Elizabeth Mansfield (28 page)

“I surmised as much. He’s a sailor, isn’t he?”

Camilla looked up in surprise. “How did you know? Did he tell you?”

“No, but he always told sea stories so well. Full of details that a landlubber wouldn’t know.”

“Landlubber?”

“Yes. That’s what he calls people who work on land. Has he gone back to sea, then? He wouldn’t do that without saying goodbye to me, would he?”

“No, of course not. He’s … oh, dear, I don’t know how to tell you. He’s been … taken into custody.”

Pippa peered at her mother with stricken eyes. “Mama! You don’t mean
prison
!”

Camilla tried to answer, but, afraid that she would burst into tears, put a hand to her mouth and merely nodded her answer.

Pippa drew in a breath. “But …
why
? What’s he done?”

“I’m not completely sure,” Camilla answered, choked. “The worst of it seems to be that … that, in a struggle with some men who were trying to kidnap him to serve on a naval vessel, he hit one of them so hard that … he d-died.”

“Oh, Mama,
no
! What will they do to him?”

Again all Camilla could do was shake her head.

Pippa’s eyes widened in horror. “Mama! They won’t … they wouldn’t …
hang
him!”

Camilla held out her arms to her daughter, and Pippa flew into them. They clung together for several minutes, too terrified even to weep. “Don’t shiver so, love,” Camilla said at last. “Your Uncle Oswald has gone to see what he can do to help. Perhaps he can find a way …”

***

Oswald returned late that afternoon and found Camilla sitting with Pippa near the fire in the sitting room. They both turned to him with faces of such eager hopefulness that he almost wanted to retreat. “My news is not all bad,” he said in preparation, “but if you’re hoping to see your Thomas come walking in that door, you’ll be disappointed.”

“Tell us what you’ve learned, Oswald. We can deal with disappointment, if we must, can’t we, love?”

“You don’t want Pippa here, do you?”

“Yes, she’s all right. She loves Thomas very much, you see.”

“Well, then,” he said, seating himself on the edge of a chair and pulling a sheaf of notes from his coat, “let’s see what I’ve accomplished thus far. First, there’s some good news in Daniel’s case. He’s safely out of it. His papers were signed with an X, and when I showed the committee his real signature, they decided to rule that he had not legally been enlisted. Under the circumstances, no one seemed impelled to make an issue of his case, not even Brock. It’s Thomas he wants.”

“That
is
good news, Oswald. Betsy will be overjoyed.”

“I wish I could say the same about Thomas’s case. I discovered that the
Triton
is out to sea, which is a bit of bad luck because we won’t be able to question the captain about Thomas’s credentials until the ship returns. But most everyone I’ve spoken to on the Admiralty board seems inclined to believe that Thomas is telling the truth. Lord Jeffries is furious at this evidence of the continued activity of press-gangs—the Admiralty doesn’t admit to sanctioning them, you know—and Lord Sturtevant is so angry about the incident that he threatens to bring the matter to the attention of Parliament if the Admiralty doesn’t treat Thomas fairly. (He’s quite impressed with Thomas, it seems, from some remarks he’d made at a dinner here. And Lady Sturtevant gave him a very dramatic account of everything that happened here last night.) I think Brock will find his friends at the Admiralty very cool to him as a result of all this. And if it turns out that Thomas has been telling the truth about being a mate on the
Triton
—”

“Don’t worry, he has been,” Pippa said confidently.

“If he has, then Brock will find himself in very hot water. But, of course, the murder is the sticking point for Thomas. Don’t know what we can do about clearing him of that.”

“But if he was defending himself, it isn’t really murder, is it?” Camilla inquired, biting her lip.

“I don’t know. Self-defense may not be applicable in this case.” He looked down at his notes. “I’ve learned the name of the officer in charge of the press-gang, but no one seems to know the name of the
deceased. Thought I’d ride down to Southampton and see if I can locate the officer. The prosecution will have to do it—they don’t have a case without a victim—and I don’t want them to have more information than we have. Don’t know what good it will do, but there’s no harm in learning all we can.”

“When do you want to go?” Camilla asked.

“Right away. Why?”

“Because I’m going with you.”

“I, too,” said Pippa.

“No, dearest, you will stay right here. I’ll give you a more difficult task to accomplish than chasing about with us in Southampton. Stay here and see if you can make matters right with your Aunt Ethelyn.”

***

Moresby, the officer who’d led the press-gang, was not hard to find. But he seemed strangely reluctant to reveal the name of the murdered man. It was only after Oswald bribed him with a handful of sovereigns that the fellow managed to remember it was a Casper Jost who’d died that day.

“Where’d you bury him?” Oswald asked.

“I didn’t bury him. It isn’t my job,” Moresby said.

“Who did, then?”

“How would I know that? Ask his widow.”

“Where can we find her?” Oswald asked impatiently.

“Can’t say. Jost was no friend of mine.”

But with the help of an additional bribe, the officer remembered that Jost had mentioned having a place in Netley, a short distance south on the Portsmouth road.

On the way to Netley, Oswald castigated himself roundly. “Don’t know why I dragged you on this goose chase. No point in it anyway. There’s no good can come of it that I can see.”

“Perhaps not,” Camilla said, “but I’d like to talk to the widow anyway. It might ease her grief if I tell her that it was only an accident—that Thomas hadn’t meant to kill her husband. And we can give her some money, too. Not that money could ever make up for … for …”

“I know,” Oswald said, squeezing her hand.

The proprietor of the Netley Linendrapery pointed out the Jost domicile. It was the third from the corner of a long row of tiny, frame houses with identical front steps and little iron grillwork surrounding identical little front gardens. When the carriage drew up to the house, Camilla put a restraining hand on Oswald’s arm. “Let me go alone,” she begged. “I shall do better with the widow that way.”

Oswald shrugged. She jumped out of the carriage and ran up to the front door. An ill-kempt, stoutish woman with a number of hairs on her chin answered the door. “Are you Mrs. Jost?” Camilla asked.

“That’s ’oo I be. Whut ye want?”

“I … I’ve come to ask you some questions … about your late husband.”

The woman squinted at her suspiciously. “Whut’d ye mean, me late husband? On’y got but one, an’ he’s sittin’ back there in the kitchen, swillin’ ale.”

***

It was a jubilant Camilla who returned to Upper Seymour Street that night, and a jubilant Pippa she tucked into bed. “I
knew
my Thomas couldn’t have killed anybody,” the child grinned, hugging her
mother tightly. “Will he be coming home tomorrow?”

Camilla eased her daughter on to the pillow and drew up the coverlet. “I don’t know what will happen next, dearest. But I suspect Thomas will not be coming back here to live. He isn’t a footman after all, you know, and we can’t expect him to spend his life working at something for which he is unsuited.”

“Yes, I understand that, but aren’t you going to marry him?”

“
Marry
him? What gave you such an idea as that?”

“You did. When you invented a husband for yourself, you made him just like Thomas, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t. He wasn’t like Thomas at all.”

“Yes, he was. Tall, lean, sandy-haired, generous, kind and humorous. That’s how you described Mr. Petersham, and that’s just how Thomas is!”

Camilla flushed. “But, those are very general terms. They could equally apply to any number of people.”

“I’ll wager you can’t name
one
.”

“Really, Pippa, you are becoming much too cheeky. You must take my word for it that Thomas and I would not suit.”

“I can’t agree. When you pretended to be wed, it seemed to me that you suited each other very well.”

“It was only pretense.” She smoothed the hair from her daughter’s brow tenderly. “I know you wish to have Thomas near you for always, dearest, but you mustn’t let your desires run off with your reason. I can’t be expected to marry everyone for whom you take a fancy, you know.”

Pippa hitched to her side, turning her face away from her mother and pulling the coverlet up to her neck. “I thought you fancied him also,” she said, her voice melancholy and suddenly very childlike.

“Well, I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, love. But isn’t it enough that the man Thomas injured is fully recovered and that Thomas will soon be a free man? And that we can go on living contentedly here in London, near our friends the Sturtevants, just as before? Isn’t that
enough
to be happy about?”

“I’m happy about Thomas being a free man, of course. About the rest, I shall have to think before I answer. For things will
not
be as they were before, with Thomas gone. Goodnight, Mama.”

Camilla closed her daughter’s door quietly behind her and walked thoughtfully down the hall, wondering why she’d been reluctant to reveal to the child how close her own desires were to Pippa’s. But before she could find an answer, she thought she heard her name being called in a quavery voice. “Ethelyn?” she asked hesitantly, pausing before her sister-in-law’s door. “Did you call?”

“Yes. Can you come in for a moment?”

She opened the door with considerable trepidation and looked in. Ethelyn was sitting up in bed, a prayer book in her lap. Camilla came in and stood at the foot of the bed, studying her sister-in-law curiously. Ethelyn was wearing only her nightdress. Somehow she looked much less formidable in the white muslin gown with its soft lace at the neck and with her greying hair loosened from its knot and falling round her shoulders with unaccustomed softness. It occurred to Camilla that she’d never seen Ethelyn except in the darkest of colors and the most formal of costumes. In this bedtime informality, her usually awesome sister-in-law looked almost frail. “Is there anything I can do for you, Ethelyn?”

“I wish to speak to you,” Ethelyn said, her eyes lowered. “Will you sit down, please? Here at the side … that is, if you wish …”

“Yes, of course.” Camilla took the chair indicated and waited for what she expected would be a long lecture on the blessings of redemption.

“I have had a number of long talks with Pippa since you left for Southampton,” she said quietly,
after a moment of silence. “Did the child tell you?”

“
Pippa
?” How had her ingenious daughter managed to convince her aunt to call her that? “No, she didn’t tell me.”

“She is quite remarkable, you know. She believes we … you and I … don’t have an adequate understanding of one another.”

“Oh?”

“She is probably right. It gave me pause, especially after what you had said … and Oswald, too. I’ve been thinking a great deal … and praying. And I’ve come to the conclusion, Camilla, that I have been … grossly at fault.”

“Ethelyn, I didn’t mean—”

“No, don’t soften just because you see me shaken. I d-drove you to fabricate a large falsehood—”

“A very large falsehood.”

“Yes, and I didn’t want to admit that I knew … I
knew
… that lying is not characteristic of you. I knew it even when I accused you …”

“Please, Ethelyn, you don’t have to—”

“But I
do
. You and Pippa and Oswald … you’re all the family I
h-have
!” Astoundingly, she put her hands up to her face and burst into tears.

“Ethelyn!” Camilla gasped.

“I don’t want to l-lose you!” the older woman wept.

“Oh, my dear,” Camilla murmured, moving to the bed next to Ethelyn and putting an arm around her shoulders, “have no fear of that. I think Pippa was right. If we take the trouble to learn more about each other, instead of always judging each other, we shall do better.”

“Then you … forgive me?”

“You don’t need to ask.”

“I shall not, ever again, give you orders, Camilla. I promise.”

Camilla laughed. “Then
I
promise, if ever I
do
find a suitor I wish to wed, to bring him round for your approval.”

Ethelyn looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?” she asked, wiping the wetness from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Aren’t you going to wed Thomas?”

“
Thomas
?”

“Yes. Oswald told me it looks as though he’ll be completely exonerated. I assumed, therefore—”

“Tell me, Ethelyn,” Camilla said, watching her sister-in-law from the corner of her eye, “if I
did
, would you approve?”

“Well, I approved of him before, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but you thought he was a Petersham. Of the Sussex Petershams.”

“What difference does that make? A man is more than a pedigree.”

Camilla, trying not to laugh, got up and looked down at her sister-in-law with hands on hips. “Did you know the fellow was my
footman
?”

Ethelyn’s eyebrows rose. “What has
that
to say to anything? We are all equal in the eyes of God, you know. Really, Camilla, I hope your months in this mad, corrupt environment have not made a snob of you.” She opened her prayer book and began searching for her place. “Thomas would be much more suitable for you than anyone I could think of, including Mr. Harbage. Goodnight, my dear.”

The
Triton
was rumored to be returning to port by the end of the month. As soon as it arrived, and Thomas’s status could be verified by its captain, a final dispensation of his case would be made. In the meantime, Ethelyn and Oswald decided to return to Wyckfield. Ethelyn explained that she missed the sweet country air, and Oswald, whose increased activity had caused him to burn off a half-a-stone of fat, declared that if he stayed in town much longer he’d waste away. They therefore bid Camilla and Pippa a fond farewell, extracted a sincere promise from Camilla that she and Pippa would pay a visit to the country soon, and were embraced with a great deal more affection than they’d received on their arrival.