The Sleeping Partner (9 page)

The room was gloomy. Miss Tolerance made out green walls, brown sofa and chairs, a case of books bound in brown and green leather, and more of the nautical prints she had seen downstairs. Spread out upon a large table was a map of the continent, held at the corners with books. There was a good fire in the grate and a branch of candles on a well-ordered desk, but no natural light. A man stood facing the fire. Despite the warmth of the day his hands were stretched out as if to warm them.

“Come in.” He spoke to the fire. “Do not stand there all day.”

“I beg your pardon,” Miss Tolerance advanced a little further into the room. “I was looking for Mrs. Brown.”

“Hah. Is that what she called herself? Yes, I know who you’re looking for.” The speaker turned. He was an older man of middle height, his sparse light hair combed forward over a high forehead, his eyebrows thick. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles pushed well up on his nose; the eyes behind them were cold. “I know all about it.”

“I am happy to hear it, sir.” Miss Tolerance curtsied. “Perhaps you will have the goodness to explain to me. Have I the honor to address Lord Lyne?”

The man gave a bark of laughter. “You know that, d’you? My daughter thinks she has been very clever, but I see you know all about her.”

“Hardly that, sir. But you cannot expect me to enter a house unknown to me without a little inquiry into its owner.” Miss Tolerance kept her tone mild. “My lord, if I was summoned here by your daughter—”

“You were not,” the man snapped. “I wrote that letter, bid you come so I could tell you to your face to cease your interference in my household.”

“Ah, I see.” Miss Tolerance kept her tone neutral. “Does Mrs. Brown know that you have done so?”

“Why should I tell her? I am telling you. Hi, there!” Lyne craned his neck to look past Miss Tolerance. “You, sir. Come tell this—woman—that your wife don’t require her services.”

Miss Tolerance heard footfall behind her and turned to see in the doorway a prosperous looking gentleman of perhaps thirty years. He was dressed well but without pretension to high fashion; his hair was cropped, but not too close, his neckcloth and shirt points were of moderate height, and the buttons on his coat were no more than an inch in diameter. He was a little taller than average, of unremarkable build—in fact, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the man at all. He might have been a prosperous squire from any county in the nation.

Miss Tolerance took a sharp breath. The unremarkable man was known to her; his name was Adam Brereton, and he was her brother.

Chapter Five

Miss Tolerance was so surprised that she neither spoke nor heard what her host was saying. As she watched him, Sir Adam entered, closed the door behind him, and stood before it with arms crossed, as if to bar the way. He did not regard her with any surprise or recognition; either he had known before she arrived that Sarah Tolerance was Sarah Brereton, or he did not recognize her at all. Should she reveal herself? Not here and now, certainly—she doubted that Sir Adam would want his ruined sister to declare their relation before Lord Lyne, who was—his father-at-law?

Lyne, turned back to the fire, was speaking.

“I beg your pardon?” She turned back to him. “I am afraid—I did not hear what you said.”

“What part did you not hear?”

“I apologize, my lord, but I must ask you to repeat the whole of what you said. I beg you will forgive a moment’s inattention; it is rather close in this room.” There, let him think the heat had her close to swooning.

“I said that you were to cease insinuating yourself into my household affairs,” Lyne said.

“Yes, sir. So you did.” Miss Tolerance could feel her brother watching. Resolutely she put the thought of him from her mind and concentrated on Lord Lyne. “What I do not understand is the reason for it. Has Miss Thorpe been found? Is there dissatisfaction with my work? I have not had much time to complete the task I—”

“If I say you are to stop, you baggage—” Lyne looked at her over his shoulder; his thick brows were drawn down in a scowl and his lips were pressed thin. Light glancing off his spectacles hid his eyes.

“My name is Tolerance, Lord Lyne.”

“I know that!” the man barked. “D’you think I do not know that?” He turned away from the fire and, without inviting her to sit, took a chair himself. Miss Tolerance knew well that no great courtesy was due to her as a Fallen Woman, but she believed the baron’s rudeness licensed some brusqueness on her part.

“That you are angry, sir, does not authorize you to speak to me as if I were a fishmonger’s drab.”

Lyne’s eyebrows raised a fraction. His mouth moved, as if it were seeking something devastating to say.

“You have taken it upon yourself to go hunting for the girl,” he said at last.

“Taken it upon myself, sir? No. I am a businesswoman, I cannot afford to go seeking runaway girls unless I am hired to do so.” She turned to include Sir Adam Brereton and recognized his expression from their childhood: he believed that there was trouble, that he might be in for his share of it, and that he might be able to lay the whole of it off upon her. As for the source of the trouble, his eyes kept returning to Lyne. He had not recognized her. “Surely your—wife? Lady Brereton must have told you as much.”

“Lady Brereton has no authority in this matter,” Lyne said flatly.

Miss Tolerance gave no sign of her anger; half a dozen years in business had taught her to maintain the illusion of composure. But she took a seat, all uninvited, and smiled pleasantly.

“My dear sir, if you have washed your hands of your younger daughter’s fate, it becomes a matter for any other person who has the kindness to concern himself. Or herself. I take it as a mark of good principles that Lady Brereton intends her sister not be left to the mercies of the city.”

“The girl has cut herself off from her family and from respectable society.”

“Your daughter might have been too young or innocent to understand what that means, sir, but you and I are not. Should that innocence and youth be rewarded with heartbreak, poverty, disease, starvation, the lowest kind of whoredom?”

“All she need to have done, to avoid those things, was to stay in my house,” Lyne snapped.

Sir Adam intervened. “Come, Miss Tolerance.” These were the first words he had spoken in her presence, and she was shocked at how familiar his voice, and the scoffing tone meant to make light of what she said, were to her. “We have no reason to believe that Ev—that the girl will meet any of those things. Her father’s wishes must be paramount.”

Miss Tolerance was so furious that she was, briefly, unable to speak. That her brother could say such a thing suggested that her own elopement had taught him nothing. Blood first flushed her face, then departed, leaving her pale and cold.

“Have you
any
experience of the matter, sir? Do you have any idea what happens to a gently reared young woman once the stews get hold of her? Would you suffer a young woman of your own family to be so abandoned? If you knew it might mean her death?”

Sir Adam was red-faced, looking from her to Lyne and back again. “Keep a civil tongue! Remember to whom you speak!”

“I know well to whom I speak, Sir Adam.
You
might remember
of
whom I speak,” Miss Tolerance said coldly. “Your wife’s sister.”

“What would you have my father-at-law do? Bring the girl home and attempt to pass her off at Almack’s as whole goods?”

“That is not the only alternative. See that the fellow marries her, and save her reputation and your own. If you fail of that, bring her home and make arrangements for her. Give her some occupation! Let her be of use, if only by handing out liniment and calf’s foot jelly in the village. Do not force her away from all the persons who meant safety and home for her.” Miss Tolerance’s voice shook. This was dangerous ground; far better to return her attention to Lord Lyne, who was watching her with peculiar detachment.

“Perhaps Sir Adam is right, Lord Lyne. Perhaps I paint the matter too black. If your daughter is lucky, she and her lover will live in some kind of domestic situation for a time before he passes her along to another man of similar fortune. She will make a life as a demi-rep until she has no looks to recommend her and then, if she has been thrifty with the presents and jewels that her keepers have bestowed upon her, she will set herself up with her money invested in the Navy Funds and live a quiet, retired life, almost respectably. If she is less lucky her seducer will pass her along to someone who cares nothing but a pretty face, or who may enjoy defiling a woman better born than he—”

“Enough! I hear enough of this from my son. The girl has made her bed—”

“And you require her to occupy it,” Miss Tolerance finished. “Does the girl truly stand so low in your regard that you would abandon her to the London stews?”

Sir Adam made a noise of revulsion. Miss Tolerance ignored him and kept her gaze upon Lord Lyne. He stood with his back to the fire, hands in his pockets, warming his backside. He appeared unmoved; Miss Tolerance changed her tack.

“Is it not most likely that what your daughter did was done upon impulse, with the impetuousness of youth and under powerful persuasion from a man she believed loves her? My lord, she is your child. Surely you do not wish such dire harm to come to her. Let me ascertain that she is alive and well. After that your family may decide—”

Lyne’s voice was cold. “The girl dishonored us, without a care to how it would affect her family. She deserves no further attention.”

Miss Tolerance felt her own spine stiffen. “So you say, sir. But you are not my client and cannot, therefore, dismiss me. Your elder daughter has hired me, and I will take my direction from her.”

“By God, Miss Tolerance, I’ll give you your direction!” Sir Adam stepped further into the room. “It is as Lord Lyne says. You are—”

“Sir Adam, you did not hire me either. As I often am employed by wives seeking information about husbands’ indiscretions, I have made it my policy that who hires me must dismiss me as well. Else there would be any number of men in London eager to pay me to forget all I have learned of their amours. When Lady Brereton tells me—

“Lady Brereton has no standing—” Lyne began again.

“I cannot concern myself over-much with matters of standing, my lord.”

Lyne left his position by the fire—he favored one leg, Miss Tolerance noted. “Then I shall summon my daughter to attend you,” he said. “Wait here.”

“As you wish, sir.” Miss Tolerance rose and curtsied.

When the older man had left the room, Miss Tolerance sat again and regarded her brother. Better to tell him, she thought. Were he to learn in some other way who she was, would he not likely resent it? It did not seem fair, or safe, to keep him unaware.

“You should not have drawn my wife into this,” Sir Adam said into the silence.

Miss Tolerance stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said—”

“I heard your words. And to the contrary, it was your wife who drew me in. How fortunate that you married a woman who sees so clearly what her duty to family is.”

“Yes, she—” Sir Adam stopped. “What do you mean?”

Miss Tolerance had lost all sympathy for her brother. “Really, Adam,” she drawled. “Can you scruple to leave Miss Thorpe to her father’s mercies?”

Sir Adam pulled back as if from a snake. “What did you say?”

“I asked if it was necessary to abet Lord Lyne in treating his daughter as our father treated me.”

Sir Adam stepped closer, circled her, staring. As recognition came he leaned away from Miss Tolerance, his eyes large. “Good God!”

“So you might say.”

Sir Adam went to the door, closed it, returned and sat heavily in one of the brown chairs, regarding his sister as if she might explode.

“How do you come to be here?” he asked at last.

“I was summoned by your father-at-law.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. How it is you are—I thought you were in Europe, or dead!”

“The two being very like each other?” Miss Tolerance sat. “I was in Europe for eight years, Adam. When Connell died, I returned to London.”

“He died? Did he marry you?”

“Would that somehow make his death more acceptable? No, Connell and I could never settle how to wed—he wanted a Roman ceremony, I a Protestant one. And we were first in France and then in Belgium, which complicated matters even more.”

“You’re mighty casual about it, Sally!”

“Not in the least. But I have had many years to devise an answer to those who have no business asking in the first place.”

“No business?” Sir Adam appeared to think better of debating that point. He looked at his sister with amazement. “But why are you here?”

“Your father-at-law wrote a note,” she said again. “And as I believe I hear him returning to continue his rebuke, perhaps you will wish to continue this discussion at another time?”

Indeed, the sound of Lord Lyne’s voice, audible but indecipherable, came from the hall. Sir Adam rose and signed Miss Tolerance to hush. Lyne returned to the room.

“My daughter is coming.”

“Thank you, sir. Before she arrives, I wonder if I might make one more point with you?”

“You will not change my mind,” Lyne said.

“I did not think I would. But I will set my own mind at ease that I have done my best. You feel that your daughter’s elopement has left you vulnerable to disgrace. Would not it be in your own best interest to know her situation? As matters stand you can have no idea how Miss Thorpe’s disgrace might come back to haunt you or your family. If you provided for the girl and were thus able to know where she was, there would be less likelihood, when your sons come to be married, that this old scandal would surface again.”

She heard a muffled sound from Sir Adam but kept her eyes trained upon Lyne.

The baron pursed his lips. “I am prepared to take that chance, Miss Tolerance.”

“Would not your wife prefer to know if the girl lives?”

“My wife, I am thankful to say, did not live to see her daughter disgrace the family. I would ask why you are so hot upon the subject, but of course, if we let you continue your inquiries, you get your fee whether we take the girl back or no.”