Chapter 22
“I have to leave.” Tom hated the dullness that Joanie tried to smile away as she arranged light purple blooms in a clay vase. The plants in front of the cottage had just speckled with their first dots of color.
“Should I pack you something? You’ll get hungry.”
“Nae time for it.”
“Mrs. Musgrave would make you eat.”
Leaving his pipe to cool on the mantel, Tom grabbed his coat and followed the kitten’s gait toward Joanie. He snatched out the flowers.
“Tom—”
“Look blithe, or I’ll not give them back.”
She made a small leap for them. “I am blithe.”
“Ye’re not.”
“I am.”
“Not.”
“Tom, you’ll crinkle them!” Flustered and giggling, she made a final groping circle around him before slumping her shoulders in defeat. She opened up her palm.
In which he placed—unharmed—the flowers. “Get yer things and come with me. Ye can stay with Mrs. Musgrave.”
“No. There is too much to do here.”
“Ye dinnae like to be left alone. I can tell.”
The look she gave him was one part wistful and the other part grateful. She dropped the purple blooms back into the vase, her profile troubled.
“Lass?”
“It isn’t that, Tom.”
“What’s bothering ye?” When she didn’t answer, a low rustling of regret hummed in his ears. Then she’d noticed.
“What did you do with it?”
“Nothing.”
“Tom, you didn’t—”
“Nay.” He had not done what he’d wanted to do.
Rip the pages out. Toss them into the hearth.
Forget the memories that swelled through the Bible like ripping torrents.
What had he hoped to gain by drinking the words last night?
They were poison to him. A battering reminder of what he’d lost. “I put it in the barn. With some of my old things.”
Joanie’s eyes brimmed with moisture for just a second, then she nodded, smiled. “Good.”
“I cannae promise I’ll read it.”
Another nod.
He pulled her to his side with a quick squeeze. “I’ll be back tonight. Mayhap sooner.” Extracting his coat sleeve from Gyb’s playful claws, he started for the door—
“Wait.” Joanie swooped to the floor and grabbed something. She delivered it to Tom with a smile. “You dropped your piece of wig.”
He took the coarse clump of hair. “Wig?”
“It is, isn’t it?” Joanie sniffed. “Smells just like Corporal Simmon’s always did, from back home. Like orris roots, almost. Why do you have it?”
“I—” His mind whirled. Faces flitted through his mind, people he knew, villagers he’d passed on the street and doffed his hat to.
A wig. One face bleeped with rapid-fire speed.
Curly brown periwig.
Strawberry jam.
Fleshy chin.
Mr. Willmott? Though surely the man could not be the only village resident who donned a brown wig. Besides, the justice of the peace had been kind to Tom. Since he’d first arrived in Juleshead, Mr. Willmott had weathered through Tom’s scrapes and trouble with an annoyed but steady forbearance.
He was rule-bent, married, and upstanding.
Not the sort of gentleman who would frequent Mamma Lieselotte’s brothel. Or profess love to a strumpet like Elisabeth. Or see her death recompensed with more death.
Tom closed his fist around the hair. Mr. Willmott was not the blackguard he sought.
But perhaps he could lead Tom to someone who was.
“Find anything?”
Lord Cunningham threw another red hardback to the library rug. His usual frilled cravat was missing and the skin around his eyes was puffy as he shot a hollow glance her way. He wore the same clothes as last night. “You are come to admonish me, I suppose, for our less-than-congenial dinner party.”
Had she?
Contemplations rose in her. At first, she’d been angry he could be so cold, then disappointed he could inflict pain so heedlessly. Now, looking at him on his knees in front of the bookshelf, tossing medical books into a pile, some of her resentment toward him waned.
She saw a little deeper into him than she meant to.
Beyond his eloquent speeches.
His intelligent poise.
He was little—all the way through him—but she could not despise his lack of fortitude, when all it stirred within her was pity. The very reason she’d agreed to marry him in the first place.
“In answer to your question, no.” He shook a book upside down as if looking for notes tucked inside, then slammed it back into the pile. “There are no answers in these books for Violet. Nor, despite what Father would have said, in long-ago fables.”
“Perhaps you search for answers in the wrong place.”
He gave a dry laugh. “You insinuate I should beseech higher powers, doubtless. You are good like that.” He grabbed the shelf and pulled himself to his feet. “It may surprise you to know I have prayed. Perhaps most of all.”
“Then you must not lose hope.”
“Hope is only the benevolent name we give our pain.” He swooped two glass decanters from the floor. One swished with amber liquid. The other was empty. “As I am certain you did not find me for more of our poetry readings, I must conclude you have heard.”
“Heard what?”
“Lady Walpoole departed this morning. Whether she was displeased with my gentility as host or found your late-night disappearance scandalous, I suppose we shall never know. Suffice it to say, we are both to blame.”
“It does not matter anyway.”
“No.” His bloodshot eyes bore into hers. “I did not imagine it did.” After several beats of silence, he finally smiled. He lifted the decanter into the air, like the final toast old chums make before parting ways. “If this is farewell, you have chosen a deuced good time to declare it.”
“I—”
“Do not say anything.” He took a couple slow steps toward her, hair falling over his forehead, his mouth weak about the edges.
“You are perfect. I wish to keep you that way. I wish to solidify your image as the spotless dove and immortalize you in my mind, as did the poets of old.” He glanced at the decanter gripped in his white-knuckled hand and smiled with rue.
“The spirits talk so beautifully inside me, do they not?”
“I think you should rest. You do not appear well.”
“Perhaps you are right. Two of the servants fell ill during the night, so perhaps whatever ailment has stirred in this house is affecting me too.” He smiled. “Tomorrow, perhaps, all shall be over and we shall be well. Violet shall be better too. We will all be happy.”
She must have given him a sympathetic look, because he appeared all of a sudden as if he were about to cry.
“But we both know that is untrue.” He wiped his nose and turned away. “Even the fables do not end happily. A lesson my father taught me in the most terrible way possible.”
“It is the noses. You must remedy the noses.” Mr. Willmott hovered over the artist’s shoulder, already wearing a bit of blue and green paint on the hem of his sleeve. “Genevieve, come here at once so the man may look at you.”
The twin daughters—fourteen years old, if Tom remembered right—looked unconcerned about their father’s worries. Or the painting, for that matter.
They sulked in their stances, one holding a basket of flowers in her lap, the other draping a limp arm about her sister’s shoulder. Sunlight trickled over them, and the backdrop of oak leaves, a dense tree line, and fluffy white clouds had already made its way onto the painter’s canvas.
They whispered something, giggled, then pointed at Tom.
Mr. Willmott turned. “You.” He grumbled, his wig slightly askew. “Thunder and turf, McGwen, do you always have to pester me just when I am taking in a bit of pleasure? I cannot speak with you. I am busy.”
“This is important.”
“It usually is.” Mr. Willmott shouted across the lawn at his girls, “Lydia, the nose!” When the twins had angled their heads to a satisfying degree, he flung a dismissing hand at Tom.
“Come back tomorrow when I’m swearing in recruits or something or other.
And if this concerns Miss Foxcroft’s unfortunate circumstances, I am afraid even I cannot do anything. ”
“It’s not that.”
“Whatever it is can wait.”
“Nay. It can’t.”
“Tare and hounds.” Riled, Mr. Willmott turned back to the painter.
“Keep these girls in position if you have to whack the basket over their little blonde heads. This shall only be a minute. That I can promise.” He motioned to Tom.
“Over here, McGwen, and make it fast before I lose what little perseverance I have left.”
When he’d yanked and jerked Tom toward the secluded garden next to a lion-faced fountain, he pulled at the bottom of his waistcoat and lifted his chin.
Scents from nearby wisteria vines drifted across the lawn.
“Very well, McGwen. What is this dilemma you shall demand I resolve and that I shall conclude, per usual, I cannot?”
“I am looking for a man.”
“A ratcatcher again, perhaps?”
“Nay. A man with a wig.”
“See here—”
“I mean ye nae disrespect.” Tom rubbed the hair lock in his pocket, his nerves taut. “I think he may know something about Mr. Foxcroft … and the things that have happened.”
Mr. Willmott straightened his wig with defiant indignation. “Anyone with a good understanding of history and aristocracy comprehends the fact that wigs are representative of such. They should not be disparaged just because modern fashion declines.”
“He frequented a bawdyhouse on the east side of Juleshead.”
“Who?”
“The man I’m looking for.”
“Go on.”
“He visited … a woman named Elisabeth.”
“Why do you not ask her?”
“She is dead.”
“I see.” No hitch. No shift in his expression or tone.
He sighed out his impatience. “Then it is my conjecture that you have bombarded me today simply because I have good taste.” Mr. Willmott cleared his throat.
“And as usual, there is very little I can do to assist. It is hardly in my line of powers to administer a village-wide search for anyone not wearing their own hair.”
Disappointment sank like a rock in Tom’s stomach. He nodded. “I see.” He started to turn, but paused and tossed over the brown ringlet from his pocket.
Mr. Willmott caught it with a frown.