrs. Winklebleck said. “Never mentioned a village, never talked about going ’ome for Yuletide or to pay a call on his granny in ’igh summer, but then, who’d ’ave a grandson like ’im? I’ll ’ave another tot, if you don’t mind, MacIvey.”
“Best give it a rest, Nanny,” MacIvey said, making no move to surrender the decanter.
“She’s Mrs. Winklebleck to you,” Tremont muttered, though his heart wasn’t in the scold. Somewhere in her words, in what Harry Merridew lacked, was a thread of gold.
“He doesn’t go home,” Tremont said, feeling again an unwanted kinship with Matilda’s husband, “but he has a home. The situation wants more information, and as it happens, I know how to come by it. Who here recalls a man named Spartacus Lykens?”
The discussion went on for another quarter hour before a quartet of former infantrymen was detailed to patrol—to harmlessly wander about, rather—a certain neighborhood in Knightsbridge. Five minutes later, Tremont was escorting MacKay to the door.
“Do you know what you’re about?” MacKay asked, whipping a green and white plaid scarf about his neck.
“Part of me knows what I’m about. I am securing for Matilda and Tommie the freedom to remain in England. If she leaves, that should be a choice rather than her only option.”
“And the rest of you?”
“I want to kill Harry Merridew, MacKay. I want to slowly strangle him and watch his eyes as he realizes that he cannot swindle, rig, lie, cheat, or bamboozle his way out of the fate he deserves. What that man has done to Matilda… Except that, for a time, I wanted my mother and sister to think I was dead, didn’t I? I hid in the slums and hoped the sins of my past would never reach the ears of my family. Having made egregious wrong turns myself, I can judge no man for his faults.”
MacKay, who had served under Dunacre, looked thunderous. “You had your reasons.”
“And Harry Merridew must have his. My job is to ferret them out and use them to Matilda’s advantage. She said he comesfrom good Quaker stock and had a falling-out with his father. If any people on the entire face of the earth go about their disputes with deliberation, it’s the Friends. Somebody somewhere will recall the details of this family scandal. Failing that, Lykens might impart some names and dates that I can use to persuade Merridew to stay more or less dead.”
MacKay settled a high-crowned beaver on his head at a jaunty angle. “So you can keep Matilda as your mistress?”
That question was a kindly attempt to turn despair into anger. “Of course not, but neither will I see her banished from her homeland with a child to support while it’s in my power to make her circumstances easier. I will not allow her to get on that ship bound for Philadelphia unless and until I’ve done all in my power to see her disentangled from her scapegrace husband.”
“Because,” MacKay said with a lopsided smile, “you love her. Dorcas saw this coming, damned if she didn’t. ‘For aught that I could ever hear by tale or history,the course of true love never did run smooth.’ Let me know what you get out of Lykens. He was a tough old boot at too young an age.”
“My regards to your lady, MacKay.”
“And mine to yours.”
Tremont offered a polite bow in parting, but he wanted to applyhisboot to MacKay’s backside. Matilda was not Tremont’s lady, and she might well never be.
Also, MacKay had bungled the quote. “It’s ‘for aught that I couldever read,’” Tremont muttered as he watched MacKay stride along the walkway, “‘could ever hear by tale or history,the course of true love never did run smooth.’”
In that much at least, the Bard had hit upon the sorry, stinking truth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Are we in trouble, Mama?” Tommie asked, snuggling down beneath his blankets.
Matilda had waited until Sunday evening to explain to Tommie that a journey was in the offing. She’d read to him about the tortoise and hare—the story had become his favorite—and then explained that on Tuesday, he’d go sailing with her to start a new life in a distant land.
“We are not in trouble,” she said, sitting on the edge of his bed and brushing his hair back from his brow. “We are soon to be off on an adventure.”
“Because if we were in trouble, Tremont would help us, and so would the men and the ladies.”
“They have helped us, tremendously, and we have helped them. It’s simply time to go.” Parental license rather than a lie, surely.
