Chapter Ten
B eckett felt like he could stride through the ocean without resistance. He was stronger than an ox and smarter than Timothy could ever be. He was invincible. He met up with his friend in their usual room at their club.
Timothy was hunched over with a glass of brandy, smoking a cigar. He rarely smoked, and only did so when he was thinking. Beckett poured his own glass and went to sit beside him. Letters were stacked in an uneven pile on the small table between them.
Beckett tried to mitigate his ebullience, lest it put off Timothy, who seemed to be struggling. “Everything put to rights?” he asked, eyeing the precarious stack of unfolded papers. There were more at his feet.
“My ardent pen pal seems to be otherwise occupied. I hope he is not ill.” Timothy puffed on his cigar and blew out the smoke slowly, letting it rise in sinuous curls to the ceiling. “Or dead.”
That surprised Beckett. Timothy was not a man prone to morbid predictions. “Are you that worried?”
“I am,” Timothy said. “It’s Mr. Smalls.”
Beckett sipped at his brandy. “Ah yes, the industrious Cornelius Smalls. I’m not sure I ever read an entire letter from the man.”
Timothy grunted. “I’m aware. He has complained of it a number of times. It was then that I suggested we begin a chess game via correspondence as a way to distract him from his complaints.”
“Is that why you think he is dead? He hasn’t yet given you the next move in your game?”
Timothy took another drag at his cigar and pondered.
It made Beckett wonder if his friend was already drunk.
Very possible. “I’ve thought perhaps he had something going on with him the last few weeks.
His responses took longer than usual, and his overall missives shorter.
As if something else held his attentions. ”
Beckett raised his eyebrow. “Sounds as if you are jealous.”
Another drag and exhalation from his friend.
“Perhaps I am. For so long, I held his rapt attention, as if I could see him sitting down with his chessboard the moment he received my missives. Now? My letter sits at the bottom of a pile, waiting for his splintered awareness. And now? It’s been a full week. He has never taken that long.”
“A week? That’s nothing. Hardly an eyeblink for postage.”
Timothy leveled him with a look. “Mr. Smalls abides in London.”
Beckett made a face. He’d never thought long enough on Mr. Smalls to speculate where the fellow lived. He was an annoyance. A person who bedeviled all men of power, hoping to gain influence and status.
“I know you think poorly of him, but his mind is quick,” Timothy said. “And I’m worried.”
When a friend worried, the only thing left was to lend what aid one could. “Let’s have it, then. Where’s the most recent letter? The unanswered one. Perhaps we can ferret out a clue.”
Timothy gestured to the top of the pile.
“Did you bring the entire history of correspondence?” Beckett harrumphed at the letters that skidded about.
Timothy huffed out a laugh. “Hardly. That’s from the past few months alone. We exchange letters perhaps twice a week. Glad I’m a member of Parliament, otherwise even we would drown in postage costs.”
“This is from but a few months?” Beckett looked about, shaking his head.
He didn’t have time for such a literary affair.
He shook his head and held the letter to the firelight to read.
“Seems innocuous enough. Economy. Voting. Poverty.” But as he read through the letter, summarizing the talking points familiar to any government official, he began to look at the familiarity of the handwriting.
And then, without wanting to think too hard upon it, he withdrew from his pocket the suffocatingly obsequious note he’d received from Mrs. Reid. A knot full of sick dread formed in his stomach.
“What?” Timothy asked, blowing another sinew of smoke into the air. “Did you find something?”
Beckett felt like he might cast up his accounts. The formation of the uppercase L , the short, efficient crossing of the lowercase T , were identical from the note this morning and Timothy’s sheaf of letters. He felt sick.
Bile rose in his throat, accompanying the betrayal that blanketed him. The experience was too acute to parse if it was a betrayal of hers or Timothy’s. Because he was certain—certain—that the hand that penned his note also penned the letters to Timothy. He handed the note and the letter to Timothy.
He put down his snifter and his cigar and took the papers. “What am I looking at here?” And then took to studying the two. A very quiet noise came out of his friend’s mouth, which was when Beckett knew he’d seen the same thing.
“It seems that Cornelius Smalls may be an alias.” Timothy folded his lips inward.
Beckett shook his head. This could not be. Why was Mrs. Reid maintaining such a friendly correspondence with Timothy? Why would she invest so much of herself to someone else?
He skimmed letter after letter as Timothy looked on.
Nothing could be amorous or hinted at more feeling between them, but still, the fact that Mrs. Reid had been writing to Timothy for years now, multiple times a week, felt like she had somehow been unfaithful.
How could she share her thoughts with someone else? Why did she feel the need to do so?
None of these feelings made any sense, but feelings rarely did. They floated like scum on the surface of a pond. Both real and also lacking substance. A lump sat in his throat, obscuring the path of the brandy and making it burn longer. The discomfort felt apt.
What had he ignored by letting all those letters from Mr. Smalls fuel his study fire? Would he have found her sooner if he’d bothered to read those political missives instead of handing them off to his secretary?
He continued to second guess his own actions until a worse thought occurred to him.
The twist of fate that brought Mrs. Reid and Beckett together had missed its mark: Mrs. Reid was meant for Timothy, not him.
Perhaps it should have been Timothy courting her all along.
Sure, his friend’s mild disfigurement didn’t allow for the long walks without pain, but their meeting of the minds was likely profound.
Timothy was the easiest person to talk to, which would have made the first encounter far smoother than the one Beckett had experienced with her.
But who knows how they would have got on in person? As far as Beckett knew, they’d never clapped eyes on one another. Had they?
He shook his head, confused more than ever.
Life ought to be straightforward. Easily digestible.
Of all the things that had gone right in his life, he had been born to a rich family.
And that was where that list ended until he started seeing Mrs. Reid.
And even then, it didn’t start feeling right.
It began feeling like having a healthy tooth pulled for no reason other than a gambling debt.
“What is happening inside that monstrous head of yours, Beckett?” Timothy prodded.
He sipped again at the brandy, hoping the lump in his throat had dissolved. It hadn’t. “Nothing good.”
Timothy nodded, humming in thought. “Tell me what the best way forward is, and I shall do my best to aid you, however you like. Would you like me to confront this Cornelius Smalls?”
“Of course not,” Beckett said immediately.
Given their history, he wanted nothing better than to keep Mrs. Reid as far away from Timothy as possible.
He had all the same benefits of wealth and entitlement that Beckett had, but he was better looking and better tempered.
He didn’t dare introduce them. Not even after he married her.
The realization took his breath away, like a punch to the middle.
He couldn’t possibly marry her. This woman who had dozens of correspondents, most likely.
This woman, who was possibly a murderess.
Her nom de plume would quickly come to light.
The judgment would be swift and humiliating, that she was a woman writing to all these men.
It made her look—well, it made her look like she wanted something she absolutely did not: the limelight.
“Find out more about the murder of the painting master. I need to know if she killed him or not.” The words dripped with shame.
He didn’t want to know. Because if she hadn’t hurt the man, then he’d doubted her for no reason.
And if she had? Then she was a murderess and not deserving of a decent marriage.
But why did her letters to Timothy feel like a bigger hurdle than a possible murder? His head hurt, and his molars ground down further. Everything felt heavy and loud and he felt angry enough to burst.
“What will you do?” Timothy asked.
“I will go about my business unchanged until I have further information,” Beckett snapped, shifting in his seat.
Could he go on like that? He was not a man prone to acting.
He thought it a waste of time to dissemble.
And now, he would do so, for the sake of his future.
For the sake of love. Or perhaps it was merely pride. He flexed his hands into fists.
He liked that Mrs. Reid didn’t like many people, but had grown to like him, as if he alone had tamed a cautious mare.
But now, he found his assumption untrue, for she had a long-term written relationship with Timothy.
They had both won her trust, and Beckett was no longer special.
Had he not enough training from his family to know that he wasn’t special?
He was a placeholder in a long line of titles, none of whom were precious because of the men they were, but from whom they descended.
He downed the brandy, gagging on the lump that remained. “I have to go.”