Page 58 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
“He’s not only a bookseller,” Mercy said. “He’s a publisher. He’s got half a dozen bookstores scattered across London, and he prints and sells his own copies of the titles whose rights he has acquired. Probably he is quite wealthy.”
“It’s not his ability to support her which is in question,” Thomas said. “She’ll have a dowry for that, one which I expect to keep her in comfort for the rest of her days. It’s the sort of life she will have outside of financial considerations.” His hand landed once more upon the railing, gloved fingers tenting over it as if he would drive his blunt nails into the wood. “She’ll sacrifice,” he said. “Her social position. The standing within society to which she has been entitled since birth. I don’t think she understands quite what it will mean.”
“Oh. I see.” A woman’s reputation, her social value, was ever so much more fragile than a man’s. Any number of things might damage it, from a minor slip to a major fall. Even things for which she was by no means responsible might affect her perceived suitability for marriage or for inclusion within those most exclusive events whose invitations were sparingly distributed.
Would Marina consider it a sacrifice? In all her Seasons out, she’d not found a gentleman yet whom she had cared to encourage. But she had lit up from within every time she’d encountered her bookseller, glowing with pleasure, with happiness.
Thomas sucked in a breath, turning his head to squint through his spectacles, searching for the man situated across the theatre from them. “I don’t want to break her heart,” he said. “But it is my duty to guard them, to guide them where appropriate.”
Yes. As any good brother would. To protect them from the evils of the world, from society’s censure and judgment. To shepherd them toward suitable matches and to nudge them away from those which might cause injury. As the daughter of a tradesman herself, Mercy knew she was something short of suitable by virtue of her common birth alone. A man might lower himself to marry beneath him—to a point. But past it, and it would not be only his judgment called into question.
Guilty by association. Mercy would doom them all, eventually, see them made as much outcasts as ever she had been. And all of that brotherly concern would be for naught.
She ventured, “I could speak with her, if you like.” Perhaps she owed him that much. To lead by the example she intended to set herself.
His hand upon the railing slid nearer to hers, their fingers nearly touching. As close to a touch as they might risk in a venue such as this, surrounded by family and onlookers. “No,” he said. “It is my responsibility. And—I shall trust your judgment in this for now, I think. Harmless, until proven otherwise.” A half-smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “God knows what I’m meant to say to her, besides.” he sighed. “I’ll have to think upon it.”
She hoped he would. For Marina’s sake, and his own.
∞∞∞
Shortly after eleven, after the girls had gone upstairs to ready themselves for bed, and Mother had gone off to the library in search of a novel to read, Mercy came silently down the stairs, garbed in one of those dull gowns she had favored in the countryside. A subdued brown, it made her look more like a shop girl than the heiress to a vast fortune. She paused there upon the last set of stairs, sketchbook held in one hand, expression wavering as she caught sight of him.
Probably, Thomas thought, she was wondering if he had reconsidered. If she might even now expect to be turned away from the door and sent back upstairs. It wasn’t that the thought didn’t tempt him. It was that it would not hold her. Mercy could not be kept at his pleasure; she would only stay at her own.
He had the distinct feeling that their marriage would involve a great deal of negotiation and compromise, and the thought was oddly…pleasant. He would not be the sort of husband his father had been; a commanding, authoritative one, accustomed to and expecting of proper deference and obeisance. Mercy would expect to be a partner, not a servant. She would never agree to marry him otherwise.
He said, “The carriage is waiting outside. The coachman knows your destination. He’ll wait for you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and her voice was saturated with relief. “I know you don’t approve—”
“I don’t.” His lips twitched at the disgruntlement that slid, however briefly, across her face. “I will worry for you every hour you are gone. And I will be in that chair”—he jammed his finger toward the open door of the drawing room, to the chair justvisible from within—“until you return. Have you got everything?”
“Yes,” she said as she proceeded down the last of the steps. “I think so.”
“Key?” Though she wouldn’t need it, best to be safe nonetheless.
“In my reticule.” She stepped onto the floor of the foyer, and he was pleased to see her shoes peeking out from beneath the hem of her gown.
“Reticule?” he inquired, since she had forgotten it last time.
She lifted her right arm, and the little bag—the one his sisters had made for her out of the fabric from one of her old gowns—dangled from her wrist.
“Coin?”
A twist of her wrist, and he heard the distinctiveclinkof coins within. Good. She had prepared as well as was possible, forgotten nothing of which he was aware.
“I really do have to be going,” she said impatiently.
“I know.” He turned toward the coat rack near the door, snatched a spencer from it. “It’s gone a bit chilly,” he said, “and will be worse still when you return. Do me this one courtesy and wear a spencer.”
With a longsuffering sigh, as if she thought his manner unnecessarily protective, she braced her sketchbook behind the newel post upon the stairs, pulled the small reticule from her wrist to shove it into the pocket of her dress, and held out her arms. He helped her shrug into the garment one arm at a time, and fastened the buttons that ran down the front. “A bit too fine,” she said. “It may make me stand out more than I’d like.”
“It’ll be dark enough that it won’t likely matter.” Too dark to take much note of the embellishments, the subtle embroidery, the fine stitching. And still there was so much of her plain dress visible beneath. Probably, even if someone did happen to lookclosely, they would only assume she had gotten her hands on a fine lady’s cast-offs.
“Are you now satisfied?” she inquired archly, tugging at the cuffs of her spencer.
“Not until you are home again safely. And if the coachman has not delivered you back to me by—”
