Chapter 9
“Surrey before Town, like any sensible man who wants a better table. My family had a little place, once. Gone now.” He made a small, elegant gesture of loss, as if tossing ash from a sleeve. “It’s a story redone to death. Cards. Credit. Friends who are not.”
Sylvia let the name turn once in her mind. Walton. She had heard it before—not from a gentleman’s lips, but from a girl’s clenched jaw. Surrey, as well.
She schooled her features, careful not to show recognition. “Yes,” she murmured, as though merely acknowledging his tale. “I’ve heard stories like it.”
Her hand drifted to the small silver bell on the side table. She rang it once. “With your permission,” she said—not waiting for his assent.
Jonas filled the doorway a moment later, solid as a doorframe. He bent until his ear was an inch from her lips.
“Fetch Catherine,” she whispered. “Stand her outside the door. Leave it open. She is to hear.”
At Jonas’s departure, Sylvia returned to her guest. “Pardon my interruption.”
Walton swirled his brandy. Sylvia thought he nodded as though the gesture itself were the thought. “A man may lose coin and still recover. But lose a reputation, and he is finished. I learned that the hard way.”
Sylvia tipped her head, letting admiration glint in her eyes, though she was listening more for the tread in the corridor than his philosophy. “Practical. I admire a man who learns from misfortune.”
“Indeed. My second marriage was one such lesson. A dowry heals wounds faster than sentiment. Though, God knows, I found myself shackled to a block of ice. I do her the courtesy of discretion and she the blessing of silence. Our arrangement is sound.”
“Ah,” Sylvia murmured. “So, your home is orderly, if not warm. And here you seek warmth without disorder.”
He smiled, broad, self-satisfied. “Exactly. I knew you’d understand. That is why I came to you, and not to some gutter with painted girls who’d sell a tooth for gin.”
Sylvia let the insult slide past as if she hadn’t noticed, sipping her brandy.
She caught a flicker of movement in the doorway—Jonas returning, a still shape filling the frame.
He did not speak; he did not need to. His presence was answer enough.
Catherine was there, waiting in the hall just beyond.
“You are fortunate,” she said, as if they were still talking of Surrey.
“Some men lose their houses, their horses, their very bloodlines. And yet here you sit, glass in hand. I wonder—” She tilted her head, as though the thought had only just alighted—”what sort of girl a man like you would find tolerable. ”
Walton’s brows rose, pleased to be invited to the subject. “Tolerable? I want more than tolerable. I want a girl who doesn’t simper, doesn’t scold. A girl who knows a man’s nature and is glad enough to serve it.”
Sylvia sipped her brandy, eyes half-lidded. “Spoken like a man who has known the wrong match.”
His mouth twisted, part sneer, part shrug. “My second wife is a cold slab of marble. A widow when I found her, and she has only grown frostier with the years. She does her duty in the ledger and in the pew; I do mine in society. There’s no harm in it. A man must live.”
“And your first?” she asked smoothly.
His expression sobered into the kind of practiced melancholy that men kept ready for use, like a pocket watch. “Gone. The fire took her. Took the boys, too. God’s will.”
He sighed, slow and weighted, then touched his breast as though feeling for virtue. “But I was a good father. I gave them everything. No one may say otherwise.”
Sylvia leant back, lashes lowering to veil the glitter of her eyes. “Tragic. To lose everything at once. Wife, sons…” She let the sentence drift, bait dangling.
He lifted his glass. “A man survives what he must. I took another wife, kept my accounts in order, made myself agreeable again.”
“And no daughters?” she asked, soft as silk. “I thought you said once you had a daughter.”
The colour in his cheeks lifted, the drink and the memory together. He shook his head, rueful. “Ah. My poor darling Winnifred. She was in the house, too.”
He sighed, theatrically gentle. “Barely in her first season. Only the day before, she had received a card from a wealthy young man from the north. What a match she would have made. She was so dutiful—never once raised her voice against me. Always wore blue because she knew it pleased me. Had her mother’s patience, her smile.
” He shook his head. “I console myself with that.”
Behind Jonas, Sylvia caught the faintest sound—not a word, but the stiffening of breath.
She turned her smile on Walton, sweet as cream. “Men are not always so loyal in their memories. Many, I find, would sooner speak ill of the dead than live with them in reverence. But you—” She let her voice warm. “You still grieve?”
“Of course,” he said, puffed with self-importance. “Though I’ll not pretend perfection. That is the way of lesser men.”
Sylvia tipped her glass towards him as if to salute the sentiment. Yet her gaze slid past, to the doorway—where Jonas stood like a pillar, and just beyond, she knew Catherine heard every word, stiff as carved wood.
“Thank you for indulging me. I can happily say I have the girl you seek.”
Walton’s eyes widened. Greed. Lust. His tongue peeked out, then he moistened his lips, bottom over top, then top over bottom.
“She was sold into servitude by her guardian. To satisfy his debts.”
Walton shook his head. “Shameful.”
“I agree. She was treated poorly for several years until I could rescue her.”
“You are a saint, I daresay. What is her name?”
Sylvia waited a moment. She could smell the lust oozing from him. “Her name is… Catherine.”
This was the place where Sylvia usually offered a figure so high it would be taken for insolence if she had not sweetened it with a smile. She opened her mouth to speak it—and saw Catherine move. Her eyes met Sylvia’s a half-second before looking away. Sylvia did not speak. She only watched.
Not a step. A shift. Catherine moved, as though answering something unheard. Walton did not notice; he was busy arranging his face to receive a number.
Sylvia saw her girl’s hand close around the poker. She lifted it and walked behind Walton’s chair.
“What do you call a fair price?” he said. He licked his thumb and smoothed it across one eyebrow, then the other.
Catherine brought the iron down. The strike made a dull, wet crack that seemed to break a seam in the air. The head snapped; blood fell in a fan across the shoulder, the arm of the chair, the pale of the carpet.
Walton sagged sideways in the chair, his hand still clutching the brandy glass.
Jonas appeared, put a large hand upon Catherine’s shoulder, and gently took the iron as if it were no heavier than a walking stick.
Catherine stood breathing in shallow, measured drafts, as if she meant not to take too much air from anyone.
Blood stippled her cheekbone; a dark spray dotted the white of her shift.
She looked down with the same expression Sylvia had seen on her face when examined a crooked ledger column or a dress ribbon that wanted recutting.
Sylvia set her glass on the small table beside her. Her fingers were steady. “Jonas,” she said, without raising her voice. “Close the door.”
It closed with a hush. The silence circled the room, heavy and certain, like a dog turning before sleep.
The strike had left a red tongue on the nap; she stepped around it, knelt by the basin, dipped a cloth, and wrung it out.
She rose and came to Catherine, and with the same care she had used a hundred times to retie a girl’s laces or smooth a curl before a gentleman’s entrance, she wiped the blood from her face.
She was pleased her girl did not flinch at her touch.
“There,” she said softly. “Tilt your head, my dear.”
Catherine did. The cloth turned pink, then red, then something like rust. Sylvia folded it in on itself and worked with the clean corner until the pale line of Catherine’s collarbone showed white again.
Jonas stood at ease by the door, gaze on nothing; he had the soldier’s respect for a room that had just changed its rules.
Sylvia dropped the cloth back in the bowl. How easily blood came away. As if the face had never been touched by it.
“What shall I say to that?” she asked the air, with a little lift of her brow, as if the fire might have an opinion. She grasped both sides of Catherine’s face and gently, lovingly kissed her forehead.
Catherine turned to Jonas. He bowed—not to Sylvia this time, but to her.
Her girl’s eyes were steadier than they had been six months past. Sylvia searched them for relief, for triumph, but found only space—bare ground waiting for what she might sow.
“My name is Sylvia. In this house, you will call me Mrs Murray. But when we are alone—you may call me Sylvie.” She paused. “Who are you?” She asked, not because she didn’t know but because the answer mattered to the girl who had to say it.
“My name is…” She looked once more at the body slumped in the chair, then back at Sylvia.
“My name is Catherine Murray.”