Page 90 of Miss Dauntless
Matilda knew what it was to be that tired and chided herself for pushing Tommie too hard. He wasn’t yet six years old, and if she was exhausted, he had to be at the very limit of his resources. She got him undressed and into the trundle bed, where he subsided into sleep, Copenhagen clutched in his arms.
Matilda washed, changed into nightclothes, and took down her hair, though the brush had somehow acquired the weight of a cannonball. She managed a braid and nearly fell asleep on the vanity stool.
“To bed with you,” she muttered, though now that no food was on hand, she was almost as hungry as she was tired. She climbed under the covers, closed her eyes, and said one prayer for Tremont’s wellbeing and another for an uneventful journey to Paris.
She surrendered to welcome oblivion only to be awakened what felt like moments later by an insistent pounding on her door.
Matilda, looking rumpled and grumpy, peered at Tremont as he stood in the doorway to her room.
“Am I dreaming this, my lord, or are you truly here?” Her eyes were underscored by dark half circles, her braid was half undone, and on her feet was a pair of heavy wool socks. She was covered from neck to ankles in a brown quilted dressing gown going frayed at the collar and cuffs, and the color accentuated her uncharacteristic pallor.
Matilda had never looked more dear to him or more thoroughly vexed, and while Tremont longed to take her in his arms, he had come to her in all his considerable dirt. More significantly, the proprietress—Madame Howard—hovered at his elbow, doubtless ready to pitch him down the stairs if Matilda took umbrage at his arrival.
“I am truly here,” he said, quietly because Tommie slumbered in a trundle bed not eight feet away. “And you, thank the guardian angels of my fondest dreams, are here. You are not, however, legally married to Harry Merridew.”
Matilda put a hand on the bedpost. “Is this a nightmare?”
She sounded genuinely bewildered and looked as if she was about to collapse. Tremont advanced into the room and led her to the sole chair before the banked hearth.
“Perhaps we could light a candle or two?” he said, rather than presume to order Madame Howard about.
“Non,” she replied. “You and Mrs. Merridew may use my parlor at the end of the corridor. I will stay with the boy. I believe the lady could benefit from some brandy,my lord.”
She reproached him by using his title, which he’d forgotten to mention when he’d been babbling about perilous journeys and utmost concern and whatever else had come out of his exhausted, desperate mouth.
“Thank you,” Matilda said, rising with Tremont’s assistance. “Some explanations are in order, and the privacy is appreciated.”
“I have very good hearing,” Madame Howard said. “Madame need only call out, and I will wield an iron poker on his lordship’s handsome head and throw his body into the sea for the sharks.” She made a shooing motion toward the door.
Those threats—or promises—inspired a faint smile from Matilda. “No need for dire measures, Madame. His lordship is the quintessential gentleman under all circumstances.”
Tremont processed with Matilda down the corridor before Madame took a swipe at him for practice.
“I like her,” Matilda said. “She’s fierce and kind, and I like her. Tommie does not want to go to France, and for that matter, neither do I, but what are you doing here, and how did you find me? If Harry is dead, I will try to mourn his passing, but that will be uphill work.”
He ushered her into a toasty parlor done up in red, white, and blue. A bow window overlooked the sea, and the setting moon spread streamers of gold over the dark water.
Matilda had planned to sail across that expanse, never to be seen again by the man who loved her to distraction.
“Let’s sit, shall we?” he said. “My guess is that Madame Howard will have very good brandy, if you’d like some.”
“Will you join me?”
“I’d best not. I’ve ridden seventy miles through winter weather on horses whose sole redeeming qualities were speedand stamina. Some of them were carnivores, all of them had miserable gaits, and two were prepared to commit homicide, so fiercely did they hold to the conviction that they must return to London. A nightcap might lay me low.”
Matilda subsided onto the blue sofa and took up a matching blue pillow embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis. “And yet, despite the perils of the journey, you are here.”
He poured her a generous portion from a decanter on the sideboard and brought it to her. “May I sit beside you?”
She accepted the drink. She did not pat the place next to her on the sofa. “Tell me about Harry. He’s mixed up in this somehow, isn’t he?”
Tremont shifted a wing chair such that it faced the sofa rather than the sea. “He’s not Harry Merridew. He’s Harrell Merchant, scion of a respected Quaker trading family from Bristol. He’s probably quite wealthy, if—in a singular irony—he hasn’t been declared dead.”
Matilda sipped her brandy. “Then I am Mrs. Matilda Merchant?”
“You need not be Mrs. Anybody. I consulted in some detail with Mr. Michael Delancey, who has a thorough grasp of ecclesiastical law. You and Harry were married by special license, and that license was sorely defective. Harry lied about his name, he lied about belonging to a Church of England congregation, and through marriage to you, he got his hands on much of your dower property.”
Matilda stared at her drink. “Perhaps the lateness of the hour and a day spent in Tommie’s disgruntled company has addled my wits. What is the significance of Harry’s prevarications?”
