Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Since we’re lifting the travel ban Rupert put in place,” Kendrick told Genevieve a few days before Christmas as she sat at her vanity, “I’ve decided to deliver some of the ball invitations in person to residences in the London countryside, to allay any fears about coming.”
“Should we go together? A united front?” Genevieve asked, pausing in her hair brushing.
“I thought of that, but you and Sparrow are in the midst of your preparations helping everyone here ready themselves—that’s more important. It should only take a few evenings. Will you be all right without me?”
“Of course,” Genevieve said. “We haven’t heard a peep from Laurent or his ilk in days. When will you leave?”
“At dusk. Do you need anything? Any requests from my travels?”
She turned, shooting him a slightly exasperated glance. “You’ve already given me gifts.”
Kendrick smiled. “A husband can’t buy things for his wife?” Though what he had given her so far had been mere tokens: a pair of gloves, a hat, a soft scarf, a new book he’d thought she might enjoy. Just signs he’d been thinking about her. That he cared about her.
She rose and pulled back the covers on their bed. “I don’t need anything, truly. Will you wake me when you go?”
“I will.” Kendrick stripped off his clothes down to his smalls and got into bed beside her. She hadn’t had a nightmare for the last three nights. Kendrick dropped a kiss on Genevieve’s lips. “Good night, Wife.”
“Good night,” she whispered, laying her head on his arm.
When the sun had journeyed across the sky and begun to set, he slipped out of her embrace and rose. Dressing, he secured the invitations in the pocket of his coat and settled his sword on his back.
“Travel safe,” Genevieve murmured, still mostly asleep. “And return soon.”
Her dark hair fanned across her cheek and the pillow, the sight enchanting to him. Will you miss me, Genevieve? “Always.” He bent and kissed her forehead before he slipped out of the room.
He was telling the truth. The first night, he did go around to the vampire households around London and deliver the invitations personally, visiting with the inhabitants and assuring them of his promises to the vampire citizenry of London, if they had not yet heard of his oaths.
But the second night, he boarded at Paddington Station for the train to Oxford.
In the baggage car, he pushed aside some trunks and a gentleman’s portmanteau and crossed his arms. Christmas, Kendrick thought.
Christmas, and Genevieve. She did not want a Christmas ball, but a New Year’s ball she would have.
He had even dashed an invitation off for Salem, though Kendrick doubted that he would come.
But what about Christmas?
Twenty years ago, Jenny was turned just before Christmas, and last year her father had died before Christmas.
She had admitted that that chapter of her life did not feel closed.
Her journey to Oxford in the wake of her broken blood bond had been panicked and she had returned in the grip of grief.
There might have been possibilities she’d overlooked, colleagues of her father’s whom Kendrick could coax to speak, neighbors he could question.
He hadn’t wanted to mention the possibility to her in case he raised her hopes.
His were already high enough.
He disembarked the train at Botley Road and stepped out into the old cathedral city that was home to pillars of knowledge and learning.
He had asked Elspeth for the direction of Genevieve’s former home, as that seemed like the most logical place to begin, and she had told him the street.
He wended his way through the old city that always felt strangely comfortable to him, surrounded as he was by every style of building and architecture he could remember.
Making his way to the little side street, he stared up at the cozy and comfortable house with a light glowing in the window and the sound of sleepy children’s voices behind the doors. Kendrick waited until the small voices dropped off into slumber before he knocked on the door.
The man who answered the door was plain and unassuming, with thinning, brown hair and spectacles on his nose. “May I help you?”
“I hope so,” Kendrick said with a smile. “Is this the home of Ezra Dryden?”
“Yes, it was, but I’m sorry—Ezra passed away a year ago.” The man frowned at the sword hilt over Kendrick’s shoulder. “What’s this about, Mister…?”
“I’m looking for anyone who may have known him.” Kendrick used a little of his persuasion. “My name is Kendrick. May I come in?”
The frown smoothed away from the man’s forehead. “Oh! Yes, come in.” He held the door open and ushered Kendrick across the threshold. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kendrick. I am Arthur Cooper. Ezra—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Ezra is greatly missed.”
“You knew him, then,” Kendrick said.
“Yes, we—”
“Dear, who is it?” A woman about forty stepped out of a sitting room and eyed Kendrick in puzzlement. Some threads of silver wended through her red hair, but it still glowed like flame in the lamplight.
“This is Mr. Kendrick; he’s come asking about Ezra.”
“I’m looking for anyone who may have known Mr. Dryden and his daughter,” Kendrick said.
“Genevieve?” the woman exclaimed. “What about Genevieve?”
Kendrick paused, taking in her hair and the expression on her face. The way her heart had skipped a beat. “Forgive me, ma’am…but is your Christian name Hetty?”
She recoiled, her lips parting.
“Genevieve said that you were her friend,” Kendrick said.
The woman paled and swayed. Her husband was by her side at an instant to steady her. That was a yes, then.
“Perhaps we had best sit down,” Kendrick said soothingly.
In the sitting room, the Coopers sat beside each other on the settee, their hands clasped. Kendrick sat in a much-loved armchair across from them and propped his sword on its side. They barely gave it a distracted glance.
“Can you tell me about Genevieve and her father? How did you know her?” Kendrick asked, letting his gaze and his voice do their work.
“I never met her,” Mr. Cooper said. “Hetty was her friend, though.” He squeezed his wife’s hand.
“Yes,” Mrs. Cooper whispered, her eyes far away.
“She was a friend to me, though she was several years older. She and her father were one of the few families who still associated with us after we slid into dire straits. My father had died far sooner than anyone expected, you see,” she explained, “and left behind my mother and sisters and my little brother, who had years yet to reach his majority. There was trouble with the will—it was outdated, and the money tied up by awful legalisms until my brother came of age. So, we were forced to genteel poverty, scrimping and stretching everything and trying to pretend like nothing was wrong. My mother would fly into the boughs whenever I brought up seeking what employment was available to an unwed young lady. In her mind, all we had to do was wait the years out, and then all would be well again. I would not have minded being a shop girl or something of the like. But shame was stronger than hunger—for a time. But eventually, it got so bad, we were only drinking weak tea and stretching the gruel and bread throughout the day.”
She lifted her face to Kendrick. “I decided to sell my hair. I didn’t know what else to do.
But then the wigmaker looked down his nose at me, and I got so little for it, and the next Sunday, the vicar preached on”—her voice trembled, even years after the event—“on a woman’s hair being her glory.
And it seemed as though he were looking right at me.
I ran out of the service crying, but Genevieve came after me and got the whole story out of me.
She marched me back to the wigmakers and pounded on the doors—on a Sunday!
—until the proprietor opened them, and then she took her bonnet off and demanded to know what he would give her for her hair.
And it was long, far past her waist. She browbeat the man until she had talked him up from that paltry sum, and then she demanded to know why I had received so little in payment for mine.
She bullied him into paying me the difference, and then she said, ‘Don’t put your moneybox away just yet, sir. Hand me your shears.’”
She bit her lip, shaking her head in amazement. “She sold her hair for me. It was the bravest, most selfless thing I had ever seen. I really think she saved my life a little,” she told Kendrick earnestly. “It certainly felt that way at the time.”
She swallowed. “It was only a few days later she disappeared. I was so shocked. She never would have left her father,” she assured him.
“Not without a word like that. And because—because I wanted to be like her, and be brave and think of others, I looked in on him those first few days. Making sure he was eating, giving him a distraction from the worry. He didn’t have any other family.
And then Mr. Dryden offered me a job. I could keep house for him and live in, to take some burden off my family and earn an income—more generous than it warranted.
And though they were horrified about me taking employment, I did it because I realized I was needed, and I was smart enough to learn what I didn’t know, and I could be brave in the face of adversity. ”
“And it was for the best,” she said, with a warm glance at her husband.
“When the vicar preached a few too many sermons about souls who wandered from God’s path, and a woman’s place, Ezra took himself to the Methodist church.
And that’s where Arthur struck up an acquaintance with Ezra, who brought him to dinner.
And that’s how we met.” Her husband squeezed her hand.
Kendrick asked, “And you remained with Mr. Dryden?”
Mrs. Cooper nodded. “At first, he wanted me there in case she came home and—needed someone. A woman’s help.
Something like that.” She bit her lip. “And then it was the company. We didn’t like the idea of leaving him on his own after we married, and then he said hang convention, we were part of his family, so we started married life here.
The children thought of him as their grandfather, and they miss him still.
But I think—it really was a double-edged sword.
Every time he heard my foot on the stair, there was a split second where he hoped it was her.
” She lifted her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes again.
“And he left you this house?”
Mr. Cooper nodded. “In his will, and the rest of his belongings and money given to women’s charities.”
“Even personal effects? You see…” Kendrick deepened his talent’s influence. “I know Genevieve.”
Mrs. Cooper gasped. “She’s alive? She’s all right?”
“Yes,” he assured her, letting a wave of calm flood the words. “She is all right now. She is my wife. But I know it would mean a lot to her if she had something of her father’s. Is there some trinket, or a book of his that you might part with?”
The husband blinked. “There’s the trunk.”
Kendrick raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“He left a trunk,” Mrs. Cooper said, leaning forward eagerly.
“He always hoped she would come home, but he knew we needed the room when the children started coming. So, we packed up all her personal things, and later everything he wanted her to have, and put it in a trunk. It’s in the attic. Dearest, will you—”
“No need,” Kendrick said, lifting a hand. “I will bring it down if you point me to it.”
Kendrick followed the husband up the narrow stairs to the attic to unearth the dusty camelback trunk with “ESD” stamped on the cover. He wiped some of the grime off the brass plate and touched the keyhole.
“Hetty has the key,” Mr. Cooper assured him.
Kendrick carried the trunk down the stairs to where Mrs. Cooper waited. She held out the small, brass key. “Will you tell her—” She faltered. “We named our son for him—Ezra. And our oldest girl is Jenny. I never forgot what she did for me.”
Kendrick pocketed the key. “She hasn’t forgotten, either.
I will tell her that you acted in her stead where she could not, and that you loved her father well.
” He let his talent reach out as he caught the eyes of the husband and wife.
“I am most grateful to you both. You will not remember much of tonight. But know that she is well and taken care of, and you have discharged this duty. Thank you.”
A puzzled expression crossed both their faces as his persuasion did its work, but they nodded and smiled, Mrs. Cooper with tears in her eyes.
Kendrick left the small, cozy house with the mysterious trunk over his shoulder. Maybe this will be cause for Christmas, after all, Genevieve.