Chalgrove saw her standing beside one of the wagons before his carriage even came to a full stop. He clenched his teeth.
‘I wish to talk to her alone.’
‘If you’re sure, Your Grace.’ Wiggins let his head fall back against the squabs. ‘Shout if you need help. I usually wake up. Always have after I’ve been asleep.’ But instead of shutting his eyes, he stared out of the window.
Chalgrove jumped out of the carriage, muscles stretching after the ride and ready to explode into action against the criminals. They’d captured him last time and this time they would suffer for it.
Instead of seeing a band of culprits suitable for the drop from a trapdoor, he saw one female vagabond, humming to herself and shuffling around a fire with a pot bubbling over it smelling of stew. A child ran away in the distance. Horses stood tied among the trees. The old woman wasn’t truly alone, but she appeared abandoned.
Chalgrove heard the clunk as she dropped the last of the wood on to the fire pit.
She surveyed him. ‘A little late, aren’t you? But there’s still plenty to eat.’
‘You knew I’d find you,’ he said as he strode towards her. She considered him as if she’d invited him.
‘You do look familiar. The seal on the carriage helped.’ She laughed, a joke of her own. ‘And your constable...’ She pointed to the window of the carriage. The constable waved at her. ‘We’ve met before. Several times. The man does not trust me, but then I’ve never given him a reason to.’ She grinned. ‘I don’t trust him either.’
She indicated the stump someone had provided as a seat. ‘Sit. Be a guest of Ella Etta in my mansion of no walls.’ She chuckled. ‘Yes, sit. I don’t like craning my neck to see you, Your Grace.’
‘You aren’t very proud of that neck or you’d be watching over it better.’
She stared at him. ‘After all I did for you. I gave you a beautiful woman to woo. A cottage. A feather bed.’ She smirked. ‘I guess I should have taken one look at the hat and known you couldn’t see a beauty in front of you. That hat was so ugly my mule wouldn’t wear it.’
He ignored the jibe. ‘I wouldn’t take advantage of a woman.’
She pursed her lips, then moved to fetch a three-legged stool which hung from the side of the wagon and sat it beside him. He ignored the movement.
The sun dappled through the shade of the trees, illuminating the worn clothing she wore.
‘I’m here to take you to Newgate.’ Chalgrove put a foot on the stool.
She scowled. ‘You can’t be serious. It’s not for me. Nasty place. You really visited because you missed my good bread and my sweet voice.’ She laughed and studied his face. ‘You’re looking better than when I saw you last. Except—’ Her eyes moved to the top of his head.
‘Tell my fortune, old woman?’ he challenged. ‘I’ll tell you yours.’
‘I have no fortune for a duke. The title gives him enough.’
She inclined her head away from him. ‘Coffee?’ Without waiting for an answer, she went to a pot hanging at the side of the fire pit. She poured some into one of the cups sitting at the edge of the fire, then brought the cup to him. ‘Can’t seem to find good tea in the woods.’
‘You can be hanged, or, if you give me a reason for what you did, you may be only transported.’
She touched the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Wouldn’t want to ruin our good friendship by your doing such a thing to me.’ She held out the cup.
He stared at it, grasped it, then took a sip, surprised at the earthy flavour.
‘You can take me to hang and I won’t speak a word. Or you can sit and have a sip with me and I’ll tell you all.’ The woman rummaged around in a basket until she found another cup.
‘I’ll decide,’ he said. ‘You are daft and have no choices.’
‘You two were more trouble than I expected.’ She examined him from head to heel. ‘But I guess it’s my lot in life to take care of others.’
‘By kidnapping?’
She nodded, pouring her own drink. ‘With whatever means is at hand.’ She raised her brows.
‘Why’d you risk your life for a few coins, while lugging food and water to us?’
‘I’d never met a duke?’ Innocence poured from the words.
‘Why me?’
‘A man wearing a hat like yours, I guessed you wouldn’t put up much of a fight. But you didn’t make it easy,’ she mused as she sat down on the stump and crossed her ankles ‘I’d seen you from a distance. You have a shadow that blocks the sun and the night in your eyes. I liked that. And your servants don’t complain about you...much.’ She viewed her boot laces, sat her cup on the dirt and tied one of the worn, mismatching strings.
She grinned. ‘My scrawny Child grew into being a Miranda. It’s a suitable name. She fits it.’
‘Makes no sense. Abducting the two of us.’
‘I don’t have to make sense. I’m addled. I’m old. I’m so old I don’t even know how old I am.’
‘You could hang.’
She shrugged. ‘You want me to hang? To let this be in the newspapers. To ruin the girl? Child would not let me kill the hare eating our beans even when I told her we would starve.’ She frowned. ‘For her, I had to get a dog to scare the rabbits away so we could eat. I’m sure the dog ate meat and we ate vegetables.’
‘Abducting me is enough to send you to the gallows. I don’t need to spread tales about her.’
The old woman nodded. ‘I hoped...’ She pulled the shawl tight and he heard the sound of beads clicking together. ‘I’d hoped to guide the governess to marriage.’ She lifted her cup. ‘I wanted the best for her. That’s how I picked you.’ Her stare wavered. ‘Against my better judgement. But no matter. I saw it in the stars.’ She gazed overhead. ‘But I can’t really see the stars at night any more. They’ve faded. So maybe I imagined it.’
She wriggled her boots out in front of her and he noticed the loose sole on one.
‘You should find yourself some new boots.’
She tapped the toes of her boots together, the sole flapping. ‘I like these.’ She grinned up at him. ‘I’m saving funds for my dowry.’
‘Why do you act as you do?’
She let out a deep breath, and stared at the ground, disgusted. ‘My eyes are so dim, I can barely see the lines in a palm, so I just tell the people whatever I want to say.’ She held out her arm as far as she could, studying the inside of her own hand. ‘I’d have to have the palm this far from me to see it and who would believe I could see into the future if I can’t even see my own hand? So, I bumble along and do what I can.’ She gave him a smile. ‘I say what I wish and everyone is happy. I found you a bride and I caught Child a husband.’
‘You call your granddaughter Child?’
She chewed her bottom lip, smiled, and said, ‘I don’t have a true granddaughter.’
‘Miss Manwaring.’
Staring at her boots, she spoke. ‘She is my granddaughter by heart, not blood.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Drucie. That was the name her mother gave her, but I just called her Child or Grandchild. Seemed to make us a family. Her true mother died when she was just a little one and her real father possibly a rich man.’ She stared at him, death in her eyes. ‘Made me angry to see a little babe, running and laughing and her true mother dead, and no one but me to care for her and her as innocent as everyone else wasn’t. I couldn’t toss her away. Then...’ She examined the sun. ‘The stars told me I could get her dressed in silk.’ She laughed. ‘I just preened, wondering if I could do such a thing.’
This woman truly was for Bedlam.
‘Or I dreamed it.’ She sniffed. ‘There was a story about a babe left in a basket.’ She cupped her chin. ‘So, I studied the world and I knew where Child belonged,’ she continued. ‘I put Child in her best dress. Did her hair nice and put smudges beneath her eyes. I sat her beside the road where Manwaring’s wife—not the flea-ridden mange he beds down with now, but his first wife—went to Sunday Services.’
‘You were risking a child’s life.’
She sneered. ‘Manwaring was rich. His wife was childless. I’d read her fortune and told her she’d discover a child soon that was to be her reward. Told her how a brown-eyed child would bless her.’
Then the old woman’s eyelids dropped, but not before he saw the determination.
‘I’d heard this story about a little boy being left floating in the stream and a princess found him and took him in and made him a leader. Long ago in a faraway place. I had the spare child. Decided it might work.’ She chuckled, and her face brightened. ‘It did. Almost.’
The woman met his glare. ‘Child’s mother was the daughter of the gamekeeper. So, we met. Not long after the babe was born, they stayed here. Talked about the babe’s father. Then the daughter ran off and left Child with me. Died soon after.’ Her eyes tightened. ‘I didn’t like that babe being so alone, so I took Child.’
Wind whispered through the trees.
‘Manwaring’s wife, not the most sensible, but she always paid me well when I read her fortune. Her brain not much bigger than my little finger, but her heart bigger than ten of mine and she could give the little one a home. So, I read her fortune that way.’ She shuffled her shoulders. ‘She wanted a baby. I gave her one. I don’t think Manwaring thought it was as good a plan as I did. The toad.’
Then she tossed the dregs of her coffee away, sat the cup on the ground again, and snapped the shawl into a knot. ‘Then the woman went and died.’ She huffed, shaking her splayed fingers. ‘That nearly killed me. I had to scramble around when I knew that Child was without a mother to protect her. Not only once. Now a second time. I didn’t know what to do. Took me some time to work on it.’
She chuckled. ‘So, then I read about twenty fortunes at no cost, finding out what I could where I could, and I found a rich man, Trevor, who had a sickly wife who wasn’t expected to live. I read Miss Cuthbert’s fortune and told her about the governess being needed. Once his wife died, I decided the man would trip over his own feet falling in love with Child.’
The toes of her good boot touched the ash of the fire before she reared back and moved her feet closer. Her glare pinched. ‘Wouldn’t you have expected the man would have fallen right away in love with her? Any man with a grain of sense would.’
He didn’t move. ‘Yes.’
‘But she’s not getting any younger and when I read the fortune of the scullery maid I found out about the stories of the house where Miranda is a governess.’
She moved her hand as if wiping off crumbs. ‘Only tales of that house’s master was of him being distracted and not by Child. Her praises went high and wide, but no secret looks between her and the master and no whispers of the servants about how the two of them might be carrying on. Only carrying on was by the cook and a stableman. I had to do something, Child is turning into a spinster.’
The fortune-teller held up her chin. ‘I had to get her a husband. What if something might happen to me? Who would watch out for her then?’
She glared again to the sky and seemed to talk to it, holding her hand high. ‘Three times now. Three times I have had to guide the blasted stars.’ She composed herself, then scratched the loose skin of her neck. ‘I figured you were my last chance to get her settled in gold and you would have eyes enough to see her value.’ She spat at the ground. ‘I didn’t call that one right.’
He studied her.
She scowled at him. ‘I was fond of having her around, but then I decided she deserved better than rags.’ She sneered. ‘Perhaps you believe I should have left her in tatters.’
‘You are to stay clear of her,’ he said to the old woman.
She shook her fist at the sky, moving her head in a negative shake, then spoke to him as she raised both palms. ‘I give up on her now. She’s alone in the world. Just like the rest of us.’
‘You will stay clear of her.’
‘I wash my hands of the brat. I would have done better to have found her a job as a scullery maid. I keep trying to turn her into a silk purse and she keeps finding sow’s ears.’
‘You wished for me to marry her? That’s why you trapped us together?’
The woman frowned. ‘By that hat, I knew you didn’t have a woman around to guide you. And you might be simple-minded enough to fall in love with her. I call her a beauty, although she’s not much to look at, but it was dark enough in there.’ She squinted. ‘No. You’d expect a peer’s daughter. Not a mindless simpleton Child. Not a woman who wastes all her time caring for a rich man’s children.’
Anger flared in him. ‘You could hang.’ She dared criticise Miss Manwaring.
‘I should. One simple task and I could not complete it. I wanted Child to have a home of her own. A family. Marriage.’ She kicked at the dirt.
‘You can’t be tossing people into a room expecting them to marry.’
‘Yes. You can. I did. It didn’t work.’ She straightened her shoulders and puffed out her chest.
She held out her palm again, and studied it. ‘Doesn’t seem to work like it should. Maybe because I can’t see the lines any more.’ She spat into the fire. ‘What use am I if I can’t make up nonsense to give people hope?’
He looked at the old woman. Every servant in his house dressed better than she. And his butler and man of affairs had spectacles.
And she spoke of giving people hope. This tattered vagrant in a camp of thieves.
‘You truly should hang, you know.’
She raised her shoulders. ‘I’d break the rope.’
‘You probably would. And would claim it magic.’
She smiled. ‘Of course I would claim that. I claim the sun rising as magic and, if we need rain and it rains, I say it is all my doing. I lie, but it makes people happy. Particularly me, when they pay for my nonsense.’ She held out her palm. ‘I would like to be reimbursed for introducing you to the lovely woman.’
‘Your payment is that I will not see you hanged.’
She folded her palm back under her shawl. ‘I’ll take what I can get.’ Then she laughed to herself. ‘Not everyone can say a duke chose not to hang them.’
‘You will let her live her life as she wishes.’
She kicked at the dirt. ‘It was tiresome doing all the work to get you with her.’ She shrugged. ‘I knew you’d find a way to get out. You did, didn’t you? You always find a way to get out. Of marriage.’ One eyebrow quirked when she said the word marriage.
He didn’t need her to read his palm. He saw it in front of him. A lonely existence, if he married someone besides Miss Manwaring. His future. As routine as his sister and cousins lived their lives and he would continue to live his life and work long hours trying to move the country forward.
The country would move forward, but his life would be left behind.
She picked up a ladle and found a bowl, placed some soup into it and put the bowl into his hand. ‘Best to drink it,’ she said. ‘I’ve no spoons so I chop the vegetables finely.’
He wanted to make London a better place so little children wouldn’t starve and old women would have shoes. He expected other people to take care of the details. This woman didn’t. She took care of her own particulars.
Chalgrove took the soup and held the bowl to his lips. The broth and the vegetables satisfied. The old fraud could cook.
For an interval they talked and ate, and she offered him a hunk of bread to take with him.
He didn’t want to take food she might need, but then she smiled. And he took it and made his way back to the carriage.
‘Well?’ Wiggins asked when Chalgrove crouched to enter the vehicle.
He broke the bread in half, gave Wiggins a share and the constable took a bite, nodding.
Chalgrove settled himself on to the leather seats and raised his hand to thump the roof. ‘She’s the most daft old crone I’ve ever seen. Forget about her. Not the right woman.’
Wiggins shut his eyes and his head dropped to the side. ‘They never are.’
But Chalgrove knew who the right woman was. She just loved someone else. Two someone elses.