Augusta blinked into hazy darkness broken by blobs of light. When she squinted, the lights resolved themselves into the flames of a fire and a lamp. Glancing around the room, she recognized the dark trellised wallpaper as belonging to her Queen Square bedchamber.
She lay in the bed with the coverlet pulled up to her chin; she was perspiring; her head ached. Trailing light fingers over the painful spot, she located a knot on her forehead that felt as large as a duck egg.
“What in God’s name happened to me?” she murmured, tossing back the covers.
“You slipped on spilled mineral water.”
Augusta started at the sound of Emily’s voice. She sat up and saw the countess reclining on the bedchamber’s short settee near the fireplace, a book in her hands.
“What time is it?”
“Five o’clock in the morning on the fifth day of April. You’ve been unconscious for weeks.”
“Impossible.” Augusta glared at Emily. “Ouch. Glaring at you pulls at my bruise.”
Emily laughed, then shut her book. “All right, only teasing. Your fall looked rather horrible, but you weren’t unconscious long. It’s just after noon.”
Augusta thought back. “The Sutcliffes were shouting. No—everyone was shouting.” Flirt—widow—liar. “All of Bath was shouting.”
“Close to it,” Emily said blandly. “Here, have some water.” The countess poured out a glassful from a pitcher, then tugged back the drapes to let daylight into the chamber. “I have never been convinced of the health benefits of Bath’s mineral waters, and today they nearly broke open your head. The positive side is that now you are an invalid and you may be as demanding as you like.”
“Oh? Are you going to cater to my every whim?” Sips of water—not mineral water—were pleasant on her parched throat before she set the glass aside again.
“Perhaps not I. But I’m sure I can find someone who will.” Emily sat on the bed. “I could hardly tug the papers from your hand even after you hit your head.”
“Where are they now?”
“I tucked them in my book.” Emily waved a hand in the direction of the settee. “Were they worth breaking your head over?”
“As they effected my removal from a shouting mob, I should say so. How did I get back here?”
“With the combined efforts of Mr. Everett, a few footmen, and a Bath chair. Lord and Lady Sutcliffe were beginning to brew a grand row, though they managed to bottle it and follow our progress to Queen Square.” Rising, Emily retrieved the volume from the settee, then returned to press it into Augusta’s hands. “Mr. Everett has rejoined them, and I cannot imagine how he intends to make peace between them. But that will not be his concern for much longer.”
“No, I suppose it won’t.” Augusta traced the tooling on the small book’s binding. “You were attempting to read William Blake again?”
“Attempting it, yes. I was able to read all of ‘Infant Joy’ today without even throwing the book into the fire.”
“‘What shall I call thee?’” Augusta said. “‘Sweet joy befall thee.’” The poem that had sent Emily into tears not so long ago. The evening of the assembly, when Augusta had encountered Joss Everett and he had peeled away the first of her secrets.
It seemed ages ago.
“‘What shall I call thee’ reminds me of something I meant to tell you.” Emily sank onto the edge of the bed again. “Augusta, I admit that I was angry with you earlier. Not because you expected me to let you pose as Mrs. Flowers—though you are fortunate that I’m up for such a lark.”
“A lark that is certainly done with now,” Augusta said drily. “It is for the best, though I expect the aftermath will be dreadful for a while. I thank you for giving me room to recover my wits, and I only hope the scandal does not affect you much. But what angered you, Emily?”
Emily looked at the cover of the small book in Augusta’s hands. “Because you persist in thinking of yourself as weak and wounded, and you have thrown away much good as a result. You’ve had much to grieve, there is no question. Were you a man, you might have coped by destroying your health and fortune with drink and gambling and whores. All things considered, dear Augusta, I think you must give yourself credit for being quite strong. Quite strong indeed.”
This was so unexpected, so unlikely, that Augusta had to laugh.
“Ah, you are trying to ignore what I’m saying. But I’m serious. You must choose for yourself in the present, not to chase away the past. Because making decisions to chase away the past…”
“It stays,” Augusta sighed. “It stays and stays, every time I try again to forget it.”
“That is why I read ‘Infant Joy’ again,” Emily agreed. “Only think of this: you have a chance at love, Augusta, yet you keep yourself hidden away from it.”
“And you,” Augusta could not help but reply. “What of you?”
“Touché, ma chère. You are quite right; I have been hiding too. But I wrote to Lord Tallant this morning, asking him and our sons to join me in Bath for a few days. And then, I think, we will all return to London together.”
“You are ready for that?”
“Yes, I believe so. I’m not done grieving. But I’m done grieving alone.”
Emily was good, so good, at capturing shining moments.
Oh, this was not such a moment, not with Augusta’s head aching, a scandal prowling the streets of Bath, and a poem that would forever remind Emily of the daughter she had lost. Yet as the women sat together, quiet and still, Augusta thought there was something solid in the moment. It was, as she’d said of the White Hart, true.
She was ready for truth.
Emily patted Augusta’s arm, then stood. “And now, the former Mrs. Flowers, I shall leave you and your precious papers. Do you think you could see another caller in a little while? Say, a handsome bachelor caller?”
Augusta dropped the book.
“Very good. I’ll have him summoned.” Emily smiled, then left Augusta alone.
The folded papers had slid from the book when she dropped it, falling in a sheaf to the coverlet. Joss’s handwriting, careful and elegant. He had left her with this, intending it to be a final gift, a good-bye.
But the closely written pages gave her an idea instead. And when he called later, she would have much to tell him.
***
“Into the drawing room,” Joss said when he and the baron and baroness entered Sutcliffe’s rented house. “Both of you. Upstairs. No, Sutcliffe, you will not need your spyglass.”
The past two hours had contained a series of unrealities. Giving papers to Augusta—papers written from his family and his heart—as he intended never to see her again. Watching Lady Sutcliffe’s foray into the Pump Room in full battle regalia of watered silk. The public fight that threatened to spill forth when she saw her husband—and the secrets that had been spilled instead.
When Augusta slid and fell—God, watching her slam to the floor had made his heart hurt—Joss had helped Lady Tallant see to her safety and transport back to Queen Square. And then he marched the Sutcliffes from the gawking crowd in the Pump Room.
As he had passed by the seated Lord Chatfield, the marquess caught his arm. “Conflagration” was what it sounded like the man said; Joss shook his head in confusion. More loudly, the marquess said, “Once you’ve seen to the present needs, let me know how you shall pay me. My offer of employment stands.”
Joss hardly knew what he had said by way of reply, so desperate was he to follow the Bath chair that carried away Augusta’s still figure.
He was certain, though: he could not carry out this sort of work for the marquess. He could not bear to earn his bread by searching for clues to people’s undoing. Watching the undoing of one family—this family—was too much already.
Once Lord and Lady Sutcliffe had drifted into the drawing room, tension vibrating as though a spring ran between them, Joss arranged each spouse in a slipper chair before the drawing-room fireplace. Then he faced them both, and, drawing a deep breath, prepared for painful truths. “Lady Sutcliffe, your husband has been receiving blackmail letters. You have been sending them, have you not?”
The diminutive baroness sat up straight, her feet hardly brushing the floor. “Yes. I have.”
Sutcliffe sprang to his feet. “Impossible! A maid delivered one only yesterday, and she was much too tall to be you. I know, because I gave her a shilling.”
Given the time, place, and subject of the conversation, this was not a wise confession. The baroness’s pale skin went the color of chalk. “Shillings for maids,” she spat. “How generous, especially considering all your money is really mine. But it doesn’t stop with coins, does it? No, then you begin your magic tricks. Flirtations. Seduction. Or was it rape?”
Gingerly, Sutcliffe perched again at the edge of his chair. “I’ve never forced a woman.”
“It should never even come close to that.” Red blotches appeared on the baroness’s face and neck, but her voice remained under careful control. “You cannot imagine the humiliation of knowing that you stray. Knowing that you would rather gamble and shop than spend time with your children or your tenants. Yet as humiliated as I am—as angry as I am—I am not the one most wronged.”
Joss was beginning to feel superfluous, until Lady Sutcliffe turned to him. “How did you know it was me?”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I gave the maid a shilling.”
The baroness made a disgusted sound. “I did not think she would be so easily bought.”
“She was not. Lord Chatfield had also paid her for her secrets, as it turns out, and a great deal. Information is worth far more to him than mere coin.” Following his departure from Sutcliffe’s house the night before, Joss had knocked at the kitchen entrance of the house next door. After a short survey of the servants, he had picked out the maid who had drawn his cousin’s notice. And the story flowed out from there: Lady Sutcliffe had hired a maid in Emily’s service to post a few letters. Once her messages were delivered to the maid, Jill, they were recopied in Jill’s hand—unfamiliar to the baron—then sent on to Lord Sutcliffe. Thus came the letters from London, then posted from Bath, then carried by hand.
“It was a clever plan,” Joss added. “But—why?”
Lady Sutcliffe set her jaw. “Because I have nothing that he cares for but money, and so the threat of impoverishment is the only hold I have over his behavior. I thought to shock him into respectability, but instead, he has dragged you down with him.”
Joss bristled. “Any action I took in the service of Lord Sutcliffe was intended—”
He cut himself off before adding for the ultimate good of your family. Because it wasn’t true, was it? He had meant well; he had urged Sutcliffe to confess, to mend his ways. But when had Sutcliffe ever done something just because someone told him he ought? Joss should have known that, but it was easier to make a small effort, to keep his head down and plow forward.
He ought to have done what he knew was right, even though it was not easy.
“I’m so sorry, my lady,” he said to the baroness. “You are right. You deserved to know the truth. I ought to have told you.”
Her small frame sagged against the back of the chair. “My children shall have a half sibling that they can never know.”
Awkwardly, hesitantly, Sutcliffe reached out a hand and patted that of his wife. “Now, Celia, it’s not as bad as all that. We could take the children to visit Jenny and the baby—”
“Jessie,” said Joss and Lady Sutcliffe at once.
“And no, Sutcliffe, we could not,” she added. “It would be cruel for you to force me to face the physical evidence of your adultery. At least, Mr. Everett, you were not so far gone in sense as to neglect to make provision for the poor woman.”
“I believe she shall be well,” Joss said. “She will receive an annuity for life.”
“To be paid from my fortune,” sighed the baroness. “All of our money was my money. And so I pay for your wrongdoing again, Sutcliffe. When will it end?”
Joss sidled toward the door. “Let me ring for some tea.”
“Hot water for me,” piped up the baron.
His wife made another disgusted sound.
Joss rang for a servant and ordered the tea tray, not a pot of hot water. Then he turned back to the baroness. “When you return to Sutcliffe Hall,” Joss said to her, “I suggest you have the contents of the conservatory destroyed.”
She tilted her china-doll head. “Are you certain? That is all you have left of your grandmother and mother.”
Joss stared. She had kept it for his sake, thinking he drew meaning from rows of grassy somalata buried in earth? “You are very kind to consider my wishes,” he said. “But that’s not all I have left.”
No, he had a fistful of memories of his mother, calm and tired; he had a book of botanical drawings he could not understand and notes he could not read.
He also had his existence. And he had a dream, finally: a wish for something grander than one hundred pounds and a steady clerical job.
And he knew where he must go next to bring it to life.
He would go alone, but Augusta would linger with him, the echo of her questioning voice in his ears. It’s not really a dream, is it? It was now, dear fake widow. It was.
And she would become a dream too, especially the sharp sliver of time when she had told him I want you very much indeed.
It had not been enough. But it was far better than no memory of her at all. And seeing how marriage had treated the heiress who became Lady Sutcliffe—well, such women had good reasons to guard their hearts as carefully as their fortunes. Joss could not fault Augusta for protecting herself; he only wished he had been wise enough to do the same.
“I will see the plants destroyed,” Lady Sutcliffe decided. “But it will not be enough to right matters. Too much else has already been destroyed in their stead.”
“It won’t be enough,” Joss agreed. “But it might help. And Lord Sutcliffe is a positive fount of ideas. Perhaps he can think of other ways to make amends.”
The baron sat up straighter. “Do you want to look through my spyglass, Celia?”
She frowned. “I sincerely hope that is not a euphemism.”
“What?” The baron burst into laughter. “By God, Celia. You’re a funny woman. I have missed you very much.”
Her frown wavered. “I am glad you say so, even if you do not mean it. But I won’t, you know. I won’t touch your…spyglass. Not after you’ve been poking it in places it doesn’t belong.”
“What do you mean? A spyglass doesn’t belong anywhere. Except in my hand, maybe.”
The frown melted a bit more. “Then we shall let your hand tend to your spyglass for the foreseeable future.”
Joss cleared his throat. “I should be getting back to my lodging. It seems the two of you have much to discuss.”
The baron’s thin face fell. “Will you be back?”
“Yes. I’ll return later.” Much later. “I’ll help you find a good man of business to replace me. Perhaps Lord Chatfield could recommend someone, since he knows everyone else in the world.”
“You’ll stay,” Sutcliffe decided. “You would miss me if you left my service. I’m the only family you have.”
This was unfair to the baroness and her children, or to Sutcliffe’s six sisters who lived in Lancashire. But Joss understood his meaning. “You’re the only family I know well. But that won’t be true for long, I hope. I have plans to learn about my Indian forebears.”
Something about India had been so lovely to his grandfather that the late baron could not leave it behind entirely. Something about the language, the sun, the marvelous distance from England—Joss wanted to learn it all.
It would be, as Augusta had once said, an addition to the list of things he knew about himself. And the journey would begin—of all places—in the seaside town of Brighton.
Lady Sutcliffe’s eyes were troubled blue pools as she looked up at him. “I ought to wish you godspeed, Everett, but indeed I shall miss you. I live with three small children and a husband who acts like a fourth. Your sanity has been a blessing.”
Before Joss could offer her thanks, a servant entered bearing the tea tray. When it was deposited on a table, Sutcliffe looked over the offerings and smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Where’s my hot water?”
“Do try some tea instead,” said the baroness with polite formality. “And a sandwich or two, husband. How long has it been since you ate?”
“What?”
And with that, Joss bowed from the room. He had said all he could for today.
Mere words would not convince Sutcliffe to value his wife. Perhaps the blackmail attempt would, eventually, have a beneficial effect. Or the destruction of the conservatory. Sutcliffe was led by his purse and his somalata pouch; perhaps one day he could be led back to his family.
And for Joss, what now? An empty afternoon stretched before him as he descended the carpeted treads of the main staircase. If he returned to his rented room, the scent of sandalwood would make him light-headed. When the bottle broke, the golden oil sank into the wood planks of the floor.
For the first morning since reaching adulthood, he’d had none to daub on himself. He didn’t mind leaving the tradition behind. It was a reminder of who he was, of the family that had built him, but he carried that knowledge far deeper than the surface of his skin.
Maybe he would return there after all. Or maybe he would take a walk in Sydney Gardens.
Slam. He collided with a smaller figure.
Or maybe he’d walk right into someone as he exited the house.
Taking a step backward to correct his balance, Joss found himself face to face with a maid, now rubbing at her forehead. She was a scrubby creature, with curly dark hair beneath her mobcap and avaricious light eyes.
This was the same maid who had delivered the last desperate letter from Lady Sutcliffe, then taken coin after coin to keep and break her silence.
So. Lady Tallant’s maid was racing toward Lord Sutcliffe’s house. Interesting.
But politeness first. “Are you quite all right, miss?”
Her eyes opened wide, and she dropped a crooked curtsy. “Yes, sir.”
“Very good. If Lady Tallant should release you from her service after today’s events, do let me know, and I shall give you Lord Chatfield’s direction. The marquess would appreciate a servant with your sort of acumen.”
He made to pass by, but she plucked at his sleeve. “Mr. Everett. It’s you as I’ve come for. Mrs. Flowers—that is, Miss Meredith—is awake, and she’s asking for you.”
A soar, a plummet. How could he feel both at once? Joss paused halfway down the stone steps. “Is she, now? I suppose you are looking for a response other than ‘Thank you for the information’?”
“Indeed, sir. I’m to fetch you at once.”
What did Augusta intend to extract from him now? He would not be able to deny her again.
Or maybe he would. He had just shaken free of Sutcliffe, neither knowing or caring whether he would receive the promised hundred pounds at the month’s end. Once he had pinned his future on the promise of that sum. But he didn’t need it. He’d be fine.
And he’d be fine when he saw Augusta, too. Somehow. “Then lead on.”