Page 27 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
Probably so none of them caught her staggering about the house in her cups, reeking of brandy, she mused. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go up once I’ve finished my glass.”
“Good.” He set his glass aside upon the table, turned toward the door—and paused. “Let’s make a deal between us,” he said slowly, as he turned toward her once more, a curious expression chasing across his face.
“What sort of a deal?” Mercy asked, inclining her head in interest.
“You’ll attend the next ball—at which I promise you that you will dance at least once—and after, I will let you beat me at billiards.”
Mercy scoffed. “I don’t require such a deal to beat you at billiards,” she said, tipping her nose in the air in open superiority.
“Fine,” Thomas said with an insouciant shrug. “I will let youtryto beat me at billiards.”
With an annoyed huff, Mercy climbed to her feet, listing just a bit unsteadily. It had been easy enough to ignore the effects of the brandy whilst seated, but just now she felt them a bit more severely than she had anticipated. “I will also reserve the right to leave the ball at any point if I should become bored,” she demanded.
“I will take you home myself,” Thomas promised. “Understand me here—you are notto leave any event unaccompanied. Like it or not, you have a reputation to protect,and the protecting of it is presently my responsibility.”
Good enough, she supposed. “Done,” she said, and extended her hand to him.
Like a gentleman, he took it, his fingers warm and strong as they wrapped around hers to seal the deal they had made between them. “For whatever it might be worth to you,” he said, “Iamsorry. Not because you overheard those words I said, but because I said them to begin with.”
Chapter Eleven
Mercy had returned to her room just minutes before Mother and the girls had arrived home. The whole household had gone off to bed an hour or so ago, leaving Thomas alone and awake in the depths of the night. Probably he ought to have gone to bed as well, but he doubted he would have managed more than to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling until dawn came pouring through the nearest window.
Father had been dead for over three years, now. He hadn’t even realized that the anniversary of Father’s passing had come and gone until nearly a week afterward. Possibly the girls hadn’t either, though he doubted Mother had managed to let it slip her mind. The truth of it was that none of them had much missed him.
The deeper truth of it was, he’d never really gone. He’d passed, God rot his miserable soul, but he’d not left. No longer burdened by the deficiencies of a mortal body, he hadhauntedhis son. Thomas had lived these last years with his father’s voice settled right at the back of his brain, an ever-present thrum within his very skull to remind him in perpetuity of just what a failure he had been. What a disappointment he was. How far he had fallen from expectations.
He knew well enough what Father would say of him now. He could see it even, in his mind’s eye: the sneer, the faint curl of hislip, the cutting gaze that could take strips off of his hide with the smallest glance.I knew you would be the ruin of this family, that insidious little voice jeered, and the sound rolled through his brain with an unsettling malevolence.I knew never to expect better of you.And only look—you have reduced the family to this. To the indignity of being beholden to the good will of Augustus Fletcher. Like a dog on a lead.
Thomas pulled his spectacles off of his face and scrubbed at his aching eyes. Father had always had the power to reduce him to an almost childlike state, yearning for an approval that would never come. He’d apologized to Mercy this evening, and Father—Father would haveloathedthat. A sign of weakness, he would have thought. He’d have applauded Thomas for having put Mercy in her rightful place, which was inextricably and unquestionably beneath him.
All these years he’d held an image of her in his mind, one that had been formed by his father since childhood. A hoyden; a hellion. Half-wild, and no better than she ought to be, given her common roots. Her very existence had been an offense in itself, Thomas thought. Her father’s wealth an even worse one.
Father had never liked her. He’d never approved of her friendship with Marina and Juliet. But then, Father had spent as little time as was possible in the countryside, preferring the amusements to be found in town—and Mother had disregarded his grumbling about it in his absence.
Like his father, he’d made so damned many assumptions of her. Unfair ones, he supposed, and even untrue ones. He’d taken offense at so simple, so generous a gesture as the offer of gowns, which he had assumed to be cast-offs, when they’d never even been worn. He’d been so damned determined to view her through the lens his father had given to him, and he had never bothered to consider whether or not he truly shared that judgment. He’d said terrible things of her within her own home,and she—
She had been so much kinder about it than she had had to be. Than he had any right at all to expect. She’d have been within her rights to write to her father and have the lot of them cast out into the streets. But she hadn’t. Instead she had humored Mother’s insistence upon her attendance at social functions, and weathered a terminally boring ball despite the humiliation of it all.
Irreverent Mercy might be. Reckless and uncontrollable, that much was true—he had the bend in the frame of his spectacles to prove it. But above everything else, she was kind and loyal and generous. Generous enough even to deny herself the catharsis of a shoulder to cry on, when it might have meant dashing Marina’s romantic notions of the Season she had so cherished.
For the space of a half an hour as they had conversed in the library, that nasty little voice that had lived in the back of his mind these last three years had quieted. There had been no hissing, spiteful recriminations there to allow him to justify to himself his own poor behavior, his cruel words—whether or not she’d been meant to hear them.
There had just been the shame of having been overheard. Of having said those hateful words to begin with. He doubted she’d even intended to give it to him, but still he’d been unable to meet her direct, forthright gaze. For once, that shame had been entirely self-inflicted. There was an undeniable sort of novelty in it, to be directed by his own conscience rather than his father’s lingering voice.
It hadn’t lasted, of course. A temporary reprieve at most, one which had vanished with a vengeance as soon as the household had gone to bed and Thomas had been left alone in Mr. Fletcher’s study with his thoughts and the most recent missive from Mr. Sumner’s investigator.
Father wouldn’t have approved of Thomas cutting short theinquiries he’d been making around Cheapside, where Fordham—that villain—had last been seen making free with the family funds in order to attend, however briefly, Juliet’s first ball.
But Mercy, he thought, would have.
∞∞∞
Fordham’s rented flat had been abandoned, and his office shuttered. None of those living or working nearby, to whom Thomas had posed delicate, innocuous questions, had recalled seeing the man inside of the last month.
His best lead had been a tavern in Cheapside, which had come to Thomas’ notice by way of the investigator whom Mr. Sumner had engaged. Fordham had been something of a regular, he was given to understand—and he had last been seen within only days ago.
The damned villain had gone to ground. It was the only explanation. It could not have escaped his notice that Thomas’ family had arrived in London for the Season, and he had to have known that his theft had not gone unnoticed. That there would be some effort made to locate him, to recover the funds he had stolen.
