CHAPTER TEN
“Obtaining a position is your task. Mine is ensuring I do not invite thieves to polish the silver.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to an applicant for the position of lady’s maid during an unusually abbreviated interview.
Sarah carefully folded her father’s waistcoat and placed it inside one of the crates slated for the poor. Mr. Dunhill had promised to distribute Papa’s things to deserving families. Which was strange, considering she and her mother could now be counted among that number.
“Do you suppose we should take the teapot with us when we leave?” Eleanor inquired as she entered the parlor with another stack of clothing. She set it beside the pile Sarah was sorting. “It is rather fragile.”
Plucking another garment from the stack, Sarah said absently, “Given we do not yet know where we will be living, I suggest we pack only what is necessary.”
“Well, Mrs. Hubbard has offered—”
“I know, Mama. But how long can we stay with them, really?”
Eleanor sighed, arching her back as though it pained her. The black band of fabric around her upper arm slid down to her elbow. She tugged it back up and ran a hand over her forehead, nodding her agreement. Her hand dropped to her hip. “Have you heard anything from the school in Exeter?”
“Nothing yet.”
“I still maintain we should travel to Bath. There are several fine schools there, as well as moneyed families who may be in need of a governess, and Cousin Elizabeth will have a much harder task ignoring us when we arrive at her door.”
Lately, Sarah had found little to laugh about, but the vision of Mama’s haughty cousin—who refused to answer Mama’s letters—being importuned upon her own doorstep was rather amusing. She gave a half-hearted grin and pulled one of Papa’s tailcoats from the pile. Giving it a shake, she examined the seams. A bit worn, but someone would surely get years of use out if it.
Unbidden came the thought of the last man who had borrowed Papa’s clothes. For possibly the millionth time, she wondered about him. Colin. Wondered how he was, where he was. Whether he had found safety. Whether he ever thought about her, the madwoman who had claimed him as her betrothed.
“Be sure to search the pockets,” her mother murmured, glancing around the parlor for her teapot. “Your father was always tucking things away.”
Sarah laid the coat down atop the crate and fished inside the interior pocket. A corner pricked her fingers. Folded paper. She withdrew the sealed letter, noted her father’s spidery scrawl on the outside. It was her name.
Tears gathered in her throat, choking her.
Across the room, china clinked. “If it cracks, then so be it,” Eleanor muttered. “This pot was a gift from my mother on my wedding day. Where I go, it goes.”
Sarah gritted her teeth and shoved the letter into her apron pocket. She sniffed and folded her father’s coat, placing it gently inside the crate.
A knock sounded at the door. Sarah turned in that direction, but Eleanor was ahead of her. “I shall answer,” her mother said, wiping her hands on her apron and weaving her way past the various crates cluttering the parlor floor. “Likely it is Mr. Dunhill’s mother-in-law again, come to measure the windows for draperies or some such.”
Sarah half-smiled. The woman had visited thrice in the past week, always insisting they should “take as much time as needed in this period of mourning.” Yet invariably she managed to leave with a set of measurements or new furniture plan, all in preparation for taking possession of their cottage.
The voice now drifting from the open door was not a woman’s, however. It was a man’s—cultured, soft, unfamiliar. Sarah frowned, curious. She walked slowly across the parlor and came to stand behind her mother.
He was richly dressed, his greatcoat of fine, gray wool, his black top hat gleaming in the early sunlight. Apart from his blatantly expensive clothing, he possessed bland features and middling height that made him rather unremarkable.
“Ah, Sarah,” said Eleanor over her shoulder. “This gentleman has come to inquire about placing his ward in St. Catherine’s Academy for Girls of Impeccable Deportment. I was just informing him, regrettably, that we have closed the school. Our last pupil departed yesterday.”
“Regrettable, indeed,” the man said, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat, his gloved hands clasped neatly atop a silver-capped walking stick. “St. Catherine’s Academy came with the highest recommendation.”
“Oh?” said Eleanor. “By whom, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“A friend of a friend is acquainted with a local man. Mr. Foote, I believe.”
Slightly nauseated by the reminder of Felix Foote, Sarah recalled hearing he had gone to London last month. For what purpose, she did not care to know. She’d simply been relieved he had disappeared from Keddlescombe. After her father’s death, the respite from his loathsome attentions had been a blessing.
Presently, she smiled with a politeness she did not feel. “I do hope you have not traveled far, Mr. …?”
“Forgive me, Miss Battersby,” he said, smoothly removing his hat. His hair was ruddy blond and thin, the wisps combed neatly across his scalp. “Syder. Horatio Syder. I traveled from London, but I have matters of business to attend nearby, so it was not out of my way.” His eyes, previously difficult to see, were a flat, pale gray. He smiled gently, his expression mild and even charming. But his eyes gave her a chill.
Dismissing it as a trick of the light, she nodded and responded with the manners her mother had taught her. “Well, I am very sorry to have disappointed you, Mr. Syder. If you like, I can provide a list of recommended schools for your ward. What age did you say she is?”
“Fourteen,” he said, his eyes brightening for the first time. Yes, indeed, she decided. A trick of the light, surely. “And so curious, it is all I can do to persuade her to leave the library.”
Sarah smiled back at him. “Many of my students are the same.” She shook her head and immediately corrected, “Former students, I should say. Their expression of wonder at making a new discovery was always my best reward.”
A breath-stalling gust of wind whistled up from the sea, pushing past Mr. Syder and raising gooseflesh on Sarah’s skin.
“How rude of us,” Eleanor exclaimed. “Would you care to come inside? I fear we are in the midst of packing up the cottage, so it is dreadfully cluttered at present, but we can certainly offer you a cup of tea.”
Sarah blinked at the back of her mother’s head. What in heaven’s name was she thinking? The parlor was in no condition to host—
“I would be delighted, Mrs. Battersby.”
Before Sarah could protest or even inquire as to where her mother had left her wits, Eleanor had escorted the gentleman into the room piled with their possessions—stacks of linens and clothing, books and dishes, keepsakes and silly mementos that should have been discarded years ago. The stuff littered every surface, interrupted only by wooden crates and two old trunks. He took it all in with a sweeping glance. She had the odd impression that he was calculating its value in his mind.
Her mother busied herself clearing space on the lone, threadbare sofa. Eleanor then patted the cushion and said, “There now, do have a seat if you like, Mr. Syder. It will only take a moment to pour the tea. Perhaps my daughter can tell you a bit about her skills as an instructor of curious young girls.”
“I—I can?”
“Certainly, you can,” Eleanor insisted, her inflection emphatic. “For, it sounds as though Mr. Syder’s ward is in need of someone with your talents and experience. If not at a school, perhaps as a private tutor or governess.” Her mother’s eyebrows were bobbing up and down in a most peculiar way before she left the room, pausing only long enough to retrieve the china teapot she’d been packing.
Blast. Sarah had told her mother she would prefer a position at a school, where they could more easily settle in one place. How else could she provide a home for them both? Marriage, perhaps, but she had already rejected the idea. The only man who might have tempted her in that regard had left her behind nearly two months ago.
“Well,” she said, now that her mother had given her no choice. “Perhaps we should sit.” She picked her way across the room to remove a stack of bed linens from a chair then dropped them into an empty crate before sitting.
Mr. Syder’s walking stick tapped on the plank floors, sounding sharp in the room before he sat on the sofa, leaning the thin cane against the rolled arm and placing his hat beside him on the cushion. Gray eyes leveled on her. “Keddlescombe is a lovely place. The villagers have been most helpful. They do seem to know everything of note that occurs in the area.”
“The village is very small. It would be more difficult not to notice, I daresay.”
“Indeed.” He smiled at her, but his eyes had taken on a flat cast again. “I have a friend who passed through this way recently. He wrote to me, singing its praises. So green, he said. The air clean and smelling of the sea. Quite different from the coal dust of London. I felt I simply must see it myself.” His hands rested beside his knees, perfectly still. The man did not fidget, scarcely blinked. “Perhaps you remember him. Tall chap.”
Her heart kicked against her bones, suddenly turning and flopping and pounding in a frantic rhythm. A wash of cold, sick fever ran through her blood. “No, I … I cannot say …”
“His name is Colin Lacey.”
The fine hairs on her forearms lifted away from her skin.
“Lord Colin Lacey, although he often prefers to dispense with the title, as it is a courtesy only. His brother is the Duke of Blackmore.”
She could feel the blood leave the surface of her body. Perhaps it was fleeing from the man sitting across from her. The man who had sliced open Colin’s ribs, blackened his face, and left him for dead.
For a full minute, she could not get enough air to speak. Finally, when she did, her words were faint. “I’m afraid I—I have not visited the village a great deal of late.”
His eyes, gray as death, fell on the black band around her upper arm. “You are in mourning,” he said, his voice soft.
“Yes.”
Glancing around the room desultorily, he tilted his head. “Your father, I presume?” The way he said it, casually, easily, as though it were simply one more bit to add to her file, froze her in her seat. “My condolences to you. And your mother, of course.”
Why, when her breathing had grown so shallow, did her heart suddenly feel squeezed by a vise?
“So, where did you say Lord Colin headed when he left here, Miss Battersby?”
She swallowed, nearly choking on the dryness in her throat. “I did not. I do not know a Lord Colin.”
His head tilted again. “Oddly enough, the villagers seemed to think otherwise.”
“They are wrong.”
“Is that so?”
Eleanor entered, carrying a tray with her china teapot and three small cups, which clinked against their saucers. “It is freshly brewed. I simply cannot countenance tepid tea.” She set the tray on one of the crates, then poured them each a cup. As she reached to hand Sarah hers, she froze, apparently noting her daughter’s expression. “What is it?”
“I fear Mr. Syder is seeking that which we cannot provide.”
His smile flattened, then disappeared. “Perhaps it is a matter of incentive.” He took a sip of her mother’s tea. “Come now, Miss Battersby. Your difficulties needn’t continue in their current vein.” The cup returned to its saucer without a sound. “You could live quite comfortably on what I am willing to offer for a rather inconsequential piece of information.”
“Information?” Eleanor frowned. “I thought you were here about the school.”
Sarah ignored her mother, unable to look away from the dead-eyed predator seated across from her. “I cannot sell what I do not possess, Mr. Syder.”
Sighing, he leaned forward to return his cup to the tray. His nearness set her skin writhing with the need to run. “That is most unfortunate.” He stood, returning his hat to his head and his walking stick jauntily to his hand. Head tilting the slightest bit, he again glanced around the cluttered parlor. “Perhaps a change of circumstances will persuade you otherwise.” With that, he simply turned on his heel, walked calmly to their front door, and exited the cottage without another word.
“What in blazes was that?” Eleanor queried. She still hovered near the tea tray, her cup in hand, clearly bewildered.
Sarah sat in place, feeling ice crystallize inside her veins. “That was the reason you had to stitch a man’s skin back together, Mama.” Her voice was nearly soundless, but perhaps it only seemed so because her heart boomed loudly in her ears.
“That was …?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my word.”
Suddenly, Sarah could not bear to sit any longer. She stood and rushed to the front window, pulling back the curtain. He was gone. At least, from her house. “I must warn Colin,” she mumbled, now pacing in the open space along the wall. Her hand covered her mouth, then dropped back to her side. “But I have no idea where he is. He did not tell me before he left, said only that it was safer if I did not know.”
Her mother watched her pace, saying nothing. Which was unusual.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“I do not know what to do.”
“I can see that.”
“Please tell me what I should do.”
Eleanor crossed her arms beneath her bosom. “Perhaps you should give Mr. Syder what he wants.”
Sarah stopped pacing, looked at her mother’s shuttered expression. “I just said I do not have what he wants.”
Several heartbeats passed. “Perhaps I do.”
“You.”
Eleanor sniffed. “Yes.”
Incredulity built like pressure behind a cork. “And you wish to sell it to someone who would beat and torture a man nearly to death?”
A slight flush entered her mother’s cheeks. “I do not wish to, but … Oh, really, Sarah. Do not look at me so. The chances of anyone still finding him there after all this time are quite remote.”
“Mama.”
“He said I should only contact him in case of a threat.”
“This is a threat. It is the very definition of a threat!”
Eleanor shook her head. “To you, Sarah. Only if there is a threat to you.”
Her heart began pounding again, this time not out of fear. “Tell me, Mama. I must find him, warn him. Please.”
Her mother’s eyes softened. “This Syder fellow will simply follow you straight to him, you realize.”
“Not if I am careful.”
Uncrossing her arms, Eleanor hissed out another sigh and closed the distance to Sarah. “We will be careful, because we will warn him together. I will not allow you to take such a chance on your own.”
“Very well,” Sarah said before her mother had even finished speaking. “Where is he?”
“First, we shall complete our packing. We will take our belongings with us, as we had planned.”
Sarah frowned. “No, we must—”
“And then, daughter, we will formulate a strategy. One that avoids the circumstance in which either of us lies bleeding beside the road. Is that clear?”
Impatience thrummed and burned. She wanted to discard her mother’s sensible warnings. Instead, she had no choice but to nod and obey.
Eleanor’s hand settled on Sarah’s shoulder. “Do not worry so. If he knew where Mr. Clyde had gone—”
“Lacey,” Sarah said faintly. “Or, more appropriately, Lord Colin. He is the brother of a duke.”
Her mother’s long silence was filled with questions. Fortunately, she did not ask them, because Sarah had few answers. “Regardless. If Mr. Syder had the first inkling where Lord Colin was hiding, he would not have paid us a visit, nor would he have offered funds in exchange for the information.”
The pressure around her heart began to ease just a bit. “You are right. But Syder is much too close to Colin’s scent.”
“Let us finish our work here.”
Sarah started to protest again, then stopped when Eleanor held up a hand.
“We finish here,” her mother repeated. “Then we shall see about saving your stranger once again.”
*~*~*