Twenty
Fort
Furious with himself and the world, Fort glared at the sloppy interior of Henri’s used clothing store and shifted a group of tweed coats to a different rope. The line sagged dangerously. He needed a hammer. He needed to slam nails or just beat his head against the wall.
If he hadn’t tied up Calendar. . . could the man have fought his killer?
Fort hunted for anything resembling a hammer and found an old boot. Fine. He slammed the heel against the board pulling from the wall. The rope straightened infinitesimally.
Pounding didn’t stop his thoughts from beating against his skull.
Two murders. . . and he was encouraging Lavender to spy amid a nest of killers! He tossed the boot back on its shelf and returned the tweeds to their original position.
The stubborn fool female had refused to close her shop. He might as well tell a fish not to swim. All his education and training and he hadn’t the skills to so much as order a fragile female to stay home.
He was contemplating shutting Henri’s shop and parking himself in Lavender’s when the slick-haired clerk he’d seen in the tavern entered and glanced around. His eye caught on the coats Fort had just shifted. “My employer just died. I need summat respectable for his funeral. Got anything my size?”
Fort instantly stiffened and brought his raging thoughts back to study the customer. The slick hair was undoubtedly some form of cheap hair grease to keep over-thick, wavy hair in place. Maybe he should give him some grooming advice.
Of average height, blocky, with callused, ink-stained fingers. . . if his employer had just died, his customer was most likely the late Calendar’s assistant.
He finally had a fish on the line. Not a large one, from the looks of it, but bait for the circling sharks. The best way to keep Lavender safe was to catch the killer. Shoving away thoughts of laughing blue eyes and blond curls, Fort focused on the task at hand.
He had spent the latter part of the morning rearranging Henri’s stock. He could now successfully gesture at the section closest to the customer’s size. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t explain the various fabrics or colors. A tailor had always provided what he needed.
Gauging by the bright green the clerk wore, Fort produced a green-brown nubby coat, with a yellow waistcoat.
He employed his best meek, subservient role.
After this past year, he’d had plenty of practice.
“Your employer was Mr. Calendar? I am sorry to hear of your loss, if so. I heard he died in his sleep?”
“So they’re sayin’.” He frowned at the coat Fort laid on the counter. “Not zactly a funeral coat, is it? I gotta look professional to keep my place.”
If the clerk had any sense at all and knew his employer had been murdered, he’d be fleeing for safety, not angling for his position. Chances were that he knew nothing,
Fort located a somber gray. “Good for a funeral and working with clients. Mr. Calendar was an architect, was he not?”
“Yeah, a proper one, went to school and all. I’m a builder, myself, but he taught me a right lot. I reckon I know how to fix that crumbling pile of stone on the hill. How long does measles last?”
Huh, this one wasn’t mourning Calendar’s death. “Two weeks, I believe, unless others catch it too. Would you like new linen to go with this?”
“Might be. Reckon if my costs are paid, I can live easy for them weeks, if I dress proper and play my cards right.” He shrugged muscled shoulders and short arms out of his shabby coat and tried on the staid, gray, frockcoat. “Sleeves too big. You got a tailor?”
Andrew, Henri’s assistant, had been in and out all morning. Fort assumed he could hem sleeves. “A most excellent one. If you wish to try on waistcoats, I’ll have a messenger fetch him. I’m Birdwhistle, by the way. And you are?”
“Bobbert, three B’s. Think I can put this on my employer’s account? It’s for him, after all.”
Trying not to roll his eyes, Fort laid out a stack of waistcoats and shirts for his perusal. Leaving Bobbert with three B’s to choose among them, he crossed the hall to Lavender’s shop.
Apparently lacking his temper and unconcerned about killers, she actually smiled as he entered. It didn’t ease his irritation but increased his terror that he was doing all the wrong things. He needed to wrap her in cotton batting and store her somewhere safe. . .
“A friendly face! Have you come to rescue me from boredom? I hadn’t realized how much more I enjoy creating designs than sewing them.” In the gray light from the mullioned window, the little modiste resembled a Botticelli angel, her golden hair almost lit from within like a halo.
Fort would never grow tired of looking at the lady, although he’d prefer to do much more than just look.
But besides his father tossing him to a tiger if he brought her home, he’d lost his only chance once he’d revealed he wasn’t a tutor.
This was the first time she’d smiled at him since that day.
“I have Mr. Calendar’s assistant, Bobbert, buying funeral clothes.
I need Andrew to measure him. Is he about? ”
“He is everywhere, all at once, proving to himself that his poor foot is no deterrent. If you only need a coat measured, I can do that. Then I’ll know where to nip and tuck so he will look most fashionable. Can he afford us?”
“Doubt it. It sounds as if Humphries is paying their expenses. He wants to charge Calendar’s account, as if we are a bar tab.”
She gathered up her measuring tools. “Not our worry. Are there questions I should ask? I’m not like Clare, imagining horror stories. . . I can’t believe she hid her novel writing from us all this time!”
Fort was learning that Lavender’s thought processes were as creative as her designs. No wonder she had difficulty reading. Letters and words must wander all about like her thoughts. “Just have him talk about Calendar and the other guests. You’re probably better at that than I am.”
She sent him an assessing stare. “You do not think me a complete nodcock? Unusual. Well, we’ll see.”
Nodcock? An adolescent who had successfully established her own business employing local women? Whatever on earth had given her that notion?
Fort watched in fascination as she pulled a dreadful cap over her halo, tucked up all the wisps of dangling curls, then added wire spectacles, transforming herself into the seamstress she purported to be.
“You’re good at this,” he said in admiration as she carried out her sewing basket and locked her shop.
The look she sent him reminded him that she’d had practice at concealing her beauty.
A female without family. . . Her temerity in demanding that she be accepted by her aristocratic relations despite the circumstances of her birth was inspiring, although his situation was quite the opposite.
He wanted to push away his overbearing, demanding relations. And he’d disguised himself to do it.
Well, it wasn’t much of a disguise, but then, neither was Lavender’s. On some levels, this was who they were, a seamstress and a teacher. He didn’t think he could convince Lavender of that.
Bobbert was struggling into one of the waistcoats Fort had set out. He hastily removed it and reached for a coat at sight of Lavender.
“The tailor wasn’t in, but Miss Marlowe can hem your sleeves,” Fort explained.
“Button up the coat, shrug your shoulders until it hangs right.” Lavender spoke with the command of a much older woman.
“Excellent choice, sir. The gray is flattering on you. I think the black waistcoat to go with it. You will find that it goes with everything.” She began sticking pins into the sleeve hems.
Bobbert had apparently lost his tongue. Fort watched with interest as a slight girl, half the builder’s size, bullied him into purchasing vest and linen.
Then she gestured commandingly for Fort to carry over the stack of trousers.
“He cannot wear tails with breeches, especially not ones so disreputable. You will take him up to his rooms so he might try those on.” She handed him her measuring tape.
“Measure waist to crotch and waist to ankle. Andrew and I will take it from there.”
Stuffing her notes into her apron pocket, she took her sewing basket, the coat, and sailed out.
“My word,” Bobbert whispered. “She’s worse than my ma.”
Fort had to hide his laughter. The delicate fairy might reduce a killer to a gibbering little boy, while wearing an apron and mobcap. A mere builder didn’t have a chance.
Fort, however, grasped what she had done with a few simple commands. The brilliant female had opened an opportunity for a quick look around Bobbert’s room.
Once he’d managed a straight face again, Fort picked up the stack of trousers. “She is quite right, sir. I regret we have no dressing room for someone so discerning as yourself.”
Bobbert looked rightfully confused and a little worried. “How much will all this cost, then? I don’ wanna be per-shumpt-yus.”
Fort gestured at a price chart on the wall.
Surely an architect’s assistant could read.
“As you can see, we are more than reasonably priced. You have chosen to come to the right place in your time of mourning. And if you send some of your companions our way, we’ll be certain to discount your next purchase.
” He’d heard that ridiculous line when he’d bought shirts at a small shop in Birmingham.
Studying the chart, doing rather slow arithmetic in his head, Bobbert nodded. “Worth investing in my future.” He led the way to the lobby stairs.
A tall gentleman, with sharp cheekbones and a bony nose, wearing a frockcoat so tightly tailored that Fort assumed two men and an ox were required to divest him of it, strode from the pub. “Bobbert, where are Calendar’s notes?”
In Fort’s pocket. He’d confiscated them last night but so far hadn’t made much of them.
“They’d be with him, Mr. Featherstone.” Bobbert all but trembled in his shoes—which needed replacing. Calendar’s assistant was not well paid.
Featherstone! Fort studied the gambler king.