To Kiss a Thief (4 page)

“Where on earth would I go?”

The rattle of the door latch appeared to startle her. She turned toward the sound of someone entering the house.

“That will be Mrs. Potts returning, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

He thought he caught a note of hesitation in her voice, but it was drowned out by Mrs. Potts's call. “Here we are, mum.”

A whirlwind of light brown ringlets and dirty pinafore tore through the room with a squeal and buried herself in Sarah's skirts. “Mama! Mama!”

S
arah passed her hand over her daughter's head. “And were you a good girl for Mrs. Thomas, Clarissa?”

But the girl had already been distracted by the presence of a stranger and toddled over to inspect him.

Sarah watched St. John study the child's features in return, no doubt searching for some sign of family resemblance—as she herself had done all too often. Clarissa had Sarah's brown hair, although sea, sun, and a passionate dislike of bonnets had turned it more golden than her mother's. The girl's eyes, blue at birth, had been Sarah's best hope, for no one would have denied that St. John was Clarissa's father if she had had his pale eyes. Over a matter of months, though, they had shaded to violet. Beautiful, yes.

But not Sutliffe eyes.

It would have been painful to have had that daily reminder, to see his reflection in her child's face, but she could have borne it, as she had borne so many things, to have had just that small security. It would not have proved Sarah's faithfulness entirely, of course, but it might at least have ensured that the girl would have some future—albeit a future spent far away from her mother, Sarah feared.

Now, however, she felt a peculiar gladness that Clarissa's paternity could not be so easily identified. It made the child hers—always and only hers.

“Who dat is, Mama?”

Sarah opened her mouth, although no reply was forthcoming, and watched in shock as St. John lowered himself to one knee to meet his daughter eye to eye.

“Clarissa, is it?” He extended his hand, and Clarissa placed her chubby fingers in his palm. “I'm called—” He paused, evidently searching for some suitable alias and landing, to Sarah's astonishment, on his given name. “I'm called St. John.”

Not
Fairfax
? He must have feared his title would tip his hand. Even a child as young as Clarissa could recognize
Fairfax
as her mother's name, and her own. Convenient that his given name could pass for a surname—but then, it likely
had
been someone's surname once, a nod to the family of some other young woman who had traded her identity, or perhaps something more, to become a Sutliffe.

“Sijin?” Clarissa's two-and-a-half-year-old tongue struggled to frame the unfamiliar name, a name so intimate even Sarah had never ventured to utter it outside the marriage ceremony.

“Just so. I knew your mother many years ago. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Clarissa.”

Clarissa cast a backward look at Sarah and smiled in obvious satisfaction at being addressed like a grown girl, not a baby. Sarah set her free hand on the child's shoulder and pulled her gently away from St. John, fighting with every fiber of her being the instinct to snatch up her daughter and run as far and as fast as she could.

He rose to his feet and nodded stiffly to Sarah. “I'll bid you good evening, Mrs. Fairfax. But I'll be back tomorrow. It would seem we have one other little matter to discuss.” She could not read his expression as he cut a glance toward Clarissa. “Mrs. Potts,” he added with a nod in her direction, and was out the door before Sarah could speak.

Or even hand him his hat. “Uh-oh,” Clarissa piped, tugging on its black brim.

Sarah looked down, startled. “No, no, dear.” She lifted it gently from the child's reach and hung it on a hook near the door. And then, for good measure, she shot the bolt in the latch, a thing she had never done before in this house.

Mrs. Potts raised an eyebrow. “Everything all right, mum?”

“Perfectly, Mrs. Potts,” Sarah replied with a calm she did not feel and ushered them into the kitchen. “Have you had your tea, then?”

If she hadn't already known the answer to the question, the quantity of gooseberry jam on Clarissa's pinafore would have told the story.

“Yes, of course. Mrs. Thomas wouldn't hear of us leaving without it,” answered Mrs. Potts, just as Clarissa demanded milk. Absently, Sarah picked up the small jug from the tea tray, poured its contents into a cup, and handed the cup to her daughter. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don't seem yourself. Are you sure that gentleman didn't—?”

Sarah shook her head sharply, glancing at Clarissa. “As he said, we knew each other briefly, years ago. It gave me a start to see him again after all this time, that's all.”

Mrs. Potts appeared to consider this explanation. “I 's'pect your head still aches from that music lesson, and that's what's got you looking peaked. Why don't you let me put the child to bed?”

Clarissa clapped sticky fingers. “Story,” she sang out. “Story 'bout a cat 'n' a fish!”

“'Course, wee one,” Mrs. Potts crooned, going to fetch a cloth to wipe the child's face.

“I do have a touch of the headache, Mrs. Potts. I believe I will lie down. Thank you.” Sarah knelt in front of Clarissa. “Give Mama a kiss.”

With a child's unconcern she leaned forward and brushed Sarah's cheek, her puckered lips cool and wet with milk. “'Night.”

“Good night, dear one. Mama loves you.” But Clarissa had already resumed her pestering of Mrs. Potts. Sarah mustered a smile. “Good night, Mrs. Potts.” Mrs. Potts nodded in return and handed Sarah a rushlight so she could make her way to bed.

Sarah passed St. John's hat hanging on the wall as she walked to the stairs. How strange to see a man's things in the house. Would he come for it in the morning?

Would he come for his child?

Pressing her knuckles into her lips to keep from sobbing aloud, she forced herself to go up the steps at a measured pace, not to run or to slam the door of her bedchamber or to throw herself onto her bed as if she were no more in control of herself than Clarissa. Instead, she knelt near the foot of her bed, placed the rushlight on the floor beside her, and opened her trunk, lifting the lid slowly, as if its contents were something to fear.

Beneath a small pile of carefully folded clothing lay the miniature. She had not looked at the picture for a long time, months perhaps, but she had not always been so circumspect. The leather was worn near the clasp and dark from the sweat of her palms. With trembling fingers, she flicked the case open.

The boyish face that looked up at her confirmed how much St. John had changed. The portrait was old, of course—painted when St. John was not yet one-and-twenty—but three years past, it had looked very like the young man she had married. Neither the artist nor her imagination had anticipated the ways that visage would change to become the face of the man she had confronted tonight.

The boy who had sat for that portrait had not needed to shave, she was sure, but this evening the lamplight had caught the shadow of a two days' beard along St. John's jaw. It had highlighted a long, thin scar, as well, running almost from his temple to his chin. She wondered what had caused it. A mistress's jealousy, perhaps—or that mistress's husband's.

The artist had given his subject a suitably aristocratic pallor. Tonight St. John's skin and hair had looked as if they had been bronzed by the sun. Promenades in Hyde Park? A curricle race through the countryside? Those had been the pursuits of the frivolous young man she had known. Were they his pastimes still?

There were other changes, too, changes the miniature could not show. He carried himself differently, and she did not think the broad shoulders beneath his coat had been put there by his tailor. She shivered again, as she had in the sitting room, and cursed her body for its betrayal. How could she have felt the slightest attraction, the slightest longing, after so much time and after so many hurts?

Yet feel it she had—the heat from his body, his breath on her ear—as she had felt it years ago, when he had lain with her, when she had not yet known whether it was pleasure or pain.

When he had given her their child.

Sarah snapped the miniature case shut, latched the trunk, and blew out the feeble light. Rising from the floor, she readied herself for bed and lay down atop the counterpane, staring into the darkness, clutching the picture to her chest, remembering.

Only his eyes—blue and piercing and cold—had been unchanged.

With strength born of both fear and fury, she threw the miniature from her and felt something like satisfaction when it struck the sturdy oak door at the foot of her bed. The clasp must have come loose in midflight, for she heard the small oval of glass shatter when it crashed into the wall and tinkled onto the floor.

In the silence that followed, she lay still, fighting tears and wondering whether one of those shards would be sharp enough to cut out her traitorous heart.

* * *

St. John ducked beneath a sign bearing a picture of a gaudily colored fish with the words
Colin Mackey, prop.
underneath and entered the pub, intending to get thoroughly foxed.

A half-dozen pair of eyes watched him cross the threshold and then returned to their mugs and their companions. By their weather-beaten skin and coarse clothing, the customers looked to be mostly fishermen, clustered in groups about square tables. Some played at cards, while others ate. One man, a hefty sort with a balding head and a bushy moustache, sat apart reading a broadside.

The pub looked respectable, although it was dimly lit and the whitewashed walls had yellowed with age and the smoke of innumerable clay pipes. St. John made his way across a rough-hewn floor so ancient that in places it appeared to have become one with the soil beneath. Behind the bar, a man with brawny forearms and unkempt ginger hair was pulling drafts.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked without turning.

St. John snapped a coin onto the bar. “A room for the night and a pint, if you please.”

“Aye,” the man replied as he set a foaming mug of ale before him.

“Have you a boy who can fetch my horse from the top of the lane and take it 'round to the stables?”

“Aye. Colin!” he barked. A boy of perhaps twelve or fourteen poked his carroty head around the door behind the bar. “Go up-along and get the man's horse.”

“Right away, Pa,” the boy replied and darted back from whence he'd come.

St. John had hardly needed confirmation that the pair were father and son, but the boy's address brought home a fresh stab of panic at the memory of the little girl, Clarissa. Perhaps she, too, shared her father's face, his features? He could not say. Even as he had been looking into her eyes, his mind had been racing to estimate the child's age—counting, adding, subtracting.

Mental arithmetic had never been his forte.

“Keep the pints coming,” he said as he turned to face the small taproom.

The big man with the moustache lowered his paper and caught St. John's eye. “Have a seat,” he said, pushing out a chair with the toe of his boot.

Gesturing his thanks with his mug, St. John levered himself away from the bar and took the offered chair.

“Beals,” the man said, extending his hand. “I'm the baker hereabouts.”

“Pleased to meet you,” St. John replied.

“Been traveling far?”

He thought of the thousands of miles he had logged in the past weeks and nodded. “I left London the day before yesterday.”

Beals raised one brow. “What brings you to Haverhythe in such a hurry?” he asked, just as Mackey came to the table juggling another pint, a rusty key, a bowl of steaming fish stew, and a hunk of crusty bread.

“Comes with the room,” Mackey said, jerking his chin toward the food as he placed it on the table.

“Much obliged,” St. John replied as he bit into the fresh bread and found himself surprisingly hungry. “Yours?” he asked the baker.

Beals's chest puffed with pride. “Aye.” He folded his paper and laid it aside, then carefully removed his steel-rimmed spectacles and tucked them into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Sit, Mackey,” he ordered the proprietor. “The boys'll soon have drained the dregs and then they'll be ready to head home.”

Mackey cast a look over his shoulder at the handful of customers remaining and reluctantly drew a chair toward Beals's table, straddling it as he tossed his bar rag onto the table. “Somethin' to say, then?”

“Why, just that this gentleman's come all the way from London, and it behooves us to make a stranger feel welcome.”

Mackey turned curious eyes on St. John. “How's that?”

He considered his reply carefully, straining to recall every word that Sarah had spoken. What she wouldn't tell him, surely the locals could. He had only to ask the right questions.

“I've come on behalf of a family looking for a young woman who disappeared several years ago. New information came to light recently, suggesting she might have come here, to Haverhythe.”

Beals and Mackey exchanged a glance. “How many years ago?”

“Oh, two or three,” St. John replied, affecting uncertainty.

Mackey shrugged, but Beals leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “And if we knew of such a woman, why should we tell you?”

“Why, because her family is gravely concerned. She left under the shadow of an unfortunate—misunderstanding, shall we say.” He shook his head somberly. “Everyone involved would like to see the wrong righted.”

“What'd she look like?” Mackey asked, drawn in by the possibility of a tale of woe.

St. John paused, appearing to consider the question. “Brown hair, gray eyes. Slender build. Tallish, for a woman.”

The baker and the publican looked at one another again. “Sounds like it could be Mrs. Fairfax,” Beals offered at last.

“Mrs.—Fairfax, did you say?”

“'Course, that could be a, a whad'y'call? An assumed name,” Mackey suggested, nudging Beals with his elbow.