Married to a Perfect Stranger (19 page)

Eleanor rose. “I shall go and talk to Emily. We are of different generations, but we are friends of a sort.”

Mary clasped her hands tight in her lap. “Could you tell her…that I'm sorry…that I never meant to cause her any pain. That I just… Oh, she will never understand what happens when I draw.”

“What does happen?” asked Caroline. “I mean, I did wonder why you made her so…”

“Mary learns and, in a way, ‘speaks' with her hands,” replied Eleanor, reaching for the bellpull.

Mary's mouth fell open in surprise. She stared at her hostess.

“It's simply a different way of dealing with information.”

“How did you know…?” Mary couldn't find words to convey her amazement.

Eleanor smiled at her. “It happens to me, just a bit, also. Enough so that I can recognize and admire it.”

“Admire!”

“Your hands? How can they?” Caroline looked brightly curious. There was no censure in her gaze.

Mary ventured an explanation. “When I begin to draw…they somehow know what to do without my thinking about it. They draw what…I might not be able to understand…otherwise.”

“Really?” Caroline gazed at Mary's hands. “How interesting.”

The butler came in answer to Eleanor's ring. “I need the carriage, Jenson,” she said.

“It's quite cold and blustery outside, my lady.” It wasn't quite an objection, but there was a hint of reproach in his tone.

Eleanor gave him a stern look. “The carriage. Immediately.”

He surrendered with a bow. “Yes, my lady.”

Caroline begged Mary to stay and await the result with her, and so the two young women tried to occupy themselves for an endless hour. Caroline asked further questions about the drawing process. In the face of her uncritical interest, Mary talked about portraits she'd done and the ways they'd helped her. After a while Mary began to hope that she could explain what had happened at the party to John as well.

When the sound of carriage wheels finally came outside, they leaped up and met their hostess at the front door.

But Eleanor shook her head as the servants took her hat and gloves and cloak. “Emily has gone down to the country for two weeks,” she said.

They walked back into the parlor, closing the door on curious eyes.

“As far as I could discover, her departure had been planned for some time,” Eleanor continued. “Hunting season, you know. There will be parties invited to Waletts for sport.”

Mary sank into a chair, shaky from the release of tension as much as disappointment.

“I was thinking on the way back that this may be just as well,” said Eleanor. “Over that time, the talk will decrease. We can consider what…”

“So we do nothing!” exclaimed Caroline.

“To think and plan is not nothing,” was her grandmother's mild reply.

Caroline paced the room, her skirts swirling around her. “It feels like it.”

It did, Mary thought. She longed to put everything back the way it had been yesterday, when they'd been anticipating the party with such high hopes.

“Scandal fades away,” said Eleanor. “Emotions cool. It will be far better to speak to Emily when she is…”

“Not furious with me,” finished Mary.

The silence in the room confirmed her judgment.

Mary rose. “Thank you for trying to help,” she said to Eleanor. She nodded to Caroline to show that she included her in this, despite a niggling wish that Caroline had stayed silent at the reception. “I must go home.” She moved to the door. Caroline started after her, but Eleanor seemed to sense Mary's need to escape and called her granddaughter back.

Mary found several of the dowager countess's servants in the entry. As she waited for her cloak to be fetched, the lady's maid sidled up to her. “Quite a brisk wind today,” the woman said. “There's talk of snow by morning.”

Mary nodded.

“If there was anything you could do to discourage her ladyship from going out in the cold…”

Another thing to regret, Mary thought. There was no end to them just now.

“Her family is always urging her to visit in the winter, when town is so grim and empty,” the maid confided.

Empty of the
haut
ton
, Mary thought. Yet thousands of people remained in London going about their lives as usual.

“Her son the earl would be glad to have her,” the maid continued. “Or Lady Frist, her younger daughter, you know. Not Lady Caroline's family perhaps…”

“Her ladyship makes up her own mind, Jenson,” was all she could find to say as she gratefully pulled on her gloves and cloak.

* * *

All through the afternoon, John felt like a zoo animal. So many of his coworkers made an excuse to pass by their office and peer inside. Conolly kept them out, for the most part, but John could feel the news of last night spreading through the building like an acrid fog. John was more than ever grateful that fate had made William Conolly the other inhabitant of this small room. The man knew when conversation was unwelcome.

John buried himself in his work. And there he found some salvation. The tasks were familiar, and he knew he did them well. The pile of intelligence reports awaiting his scrutiny both challenged and reassured him. Exercising his faculties in analysis restored his spirits and renewed his determination. He would find a way through this. He would keep his head down, do his job, and endure. Tomorrow would be better, and the day after more so, as the talk subsided.

Still, he was relieved when the day ended and he could head for home. Riding through the darkening streets, he bowed to a raw wind that found all the crevices in his scarf and coat. Small, sharp snowflakes raked his bare face like tiny knives. It was wonderful to reach the house and be welcomed by warmth and golden candlelight. His house felt like a sanctuary, far from Fordyce, rumors of war, and the slums where so many wretches shivered this night.

He gave Kate his things and headed for the fire, holding chilled hands over the flames. Mary came to stand beside him. “John, I would like to explain about the drawing,” she said. “How it happened…”

“Please.” His hand came up, unthinking. He was sick of the whole subject. “Going over and over the thing will do no good.” He smiled at her. “Let us talk of something else tonight.”

“But you don't understand!” She reached out a hand, looking agitated.

He took it and squeezed her fingers. “I know very well that you meant no harm.”

“Of course I didn't.” Her tone had a snap now. “I need you to see…”

Above all, he didn't want to quarrel. “Must we do this now? I had very little sleep and a trying day.” He tried another smile. “I'm quite hungry as well, looking forward to one of your excellent dinners.”

Mary gazed at him for a long moment. He wished she wouldn't look so sad. “I'll tell them to serve as soon as may be,” she said and went out.

Dinner was stilted at first. John searched for a topic that would raise his wife's spirits. “How is your family?” he asked. “Have you had letters from your sisters?”

“I had one from Lucy,” Mary replied.

“What news from her?” He was surprised at the depth of his relief when Mary began to smile.

“Her little boy is teething, and he got hold of the dog's bone and began chewing on it before she noticed and took it away from him.”

He laughed, partly to encourage her to go on.

“She washed out his mouth with lavender soap. And then he was sick. And she doesn't think that he will ever forgive her.”

“More likely he's too young to remember the indignity.”

“The dog was quite aggrieved, also, when she threw away the bone.”

“What is the name of this ferocious child? I fear I've forgotten.”

“Daniel.”

“That's right. He sounds rather like Frederick's eldest.”

Through the rest of the meal, they diverted themselves with stories of the upcoming generation in their families. Mary had five nephews and nieces, to his two. When they removed to the parlor after dinner, however, conversation tailed off. They sat on the sofa before the fire, its crackling a counterpoint to the scratch of snow at the windows.

The silence had grown long, and awkward, when Mary turned to him and said, “I
will
find a way out of this tangle.” Her tone was fierce. Her dark eyes glowed with resolve. Then she laced her arms around his neck and kissed him, holding on as if for dear life.

The intensity in her voice and her touch shook him, fired him like a match set to tinder. He slipped his arms around her and drew her close, murmuring her name against her lips. The world drew in around him, a sheltering cloak, until nothing existed but their embrace.

Some endless time later, John surfaced. Mary's hair was tousled, and her eyes were smudged with desire. Her gown was falling off one white shoulder. He pulled his wife to her feet. “Upstairs.”

In the sanctuary of the bedroom, they shed clothes with hurried tugs and low murmurs. Firelight gleamed on glimpses of skin and then on bare bodies yearning for each other.

John let his hands run over the curves that he'd learned to savor and teased out the gasps that had come to thrill him as much as his own surges of desire. His breath caught, too, as Mary's fingers found ways to tantalize him.

Falling into bed, they urged each other on, and on, until desire beat through them like floodwaters at a dam. John hung at a vibrating edge, until he felt Mary shudder and open under his touch, and then he plunged and let the whirling urgency take him away. There was nothing, then, but this, the exquisite joy of shared release. He felt Mary with him as the wave rose to an impossible peak, broke in glory, and slowly, deliciously, ebbed.

Wasn't this enough? John thought, over the gradual slowing of his heart. Still holding Mary, he turned on his side and kept her close. Need a man ask more than to be happy in his home? Wasn't the rest of it just empty posturing? There were other desires, yes—to be useful and admired by one's fellow man. Yet how could they match…? His mind blurred; he tried to think about the question. But last night's sleeplessness caught up with him and pulled him down into oblivion.

Lying beside him, still encircled by his arm, Mary heard her husband's breathing slow into sleep. His body relaxed against the pillows, and his face looked peaceful, younger than when awake. Tears burned in her eyes, and a sharp ache pierced her heart. She'd never regretted anything so much as the trouble her drawing had brought him. It was so unfair that he should suffer, so undeserved! And that she should be the cause…

She desperately needed him to understand how it had happened, to understand
her
. They were no longer the strangers who had reunited after his long absence. But the steps they'd taken toward each other had simply made her want more.

Mary traced her husband's handsome features with her eyes. If they could lie here forever side by side… But that was not the way of the world. Morning would come, and he would go out to contend with the difficulties her drawing had caused. She bared her teeth at the thought. She would do anything, she realized, anything to make this right for the man she…loved.

Mary rose on one elbow and looked down at John. Her heart seemed to expand in her chest. She desperately loved this husband who had returned to her a stranger and gradually become the center of her life. She
would
find a way to help him. She didn't know how just now. But she'd find a way.

Careful not to disturb him, Mary turned to blow out the candle on the small table beside the bed. She lay in the darkness a long while before sleep finally came.

At breakfast the next morning, Kate was unusually attentive, offering to freshen Mary's tea or fetch more toast. Instead of appearing only if called, she positively hovered. Instead of her customary sullen stoicism, her expression seemed full of purpose, her movements crisp. When Mary had finished eating, Kate stood before her like a workman who has completed his assigned task and now expects payment. “Ma'am, would you go with me back to the apothecary shop? I've finished all the samples I wish to show Mr. Jenkins.”

“You can have leave to go on your own, Kate.”

“I don't want to go alone.” The maid's tone was adamant.

What was this? Kate had never been shy of any deliveryman or shopkeeper. Not that Mary had seen. “Why not?”

“This is an…official visit, like.”

“Official?”

“And I don't want Mr. Jenkins thinking I'm the sort of girl who goes gadding about the streets on her own, getting up to mischief,” Kate added.

Mary was tempted to ask her what sort of mischief she had in mind, but she was too intrigued by this new Kate—focused and intense, clearly determined. The lackadaisical, discontented servant she'd endured for all these weeks had disappeared. The transformation almost made Mary forget her own troubles. “All right, I will go with you,” she said.

An hour later they walked out of the square together, warmly dressed against the morning chill. Kate carried a large basket that clinked softly as she moved, though she had swathed many of her samples in cloth.

Eager to promote the success of her own plan, and remembering their last visit to Mr. Jenkins, Mary ventured a hint. “Perhaps you should be a bit more…umm…accommodating when you explain your concoctions today.”

Kate's chin came up, and her lips turned down. In an instant, she looked like her old sullen self. “I've no need to be ‘accommodating.' His shop'll be better off with my lotions and tinctures. I'm very good at concocting, if I do say so.”

“Well, but he doesn't know…”

“He will after today.” Kate shook the basket slightly. “And I'm right here in London and can make up special orders in a day. No sending down to the country.”

She'd clearly thought this through. Mary was impressed, yet she had envisioned a rather closer relationship for Kate and Mr. Jenkins. “Yes, but if you seem to be puffing yourself off…”

“No one else will if I don't,” was Kate's brisk reply. “Old Alice in the stillroom used to say, ‘The only way to get respect is to insist on it.' And I reckon she was right.”

Insist on it? The words seemed to echo in Mary's ears. Insist on recognition for one's talents? She tried to imagine doing that with her family and saw a row of astonished faces gazing back at her. Yet, she had insisted when it came to Great-Aunt Lavinia. She'd made her case, and her mother had agreed. But the drawing of Lady Castlereagh…that was different. People were angry at her. Even John… That struck to her very heart.

“Here we are,” Kate said.

Mary had nearly walked past the apothecary shop. She saw Kate take a deep breath before opening the door and realized that the maid might not be quite as confident as she was trying to seem. They walked in, the bell jingling to herald their entrance, and handsome Jeremiah Jenkins came out from the back.

Kate marched up to the counter and set down her basket. “I've come to show you some things,” she declared, pulling back the cloth covering.

For the next half hour, Kate talked with surprising authority. She explained her concoctions in detail, verifying the quality of the ingredients and detailing their uses. She smeared lotion on her wrist and offered it to Mr. Jenkins to sniff. She commandeered Mary's wrist for another, so as not to mingle the aromas. She extolled the efficacy of several herbal tinctures and flower essences. She noted how carefully they'd been made. When a customer entered, Kate paused and stepped back, then picked up right where she'd left off when the customer was served. Mary was amazed by her fluency and assurance. This was a different creature from her dissatisfied, mumbling housemaid.

As she talked, Jenkins's expression slowly shifted from surprise to wariness to enthusiasm. When at last Kate ran down, he said, “These are first-rate.” He held a tincture up to the light. “Not a crumb in the suspension. Very well made.”

“Didn't I say so?” replied Kate.

Mary winced at her truculent tone, but the apothecary merely nodded. “I assume you mean to offer them to me for sale here?” he said.

“Yes. I could do special orders as well. If a lady wanted a lavender-scented lotion or rose. Whatever her favorite is.”

Jenkins nodded again, more thoughtfully.

“You could run advertisements,” Mary suggested, “like the ones in the fashion papers for Denmark Lotion and Olympian Dew.”

Her companions did not appear to hear her. They were leaning toward each other across the counter. “I suppose you could supply new concoctions fairly quickly?” said Jenkins.

“Not like the days it must take from the country,” Kate agreed. In the face of his interest, she smiled, and the smile transformed her somewhat plain face, giving it beauty and life. Mary was startled. Had she ever seen Kate happy in all the weeks she'd known her? Not that she could recall. The change in her expression suggested a far more engaging, attractive creature than the sullen maid she knew. She could see Jeremiah Jenkins noticing it as well.

“I do believe we can work together,” he said. He held out a hand. Kate grasped it. They shook on the bargain and did not immediately let go. From the way Kate's smile broadened, Mary suspected that she wouldn't be asked to accompany her to the apothecary shop again.

* * *

At the Foreign Office, another awkward day crawled past. John chafed at his situation and did his best to ignore it. He would go out with Henry Tsing tonight, he decided. That was one initiative he could control, and who knew, a few calculated risks might yield important information and counterbalance his current…not disgrace. That was far too strong—and foolishly self-indulgent—a word. Notoriety?

Whatever you called his plight, it didn't change the fact that he wanted to help England and that he had valuable skills to apply to this goal. He dashed off notes to Tsing and to Mary, letting her know of his plans, then settled to work in somewhat better spirits.

Trudging through the slums that evening was actually a relief. The sailors and ruffians John observed in grog houses and taverns knew nothing of society gossip and wouldn't have cared a fig if they heard it. Whatever shifts they were put to in their struggle to survive, they weren't idle and bored. Their lives had a…gritty reality that altered his perspective on his own problems.

Ending his tour at Shen's establishment, he sat for a while with the man and had a real drink. No need to tip Shen's fine brandy into a dark corner or under the scratched boards of a grog house table. It was finer than what John had at home. They discussed ships newly in from the Orient and the activities of the latest crop of stranded Chinese sailors. “Not much news tonight then,” John concluded.

“Ah.”

The tone of this one word made John sit straighter despite his fatigue.

“Two of my fellow…proprietors have become quite elusive of late. They haven't dropped in for a chat, as you are kind enough to do.” Shen's tone was ironic. “Or responded—except uselessly—to my inquiries.”

“Who?” John asked. And when Shen named the owners of a sailors' doss-house and a low inn, he said, “They're in the habit of calling on you?”

“From time to time. It's good for business to be acquainted with your…competitors.”

Shen was being charitable. John knew these other two were far less influential. “Perhaps I should call upon them…”

Shen shook his head. “Unwise. A whiff of a stranger, and any odd doings will be swept away. Let me inquire. I shall tell you what I learn.”

“You expect it to be significant.” John could hear it in his host's voice.

“I do. Though there is nothing I can put my finger on, I have a…feeling that they may have the answer to the elusive ‘presence' we have been pursuing.”

John had a healthy respect for intuition. Many of the reports he read from far-flung spots spoke of hunches that paid off. Still, who mentioned those that did not? “I shall leave it to you then.”

“You may.”

John nodded his thanks. This scheme of his would be impossible without this man, he thought. It was a piece of luck that he had found him.

* * *

Mary sat in the front parlor of her home with only the light of the fire to illuminate the room. She was watching for John's return, and it was far easier to see the square outside without a lamp or candles reflecting off the window glass. And though she knew it was much too early to expect him, she found the dimness soothing. It let her feel hidden, secret, safe. In the dark the sense of a battery of accusing eyes upon her lessened.

The clatter of a carriage brought her to her feet. Peering out, Mary watched a hackney draw up in front of Eleanor's place across the way. A man alit and paid the driver. When he turned, the carriage lamps washed his face, and Mary recognized William Conolly.

John's friend knocked and was admitted, though this was hardly a conventional time for calls. He must have an appointment, and Mary doubted he'd come to see Eleanor. Caroline was a much more likely attraction. Mary wished him well if that was where his interests lay.

She returned to her chair and watched the wash of orange firelight on the walls. The evils of her situation cycled round and round in her brain. She'd tried a book, a pile of mending, but nothing diverted her from the desperate desire to help her husband.

Sometime later, Mary heard Kate and Mrs. Tanner go up to bed. As the hour passed midnight, she moved to a straight chair by the window.

Finally, at what seemed the middle of the night, she heard footsteps in the silence of the square. Peering out, she spotted John. He carried a small lantern to light his way. She now knew that he had a pistol in his pocket, too, which was both a worry and a reassurance.

The light of a half-moon silvered the landscape, and just as Mary was rising to go to the front door she saw another figure, lingering at the corner of the street that led into the square, fifty feet or so behind her husband.

This person carried no lantern, and so was a mere outline. He—she was certain it was a man—edged over to the fence bordering the square's garden. There, he crouched, harder to see against the wrought iron bars and bare branches beyond.

At the sound of John's key in the lock, Mary looked away for a moment. When she turned back, she could no longer see the dark figure, no matter how hard she stared. Cursing that brief inattention, she hurried out to the front door.

John started when she appeared in the entryway. “Were you sitting in the dark?”

“To watch for you.” She moved past him and through the still open doorway.

“What are you doing?”

Mary rushed over the cobbles and scanned the line of the fence. John came up behind her, the light of his lantern illuminating an empty scene.

“Mary, what the deuce are you…?”

“There was someone following you. I saw him.”

“Following?”

“He came into the square behind you, and then went over to the garden fence.”

John looked around and held the lantern higher. “There was no one behind me. I kept a careful eye out.”

“There was.”

John turned, casting the beam of light over the pavement and running it along the iron fence. “See, no one.”

“But I saw someone!”

John walked back into the house. After a moment, Mary followed. He closed the door and extinguished the lantern, setting it down on the floor. “If you saw anyone, it was probably a late reveler or a neighbor who couldn't get to sleep,” he said.

Mary let the “if” pass. “Why would anyone like that hide by the fence?”

“A call of nature?”

This use for the fence hadn't occurred to her and was an unappealing piece of knowledge. Mary shook her head, remembering something. “I've seen someone before. Nearer the house. Watching or…”

“The neighborhood is full of people, Mary.”

He didn't believe her. Mary wanted to argue, but he looked so tired. She would leave it for now. Though she knew she was right.

* * *

The next day was Sunday, and the Bexleys attended the local church, as had become their habit. After Mrs. Tanner's Sunday roast, they'd barely settled in the parlor when there was a sharp knock at the front door. “Are you expecting anyone?” Mary wondered. John shook his head. Since she'd given her small staff leave to go out, she went to answer it herself.

She found John's brother George on the doorstep. He didn't wait for an invitation but walked in as if he owned the place, saying, “Mary,” with a curt nod. He was peeling off his coat when John appeared in the parlor doorway. “There you are,” said George. He handed his hat and coat to Mary and walked into the parlor.

Mary looked at her husband. His jaw had tightened. As he turned back toward the parlor, she tossed George's things over a chair and hurried after him.

George Bexley stood before the hearth, with his hands out to the warmth of the fire. His ruddy face was creased in a frown. “What the devil have you been up to?” he said to Mary.

“I beg your…?”

“From what I hear, you've managed to insult Lord Castlereagh.” He shook his head. “Mama thought that getting John leg-shackled would put an end to his scrapes. Now we find all it's done is double the risk of his falling into them.”

“That is absolutely not…” began John.

“So I've come round to pull
both
of your chestnuts out of the fire,” George interrupted.

“How do you even know…?” tried Mary.