Matilda had never once indicated that her husband was a strikingly handsome man. Harry was not quite in the same league with Michael Delancey, but his looks were attractive in a way Delancey’s perfection was not. Harry’s smile had a quality of conspiratorial charm. His air was friendly and unassuming.
Dear old Harry, come to pull off another swindle.
A young, pregnant Matilda would have thought him quite the gallant knight, though she was clearly unimpressed now.
“I am Matilda’s husband,” Harry said as Tremont latched the door, “and I have much to answer for in that regard, but that is between me and Matilda.”
“No, Harry, it is not,” Matilda said, motioning for Tremont to take the place beside her. “You never consider the repercussions of your schemes beyond how much risk or reward is involved for you, but this time you have gone too far.”
“Matilda, I was left for dead on the king’s highway.” Harry’s version of injured dignity could have rivaled the late Mr. Garrick’s. “I was friendless and bleeding without a coin to my name. You know how twitchy I get without a few coppers in my pocket. I mucked stalls to put bread in my mouth, suffered terrible headaches—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Merridew, spare us your histrionics.”
Harry sent a look of noble long-suffering across the table. “I go by Merriman now.”
“You go by whatever name suits your current criminal scheme,” Tremont retorted, “but you neglected to change your handwriting when you changed your name.” Tremont withdrew two documents from his satchel. “This is the cordial invitation you penned, inviting Mrs. Merridew to this meeting.”
Tremont lay a single page of foolscap faceup on the table. “This,” he went on, laying a second, yellowing page next to it, “is supposedly from the Hungry Hound’s innkeeper, informing Mrs. Merridew of your death and asking her to remit a sum certain for the expenses resulting from her bereavement.”
Harry studied both missives and had the sense to keep his lying gob shut for a change.
“Matilda sent you the money,” Tremont said, returning the letters to his briefcase. “The penmanship is the same, despite the documents having been written years apart. You even make the same flourish beneath your signature, no matter which name you choose to use.”
Harry sat back, not a hint of charm in his countenance. “Coincidence, my lord. Not proof, and if Matilda is such a penmanship expert now, why didn’t she recognize my handwriting when I supposedly wrote to her from the Hungry Hound?”
Matilda studied the ceiling. “Because I was too busy wondering how I’d pay for your funeral and Tommie’s next meal? Because it never occurred to me that my husband would swindle me out of the bed and board he owes me by law until death us do part? Because I do not have a criminal mind?”
“You’re still a prodigious scold, Til.”
“The fine Christian woman,” Tremont said, “who took care of your supposed funerary expenses—Mrs. Brent of Worthy Street—is a madam of considerable renown among Oxford’s randy scholars. There is no Hungry Hound, unless I behold him at this moment, and if you ever were in Ireland, you were driven from those shores because some scheme—some other scheme—went badly awry.”
“My lord eavesdropped on the private conversation between a man and his wife?”
Matilda snorted. “Tremont, at my request, knew better than to allow you any unwitnessed discourse with me, Harry. We set you up, and you waltzed into the snare, spewing predictable lies and offering not a word of apology.”
She rose, bracing her hands on the table and looming over her husband. “You left me alone, barely a coin in the house, with a small child to raise. I don’t care that you stole from me. I married you, and the cost of some mistakes never ends. I care very much that you turned your back on Tommie, when I married you solely for his sake. You broke your word to me, Harry, and for that, I will not forgive you.”
Harry’s bravado faltered, and he had the grace to look abashed. “I do stupid things when I’m desperate, Tilly. You of all people know that. I hate to be desperate. But I just can’t seem… I thought maybe I’d go to America. They have land for the asking there, opportunity, a chance to start fresh, but I can’t start fresh if I’m penniless.”
America was a desperate measure indeed. Harry would have no old chums in the New World to turn to in a bad moment, no familiar bolt-holes, and his assortment of British regional accents would do him little good.
“You can have that fresh start, Harry,” Matilda said. “All you have to do is divorce me.”
Harry looked honestly puzzled. “Folk like us don’t get divorced, Till. That’s for the prancing lords and…” The puzzlement faded. “I see. And if I am unwilling to divorce you for his lordship’s convenience, would you rather be his fancy piece than my wife? You do so value your respectability.”
Matilda patted Harry’s hand. “I’d rather be Tremont’s anything than your wife. His scullery maid, his fancy piece, his undergardener. Tremont treats everyone with honor and respect, while you regard other people as so many marks for you to bamboozle.”
Harry winced. “You never used to be so harsh, Till. I work with what’s on hand, same as any man who has to earn his keep.” He rubbed his chin and sent Tremont an assessing look. “His nibs could kill me in a duel. It’s been done, to escape creditors, to dodge a nagging wife. Says he’s a dead shot, so folks would believe he’d done away with me.”
Of all the schemes Harry could have concocted… “No,” Tremont said. “For reasons which Mrs. Merridew will understand, I refuse to commit murder, or its theatrical equivalent. Besides, you have a tiresome propensity to rise from the dead. The simple, legal, effective solution to your problems, sir, is to divorce Matilda. You will be awarded handsome damages in the criminal conversation case. You can start afresh, and so can she.”
“How handsome?”
Tremont named a figure which was not at the limit of what he could afford, but which would set him back more than a few years.
Harry gave a low whistle. “His lordship must love you, Till, and I’m all for aiding the course of true love, but in this case, I simply can’t.”
Matilda crossed her arms. “You won’t. I know you are ruthless, Harry, and endlessly self-interested, but I never thought you were gratuitously mean. You worship the twin gods of Mammon and your own dunderheaded cleverness, so why won’t you just once—after having wronged me repeatedly—give me what I want?”
Harry shot his cuffs. He rubbed his chin again, and Tremont knew exactly why the blighter was stalling.
“He cannot, Matilda, because it’s worth his life to keep his name out of the papers. Every person he’s swindled, every debt he’s run out on, every friend he’s double-crossed will recognize him as the supposedly dead husband of Matilda Merridew and come for him with pitchforks and warrants. I should have seen this. A man who will cheat his blameless wife will cheat half the realm, given the opportunity.”
“It weren’t like that,” Harry said, a note of some dialect creeping past his public school diction. “Tilly was miserable with me. Hated every minute of being my wife, and I knew the Puritans at St. Mildred’s would look out for her and the boy. I left the rent paid up and the larder stocked. The Puritans lent Tilly a hand, and now you want to look out for her too. She’s already said she didn’t miss me, so you can sod your sanctimonious—”
Tremont did not plan to snatch Harry up by his cravat and yank him to his feet, but one minute Harry was clothing himself in a martyr’s robes, and the next he was clawing at Tremont’s wrists.
“Cease. Lying.” Tremont shook Harry once, to emphasize the point, and let him go.
“He’s not lying,” Matilda said, “not entirely. That’s part of Harry’s arsenal. He dribbles a little bit of the truth into all of his dissembling. I was utterly miserable married to him—though the rent was coming due and the larders empty—and now I’m apparently to pay for his sins as well as my own stupidity. Pay with the rest of my life.”
“Sorry, Till.” Harry ran a finger around his collar. “I’d like to get my hands on that money, but more than the money, I’d like to live to keep my handsome body and tarnished soul together. I can’t have my name in the papers, and that’s the whole truth. You could come to America with me. I’m sure his lordship would fund your passage if you asked him to.”
The man was either very foolish or very brave. Perhaps both.
“Be quiet, Harry,” Matilda said wearily. “Your stupid, selfish schemes nearly turned me into a streetwalker. Your dear friends condoled me with one breath and propositioned me with the next. Tremont offers me an honorable suit, but I can’t… I am so angry with you right now that those creditors and betrayed friends may not be the worst danger you face.”
Harry was quiet for a moment. “You aren’t violent,” he said. “I spotted that right off. You disdained your pa for raising his hand to you, and… I noticed that. You won’t kill me to clear your path to the altar, Till, and his lordship won’t either. You could pretend to die, maybe wait a year, use some henna, and study up on a Yorkshire accent. That one’s easy—”
“Hush,” Tremont said, when he wanted to bellow profanities. “Matilda is in an untenable situation because of your damned schemes and lies. We won’t solve the situation with more falsehoods and farce.”
“Harry Merridew is dead,” Harry said evenly, “and that suits me well enough. With a bit more coin, I can book passage from Bristol to Philadelphia, and then my situation will be as tenable as I need it to be. Give me the money, Tilly—sell the house, charm the blunt off his lordship—and I will leave you and the boy in peace. That’s the best I can do, and you know that’s more decent than I usually bother to be.”
Matilda gazed at him the same way the Almighty must have looked upon Lucifer after the war in heaven.
“You will leave me in peace,” she said, “until you need more coin. Then you will come back around, having escaped hanging in Pennsylvania, New York, and probably New Jersey for good measure. You will wreck my life at regular intervals, my very own remittance husband, and if I balk at your demands, you will threaten to take Tommie with you. I know you, Harry. You have better angels, but they gave up the fight years ago.”
Drees chose then to rap on the door. “Are we all through conferring? Glover, are you in there? Not the done thing to leave my client without the benefit of counsel.” He let himself in while a boy with a tea tray hovered behind him.
“I’ll just be going,” Harry said, pulling on his gloves. “The lady has heard my offer, and she’s said what she has to say.” He tapped his hat onto his head and nodded to Tremont.
“We are finished for now,” Matilda replied. “You will hear from me, Mr. Merry… I beg your pardon. I forget the name.”
“Easy to do with passing acquaintances.” Harry bowed to her and moved to the door, then paused with his hand on the latch, his expression distant and dignified. “I wasn’t always like this. Believe that if you believe nothing else about me, ma’am. Good day and best of luck.”
Tremont escorted Matilda back to the waiting coach, then took the place beside her on the forward-facing bench. He rapped once on the roof, and the coach rolled forward at the walk.
“I do not care for reconnaissance missions,” Matilda muttered, “if that one was representative. Harry has aged, but he has not changed his spots. If anything, he’s grown harder over the years. What did we learn, Marcus, besides the fact that we can never marry?”
“We learned that Harry Merridew-man-whatever values his life more than he values coin. We learned that his back is to the wall, probably as a result of whatever happened in Ireland. He cheated somebody in a position to press charges, or he’d never willingly take ship for America. We learned that his enemies are legion.”
They had also learned that, by his own peculiar lights, Harry had made an effort to deal fairly—if not honorably—with Matilda and Tommie.
“Oh, very well, then. We learned all manner of interesting things,” Matilda said, removing her bonnet, “but, Marcus, what are we to do?”
He put an arm around her shoulders and scoured his memory for some fortifying wisdom courtesy of the philosophers, the Bard, or poets. A protracted search confirmed that they were as inadequate to the occasion as Tremont felt, so he simply gave Matilda the truth.
“I don’t know what to do, Matilda, but I am certain that I love you.”
“And I love you.”
Matilda had stashed all of her first pay packet into the same bank account that held her meager savings. She retrieved the whole of her means when she ought to have been taking her final turn in the MacKay nursery.
She would miss little John and his parents.
She would miss the men, the maids, and dear Nan, who was trying hard to remember her haitches.
She would miss stinky, crowded, bustling London, some.
She would miss the parishioners of St. Mildred’s, who in their way had been kind to her when she’d desperately needed kindness.
And she would miss Marcus for the rest of her days.
“I know that walk, Tilly, me love,” Harry said, falling in step beside her. “You are in a temper.”
“If I hadn’t been before, I certainly am now. Do you know, Harry, I have you to thank for showing me that I even possessed a temper?”
“Happy to oblige, that’s me. When will you sign over the house to me?”
They waited on a corner while a stately four-in-hand negotiated the intersection. Charles’s replacement waited as well, because the delay was caused by a horse unwilling to heed nature’s call at any pace faster than a plod.
“I will sign the house over to you when all the seas gang dry, and rocks melt with the sun.”
“Burns,” Harry said. “’My love is like a red, red rose.’ Sentimental drivel, but he was apparently right popular with the ladies. I need that house, Tilly.”
“The lament does not improve for repetition, Harry. If you worked half as hard at legitimate employment as you work at avoiding it, you would be a wealthy man.”
Matilda knew better than to pick up the pace, because Harry, being half a foot taller than she, would keep up easily. She called on old skills, skills learned early in her marriage, to separate her mind from the rage in her heart, while she examined whether the encounter could be put to any use.
“I can make trouble, Tilly,” Harry said, ever so pleasantly. “I don’t like to make trouble—I like to turn a coin or two and be on my way—but I can make very bad trouble.”
“Why, Harry, I do believe you are threatening your own lawfully wedded wife. This follows inevitably upon denial of your purportedly reasonable requests, which are, in truth, the demands of a whiny boy. Next will come blustering, then a silence that is also intended to be threatening, but is, in fact, tedious. When I do not relent, you will do a bunk, to use the vernacular, and I am supposed to worry about my errant husband. What your schemes lack in originality, they make up for in predictability.”
Harry offered his arm as Matilda stepped off the walkway. She ignored a courtesy that was entirely for show.
“Tilly, you wound me.” Something in Harry’s tone suggested he’d just parted with one of his rare, judiciously dispensed truths.
“You filleted me like a mackerel, sir, financially and emotionally, and I have yet to hear an apology.”
They passed the tea shop where Matilda had spent some pleasant hours. She would miss that, too, as would Tommie, no doubt.
“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?” The odd, honest note remained, not remorse, but perhaps bewilderment.
“You are always sorry. I have wondered, if anybody has ever been proud of you, or of their association with you.”
Matilda was tempted to continue spewing bile, but she’d made her point. She kept her peace, wondering if Harry had followed her to the bank. He would—he was that determined and that canny.
And some other day, some day when she and Tommie were far, far away and the ache in her heart had faded to a mere agony, she’d again indulge in tears. Since weeping on Marcus’s shoulder two days ago, Matilda had clung to reason with ruthless devotion.
Marcus had been closeted with his solicitors, though Matilda well knew what the result of those conferences would be. The situation occasioned by Harry’s rise from the dead had a solution. It did not have a happily ever after, not for her and Marcus. Harry was just being Harry—conscienceless and self-interested to a staggering degree—but he was Matilda’s husband.
“Did you for even one moment think of leaving me and Tommie in peace, Harry?”
“Yes. I left you in peace for several years, but I am tired, Tilly. I am tired of British laws, British snobbery, and British hypocrisy. I mean to go to the New World and take my chances in a new land. If you cannot see your way clear to deed the house to me, then I will simply take Tommie and leave you to your honorable earl. You can have all the peace you please.”
And there it was, Harry’s heavy artillery, fired with what sounded like genuine remorse.
“Your name does not appear on the birth registry, Harry. You dealt yourself out of an honor I would have willingly granted you. You are not Tommie’s father in any sense.”
“Happens I am. I have consulted the lawyers, and they say it’s not even a question. You were married to me when the lad was born, I have not repudiated him, and thus the honor of his paternity is entirely mine.”
Harry could put on and take off accents like a trained actor. Matilda had heard him glide from Cockney to Yorkshire and over to East Anglia in the space of an hour. He sounded in this conversation as if he’d had a proper education, to the manor born, even.
“Harry, who are your people?”
His steps slowed. “You ask me that now? I tell you I’m about to take your only begotten son halfway around the world, and when you should be shoving the deed to that house into my hands, you want to review old business?”
“Humor me. If you do plan to impersonate Tommie’s father, you will have to become accustomed to all manner of outlandish questions bearing no apparent relation to anything save a small boy’s curiosity. When Tommie asks about his grandpapa, what will you say?”
Harry touched a finger to his hat brim when a pair of shopgirls passed by. They giggled, he smiled, and Matilda wanted to shout profanities.
“If you must know, my father was a sanctimonious old Quaker whose own father made a fortune manufacturing guns. Papa refused to take over the business—the Friends have grown reluctant to openly dabble in war, though their banking tells a different story. In the grand tradition, I refused to wear my own father’s false piety. We had a falling out, and I decamped for Sodom on Thames, to the relief of all and sundry.”
“You did a bunk,” Matilda said, trying to keep the surprise from her voice. “Is this why you disdain violence, Harry? Because the ghosts of your ancestors would haunt you?”
“Those ancestors could be handy with a birch rod on a small boy’s backside, Till. Some of them at least. When can I have the house?”
“That is Tommie’s house. Why can you not see that a child lacking many of life’s advantages needs that asset more than you do?”
“Because he doesn’t.” The words were snarled without any pretensions to civility. “He’s had you to cosset and coddle him. He had me, for a time, to pay the rent and the coalman. He has a damned earl ready to send him to bloody public school, while all I have is a pressing need to quit the home shores. I will take the boy, Tilly. I don’t want to—he’s a good lad, and he loves you—but I will take him. All manner of rigs suggest themselves when I can be a grieving husband with my pale little son.”
Tommie was not pale, but he was little. Small enough to be snatched from the stable, despite the vigilance of the men and his mother. Besides, Harry could appeal to the authorities to return his son and his wayward wife to him, and the authorities would gladly render assistance.
While Matilda would look a fool, if not mad, claiming her husband had died on the Oxford Road at an inn that didn’t exist.
“I will take ship for Philadelphia,” Matilda said as they approached another intersection. “Tommie and I will, rather. Aunt Portia has some connections there, and it’s said to be a gracious and prosperous city. When I have left London with Tommie, you will have the deed to the house.”
Harry smiled at a veiled dowager mincing along on the arm of a footman. “You’ll leave your fancy toff just like that?”
I will do the right thing for the man I love. “Try as he might, Tremont cannot solve the problem that you’ve created for me and Tommie. That fresh start you mention is the only reasonable option if I still value my reputation, which I do. I have no connections of my own, so I am reduced to trading on Aunt’s girlhood friendships.”
“We’re good at landing on our feet, aren’t we, Tilly?”
For attempting that wistful, confiding tone, Matilda would have gladly pushed Harry beneath the wheels of the next oncoming coach.
“We’re cowards, Harry, who are good at running. I ran from scandal, and I ran from the vicarage. You ran from me. Now you’ve run from schemes gone inevitably awry, and I am running from scandal again.” And running straight into a broken heart.
Harry studied the sky, which today was a bright, wintry blue. “Cowards live to run another day, Tilly. Tremont wants you to be his fancy piece?”
No, he did not, though Matilda had offered. “Is that so surprising?”
“Not surprising in the least, but less than you deserve.” Harry drew Matilda away from the edge of the walkway just as a phaeton splashed past. “You will find it hard to credit, erstwhile wife of mine—I find it hard to credit—but I have missed you, contrary to previous representations. You kept a wonderfully tidy house, and you were so trusting, so earnest, and then so ferociously devoted to the boy.”
“And now,” Matilda said sweetly, “I am so angry. I will book passage for next Tuesday, and you will not see me off. I have arrangements to make if you are to be given the deed upon my departure.”
“I knew you’d see reason. Any chance I can have the deed sooner?” Harry studied a dray lugging a steaming load of manure along the muddy street.
“Tuesday is less than a week away, Harry. Are you truly that hard up?”
“Rent’s coming due.” Said with casual humor.
Matilda counted to ten in French, while a crossing sweeper diligently collected a fresh pile of horse droppings.
“And you think you are fit to parent a small boy,” she muttered, taking out a few coins and passing them over. “Until Tuesday, stay away from me and mine, Harry, and that means keeping your skulking minions away from Tommie too.”
The coins disappeared while Harry resumed studying the sky. “Never skulk. I taught you better than that. March, saunter, stroll, take the air, bustle along, but don’t ever skulk. I’ll expect that deed by Monday, Tilly.”
“Where shall I send it?”
He recited an unprepossessing direction in Knightsbridge, one that would, alas, never see another penny in rent from Harry Merridew.
Merriman. He was going by Merriman now, or so he claimed.
“Don’t come near Tommie, and you will not impose your company upon us in Philadelphia.”
Harry shuddered. “Too many Quakers. I’ll keep to Boston or New York, if the wilderness doesn’t take my fancy. Is this good-bye, Tilly?”
“I dearly hope so.”
“That’s the spirit.” He winked, touched a finger to his hat brim, and bowed. “Do you know, of all the souls in this great metropolis, I believe you are the only one whom I’d trust to keep your word? If you say I’ll have that deed, then I’ll have it. Best of luck, Tilly, and give my regards to the City of Brotherly Love.”
He jaunted off on that grand exit line, and Matilda let him go. She’d never understood him and still didn’t, but he wasn’t all bad. Not nearly. Unlike Papa, Harry hadn’t lied to himself, and that alone took a sort of backhanded courage.
Though thank the heavenly intercessors, she would never see him again. “Harry!” she called.
He turned slowly.
“Best of luck to you too!”
He saluted, and Matilda went upon her way. Harry had not been bluffing about taking Tommie. He never bluffed, though he did cheat, steal, misrepresent, and lie. Matilda had learned to lie as well, and her future and Tommie’s depended on Harry believing the load of falsehoods she’d just served him.