Chapter Six
J ake didn’t go with the captain to the Lyon’s Den for the meeting with the potential Mrs. Harraway.
Apart from possibly catching a glimpse of his future mistress, there was nothing for him to do.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, his friend Skippy would be asleep, after a busy night’s work protecting the ladies of the second floor as they pursued their business interests.
He stayed in their apartment, doing a bit of mending, and cleaning the captain’s boots, so he was an eager audience for a description of the lady who might soon be ordering his life.
First, the captain digressed to say Waterford had been disqualified because of his cheating, which was what Jake had thought. He had been given a lifetime ban from the Lyon’s Den, which served him right.
Then Captain Harraway went into rhapsodies about his betrothed. According to him, the matchmaker couldn’t have made a better choice. The captain bubbled over with enthusiasm for Lady Ellen Miller. She was pretty. She was sweet natured. She was a lady in every particular.
“She is no taller than my shoulder, Jake,” the captain said.
“A slightly built lady with light blue eyes and fair hair. And a complexion like a rose petal in the softest of pinks. Softly spoken, and very agreeable. You’ll be pleased to know that she likes living in the country.
She had a Season in Town, but she found it noisy and unpleasant.
We’ll move to Uncle Jeremiah’s estate, of course. Our children will love it.”
He’d known the lady for five minutes and was already planning a family with her. The man was truly besotted. He was staring into nothing with a smile on his face as he continued reporting on his meeting with this Lady Ellen.
“The poor lady has no family,” he said. “I gather her mother was unkind to her, though she is too sweet-natured to say as much. Just that Lady Miller must have thought more of her than she realized, for she left her a small competence in her will. Just enough for Lady Ellen to live on while she sought a husband.”
How strange that the lady was an Ellen Miller.
Lady Ellen Miller, though. Not Miss, like the Ellen Miller he had once known.
Jake supposed that neither name was particularly unusual.
He did his best to listen to Captain Harraway’s praises of the lady while also thinking of the Miller household, and especially of his Kat.
The captain’s wedding would take place in seven days. Clearly, Captain Harraway could hardly wait.
In a carriage on the Uxbridge Road
“You were right, Kat,” said Miss Ellen, when they were in Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s carriage on their way home from the Lyon’s Den.
“Right about what, Miss Ellen?” responded Kat.
“Right about my clothes. I felt so much more confident in the ones Mrs. Dove-Lyon provided after the accident with the bucket.”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon had done well. That shade of blue lent color to Miss Ellen’s face and eyes, and the cut displayed Miss Ellen’s slender figure to perfection.
The fabric and trim were of the finest quality, too.
Miss Ellen was always pretty, in Kat’s opinion, but looked washed out and even ill in the pastels her mother had chosen, and shapeless in gowns that were a poor fit.
And the bucket flung from an upper floor at just the right moment to drench Miss Ellen had been perfectly targeted.
Yes. Mrs. Dove-Lyon had done well.
As it turned out, Miss Ellen was also pleased with Captain Harraway, Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s choice of groom. “He is so handsome, Kat. And tall.”
Kat had seen him from her station at the door of Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s room and was forced to agree on both counts. A blond gentleman, so their children would probably all be flaxen-haired and blue-eyed. In his late twenties, as far as Kat could judge it, so a good age match for Miss Ellen, too.
He wore full dress uniform as an officer of the guard, though Miss Ellen said he was in the process of selling his commission. Apparently, with the war over, the opportunities for advancement were few, and Captain Harraway did not have powerful sponsors to ensure his promotion.
“He has inherited a country estate within easy reach of London, and wealth enough for us to live comfortably, Kat. That sounds perfect, does it not?”
It would be perfect if the man did not cry off when Miss Ellen told him the whole truth.
Not that she had lied. Miss Ellen could not tell a lie if her life were at stake. From what she’d told Kat about her meeting with Harraway, she had told him the truth. That her mother, Lady Miller, had left her a small—a very small—inheritance, and that she needed a husband .
Kat and Mrs. Dove-Lyon had introduced Miss Ellen as Lady Ellen , thereby implying she was the daughter of at least an earl and perhaps a marquess or duke.
The man wasn’t titled himself. Surely it would not matter to him that she was the daughter of a mere baron?
Miss Ellen’s mind must have been marching with Kat’s. “I shall write him a letter, Kat. I need to tell him before the wedding next week that I am merely the daughter of a baron. And I suppose I must admit I merely borrowed Carr Abbas while we were homeless. Do you think he will mind?”
Would he? Surely it couldn’t matter to the man? Miss Ellen had pretended to be the Lady of Carr Abbas in a good cause, and it was not, after all, any skin off Captain Harraway’s nose.
Captain Harraway’s lodgings, the following day
Jake waited until he had the captain lathered up for a shave, and the naked blade of the razor against his cheek, all the better to have a captive audience for what he was about to say.
“Captain Harraway, I’ve heard something I think you ought to know.
It is about your promised bride and her connection with your house. ”
The captain had prohibited any mention of his unwanted estate, but Jake was going to have to ignore that, no matter how the man glared at his reflection in the mirror.
“Lady Ellen Miller also calls herself the Lady of Carr Abbas, and I think she might be living in your house. I heard about it from my friend Skippy, who works at the Lyon’s Den.
” Jake had had to ask Skippy to repeat the estate’s name.
It must be the same one as that left to Captain Harraway by his uncle.
There could not be two estates in Ealing called Carr Abbas.
Lady Ellen Miller couldn’t be the same Ellen Miller Jake remembered.
Nor could her servant, a man called Fivepence, be the Kat Fivepence Jake knew.
“Knew” was a pale word. He had loved that girl with every particle of a heart he’d thought already wizened and twisted, though he was little more than a boy himself.
Jake toyed with the idea that this Fivepence might be related to his Kat. But Kat had been an orphan from nowhere, like Jake, with neither known parents nor known brothers and sisters.
And yet those two names together seemed too much of a coincidence!
Fivepence wasn’t a common name. Kat had been given the name, according to the story she’d been told at the orphanage, because of what the orphanage servants found tucked into the blanket she had been wrapped in before someone left her on the doorstep.
“My ma left me with five pennies wrapped up in a scrap of fabric, so they called me Fivepence,” she had explained.
She was quite proud of the fact—that her mother or father, or whoever it was who could no longer keep her, had still managed to scratch together five whole pennies to start their baby on her new life.
As she said to Jake, it was her very own name, with nobody else to share it. How she would stare to know Jake had encountered someone else with the same name! If it truly was someone else and not Kat herself.
Until he knew more, he would not mention the possible link with his own past to Captain Harraway.
A blink from the captain. Jake took it as permission to continue.
“A servant has been coming from Ealing once a week, bringing Mrs. Dove-Lyon a gift of game and produce. If I’m right, your game and your produce. He announces each delivery as a gift from the Lady of Carr Abbas.”
Raised eyebrows. The captain was as intrigued as Jake.
“I thought we could watch for the footman and ask him some questions.” Actually, Jake thought they should ride out to Ealing this afternoon, and take a look at the house, but he doubted Captain Harraway would agree.
He moved to do the captain’s other cheek. The man’s hair could do with a trim, too. Would he let Jake touch it? “Shall I trim your hair, sir?”
A frown and a wagging finger. No, then.
He finished his task in silence. From the captain’s frown, he was thinking about Jake’s revelations, and sure enough, when Jake handed over the hot towel he had ready and began cleaning the shaving gear before putting it away, it was of the Lady of Carr Abbas that the captain spoke.
“What does the lady want? Does your gossip know? Or guess?”
“Sir, according to Skippy, the Lady of Carr Abbas is the lady you met yesterday.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Her servant is tight-lipped about her purposes, but voluble on the topic of how lovely the lady is, how kind, how gracious, how rich. Which makes it sound like a scam to me.”
“Lady Ellen is living in my house? I cannot believe it! She seemed so innocent, so genuine!”
If it really was Miss Ellen, then perhaps she was. Jake had difficulty believing that either Miss Ellen or Kat were involved in anything criminal. Well. Perhaps Kat, but only from the best of motives. “She may have her reasons, sir,” he said.
“We’ll ride out and have a look,” the captain said.
Jake froze and stared at him. Ride out? The captain proposed to actually leave London?
“Shut your mouth, Jake. You’ll catch a fly.”
The captain was right. Jake was so surprised his jaw had dropped open. He knew better than to comment. “A riding coat, sir?”
“Put it out, Jake. Pack for you and for me for two nights, then run over to the Crown and hire a couple of horses for a trip along the Uxbridge Road. We have a mystery to solve.”
He rubbed his hands together at the thought of it. If Jake had known it would only take a mystery, he might have gone looking for one earlier.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, flinging off a sketchy salute. He’d hurry through packing and get the horses before the captain had the chance to think better of the trip.
As he packed, his mind flooded with memories of his years of service in the Miller household.
If Kat’s surname was bogus, his was even more false.
At least she’d had hers from babyhood. Jake had needed a surname when he was employed by the Millers, and adopted the name of Boss Flynn, who had picked him up from the streets when he was four or five, to train him as a pickpocket and later as a burglar.
He had been introduced to the Miller house by Flynn, who was, as he put it, ruralizing to avoid the runners, and doing a few jobs to keep his gang busy.
Jake was meant to open the window to his mates, rob the place blind, and move on.
But the gang was caught on another job, and Flynn died attempting to escape.
Jake saw his own future in their fate and chose another path. He stayed on.
For four years, he and Kat Fivepence had worked together, he as the youngest footman in the house, the butt of every male servant’s ill-temper or mean jokes, she his counterpart on the women’s side.
They had befriended one another, helped one another, become friends and then more. She had taught him to read, passing on the lessons she had learned from the youngest daughter of the house, who was a sweet girl a few months older than Kat.
Dreams of marriage foundered on reality.
Few households—even those without such a harsh master and mistress at the helm—allowed their servants to marry.
Not even their senior servants, let alone a couple of despised juniors.
Even a hint that Jake and Kat had such hopes would have had the pair of them tossed out on their ear, with no testimonials to help them find another position.
Inevitably, despite the constraints on their time and the almost constant presence of others, their attraction to one another ignited in the most glorious of ways.
After that, Jake knew he could no longer stay near Kat or he would disgrace her.
He waited only long enough to know that their coupling had not had consequences and left to make his fortune.
“I’ll come back, Kat, when I can afford a wife.
You and me. We’ll show them all, won’t we? ”
She’d smiled and wished him every good fortune, but the sadness in her eyes belied the hope in her words. As it was, he’d found no work at all until he joined the army, figuring that at least they’d feed him.
If that footman really was Kat, he’d have to find out what she was trying to achieve, and how he could get it for her without hurting his captain.
Kat Fivepence. He’d been trying not to think about her, because he couldn’t desert Captain Harraway when the man was in such a low state. But now that he had opened the door to those thoughts, they flooded his mind.
If this Fivepence proved to be someone else, he’d not delay any longer, for he needed his Kat with a power all the stronger for having been denied for so long.
When the captain was settled, Jake would go and look for Kat—though he had little hope she’d waited for him.
She was a firecracker of a girl, and in the past eight years, some lucky man must have seen her for the treasure she was.