Page 53 of Two Rogues Make a Right
Martin had twenty shillings and a few pounds in bank notes. It was more money than he had carried in years and the clink of coins in his pocket made him feel perversely adult. Here he was, three and twenty, and for the first time he felt fully in charge of his own destiny.
He also had four books from his aunt’s library, several sets of clothes that he supposed would do for a rural convalescence, as much camphor and willow bark as his aunt could purchase at eight o’clock in the morning, and a tin of tea. He supposed people had started out on far less.
Foolishly, he had hoped that he would feel better as soon as he stepped out of the carriage, that the first breath of fresh air would restore him to some semblance of health. Instead he coughed, and there was blood on the handkerchief, and this was—well, it was not ideal, but it was what he was working with, and he was going to keep working with it because the alternative was not worth thinking of.
The Tanners’ cottage was a five minutes’ walk from the inn. He knew he could walk that distance without coming to any harm, but he was being careful, so he gave tuppence to one of the boys who loitered around the inn and told them they’d have another tuppence if they came back with Miss Daisy and her mum. Then he took his hat off, straightened his shoulders, and took a seat at a table near the door. He felt exceptionally visible, especially without the shabbiness of his old clothes to give him cover. Anyone who had believed him to be plain Mr. Smith would have plenty of time to recognize him as an Easterbrook. But in order for his plan to work, he had to be as honest and upfront as possible, so he gritted his teeth and let people look.
When Mrs. Tanner and Daisy entered, he paid the lad who had fetched them and then gave Daisy another tuppence to bring his satchel to the cottage. That, he figured, would give him enough time to have the conversation he needed to have with her mother.
“Is Mr. Sedgwick with you or is he coming later?” Mrs. Tanner asked. She had immediately taken stock of his fine clothes and probably also noticed his pallor.
“It’s only me for now, which is why I wanted to speak to you. My health has taken a turn and I need someone to look after me. I thought Daisy could do it, for whatever wage is customary. It would be light work as long as I don’t get much worse. She’d only need to look in on me a few times a day, do the wash, and bring supper. If I need the physician, she’d be the one to fetch him. But if I get worse, I might need nursing, possibly overnight, and that’s where things get difficult. She’s young and I wouldn’t wish for anything untoward to be said. That’s why I’m speaking to you first, instead of to her directly.”
“That’s considerate of you, Mr. Smith,” she said cautiously.
“If it’s all the same to you, Mrs. Tanner, I think we can dispense with that fiction. I beg your pardon if I’m wrong, but I believe you knew my late father, Sir Humphrey Easterbrook. I’m under no illusions about what kind of man he was, or what kind of misdeeds he must have committed in any place he spent time. I can assure you Daisy would be quite safe in my company—indeed any woman would be quite safe—but my assurance alone will do nothing to stop gossip. However, and I’m afraid there’s no delicate way to ask this, but if there is some other family connection between Daisy and myself...” He took a deep breath, as deep as he could, which only resulted in a coughing fit. When he steadied himself, he managed to smile at the older woman. He had to handle this well; he needed to make sure she didn’t think this was blackmail or extortion or even some kind of high-handed charity. “The fact is that I need to hire someone to look after me, and it would go better for everyone concerned if that person were a family connection. I could be grossly mistaken and it’s presumptuous for me even to have this conversation, but my understanding is that it’s commonly known that you weren’t married to Daisy’s father, and I’ve noticed that—” He stopped himself. He had blathered long enough and now needed to make his point. “Mrs. Tanner, is Daisy my sister?”
She continued to look at him unflinchingly, and he guessed that she was deciding whether to lie. “Well, yes, Sir Martin, but we thought you knew.”
Martin bristled at his title but there was nothing to be done about that. He couldn’t renounce it, and even if he could, it would look like he was trying to deny who he was, who he had been. It would feel like cowardice. “And so I did. I wasn’t certain whether you did, though.”
She shook her head. “As if I wouldn’t notice that you’re the very spit of him at that age. That morning I walked into your cottage and caught you in bed and you dressed me down, you sounded just like him as well.”
“I apologize. It can’t have been a pleasant surprise. I wish there were something I could say to assure you that I’m not like him, or at least that I’m trying not to be.”
Mrs. Tanner looked at him for a long minute. “If you’ll beg my pardon, once I got over the shock, I realized you were only worried about your young man’s privacy, which is a sight more than your father would have ever cared about.”
Martin opened his mouth to deny that there was anything requiring privacy, to insist that there was nothing untoward about two men sharing a bed. But Mrs. Tanner had seen him and Will together for months; if she had arrived at the truth, then making a show of denying it would do no good. Besides, he was trying to show her that he was trustworthy, and maybe he needed to trust her as well. So all he did was wave over the barmaid and ask for a pair of pints.
“I’m quite poor,” he said. “Otherwise I’d try to do something for Daisy, especially given that she constitutes a full half my blood family. As things stand, I realize that instead I’m asking Daisy to do me a favor for a sum of money that might not be worth her while and which might cause her parentage to become the source of a gossip for months to come.”
“People have been wondering about Daisy’s father for sixteen years, and the only reason I never set anyone straight was that I was afraid her da—your da—would come back and make trouble. But if he’s dead, and good riddance to the bastard, then it’s no skin off my back.” The door swung open, bringing in a gust of fresh air along with Daisy, who flung herself into the chair between her mother and Martin. “Daisy,” her mother said, “you’ll look after Mr.—Sir Martin—while he’s poorly, won’t you? Three shillings a week, more if you need to spend the night.”
“Right,” she said, casting a keen glance at the signet ring Martin wore and then raising her eyebrows at him with the clear message ofIt took you long enough.
“You can start by telling one of the lads in the stables that Sir Martin needs the pony cart to bring him to the cottage.”
“I—” Martin had been ready to protest that he could walk the mile to the cottage, but remembered that he was being cautious as well as honest. “Thank you, Daisy.”
When, finally, he arrived at the cottage, he felt like he had been gone longer than two weeks. He was surprised to see that the piglets were still small, the house unchanged. Even indoors smelled the same, like candle wax and timber. While Daisy put fresh sheets on the bed and lit a fire, he unpacked his trunk, laying his clothes on the back of a chair and stacking his books on the chimneypiece beside the volumes Will had left behind.
He hoped Will would visit sooner rather than later. He knew he was being selfish: Will had every reason to stay in London. Surely he would at least send a letter once he received Martin’s note, and that would be enough. Martin winced when he thought of that note. There wasn’t a single word in it that he’d take back, but he feared that he could have been more coherent in his phrasing. And now that he had had time to think about it, it seemed grossly presumptuous of him to insist on giving this cottage to Will and then resume living in it himself. But he had wanted to make sure that Will knew he had a place to live even if Martin died. He probably ought to have said that clearly in the letter. God knew he wasn’t any stranger to thinking about his eventual demise, but over the past few months he had stopped thinking about his death as something imminent, as something he could casually allude to in a hastily written note. The threat was still there, but it seemed both more remote, in that he wasn’t going to die this time, and more grave, in that he and the people he’d leave behind would have more to lose. It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be addressed in a handful of words.
“There you go,” Daisy said, wiping her hands on her skirt. “I’ll be back tonight with supper.” Then, to his surprise and mild consternation, she got to her toes and kissed his cheek.
“Anyone else would sack you for impertinence,” he said, his eyes stupidly hot, because it had finally sunk in that this girl was his sister. “You’re assuming a lot of my nepotism.”
“La, three shillings a week, what’ll I ever do without it.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward. “This child is my closest living relation. I am to be pitied.”
She cackled, kissed him again, and swept out of the cottage. He was beginning to believe that a sharp tongue and terrible manners were a hereditary condition. He changed into a dressing gown and slipped between the sheets, then read until he drifted into a sleep that was only slightly troubled by the fitful dreams of illness.
“I promise we’d have noticed a grown man lurking around the premises,” Ben said when Will arrived at Lindley Priory, Martin’s family home which was now being run as some kind of charity school for wayward youth. “What exactly did his letter say?” Ben held open the door to a room Will dimly recognized as Lindley Priory’s morning room, and which Ben evidently used as an office. Every surface was covered in papers, composition books, and toys in need of mending. It looked like a rag shop crossed with a lending library; Sir Humphrey had to be rolling in his grave.
“Just that he was coming home. I didn’t think he’d actually be at the Priory. But I thought he might be staying at the dower house or the inn, but no luck.” The dower house had been closed up, and the innkeepers knew Martin well enough to assure Will that they hadn’t seen him.
A few children ran careening past the door. Ben stepped into the corridor. “Carrington, Delacourt, and—oh, for heaven’s sake—Jamie, go outside if you mean to act feral.” Then he turned back to Will. “He hasn’t been back in almost a year. I don’t think this place holds many happy memories for him.”
