“The MacKays mean well,” Michael Delancey said, “and Dorcas sets a fine table. Shall we walk together for a bit?”
Tremont would rather have walked alone, but left to his own devices, he’d find himself standing outside a certain genteel riverfront inn, baying at the inky winter sky.
“Thank you, Delancey,” he said. “I’d be happy for the company. Do you ever refuse your sister’s invitations?”
“I don’t feel I have the right.” Delancey set a relaxed pace along the deserted street. “I was off in the north for years, while Dorcas was all but running St. Mildred’s and contending with other challenges. I should have been here for her and for my father. She still keeps a hand in at St. Mildred’s, while I…”
Delancey’s voice trailed off, and his gaze narrowed on a heap of shivering blankets tucked against the door of a grocer’s shop.
“You are to rise swiftly through the ranks at Lambeth,” Tremont said, “and make your father proud of you?” The reminder that other men had burdens was timely. Matilda and Tommie would sail out of Tremont’s life tomorrow, and some comparable sorrow had apparently sailed into Mr. Delancey’s pious and worthy existence.
“Oh, something like that. MacKay pulled me aside and said I was not to mention Mrs. Merridew’s name. I gather she’s left her post?” Delancey approached the heap of blankets and knelt. “You’ll catch your death out here, my friend. Do you know where St. Mildred’s is?”
The heap scrabbled back against the wall, revealing the crossing sweeper Patrick. “Don’t touch me, mate. I’ve got a knife aimed at yer…” The boy leaped to his feet. “Milord. Evenin’.”
“Mr. Delancey means you no harm, Patrick. It’s too cold to weather the elements tonight. Take yourself off to share the kitchen fire with Charlie and tell him you’ve missed your supper.”
Patrick shoved unkempt dark hair from his eyes. “I dint mean to fall asleep.”
Delancey unwound a green and white plaid scarf from about his neck. “Do as the earl says, lad. As cold as it is, you might have awakened without the use of a few fingers and toes, if you awoke at all.” He wrapped the scarf around the boy’s ears. “Away with you. My sister knits me a different scarf every week. You’d do me a kindness if you kept that one. The colors do not suit me.”
“Smells good,” Patrick said, taking an audible sniff. “Like the bakery on biscuit day. I can keep it?”
“Please do.”
The boy trotted off before Tremont could toss him a coin. “If you’re crossing the river, Delancey, you have a long walk ahead of you. You’re welcome to spend the night with me and take my coach to Southwark in the morning.”
“No, thank you. The walk will do me good. About Mrs. Merridew. She’s quit her post?”
“She’s quitting England. Ready for a fresh start.”
Delancey muttered something that sounded like, Aren’t we all? “Dorcas left me with the impression that you and Mrs. Merridew might suit.”
What was this interrogation in aid of? “The lady decided otherwise, for reasons I cannot question. What’s it like, working for the archbishop?”
Tremont turned down his street, and Delancey accompanied him. “I do not work for the archbishop. I work for the Almighty, or so I’m to believe. Who would have thought that the Creator had need of so many glorified clerks?”
“Perhaps you should take ship for Philadelphia.”
Delancey shook his head. “I’m needed here.” An automatic and somewhat bleak reply.
“As am I. Sure you won’t join me for a nightcap? Allow me to loan you a scarf? Mine are all in the best of subdued good taste.”
“I will decline your kind offers and bid you good night.” He bowed at the foot of Tremont’s front steps. “You’ll keep an eye on Patrick? He’s set himself up for lung fever, at best.”
“I will keep a roof over his head if he’ll allow it. One must deal gently with puerile pride.”
Delancey smiled. “And its adult equivalent. You are welcome to spend the night roaming the metropolis with me, my lord. I promise not to pry, and I won’t lead you into any gaming hells or dens of vice.”
How would a bishop-in-training know to find his way to such entertainments? “Most kind of you. I’ll page through a few scenes from one of the Bard’s plays, and I should be ready for slumber. Wander carefully, Delancey. The MacKays would take it amiss if you should run into foul luck.”
“I am ever cautious, thank you. If you want the best soporific known to man, may I recommend ecclesiastical law? I defy any sentient creature to remain awake for more than one page of the bishops’ maunderings. Thanks to the arcane proceedings of the church courts, I have become a sleepwalker of no little skill, but you must not tell that to my superiors. Adieu, Tremont, and pleasant dreams.”
He saluted with his walking stick and strolled off into the night.
Tremont paused outside his home, watching Delancey disappear into the gloom. He doesn’t feel the cold. Saints were that detached from bodily concerns, but so was a particularly miserable class of sinner. Tremont had been among their number when he’d first returned to London.
Melancholia was too simple a label for such a complicated problem. As Tremont made his way up to his apartment, he offered a prayer for Delancey’s eventual waking. Sleepwalking took a toll, though as to that, waking could be nearly as painful.
Memories took a toll as well, and because Tremont did not want to toss and turn in the very bed where he and Matilda had become lovers, he opened a volume of Shakespeare and found himself staring at Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2.
Two lovers caterwauling into the night, about family feuds, birthrights, and names, and Romeo offering to cast his name aside for Juliet’s love. A rose by any other name…
Utter tripe.
He turned some pages and let his mind wander over the entire situation with Matilda. She was married to Harry Merridew. No getting ’round that. She’d married of her own free will to ensure her child had legitimacy, and her vicar father had been present and unobjecting at the ceremony. No hint of coercion, nobody committing bigamy, nobody operating under a mental deficit such that consent was in question.
Logic, reason, and common sense all united to dash hope, not for the first time. The sonnets were no greater comfort. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long…
Only the thought that Matilda would chide him for disrespecting great literature stopped Tremont from tossing the book onto the flames. Rather than yield to that impulse, he stretched out on the sofa and woke several hours later, cold and stiff. His mind was cobwebbed with images of Matilda on the balcony of the coaching inn, her arms full of roses.
Not until he’d shaved and dressed did Tremont realize what Shakespeare’s doomed lovers had been trying to tell him.
“Send the coach around,” he said to his first footman. “I’m off to Southwark, and time is of the essence.”
“Mama, you said we weren’t getting on the boat until this afternoon.” Tommie eyed the river with distaste beyond his years. Even Copenhagen, peeking out of Tommie’s coat beneath his chin, seemed to regard the water with contempt.
“I misspoke,” Matilda said. “We are actually taking two ships, one to Dover and then another that departs from Dover.”
Tommie’s brows knit. “I thought we were going to Ports… Ports-something and to America.”
“America is very, very far away. Sailing there can take weeks and costs a lot of money. Do you recall my telling you that England and France are only twenty miles apart?” Matilda injected the question with a brightness at odds with her mood.
“We are going to France? The French are our enemies. The Corsican Monster fought for France.”
I am not arguing international politics with a five-year-old. “We are at peace now, and the French are our friends. Let’s explore the ship, shall we?”
Tommie wrinkled his nose. “It’s not a longboat. I don’t see any dragons.”
Matilda took his hand, picked up her traveling valise, and gave their names to the steward several yards down the pier from the gangplank. Exhaustion dragged at her, because she’d slept barely two winks.
“We will have to imagine the dragon on the prow and a square sail on the mainmast. The inn packed us a nooning, and we’ll be at Dover before nightfall. Do you know, I’ve never set foot on a sailboat before.”
“Tremont said we’re having an adventure. I don’t want to go to France, and I don’t like this adventure very much so far.”
I perishing hate it. “Adventures can be like that. A bit tedious when you’re in the middle of them, but fondly recalled. Shall I teach you how to say something in French?”
“Teach me how to say ‘I miss Tremont, and Arthur, and Tidbit, and the goats, and Charlie, and MacIvey.’”
Matilda paused at the foot of the gangplank and summoned every ounce of courage and determination she possessed. This journey was for the best. The only way to preserve dignity and honor. A remove to Paris was…
Awful.
She started up the incline, keeping a very firm grip on Tommie’s hand. “In French, you would say, ‘Mes amis me manquent.’ I miss my friends.” My friends are lacking to me, literally and more poignantly.
The ship rose and fell at its mooring, and a bitter wind whipped along the river. Tommie clambered onto the deck, where another steward greeted them and took Matilda’s valise.
“This ship stinks worse than our house did.” Tommie had spoken too clearly for the steward not to have heard him.
“The river has an odor,” Matilda said. “The sea is far more fresh. Let’s get out of this wind, shall we?”
They were shown to a tiny stateroom, with two bunks folded up against the wall and two chairs set on either side of a table no larger than a chessboard.
“We cast off in a quarter hour,” the steward said. “Should make good time to Dover, though the wind can be fickle this time of year if you’re bound for Calais. The Dover inns are cozy, though, and they are used to waiting on the weather.”
He bowed and withdrew as Tommie dragged a chair over to the porthole and stood on the seat.
“I can’t see anything, Mama. The glass is too dirty.”
“The sea air leaves brine on everything,” Matilda said, “but the ship isn’t going anywhere for another fifteen minutes. We’ll go back up on deck then. Shall we play some cards?”
“Tell me again how to say ‘I miss everybody.’”
Matilda did not miss everybody, not yet. She was too consumed with missing Tremont. “Mes amis me manquent. Can you say that?”
Tommie parroted the French exactly, and then Matilda translated each word for him. She wrote the words out and pointed to them as she spoke. Tommie asked how to say France is stupid and Vikings are brilliant and a dozen other phrases while the minutes dragged by.
Please come, Matilda thought, sending that silent plea to Tremont. Please tell me that your great, busy mind has found a way for us to be married, despite Harry, despite everything. Please, please…
But by the time she was explaining to Tommie how to say I call myself Thomas, the motion of the boat had changed, becoming less gentle.
“We’re moving,” Tommie said, his head coming up like a horse who heard the groom pouring oats into a bucket. “We’re sailing on the sea!”
Not quite, but they were underway. Matilda took Tommie up on deck, where other passengers were assembled along the rail, waving farewell to friends onshore and doffing hats in a general gesture of parting.
“Mama, we’re sailing away! The ship is moving!”
“I know, Tommie. I know.”
She searched the crowd on the pier for a particular tall, quietly elegant gentleman and found no one answering to that description, which was to be expected. She’d led Tremont to believe they were sailing later and from a different pier.
“We are sailing away!” Tommie called again, waving to nobody in particular. “I’m a Viking on my longship, and I’m sailing away to France!”
His exclamation provoked a few smiles, and Matilda tried to return them, but she was not a Viking, and she was not on her longship, and Tremont was not going to save her from the wretched burden of living her life as a loving mother and an honorable, decent adult female.
And that hurt, brutally, but the pain was gilded with a little pride. You were wrong, Papa. I have not come to a bad end, nor will I. So there and to blazes with you and your hypocritical judgments of me.
The boat caught the current of the outgoing tide, and the shore receded. Tommie’s teeth were chattering by the time he agreed to return to their stateroom, and Matilda was chilled to the bone. The steward came around to ask if they’d like tea, coffee, brandy, or hot chocolate.
Tommie asked for hot chocolate, while Matilda declined any refreshment. The motion of the ship did not agree with her, and they would not see Dover for hours.
“What in blazing perdition do you mean she’s already departed?” Tremont kept his voice down, though it was a very near thing.
“She and the boy left not an hour ago,” the desk clerk said. “With all their luggage.” He was an older fellow, balding, and skinny. His coat was shiny with age and his gloves less than pristine. “Be you her husband, sir?”
“I am.” Harry spoke up from Tremont’s elbow. “And I am very curious to know where my wife has got off to. Curious enough to summon the authorities if she’s bolted with my son.”
“Shut your lying mouth,” Tremont growled.
“You won’t get anywhere with the likes of him,” Harry said, jerking his chin in the clerk’s direction. “He can’t be bribed, but he can be bullied. I know the type.”
The clerk drew himself up. “If you was a proper husband to the lady, she’d have no reason to bolt, would she?”
“Precisely,” Tremont said, “but I am not her husband, and I am most concerned for her and the child. This fellow”—he jerked a thumb toward Harry—“has no idea where she’s gone. She is not on the manifest for the Portsmouth packet, and her only relative—an auntie—gave us reason to doubt the Portsmouth itinerary in the first place.”
The morning had been busy, starting with a raid on Lambeth Palace and progressing to an invasion of Aunt Portia’s breakfast parlor. Tremont had press-ganged Harry into joining the affray, because he hadn’t time to tarry in Knightsbridge playing skittles with a swindler.
Moreover, Harry deserved to know the result of Tremont’s consultation with Mr. Delancey regarding the niceties of ecclesiastical law pertaining to voidable marriages.
Portia had been unforthcoming in every regard, except that when Tremont asked for an address in Philadelphia where he could send any correspondence for Matilda, Portia had replied that she had no acquaintances in Philadelphia who might be prevailed upon to hold Matilda’s mail.
Philadelphia had been a ruse, which left only the entire rest of the world for Tremont to search.
“What other packets depart from the nearby piers?” he asked.
The clerk sent a dubious glace toward Harry.
“I mean the woman no harm,” Harry muttered. “But she’s leaving England under a serious misapprehension.”
The clerk addressed Tremont. “All manner of packets tie up on this part of the river, from Aberdeen on south and around west to Bristol. Many of them also call at Dover, though some passengers prefer to take the stage overland to Dover.”
Would Matilda subject Tommie to more than seventy miles of stage travel? “And from Dover?”
“Oh, my gracious,” the clerk said. “She could sail to Calais, of course, but also to Le Havre, Cherbourg, Amsterdam, Dieppe, the Channel Islands… If she sails from Dover…”
“She’s gone for good,” Harry said. “If she’s gone to Dover. She might well be headed for Yorkshire. Just when you think a woman’s become predictable, she surprises you.”
“Where is the porter who took her luggage?” Tremont asked as a well-fed elderly woman in weeds and black bonnet stepped up to the reception desk. She’d pinned back the veil of her bonnet, probably the better to glower at all and sundry.
“The porters assemble at the far end of the veranda, sir, and come when summoned by the doorman. No telling which one took any particular guest’s luggage.”
“I’ll have a word,” Harry said, tipping his hat to the older woman and sauntering out the door.
“Pity the lady if she is married to that one,” the clerk muttered, “but I’m afraid I cannot help you, sir.”
“She is married to him,” Tremont said, “but there’s hope.” He bowed to the glowering woman and stepped out into the malodorous cold of the winter day. The sense of activity was relentless, on the walkways, the veranda, and the street. Somewhere in this morass of bustling humanity was somebody who’d caught a glimpse of Matilda and Tommie, somebody who’d watched them climb into a stage coach or…
“No luck,” Harry said, sending a scowl in the direction of the loitering porters. “The fellow who took Matilda’s bags was subsequently tasked with taking a load of trunks to some Mayfair hotel. He might not return to his post until tomorrow.”
“Then Matilda and Tommie did not go far,” Tremont said. “If they left only an hour ago, and the porter had time to see them to their destination and then return for another assignment, they did not go far.”
One of the porters watched them, though clearly neither Tremont nor Harry had any bags to be carried. Something about the man looked familiar, as if—
“The porter coming back quickly doesn’t tell you anything,” Harry said. “Tilly could have gone a quarter mile down the wharves or two streets over to a coaching inn. She’s gone, and she learned from me how to hide her tracks. She’ll speak with an accent—Dorset or Yorkshire, one distinctive enough to leave an impression, but not an impression of the Matilda you’re searching for. She’ll walk differently and maybe use an alias.”
“You and your damned aliases. Matilda is not trying to hide from me. She will travel as herself.”
The same porter had sidled closer, a tidy fellow with the wiry strength of a yeoman and the wheat-blond hair of a Saxon.
Harry droned on, about all the theatrical tricks he’d used to disguise himself, while Tremont focused on Matilda and what Matilda wanted. Safety, of course. Security. Peace and quiet. She’d go someplace affordable—most of the Continent was affordable compared to England. Someplace where nobody knew her. Someplace where she could find honest employment, which meant no tiny villages.
What else did she want? If granted three wishes, what would they be?
“Beg pardon, sir,” the towheaded porter said. “You’d be Lord Tremont?”
“I have that honor.”
The fellow stood straighter. “Thought that was you. Wanted to wish you a fine day.”
While Tremont wanted to toss the fellow into the river. Manners and something more—a niggling at the back of Tremont’s mind—stopped him.
“Thank you, and the same to you. I have the sense we’ve met.”
Harry glowered at the fellow, who was grinning as if he’d just been given the Freedom of the City and all its pubs.
“I knew you’d remember me. Shores, sir. Corporal Dennis Shores, which is a joke now that I’m working on the riverbank, innit? I served under Dunacre along with you, and I heard what you done for some of the men now Boney’s been trounced.”
Vague recollections, of a skinny fellow who’d advanced to corporal thanks to excellent aim with a rifle and a well-timed jest.
Every moment spent passing the time of day was a moment Matilda and Tommie were farther away. And yet, one did not snub a former comrade-in-arms.
“Shores, how good of you to introduce yourself. I hope you are thriving.”
“Keepin’ body and soul together. And it’s thanks to you I’m alive to do that. My brother was with us at Waterloo, too, and he’s got a fine job as a footman. I heard this’ un”—Shores jerked his chin at Harry—“asking after a young lady and a lad. Did the lad have a stuffed horse stickin’ out of his coat?”
Thank the angels of mercy and a small boy’s attachment to his friends. “He surely did.”
“They took ship for Dover not an hour past. Martin hauled their luggage for ’em, though ’tweren’t much. Long gone, given the tide, but she were Dover-bound, sir.”
“Shores, I could kiss you.”
“A handshake will do, sir.”
“No, it will not,” Tremont said, extending a hand. “If you or your brother are ever in need, you come by the soldiers’ home two streets from St. Mildred’s. Come by for a drink even when you’re not in need. The men will be glad to see an old friend, and Cook always makes enough for a guest or two.”
“I’ll tell me brother. You’re for Dover, sir?”
“On the fastest horses I can find.”
“You’ll want to go to the Jolly Bullock, sir. They handle a lot of expresses for the captains and crew. Fastest nags this side of the Thames, and the grooms will tell you where to make the next change. You tie a red kerchief to the horse’s right rein, and the tollkeepers will wave you through if you toss ’em a few pence for their trouble.”
Harry looked fascinated by this recitation.
“Shores, you have been a godsend. Thank you for keeping a sharp eye, and I meant what I said about looking up the old crew. Bring your brother and anybody else you happen across who served with us.”
“You were the godsend, sir. Took us a while to realize that, but Waterloo isn’t a day we’ll ever forget. The Jolly Bullock is two streets up that lane, and you tell ’em Shores sent ya.”
“I’ll do that.”
An ornate coach pulled up to the foot of the inn’s steps. Shores tugged his cap and jaunted down the steps. “Best of luck, sir.”
Harry watched as the coach disgorged two women, clearly mother and daughter, both dressed in the first stare of fashion. “What was that all about?”
“That was about Waterloo and doing the right thing. You are going to do the right thing now too, Merchant.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“That is who you are. I must away to Dover, but you must stay put until I can retrieve Matilda and get her free of you.”
Harry shifted so his back was to anybody coming up the steps. “Staying put is not my forte, Tremont.”
“How well we know that, but you’re about to turn over a new and better leaf.”
The ladies swept past, and Harry turned again so his back was to the door of the inn. “I’ve tried turning over new leaves. Matilda was supposed to be a new leaf. Oxford, Dublin… I’ve littered my path with new leaves, and they always wilt.”
“Do you know where Matilda has gone, Harry?”
Harry’s expression turned bleak. “Dover, and from thence… God knows, so you’d best be on that fast horse and leave me to be about my business.”
“Matilda is going someplace you can never plague her,” Tremont said. “Someplace she can turn over a new leaf and go about it properly. She is going to Paris.”
The elegant coach rolled around to the side of the inn, where the porters and footmen would deal with the luggage out of sight of the inn’s guests.
“I did not plague her,” Harry bit out. “I rescued her from scandal and ruin.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive. You would never set foot in Paris, because it’s nearly overrun with Englishmen of all stripes. Merchants, nabobs, peers, debtors, and thus creditors. As ripe as the pickings might be for one of your ilk, you cannot risk trolling in those waters.”
Harry ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “I also can’t speak Frog. I’ve tried. Tilly used to laugh at my attempts. I can read it some, thanks to her and a few years of Latin, but attempting to ply my trade when I can’t understand the language is asking for disaster.”
“You have no trade,” Tremont said, “but you would make a first-rate actor.”
The longing that flashed in Harry’s eyes was astonishing. “Maybe once upon a time. Hadn’t you best be on your way, Tremont?”
“I have one small task to see to, and then I’ll gallop for the coast.”
“I’ll wish you Godspeed.” Harry swept off his hat and made an elegant bow. “And give my regards to Tilly.”
“You may offer them yourself upon her return to London, because any plans you had to quit the metropolis are now postponed. Ah, here come my reinforcements. Major Alasdhair MacKay, may I make known to you one Harry Merchant, late of Bristol and various unlucky locales. MacKay is assisted by MacIvey and MacPherson, and I suspect Bentley and Biggs are canvassing the surrounds. MacKay, your charge. If he tries to do another bunk, carve up his handsome face. Distinguishing scars would all but put him out of business as a swindler—and as an actor.”
MacKay nodded. “I’d let Mrs. MacKay have a go at him. She’s not as softhearted as I am. MacKay, at your service, Merchant. We’ve met.”
Harry was frankly staring at Tremont. “You never did tell me how you learned that name.”
“I asked a few honest questions of a mostly honest man. Now behave for the major and his missus until I return.”