Chapter Twenty-Three
L ate in Lark’s third evening in the Fashion Emporium’s upper room, Ezra sat on the edge of the table drinking porter. “You can’t stay here indefinitely.”
“I won’t.” Lark took a swig of his porter and went back to his copying. “I’ll leave as soon as I finish making a copy of these proofs.”
“Remind me. Why do you need a copy?”
“To retain evidence of what the text should say.”
“Will you blackmail this writer, the Traveling Viscountess?”
“Not blackmail her. Persuade her to do the right thing by her partner.”
“And why do you care about that? You’re not in love, are you?”
For a few minutes the room was quiet except for the scratching of Lark’s pencil, sounding loud in his ears. He had used up four pencils, dozens of sheets of paper, and quantities of ink, and he wasn’t finished. As long as he kept his head down and the pencil moving, he felt nothing. In love was an odd phrase when there was no being in only being shut out .
Around him, the anonymous room had kept a steady vigil, throwing light on his efforts in the morning, collecting heat at midday, and cooling in the evening. The room, which could be any upper room anywhere in London, was unmarked by personal effects, arrangements of books or clothes, favorite chairs or prints. Beyond it, London was a muted rumble, broken by the regular pealing of bells marking time. He had been able to do the most at night when the Emporium below him went quiet for a few hours, and he left the room only when Ezra proudly showed him the Emporium’s modern toilet facilities. Another time he would return and show Ezra some proper appreciation for his family’s forward-thinking innovations.
“You know,” Ezra said, “I could have our printer do up a proof of those corrections. He’s fast. It would take him a day, at most two.”
Lark stopped copying. He hadn’t thought of that. The Emporium had its own printer who prepared a pamphlet of fashion advice each season to hand to customers. “Would you?”
Ezra shrugged. “You haven’t tried the Cossack pants yet.”
Lark glanced at the trousers hanging from the wardrobe. The striped fabric reminded him forcibly of Mrs. Stryde. “They’re a disaster.”
“You could wear them to show your gratitude for my help. Having our printer do a set of proofs will be much quicker than what you’re doing. He could make a copy for you while you stroll along Bond Street.”
Lark shuddered. He didn’t care to become a walking advertisement for the appalling trousers. But the suggestion gave him a different idea of how to repay Ezra for his help. “ What if,” he said, “the printer puts one of your ads in the book?”
Ezra’s eyes gleamed. He jumped down from the desk. “Oh say, I like that. How do you think this book will do?”
“Well enough.” Lark lay his pencil down and took another long pull on his drink. A printed proof with Viv’s corrections would be a strong weapon to use against Lady Melforth and Dodsley, should either of them refuse to cooperate. He eyed the Cossack trousers again, brown with a vertical green stripe, full and gathered at the waist, tapering to the ankle straps that passed under the wearer’s feet. If a Bond Street stroll in the absurd trousers was the price of a copy of the book, he could do it.
*
In the end Lark did the Bond Street stroll for two days. He felt strangely invisible in the garish trousers and coat with its close-fitting waist and flaring skirts. He was a hollow man, neither Edward Larkin, the would-be gentleman, nor Lark, the pickpocket.
Ezra was as good as his word. While Lark strolled, the Emporium’s printer did up a proof using Viv’s corrections. The copy closely resembled the original in style and layout with Viv’s name on the title page, and her words restored, plus there was an ad for the Isaacson Brothers Fashion Emporium.
Early on the following day, Lark paid a visit to Dodsley & Sons. Then, with the proof copies in hand, he went to Wenlocke. He could not risk returning to his rooms, so he was conscious of his drooping tie and stale linen as he waited in the duke’s study. When Wenlocke entered, Lark asked, “You got my message?”
Wenlocke’s face wore a drily amused expression. “ Don’t worry. Not taken up. Your note did not inspire total confidence.”
Lark drew in a breath. “There was no time to elaborate.”
“But there is now. Sit. Tell me. You look as if you are in need of refreshment, and coffee.” The wry glance passed over Lark’s rumpled attire.
Lark shook his head. “My business is urgent, and I have a favor to ask.”
Wenlocke shrugged. “Or, don’t sit, and don’t tell me?”
“I need you to keep something safe for me.” Lark placed the original proofs with Viv’s penciled corrections on Wenlocke’s desk.
Wenlocke crossed to the desk and glanced at the brown package, his gaze narrowing. “How did you come by this?”
Lark straightened and met the sharp, clear-eyed gaze fixed on him. “In the way I’ve come by many things over the years.”
Wenlocke tapped the stolen proofs. “You know Rook was taken up for the theft.”
Lark rocked back. “No! Viv knew I took them. There could be no mistake about that. You’ve spoken with Rook?”
“Robin has, in Newgate. The Force has been watching Rook for a list of offenses since last October. A pawnbroker in Grays Inn Lane spoke against him. I suspect that Rook faces transportation.”
“A lagging. ”
“It’s a Ticket of Leave , a bit like bail, renewed yearly for seven years, and a likely pardon once the sentence is complete. It might be better for him than the path he’s on.”
Lark was not convinced. Wenlocke must have used his influence, but Rook was a creature of habit. He liked his dark little corner of London with its narrow lanes and decaying grandeur, its beer and bloaters, its girls like Liza, and its easy escape after a click. A journey across vast oceans, a new and unfamiliar world seemed beyond Rook.
“Sit. You look done in.” Wenlocke put a hand on Lark’s shoulder.
“Some late nights.” This time Lark took the offered chair. He should have expected that ending his partnership with Rook would embitter his friend. And he knew how resentment could make a man reckless and indifferent to his fate.
“I see that you blame yourself.” Wenlocke took a seat opposite Lark.
“Who else?”
“You must allow Rook his share of the fault. He had quite a lot to say against you. Chief among your many offenses is that you asked him to quit dipping into pockets and enter some legitimate enterprise with you.”
For a few moments Lark stared at the pattern in the Turkish carpet, his mind in a haze of sleeplessness and change. The world was strange and different, and he couldn’t unravel its pattern. He was not Rook’s partner, but surely Lark could do something for him.
“When did you let go of your bitterness?” Wenlocke asked .
Lark looked up. It was awkward to be so well understood, but there was no denying that he had been bitter or that he had let his bitterness go. He had wanted to be done with it. He had realized that it was a resentment against life itself and that it had been holding him back, making him see London as a set of chains binding him. Every click had been a shaking of those chains. But they had been chains of his own forging. He had made those links. The night of the fire he had decided to file them off.
“The night of the fire,” he said. He had not expected it, but when the commons and lords were clearly gone, and the call came to save the adjoining hall, Lark had answered. He had manned a pump with other Londoners amid swirling smoke, flying embers, and falling glass, and they had saved the hall. The exhilaration of triumph in a common effort had been like nothing he’d ever felt before. When he’d returned to their rooms, exhausted and tasting soot with every breath, he found Rook grinning with satisfaction over a pile of watches and wallets. And Lark knew he would never feel the satisfaction of a click again. The next day he had begun the search for his mother. And then he’d met Viv.
He shook off the memories and looked at Wenlocke. “What if Rook goes to Sydney as a free man with a stake to start a business?”
“Could he?”
“I know a man who could arrange it. I have…investments in his shipping company.”
“I thought you had urgent business.”
“I must see Lady Melforth.” He didn’t know how much Wenlocke already understood, but Lark did not want to expose her ladyship’s betrayal if he could avoid it. He simply needed to act because Viv was hurting.
“May I suggest that you bring in reinforcements, to create a distraction. You don’t want to be taken up now.”
“Reinforcements?” In his head, the word now rang oddly.
“The duchess, of course. A morning call from her, coming on the heels of your visit, will keep Lady Melforth pleasantly occupied, not summoning the constables.”
Lark nodded. He liked the plan. Maybe he had been wrong about the now .
Wenlocke stood and indicated the door. “Let me tell the duchess our plan, and don’t worry, I will keep your document safe.”
Lark nodded and rose to his feet. “Can you keep Rook from a lagging until I talk to the emigration agent?”
“Robin can. Your place is watched, by the way, so use my dressing room. I’ll send for coffee, and my man can help you put yourself to rights. Oh, and when you’re ready”—he paused, and Lark halted—“I have news of your mother.”
“Alive?”
He read the answer in Wenlocke’s eyes. Once again, the haze descended, and Lark fought to clear his head. First, he would help the living, then he would mourn his mother.
*
Lark used the basement entrance to the Henrietta Street house, carrying the Emporium printer’s copy of the guide under one arm. In the kitchen he caught the eye of Mrs. Brandle and with her help summoned Jenny. Under the stairs outside the stillroom, they had quick conversation.
“Mr. Larkin, sir, why are ye ’ere? Miss Bradish’s gone away to ’er parents’ ’ome in Weymouth.”
“Was she sacked?” A hot surge of anger welled up in him, tightening his mouth.
“She resigned. She was most particular about it. She told me I shouldn’t worry.”
“When?” He didn’t believe that Viv had simply resigned.
“That day the ruffian came to the ’ouse. It was such a to do with Mrs. Stryde saying ’orrible things, and Mr. Haxton waving a poker about.”
Lark almost laughed. Maybe Viv had simply chosen to leave a house gone mad. “Do you want her back?”
Jenny gave a fervent nod. “It’s right dismal ’ere now, it is. Nurse Coates ’as more bones than a snake, and not a single kind one.”
Lark smiled. “Then you need some help. You need Viv back.”
“Can you get her back?” Jenny’s eyes grew wide in her smooth, round face.
That was more than he could promise. “Can you get me a chance to speak with her ladyship alone?”
“Oooh, that’s a scary thing. She’ll be right furious.” Jenny clutched two great bunches of her apron in her hands, squeezing pleats into the crisp linen.
“She won’t know you were a part of it. It’s for Viv.”
Lark waited while Jenny crumpled her apron and chewed her lower lip.
“I’ll do it. Ye just wait ’ere a bit until I see she’s in ’er sitting room. She likes to be alone there in the morning. ”
“Thank you, Jenny.”
Minutes later Jenny returned with a conspiratorial smile. She handed Lark a silver hand bell. “’er ladyship’s. She’s alone and can’t reach the bell pull by the wall.”
Jenny led Lark up the servants’ stairs and into the great room along the front of the house. From there, through open double doors, he could approach her ladyship unannounced.
He entered the darkened drawing room. Lady Melforth sat staring at nothing, her imperious face pale and blank. Even the red hair had a dull, sullen look, like a dying fire in the grate. When she saw him, she started, and reached for her little bell, the one Jenny had taken. He held it up. “Calm yourself, Lady Melforth. You are in no danger from me.”
“You, how dare you come here! You should be taken up. Thief!” She shot a wild glance at the distant bell pull by the door.
“That makes two of us then, ma’am.” He crossed the room slowly, his tread lost in the rich carpet underfoot. The silk pillows piled around her ladyship made a faint brightness in the dim room. He stopped as he had done weeks earlier where her ladyship must look up at him, and laid his copy of the proofs on an apricot-colored silk cushion at her side. She seized it at once with a shaky hand.
“What is this?”
“A new proof copy of your book based on Viv’s corrections, an honest copy that reflects the work you did together.”
With an unruly jerk of her hand, Lady Melforth flipped open the book, her hawkish gray stare fixed on the title page.
Lark watched as the truth of what she was seeing registered on her face. “You haven’t permitted Dodsley to publish yet. Your conscience troubling you?”
“You are impertinent.” She did not meet his gaze.
“I’ve spoken with Dodsley and advised him not to publish the original proofs unless he wants to face legal action.” Lark pulled up a chair and sat facing her.
“What are you talking about?”
“That copy in your hands, printed up by a friend of mine, is based on Viv’s corrections. I retain the original printer’s proofs, the ones delivered here, with Viv’s handwritten notes.”
The sharp gray gaze swung to him. “You dare to threaten me. You! What are you? A common pickpocket…a nobody with no connections. Your ties to the duke a mere fiction…”
Lark met her disdainful gaze while she said what the world had always thought of him. The words were so much empty noise, a blast of fear and resentment that couldn’t touch him. He was no hollow man any longer, no picture of a gentleman. He was someone new now, the man who loved Viv Bradish. When her attack faltered, he spoke again.
“Say what you like, you can’t change what you did to Viv.”
“Viv left me. She resigned.” It was a plea for pity, but he wouldn’t yield, not yet anyway.
“She stood up to you. She refused to salve your vanity, by pretending that the book was all your work.”
“I taught her everything. And she has time to write other books, while I can’t hold a…a pen steady.” The imperious voice wavered between anger and desperation.
“Viv will write other books. In any case you can’t stop her. But you know she was glad to write with you. She admired you. She was eager to learn from you. And you betrayed her, used her.”
Her gaze faltered under his. Her voice grew thin. “She was not supposed to fall in love. She was not supposed to leave me. She is well-served for choosing a charming villain. You’re no better than that stepfather of hers.”
“Do you want her back? Or do you prefer your cousins and Nurse Coates?” His voice was low, and he hoped, not unkind. The suffering brought on by her illness was real, but it couldn’t blind him to the suffering of her own making.
“What do you know of Nurse Coates?”
“What does it matter?” Lark stood. “I know Viv. I know the difference between mean and kind, between judgmental and generous. She’s a bit rash, our Viv, obstinate, maybe, tenacious, and fearless. She doesn’t back down. Do right by her, and she’ll think the best of you, as she once did. She might even return to London. If you have Viv in your household, you will laugh, you will pull the curtains back, you will find a way to go on writing. Together you will have adventures and shake up London. But if you let her go, you have nothing. If you publish without acknowledging her, you have a printed lie with your name on it.”
From below came sounds of a bustle in the hall. He set the little silver bell on the table at Lady Melforth’s side. “You may want to have Jenny or Thomas open the drapery. I believe her grace, the Duchess of Wenlocke means to call upon you this morning.”
*
An ornate iron gate swung open on a tree-lined path to a red brick house with an air of substantial prosperity and a white pedimented door.
“Ready?” asked Wenlocke at Lark’s side.
“Not at all,” Lark replied, and passed through the gate. The house, Lark’s mother’s childhood home, was the end of the journey he’d been on since the great fire, a journey that had taken him to the Penitent Women’s Hospital and from there to a private hospital in Surrey and a grave. From the grave he had circled back to a small church in the East End where the vicar remembered marrying Miss Ada Wheatley to Captain Caperton. Now Lark was to meet his great-aunt Beatrice, sister of his deceased grandfather Sir Henry Wheatley, founder of the Old Clock Bank. At every stage of the journey his friends had helped him, Wenlocke and his brothers, and Robin, Finch, and the others, their fellowship restored. Only Rook was no longer part of the gang. Soon Lark would get his old friend out of prison.
A lean, brisk-looking butler with a trim moustache admitted them to the house and led them to a light-filled yellow drawing room, where a tall white-haired woman in a pewter-colored silk gown stood erect and keen-eyed by the mantel.
“Your grace,” she said with a slight bow to Wenlocke. Then, turning a warm gaze on Lark, she said, “My dear boy, you have no idea how gratifying it is to welcome you…home.”
“Ma’am.” Lark bowed. His throat ached, and he did not trust himself to say more.
“Aunt Bea,” she corrected .
Lark felt Wenlocke’s hand on his shoulder. “I will take myself into the garden while you and your aunt talk.”
“Shall we sit?” asked his aunt.
Lark nodded. He should not keep his elderly aunt standing.
“I want you to tell me everything about yourself. Everything, good and bad, with no fear or hesitation. You must consider Wheatley House your home now whenever you wish it. But first, I expect you want to know more of your mother. Do you remember anything of her?”
“I remember watching her hands turn the pages as she read to me. She wore rings.”
“Ah, she did like to wear rings, from the time she was a girl.” His aunt did not prompt him to say more. She seemed content with what he offered. Maybe it was the place itself that bred a kind of peace, just a short distance from the noise and smoke of London, but above it, surrounded by trees and swathes of heath.
He hesitated over the next memory, the one it had taken so long to recover. But the mystery nagged at him. Everything around him spoke of love and comfort. The great gap in his mother’s story was how she had become separated from such a life. “I remember watching her carried into the women’s hospital by my father and a man named Sneath.”
His aunt’s expression sobered. “We do not know what happened in that marriage. My brother was against it from the beginning, distrustful of Captain Caperton and his intentions, but your mother would not be cautious or suspicious. That was not in her nature. She ran off with him and sent word that they were married and living in London. Your grandfather refused to see her with her husband, and she refused to see him without her husband.”
A little breeze came into the room through an open window fluttering the linen curtains. Outside birds sang. His aunt in her unhurried way took up the story again. “For a time, there was little correspondence except for a brief notice of your birth and christening. Then an alarming letter came, unlike the others, written in haste, and promising that everything would soon be well again. That was shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday. On that birthday she came into her full inheritance. The money was sent to her account, but no further letter came. Within a few weeks, your grandfather received notice that the account had been emptied and closed by Captain Caperton.
“Your grandfather went to the house they had taken in Chelsea, but the place was leased to new tenants, and none of the neighbors seemed to know what had become of the previous family. With your mother’s disappearance and the failure of his efforts to find her, your grandfather became distraught. He ceased to care about himself. He became a figure of curiosity hereabouts, wandering, speaking only to himself, picking up whatever fell in the roadway, falling into more and more decay. He could not bear not knowing your mother’s fate.”
Lark understood.
“But it is not a day for sad tales. You are here now. You will have your own much happier story to write, soon. Come, there is a portrait of her in the music room, if you would care to see it.”
“Yes, thank you. ”
His aunt rang for a footman. “We’ll have refreshments in the garden, Matthew,” she said.
Then she and Lark passed into a pale green room with a piano against one wall. The nameboard with brass inlays declared it to be a Broadwood. Above the piano was a portrait of a girl in white muslin gown bent over the keys of the instrument. She leaned forward slightly, her back straight, her dark hair gathered in a knot from which a few curls dangled, her eyes cast down upon the instrument, her cheeks round and rosy, and the ringed fingers of her right hand spread to play some chord. There was no mistaking his mother’s hand or the garnet ring she wore. Lark could not resist touching his finger to the painted one. It was after all just a dab of pigment from an artist’s brush, but he felt that by touching it, he touched the past.
“I’ll leave you here, shall I?” his aunt said. “I will be in the garden with your duke when you are ready to join us.”
He heard the gentle swish of her skirts and the closing of the door. He sat at the bench and opened the instrument, laid his hands on it, stretching his fingers apart in imitation of his mother’s hand, and let the long-denied memories come. He had no explanation for why memories that had lain hidden in his mind should at last stir and parade before him.
He waited to see whether the memories would change him again. He had a name now and a lineage, not so grand a one as duke, but not a mean one, either. He would not take the name of Caperton. He thought briefly that he could take his mother’s family name, but he realized that the name he wanted was the one he’d given Viv that first day. He was Edward Larkin, the man who loved Viv Bradish. In the end it was the only name that suited him. He was impatient to go to her, but first he would free himself from all past claims.
Voices and laughter from the garden roused him from his thoughts. He closed the instrument and went to join the others.
They sat at a white iron table on a flagstone terrace above a sunken expanse of green lawn. He joined them, and his aunt poured him a cup of tea. “Now that you’re here, I wonder if you might stay a fortnight or so.”
Lark accepted the tea and glanced at Wenlocke.
“I can arrange for anything you need to be sent here,” Wenlocke said.
“Then it is settled?” asked his aunt.
“You know,” Lark said. “When I had no family, I invented an aunt for myself.”
“Did you? You must tell me what expectations you had for this imagined aunt. Was she to dote on you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cake then?” said Aunt Bea, her eyes alight with merriment.
*
In the coolness of a May morning, three groups of passengers waited dockside to board the Arcadia . A stiff breeze blew off the Thames carrying the scent of the ocean, straightening the ensign and jacks flying from the stern and bow, and rattling lines and blocks on the masts and spars. Clouds tore by above the crisscrossed shrouds and rat lines. Crewmen moved about the deck while shoremen rolled barrels up a ramp and swung crane arms to lower dangling bundles into the hold. An officer on the upper deck oversaw the activity, while another officer and a clerk stood by at the ready to see the passengers on board.
Rook stood, stony-faced, among a group of single male passengers, easily a head taller than the others, wearing sturdy, serviceable clothes from the Fashion Emporium, which, Lark had learned, did a business outfitting those bound for the colonies. A bold woman or two from the raucous group of single women passengers called out, asking Rook his name. With laughter and shoving, the women pushed a freckled redhead in a blue bonnet to the front of their group. “Kitty wants ter meet ya, luv,” was the cry. Families traveling with children made up the third group of passengers, talking quietly among themselves and watching the necessary preparations for such a voyage. The Arcadia would stop at Plymouth and Tobay for water, and then on to Sydney. If they were not required to quarantine before landing, they’d make it by September.
Lark waited with Robin and a copper from the Force to see Rook safely aboard. The constabulary were taking no chances on letting Rook slip away. Rook steadfastly refused to look at Lark or speak to him, though from time to time, he mumbled in reply to Robin. Lark did not expect forgiveness. A betrayal was a betrayal. He had kept his arrangements on Rook’s behalf quiet. Rook knew only that he had a trunk full of gear and a place in Sydney with a wool dealer if he wanted it. Lark would do one more thing for his old friend and let him go .
The crane arm swung away from the ship, and the shoremen left her. Pipes sounded, and the crew scrambled into position, ready to cast off lines. The ship’s agent signaled to begin boarding, and passengers shuffled up the ramp to the deck, Rook’s group trailing behind the others. Lark removed his hat, slipped a borrowed cap on his head, and adopted a shambling gait to keep pace with the others. Where a little knot of men formed at the base of the ramp, Lark made his move, a quick dip into one of Rook’s outer pockets. He shuffled to the end of the line, doffed the borrowed cap, and faded into a small crowd of onlookers.
Rook reached the top of the ramp before he stuck a hand in that pocket. He jerked the hand out, drawing with it a wad of notes, which he returned as quickly to his pocket. He spun around, his astonished and uncomprehending gaze wildly searching the faces on the dock.