Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
H e pulled her into his arms, pinning her against the wall. Slowly, he bent his head. His mouth brushed over hers and along her jawline. She couldn’t breathe. His grip was fierce, but the caress of his lips was feather light.
His voice tickled her ear. “Celia. My darling. Nothing and no one can come between us ever again. Say that you are mine.”
“I am yours,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes and groaned deep in his throat. “And I am yours.” His mouth found hers. The kiss began as the lightest of touches—a caress of hot skin on hot skin. But as she pulled him closer, his kiss grew more demanding. Shivers of sensation traveled through her. Past and present mixed into a pulse-pounding longing….
“Miss Ryder. Miss Ryder! ”
Celia jumped. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Ellesmere was glaring at her. “I begin to think, Miss Ryder, that you are queer in the attic—or that you simply do not care about your employment. I do not pay you to skulk on the landing, hugging your elbows and daydreaming!”
“No, ma’am.”
“Come at once! I require you to read to me!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Celia’s face was burning. She followed her employer into the sitting room. Why had she slipped into a daydream about Keynsham? After all, he was a liar and a seducer—and his marriage to another lady would be announced any day now.
Every Sunday Celia accompanied Mrs. Ellesmere to church in the morning, ensuring that she had her extra shawl, mitts, peppermints, prayer book, reading spectacles and any letters that she wished to show to her acquaintances after the service.
Afterwards, if Mrs. Ellesmere had no callers, Celia read aloud. Her employer’s chief pleasures in life were gothic romances and newspaper accounts of murders, fires, violent crimes and fatal accidents. Neither were suitable reading material for a Sunday… but there was certainly nobody who would dare to tell Mrs. Ellesmere that.
She placed a screen between Mrs. Ellesmere and the fire and took up the book that she was reading aloud. Anyone would have thought that her employer was an elderly invalid. In fact, she was in her fifties and perfectly healthy—apart from a knee that troubled her occasionally, which gave her a reason to carry a cane.
As Celia read, Mrs. Ellesmere clicked her tongue. She was annoyed with the book— The Sorceress of Sarteano. But then, she was always annoyed by the books. “Dreadful,” she would mutter under her breath, getting louder each time she said it. “Dreadful! Dreadful! Shameful! Disgraceful! Trash! ”
She’d said the same of The Confessional of Valombre, The Grotto of San Lorenzo , The Pirate of Naples , The Crypt of Crispiano and Sicilian Mysteries —all of which she’d chosen herself . Celia had never been farther away than Lincoln, but thanks to these sensationalistic novels she was beginning to feel that she’d visited Italy herself… or at least, the parts of it that were most heavily beset by forbidden love, murderous ghosts, abducted heiresses, secret babies and icy tombs.
Finally, Mrs. Ellesmere thumped her cane on the floor. “That is quite enough humbug for one day. You may play now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Celia settled herself at the pianoforte and began a sonata. Playing rested her throat, which was tired after almost two hours of reading. But unfortunately, it also allowed her mind to wandered to painful thoughts. Somewhere in London—only two or three miles away, though he might as well be on the far side of the moon—was Keynsham.
She ought not to care what he thought. But… did he ever regret how he’d behaved? Probably not. He was probably with his fiancée… perhaps in an open carriage in the park… no doubt admired by the entire ton . She would be wearing an elegant carriage gown, and Keynsham…
But no. She must stop thinking of him. She must forget the determined set of his jaw as he’d held out a protective arm behind his carriage… the fire in his eyes when he’d told her that he’d never forgot her… the feel of his lips on her earlobe…
“Miss Ryder! Miss Ryder! ”
She came back to the present with a jolt. “Stop!” Mrs. Ellesmere’s face was red with rage. “ Stop! This is intolerable! Your playing is dreadful! Dreadful! Never have I heard so many mistakes and wrong notes!” She thumped on the floor again for emphasis. “You are making no effort. No effort whatsoever! If there is one thing that I cannot and will not tolerate, it is a young lady who makes no effort!'
“I—I am sorry, ma’am.” Celia was so stunned by this outburst that she wasn’t certain what to say. Had she missed notes? She hadn’t thought so, but perhaps she was wrong. “I apologize. I believe that I may be somewhat fatigued.”
“Fatigued? Did you say fatigued , Miss Ryder?” Mrs. Ellesmere rose. “Fatigued indeed! What a hum! How can you be fatigued ? Why, you have done nothing at all all day!”
She pounded her cane on the floor. “All the young ladies nowadays are pale and weak and vaporish. I suppose that it is the green sickness. Well, I tell you to your head that I will not stand for it! I will not stand for sickliness in my household! Miss Goodman was precisely the same. Indeed, you may be worse than her!”
Miss Goodman had been Mrs. Ellesmere’s previous lady’s companion. Celia still hadn’t learned the exact circumstance of her departure… “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I do not suffer from the green sickness.”
“Do you dare to contradict me?” Mrs. Ellesmere’s eyes snapped with fury.
“No, ma’am.” Too late, Celia realized that she ought to have said nothing. She’d thought herself immune to her employer’s irrational fits of temper. Now she realized that Mrs. Ellesmere had, until now, been on what passed as good behavior with her.
Mrs. Ellesmere stamped across the room. “First that woman at the employment agency told me that she would send me no more companions. And then she foisted you on me—with no notice whatsoever! I suppose she thought that she would leave me no choice but to hire you! Well, I shall write to her and tell her exactly what I think of her petty stratagems.”
She rang the bell. “You are unsatisfactory—just as unsatisfactory as Miss Goodman, Miss Black, Miss Fremont and Mrs. Bristol all were. And you may be certain that I shall replace you, too.”
Celia’s stomach did a sick lurch.“Please, ma’am….”
“Silence! You have given me the headache. I shall have to go lie down. Tomorrow morning I shall write the letter, and you will take it to the employment agency yourself—so that Mrs. High and Mighty may see the shabby way that you are dressed, too. It depresses my spirits to see you in that drab gown. I should have expected better of”—
The sitting room door opened. Tate walked in, bearing a tray with the tea things. Mrs. Ellesmere frowned. “I did not order tea.”
Tate raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon, madam. You requested it earlier.”
Mrs. Ellesmere paused, thrown off her tirade. The delicious odor of baked goods rose from the tray. “Is that lemon cake?”
“Yes, madam. And Cook’s chocolate tarts.”
“Oh, very well—since you have brought them anyway.” She scowled. “What is this?” There was also a folded newspaper on the tray.
“Ah. It is the Sunday Observer . I thought that you would be interested to know that there is a notice about the murder committed by the butcher’s apprentice in South Lambeth. You were quite correct, madam. The body has been discovered.”
“ Indeed! ” Mrs. Ellesmere’s face lit up. “And was it cut up—as I predicted?”
“Yes, madam.”
“How dreadful!” She snatched up the newspaper and began to read. “Exactly as I said! And the head! Chopped off with a cleaver and pickled in a barrel with the corned beef!” She took a large bite of a chocolate tart. “Is that not precisely what I predicted? Did I not say that he had hid the head in the shop?”
“Indeed you did, madam. Perhaps Miss Ryder might pour the tea.”
Mrs. Ellesmere, still engrossed by the newspaper, merely grunted. “It says here that a man was knocked unconscious on Westminster Bridge after being run down by a young lady driving a phaeton—with a pink dog beside her! Humph! I disapprove of ladies driving. I shall pray that they catch her—and that she is whipped.” She gestured at Celia. “Fetch me my paper scissors, Miss Ryder—and my folio. I shall want to add this article to it.”
“The folio” was a large collection of newspaper clippings of stories of gruesome murders and deaths. Until now, Celia hadn’t been allowed to touch it.
In the corridor she took a shaky breath. Would Mrs. Ellesmere put her out on the street? She wouldn’t last long without a roof over her head—not with Wilkes hunting for her! If only she hadn’t allowed herself to daydream of Keynsham. If she’d missed notes as she played, she had no one to blame but herself.
She hurried up the stairs to Mrs. Ellesmere’s dressing room, where a large writing desk contained her employer’s letters and papers. The cherished clipping collection was in its top righthand drawer.
But as she lifted the heavy, untidy pile, papers slid out of it in all directions. Her heart pounding, she struggled to retrieve them without dropping others. Would Mrs. Ellesmere notice if she they were in the wrong order?
A name, printed on one of the escaped clippings, caught her eye: Mr. Julian Talbot.
She blinked. Julian Talbot?
No. It could not be.
But it was.
Mr. Julian Talbot. Her father.
She sank to the floor, everything else forgotten.
Inquisition Held in Surrey
An Inquisition was taken at Guildford, Sy., before His Majesty’s Coroner Mr. Inchbald, on view of the body of Mr. Julian Talbot, Esq., of Oldbourne, Hants.
Mr. Talbot’s carriage was discovered at sunrise Thursday morning, overturned on the London road some four miles from Guildford. Mr. Talbot’s right forearm was broke, as were several ribs. His head had received such grievous injuries as to render identification of the corpse difficult. The coachman had fled the scene.
On Friday the Coroner’s Inquest sat on the body at the Queen’s Head, a public house in Guildford, where the jury brought in a verdict of Accidental Death.
She clapped her hand over her mouth. No. No. This was a mistake. Her father had not been on the London road. His head had received such grievous injuries…
She closed her eyes to block out the mental picture, but that only made it more vivid.
“Miss Ryder! Miss Ryder! Miss Ryder!”
Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t manage to put the stack of papers back together. She couldn’t manage anything.
“ Miss Ryder! ”
She stood and tottered, puppet-like, downstairs to the sitting room.
“Well?” Mrs. Ellesmere glared at her. “Where is it?”
Where was what? The newspaper collection. “I… I could not find it.”
“Really, Miss Ryder! You are utterly incapable!”
“I—I beg your pardon, ma’am.” Her voice was a near-whisper.
Tate shot Celia a strange look. “Miss Ryder, perhaps, did not know where to look. It will take me but a moment, madam.” And before Mrs. Ellesmere could stop him, he hurried out of the room.
Mrs. Ellesmere glowered at Celia. “Now you see? You are putting Tate to a great deal of trouble. He should not have to do your work!”
“I am sorry, ma’am. I do not think that I….” Her head was pounding. “That is, I do not feel at all well.”
“Do not feel well? Miss Ryder, you are sickly . I have told you specifically, several times, that I do not tolerate sickly young ladies.”
“I—I beg your pardon.” She turned, almost blindly, and left the room.
“Is it your throat?” Mrs. Ellesmere shouted after her. “I will not have a putrid throat in this house!”
#
Celia lay on her narrow bed, shivering as though a fever were wracking her with chills. She longed to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. Horrifying images appeared when she closed her eyes.
Nothing made sense. Her father had been traveling to Bath. Hadn’t he? All his talk had been of Bath: the friends that he would see, the titled and fashionable people he was expecting would be there. Besides, Wilkes had told her that the wreck had been found on the Bath road.
Wilkes . Pulling strings… wheedling her to obey her dead father’s wishes… He seemed to know everything. So why had he been mistaken about the road?
She turned over, but the unanswered questions wouldn’t stop plaguing her. She knew in her heart that there was something wrong with the whole story.
There was a knock. It was Annie with a tray. “Oh, Miss Ryder!” Her freckled face was ashen. “All of us feared that it would come to this.”
Celia’s thoughts were in such a whirl that they seemed to be consuming all her energy. “I beg your pardon?”
Annie lowered her voice. “This is how the nervous complaint took Miss Goodman. She went to bed and couldn’t get up.” She set the tray on the dresser. “Look, I am pouring you some tea! Do have it while it is hot.”
Celia forced herself to sit up. “I do not mean to worry you.”
“She wears you out!” Annie handed her the tea. “It isn’t right that you go out on your own, carrying her parcels in all weathers. You ought at least to have one of us with you.”
Celia took a sip of tea. “I was used to walking long distances alone in the country.”
“And this ain’t the country!” Her young face was serious. “Ladies in London ought not to go about by themselves, is what I’m saying! There’s bad men out in the streets.”
Didn’t Celia know it… Yet her errands allowed her to escape the house for a few hours. If nothing else, she was free to choose which streets she walked on, without someone scolding her every step of the way.
Which streets….
“Miss Ryder!” Annie pounded her on the back. “Is the tea too hot? Did it go down the wrong way?”
Celia, coughing, shook her head. “No. No. I am fine.”
She was not fine. She was not fine at all.
But she did have a plan.
#
At best there might be an hour of time that she could steal from her errands—and even that would need to be explained away somehow. Well, she would think of something.
She followed a passageway into a hushed and damp courtyard surrounded by a rambling half-timbered building that seemed to have no door. When she found one, it led her to a long empty corridor where her footsteps echoed on an ancient flagstone floor.
She’d never been to the Inns of Court before. She followed the corridor until she came to an open door that revealed an office where three men were hunched over wooden desks stacked with papers, writing furiously. One glanced up and frowned at her.
She forced herself to step forward. “Good morning. I am looking for Mr. Maddox. Do you know where in these buildings I might find his chambers?”
The young man was handsome, ginger-haired and foppishly dressed in an aubergine colored jacket with a sharp collar. He did not rise. Indeed, he stared at her for so long that her face began to warm.
“I beg your pardon,” she forced herself to say.
“And who might you be?”
She drew herself up—as much as it was possible to draw herself up in her shabby ensemble. “My business is not with you.”
“Godfrey!” An inner door flew open and banged against the wall. Celia jumped, her hand to her throat. “What is the meaning of this?”
“This young… lady ”—the clerk said this in a sneering tone, as though he doubted that she were a lady at all—“says that she is looking for Mr. Maddox .”
The man who’d flung open the door advanced. He was red-faced and grey-haired, and his silk waistcoat strained over his belly as he scooped an armload of papers off Godfrey’s desk. He scarcely bothered to glance Celia’s way. “I am Mr. Maddox.”
“Then… then it is you I have come to see, sir.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Oh… no.”
“Then you shall have to make one.” He turned to go back into the inner office. “I am afraid that I am very busy.”
“Please. I have only one question. It is about my father. I believe that you were his solicitor?”
He scarcely paused. “Who is your father?”
“Mr. Julian Talbot. Of Hampshire.”
He froze mid-step.
The office went silent. Mr. Maddox turned. The florid color drained patchily from his face. “Miss—Miss Talbot?”
Godfrey and the other two clerks put down their quills and stared.
Mr. Maddox recovered and bowed low. “Miss Talbot. There are important matters that must be discussed. Privately .” He glared at his clerk, who was watching the exchange as avidly as though they were actors in a play. “Godfrey! You are idle as usual!”
Godfrey picked up his quill without taking his eyes off Celia. He seemed determined not to miss a moment of the drama.
“Miss Talbot.” Mr. Maddox stepped back and gestured at the door to his office. She walked past Godfrey, who was fragrant with scent and now seemed to be trying to wink at her.
The lawyer shut the door and pulled out one of the leather upholstered chairs that faced his desk. She sat down. The windows faced north, over the hushed courtyard, and the only sound was the ticking of a clock on the mantel.
His steps as he returned to his own chair were heavy. “I have been searching for you for over a year, Miss Talbot. To have you simply appear here is….” He shook his head. “Are you… Are you… safe? Well?”
“Quite well, thank you,” she lied. “I did not mean to cause a disruption. My question is only a small one. It may seem silly, but I...” She broke off and swallowed hard. “I wondered whether my father had had an appointment with you. When he was… killed.”
Mr. Maddox frowned. “Had an appointment? No. He did not. It would have been in my calendar.”
“Are you certain? He was to have gone to Bath, but I thought perhaps that he might have been coming here first to discuss my… my marriage settlements.”
“Marriage settlements? I must beg your pardon. I was unaware that you are married.”
“I—I am not.”
There was a brief silence. The lawyer’s frown deepened. “Miss Talbot, forgive me, but… are you in some sort of trouble?”
“No! Not at all!” She rose, her face heating. “Thank you very much for your time. I am sorry to have caused trouble. Please excuse me.”
“Miss Talbot, please!” Mr. Maddox rose as well. “You must not leave without—that is, there are papers that you must sign—papers regarding the property in Oldbourne.”
Her face heated. This respectable man with his three clerks and damask waistcoat would recoil if she explained the bargain that her father had struck. “There is no property. My father… mortgaged it.” She didn’t dare speak Wilkes’s name.
Mr. Maddox was still frowning. “I am afraid that that is quite impossible.”
“He… he was in a great deal of debt.” There was a long silence. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Mr. Maddox. Now that he understood her situation, he must see that she was poor, and unimportant, and not worthy of so much courteous treatment.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Talbot, you seem to be confused.”
To her mortification, tears began to prickle her eyes. She blinked them back.
“Has no-one explained your position to you? Please—sit down.”
What could he mean? She had no position. She hesitated, and she sat down again.
Mr. Maddox sat down again and folded his hands upon his desk. “Well. At risk of telling you facts with which you are already familiar, my father was your grandfather’s solicitor. I took over his practice some years ago.”
She hadn’t known this. In fact, she’d only been able to recall Mr. Maddox’s name because she’d had to write some of her father’s business correspondence for him.
“And you know, of course, that your grandfather—Sir Ramsey—settled Talbot Hall on your father when he married. He had hoped that your father—who had been a rather wild young man—would settle down to the responsibilities of land ownership. But…”
He broke off and shook his head. “Well. A few months after your mother’s death, your father went to Sir Ramsey. He wished to purchase a commission in the army and make a new start in life, he said. But he needed money to settle some debts first. And he proposed that you be sent away to live with his older brother.”
“Sent away?”
“Yes. He proposed that Sir Ramsey buy Talbot Hall back from him—but also allow him to live there and hunt on the lands whenever he wished to. Well, Sir Ramsey did not care for this rather… lopsided plan. He did not believe that your aunt and uncle would be kind to you. He also did not believe that your father would follow through with purchasing a commission in the army. In fact, he suspected that without the responsibility of managing the estate, your father would, instead, spend all of his time traveling to, er… race meetings, and watering holes, and so forth.”
He sighed. “And so he insisted, instead, upon his own proposal. In exchange for advancing a generous sum of money—which was to relieve all your father’s embarrassments and make him easy for the future—he made arrangements regarding Talbot Hall that were meant to protect your interests.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. I suppose that you do not remember him well, but he was fond of you. At any rate, despite the money, your father—who was not used to not getting his own way—was angry. But of course, he could not afford to turn it down.”
Mr. Maddox cleared his throat. “Miss Talbot? have now laid out the facts of your position. Do you have any questions?”
The facts of her position? “I beg your pardon, but… what position?”
Mr. Maddox’s eyebrows went up. “I have just been explaining that Sir Ramsey made the estate over to you, in trust, with a life interest to your father. Talbot Hall is yours—although I am the trustee until you are twenty eight, or until you are married.”
“I beg your pardon.” He must not have understood. “ My father ran out of money again. He mortgaged the property to—to… a moneylender. The estate is his now.”
The lawyer’s eyebrows climbed even higher. “That is impossible.”
“I believe that he had… gaming losses.”
“No, Miss Talbot. What I mean is that the estate could not be touched. Indeed, I told your father so—several times. He ordered me to draw up papers for you to sign. I had to tell him repeatedly that it was quite impossible, as you were not yet of age.”
She couldn’t reconcile this with what her father had said, the day that he’d told her that she must marry Wilkes. “But… if the estate was in my name, how did he continue to borrow money against it?”
There was an awkward silence. “Miss Talbot, without all the facts before me I cannot… but what you have described to me is… well, in a word… fraud.”
She found herself on her feet. Fraud ? Her mind was in a state of blank panic.
“Miss Talbot.” The solicitor rose as well. “Please. I did not mean to offend you. You must sign”—
“Thank you, good day.”
She flung open the door to the outer office, bumped blindly into the corner of Godfrey’s desk, and rushed down the corridor, rubbing her smarting thigh.
She must not cry. She must not cry. And yet, as she made her way through the jostling crowds of High Holborn, she found herself gulping back sobs and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. Just when she’d thought that she could sink no lower, she’d learned that her own father had tried to rob her—and had committed fraud.
She was too preoccupied to remember to put her veil down. And she was too preoccupied to notice the big man with the bruised face lounging against a wall.
And she was also too preoccupied to notice when he began to follow her as she made her way east—toward the lending library.