Lord Tremont had a surprisingly jolly laugh, all good nature and merriment. He apparently took no offense at the MacKays’ machinations, while Matilda… She had hoped her inquiries of Mrs. MacKay hadn’t been too obvious, and then, there stood the earl, gazing up at her from the foyer as if she’d conjured him from her abundant imaginings.
Fate playing a little joke on her, or a wish coming true?
“I have never seen Major MacKay looking so devilish,” she said as she trundled along arm in arm with the earl. “When I first met him, he struck me as the quintessential dour Scot. Dorcas Delancey was the equally circumspect daughter of the vicarage, but they appear to have brought out the mischief in each other.”
“Is a little mischief a bad thing, Mrs. Merridew?”
Matilda considered the question while they waited at an intersection. The snow was rapidly thickening, and street traffic was hustling along. The crossing sweeper marched out into the middle of the passing vehicles and brandished his broom in both directions. The boy’s trousers were raggedly hemmed a good six inches above his skinny ankles, and the lumbering coaches dwarfed him.
“It’s hard to imagine that one is entitled to any mischief,” she said, “when a child must face this weather. That could be Tommie—shivering, underfed, a hairsbreadth away from tragedy if some drunken lordling goes racing by in his phaeton. I was raised in a vicarage—I have that in common with Mrs. MacKay—and such an upbringing takes a jaundiced view of mischief.”
“Perhaps ‘mischief’ is the wrong word,” Tremont said, guiding Matilda across the slick cobbles. “Maybe the term I want is ‘joy.’ Glee, high spirits.” He tossed the boy a coin, and the lad caught it in a bare, dirty paw. “In a world where children must fend for themselves from too young an age and generals send young men to their deaths by the thousands, joy can be an act of courage.”
Matilda had felt a spike of joy simply to behold Tremont, and he was right—that had been an act of courage, or folly. Maybe both?
They reached the opposite side of the street, and when Tremont ought to have escorted Matilda down the walkway, he instead considered the crossing sweeper.
“The lad’s name is Charles,” he said. “He refuses to answer to Charlie. I’ve tried giving him more substantial coin, but he spends it all on his auntie, who is a sot. I doubt Charles is home much, if a home he even has.”
A closed, crested carriage careened by, nearly knocking Charles off his feet.
“Tremont… He can’t be nine years old.”
His lordship appeared to be mentally puzzling out a geometric proof, while Matilda wanted to snatch the child off the street, sit him before a roaring fire, and acquaint him with a full plate of beef and potatoes.
“You said Cook needs more hands in the kitchen,” Tremont observed, “and we’ve already added one boy to the household. Shall we offer the post of potboy to yonder fellow, Mrs. Merridew?”
Potboy, a job at the elbow of the cook, who would prepare six meals a day if left to her own devices. Charles would be warm and well fed and might eventually apprentice to his supervisor.
“He could also see to the men’s boots on Saturday nights,” Matilda said. “Shine them up for services on Sunday.”
“Until he pikes off in the spring,” Tremont replied. “We can but try. Charles!” He motioned the boy over to the walkway, and a parley ensued. Matilda eventually divined that Charles was reluctant to become a member of any household composed primarily of men.
A reluctance she well understood. “You will work for Cook,” Matilda said, “but you will also report to me.”
Charles was trying heroically to stop his teeth from chattering. “You bide there too, missus?”
“With my son, Tommie. He’s a few years younger than you and will make a complete pest of himself if you allow that. The men are former soldiers, Charles. If they in any way treat you ill, they will have me to answer to.”
“And me,” Tremont said. “To say nothing of what our housekeeper, Mrs. Winklebleck, would do to them.”
Charles’s grimy countenance brightened. “Big Nan is your housekeeper?”
“She is Mrs. Winklebleck now,” Matilda said, “and a more cheerful housekeeper you never did meet. Please say you will assist us, Charles, or least give it a try.”
“I’ll lose me patch,” the boy said. “If I’m gone three days, some other lad’ll take me patch. That’s the rule. A fellow can miss on Sundays, and he can take ill for a day or two while the other boys keep his corner tidy, but three days straight means he’s given up his patch.”
Harry had known such rules, and he’d also made up his share. “If you come work with us,” Matilda said, “I will teach you to read and write. I will show you how to drive the pony cart. You will have more than coin to show for your labors, Charles. You will have skills.”
“My ma could write,” Charles said, sniffing as snowflakes dusted his dark hair. “Some.”
“Why don’t you look the place over?” Tremont said. “You know where it is?”
“Aye.”
“Reconnaissance is a vital part of any successful mission,” the earl went on, “and you shouldn’t accept the job without some idea of what you’re getting into. Tell Cook we’re taking you on, have her show you where you’d sleep and what your duties would be. Make up your own mind. Nobody will steal your patch if you take a day or two to do that, and this weather will soon have the streets cleared in any case.”
Another man would have been arguing with the child, or worse, ordering him to give up his trade for what might be a terrible position. As a crossing sweeper, Charles set his own hours, kept all of his pay, worked no harder than he pleased, and was never beaten for a job poorly done.
None of which mattered with a winter storm bearing down. Matilda was about to shove Charles off in the direction of the house when he held out his hand to Tremont.
“I’ll give it a looking over, milord, like you said, but I can come back to me patch if I’d rather.”
Tremont shook. “You scout the terrain for yourself, and Mrs. Merridew and I will await your decision. If you cut through that alley there, you’ll save yourself some time.”
Charles gathered up his barrow, broom, and shovel and trotted off into the thickening snow.
“Perhaps we should take the alley,” Matilda said. “This is turning into quite a squall.”
“I have another idea,” Tremont replied as they resumed walking. “We can seek shelter along the way, and twenty minutes from now, the snow will have stopped.”
“You suggest we tarry at the tea shop?” A delightful notion, particularly given that Tommie was not underfoot.
“The tea shop is one street over in the wrong direction, but my town house is right around the corner.”
Matilda nearly lost her footing. The Earl of Tremont was inviting her into his home. True, the hour was technically appropriate for paying calls, and she was a widow and thus needed no chaperone, but still…
“Maybe this is how Charles felt when confronted with a suspiciously tempting offer,” Matilda said.
“We were to discuss how you’re settling in and what plans you have for the men,” Tremont replied. “Why not do so in comfort while Charles makes his inspection tour of the soldiers’ home?”
Reason. Tremont was the very devil for applying sweet reason. “That place needs a different name,” Matilda said. “‘Soldiers’ home’ brings to mind grizzled, arthritic men rendered deaf by artillery rounds fired decades in the past. Our lot is hale and relatively young.”
“I had not thought of naming the house, but that makes sense, and now, with you newly appointed to your post, is a perfect time to do it.”
The wind gusted, nearly knocking Matilda off her feet. She took a snug hold of Tremont’s arm. “Get me out of this weather, my lord, and we can name the house anything you please.”
Matilda capitulated to the earl’s offer with equal parts misgiving and anticipation. She’d wondered if his domicile would be as neat and understated as he was, or would the mental absorption of the philosopher mean boots were left in the library, and a half-full brandy glass had been abandoned in a linen closet?
He’d called himself curious, while Matilda thought of herself as cautious. Curiosity and caution were not mutually exclusive, apparently.
A dozen doors on, Tremont led her up a set of steps to a modest, tidy house. Somebody had already swept the walkway free of snow once, and the brass fixtures around the door lamps gleamed despite the day’s gloom.
“Before we go in,” he said, pausing inside the recessed doorway, “you should know something.”
The lamps had not yet been lit, and the alcove was out of the wind, giving it a confessional air. “Say on, my lord.” If he was leaving for Shropshire, that might be for the best, though Tommie would be disappointed.
“I had a definite purpose for calling upon MacKay, and not an entirely noble purpose.” His tone was serious, his expression unreadable. “I wanted…” Tremont turned Matilda so the wind was to her back, and the meager light fell across the earl’s face. “I inquired of the major regarding your late husband.”
And here Matilda had hoped Tremont had inquired regarding her. “What possible interest could Harry Merridew hold for you?” Unless Harry’s lingering and larcenous shadow was about to cost Matilda her post.
Tremont studied her, then seemed to come to a decision. “What was your reason for calling on Mrs. MacKay?”
Once upon a time, Matilda had been curious and forthright. Her father had called her ungovernable and bold, but such were the labels applied to women who failed to simper and scrape. Matilda would never entirely escape the damage marriage to Harry had done, but with Tremont, she could be a little less cautious and a little more honest.
“I inquired regarding you, my lord.”
“Because I hired you to manage the men?”
Dignity whispered to Matilda to retire behind that proffered fig leaf. Courage demanded that, with Tremont, she put such cowering aside.
“I did not ask my questions of Mrs. MacKay because you hired me to manage the men, not entirely.”
Tremont stared past her shoulder. “I see.” He lifted the latch and bowed Matilda into the foyer.
I see? What did I see mean? Matilda had developed the ability to read Harry as closely as she’d ever attended to Scripture. She’d learned to parse his silences, to listen for the schemes brewing beneath his jests and cryptic asides. By the time he’d died, Harry had been an open book to her, one she had studied out of dread necessity.
Tremont appeared preoccupied as he set her bonnet on a hook, took her scarf and gloves, and then her cloak. Matilda slid his cloak from his shoulders, and when he turned to her, he still had the look of trying to solve a puzzle in his head.
“Let’s find a roaring fire,” he said, “and ring for tea. I am at your disposal to answer any and all questions you might have regarding my humble person, and perhaps you might answer a few questions for me as well?”
Tremont didn’t smile, but Matilda suspected he was happy. So, oddly enough, was she.
“Ask me anything,” she said.
When the various wraps and accessories had been stored, Tremont did not offer his arm. He, the soul of gentlemanly decorum, took Matilda by the hand, and she, the soul of genteel propriety, linked her fingers with his… and rejoiced.
As Tremont led his guest to the formal parlor, he began a mental exegesis on the topic of wooing a lady. A gentleman seeking to earn a woman’s favor must be charming, witty, gracious, and… something else. Not alluring—that was for courtesans. Not wealthy, else fellows of modest means would never wed.
Further analysis of the subject eluded him because he was simply too absorbed with the pleasure of having Matilda’s hand in his. Her fingers were cold, which made him want to place them directly on his person. He’d put her palms flat on his chest, inside his shirt, and cover them with his own, and feel her touch with each inhalation and exhalation…
Steady on, soldier.
“The formal parlor,” he said, stopping outside a carved oak door. “Not because I am a formal sort of host, but because I know it won’t be strewn with newspapers, my favorite pair of slippers, and three different books that I am reading at different times of the day.”
“You enjoy reading?”
How to answer that? “I immersed myself in the philosophers as a youth and grew quite convinced of the wisdom of the Stoics. Then I went to war, and came home, and… It’s complicated. I started off reading as a way to replace the wisdom of an absent parent, but now I read as some people enjoy meals. Sustenance for the mind.”
Matilda went directly to the fire and splayed her hands before its warmth. Tremont tugged the bell-pull three times—tray with all the trimmings—and took a moment to behold his guest.
How could the bachelors and widowers of London not see Matilda Merridew’s loveliness? She might hide her physical beauty behind drab colors, dull bonnets, and a quiet manner, but the lady had self-possession, common sense, a kind heart… and those treasures were in plain sight.
“Please do have a seat,” Tremont said, patting the back of a wing chair. “Why don’t you embark on your interrogation of me while we wait for our tea?”
She settled onto the cushions and motioned for him to take the other wing chair. “You want to know about my late husband.”
A question in the form of a statement. Mama and Lydia excelled at that rhetorical device.
“No, actually,” Tremont replied. “I want to know about the state of your affections. Are they available to be claimed by a worthy party, or did your late spouse end once and for all your willingness to look with favor on a fellow?”
“Because,” Matilda replied, gaze on the fire, “if my answer is no, and my affections are not claimable, then you will make no further inquiries. Are you always this logical?”
“’Fraid so, or I aspire to be. I’ve landed in a deal of hot water and created misery for those dear to me by yielding to impulse.”
“As have I,” she said, “and yet, I am not as rational as you seem to be. My father frequently castigated me for impulsiveness.”
“Was Mr. Merridew one of those impulses?”
She smiled at her hands, and Tremont had never seen more sadness in a woman’s eyes.
“Harry was one of my regrettable impulses, not the first, alas. By the time he came along, my father was washing his hands of me, and my aunt was still married to a Puritanical old article. Uncle might have taken me in, but my life would have been difficult.”
The first footman chose then to appear with a lavish tray heaped with comestibles.
“Thank you, Putnam,” Tremont said. “That will be all. Mrs. Merridew, will you pour?”
“Of course.”
Before Putnam blew retreat, he gratuitously poked up the roaring fire, lit two sconces in addition to the two already burning, and tidied decanters on the sideboard that needed no tidying.
“The garrison is on high alert,” Tremont said when Putnam finally quit the parlor. “They spy for my mother and sister, but one cannot resent the family’s concern. Have you no other relatives besides this auntie?”
“None,” Mrs. Merridew replied. “I assume Harry had some family somewhere, but I’d have no idea how to find them, and I am entirely sure I don’t care to. I want to gobble every item on this tray, not only because the food looks delicious, but also because Tommie isn’t on hand to monitor my behavior.”
The tray was the same as a thousand others—sandwiches, cakes, tarts, tea. Tremont put two sandwiches on a plate and passed it over. “Gobble away, and I shall do likewise. Your husband disappointed you.”
Mrs. Merridew poured the tea, added honey and cream to both cups, passed Tremont his serving, and stirred her own.
Delaying tactics by any other name.
“Every spouse is probably a disappointment to their partner before the honeymoon ends,” she said. “We build up our intended to impossible heights, or I did, and then reality intrudes. I disappointed Harry too.”
More delaying, and had the bounder told her she was a disappointment?
“When I mustered out,” Tremont said, “I could not bring myself to return to Shropshire. My mother and sister needed me, as did my tenants and my staff, but I was too muddled to face them. My sister had to eventually fetch me home, and she managed that only because Captain Powell abetted her efforts. My mother and sister have forgiven me my foolishness. I fear Merridew did something beyond forgiveness.”
She sipped her tea, took a bite of sandwich, and took another sip of tea. “Why did you not return home, my lord?”
He deserved that, for bringing up his past. “I told myself that I wasn’t fit company for my family, that I needed time to adjust to civilian life, but, in fact, I was hiding. I had made decisions—those impulsive decisions you allude to—and they haunted me. You might have noticed that I have a talent for rumination. I ruminated myself into a morass of misery from which I could not extricate myself.”
Mrs. Merridew studied him as if he were one of those medieval paintings of fantastical beasts and strange flowers. What could one say about such a piece?
“Did you impulsively choose to marry a complete bounder thinking he was the answer to all your prayers?”
How fortunate for Harry Merridew that he was dead. “I shot my superior officer at point-blank range in front of dozens of witnesses.”
Tremont did not speak of his gross breach of military protocol, civil law, and God’s commandments, and neither did the men who’d seen him fire his pistol.
Mrs. Merridew set down her cup and saucer carefully, and Tremont braced himself to be told that she’d see herself out. That must be some kind of record to put a lady off before she’d finished even a single cup of tea.
“I’m not sorry I told you,” Tremont said. “But you seem to think that marrying Merridew was an unforgivable offense on your part. That is simply not the case. We do the best we can, Mrs. Merridew, and one cannot control the results.”
Her expression remained unreadable, so Tremont blundered on. “My superior officer was ordering us into certain, stupid death on a battlefield where every able-bodied soldier had a contribution to make. He ignored the very clear direction we’d had from headquarters and was willing to sacrifice his men on the altar of military vanity. What I did was wrong, a violation of military decorum, a crime, et cetera and so forth, and yet, I would do it again.”
That speech settled something for Tremont. He’d pondered and considered and ruminated on the events at Waterloo until he was sick of the memory, but he’d never quite admitted to himself that he’d made the only possible choice.
“Your superior officer,” Mrs. Merridew said, “was begging for a bullet, and you are right: From a certain perspective, I needed marrying. There is that.”
A log fell on the andirons, sending a shower of sparks up the flue. In the ensuing quiet, Tremont reviewed Matilda’s words in his head to make sure he had the sense of them.
“I cannot argue with you about Dunacre,” he said slowly, “and the men have kept my confidence as well. Powell knows, as do my mother and sister. The memory troubles me far less than it used to.” And making this confession to Matilda had shoved the whole business even further from the central location in Tremont’s awareness that it had once occupied. “Would you marry the scoundrel again?”
Matilda took her time answering. “Yes, but I would have guarded my heart. I saw Harry as my savior, plucking me from the misery of the vicarage, preventing me from ruining my own good name by escorting me into the ever-respectable bounds of holy matrimony.”
“Harry was escorting himself into possession of your settlement portion.”
She nodded. “He could not get the house—that is my dower house, essentially—but before he died, he was beginning to drop hints that the time had come to sell it. Harry spent every groat he could get his hands on, and the house was the last asset I had left to bequeath to my son.”
Tremont added some jam tarts to the plate that held her sandwiches. “Battle lines were being drawn?”
“Hard for a woman to draw battle lines, my lord, when she has no money of her own, her husband stands nigh half a foot taller than she, and he is willing to use a mere infant as a bargaining chip. Harry used to call me Miss Dauntless, but the name came to feel more like a taunt rather than a fond nickname.”
Tremont made himself ask the next question. He would rather remain in ignorance of the answer, but he did not want Matilda to be alone with the truth.
“Did he beat you?”
“He did not need to.”
While she munched on a sandwich, Tremont silently counted backward from ten in Latin. “Because of the boy.”
“For all your fine manners, you are a discerning man, my lord. I considered taking Tommie and running to my aunt many times after my uncle died, but the authorities would have forced Aunt to hand me and Tommie right back over to Harry.”
If a deserter turned himself in, his punishment was usually to be shipped to the thick of the fighting, or worse, to the tropics, where disease would kill him as surely as any French bayonet could. If he did not turn himself in, he faced death upon capture. Parallels between enlisted military service and marriage began to insinuate themselves into Tremont’s thoughts.
“We get into situations,” he said, “where our choices are among bad and worse options. Did you kill your husband?” Did he hope she had?
“I did not. The notion appealed in the same way that being Queen of England appeals. I had sense enough by then to see that impulsive behavior had landed me in nothing but trouble. I had also begun to develop some weapons of my own. Harry sought desperately to be regarded as respectable, and thus I attended services. The self-same Church of England that had been such a source of frustration in my youth became a means of checking Harry’s worst notions.”
“If you were to pay calls, then your domicile had to have sufficient furnishings that you could receive calls, and so forth. You needed food in the larder, an acceptable wardrobe.”
“Precisely. Harry had pawned every pearl brooch or nacre button I owned by then. If that man had worked half as hard at legitimate ventures as he worked at confidence games and swindles… but he did not, and most of his games came to naught. Everything about him was false, and as his lies piled atop one another, he needed to range farther afield. He was off to Oxford when he died, hatching some scheme to bilk university boys of their allowances.”
Matilda started on the second sandwich. For a woman who longed to gobble, her manners were exquisite.
“Harry was not in London when he died?”
“On the Oxford Road. Food poisoning, if I’m to believe what I was told. A jealous husband is another possibility. The innkeeper made the final arrangements and sent Harry home to me in a plain coffin. I still have the letter condoling me on my loss and requesting payment for expenses incurred. Early in my widowhood, I read that letter several times a day.”
“To make certain that you hadn’t imagined his passing.”
“I dwelled in that peculiar land between a nightmare and waking, the place where you reassure yourself that ‘it was only a dream,’ but your heart is pounding, and you cannot make your mouth form coherent words. Fortunately, I had Tommie, and that child demands constant supervision and regular meals.”
“He’s a wonderful boy. You must be very proud of him. Are you even a little bit proud of yourself? You should be.”
Matilda set aside the empty sandwich plate and took to blinking at the fire. “Damn you.”
Damn you. The only other person in the room was Tremont, and thus she cursed at him. A tear slipped down the curve of her cheek. Making a lady cry had to be at the top of the list of things a fellow did not do when trying to win her favor.
“Mrs. Merridew?” Tremont produced a handkerchief and dangled it before her. “Matilda?”
“I don’t speak of my marriage,” she said, snatching the linen and blotting her eyes. “I don’t mention my late husband. I don’t bring him up… He’s dead, and buried, and gone… and…”
“And he haunts you. Dunacre haunts me.” Tremont rose and went to the sideboard, rummaging about madly for what else he could say. He poured two small portions of brandy and brought a serving to his guest.
“To ward off the chill, and don’t tell me ladies never partake of strong spirits. If you’d ever sipped my mother’s Christmas punch, you’d know that is utter rot.”
Matilda tasted her brandy. “Thank you.”
Tremont resumed his seat and sampled his drink. “For making you cry?”
“For making me talk. About Harry. He was awful. One lives with disappointment, and when Harry strayed—which he regularly did—I was relieved. I wanted no children with that man, but I was his wife, and he treated me like a second pair of boots. Too useful to pawn, but hardly something to show off. He bought me a fine cloak so nobody would know the rest of my wardrobe was falling to pieces.”
“He betrayed his vows, and he betrayed you. I’m sorry. You did not deserve the fate Merridew visited upon you, no matter how high your youthful spirits, no matter how much of a hoyden you might have been. The institution of marriage should have been a refuge and became instead a prison and your husband its warden. That is worth crying over.”
Matilda nosed her brandy, which had to be among the loveliest sights Tremont had ever beheld. She hadn’t let herself indulge in a good fit of the weeps, but her eyes were luminous and her color a bit high.
“You are right, my lord. Harry Merridew was the husband from hell. Everything about him, from his smiles, to his poetry, to his promises of marital bliss, was a lie. My aunt agrees with my assessment of him, but to hear a man pronounce sentence on Harry is a comfort I had not thought to have.”
Why not? “I cannot vouch for my entire gender, but I’m sure Major MacKay and Captain Powell would agree with me. Have you met their cousins? Mrs. Sycamore Dorning and Colonel Sir Orion Goddard are brother and sister, and when MacKay is in town, he and his missus socialize with both.”
“I’ve met the colonel. Wears an eye patch? I know of the Dornings.”
“Half of London does. Lord Casriel and I occasionally collaborate on bills in the Lords. Managing eight siblings must be far more complicated for his lordship than dithering about with Parliament. More tea?”
The snow had settled into steady, businesslike precipitation, while conversation wandered from other mutual acquaintances to matters at the House Without a Name. By the time Tremont was escorting his guest from the parlor, she was again her usual composed self, and he was…
Engaged in another mental flight on the topic of how to woo a lady. Revisiting her worst nightmares was surely not a recommended course, and yet… that trait Tremont had been struggling to recall, that snippet of wisdom he’d picked up somewhere over a campfire or in an officer’s mess, came back to him.
When wooing a lady, a fellow ought to put his best foot forward, of course, but he also ought to remain true to himself. He must never do as Harry Merridew had done and inveigle a woman into falling in love with a lie.
As Tremont saw Mrs. Merridew home and bowed over her hand on her doorstep, he felt a lightness of heart, despite the thickening gloom. Brilliance was beyond him, his wit was ponderous at best, and his gracious hospitality was undoubtedly the work of a conscientious staff.
But Marcus, Earl of Tremont, could be himself. He could most certainly be himself and hope that, for Matilda Merridew, the genuine man was enough.