Matilda had learned to despise the giddy raptures she’d fallen prey to as a younger woman. Harry Merridew had been so handsome, so gallant, so very understanding, and marriage to him would be so perfect!
Gradually, she’d come to see that a girl raised in ignorance of the world’s realities had been easy pickings for such as Harry, and she’d forgiven herself—a little—for her gullibility. A mistake of the same magnitude, though, was unthinkable now that Tommie was on hand, and thus Matilda had mended her ways. No more giddy raptures, unless they were reserved for a fine buttery tea cake or a cup of steaming hot chocolate.
The Earl of Tremont bowed over her gloved hand. “I will bid you good day and thank you for a very enjoyable conversation.”
He’d positioned himself to take the brunt of the frigid wind, and Matilda would have bet her last groat he’d done so without any thought or calculation.
“Was it enjoyable?” she asked. “I try to keep my troubles to myself and even more so my errors.” And yet, to tell share truth—part of the truth, anyway—with somebody who had demons of his own, had been a relief. “You trust me, and…”
“Your confidences will go with me to the grave,” Tremont said, crossing his heart with a gloved finger.
“Likewise.” Matilda trusted Tremont to keep his word. That in itself was some sort of miracle. She liked some men—Vicar Delancey was a good sort, his son, Michael, was honorable if a bit too serious, and Alasdhair MacKay was a gentleman to his bones.
But she trusted Tremont, and she liked him.
A sleigh went by, harness bells jingling until they faded into the wintry quiet.
“I ought to be going.” And yet, Matilda remained on the stoop, her hand in Tremont’s. She wasn’t giddy or rapturous, but she was… interested? Pleased? Something. “I have become so careful, so cautious and circumspect.”
“Hence,” Tremont replied, “the question becomes, do you trust yourself? When I came home from the Continent, I fell into an agony of self-doubt. I had crossed a line at Waterloo, and I did not trust that I could uncross it. I had never thought of myself as a rule breaker or a man who subverted authority, except that I was.”
His lordship would wait for her to retreat into the house until the moon rose, and Matilda did not want to discommode him. She considered their joined hands, and she turned his words over in her mind.
“What you say is true. I was overly trusting of the world and other people, and now I am under-ly trusting of myself. What sort of fool gets herself into a situation where marrying a confidence trickster looks like the answer to her prayers? I want to blame my folly entirely on Harry, but I can’t.”
“He’s dead,” Tremont said, smiling slightly in the gloom. “Blaming him works marvelously because he’s not here to defend himself. Given my sentiments toward the man, that is rather a good thing. I don’t approve of violence in the normal course, and I grow positively pedantic about the stupidity of dueling—from wretched experience, let it be said. For Harry Merridew, I might once again prove that I am capable of breaking my own rules.”
“I’m about to break one of my rules, my lord.”
Despite that warning, Tremont remained calmly gazing down at her as the snowflakes danced onto his shoulders and the wind soughed around the corner of the house.
Matilda braced herself with a hand on Tremont’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. She lingered near for a moment, catching a whiff of jasmine and green grass—a delicate fragrance for such a substantial man.
In Matilda’s lexicon of broken rules, that kiss should barely qualify. Tremont’s cheek was cool and a little rough, and he remained unbending in response.
“That kiss was not for my rapier wit or devilish charm, was it?” he asked.
“Nor for your sparkling repartee, my lord, and while I find you more than passingly handsome, I did not kiss you because I was overcome with animal spirits.” That Tremont had inspired Matilda to even acknowledge animal spirits aloud was another marvel.
He took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “Please do tell me what inspired your display so I might earn a similar reward under circumstances where I’m in a better position to reciprocate.”
Matilda took courage from that speech. Tremont resorted to rhetoric when emotion threatened his reserve.
“You listen to me,” she said. “You talk with me, not at me. When you invite me in for tea and conversation, that is precisely what you have in mind. Discussion with you does not mean gossip about others or platitudes about the weather. You are the opposite of a confidence trickster.”
Tremont put his hat back on, and Matilda resettled it on his head at a slight angle.
“Into the house with you,” he said. “Much more of your flattery, and my hat will no longer fit.”
And yet, he had once again taken her hand.
Between one chilly sweep of the wind and the next, Matilda realized that his lordship was asking her a question. He was skilled with high-flown discourse, and he also knew how to use a silence.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “If you were to kiss me back, I would be pleased. Disconcerted, bewildered, and a bit unnerved, but pleased.”
“Then I must choose my moment carefully, such that the pleasure is sufficient to overcome your misgivings. Parting on a frigid stoop is not, alas for me, such a moment. You have set me a challenge, Mrs. Merridew, and I relish a challenge.”
“Matilda.”
His smile was sweet and a little devilish. “Marcus.”
They goggled at each other for a moment—not quite fatuously—before Tremont unlatched the door. Matilda slipped into the house and watched his lordship march off into the shadows.
The house smelled good, of conscientious cleaning and a roast in the oven. The foyer wasn’t warm, but it was a welcome respite from the elements. From the library came the strains of a fiddle lilting along in triple meter.
Home, at least for now. Matilda took off her cloak, scarf, and bonnet and reviewed the afternoon’s events. She looked for the trap, for the clue that Lord Tremont wasn’t who and what he appeared to be, and she found no such indications.
She looked for the mistake—kissing Tremont had been the next thing to an impulse—and impulses led to painful consequences. What she’d gained had been a sweet moment and a promise of more sweet moments.
Matilda was listening to Tommie’s voluble description of Jensen’s offer to take him to the lending library when she finally found a label for what was so attractive about Marcus, Earl of Tremont.
He was simply honorable. A younger Matilda would have found him unremarkable—once she’d stopped admiring his fine tailoring, broad shoulders, and exquisite manners—but the older and wiser lady knew him to be a rare gem.
He was kind and honest, and he was planning to kiss her at some opportune moment, and that made Matilda more happy than worried. Perhaps she was truly accepting the reality of Harry’s death after all this time, and that was a very, very good thing.
Tremont lasted exactly one week before he was back at the soldiers’ home, though seven days and nights of pondering and cogitating and wondering had brought him no closer to understanding how he ought to next approach Matilda.
So here he sat in the kitchen, without a plan or a clue, and without catching sight of his quarry either.
“Mrs. Merridew knows things, my lord,” Mrs. Winklebleck said, taking a loud slurp of her tea. “Magic potions to stop a stain from setting, boot polish that don’t stink of lard. She says I can learn all that from books, but I’ve already learned a power of tricks from her, and she’s been here only a fortnight.”
Tremont had come in the back hallway door, as was his wont when he’d cut through the garden. Mrs. Winklebleck and Cook were enjoying a cup of tea at the kitchen worktable—as seemed to be their wont at any given hour—and Mrs. Winklebleck had poured him a cup before Tremont had stomped the snow from his boots.
Mrs. Merridew did, indeed, know things, such as how to muddle a man for days on end with a simple gesture of affection.
“Missus can cook too,” Cook said in her thick burr. “Has ideas, about spices and sauces. Wants the table set just so, but she’s no’ fussy.”
“Puttin’ the manners on the lads, she is,” Mrs. Winklebleck said. “They’ll never be choirboys, but they are tryin’.”
“Choirboys in my experience are a rowdy lot.” While earls, with proper provocation, could apparently be a randy lot. Tremont had largely ignored his animal spirits in Spain, there having been a war on and few opportunities for frolicking—not that he was the frolicking sort. When he’d returned to England, keeping body and soul together had left nothing in reserve for masculine mischief, but now…
Matilda had kissed him, and his imagination had gone rampaging off in all manner of earthy directions.
Cook gave Tremont a sidewise appraisal. “You’d know more about being a choirboy than we would, milord.”
Her reproof was mostly for form’s sake. Earls did not take tea with the staff belowstairs, but Mrs. Winklebleck had poured him a cup, and the rudeness of a refusal was beyond him. He’d known her when she was Big Nan, a pillar of the streetwalking community.
And yes, much to his fascination, there was such a thing as the streetwalking community, and it did have impressive pillars. So, too, did the newsboy community, the housebreakers’ community, and the crossing sweepers’ community boast of pillars—real pillars, of moral and physical invincibility, not mere snobs claiming a fine ear for gossip while sparing the poor box mere pennies for show.
More to the point, Nan had known Tremont when he’d been eking out a living as a scribe and reader in the pubs of St. Giles. He’d been no sort of pillar at all, but he’d learned a thing or two.
“Have we thought of a name for this place?” he asked. And where was the wonderful Mrs. Merridew at that moment?
Nan took another slurp of her tea. “Missus says the lads have to decide because it’s their ’ouse. House, rather. We’ll be living at My Weary Arse if that lot gets their way.”
“The Home for Useless Reprobates,” Cook muttered. “They do appreciate a good meal, though.”
The ultimate test of discernment in Cook’s eyes. “How’s MacIvey working out?”
A look passed between Nan and Cook.
“He’ll do,” Cook said. “Hard worker, that ’un.”
“MacPherson’s jealous,” Nan said. “Missus wants to show him how to keep the books, but she hasn’t got ’round to it, what with the shoveling and all.”
Tremont set down his teacup. “If Mrs. Merridew is having to wield a snow shovel when this house is full of able-bodied men—”
“Listen to ye,” Cook said. “Cluckin’ like the king of the coop. She sent the men ’round to shovel snow for some old Puritan from the kirk, and the Puritan paid the lads and sent them on to her Puritan friends, and you never seen such a lot of grown men assuring each other that more snow was on the way. The lad Charles says they all shoulda been crossing sweepers, so skilled are they with their shovels.”
“So Mrs. Merridew has the men shoveling snow for hire. Enterprising of her.” What else had she found to do in the past week? Tremont had accomplished appallingly little, all because of a certain kiss from a certain lady on a certain chilly front porch.
He should have kissed her back then and there.
He should have brought her flowers the next day.
He should have sent her flowers along with a witty note, but how did wit apply to the sweetest, most luscious, unexpected…?
Or perhaps the correct course was to invite her over for more tea and conversation, because she seemed to think that had gone well.
He should have sent her a smarmy poem copied in his own hand.
But no. Those were the hackneyed maneuvers of a fatuous swain, and Matilda deserved a more impressive response to her kiss.
“He used to do this,” Nan was saying, “in St. Giles. Stare off into space as if the fairies stole his wits. War can leave a man dicked in the nob.”
“War did not impair my hearing, madam. I am preoccupied is all. Mrs. Merridew can leave us at the end of the month if she pleases to. I am here to ensure she’s not of that mind.”
Nan gave him a pitying look. “You’re smitten. No shame in it, milord. Missus don’t flaunt her wares, but she does make an impression.”
“Was married once meself,” Cook said. “Settled me doon, ye might say. The handsome laddies aren’t so charmin’ when they wake up with a sore head on Sunday. Missus knows about more than just how to make boot black or cook up a bully-base.”
“That’s French,” Nan said, shifting her bulk on her chair. “Fish stew with spices and whatnot.”
Where had Matilda Merridew learned to make bouillabaisse? Where was Matilda, for that matter?
“What else does Missus know about?” Tremont asked.
“Men with sore heads, would be my guess,” Cook said. “She don’t suffer fools, that one, and the lads know it. Dantry tried to give her some sass, and she just give him the ‘you-should-be-ashamed-a-yersel’ eye. Davis kicked him under the table, and that be that.”
“A woman learns the hard way that she can’t bluff,” Nan said, pouring herself another cup. “Missus would have drummed Dantry out o’ the regiment if he’d kept it up. Coulda heard a snowflake hit the winda, got so quiet.”
Dantry was one to test authority. Tremont should have expected that. “I’ll have a word with Dantry,” he said, rising. “Insubordination and disrespect—”
Matilda marched into the kitchen, her plain beige dress covered by a spotless full-length apron. “You will do no such thing, my lord. Mr. Dantry and I understand each other quite well, and if you take him to task, he will sulk. Good day.” She bounced a curtsey at Tremont. “Ladies, I must steal his lordship from you, though I’m sure you are anxious to get back to your duties.”
Nan finished her whole cup of tea at once. “That, I am. The rugs don’t beat themselves, I always say.”
“Nor does the goose pluck itsel’,” Cook said, pushing to her feet and following Nan to the back hallway. “No rest for the wicked.”
They bustled out the back door like a pair of naughty schoolgirls, leaving Tremont to face a woman who was apparently not at all glad to see him.
“Is something amiss?” Lord Tremont asked, his tone perfectly polite.
“You must not abet them,” Matilda said, trying without success to undo the bow at the back of her apron. “Cook likes to cook, but there’s much more to running a kitchen than preparing the food. One must tidy up—regularly and well. The larders must be inventoried, lest half the day be spent in last-minute trips to market. The regular marketing must be undertaken early in the day before the best produce has been picked over. One must find new recipes, or the menus never change. Silver wants polishing… Drat this apron!”
Tremont circled behind her. “Allow me.”
Matilda stood still while his lordship plucked at the ties of her apron. She flinched when he gave the bow a hard tug, and then he was facing her again.
“Shall I cut the blasted thing off you?”
“Please do not. This is my only good apron. I was in a hurry this morning, and I tied it too tightly.”
Tremont regarded her. “And why were you in a hurry?”
“Because Jessup and Jensen were squabbling outside my apartment door, and Nan’s reaction was to offer to hold the men’s bets. That provoked the combatants to greater flights of vituperation, and then MacIvey and MacPherson came along, and MacIvey put Tommie on his shoulders so Tommie had a better view of the argument as the inevitable crowd formed. I did not know whether to chastise Nan, the maids, MacIvey, or the lot of them at once. That altercation began the day on the wrong foot. Then I find Nan and Cook enjoying one of their eight daily pots of tea, again, when the washing has long since been dry on the lines and is just begging to be rained upon.”
A beat of silence followed that tirade, then Tremont circled around behind her again. “The new officer is always subjected to a few tests of authority. Hold still.”
For Matilda to merely wait while a man, unseen, fussed with her clothing was unaccountably unnerving. A few more tugs and a good hard pull, and the knot was undone.
“How did you resolve the altercation?” Tremont asked as Matilda extricated herself from her apron.
“I sent Jessup and Jensen to neutral corners—one to inventory the linen, the other to canvass the attics. You have furniture up there, furniture the men might refurbish and sell. Amos Tucker apparently knows how that’s done. He apprenticed to a cabinetmaker before the war. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Tremont’s perusal had taken on a considering look, as if he might be doubting the wisdom of hiring a widow to manage a lot of hooligans and streetwalkers.
“We were to review the books today,” he said. “I suggest we undertake that task at my house. You could do with some fresh air and a ramble, while I… I think better when I walk, and the situation here wants some thought. I didn’t know Tucker was a cabinetmaker.”
“He’s not. He was recruited just six months shy of finishing his articles. His old master died while Tucker was off soldiering, and Tucker isn’t about to start the whole seven years over in another shop, assuming one would take him on.”
“If you come home with me, I will order us a three-bell tea tray, and you can gobble up tarts to your heart’s content. Where’s Tommie?”
The notion of sitting down before a full tray, enjoying a cup of hot tea, and getting away from the house was all too appealing.
“Tommie is in the attic, chaperoning Jensen while she and Tucker argue over furniture.”
“He’s making a fort with Holland covers, old barrels, and discarded rugs and having the time of his life. Come have tea with me, and we can spat and scrap over the ledgers, shall we?”
“I don’t want to spat and scrap,” Matilda began, and Tremont smiled at her. Not the smug, self-satisfied smiles Harry used to toss her way when he’d argued her into a corner, but a purely understanding, good-humored smile of commiseration.
“What do you want?” he asked.
What Matilda wanted astonished her. A hug—from Tremont. A little embrace in the middle of the day to fortify her against petty vexations. Some affection to remind her that life was full of small pleasures and that a moment could turn sweet without warning.
She’d learned with Harry not to initiate such moments, lest they turn unsweet—for her.
“I want to gobble your tea cakes, my lord. Let me fetch my ledgers, and I’ll meet you by the front door.”
“I will retrieve the ledgers from the library. You might want to look in on Tommie and tell him you’re going out. Remind him that spies like to come and go through the postern gate.”
“How do you do that?” Matilda asked, starting for the stairs to the first floor. “You are the epitome of organization and self-possession, but then you offer proof that your imagination is capable of flights, even as you look all dapper and adult.”
Tremont followed her up the steps, as a gentleman was supposed to. “I am sadly lacking in imagination, or happily unbothered by fancies, but I do recall my childhood. Like Tommie, I had few playmates, and like Tommie, I dwelled in a sizable domicile full of people larger than I. A boy finds ways to pass the time.”
His lordship had conceived of this house, of the landscaping venture, of a means of earning a living in the slums, and yet, he considered himself lacking in imagination.
Matilda paused at the top of the steps. “What spies came in through your postern gate, my lord?”
He gave the same smile—all sweet reason—but a little sadder. “Responsibility, duty, familial obligations, patriotism, and myriad dull pursuits attendant to adulthood. To the parapets with you, Mrs. Merridew, and I will meet you by the front door.”
Tommie informed Matilda from beneath a construction of blankets that pirates were swarming up the beach, and she’d best get to safety as soon as she could. As she came back down the steps, she realized that even a short exchange with Tremont had improved her spirits.
That he would drape her cloak about her shoulders, hand her her gloves, and hold the door for her made the day inexplicably better.
That he’d listen while she ranted about domestic annoyances, not argue with her, offer remedies for a moment long past, or chide her for being annoyed made the afternoon nearly lovely.
“You were right,” she said as Tremont offered his arm at the foot of the terrace steps.
“About?”
“I am the new officer, and my authority will be tested. Squabbling maids, wagering men, and lazy senior staff aren’t the end of the world. They are normal signs of a household adjusting to change, even change for the better.”
“And yet, those small tests are exasperating,” he said. “One wants to simply get on with the job, not waste time and effort insisting on the obvious. The tests will become less frequent, though they never entirely stop. The military appeals to those who take a certain comfort from arbitrary order and pointless routine. Those same individuals apparently feel compelled to ensure that the order and routine will survive minor insurrections. The whole business is set up to function in combat, but so little time is actually spent in combat that the reasons and the realities can drift out of sight from one another.”
They approached the intersection that had belonged to Charles, and of course, another grubby, skinny boy was at the ready with his shovel and barrow.
“Your name, lad,” Tremont asked, tossing the boy a coin.
“Patrick. You’re Tremont. Charles said you’re a good ’un.”
“I am pleased to have his endorsement. If you’re ever in the mood to pay him a call and pass the time, he’s at the big house with all the soldiers down the street and ’round the corner. The door will always be open to you, and I trust you’ll keep watch on the surrounds for us.”
Patrick saluted with his broom. “Aye, milord. I allus keep a sharp eye. Missus.” Patrick offered Matilda a jaunty bow and then trotted off toward a steaming pile of horse droppings.
“I meant to inquire after Charles,” Tremont said. “I suppose he would have decamped for his home shires by now if he meant to.”
“He’s a hard worker, and his greatest worry is that his auntie will come along and snatch him away from us. His second-greatest worry is that she will forget about him entirely.”
“For the boy’s sake, perhaps that would be best. May I ask you a question?”
The day was brisk enough that nobody was tarrying on the walks, and yet, the sun was out, and Matilda was very much enjoying the fresh air.
“Ask, my lord.”
“You did not care to have me standing behind you when I was unknotting your apron. I didn’t imagine that, did I?”
With Harry, Matilda had learned to lie of necessity, though she used that option sparingly and only when she knew she could carry off the deception. With Tremont, lies simply would not do.
“I learned to keep Harry in sight at all times.”
“The better to guard against presumptions upon your person?”
Tremont posed his question dispassionately, which made answering him easier. “Not particularly that. I learned that if I simply acquiesced to Harry’s overtures, he soon lost interest. He married me for my money and my respectability. Part of him enjoyed exercising his marital rights with me—he liked the idea of a vicar’s daughter disporting with a rascal—but another part of him could not handle being passively tolerated as a lover. Toward the end, he left me alone.”
Tremont’s town house came into sight, though Matilda could have done with more walking and more talking. The past was easier to discuss when she and Tremont weren’t facing each other over a teapot.
“Did you miss Merridew’s attentions when he withheld them?”
That question, too, was posed without any particular weight. “No. Not in the least. On my worst, most bleak and hungry days, I am still glad to no longer be married to that man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What have you to be sorry for?”
“I’m sorry, Matilda, that even in the most basic comforts the married state is intended to confer, your husband failed you. That doesn’t explain why you had to keep him in sight at all times.”
No, it didn’t. Matilda gave the matter some thought. “He didn’t strike me.”
“We have established that he did not need to strike you when he could instead threaten to send your child to a baby farm or foundling home.”
And that observation was offered with exquisite dispassion.
Matilda resigned herself to sharing another sordid truth about her past. “Harry stole things. From me, from Tommie. Aunt Portia somehow put together the coin to gift Tommie with a silver rattle. He loved it. He shook that thing by the hour, fascinated with the sound, with how sunlight gleamed on the surface. Harry pawned it or sold it. He pawned my best boots to buy me a fancy cloak, as if people wouldn’t notice my worn boots because fancy hems were draped over my frigid toes. My little trousseau—a tea service, some linen, bride clothes, and so forth—didn’t last a year.”
“And let me guess,” Tremont said, escorting Matilda up the steps to his town house. “When you asked your husband if he’d seen the rattle, he turned an innocent expression on you, or—if he was vexed by some detail of the day that had nothing to do with you—he’d chide you for not taking better care of your son’s toys. Merridew would ask you where your good boots were and then mutter that clearly you could not be trusted with any item of value. For a long, desperate moment, you’d wonder if he was right and if you were losing your wits.”
Tremont held the door for her, and Matilda passed into the quiet and warmth of his home. “That’s it exactly. I began to doubt the evidence of my own eyes, and keeping a vigilant watch over Harry became necessary, though by then, I had nothing left to steal. He had shaken me from my passive tolerance, though, and that was likely his objective.”
Tremont set aside the ledger he’d carried and unwrapped the scarf Matilda wore instead of a bonnet.
“And still,” he said, undoing her frogs, “you watched Merridew, because by the smallest shifts of expression, by the look in his eyes and the tilt of his head, you learned to know the sewer that passed for his mind. It’s a blessing all around that your husband no longer draws breath. Were I to meet him, I might have a relapse of violent impulses, and I am a dead shot.”
“You aren’t boasting.” Did Tremont ever boast? Matilda turned so his lordship could lift her cloak from her shoulders.
“I was told my father was a dead shot, and I felt it incumbent upon me to uphold his tradition. I later learned that he was only a good shot, and only with long guns, but because he’d been the earl, and he’d gone to his reward, his skills were embellished by fond remembrance. Others idealized him in memory, just as I did. Papa couldn’t manage a pistol to save himself, but my own skills extend to every sort of firearm.”
“Because when you set your mind to a thing, you never give up.”
“Because,” Tremont said, passing her his hat, “when practice is all that stands between me and an objective, even I can generally achieve the possible. Brilliance has been denied me, but persistence is my consolation.”
He spoke as if reviewing lecture notes. Tremont wasn’t lamenting a lack of mental agility, nor was he insulting himself. He merely reported what he believed to be true.
“Have you made a study of kissing, my lord?”
He paused in the act of hanging up his own cloak. “I beg your pardon?”
“Kissing.” Matilda audibly kissed the air. “Because if you bring to that endeavor the same focus you turned on your marksmanship, I must ask that we postpone our examination of the ledgers.”
The words surprised her. That was the old Matilda talking, the Matilda who’d disgraced herself and her father, who’d seen Harry Merridew’s glib charm as a suit of shining armor. The Matilda who’d yielded to impulse at the expense of common sense and decorum.
The Matilda who had caused so much trouble was stirring back to life, and she had apparently caught Tremont’s attention. He was smiling again, and this smile would have done justice to the most buccaneering pirate ever to storm a seaside castle.