SIXTEEN

Rubbing his chin while pacing across the worn Persian carpet of the study, Patrick listened to Letty’s breathless story. “What you say is certainly interesting,” he said when she finished, “but without definitive proof, it does us little good. Like you, I think the description fits Geoffrey Clapham, but as much as I dislike the fellow, I find it hard to believe he would stoop so low. Even if I did, his actions do not explain the persecution of your people by the residents of Grayton. According to what you told me, that began long before his arrival on the scene.”

“But—”

Patrick stopped pacing, and his eyes smiled into hers. “Don’t worry, my dear, I shall relate to our solicitor everything Mary told you. Who knows? Perhaps the information will help our cause after all.” He bowed over her hand, his lips warm against her skin, making a shiver course through her. “Now I’d better go up to my study if I’m to finish that cursed manuscript. I had hoped to submit it to the publisher before I speak to the Global Society next week. I can hardly believe how the time has flown.”

Letty bit back an exasperated exclamation. She endured yet another solitary dinner at the long table in the dining room, served by one of the two new maids, before ascending the stairs to her bedchamber. There she tossed and turned, her dreams filled with faceless men in top hats, who approached menacingly before dissolving into shadows.

X

She awoke with a piercing headache, worsened by sunlight streaming like daggers through the slats of the shuttered windows. In the breakfast room, she reached for a porcelain cup of steaming tea and put it to her lips, but when a sharp rap came at the door she jumped and spilled it on the lace tablecloth.

The maid poked her head into the breakfast room. “A visitor for you, madam. ’Tis a child named Mary Speakman.”

“Mary?” Letty repeated in surprise, forgetting the spilled tea.

The girl was standing just outside the door, twisting her long black braids with nervous hands. “We’re leaving New Hope, ma’am,” she blurted as soon as Letty appeared. “My father’s packing the cart now.”

“What? Leaving? Today?”

“Yes, ma’am. My father decided to wait no longer. I’m supposed to help pack, but I couldn’t leave without telling you.”

“I’ll come with you,” Letty said determinedly. “I must speak to your father.”

They hurried to the circle of cottages and arrived to find George Speakman hoisting a featherbed atop a donkey cart, which was already overloaded with an assortment of oddly shaped bags and parcels. His two young sons sat wrestling and giggling on top, in danger of rolling off their precarious perch. George nodded at Letty, cinched a rope tight across the load, and tested the knot to see if it would hold. Satisfied, he started back to fetch more bundles.

“George! Whatever is going on?” Letty hurried up to him.

“Good morning, ma’am. Got a letter from me brother-in-law in Yorkshire a week past.” He turned and tugged his forelock in the old way, a habit he had never quite broken. “Offered me a job at his dry goods store, he did. ’Twas a good offer, and I’ve decided to accept it.”

“Yorkshire? So far?”

George nodded, puffing out his chest. “Never thought much of me in the past, ’e didn’t, but my Ruby sent him a letter a month or so back. Mary wrote it, that is—Ruby don’t know her letters any more’n I do. Whatever me wife said caused Sam to change his mind, for ’e wrote that ’e’s willing to give me a chance, and if I do well, he’ll make me a partner.”

“But you can’t go.” Letty felt crestfallen. “Everyone at New Hope relies on you, George. What will they do without your leadership?”

He shook his big head. “If that’s all there were to it, ma’am, I’d be glad to stay. My family’s been happy here, and that’s the truth. But—” He paused with a delicacy she had not seen in him before. “—P’raps it’s best this way all around, the way things are.”

“The way things are?”

He avoided her eyes. “Me and some of the other men have been talkin’, Mrs. Marlowe. Truth is, we’ve been bringing you trouble. P’raps things’ll be easier for you once we’re gone.”

“You mean others want to leave New Hope too?” Letty blinked back a surge of tears. Was this the end of everything she had worked so hard to create?

“No, ma’am, I wouldn’t say that. We’re not all agreed on what to do. Some want to stay and fight it out. But I can see how the wind’s blowin’. The way people in Grayton sneer at us, refuse to sell to us, throw rocks when we pass by … Truth is, they don’t want us here, ma’am. And as long as we’re here, there’ll be no peace for you neither.”

So she had not been the only target of rock-throwing. Letty wondered why no one had mentioned it before. To protect her from worrying, no doubt. She impulsively clutched his hand. “Please, George, can I do anything to persuade you to stay?”

His face told the answer. Shoulders sagging, she let go of his hand. Letty never would have imagined that the departure of this burly, snaggle-toothed man, who once she’d thought represented the worst of the lower classes, would hit her like a blow.

She turned to his wife, who was standing by the cart with her usual placid expression. “Well, Ruby? Are you determined to desert us as well?”

“Trust me, ma’am, you’ll be grateful for our leaving. Just as we’re grateful to you for having let us come.”

George broke in. “We’ll never forget you, nor what you done for us. Our Mary plans to start up her own charity school when she’s grown up, just like you done here. I’ve no doubt but she’ll do it too. She’s one that does what she sets her mind to, my Mary is.” He gave his daughter an affectionate pinch on the cheek, tugged his forelock at Letty, and turned back to packing the cart.

Letty found it difficult to say goodbye to Mary. She had always felt a special attachment for the girl, with her sharp wit and bold, testy courage. It was hard to imagine this neatly dressed girl was the same ragged wraith who had snatched Henry from under the hooves of Letty’s horse in Telford only a year ago.

“I’ll write you, ma’am,” Mary said. “Like they said—I’ll never forget you, nor what you’ve done.”

Letty found it impossible to reply. She could only hug the girl and turn away, before Mary or her parents saw the emotion on her face.

X

In the days after the Speakman family left New Hope, Letty felt a mixture of emotions, discouragement topping the rest. She had worried whether the community would survive the attacks from outside, and now she could see it was already fraying from the inside as well. Like the Speakmans, several other residents gave up on the ideal of communal life and began to leave for jobs elsewhere. Even Miss Woods surprised her.

“Antoine and I are going to marry,” the young woman revealed at one of their encounters. “We have decided to move to the United States at the end of the year.”

Letty could only stare at her. “You are leaving too?”

“We will be here for several months more. Do not worry, Mrs. Marlowe. There will be others to replace us.”

Letty was not so sure. If things kept on this way, soon there would be too few residents left to manage the farm, and then what? The experiment would have failed.

X

Today was one of the rare days when Patrick came down from his study to lunch with her, and he commented on her downcast expression. “What’s wrong?” He set down his fork.

She had not planned to tell him her worries, but Patrick was bound to find out sooner or later. He listened without comment until her gush of words ended. “Do you think this is the end of everything I’ve tried to accomplish?” she asked finally.

“If so, it should not come as a surprise,” was his blunt response. “None of those fellows at New Hope—except Antoine and Miss Woods, naturally—appeared to be truly interested in your radical ideas, Leticia. They merely went along with the experiment to feed their bellies. As soon as opportunities for a more conventional lifestyle came along, they have seized them. You can hardly blame them.”

“But what about the shares, Patrick!” She almost wrung her hands. “One more year, and they would have been well on their way to owning everything for themselves. They would have been truly independent!”

“Maybe you tried to change their habits too quickly.” He reached over and brushed her cheek gently with his fingertips. “They say Rome was not built in a day, and I suppose a whole way of life cannot be changed overnight either—no matter how advantageous those new ways might seem to you.”

“You never believed in New Hope.” Letty could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “From the beginning, you viewed my project as a silly hobby.” Why on earth should she have expected him to understand now? “If I had stayed home with my knitting this past year, no doubt I would be safe from your criticism.” Letty turned her head away to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes.

Patrick dropped his arm to his side. His voice sounded troubled. “Is that really what you think of me, Letty? It appears that after all this time, you don’t know me at all.”

She turned back, frowning with puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“Simply this. I would be even more critical had you not tried to do something worthwhile, Leticia. The problem is not that you have done too much for these people. It is that you have not done enough.”

She stared at him. “I don’t understand. You’ve never said that before.”

“Haven’t I?” He reached out and took her hand, his fingers strong and warm. “That’s strange. For years, Lord Clapham and others like him have called me a radical for voicing beliefs that, in many ways, parallel your own. If I appeared critical, Leticia, it was of your methods, not your intentions. You have helped a small number of people to improve their lives until, God be praised, they no longer need your help, but what about the hordes out there in the world who are starving or sick or imprisoned in their own ignorance? New Hope could never be big enough to hold them all. It is a tiny island in a vast ocean of need.”

“But what can I do beyond what I already have?” she asked helplessly.

“Do what other reformers are doing. Give lectures on your ideas. Write books. Harass leaders in power until they have no choice but to change things for the better. That is what I plan to do, once I have given my presentation to the Global Society. Why should you not do likewise, if you truly hope to make a difference in this world?”

“Perhaps I could bring in new people.” Letty sounded doubtful. “We already have the cottages and the equipment. I could advertise, like before …”

“Yes, but that would not solve the greater problem: the failure of the people outside of New Hope to accept the community,” Patrick reminded her. “Not just Grayton—society at large. If you were to begin New Hope all over again, the same conflicts would arise all over again. No, the greater challenge is to change people’s attitudes toward the disadvantaged.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to give up.”

He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling with passion. “I don’t. It may not happen for another generation, maybe more … but eventually people like you and me, Leticia, will change the world. One day there will be no more social classes, and all people will be judged on their own merits rather than the accident of their birth.”

Her heart began to beat faster. It was what she had always wanted, what she had always hoped to do. Letty’s thoughts flashed back to her childhood dream. Change society on such a large scale, though? That, she had never dreamed of.

“How could I?” Letty asked, after a pause. “You and I live in the country. I have no power, no influence. And … I am only a woman. I cannot even vote, or own property.”

Patrick nodded. “If by some miracle I am named director of the Global Society, we shall move to London. There, as my wife, you can make your voice be heard. I want you to come with me, Leticia.”

Go with him to London? She stared at her husband, not sure what to make of his sudden intensity. The original plan had been for them to live separate lives—he with his expeditions abroad, she at New Hope. Now, he was inviting her to unite their destinies. It was almost like a proposal of marriage. Except they were already married. Her heart fluttered at the thought, and she looked down.

“I must wait until after the trial to decide what to do, when the future is more certain,” Letty murmured. “I … I really don’t know right now.”

The intensity faded from his eyes, and he settled back in his chair. “That is perhaps the wisest course of action. At least you can find some comfort in the fact that you have enabled those who are leaving your settlement to find good, honorable jobs that promise bright futures.”

She nodded, feeling an odd sense of regret, as if an opportunity had been passed by.

Just then one of the parlor maids arrived with a message, and Patrick read it with interest.

“The barrister I have hired to defend Simon, Mr. Wilkinson, has arrived at an inn in Telford and is awaiting us,” he announced, folding the note and putting it in his pocket. “Well, Leticia, will you come with me?”

The question did not need an answer.

An hour later, they met the lawyer at his rented lodgings near the courthouse, where the innkeeper had managed to turn an antechamber into an impromptu office, with a battered desk and a few scuffed, mismatched chairs.

Looking as out of place as a sleek thoroughbred stallion in a Yorkshire barn, Mr. Wilkinson waved them into their seats, then flung himself into another behind the desk.

“I’ve already spoken with both the defendant and the accuser,” he said without wasting time on pleasantries. “I hope neither of you will take it amiss if I inform you that this case is hardly worthy of the time of a lawyer of my stature. The story is made interesting only by the fact that gentlefolk of your station have the misfortune to find yourselves connected with it.”

The lawyer was very different from her father’s solicitor, Mr. Hawking, Letty thought. Mr. Wilkinson was young and tall, with a plain, chiseled face and a blunt manner that made him somewhat disconcerting. His clothes were unobtrusively expensive, and the third finger of his right hand was adorned with a single gold ring set with a ruby, his only ornament.

He looked at Patrick with keen black eyes. “Well, sir, have you any information to add since last I spoke to you?”

“No.”

“Then I’d like to hear your wife tell what the girl, Mary Speakman, had to say.”

Letty repeated the story: the darkness of the night, the clothes the gentleman wore, his words. This time, however, she withheld her suspicions of the man’s identity. As Patrick had pointed out, no proof existed but her own prejudice that it had been Sir Geoffrey Clapham.

When she finished, Mr. Wilkinson shook his head with disgust.

“The only evidence you have of this is the word of an eleven-year-old child, who is no longer even available to testify.”

“But Mary would not have made up the story.”

“Still, it will not do, Mrs. Marlowe. In a trial, it is not truth that matters, it is what can be proven. And what you have given me is nothing but hearsay, the secondhand words of a child with a grudge. You told me yourself the young woman in question had beaten her earlier.”

“Then how can anyone prove Simon is guilty?” Letty asked. “Is that not one person’s word against another’s as well?”

He seemed pleased by her question. “That is exactly my point, Mrs. Marlowe. It is up to the plaintiff’s lawyer, a colleague of mine named Mr. Davies, to show proof of Simon Longford’s guilt. If he is unable to do so—as sounds likely, given the witnesses—then the case may well turn in our favor.”

“Of course,” Patrick broke in, “it is a jury that will decide. And we have reason to believe, due to the factors in this case, that the jury may be prejudiced against the defendant because of his association with a controversial society named New Hope sponsored by my wife.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard all about it. However, it is my task to overcome such prejudice by presenting a vigorous defense,” Mr. Wilkinson said, rubbing his long hands. He had their full attention.