“I can understand that you were desperate to right your family’s finances,” Hero said slowly. “But they are no longer in peril, are they? My brother would have found out if there were financial concerns when he had my marriage contract drawn up.”
“Your brother is a shrewd man,” Reading said. “I’ve no doubt but that you are correct. The Mandeville fortune is safe now. He didn’t find anything amiss.”
“If that is the case, then why continue to distill gin?”
“You don’t understand—” he began.
“You’re patronizing me again,” she snapped.
He looked at her, his pale green eyes suddenly hard. “I have my family to consider, my Lady Perfect. Caro has made a fine match, but Megs is still unwed. If she is to find a suitable match, she needs to dress the part—as I’m sure you understand. I cannot give up the still until she is safely wed—until I am financially stable. We need the money from the still to finance her season.”
She closed her eyes and spoke from her heart. “We have had our differences, my Lord Shameless. There have been times in the last several days when I have thought I disliked you quite intensely.” He snorted, but she continued. She needed to make her point before she lost her courage. “But I think we have also learned something about each other. I would like to think that we are friends of a sort.”
The silence was so complete that she thought for a moment that he was holding his breath. She opened her eyes to find him watching her, his elbows propped on his knees, his green eyes still but with an expression in their depths that made her catch her breath. She clasped her hands, bolstering her bravery.
“Yes, friends,” she said quietly, as much to herself as to him. “And as a friend, I beg of you: please quit this way of making money.”
“Megs—”
She shook her head violently, cutting him off. “Yes, Lady Margaret needs gowns to catch a husband, but there must be other ways of making money. I’ve seen how gin destroys lives in the poorer parts of London. You may not care right now, you may only see your family and the money you need, but someday you’ll raise your head and look around. When that day comes, you’ll realize the misery you and your gin have caused. And when that happens, gin will destroy you, too.”
“Friends.” He sat back in his seat, ignoring her warning. “Is that what I really am to you? A friend?”
She blinked. She hadn’t expected the question. “Yes, why not?”
He shrugged, eyeing her moodily. “Why not indeed. Friend is such a very… benign… word. Do you kiss all your friends the way you kissed me last night?”
Her eyes had narrowed—she had been waiting for the shot. But still she couldn’t quite control a small shudder. His mouth had been hot. “I’ve told you I do not wish to discuss last night. It’s in the past.”
“And forgotten?”
“Yes.”
“Funny.” He stroked his chin. “I find it rather hard to forget it myself. Your lips were so very soft, so very sweet when they parted beneath mine.”
Her body heated at his words. She couldn’t help it, and she felt that same spark of desire. He could light it within her so damned easily.
“Stop it,” she said low. “What do you think you’re doing?”
It was his turn to look away. “I don’t honestly know.”
“I’m marrying Thomas,” she said. “In only five weeks now. If we are to have any sort of brother-sister relationship, you must forget it.”
His mouth twisted as if her words were obscene. “Can you?”
She lifted her chin, saying nothing.
“I thought not,” he murmured. “That’s ducky. Just ducky.”
He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a book. He tossed it wordlessly onto her lap and went back to staring moodily out the window.
Hero looked down. It was a volume of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. She traced the embossing on the leather cover, her eyes suddenly welling with tears.
* * *
“OH, MRS. HOLLINGBROOK, you have a letter, ma’am!” Nell Jones came into the home’s kitchen, waving a bit of paper in the air.
Silence looked up from the sad little lump of biscuit dough she was attempting to roll out. Really, it hadn’t been one of her better culinary efforts.
Nell caught sight of the dough and wrinkled her nose. “Here, let me finish that while you have a seat and read your letter.”
Silence gladly relinquished the rolling pin. She brushed off her hands and washed them in a basin before drawing up a chair to the kitchen table. Mary Darling had been playing with a pot and a big spoon on the floor, but when she saw Silence sit down, she crawled over and demanded to be held.
Silence picked her up and kissed the top of her head. In the last seven months, Mary Darling’s hair had grown in thick and inky black, a mass of corkscrew curls.
She set the baby on her lap and showed her the letter. “Now who do you suppose it’s from?” she asked as she carefully lifted the seal.
“Is it Captain Hollingbrook?” Nell asked. Overhead came a thump and then what sounded like a stampede of oxen across the floor. The children were supposed to be doing their afternoon reading under the supervision of the maids, but somehow the daily event often turned into a melee.
Silence sighed and turned her gaze to the letter. “Yes, it’s from William.”
“You’ll be glad of that, I’m sure, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes,” Silence murmured absently.
She deftly kept the paper from Mary Darling’s interested fingers as she read. William wrote about the Finch and its cargo, a storm they’d weathered, and a fight among the ensigns.
“Have a bit of patty-cake,” Nell said to Mary Darling, and handed her some of the biscuit dough.
A seabird the men had shot and the sighting of a French ship… Silence skimmed down the page, following the neat handwriting of her husband, coming finally to his signature—William H. Hollingbrook. She stared blankly at the page, before she began over again, reading more slowly, searching. But she knew already—there were no jokes they shared between just the two of them, no endearments, no expressions of wanting to come home or missing her. In fact, the letter could’ve been written to anyone.
“Is he well?” Nell asked.
“Well enough.” Silence glanced up and noticed that Mary Darling was carefully breaking off bits of the biscuit dough and placing them in her mouth to chew with a thoughtful expression. “No, sweetheart. ’Tisn’t good not cooked.”
Nell smiled at the baby. “She thinks it is.”
“Won’t it make her sick?” Silence asked worriedly.
Nell shrugged. “It’s mostly flour and water.”
“Still…”
Silence began to unwrap the baby’s fingers from the sticky dough. Mary Darling naturally didn’t think this a good idea and voiced her protests loudly.
Someone knocked on the front door.
“Shall I see who it is?” Nell asked over the baby’s cries.
“I’ll get it,” Silence said. She scooped up the baby and swung her around. “Who do you suppose it is? The king or queen? Or perhaps just the baker’s boy?”
Mary Darling giggled, distracted from the loss of her dough. Silence set the baby on her hip and went to the door. She pulled it open and looked out. On the step was a handkerchief knotted neatly. Silence glanced at it and then quickly searched the street. A woman was washing her step across the way, two men walked side by side trundling wheelbarrows, and several lads argued over a small terrier dog. No one seemed to be paying her any mind.
Silence bent and picked up the handkerchief. The knot was loose and came easily undone, even using only one hand. Inside the handkerchief was a handful of raspberries, perfectly ripe, perfectly unblemished.
“Gah!” Mary Darling cried, and grabbed two, stuffing them into her mouth.
A small scrap of paper was revealed now, and Silence plucked it out from under the berries. One word was writt
en on it.
Darling.
Silence glanced back at the street as Mary Darling snagged three more berries. It was the oddest thing—no one looked in her direction, yet she felt as if watching eyes were upon her. She shivered and reached for the door, beginning to shut it.
A shout came from up the street, and four men trotted around the corner. Between them they held a ragged elderly woman who struggled in their grasp.
“Let me go, yer buggers!” she shrieked. “I ’aven’t done it, I tells ye.”
“Dear God,” Nell said quietly from behind Silence.
Silence looked at the maidservant and back to the street. People were peering out of windows and doors, coming to see what the commotion was about.
“Stand back!” one of the men cried. He waved a thick cudgel over his head.
A stream of filthy wastewater poured from one of the houses, narrowly missing the group. The four men trotted faster.
“Informers,” Nell spat. “Poor woman. They’ll have her up before the magistrates for selling gin and collect a nice reward in return.”
“What will happen to her?” Silence abhorred what drinking gin did to the people in St. Giles, but at the same time she knew that most who sold it were simply trying to make enough money to feed and house themselves.
“Prison. Maybe worse. Depends if she can pay for witnesses or not.” Nell shook her head. “Come inside, ma’am.”
With a last glance at the retreating informers, Silence closed the door and barred it.
“What have you there?” Nell asked.
“Raspberries,” Silence said, showing her the kerchief.
“In October? That’s dear.” Nell turned and started back toward the kitchen.
Dear indeed. Silence picked up a berry and popped it into Mary Darling’s mouth. A month before, she’d found a baby’s girdle on the step, and the month before that there’d been a packet of sugarplums. In fact, every month since Silence had found Mary on her doorstep, there had been a small anonymous gift left for the little girl.
And each had a note with but a single word written upon it: Darling.
The same note that had been left with Mary herself. The reason Silence had given the baby the name Mary Darling.
“Have you an admirer?” she whispered in the toddler’s ear.
But Mary Darling merely smiled with red-stained lips.
“DO YOU THINK a man can change?” Hero asked that night at dinner.
She poked at the cold beef upon her plate. It was just her, Cousin Bathilda, and Phoebe, and Cousin Bathilda had pointed out that it was hardly thrifty to have Cook put on a grand meal for a quiet supper at home.
Still. Hero did dislike cold beef.
“No,” Cousin Bathilda said promptly. Rarely did she ever not have a decided opinion.
“What kind of change do you mean?” Phoebe asked.
The candlelight sparkled on her spectacles as she tilted her head in interest. She wore a bright yellow gown tonight, and it made her seem to shine in the little family dining room. The table was a nice, intimate size, and the fireplace, ornamented with white and blue tile, was just big enough to make the room warm and cozy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hero said vaguely, though of course she did know. “Say, for instance, a gentleman has a decided fondness for gambling at cards. Do you think he could ever be persuaded to quit?”
“No,” Cousin Bathilda reiterated. She slipped her right hand beneath the table while staring fixedly straight ahead. There was a small scuffle under the table.
Neither Hero nor Phoebe made any sign that they had noticed the transaction.
“I think it might depend upon the gentleman,” Phoebe said thoughtfully. “And perhaps on the nature of the persuasion.” She picked up a tiny piece of her beef and slipped her hand beneath the table.
“Nonsense,” Cousin Bathilda said. “Mark my words: No lady has ever been able to change a gentleman, by persuasion or otherwise.”
“Pass the beetroot,” Phoebe murmured to Hero. “How do you know, Cousin Bathilda?”
“It’s common feminine wisdom,” that lady said. “Take Lady Pepperman.”
“Who?” Hero asked. She helped herself to the beetroot, even though that was cold as well, before passing it to her sister.
“Before your time,” Cousin Bathilda said. “Now listen. Lord Pepperman was a well-known gambler and a very unlucky one at that. Once gambled away his clothes, if you can credit it, and had to walk home in nothing but his smallclothes and wig.”
Phoebe snorted and hastily covered her mouth with her napkin.
But Cousin Bathilda was in full sail and didn’t notice. “Lady Pepperman was at her wit’s end, so she decided she would teach her husband not to gamble.”
“Indeed?” Hero asked with interest. She chose a bit of beef and held it under the table. A small, warm, soft nose nuzzled her hand and then the beef was gone. “How did she manage that?”
Panders, the butler, and both footmen were too well trained to show anything but boredom on their faces, but all three men were leaning closer to Cousin Bathilda.
“She told him he could gamble as much as he wanted, but only in his smallclothes!” Cousin Bathilda said.
Everyone in the room—including the servants—gaped at Cousin Bathilda.
Then Phoebe closed her mouth and asked diffidently, “Did that work?”
“Of course not!” Cousin Bathilda said. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Lord Pepperman continued to gamble, except now he was clad only in his smallclothes. Went on for a year or more before he lost nearly everything and tried to blow his brains out.”
Hero choked. “Tried?”
“Succeeded only in clipping off the top of his ear,” Cousin Bathilda pronounced. “Man was a horrible shot. Can’t think why Lady Pepperman married him in the first place.”
“Hmm,” Hero murmured as she digested this cautionary tale. Truly she couldn’t think how she could apply it to Lord Reading.
There was a small silence broken only by the discreet scrape of silverware on plates.
“I saw Lady Beckinhall today,” Cousin Bathilda said at last, “at a quite dreadful tea given by Mrs. Headington. All that was provided for refreshments were some very dry little cakes. I am positive that they were stale—at the very least two days’ old!—and Lady Beckinhall quite agreed with me.”
Lady Beckinhall could hardly do otherwise, Hero thought wryly.
“She informed me that Lady Caire is thinking of extending her stay on the continent through the winter,” Bathilda went on.
Hero looked up. “Oh, no. Really?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, it rather might be,” Hero said.
“Why?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s the work on the new home.” Hero sighed. “I’ve had to hire another architect, because the first one embezzled the funds we’d given him.”
“My dear!” Cousin Bathilda looked horrified.
“Yes. We’ll need more money—quite a bit more money, I’m afraid,” Hero said. “And Lady Caire staying away even longer won’t help matters.”
“What about her son?” Phoebe asked. “Won’t Lord Caire and his new wife be returning to town soon?”
Bathilda snorted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed away until spring. He married a brewer’s daughter, after all. He’ll need his mother’s help in getting invitations.”
“I don’t think Temperance or Lord Caire are particularly interested in society events,” Hero began.
Bathilda drew in her breath sharply.
“But you are right,” Hero added hastily. “They may stay away from town for even longer now.”
“What shall you do?” Phoebe asked.
Hero shook her head and was silent a moment as the footmen cleared the supper plates and brought in a pudding for dessert.
She waited until they were each served, then said solemnly, “I shall have to raise the funds myself somehow.”
<
br /> “You can have some of mine,” Phoebe said promptly. “Mother and Father left me a fair amount, or so Maximus says.”
“But you can’t touch it until you’re of a majority,” Hero said gently. “Thank you anyway, dear.”
Phoebe scrunched her face for a moment. “I’d wager there are other ladies who would like to help the home.”
“Do you?” Hero dabbed at her pudding without really tasting it.
“Yes.” Phoebe was beginning to look excited. “You could form a… a syndicate.”
“Like a gentlemen’s business syndicate?” Cousin Bathilda frowned.
“Quite,” Phoebe said. “Except it would be only ladies—because if you let a gentleman in, he’ll want to run things—and it’s to give money, not make it. You could call it the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, darling,” Hero said, smiling. Phoebe’s enthusiasm was hard to resist. “But what ladies would I approach to give away their money?”
“You might try Lady Beckinhall for one,” Cousin Bathilda said unexpectedly. “I know for a fact that her late husband left her extremely well-off.”
“Yes, but will she want to simply give away her wealth?” Hero shook her head. She didn’t know Lady Beckinhall all that well, but the lady had always struck her as more interested in fashion and the latest gossip than charity.
“I’ll help you make a list,” Phoebe said, “entitled ‘Potentially Charitable Ladies of Means.’ ”
“That will certainly help.” Hero laughed.
“Mmm.” Phoebe ate some of her pudding with evident appreciation. “I say, why did you ask earlier about changing gentlemen?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hero replied.
“Lord Mandeville seems perfect the way he is,” her younger sister commented. “Does he gamble?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Hero said.
“Well, if he did, I can’t think he’d allow you to confine him to his smallclothes like Lord Pepperman,” Phoebe said.
The younger footman choked, earning himself a severe glance from Panders.
Suddenly an image of Lord Griffin in his smallclothes popped into Hero’s head, making her go hot all over. She took a guilty sip of wine.