Chapter Ten #2
a young woman to whom he’d never been formally introduced, unless she was on fire and needed to be extinguished.
Marchand began casually inching toward them.
“Me name’s Cook, madam. I was in yesterday with a friend who buys up everything he can find what’s got birds on it.
Right popular, those. He sells them again in the southeast of St. James’s Park, by the fountain, near all the other vendors.
I’m certain he bought a vase what sounds just like that one.
We’ll be there between three o’clock and five o’clock today, if you want to”—the man froze when he noticed Marchand’s eyes boring into him—“have a look. I hope ye find your vase, miss.”
He shrunk away. Then he speedily looped around the shelves in the middle of the shop and exited, the bell jingling on the
door behind him.
Marchand handed off the last chinoiserie fake—just flowers, no birds, no marks on the bottom—to an elegantly dressed matron
standing near him, who had been reaching for it. She smiled meltingly at him and murmured her thanks. He nodded politely.
“Ginny? Miss Woodville? I thought I heard your voice!”
Marchand swiveled again. Ginny, was it? Who on earth were all these men appearing out of nowhere? Was Fleegle’s known for assignations? It was remarkable
he hadn’t heard about it, if so.
This new male voice sounded refined. Also, absolutely delighted to see her.
But Marchand stiffened when an utterly stricken expression flashed across Miss Woodville’s face.
“Oh, my goodness. Lord Cambrough. What a wonderful coincidence!” Miss Woodville—Ginny—darted a nervous look in Marchand’s
direction before she curtsied.
He understood at once: It would be dire for her if anyone she knew saw her with the Reaper, of all people.
He turned his face away and feigned rapt fascination for the bowl he hefted in his palm. But he kept his body angled slightly
toward her so he could surreptitiously monitor the proceedings.
“You forgot to call me Henry, Ginny.” Lord Cambrough, a lanky, good-looking young fellow, swept off his hat to reveal wavy blond hair. “After all, we’ll be family soon.”
He sounded playful, but Miss Woodville now looked positively queasy. “Ha! Of course, Henry. I do look forward to that happy day, and I know Felicity certainly does, too. I’m certain the two of you will have a long,
happy life together. What brings you to London?”
Ah. So Lord Cambrough was her sister Felicity’s fiancé.
Marchand put the bowl down and reached for a vase.
He knew it was probably only a matter of seconds before Lord Cambrough asked a question that Miss Woodville couldn’t possibly
answer without lying.
Unless she wanted to lay waste to her reputation.
No wonder she was terrified.
Marchand’s mind whirred. He would need to solve this problem quickly.
“I’m in London for my uncle’s birthday celebration,” Lord Cambrough told her, “and then it’s back to Sussex after tomorrow.
I’m looking forward to our meeting about the marriage settlements. You’ll be there, of course.”
“Oh, of course I’ll be there, Henry. I have everything well in hand. I’m looking forward to it, too.” The pitch of Miss Woodville’s
voice had gained a strained half octave. “And I’m looking forward to your wedding, too.”
“I was nearby and thought I’d pop in to see if I could find another silly little china pig for Felicity’s collection. You
know how much she loved the last one I gave her.”
Cambrough sounded charmingly besotted with Miss Woodville’s sister.
“What a sweet idea. I do hope you find one. She will adore it.” Ginny sounded rushed and rote.
There fell what could only be described as an awkward pause.
“What brings you to London, Ginny?” Cambrough asked Ginny brightly.
“I’m lodging at an exclusive little boardinghouse called the Grand Palace on the Thames. I’m here to attend to a bit of official
family business. I’ll be back in Sussex soon.”
“Ah. Well, that sounds grand. I thought you might like to know that Balfort is in London for a few days, too. I just serendipitously
encountered him at White’s. I know he would want me to extend his warmest felicitations. He spoke very fondly of you.”
Who the devil was Balfort, and why was he warmly thinking of Miss Woodville? Marchand immediately wanted to know.
But Ginny blanched. “Well. I should like to see Francis soon, too.” She said this almost weakly.
Francis, was it?
The elegant matron was next to him again. She was inspecting a bowl.
Marchand leaned toward her and whispered something to her. He surreptitiously produced a one-pound note.
She nodded just once, very subtly, and took the note.
Just as Lord Cambrough asked the fatal question.
“So who are you out with today, Ginny?”
Miss Woodville merely beamed at Henry as if she hadn’t heard him.
Whereupon Lord Cambrough swiveled his head this way and that about the shop, struggling to connect someone in it to Ginny.
His questing gaze collided with Marchand’s.
The boy blinked, frowned darkly, and returned his attention to Ginny, his brow furrowed with almost comical alarm.
“You’re not . . . surely you’re not . . . are you here alone?” He delivered the last word on a hush, as though it were an epithet. He followed it with a nervous little laugh, in case
she found the very notion insulting.
“Oh no.” Ginny laughed merrily. “No, no, no, no, no. Certainly not. Can you imagine?”
Cambrough’s eyebrows were decidedly worried now. “I find that I cannot.”
Ginny cleared her throat. “Well, as it so happens, I’m wiiiith . . .”
She made the word last so long Henry was compelled to lean forward in suspense.
“Mrs. Tuffet,” the matron interjected as she strode over to them, Marchand’s pound note payment tucked out of sight into the
wrist of her glove. “I’m Miss Woodville’s neighbor, Lord Cambrough, and she was kind enough to accompany me to London, as
we both had business here. Isn’t that thoughtful of her! It’s madness for young women to travel alone, don’t you think? And
I’m terribly sorry to rudely interrupt, but we really must be going at once, Miss Woodville, or we’ll be late to our soiree. It’s a pleasure to meet you, albeit so briefly, Lord
Cambrough.”
“Oh! A pleasure to meet you, too, Mrs. Tuffet, was it?” Henry was confused yet visibly relieved.
Marchand watched as Miss Woodville strode out of the shop arm in arm with a woman she’d seen for the first time twenty seconds ago.
“Thank you, once again, for the rescue, Mr. Marchand. You’re a very resourceful man.”
Ginny said this a trifle acerbically. Because while she was indeed grateful, she was also very embarrassed. Mr. Marchand had
not only quickly recognized her grave social peril, he’d had the presence of mind to solve her problem with a deft bribe to
a stranger.
When she relived the moment she’d said “wiiiith . . .” to Lord Cambrough with desperate, feigned cheer, she nearly shriveled
with mortification.
She’d actually marched a good thirty yards down the street arm in arm with the woman Mr. Marchand had paid to lie. She was
a widow, Mrs. Tuffet explained during their walk.
Mr. Marchand eventually caught up to them, collected Ginny, and bustled her around the corner after they waved good-bye to
the helpful stranger.
Ginny had watched the woman go somewhat wistfully. What an injustice it seemed that a husband usually had to die before a
woman could run about town freely.
She was now sitting across from Mr. Marchand in a grubby little pub. It seemed unlikely that anyone with whom she was acquainted
would wander in. Although it was becoming clearer and clearer to her that anything could happen at any time, so there seemed
no point in relaxing her guard, ever.
Her heartbeat, in truth, had not yet recovered from the abject terror of watching Lord Cambrough’s expression subtly change when he suspected she might be wandering around by herself in Fleegle’s Emporium of Wonders.
Gently bred young women simply didn’t do that, particularly in a not-quite-savory neighborhood.
Unless, of course, they were helplessly eccentric, in the process of going mad, or up
to something truly, unforgivably, disastrously disreputable.
Like gallivanting around with one of the princes of London’s demimonde.
If Henry had entered the shop a few moments earlier and seen her with Marchand, speaking with Mr. Fleegle . . .
. . . if he’d then told Francis what he’d seen . . .
The cascade of potential ramifications chilled her blood.
Most young men possessed of titles and pedigrees stretching back to William I—like Lord Cambrough—wouldn’t enthusiastically
marry into a family of eccentrics. While there was a slim chance Felicity’s engagement would survive the disappearing dowry,
a disreputable sister on top of that would likely be the final nail in its coffin.
She would rather die than destroy her sister’s happiness.
Lord Cambrough’s family would never mix socially with a man like Marchand. Her reputation would be tainted forever if her association with Marchand was known.
But it seemed to her that her two overlapping worlds, the secret one in which she was suddenly living, and the one she’d lived in every day for the last twenty-four years, were blurring at the edges, bleeding into each other.
Because it struck her as irrational that the man sitting across from her, the one who had just rescued her from certain social devastation, could be the agent of her social destruction simply by virtue of being who he was—an impresario of a gentleman’s gaming club.
She might as well be sitting across from a lit grenade, for how dangerous this association was.
Yet she’d never felt safer.
Mr. Marchand seemed pensive, and she was drained by the scrabbling farce her life had become.
But surprisingly she rather liked sitting in the grubby pub. It was novel. It was dimly lit. The table wobbled, and it had
been carved with Epithet Jar words and various initials. She traced one with her gloved forefinger.
Marchand was enjoying an ale.