Chapter 4
From Larceny to Amity
“What are you grinning about, then?” Lill demanded, as Alice sat before the fire, a slice of bread on a toasting fork held out before her.
Alice blinked, torn from her thoughts by Lill’s curious demand as she carried in the tea tray, alongside dishes of butter, jam, and honey. She rearranged her face and shrugged but Lill knew her too well.
“Don’t you go thinking you can be friends with that fellow,” she warned Alice, setting the tray down and putting her hands on her hips.
Alice ignored her, pushing the golden piece of toast off the fork and onto a plate. She offered it to Lill, who shook her head.
“You have the first piece, I’ll pour the tea.”
Alice skewered another piece of bread and rested it on the fender to brown before reaching for the butter and applying a liberal amount to her toast. She frowned as she spread the butter, reflecting that Lill knew her too well for comfort sometimes.
It was both a blessing and a curse. She was right, naturally.
It would be beyond foolish to cultivate any manner of intimacy or friendship between them, but entirely against her will she had liked Aubrey a good deal, and she’d felt it had been mutual.
She had liked the way he’d teased Alfie, ribbing him good-naturedly, like he might do with a younger brother.
She’d also liked the admiring way he’d regarded Alice rather too much.
Mr Seymour was a handsome devil, what with all that lovely hair and those twinkling eyes.
He was kind too, caring of his sister, and to a woman who deserved no kindness, if he knew the truth.
But he was no fool, and she suspected he would make a dangerous foe.
She ought not to play cards with him. She ought not go to the hall tomorrow either to return the brooch.
If she had any sense at all, she would send Lill to deliver it.
But sense was not something that she had in any significant supply, it appeared, for she knew she would deliver the brooch herself, as Alice, and that Alfie would play cards with his new friend.
There was no need to tell Lill any of that, though.
She turned the bread on the toasting fork before it burned.
“Honey or jam?”
“Honey, thank you,” Alice said, taking the dish from Lill, spreading the sweet, viscous substance upon her toast. She took a bite, relishing the thick golden honey, the melted butter that dripped onto her fingers.
It was a simple pleasure, but one that had never become old or unappreciated.
Once upon a time, they would have considered this a feast. But things had changed.
The ever-present worry that they might change back again nagged at her, but Alice pushed it away.
They’d never be poor again, never be helpless again. She’d seen to that.
“Want me to deliver the brooch to the hall, then?” Lill asked as she plucked the piece of hot toast from the fork and added a fresh slice of bread.
“Nope.”
Lill sighed. “Thought not,” she said, looking none too pleased, but had the good sense to save her breath.
Ocean View Villa, Little Valentine, 8th January 1816
“Miss Marwick! What a lovely surprise, but is Alfie not with you?”
Alice had to admit the enthusiasm of Mr Seymour’s greeting rather surprised her as he hailed her in the grand entrance hall of his grandmother’s house.
He looked perfectly at home here, this handsome nobleman, grandson of a duke, dressed immaculately in a perfectly tailored blue coat and buff breeches that clung to his muscular thighs in all the right places.
Stop looking, drat you!
Alice returned her gaze to his face, which did not help at all, as his sparkling green eyes reminded her of emeralds and tempted her just as fiercely.
“No, Mr Seymour. My brother had some errands to run this morning, but he asked that you meet him at The Swan this evening, around eight, if that suits you unless—” Alice hesitated, lowering her eyes in embarrassment before saying what Alfie had apparently instructed her to say. “Unless you have come to your senses?”
“Oh ho! Like that, is it? Your brother is a wag, Miss Marwick,” Aubrey said with a snort. “Don’t tell me you think I ought to be afraid of that young whippersnapper?”
Alice bit her lip, not quite able to hide her smile. “My brother is many things, Mr Seymour, but I am afraid he has the devil’s own luck with cards. You may wish to proceed with caution.”
Mr Seymour regarded her with interest and no little surprise.
Alice wondered if he was mentally reassessing Alfie, as well he ought.
Though she liked Mr Seymour a good deal, she believed he thought Alfie a good-natured young fool and could not help but enjoy watching him reconsider his first impression.
“You told me he ran with a rough crowd, but you cannot mean that young shaver is a hardened gambler?”
Alice attempted to look shocked when, in truth, she ought to have nodded and agreed it was entirely true.
Alfie had been playing games of chance since he’d learned how to add up, and when your survival depended on the turn of the cards, you got clever fast or went hungry.
“Oh, no. Not that, but he’s… well, he’s rather good, is all.
I should not like to send you off to play him without being prepared for that. ”
This was true. Alfie relished a good opponent, and she did not want Aubrey pulling his punches because he felt Alfie was not his social equal, or out of financial considerations. She wanted to beat him fair and square and hopefully win back some of the money she was about to put into his hands.
“Well, that is good of you. Consider me forewarned and forearmed,” he said amiably. “Now, shall you take tea with us? Della and Vinnie are home and—”
Alice shook her head. She did not wish to see Vinnie for reasons she was not entirely certain of.
Yet no matter how many times she told herself that the diamonds had been in the hands of a monster who could well afford to lose them, and that she had not realised she had been stealing from Vinnie, the knowledge still sat uncomfortably in her chest, poking irritably at her lazy conscience.
“Thank you for the invitation, but I only came to deliver Alfie’s message and to return this to you.”
She reached into her reticule and pulled out the carefully wrapped brooch. She handed the little tissue paper parcel to him with a good deal of reluctance, which she hoped he could not read in her eyes.
“Ah,” he said softly, as he took it from her. “This is a wonderful gift, Miss Marwick, but I feel I am robbing you of something you loved too.”
Well, that’s because you are, she thought with some asperity, before chiding herself. He was being kind, and she was a thief and a liar.
“Easy come, easy go,” she said, with far more equanimity than she was feeling.
The urge to snatch the parcel from his grasp and run away with it was nigh on irresistible, but she pasted a smile to her face and gritted her teeth.
“Now, then. My duty is done, so if you’ll excuse me. I shall return home.”
“Oh, no. I cannot have you come all this way and return alone too. Please, just wait whilst I fetch my coat and hat,” he implored her, and so earnestly she had no choice but to wait for him, even though she didn’t want him to escort her home. Liar.
To her surprise, he really did hurry off and fetch his coat and hat, instead of hailing a servant to do his bidding.
He returned a few moments later, no doubt having secured the brooch somewhere safe first, she thought sadly.
Not that it would be hard for Alfie to enter this house in the dead of night, to steal through its darkened rooms, and take back what was his.
Alice shivered. Temptation was one thing, but dirtying one's own doorstep was an idiocy of which she would never be guilty. Besides, the brooch was back where it belonged. She’d done a good deed, for once in her life.
Mr Seymour escorted her to the front door and out into the frosty January morning. He smiled and held out his arm to her. “May I? It’s rather icy underfoot.”
Alice returned his smile cautiously, an odd frisson of excitement shivering beneath her skin as she placed her hand upon his arm.
She told herself she could feel nothing of him, no sense of the flesh and blood man beneath the layers of wool and starched linen, but her heart was unconvinced.
Her heart sensed the power lurking beneath the civilised exterior, the strength that men took for granted, and that Alfie rather envied, for all his speed and cleverness.
There had been many times, dangerous times, when Alfie could have done with that masculine force.
Nonsense, Alice thought crossly. Neither she nor Alfie needed a thing, not muscle, and certainly not a man to lean on.
Yet there was something tantalising about having him so close, at the curiosity she felt as she wondered what it might be like, to have someone to rely on, to prop her up when Alfie was all out of bravado and Alice felt small and afraid.
“Have you lived in Little Valentine very long?”
Alice glanced up, disconcerted to find Aubrey watching her.
How green his eyes were, like looking up at the canopy of a forest, yet today the trees were stark and skeletal against a white sky, reminding her it was an illusion.
This man was not her friend, would never be Alfie’s friend, no matter how much she regretted that.
“Not long,” she replied evasively. “This is the first time you’ve been here for a while too, I understand.”
He nodded. “Gee-Gee—that is, Grandmama—hasn’t been here for a long time. Hawkney is not pleased, for he doesn’t like her being so far from town, from her doctor and her old cronies, but if you ask me, she seems to be thriving.”
“That’s certainly the impression I’ve been given. She’s involved herself in the Venturesome Ladies' club and she’s become quite indispensable.”