Chapter 14
Anna found him in the kitchen.
“He’s been there the better part of an hour,” the cook’s assistant said, without turning around. “Won’t be moved.”
“I see,” Anna said.
She had come down early the next morning, before anyone else in the house was properly awake, for no better reason than that London’s mornings had a different quality to them than Rathbourne Hall’s and she had not yet adjusted.
The townhouse was still finding its rhythm, or at least Anna was trying to find her place in it.
She had dressed and come downstairs with the vague intention of tea and had drifted instead toward the kitchen passage.
She stood and looked at Percy, who did not look back.
He was entirely focused on the larder door.
“Is there anything in there,” she asked the cook’s assistant, “that a cat would want?”
“Cold roast from last night, Miss. And some fish the butcher sent yesterday.”
“I see,” Anna said again.
She looked at Percy. His tail moved once, forward and back.
I see.
Anna crossed to the cold larder and opened the door. She found the fish, wrapped in cloth, on the second shelf. She pulled off a small piece, rewrapped the parcel, and closed the larder again.
Let’s see how you feel about this…
Percy had turned around, which Anna suspected he had done the moment she opened the door, though she had not been quick enough to see it.
He was now sitting facing her with an expression of polite expectancy, his eyes wide as saucers.
She crouched down and held the piece of fish out flat on her palm.
Your move.
Percy looked at her hand. Then at her face. Then at her hand again. He moved forward, one careful step at a time. He stopped a foot away and lowered his nose toward her palm without touching it.
Anna did not move, did not speak. She let him have the full length of his consideration. He ate the fish.
Good kitty.
Not quickly, and not with any particular display of gratitude.
But he ate it directly from her hand, and he did not step back when he had finished.
He stayed where he was, and lifted his head.
For one moment, his nose touched her finger.
Then, he turned and walked away toward the hearth.
Anna stayed crouched for a moment after he had gone.
“Well,” Anna said, to no one in particular, as she stood up and smoothed her skirts.
Barnes arrived at half past ten. He was a stout, stocky man of around fifty, with the bearing of someone who had concluded that speed and precision were worth considerably more than reassurance.
He shook Frederick’s hand and accepted the chair across the desk.
He refused tea, which was, Anna thought, either efficiency or a statement.
She sat in the chair beside Rachel at the edge of the room, where she had been placed not quite as an observer and not quite as a participant.
She was someone whose presence was required, and whose comfort was secondary.
Rachel had her hands folded and her back very straight, which was Rachel’s version of bracing for something.
“The statements,” Barnes said, setting a folder on the desk, “are in good order. Your Grace’s account, Miss Cartwell’s deposition are both clear, both consistent, both sufficient in terms of establishing the circumstances of the marriage and the grounds for annulment.
” He did not dwell on it, for which Anna was grateful.
“The initial filing can proceed on this basis. However…”
Frederick said nothing. He was watching Barnes with his usual stillness but had begun running his hand through his hair. “However,” Barnes said again, “my clerks have been unable to locate Miss Cartwell’s maid. A Miss…” He consulted the folder.
“Maura,” Anna said, from her chair. “Miss Maura Marsh.”
“He looked up briefly. “She was engaged as your personal maid before the wedding?”
“She had been with me for two years,” Anna said. “She was present throughout the morning of the ceremony. She helped me dress.”
“And after the wedding?”
Anna kept her voice even. “I assume Lord Birchall dismissed the household staff I would have brought with me. My cousin would have no need… You see, when I was removed from the house, I had no ability to…” She paused. “I was not in a position to make enquiries.”
Barnes pursed his lips. He looked back at his papers.
“She was not retained by any member of the Birchall or Edgeware households or their connections, as far as my clerks have established. She does not appear to have returned to her previous employment. Her family is in Surrey.” He closed the folder.
“We will find her. I want to be direct with you about that. It may take another two weeks, perhaps three. Her testimony as a corroborating witness… an independent account of the events of that morning from someone with direct access… would make the petition considerably more difficult to contest.”
“And without her?” Frederick asked.
“Without her, the case can still proceed. It is not substantially weaker. But the opposition will look for every available foothold, and the absence of a corroborating witness is the kind of thing they will attempt to use.” He said it without apology, which Anna appreciated more than she would have appreciated softness.
“With her, it becomes very difficult for anyone to challenge the account.”
Frederick leaned forward, very slightly. “I will put my own men on it. We will find her before two weeks are done.”
Barnes regarded him for a moment. “That would be useful, Your Grace.”
“Then it is done.”
Barnes rose, and Frederick rose with him, and the meeting was over as precisely and efficiently as it had begun. The folder was put back. The handshake was brief.
Barnes said, “I will expect to hear from Your Grace’s men. I shall be in contact the moment there is progress.”
Then, he was in the corridor and gone. The room resettled into quiet. Anna looked at her hands, which were in her lap and very still, and concentrated on keeping them that way.
Two weeks. Perhaps three.
“Anna.” Rachel’s voice, close.
She looked up. Frederick was standing beside the desk, looking at her, and he had the expression he sometimes had when his face had moved before he had decided about it. Not the surface. Something below it, tighter, more present. He crossed the room and stopped in front of her chair.
“It will be over,” he said. “Not maybe. Not if we find her. We will find her, and it will be over, and you will have everything that should have been yours from the beginning.”
She looked at him. He was not telling her what she wanted to hear. She had been in the same room with him long enough by now to know that he did not do that. He said things because he had already decided they were true and was informing her of the fact, and the distinction mattered.
“He’s right,” Rachel said, from just behind his shoulder. “And Frederick’s people are very good. If Maura is in England, they will find her.”
“If…” Anna started.
“She is in England,” Frederick said. There was a quiet firmness in his voice. “A young woman from Wiltshire who was suddenly let go in London without reference or warning. She would have gone home. People go home…We will find her,” he said with confidence.
Anna breathed in. Then out. She looked at the window, at the grey London morning, and then she looked back at him.
“All right,” she said.
That night, Thomas kept Frederick at White’s until well past midnight. He hadn’t planned it. Thomas was persuasive though, and once the second bottle was ordered, the evening was decided. It had always been this way for them.
Frederick let his mind wander as he drank, and was overcome by a memory, sharp and unbidden.
He was fourteen and Thomas twelve, the two of them having agreed to an hour of fishing before returning to their studies.
The agreement had been made in good faith, on Frederick’s part at least. He was less certain about Thomas.
They had come back at dusk, sunburned and with no fish nor satisfactory explanation for where the hours had gone.
Thomas refilled his glass without being asked.
Frederick accepted it without comment. He settled deeper into the leather of the club chair and looked at the fire.
For a while neither of them said anything, which was one of the better things about Thomas.
He had never required filling silence for its own sake.
“She is doing well,” Thomas said finally.
Frederick looked at him.
“Hm?” Frederick said as he took a sip.
“Miss Cartwell.” Thomas was studying his wine with the mild attention of a man thinking about something else entirely.
“Ah. Yes, she is.”
“She is faring better than most would, in her position. She has that quality of…” He paused.
“I cannot think of the word. She is not quiet in a passive sense,” Thomas continued, unfazed.
“She is quiet like a person is when they are paying close attention to everything. Taking the measure of a room before committing to an opinion of it.”
“Perceptive,” Frederick said.
“Yes.” Thomas glanced at him. “She is.” He swirled his glass once, watching the wine move. “I imagine that quality makes her difficult to deceive.”
“Is that a comment about something specific, old friend?”
“Only an observation.” Thomas was the picture of innocence, which was always precisely when he was least innocent.
“She is a remarkable woman. I think most people who spend more than ten minutes in her company would arrive at the same conclusion.” He paused, as though the next thing he said had only just occurred to him, when Frederick strongly suspected it was the thing he had come to say all along. “Anyone with eyes can see it.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“I was curious what you see when you look, that is all.” Thomas set his glass down and regarded him with an expression of perfect calm. “You look, Frederick. I have noticed that much.”
Frederick looked at the fire and said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Or nothing, at least, that he was prepared to say here, to Thomas, with the second bottle mostly gone and the night outside the windows pressing in.
He took a sip instead.
Thomas did not push. He never pushed. Frederick frequently wished he would.