Mina sighed. “He likely thought you had news of Ivy,” she admitted.
“Ivy?”
“The pretty blonde barmaid.”
“I know who Ivy is, but pray tell, why would there be news of her in the village?”
“Oh, because she’s run away,” Mina admitted. “But I don’t think many people know that yet.”
Jeremy gave her a long hard look. “I can see you know more than you’re letting on, but I am not concerned about pretty little Ivy. What I want to know is who this fellow is that Nye thinks is trying to run off with you?”
“Oh, you heard, that did you? It was just a misunderstanding, nothing more.”
“Don’t play coy with me, that’s not your style, sister dear.”
“Sir Matthew Carswell, JP,” she admitted. “But Nye is quite mistaken about what he wanted from me.”
“Good idea to keep Nye on his toes, though,” Jeremy said approvingly. “Clever you.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “I told Nye there was nothing in it. I’m not trying to incite him.”
“I shouldn’t think you had to do much to send him over the edge where you’re concerned,” Jeremy said with a smirk. “You have surprised me, I will confess. I had not thought you had it in you to bring William Nye to his knees.”
“I have done no such thing,” Mina said, flushing. Involuntarily, she glanced over to the window to watch Nye making back for the kitchen door.
“Colfax has boxed at country fayres,” he announced as he came through the door. “So, he would do at a pinch.”
Jeremy threw up his hands in mock horror. “No one listens to me,” he complained. Mina sliced into another onion. “Faugh!” Jeremy complained, jumping up from his seat and pressing a hand to his nose. “Foul stench!”
“Well, I’m sorry for your sensitive nose, but I’ve another twenty to peel and slice before lunchtime,” she scolded him.
Jeremy laughed, tipped his hat to her, and sauntered out of the door. She watched as he and crossed the courtyard and clapped a hand to Colfax’s shoulder.
“Does he usually come to watch the boxing?” she asked.
“Fairly often,” Nye admitted, his eyes on her.
“I need to get on with these onions,” she said hastily. “It’s been one interruption after another this morning.”
He grunted, drained his teacup, and strode out of the kitchen, a frown still on his face.
Mina managed to get through the next couple of hours without disturbance and by the time Edna appeared to make some sandwiches for lunch, she had finished the onions and was halfway through the potatoes.
“There’s a sack of swedes needs bringing in for you too,” Edna pointed out, somewhat undermining Mina’s sense of achievement. She ate her bread and cheese as Edna pinned out the first lot of washing to dry and Nye carried in the sack of swedes on his shoulder from an outhouse.
“You may as well bring in your trunk from the stable now,” Mina pointed out to him as he set the swedes down next to the table.
He made no answer, but Mina was gratified to see him cross to the stables after leaving the building. She kept an eye on the window as she carried on with the potatoes and sure enough, five minutes later he reappeared with a battered trunk on his shoulder which he brought in and carried straight past her with it and out to the hall. When he reappeared, he halted next to the table.
“You’ll need to go through it, some stuff needs throwing out, some for mending.”
“You’re happy for me to do that?” she asked, looking up.
He nodded. “There’s nothing interesting, just work clothes, my razor, some spare change. I’m going down to the cellar to sort out some barrels. If anyone comes by, tell them to wait.”
“Very well.” She watched his back as he left the room and remembered how Ivy had said he jealously guarded over the cellar. She turned back to her diminishing pile of potatoes with pursed lips.
She had just dropped the last peeled potato into a bucket of cold water when Edna appeared carrying a basketful of wet sheets. “This is the last of it,” she puffed. “I’ll get it out on the line now, weather permitted.”
“There’s been no spots of rain,” Mina said. “Shall I help you? I could do with a stretch of my legs.”
Together, they collected in the washing that had dried and hung out the wet sheets. Then Edna joined her efforts parboiling up the cubed potato and swede and frying off the minced beef and onions. Once all the ingredients were prepared, they fetched out the flour, butter, and suet for a mammoth batch of dough making.
They weren’t finished with this task until well after six o’clock when they ate a simple supper of leftover fish pie together in the kitchen. Nye joined them to eat a plateful before hurrying back to whatever task he’d left.
Mina allowed herself to be persuaded to take a bath that evening and took a hurried wash in the tin bath in the scullery, listening to Edna banging the cupboards and the pots and pans in the kitchen. By the time she emerged, Edna had formed fifty half-moon shaped pasties already which she placed under teacloths.
“They’re all the better for resting before their glazed and baked,” she explained. “I’ll make a second batch first thing in the morning while these are in the oven.”
“Maybe I could help, if you could show me how, Edna.”
“I’d be glad to. Goodnight, Mrs Nye.”
Mina made her way hurriedly up the stairs, anxious to avoid all with her wet hair and her petticoats slung over her arm. She was lucky and made it up to the attic undetected. Once there she drew on her nightgown and set about towel-drying her hair.
It was at that point that she noticed Nye’s battered trunk set down against the far wall of the bedroom. She stared at it a moment, noticing the straps were unbuckled. He had given her permission to sort through his things, she remembered, and it must only be around seven o’clock. Far too early for her to climb into bed. Pulling on her bed socks, she padded over the floorboards toward it, carrying her hurricane lamp with her. Settling cross-legged before it, she set the lamp down beside her and threw back the lid.
Inside was as Nye had said, a jumble of work clothes in varying condition. Mina soon made a pile for mending and a pile for tidying away into the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. Underneath this was an assortment of penknives, cufflinks, razors, bits of string, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, braces, and a collection of old pipes.
Mina was surprised by this as she had never seen Nye with a pipe, but here she found cherrywood, meerschaum, and even clay pipes all looking well worn and in somewhat sorry repair. Some were carved into curious semblances—a dog’s head on one, a naked woman wrapped about the bowl of another. There was even a couple of pipe tamper tools, one in the shape of a mermaid and the other of a lady’s stocking-clad leg, but she found no tobacco pouch.
These were assuredly Nye’s personal effects, she thought, carrying the items to the drawers on the side of the bed he invariably slept on. Though she found no letters or even postcards among the items, she did find a sheaf of papers pertaining to his ownership of Vance House and the deeds to the inn itself, the only other paperwork she found was two photographs tucked into a folded piece of cardboard.
The first she took to be of a father and son with their identical flinty glares and stiff studio poses in their Sunday suits. Their expression though was the only likeness between them. The man was of a solid square build with a big square jaw, close-cropped hair, and sideburns which Mina judged to be of a sandy light brown color although it was always hard to tell in the black and white of photographs. The boy she knew immediately to be William Nye. He was a tall handsome boy of about eleven years, but much darker than the man whose hand rested on his shoulder, with hair that curled at his nape and brow and straight eyebrows that looked almost black. Was this Nye with the man who raised him and gave him his name? Mina turned over the photograph but found no writing to tell her if she had guessed correctly, only the studio’s stamp.
Pick
ing up the second photograph, she saw the features she already knew from the inn’s sign The Merry Harlot. This one had two words printed on the reverse. Ellen Nye. The artist who painted it must have used this photograph for reference, she thought, flipping it back over to look at the tumbled curls and the bonny face of the fourth viscount’s mistress. Thoughtfully she placed both photographs in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet also.
Mina spent the next twenty minutes hanging up or folding Nye’s clothes for the drawers, setting his razor and comb on the washstand and placing his cufflinks on his bedside table until the only thing left was the pile of clothes for mending. These she scooped up and put in a linen bag for later. There, she thought, surveying the room. Now it was truly occupied by a married couple.
Returning to one of her own drawers, Mina took out Effie’s lace scarf and contemplated it at a moment. She had laundered it ready to return to its former owner, and she raised it now to examine its rather shabby folds. It looked a good deal better now than on the night she had worn it at St Werburgh’s, she thought ruefully. She could not remember now what she had done with the silver sixpence she had been given in the church. Folding it carefully again, she returned it to the drawer and made for the pile of well-thumbed periodicals she kept under the bed. She settled on one with a juicy tale about a stolen ruby necklace and climbed into bed.
The next thing she knew, she had wakened as a shaft of light fell across her face from an oil lantern coming through the door. She made out Nye’s face as he shut the door behind him and came softly to his side of the bed where he was quick to extinguish the lamp and start undressing.
“What time is it?” Mina asked, rolling on her side to face him.
“Late,” he answered, climbing into the bed. “Why are you still awake?”
“I wasn’t,” she assured him and without conscious thought, found herself shifting closer to him in the dark. He expelled a noisy breath and for a moment she thought he wouldn’t take her up on her unspoken invitation, then his hands were at her waist and she was hauled up against him.
“Am I forgiven, then?” he said against her brow.
“What was I angry about?” She had genuinely forgotten by this point.
“My being a damned jealous brute.”
“Oh that.” It seemed ages ago. “It depends on whether you accept my word or Reuben’s on what transpired.”
His hands stroked over her buttocks and hips. “Yours,” he said raspily. “Mind, I still don’t trust that Carswell bastard.” She almost heard him scowl.
“Do you smoke a pipe?” she asked suddenly and felt his forehead furrow in a frown.
“A pipe? No, do I smell of pipe-smoke?”
“No, but I sorted through your trunk and you own so many.”
He gave a short laugh. “Already? You don’t let the grass grow, do you?”
“I was always urged never to put off till tomorrow what could be done today.”
She felt him nod and shift back against the pillow. “The pipes aren’t mine. They were my father’s.”
Mina hesitated. “And by that you mean...?”
“The man who raised me,” he said quickly with an edge to his voice. “Jacob Nye.”
“Was he the one in that photograph with you as a boy?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Mina remained quiet a moment, but he did not expand on this. She thought of the portrait of the fourth viscount that she had seen, who looked so like him. “Were you close to your… to Jacob Nye, I mean.”
He did not answer at once. “Yes,” he said. “He taught me everything I know. Except boxing.”
“And who taught you that?” she asked curiously.
“An old groom we had taught me the basics. Samuel Teague his name was.” Nye rolled onto his back and propped an arm under his head, the other he kept firmly wrapped about Mina. “When I was nineteen, I went to Exeter to box. I wanted to do it professionally.”
“What happened?” She felt his shoulder shrug under her ear.
“I went without Jacob’s blessing. He wanted me here.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died the summer I was fifteen.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “And then?”
“I trained, I fought, I won a few cups. I made some money.” He was silent a moment. “Then, after a few years my father’s health started failing, he wrote to me and I came home.”
“So, how long did you end up living in Exeter?”
“Some five years all told.”
Mina considered this a moment, staring up at the ceiling. It was somehow easier to ask Nye these things in the dark. “How long is it since Jacob died?”
“Some three years last Christmas.”
“Did you know the fourth Viscount?” she asked tentatively.
He gave a short laugh. “Know him? No. He had my mother march me out for his inspection a few times until I reached the age when I could refuse.”
“How old was that?”
“Ten years or so.”
She fell silent at that, imagining him as the boy from the photograph. “And you never saw him again after that?”
“I never said that.” He paused. “He used to follow my fights. I saw him in the crowd a fair few times. He even came and shook my hand after one of my more famous bouts. Though we met as strangers, I recognized him alright.”
“For him, it must have been like looking at a younger version of himself,” Mina mused. “The likeness is extraordinarily strong. Have you never seen his portrait at Vance Park?”
“No,” he said without rancor. “There’s nothing for me there.” He was silent a moment. “He dictated a letter to me from his deathbed, saying he was proud of me and meant Vance House to be mine.”
“Vance House?” Surely, she remembered that being mentioned before. “Was that not…?”
“Aye,” he agreed gruffly, cutting off her words. “The property was never signed over to me at the time. The old lord had never formalized his intent. Landed gentry don’t like to break up their estates,” he said dryly. “It goes against the grain. Vance House lies on the eastern border of Vance Park in its own ten acres or so.”
“That much?” She hesitated. “It must be a sizeable property.”
“Aye, it’s a handsome house. Queen Anne with access to its own private cove. An old couple, the Tavistocks are tenants at present. It generates a goodly rent.” He was quiet a moment. “Faris finally made it over to me when we wed.”
She nodded. “I thought I recognized the name.”
He grunted. “I thought you might. I’ll show it to you sometime. We might retire there, one day.”
“It sounds vastly respectable.”
He turned his head sharply. “You almost sound disapproving. You’ll be telling me next you like being a publican’s wife.”
“Why should I not?” She imagined living in a beautiful house with a servant and no neighbors that would ever deign to call. Suddenly, it occurred to her that part of her own parents’ relative social isolation could have been due to her mother’s divorce and their own craving for respectability. “It’s interesting living in an inn,” she returned evasively. “Something always seems to be happening.”
“The likes of Sir Matthew Carswell and his wife could call on you at Vance House,” he pointed out, his tone rather brooding.
“I should not want them to,” Mina retorted. “Even if they did.” She wondered again if Nye was right about Sir Matthew’s intention to marry his ward. If so, she could now understand why Cecily had run off with the first beaux who had shown any interest in her.
“You should be tired, Mina. I’ve worked you to the bone today.”
“Hardly that!” she protested. “I kept long hours as a schoolmistress. When you’ve boarders to take care of, there are no set working hours.”
“Well, go to sleep now,” he growled. “No more talking. You’re going to be busy over the next few days. I’m trying to be a conside
rate husband.”
The next day, which was Tuesday passed in a whirl of activity at The Merry Harlot. They made batch after batch of the crescent meat pies that Edna called pasties. They dressed and tidied all the bedrooms on the first floor and Mina polished windows and mirrors until they gleamed. They did not get any arrivals until early evening when Mina looked up from her simple meal of pie and mash to see a smart carriage had pulled into the yard. Nye hurried out from the stable to greet the new arrivals.
“Do you recognize who that gentleman is, Edna?” Mina asked as she rose from the table to take the empty plates to the sink. A dapper looking gentleman of middling height was climbing out of the carriage to grasp Nye’s hand.
“Jones, I think his name is,” Edna said, glancing outside without much interest. “He arranges the matches, so I believe. Nasty business,” she concluded sourly.
Mina noted his handlebar moustache, bright blue coat, and rather garish yellow waistcoat with interest. “He’s certainly a very natty dresser,” she observed lightly.
“Not the word I’d use for it,” Edna replied.
Mr. Jones turned and reached up to the carriage, helping down a lady dressed in purple silk with a matching fringed parasol, despite the fact it was an evening in early April. Her black curls were piled exceedingly high on her head and topped with a hat covered in purple butterflies. She was not exactly pretty or in the first flush of youth, but she certainly drew the eye. On her left rouged cheek was a large beauty spot which somehow seemed to add to her attraction, rather than detract. “Is that his wife with him?” she asked.
Edna sniffed. “Calls her his ‘business partner’, he does.” She lowered her voice. “But they share the same bedroom and that’s a fact. You go on and take your wash, Mrs. Nye,” Edna urged her. “I can finish up in here. There’s water just boiling on the range for you to use. You don’t want to be running into any of these folks if you can help it.”
Mina tarried a moment, to see how Nye would greet the purple-clad lady, but other than a nod he barely seemed to acknowledge her. Feeling too tired for an excess of curiosity, she had a wash and took herself off to bed. Nye did not come up to join her until midnight, but when he did, he curled around her and fell into a deep sleep almost immediately and Mina joined him.