In for a Penny (20 page)

“Sir Jasper, please, she’s only a girl!” The countess’s distress made her common little face even more unattractive.

“A girl who is evidently hell-bent on following in her radical
father’s footsteps,” Sir Jasper said as Josie Cusher was led past them, fighting and glaring and generally behaving like the disagreeably pert piece of trash that she was. “Do you wish me to circumvent the law? Perhaps her fate will persuade back to the path of righteousness other children whose feet have begun to stray.”

He signaled the constable to release Jack Bailey. The man came out on his crutch, his head bent and his shoulders sagging. Sir Jasper didn’t blame him; a gentleman would never have betrayed his word in that fashion, and although Jack Bailey was not a gentleman, he seemed instinctively to feel that he had done something shameful.

Mrs. Bailey hastened forward to help him. “Oh, Jack! It was wrong to do it, but the children will be glad to see you.”

Aaron Smith opened the Cushers’ door as soon as they knocked. “Your lordship, your ladyship.” He nodded his head respectfully. “Is there news?”

“Good morning, Aaron,” Nev said. “Not yet. Is Agnes home?”

“Aaron, is that Lord Bedlow?” Agnes Cusher rushed to the door with red, swollen eyes. She clutched at Nev’s arm, and Penelope saw that she had been twisting her lavender satin ribbon, Josie’s gift, in her hands. It was ragged. “Please, your lordship, you won’t let them send my girl away? My little Josie—” Her voice broke. She did not look at Penelope.

“We are doing what we can,” Nev said. “But I don’t know that it will do any good if she is really guilty. Agnes, tell me—
was
she part of the gang?”

“She helped them with little things—making nets, carrying messages to the men who work for the butchers in London. She—she went into the woods once or twice, because she’s small and handy. I didn’t want her to do it, but how could I stop her? Joe was gone and we would have starved—
the baby would have died—” She twined the strip of satin around her palm until her hand turned white.

“It wasn’t your fault, Aggie.” Aaron reached out and covered her hands with his. “It’s not your fault.”

Penelope looked for Kit. The boy had been crying too—he was sitting in the corner now, staring. She went over to kneel by him. “Good morning, Kit.”

“Kit, don’t bother her ladyship,” Agnes said.

Penelope looked up, surprised. “He isn’t bothering me. I just—”

“Kit, come here.” And Kit went past Penelope to his mother, who picked him up and held him tight.

Penelope stood, brushing the dirt from her gown. They all knew that Jack Bailey was arrested on her information then. They all hated her.

“
Aggie
,” Aaron said in a low tone. “She’s overset, your ladyship. Don’t hold it against Josie.”

“I wouldn’t,” Penelope said, more sharply than she meant to. “Of course I won’t.”

He looked at her carefully. “Good.”

She bristled, but—he seemed to believe her, at least.

“As I said,” Nev told them evenly, “
we
will do everything we can for Josie. Are you doing all right for money?”

Aaron’s eyes were on Agnes. “I’ll take care of them.”

It was at Harry Spratt’s house that the worst blow was struck. Young Helen Spratt opened the door dry-eyed and seemingly collected, but it took only a few sentences for her fevered state of mind to become clear. “I’d like to kill Jack Bailey,” she raged. Penelope remembered the taciturn laborers of their early visits, and marveled at how stress stripped away the discretion and reverence. “I’d like to murder that old son-of-a-bitch. You were coming to free him, and he couldn’t be a man for another hour? My Harry would never have peached on
him
. They all risked everything to save the bugger from that trap. It was Jack Bailey that recruited the half of them, anyway! We were always hungry after the commons were enclosed, but Harry thought we’d get by honest until Jack told him how easy it was, how safe, how sure! And there didn’t seem to be no harm—there’s plenty of game for us all, and if rich folk in London want to pay us for a few rabbits, who does it hurt? When the baby was sick, we could buy him some milk! It seemed so little to take, when we had to get rid of our cow—”

It was inane, but Penelope grasped on the one thing she didn’t understand, just as an excuse to not hear the horrible sound of Helen Spratt’s misery and anger for a few seconds. “Why did you have to get rid of your cow?”

Helen stared at Penelope as if she’d been dropped on her head as a baby. “You can’t go on the parish if you’ve got a cow. We had a pig too, and some geese.”

“But if you were doing so well, why did you want to go on the parish?” Penelope asked.

“You can’t get a job around here if you aren’t on the parish. That’s how it works. Mr. Snively gives us our dole, and Tom Kedge pays him for the men’s work. Mr. Kedge won’t hire you if you aren’t on the parish. It’s cheaper for him, see, so he gives Snively a little something to grease the wheels, and it’s all sunshine and daisies for everyone.”

Penelope rocked backwards. Why hadn’t anyone told her this before? How many of the farmers had had to give up what little they had, just to keep their jobs?

“Is this true?” Nev said. “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

Helen nodded. “It’s God’s own truth.” She didn’t answer the second question. Penelope supposed she thought the answer was obvious. Why
would
anyone tell them?

“We will certainly investigate this further,” Nev said. “Thank you for bringing it to our attention. But we came to
tell you that we’re doing everything we can for Harry, and in the meantime you must stay strong and not lose hope.”

Helen just shook her head. “Harry’s never coming home again.”

Nev was hiding in the library. He had been reassuring and masterful all morning, and he could not do it one moment longer. His boots were discarded on the floor, he was using his folded coat as a cushion from the stone embrasure of the window seat, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and he was a third of the way through the first volume of
Chronicles of an Illustrious House; or the Peer, the Lawyer, and the Hunchback
.

So of course Penelope must walk in and find him. He swung his feet onto the floor hastily, trying to smooth his hair and hide the book at the same time, and she actually smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile in days, he realized with a shock.

“What are you reading?” She was still standing in the doorway with her hand on the frame.

There was no point in lying. He held up the book. “Minerva Press. I lied about it being Louisa who reads them.”

Her eyebrows flew up and her mouth opened with a sort of incredulous amusement, as if she could not wait to begin mocking him. He was conscious of an overwhelming desire to kiss her, coupled with a despairing conviction that he would always look the fool in front of her. “I read
Farmer’s Tour through the East of England
last week. I just—I can’t be serious
all
the time, Penelope.”

She flinched away. “Am I such a killjoy?”

“No.”
Why must he always make things worse? And she
wasn’t
. There had been very little of joy between them in recent days, it seemed, but he was sure it wasn’t because of her. She was—sweet and sly, and she surprised him with how happy she could be, over the smallest things. “No, Penny, come here.”

Her mouth had folded sadly in on itself, but she came, and she let him pull her down till they were both stretched along the window seat, her back to his chest and her head on his shoulder. He ignored the hard wall at his back and breathed in the scent of her. “I never meant that. I only meant—I know I could never do what you and Percy do. I get restless, trying to read and make plans and manage money. I—”

He could feel her turn thoughtful. “What have you been doing instead?”

“Well…” He felt suddenly embarrassed. “I got bored, so I’ve been visiting Tom Kedge and the laborers. And—”

“That day you came home sunburned. Where were you?”

He felt silly and caught-out, like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes. “I helped harvest the wheat on the home farm.”

“I hate doing all that.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I hate trying to be friendly to people and standing outside in the hot sun. I’d rather stay in an office all day looking at books and talking with a friend.”

Nev was startled by this view of things.

Penelope tilted her head. “You did well in school. Didn’t you study?”

“I never did very well in mathematics. Percy coached me for the Tripos—that’s the Cambridge mathematics examination—and I barely passed even so. I did much better in Latin and music. I like books so long as there are things happening. Farming equipment—”

“—is dull.” But she didn’t sound disapproving, just amused. “Didn’t you ever tag along when Percy helped his father in his office?”

“Of course. At first. I wanted to do whatever Percy did. And Mr. Garrett was always willing to explain things to me. Even farming equipment doesn’t seem so dull to an eight-year-old boy.” He shrugged. “My father found me there one day, entering receipts into one of the ledgers, and explained
that gentlemen didn’t interest themselves in petty financial details.”

Penelope swallowed. “I never know what to say to things like that.” She tried to laugh. “Because on the one hand, that leads to bankruptcy, and on the other, it’s true, and I’m not a lady.”

“Why does it bother you so much? You spend so much time trying to be a lady, and—”

She tensed in his arms. “And failing?”

“
No.
And missing chances to be happy.”

She was silent for a few moments, and he wondered if he had gone too far. Then she pushed out of his arms. He froze, but she didn’t storm off—she just sat on the edge of the window seat and didn’t look at him or touch him, as if—as if she had to have her defenses about her, to say this. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like, not to try to be a lady,” she said. “I’ve been trying ever since my first day of school. You—you might not understand this because you’ve always been a gentleman. But my mother scrubbed floors for a living, once. I would meet people who had been her friends, and they had no teeth. They didn’t know how to read. I was a fat, freckled little girl, and I sounded like any street urchin in London when I opened my mouth. You’ve no notion how it feels, to go to the opera with your mother in your prettiest dresses, and a beautiful thin blonde girl sweeps by on the arm of a man you’re sure must be a lord, and she says in the most perfect English, ‘La, look at those people! What mushrooms!’ ” Penelope sighed, and made a hopeless gesture, as if what she was trying to explain was too basic to put into words. “Oh, I don’t know, Nev. I know those sound like a child’s reasons. They
are
a child’s reasons, but I don’t—I don’t know how not to care.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, but he wanted suddenly to tell her something else. “I missed you, when you didn’t come to dinner these past weeks.”

“Did you really?” A pleased, uncertain smile spread over her face.

“Desperately.”

She beamed at him. “I’m so sorry. I never imagined you would care in the least.” There it was, that sudden simple joy he never expected from her. It was in every line of her face, and affection burst through his veins like drunkenness. “Nev?” she asked, and he would have given her anything. “Will you read to me?”

He blinked. “You want me to read to you?”

She nodded. “You—you’re good at it.”

She had only heard him read aloud once—Byron, at her parents’ house. She didn’t even like Byron. He had supposed she was thinking him the most frivolous fellow alive, and instead she had liked it. For the first time in days, Nev felt that life was full of pleasant surprises. He grinned at her. “Let me dig up our copy of Malory.”

When he had found it, he returned to the window seat. He glanced at her to see where she wanted to sit; to his surprise she crawled between his legs again and settled there. So he rested the book on her lap and his chin on her shoulder and began to read. She was soft and warm and laughed in all the right places, and when he bent and kissed her hair she made a contented humming sound in the back of her throat.

When Penelope asked for Tom Kedge’s books and the Poor Law Authority’s, they were given over to her with a blithe confidence that made her half suspect the whole story was an ugly rumor concocted by the laborers. But it only took her and Mr. Garrett an hour or two to see that it was true, or mostly true. Kedge’s salary payments were made exclusively to the Poor Authority, which confirmed that he hired only Authority workers. That was bad enough, but Mr. Snively recorded those same payments in the Authority ledgers as
rather smaller, which meant either that he was indeed receiving bribes or that he was embezzling.

But they could not accuse Kedge of graft without proof. Penelope and Mr. Garrett calculated that it would cost Kedge an extra two hundred pounds a year to pay a fair wage. Surely if they lowered his rent by a hundred and fifty pounds to compensate, that would be more than fair.

Mr. Garrett agreed to discuss the matter with Kedge first; perhaps that way, he would not feel threatened.

Nev was surprised but not too concerned when a servant came to tell him that he was wanted in Mr. Garrett’s office. But when he neared the office and heard raised voices, he started to worry.

“Then you had better tell Lord Bedlow at once,” Percy was saying, “because I will certainly not—”

“You weaselly rascal! Don’t take that high-and-mighty tone with me!”

They both stopped talking when Nev entered the room, but Percy’s white face and the vindictive malice in Kedge’s eyes were impossible to hide.

“Lord Bedlow,” Percy began, “Mr. Kedge has flatly refused to consider your proposal. When I persisted, he tried to blackmail me—”

Kedge interrupted him again. “Your lordship, you cannot be serious about this plan to raise wages so high! Your father would never have asked it of me.”

“My father was an excellent man,” Nev said, “but he would never have asked economy of anyone, least of all himself. That is partly why the district has been brought so low.”