Chapter 2 #3
“I would.” He smiled suddenly and Alice felt a little frisson of pleasure at the way he looked at her. That flicker of admiration had returned to his eyes. “Thank you.”
Alice ordered a fresh pot of tea and another cup and saucer.
“Milk, no sugar,” he told her, once refreshments had been provided and Alice poured for him.
“Sweet enough,” she quipped, handing him the cup and rather pleased with herself when he smiled.
He snorted, his manner disarmingly frank now. “Hardly, after my behaviour to you this morning. I am most dreadfully sorry, Miss Marwick. I promise you I do not make a habit of bullying women. In fact I despise such high-handed behaviour.”
“Not a bit of it,” she replied, pouring her own tea while she tried to figure out the best way to deal with him.
She had sold the rest of the diamond parure to which the brooch had belonged for a good price, not nearly what they were worth, but enough that she and Lill were secure for the rest of their lives.
They’d not live in the lap of luxury, but they’d never go hungry again.
Perhaps if she simply handed the brooch over, he’d leave it at that?
Surely it was worth a try. She could almost hear Lill snorting in disgust at that suggestion.
She stirred her tea, offering him a sympathetic smile.
“I can only imagine how shocked you were to see something that belonged to someone you loved at your grandmother’s ball. ”
Sadness filled his eyes and Alice felt a jolt of remorse for having put it there. “It was a shock. The truth is… the truth is—”
He stopped, shaking his head.
Alice set down her teacup and held his gaze.
She might feel a little guilty for her part in his distress, but she was also damned curious.
“I know we are strangers to each other, but I am not a tattlemonger, Mr Seymour. If there is something you wish to unburden yourself of, I promise it will go no further. I shall take it to my grave,” she said sincerely.
She meant it, too. Well, she’d tell Lill, obviously. But that was different.
His expression became intense, his brows drawing together.
“One way or another, I intend to get those diamonds back for my sister’s sake.
They have been handed down from mother to daughter for several generations and I know it hurt my mother dreadfully to give them up, yet I am certain she believed my aunt would return them to Vinnie after… after she was gone.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and all at once a flicker of unease sparked to life in Alice’s guts.
She was a cynic to her bones and could spot a con from a mile off.
Surviving life on the streets as a child made one an excellent judge of character.
It was then it struck her, Mr Aubrey Seymour was the heroic type.
He was the fellow all those romantic writers pictured in their mind’s eye, the one that rescued the damsel in distress, that threw himself in front of a deadly bullet to save the day, that was entirely selfless and good.
All that lovely thick auburn hair, those beautiful green eyes, they were not disguising a wicked deceiver, not a fellow with a heart of stone, but someone to admire, to trust. Her stomach clenched with guilt.
Devil take the fellow!
He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it, desperate now to shut him up.
She did not wish to be this man’s confidante under any circumstances.
This good man unsettled her, his desire to retrieve the diamonds for his sister’s sake admirable and bloody inconvenient.
“Of course, if it is a family secret, it really ought to stay in the family. One must not go opening cupboard doors and rattling the skeletons in public.”
He smiled ruefully, picking up his cup and saucer, regarding her steadily over the rim. “But you’ll take it to your grave, won’t you, Miss Marwick?” He took a sip before setting the cup down and Alice began to deny any such thing but this time he spoke over her.
“My father made a bad investment. A shocking one, actually,” he said with a laugh.
He sat back in his chair, looking far more at ease now, ready to unburden his soul to her, curse him.
“He’s a dear fellow, a wonderful father, but no head for business.
Not outside being a landowner, at any rate, and…
well it was all terribly embarrassing. We needed funds quickly, and it’s hard to come by large sums of ready money at short notice when everything is tied up and entailed, but Mama went to my uncle behind his back and sold him her diamonds to get the money we needed.
Not for half of what their true value was, but she said it was worth it to save Papa’s blushes, you see.
He’s a proud man and the gossip would have mortified him.
As it was, he was furious, but he could hardly complain when she’d got him out of such a fix, and then…
and then she died just a few months later.
We’d not even known she was ill, it was so…
so sudden. Aunt Pauline tried to give the diamonds back then, knowing the sentimental value attached to them, but uncle wouldn’t let her.
There was a terrible scene, so she promised to leave them to Vinnie—that’s my sister—in her will. ”
Alice felt something weighty and uncomfortable lodge in her throat but swallowed it down.
She would not feel guilt for a family who owned enough diamonds to sink a man o’ war.
They probably had just as many rubies and emeralds, which were also family heirlooms, and they could console themselves with those.
Yet the guilt weighed heavily in her guts all the same.
She returned her attention to the conversation, meeting Mr Seymour’s eyes.
“I see. And so, you think the people that stole the jewels sold them on, and that my brother unwittingly bought the brooch for me?”
“I suppose that’s it in a nutshell. I should dearly like to speak to your brother, Miss Marwick, and discover just where he bought that brooch.”
I just bet you would, Alice thought sourly. Damnation.
“I’m afraid my brother is away from home at the moment,” she said, feeling a disquieting sensation like manacles sliding around her wrists, the harsh rasp of coarse rope closing about her throat. “And I… I do not know when he’ll be back.”
“But surely he won’t leave you alone indefinitely?”
Oh, and he looked concerned by the idea. How endearing he was, like a devoted puppy. Something like hysteria curdled in her belly. “Oh, well, one never knows with Alfie,” she said weakly, knowing she was backing herself into a corner but unable to do anything else.
“Well, I shall just have to stay put until he turns up,” he said with a sigh, hammering the nail home with an inevitability that made her groan inwardly. “Grandmama will be delighted. I know she’d never ask us to stay, but the old dear loves company.”
Alice made a noncommittal sound, wondering how she had got herself in such an appalling fix. She wasn’t usually so inept at managing things. It was his green eyes, she thought crossly, and those big shoulders, and his damnable sincerity. The combination had addled her brain.
“Besides, I can think of plenty of other reasons to stay,” he added, his gaze holding hers, and Alice jolted, suddenly realising he was flirting with her. Her heart did an odd little hop, skip, and a jump behind her ribs.
Behave, she told it sternly, but butterflies erupted in her stomach without her permission. Oh, he was dangerous. She ought to deal with this situation at once. Before things got complicated. More complicated.
“I’m sure. Little Valentine is a splendid place, and you have family here, of course,” Alice replied, adding with quiet desperation, “and, of course, Alfie is a law unto himself. For all I know, he might turn up at… at any moment!”
“We can only hope,” he said cheerfully, and lifted his teacup in a silent salute.
Ocean View Villa, Little Valentine, 7th January 1816
“Well?”
Alice glowered at Lill with a growing sense of déjà vu. It was well over a week since Mr Seymour had found her in the teashop, and now it seemed she could not escape him.
“Let me get in the door, won’t you?” she huffed, closing it behind her.
“Well?” Lill folded her arms, a look that could etch glass fixed on her pretty face.
Alice threw up her hands in frustration, there was no point prevaricating. “Yes, he was there, blast you. Same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.”
Indeed, Mr Seymour’s handsome face turned up every day without fail.
At the bookshop, in church, outside the butcher’s, or just strolling along the seafront.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was spying on her purposefully.
But Little Valentine was a small place, and he was clearly an outdoorsy sort, the kind who hated sitting idle, drat him.
Still, it was wearing away at her nerves.
“That’s it, I’m packing.” Lill turned on her heel, heading for the stairs.
“Oh, don’t give me the theatrics again,” Alice said crossly, though not without sympathy, for she knew well enough this was all her fault. “I’m going to deal with it, with him, before I go mad.”
Lill paused with her hand on the newel post. “Deal with him how?” she asked, and then paled. “Oh. Oh, no. Alfie can’t be seen to come back to town. Not now. Do you want to end up at the end of a rope?”
“I said to stop the theatrics,” Alice told her, taking advantage of her horror to dart past her and up the stairs.
She heard the heavy tread of Lill’s feet as she thundered up after her.
“Are you out of your tiny bleedin’ mind?
” she demanded. “What are you going to tell him? Eh? Where did you buy that wretched brooch? 'Cause whatever you say, he’s going to want a name and a place, and then he’s going to start asking questions, and if you put any of your contacts in the line of fire, that’ll be another price on your stupid head! ”
Alice tried not to listen because she’d already posed all those questions herself and didn’t have any answers. Well, she had answers, but good ones? Probably not.
“I’ll say I bought it at a fair, or from a bloke in a pub. I’ll give him a description, and he can chase that phantom to his heart’s content.”
Alice braced herself, knowing exactly what Lill would say.
“Oh, aye, all the while bandying the name Alfie Marwick hither and yon. That won’t cause you a mite of trouble, now, will it?”
Sarcasm dripped from every word. Lill pushed past her, barring the door.
There were three bedrooms in Ocean View cottage.
Lill had the servants' quarters all to herself, though they were done out with just as much luxury as Alice allowed herself. The two others belonged to Alice and to Alfie. Except Alfie Marwick didn’t exist, at least not in a manner that anyone other than Lill would ever understand.
It had begun for safety’s sake. When Alice and her mother had gone to the workhouse, Alice had been only five years old, and her mother had died soon after.
Lill had saved her, despite being only twelve herself.
They had run from the workhouse, where cruelty ran hand in hand with disease, and Lill had cut their hair and stolen clothes, so they looked like boys. Safer that way.
Alice and Lill had grown up pretending to be boys, until Alice got so adept at pickpocketing, cheating, and conniving and eventually burglary that she could provide funds enough to rent decent lodgings, to wear decent clothes and be respectable.
Lill had loathed every moment of it, especially cutting her lovely blonde curls off, but to Alice it had felt entirely natural, just as easy as being Alice.
Except being respectable Miss Alice Marwick was something she could only do for a certain amount of time, and then she got itchy and restless, unable to stand herself and the confines placed upon a female which she had become too used to disregarding.
So then she’d go out and about as Alfie, who could go places Alice couldn’t, and do things Alice couldn’t, like own property, and lend his sister countenance so she could live in a respectable village with her devoted housekeeper, even if he wasn’t there all the time.
It worked. Giving them freedom, independence, and the closest thing to safety and security either of them had ever had.
Yet it was precarious, and in such a small place Alice knew in her heart their days were numbered.
Eventually, someone would realise they never saw Alice and Alfie together, or she would make a slip up, and Alfie would say something only Alice could know, and then they would have to leave again.
To run away and begin another life, in another place.
No, Alice vowed. Not this time. This time, it would be different.
“Lill, I don’t have all the answers,” Alice admitted, reaching out and grasping Lill’s rigid shoulders and giving them a brief squeeze.
“But you’re going to have to trust me. I won’t put you or our place here in danger.
I’ll do whatever needs doing to keep us safe.
I know how much you like it here, I do too, though it surprises me to admit it.
I never thought I’d be able to fit in with nice people, ladies and gents that live honest lives, that go to church on Sunday and invite each other to tea, but I can, and I don’t want to lose it, no more than you do.
I’ll keep us safe. Cross my heart.” She drew her finger back and forth over her chest in a solemn vow they’d both practised since leaving the workhouse. It was unbreakable, that promise.
Lill sighed, the fight going out of her.
“All right, but if you go and get yourself hanged or transported—”
“You’ll never forgive me,” Alice finished for her with a smile, having heard her say so times past counting. “I know it.”
“Hmph.”
“Going to help me get ready, then?” Alice asked her, tilting her head to one side and bumping her shoulder against Lill’s.
“I bleedin’ well better had, or you’ll go out still wearing those earbobs and then there will be a deal of awkward questions you’ll really not want to answer,” Lill replied tartly.
“I could say I was a pirate?” Alice suggested with a grin.
Lill only snorted.