CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
A Slender Thread
“Oh! Something dreadful has happened; I cannot read it aloud!”
Bury, Charlotte, The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting
When Adam and Rosalind returned to Orchard Street, the afternoon was dimming toward evening, and Alice was waiting in the parlor, perched on the edge of her chair.
“George Dawson had been doing business with Josiah Poole for three years at least,” she announced without preamble when they walked in. “How was your day?”
Rosalind and Adam stared at each other and then burst out laughing. It felt like relief. Rosalind sank down onto the settee.
“You had no trouble with Bingham?” Adam asked her.
“As if I had not been handling officious young men for much of my life,” scoffed Alice. “Between myself and Mr. Tauton, the young man had no chance. Here are the extracts of the letters he’d found so far.” She held out her notebook. Adam raised a brow at her. Alice’s shorthand might as well be a secret code for all anyone else could read it.
“Oh, right. Well.” Alice flipped through her pages. “Captain Dawson first wrote to Poole three years ago, asking for help disentangling him from some complex promises made to a consortium of moneylenders. He insists that the terms they gave him and the terms they were enforcing were entirely different, although he seems to have neglected to write the initial agreement down.” She paused long enough for them all to shake their heads. “It further seems that Mr. Poole was successful, eventually, but that Captain Dawson was not the most diligent of students, because he landed in similar difficulties the next year and the one after that. And while Mr. Poole was able to get him out of trouble with these various unscrupulous parties, this only increased the amounts that Captain Dawson owed to Poole himself.”
“That is certainly very bad,” said Rosalind. “But it is not beyond the usual difficulties of careless aristocratic sons.”
“Unless, as alluded to, his father has threatened to cut him off entirely should the moneylenders apply to him for relief.” Alice turned a page of her notebook. “And, further, they threatened to take up the matter with the Duke of York, who, I am told, became a friend and patron of Dawson’s after his feats at Waterloo.”
And there it is. To protect his future interests, Dawson must conceal his follies, and the more he tried to hide, the more ignominious details fell into Mr. Poole’s keeping.
“You did not happen to take note of his address?” asked Adam.
“What on earth do you take me for?” demanded Alice. “Of course I did.” She held up a slip of paper. “Rendered into plain English.”
“Thank you.” Adam tucked the paper into his coat pocket. His hand hesitated, and something Rosalind could not read flitted behind his eyes. Her heart constricted with sudden apprehension, but she could not say why. “I’d best leave at once.”
Rosalind suddenly wanted to urge him to stay, to have some supper, to talk to her. But she said none of these things. She pressed both his hands and looked into his eyes, still too shy to kiss him when anyone could see, even though that someone was only Alice.
Adam smiled and kissed the backs of her hands. “I’ll return as soon as I can,” he said.
And he was gone, and Rosalind turned away.
“Sit down, Rosalind,” said Alice. “Stop scolding yourself for whatever you think you’ve done wrong, and tell me everything that’s happened.”
Rosalind meant to say she was not scolding herself, except of course she had been. Instead, she sat down in her accustomed spot on the settee and told Alice all that had transpired at the Pooles—from the sight of the man in the scarlet coat to Letitia’s accidental revelation that Mrs. Poole had access to at least some of Mr. Poole’s papers, and the inclination to use them, to Judith’s dismissal, and the family’s concerted effort to lie about the morning Mr. Poole had died.
Then, she told Alice about the possibility that Mrs. Poole had known her husband was dead before Adam and Rosalind arrived with the news, even though it had seemed otherwise at the time.
“Shouldn’t the house be watched?” said Alice. “It sounds to me as if the Pooles might decide to simply make a run for it.”
Rosalind considered this. “No. I think not. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Pooles appear ready to brazen it out. Why else would Mrs. Poole be insisting on going through with Letitia’s marriage? Why not make the best settlement she could and remove herself and her family to Scotland or the Continent? No. She does not think she has reason to run, at least not yet.”
“And William Considen?”
“I do not think he would leave his sister. They seem intent on protecting each other.”
“But this could change if they feel they are being caught in a noose.”
“But not until then,” said Rosalind. “What would it take for you to leave George if he were in difficulty?”
“That is a good point,” agreed Alice. “So we return to the man in the scarlet coat. Why was Dawson there? Was he looking for his own papers or for the certificate? He had access to the house. He could have known from Minney that Faller could be bribed. We know he needed money. Poole could have offered to get his debts cleared if Dawson brought him the certificate. He could have gone round today to be sure that Mrs. Poole intended to honor her husband’s promise.”
Rosalind opened her mouth but had no time to speak. Mortimer entered, with a note in his hand. “Brought by hand,” he said as he gave it to Rosalind. “A Mr. Geery. Says he comes from Tilney Street.”
“That’s Amelia’s hand.” Alice plucked the note from Mortimer’s fingers. Rosalind raised her brows, and Alice looked sheepish and returned it to Rosalind.
“Thank you,” said Rosalind dryly. As Mortimer retreated, Rosalind opened the letter, took a look at the hasty, wandering scrawl, and passed it back to Alice.
Alice scanned the note, her lips moving slowly and her eyes growing wide.
“What is it?”
“Tom Faller’s vanished.”
“What!” cried Rosalind.
Alice nodded. “Amelia says Tom Faller was sent out on an errand this afternoon and has not yet returned. She says that Mrs. Fitzherbert is sending the girls home early Friday morning, but Amelia thinks Minney is planning something. Minney gave her a sweetener to gain her help but hasn’t said what she needs yet.”
Rosalind let out a long, slow breath. “We must find Tom Faller.”
Alice’s brow furrowed. “I suppose Amelia could ask the butler if he has family he might have gone to, but what . . .”
“Judith will know where he’s gone.”
“Judith?” exclaimed Alice. “The Pooles’ maid?”
“Yes. I strongly suspect they’re married, or at least engaged.”
“Did she tell you that?”
Rosalind shook her head. “She did not have to. When I asked her about the visitor in the scarlet coat, she made a particular gesture.” Rosalind touched the spot over her heart. “You do something like it when you think of Amelia, and Mrs. Fitzherbert when she thinks of her husband. Judith is wearing something she keeps concealed—a ring or other token.”
Employers frequently refused to hire married servants, lest family obligations interfere with their ability to perform as demanded. So, servants who were married frequently pretended not to be.
“Amelia says there’s rumors that Faller had a young woman.” Alice tapped a finger on her knee. “Yes. It does fit.”
“And Mrs. Fitzherbert’s staff wears a scarlet livery. It could well have been Mr. Faller I saw,” said Rosalind. “So, tomorrow—”
“Is your at home,” interrupted Alice.
Rosalind felt herself staring. “Alice, this is far more important.”
“No, it isn’t. Not with Countess Lieven threatening to libel you and Mrs. Fitz all over the city. You need to be right where you’re supposed to be, acting as though nothing’s wrong. I will go find Judith.”
Rosalind was silent for a long moment.
“What is it?” asked Alice finally.
“I’m just contemplating the irony of my current situation,” said Rosalind. “For all these years I have been terrified of becoming noticed, of losing my gentility and entrée into society, and now . . . now I’m looking at days of work simply updating my books and repaying calls.”
“You should be pleased.” Alice took up one of the few remaining sandwiches and bit into it. “And I should be jealous.”
“No, you shouldn’t. And you wouldn’t be. You’d be worried.”
“Because you are?”
“Yes. This is not establishing connection.” Rosalind gazed wearily at the door. “This is notoriety, and that is much less stable.”
At this, Alice simply rolled her eyes and finished her sandwich. “Rosalind, you, of all people, should know there is no such thing as a stable footing among the haut ton. That’s why so many of them eventually run mad.” She dusted the crumbs from her hands.
“Them?”
“Them,” said Alice firmly. “I renounced my membership when my father died and have no regrets. But I’d take some notoriety. It would be good for sales. Do you think you can organize something for me?”
Despite everything, Rosalind laughed. “I shall put it on my list.”
“Oh dear,” said Alice sympathetically. “You really do look tired.”
“I think I am.” Rosalind passed a hand over her brow, smoothing back a stray lock of hair. “It’s been rather a lot.”
“Well, perhaps we will have luck. Perhaps Adam finds Captain Dawson, and he confesses all.”
Perhaps, thought Rosalind. But she was not prepared to rest all her hopes there.
“Very well, Alice. Tomorrow I will entertain the fashionable world, and you will go see if Judith can be persuaded to let us know where her young man has gone.”
And what he might have taken with him.
Because that was something they had not said—that the reason the certificate might still be missing was that it was still in the hands of Thomas Faller.