Page 19 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
But it wasn’t now. Mercy had become family to them. Thick as thieves, the three of them. And she had been good to them.Forthem, even. Perhaps she had been a better sister—if not by blood—to the girls than he had ever been a brother.
And he’d never known it. Because he had never bothered to see it for himself. Always he’d had something better to do, some bit of business to manage, or otherwise a general disinterest in dinner parties and country dances and the activities of giddy young girls.
Of course he had always loved his sisters. But Mercy, he thought,knewthem. In a way he did not, and never had. And they knew her, far better than he ever had but for the assumptions he had made of her.
“Yes,” he said, and he found that he actually meant the word. “Yes, she should have something to show for them.” Because, he thought, that was what sisters were meant to do for one another. Turn something wretched into something lovely.
∞∞∞
“I’m seven and twenty years old,” Mercy said to herself beneath her breath as she dressed in an old gown; a nondescript brown one which was not handsome but was at least serviceable and clean. “I am permitted to leave the house on my own if I please.”
It was true. She was well beyond the age of majority. So far beyond it, in fact, that she could only imagine what people would say of her this Season. At least at her last she had had the luxury of being young, just eighteen, a perfectly appropriate age for a woman to be on the marriage mart. Seven and twenty was practically ancient by comparison.
There was a difference, she knew, between the permissible and the appropriate. A woman of good reputation did not leave her home unaccompanied at such an hour. In fact, a woman of good reputation left her home at such an hour only if she were engaged for a particular event—which she was not this evening.
But she would be, and the thought sank into her stomach like a ball of lead. Shewouldbe. Because the baroness had received a handful of amended invitations just this afternoon, and she had found her social schedule decidedly fuller than she would have preferred. Than she had even expected.
Apparently, Papa had been quite correct—the baroness wielded no small amount of social influence. Enough of it to make Mercy’s presence alongside the Armitage family a small price to pay for their continued good will.
Unfortunately, the prospect of a long Season just stuffed to the gills with social events would make Mercy’s own plans a bit more difficult to accommodate. Tonight would be the last night for a week or better that Mercy expected to have a free evening. Ithadto be tonight.
Still, her nerves had frayed just a little at the edges at the thought. She knew her way around the city—in theory, if not so much in practice. She had a handful of coin in her reticule. She could hire out a hack if necessary. Between her unremarkableappearance, the cloak she had dawned, and the fact that she hadn’t really been much in London in nearly a decade, she was highly unlikely to be recognized.
But still as she crept down the stairs came the vague sense that she was doing something wrong. The Armitages would not approve. Neither would Papa, she knew, no matter howdoting he tended to be. He might let her have her way in all manner of things, but this—thisshe had not even considered sharing with him.
It might well break his heart.
The creak of a board upon the staircase drew a wince from her, unnaturally loud in the silence of midnight. The hair at the nape of her neck lifted as she heard the thud of shoes within Papa’s study, and with a dawning sense of horror she watched the shadows shift in the faint light which crept beneath the door.
Too late to flee; the door had opened, smoothly, silently. Thomas poked his head out of the room, adjusting his crooked spectacles upon his face as he peered out into the hall. His eyes narrowed minutely as his gaze landed upon her—fully dressed to go out, at an hour such as this.
“No,” he said, his jaw firming. “Whatever you are meant to be doing, just—no.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mercy said, lifting her chin in challenge. “I am of age to do as I please.” So there.
The door closed behind him as he stepped fully out into the hallway. “This isn’t the goddamned countryside,” he returned in a fierce whisper. “The streets are filled with thieves and footpads after dark, and ladies do not leave their homes at such an hour unaccompanied. It simply is not done.” His eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his spectacles as he looked her over once more, his brows descending as he noted her plain dress, her unremarkable cloak. “Just where is it that you are intending to go?”
For a moment, Mercy gawped like a fish. “For—for a walk.”
A snort. “You’re lying, and you’re not even particularly good at it.”
That was hardly fair; she hadn’t had to do terribly much lying in her life. Nor had she expected to meet him in the halls. How could she have had a ready excuse available to give to him? “You cannot stop me from walking out the door,” she said.
“I beg to differ,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “I’ve got at least five stone on you. I could heft you straight over my shoulder and lock you within your room if it pleased me to do so. Speaking of your room, I would suggest you return to it at once of your own accord.”
Mercy pursed her lips against the rash desire to argue, which she knew from experience would avail her nothing. There was simply neither point nor sense in doing so, when Thomas had plainly made up his mind.
But he had not credited her with half so much cleverness or ingenuity as she deserved, and in his arrogance he would no doubt think his point had been made and she had meekly accepted his judgment. So she would let him think what he would and do as she pleased regardless. “Good night, then, my lord,” she said, and turned upon her heel to ascend the stairs, feeling the burn of his gaze straight at her back as she went up, up, up—
And out the window instead.
∞∞∞
Mercy hadn’t precisely slammed her door, but she had certainly closed it with enough force for the sound to echo down thestaircase. It had seemed almost recriminatory, that sound, and damned if it hadn’t brought with it the faintest stirrings of guilt.
Between the two of them, Thomas was in the right, and he damned well knew it. Any number of terrible things could happen to a woman walking the streets of London alone after dark. It hadn’t been cruelty or stubbornness that had compelled him to put his foot down.
It had just been simple, honest concern.
