Page 18 of A Delicate Deception
11 August, 1824
Dear Sydney,
Are you calling me a lightskirt? I neither confirm nor deny these allegations.
As for your second paragraph, I do wonder if my letters have been intercepted by some boring, humorless, churlish man because the Sydney Gibberish of my acquaintance is none of those things. If you were angling for a compliment, consider it delivered.
Returning to your first paragraph, I will have you know you’re hardly the first man I’ve corresponded with. Interpret that as you see fit.
13 August, 1824
Dear Amelia,
I am unfit for society in every capacity. I didn’t mean to suggest that—oh bother. I’m making you pay the postage on this single sheet and I am awash in regret.
S
15 August, 1824
Dearest Sydney,
Honestly, you’re always awash in regret, so don’t try to make me feel special about it. If you wish, you can make it all up to me with another kiss upon your return. I expect your entire face is crimson now and I only wish I could see it.
Now I’m making you pay the postage on this brief missive, but I turned it into two paragraphs so I don’t feel bad about it.
A
Chapter Seven
On the stagecoach from Manchester, Sydney found his hand repeatedly drifting towards the coat pocket where he kept Amelia’s letters. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she was a good correspondent: she earned a living by writing, but so had Sydney’s mother, who was one of humanity’s worst letter writers. Case in point: the letter waiting at Sydney’s lodgings, which read, in its entirety: “Out of prison for now, your father’s gout is acting up.” Amelia’s letters, though, made him feel like she was beside him. In her words he could hear her voice and imagine her laugh. It wasn’t the same as being near her, but it was close.
But without her presence, he found himself questioning more often what exactly they were doing together. When she was near, it was easy to go along with whatever hedonistic whim was impelling them both. They had never talked about the future, had never even alluded to the possibility that anything serious lay between them. But it also wasn’t a carefree tumble. Not that Sydney had ever managed a carefree tumble—or a carefree anything—in his entire life. He suspected that this was more serious for him than it was for her, because in his experience everything was always more serious for him than it was for everyone else around him. He wanted to pin it down, know exactly what it was and precisely where in his mind to slot this experience, and decided that maybe he would have to be content with calling it friendship.
Sydney was half asleep on his feet when he arrived at Pelham Hall. The coach had left Manchester just past midnight and arrived in Bakewell a little before dawn, and he had only managed the briefest and least satisfying of naps during the journey. Surely his fatigue added to the dreamlike state of confusion with which he approached Pelham Hall. It hardly seemed real that after days and days of talking with the merchants who sponsored the railway and the other engineers who offered opinions of how to make the thing actually work, he was back here, looking at a house that stood almost precisely as it had a few hundred years ago.
He walked slowly up the drive to Pelham Hall, taking in its motley assortment of gables and window bays. He was surprised to find that the past weeks had softened the edges of his hatred for this place. It now housed his niece and his—well, he supposed Lex was still a friend—and it was close to Amelia. And he regretted that in a few weeks it would once again be empty, abandoned.
Except, as he got closer, he saw it was not precisely the same as it had stood two weeks ago, let alone a few hundred years before that. Before leaving, he entrusted Lex’s manservant with a draft on his bank and instructions to hire whatever servants were required to make the house safe and comfortable for Leontine and Lex. He arrived to find no fewer than two dozen workers on the premises. He counted three glaziers, a couple of masons, and more carpenters than he cared to think about.
Carter met him on the gravel drive. “His Grace and I had a difference of opinion on what work needed to be carried out,” Lex’s manservant said. “I’m afraid he insisted on paying for it himself.”
Sydney passed a hand over his jaw and tried to remind himself that Lex was doing this for Leontine. And also that spending money was something Lex did the way other people breathed. “How long does he plan to stay?” Sydney asked. “I was under the impression that we were only staying until he and the child were well enough to travel.”
Carter tactfully cleared his throat. “His Grace has paid the servants’ wages for the next month.”
A month! Good God. Lex was welcome to stay for twenty months but Sydney could not and would not.
“How many servants has he engaged?” Sydney asked. “And where, pray tell, are they sleeping?”
“Five, in addition to the nursery maids and several gardeners and laborers outdoors. As for their lodgings, there are quite a few rooms in the attics that only needed sweeping and airing. They were in a most unexceptionable condition considering the state of the rest of the house. His Grace paid for the furnishings and linens.”
“Anything else I ought to know about?”
Carter cleared his throat again. “I’m afraid I poached a cook from one of the great houses near Bakewell. And I may have given her the impression that she would be working in a duke’s establishment. So she was understandably dismayed to discover...”
“That she was cooking over an open flame in a pit of a kitchen. Yes, quite.” He thanked Carter and headed into the house, where he discovered Lex and Leontine in the great hall, which, thanks to the light streaming through the now-spotless windows and an accumulation of mismatched furniture, somehow seemed even more dilapidated than it had two weeks earlier.
“Uncle!” Leontine cried. She sat on the floor at Lex’s feet, a book open on her lap.
