Elyse Mady (19 page)

Hester shook her head in mock vexation.

“He was never still. He was always in motion.” She chuckled. “He stood three times and then sat down again during his proposal. I remember teasing him that I wasn’t sure if I were reading the banns with him or a jack-in-the-box. I was so happy then. On the day before he was to return to his ship, we went walking together. It was the middle of July and the barley was turning. When the wind blew across the downlands, it looked like a golden sea, with endless waves. There was a tree. Jamie climbed it like a monkey. I barely reached the first branch, convinced I would overturn and break my head. Jamie threatened to give me a pudding-cap for a wedding gift. When we climbed back down, we lay together, looking up at the sky. We made love beneath the tree, both of us so unsure… I know I should be ashamed but I cannot.” Hester sighed.

“And then he died.”

She shuddered at his voice and Thomas knew she was reliving her lover’s death once more.

He wished he could commiserate but anything he said now would ring false.

“Grief is a strange and terrible thing. In the days that followed his death, I was a coward. I wanted nothing more than to die myself. I couldn’t though. I was with child.” She whispered the confession so quietly that had he not been sitting beside her he would not have heard it.

Hester’s admission, raw and unadorned, shook him to his core. It was not that he thought her culpable, or less worthy, because she had found herself pregnant. It was the unvarnished loss he heard in her voice that made him want to weep too. He wanted to protect her from all the pain she had suffered. He swept her into his arms and held her as tightly as he could. Slowly, her sobs subsided.

“Where is the child now?”
A foundling hospital? Her fiancé’s family?
He daren’t ask but the idea of a child, bearing its mother face, was dangerously appealing. He had no time to consider that fact though, for when Hester looked up into his face, her eyes were so wounded that he nearly recoiled.

“I—I lost it.” Her breathing was ragged and Thomas wished he had never dared begin the conversation. He was the coward, not her. He dragged his handkerchief from a pocket and she wiped her face in it.

For some days now he’d been toying with the notion of asking Hester to marry him. Their irregular relationship still pricked his conscience. He knew she didn’t love him, but matrimony would give her much. A name. A home of her own. Respectability.

And there was the matter of their mutual attraction.

They would not be much in each other’s company, for he would be at sea half the year at a time. A logical, practical arrangement on both their sides.

Now, he knew that his plan was hopeless.

If she were to marry, it would not be as a salve to his conscience or as a solution to her problems. Hester should only marry for the deepest of loves. She had suffered too much to ever consider otherwise.

“What a strange thing it is, to say about a person who had died, is it not?” she observed in a raw voice, folding the handkerchief into ever smaller squares. “One loses a glove, a book, a letter. Things. But people? To say that Jamie is lost. Our child, lost. My mother. My father. All lost.” She began to weep again.

Thomas rocked her slowly. All he was cognizant of was that Hester, his brave, staunch Hester, was in pain.

He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her. It wasn’t a gesture of passion but a salute, an acknowledgement of her suffering and his humility in the face of her fortitude.

Beneath his mouth, her lips, salty with her tears, softened.

Their lips moved slowly, tongues tasting and meeting in an unhurried dance. Tonight felt languorous and decadent. He was hard, his length pressing against her skirts. She moved, up and down, the friction heating him from the inside out.

“It will come to rights. I have no doubt of it,” he promised. He wanted it to be true. For Hester’s sake. He deepened his kiss. It felt familiar, effortless, and Hester did not protest when he drew her to her feet, the better to embrace her.

His hands were busy, tracking down the column of her spine. He drew her even more tightly against his excited body. They both shuddered at the contact. He kissed the curve of her breast above her stays.

She tasted as delicious as he remembered, and when he took her hand and began to lead her up the stairs, she followed with eager haste.

There would be time enough to ponder the wounds of the past and the darkness of the future. But there would be little enough time to enjoy what they had together. Tonight, they would forget their hurts in a world of their own making.

Chapter Sixteen

Sir John Collet’s offices in Temple Bar were vastly comfortable. A half-dozen clerks stood at tall desks, their quills scratching furiously as they worked. A young man in a black suit greeted Thomas on his arrival.

“I have an appointment with Sir John.”

“Mr. Ramsay, I presume?” When Thomas nodded, the secretary spoke authoritatively. “Sir John has just returned from pleading a case at the King’s Bench but he is expecting you. If you’ll follow me?”

He led Thomas down a hallway, pausing before a heavy oak door. He knocked, received a curt acknowledgement and then ushered him into the barrister’s office.

Clearly, the practice of the law agreed with Sir John’s pocketbook. The floors were covered in thick Turkish rugs and the furniture was substantial. On a low credenza by the window, a wig hung neatly on a carved stand.

“Mr. Ramsay.” The barrister greeted Thomas warmly, shaking his hand. He was an ample man, balding, the remains of his greying hair cropped short. Like his clerks and his secretary, his suit was also black wool, but he still wore the long robes of his profession. His desk was covered in all manner of paperwork, but it was an ordered sort of chaos that suggested a lawyer’s penchant for a heavy workload. “How does your father do?”

Thomas shrugged. “He is as well as a man of his age can be expected. This year’s harvest was a good one and he and my mother welcomed their fourth grandchild. A little girl.”

Sir John smiled. “Capital news. I have six myself and I must say there is something to be said for creatures who are wholly unimpressed by my fearsome credentials and reputation at the bar and care for me only so far as my abilities to dandle them on my knee or play a rousing game of skittles. Keeps a man humble,” he said, chuckling to himself, and Thomas enjoyed his simple enthusiasm.

“I will take your word for it, Sir John. I have no children of my own.”

“A situation that may soon take care of itself, if the rumours I’ve heard are to be believed,” the barrister said, casting him a knowing glance. Thomas fidgeted. “Is it the young lady that has prompted you to call on me today?”

“Indirectly. What do you know of a solicitor named Wooley? Keeps rooms in Lincoln Inn.” He tried to relax but the urge to move about the room was strong. Sir John seemed lost in thought, doubtless trying to place the name.

“I can’t say that it rings familiar. Why?” He peered at Thomas over his steepled fingers, his eyes probing and curious.

Thomas hesitated. He wasn’t sure how far Hester would want him to go in revealing the business with Wooley and her brother. “He is the solicitor who purports to represent a young man of my acquaintance who is being detained on a serious criminal matter.”

Raised brows greeted his explanation. “Purports to be? But may not be? A curious situation for a client to find himself in. How did you come to be involved?”

“The accused is the brother of a…friend of mine. I take an interest,” Thomas said carefully. Hester was far more than a mere friend, but he felt uneasy discussing their relationship with a confederate of his father’s. Sir John’s profession demanded discretion, but there was a limit to how much Thomas felt willing to confide. Yet if anyone could help them get to the bottom of the enigma that was Wooley, it was Sir John Collet.

“Your friend being the young woman who now resides in your home?”

If he didn’t know better, he almost would have suspected Sir John of being amused. He was obviously well informed on Thomas’s domestic arrangements.

Thomas’s jaw twitched but he restrained himself. “Miss Aspinall. Her brother is Mr. Robert Aspinall. Of Vere Street Coterie fame.” Sir John disguised his surprise, if indeed he felt any, well. Thomas had his doubts. He paused. “I had not thought my situation as well known as that.”

Sir John barked sharply. “What do you think we stand about discussing down at the advocates’ table and in the halls of justice? Jurisprudence and hoary case law? Hardly. Don’t like to disabuse you, but gossip is my profession’s stock-in-trade.” He scratched his chin. “Didn’t know your friend was connected to that Clare Market business though. What’s Wooley’s involvement?”

Quickly, Thomas sketched out Hester’s interactions with the solicitor. He detailed the payments, his unusual request that she run errands and her conviction that there something untoward about the solicitor.

“Has Wooley threatened Miss Aspinall?”

“Nothing that would suffice in a court of law,” he admitted. His sense of frustration rose again. “It is all innuendo and supposition, nothing that can be fixed on or proven. But I trust Hester’s judgement. She is not a young woman to let her imagination run away from her. If she feels leery, then I believe her.” He hesitated, unsure of whether he ought to share his own experience. Briefly, he recounted what had passed in the dressmaker’s shop. The barrister listened, frowning.

“Followed? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I know it seems extraordinary but I assure you I observed the man myself. He was following me, though his purpose in doing so remains a mystery. I would have dismissed it as the work of a pickpocketing gang or a housebreaker if not for Hester’s own experiences. The coincidence is too great.”

“Indeed.” Sir John fiddled with the papers on his desk. “And you believe this Wooley to be behind it?”

“That is the part of the problem that perplexes me. Wooley knows where Hester is staying. He knows his client to be locked in Newgate. Why would he set a man to follow me?” Thomas tapped his fingers in an impatient rhythm. “I know nothing of the man myself. I have never even laid eyes on him. It makes no sense.”

Sir John shifted his bulk in his chair, the furniture creaking with his weight. “And what does the client himself say? Has he complained to you? Indicated his displeasure with Mr. Wooley’s performance?”

“No,” Thomas admitted. “But it is above several weeks since I have spoken to him directly. He is not well pleased with me at the moment and even if I were to take my concerns to him, I doubt very much whether he would give what I am saying much consideration. The situation is…delicate.”

“Miss Aspinall,” said the barrister, grasping the unspoken complication immediately.

“Miss Aspinall,” Thomas concurred with a heavy sigh.

“There is of course another option,” his companion interjected to his surprise.

“Is there? I confess it has baffled me.”

“How many men are currently awaiting trial?”

“Seven or eight. The publican, Hester’s brother and a handful more. And the two soldiers who slipped out before the melee. They were collected from the Isle of Wight and brought back to stand trial too. I saw it mentioned in the
Times.
Why?”

“There were more than two who, as you put it, ‘slipped out.’ There were at least thirty men taken up that night and twice that number all together found in the lousy hole. The magistrate who saw the accused after they were brought from the watch house is a member of my club. We’re not intimates but I heard him discussing the case when it was still much in the papers.”

“As many as that? But even so, what does that have to do with the Aspinalls? A man released is hardly likely to follow me. I know nothing of the particulars. It is for Hester’s sake that I am involved at all.”

Sir John smiled thinly, his features pensive. “But a man who fears he might be named and has the means to hire someone might. If I were such a person, afraid that I could be identified and perhaps brought to face trial and lose everything, I would want to know everything I possibly could about those involved. Even if their involvement is, as you say, merely tangential.”

Thomas considered the twisting evidence laid before him. “You think one of the unnamed guilty pursues me because they fear Robert will turn evidence? Seems a slim supposition. Even slimmer than that of a solicitor threatening his own clients.”

“I understand the accused are, with the exception of Mr. Aspinall, without means. He alone can claim access to someone with the means and ability to affect any creditable notice amongst the upper echelons of the legal system. That makes him a threat, whether or not you like to acknowledge it. If I am correct, you might want to see that Miss Aspinall is not alone whilst she is out of doors.”

Thomas thought of Hester and what might happen to her if she encountered the same man, alone and undefended. His heart caught for a moment but he kept his face impassive. “I will see that she is protected. What will you do now?”

“Leave it with me,” Sir John said after a long pause. “I cannot promise I will uncover anything to uphold your suspicions but I will make some discrete enquiries into your lawyer and the case.” He sighed. “I suppose I shall have to buy Stiers a drink and listen to him prose on about his magisterial duties if I am to learn anything. Luckily, the man can’t keep his whiskey by half. Hopefully, he’ll tell me everything of the arrest and the men he interrogated before he grows too maudlin and I grow too bored. If there is a man who has cause to fear his unmasking, I will do my best to distinguish him.”

“And Wooley?”

“If this Wooley is as you claim, I doubt his behaviour has gone unnoticed by my colleagues at the bar. Newgate solicitors rarely last long before they are run out of London for their treachery.”

Thomas had never heard the term
Newgate solicitor
before. “A what?”

“A stain on the profession. They bark and snap and defend the guilty with all manners of trickery. I have seen the same machinations from far too many of his kind to doubt that neither Mr. Aspinall nor his sister will be well served by his attentions. Quite the opposite, in fact. I will make enquiries and see what might turn up, eh?”

“Thank you. I appreciate anything you might uncover,” Thomas said, shaking the barrister’s hand.

“You are most welcome,” Sir John said. “I hope it will not be in vain. Sodomy trials are a nasty business. Too many are hung for it to sit easy on my conscience. Your Mr. Aspinall is still in grave danger of his life. Your Miss Aspinall should prepare herself for a very bad time of it. I will send word if I uncover anything of import.”

* * *

Hester knew as soon as she turned into the narrow street where the silversmith’s shop was located that it had been a bad idea to come. Mr. Wooley’s note, delivered by a young boy shortly after Thomas had quitted the house, had been vague as to her purpose here.

I have reason to believe that Mr. Threws has information pertaining to your brother’s case,
the note had read
, which will confirm a course of investigation I have been pursuing of late in regards to the ‘missing’ witnesses. Deliver this note to him and mark his response.

The street—in reality, little more than an alley, over which loomed a motley collection of brick homes, each narrower and more rickety than the last—was sloped and what shops were on it carried with them the sour odour of despair and faint custom. It had rained for much of the night and while there was a brief respite, the day was still overcast and dreary. Raindrops hung from the eaves, dripping with a steady insistence on the canted cobblestones.

She walked up the street, trying to distinguish the landmarks that Wooley had said would lead her to Mr. Threws’s shop, her pattens ringing on the stone. She stumbled on the slick ground underfoot twice; the second time, she fell on her ankle and the discomfort was momentarily intense.

George, trailing behind her like a nervous spectre, hauled her up.

“We shouldn’t be here, miss,” he hissed, peering at depressing vista furtively. “Mr. Ramsay won’t like it.”

“Mr. Ramsay will understand,” she said with an assurance she was far from feeling. “He told me I was to use my own judgement and to take you with me when I went out of the house. I am doing both of those things, am I not?”

George didn’t answer. He was too busy stepping over the muck-stained streets to pay her much heed.

She had almost despaired of finding it when at last she spied the small blue sign hanging outside the narrow shopfront. It looked as seedy and dissolute as its neighbours and she could not imagine what information Wooley could expect her to collect from this man. If the man was merely a source of information, why did he not come himself? Or if it was merely a matter of delivery, why not send the young lad who had played emissary this morning? Surely, he could relay a conversation as well as she?

Her head hurt, trying to decipher Wooley’s plan, but above all she did not want to be here.

It felt wrong.

Yet as strong as her desire to simply leave was, her promise to help her brother compelled her to remain. She had given her word to help him in any way possible. If there was a remote chance that this man might be able to shed light or share information about the night of the White Swan raids, she could not forgo it.

Her hands shook as she pushed back her cloak from her shoulders and rapped at the door.

An old man wearing a leather apron answered, glaring out into the gloomy street as though he expected little good to come of his gesture.

“Yes?”

“I am come to deliver a message to Mr. Threws.” Her voice trembled but only a little. She hoped he would not regard it.

There was no slackening in the doorman’s vigilance. “Who sent you? We weren’t expecting a delivery.” His gaze darted to George, standing behind her. It was clear he disliked the sight of the liveried servant as much as the liveried servant disliked him.

“Mr. Wooley sent me.”

The effect of uttering the solicitor’s name was profound. The door opened and she was immediately ushered inside. The man tried to shut the door before George could follow but the young servant’s strong arm, slamming into the stout door, quickly disabused him of that notion. As soon as they had crossed the threshold, the door was closed and the shop was plunged into grey gloom.

The shop was as dingy and unprepossessing on the inside as it was on the exterior. It was a deep, narrow space, with a dark set of stairs leading upwards. There were a few shelves, mostly bare, with what silver that was on display behind the high counter badly tarnished and to Hester’s eye in desperate need of dusting.