Chapter 6
Bring a long spoon.
“What exactly do you think you’re playing at?”
Anne sighed inwardly. She had known this moment would come, though she had avoided it for as long as possible. Mrs Fairway finally had her alone in the kitchens, however, and meant to say her piece.
“I can’t think what you mean,” Anne replied calmly, diligently adding items to the shopping lists she would get Martha to deliver to the various shops on the high street in the morning.
“Don’t you go playing off your airs and graces with me, pet,” Mrs Fairway said with a snort, pausing when there was a great hissing and spitting as she basted the meat she was roasting.
Once the noise had abated, she looked up at Anne.
“Don’t you think I know he’s a handsome devil, and as charming too, when he puts his mind to it.
Reckon you’re the first pretty girl he’s made up to with his winning ways? ”
“I am not so green as that,” Anne said crossly, annoyed that Mrs Fairway should believe her so gullible. “You do remember how it was we landed here together?”
“I do, indeed, and I mean to see that you don’t get yourself into another fix what needs running away from.”
“It’s only dinner, Mrs Fairway, and no one but Mr King, you, and I need know a thing about it.”
“No more sense than a peagoose,” Mrs Fairway grumbled, shaking her head.
“I have no intention of being Mr King’s conquest!” Anne said hotly. “That’s precisely why I agreed to dine with him, to show him I am not so easily won over.”
“Oh, great work,” the lady replied with a crack of laughter.
Anne stiffened with indignation. “Well, why ought I not have dinner with him? He is handsome and charming as you said, and I find him entertaining. Why not let him flatter and coax me and let me feel like I am not a dried-up old spinster for a few hours?”
Mrs Fairway sighed and wiped her hands on her apron. “No reason at all when you put it like that, except that it’s dangerous. I don’t understand why you don’t just let Captain Dearborn court you. He’s a fine figure of a man and clearly head over ears for you.”
“He is not in love with me!” Anne said crossly.
“Captain Dearborn cannot love me, for he does not understand me, nor make any attempt to do so. He is enamoured of the idea of me, but his idea is all wrong. The man wants to rescue a maiden in distress and look after her. He’s a lovely man, and chivalrous too, but I do not need or want rescuing.
I should go mad having him fuss about me, always checking if I was warm enough or comfortable or if I ought to sit down and rest, and I should make him miserable because I would not let him care for and cosset me as he longs to do. ”
Mrs Fairway looked wistful. “Well, I wouldn’t mind a bit of fuss and cosseting.”
“Then you marry him!”
“I would, should he be so daft as to look my way!”
“Oh, Hilda,” Anne said with a sigh. “I don’t want a man to take over my life.
I’m happy, very happy. I have made a success of my hotel, a great success if next summer’s bookings are anything to go by, and I won’t have some man swanning in and taking it over.
This place is mine and I shall not give it up!
” Anne folded her arms, indignation stiffening her limbs at the very idea.
Her dearest Mrs Fairway smiled gently and patted her shoulder.
“I understand better than anyone,” she said softly. “But the nights are drawing in, and they’re long and cold without a fellow to warm you. Do you really want to die never having known what it is to love and be loved?”
Anne’s throat grew tight with some unnamed terror, a fear she had not voiced even to herself, yet ate away at her all the same. “No. No, I don’t, but… but why should I marry to achieve that? Everyone thinks I’m a widow and widowed ladies have rather more leeway if they’re discreet.”
“In a big town or city, maybe!” Mrs Fairway said, eyes wide with shock. “Not in a place like this where gossip flies from house to house quicker than a bleedin’ bluebottle, spreading dirt as it goes.”
Anne shrugged, avoiding Mrs Fairway’s scrutiny as the lady sat down heavily.
“Never say…not with… Jasper King?” She whispered his name to Anne, as if fearing he might appear in a puff of red smoke complete with horns and a tail if she said it loud enough.
“No,” Anne said with a sigh. “No, of course not. I am not really that reckless nor that stupid, but… but I admit it crossed my mind. He is very handsome, and very charming,” she admitted wryly.
“Lord preserve us,” Mr Fairway said. “Didn’t I have that talk with you about where babies come from?
And here you are all dreamy eyed over a fellow what will never settle and marry you, not when he’s more like to be swinging from a rope one fine day.
And him with his own bastard here causing—” Her mouth snapped shut suddenly, her colour heightening, but it was too late.
“What? What’s that you say?” Anne said, her voice little more than a whisper but sharp for all that.
Mrs Fairway pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I swore I’d not spread gossip, for I know what harm it can do.”
“Hilda!” Anne said reproachfully.
Mrs Fairway sighed and gestured for Anne to sit down and drew a chair up, pulling it close so they could speak quietly. “It was Bill Jenner running his mouth off, which is why I might have paid it no mind, except the story seems to be well known.”
“Well?” “Jasper King was born and bred in this town.”
Anne’s mouth opened in a little ‘o’ of surprise, for whilst she had only seen Mr King in the environs of her own hotel, she always pictured him in London, striding through the filthy streets of that dirty city whilst lesser mortals strove to clear his path and get out of his way.
Even as she thought the words, though, she knew that was not the whole truth.
For there was a wildness about him, a ravenous untamed quality that made her think of raging seas and far-off lands and of a man who would remake the world if it didn’t suit him, redesigning it until he was satisfied.
If such a man could ever be satisfied by life, which Anne somehow doubted.
“He was driven out of town, so Bill would have it, though if ever there was another man born a bigger liar, I never saw one,” Mrs Fairway said in disgust, her face screwed up with distaste.
“He is a wretched man, and I pity his poor wife more than I can say,” Anne replied darkly, wishing there was a cure for men like Bill Jenner.
“Well, to be fair, he’s not the only one who said it.
Him and King were friends in those days, and though King was not much more than a lad, he was already that popular with the girls.
Those that weren’t no better than they ought to be, leastways,” she added with a sniff.
“But there was a family here then, name of Tanner, and they had a daughter. Well, she found herself in the family way and named King the father. Seems he swore it wasn’t his till he was blue in the face, said she was lying because he would have none of her, havin’ more sense than some.
The townsfolk wouldn’t have it, though, and he hopped the twig before they could force him down the aisle with her. ”
Anne gazed at Mrs Fairway in dismay, for though she had known Mr King was a dangerous man, she had somehow believed he had his own code of honour. If he had run away and left a girl pregnant with his own child, it would illustrate a fellow of a very different stamp.
“Do you think it’s true?”
Mrs Fairway shrugged. “Men are capable of all sorts. Well, women too, come to that,” she added reasonably. “Who’s to say? But I do reckon you’d best keep your hand on yer ha’penny and watch yourself when he’s around.”
Anne coloured at the cant expression, but Mrs Fairway only shrugged.
“You asked, I answered. Can’t say fairer than that.”
“You mean to say his… this child, it’s here still?”
“Tommy Tanner,” Mrs Fairway said with a nod, a name that Anne instantly recognised as the town troublemaker.
She’d had a run in or two with the boy herself, once for trying to break into the icehouse and swipe a bowl of ice-cream, another for pulling rude faces at her diners by pressing his face against the glass and squashing her window boxes at the same time.
She’d thought him nothing more than a naughty boy looking for attention, but some folk in the town seemed to regard him as the spawn of Satan.
“But… But he looks nothing like Mr King!” Anne protested.
Mrs Fairway shrugged. “No rule says he’s got to be the spitting image of his da, is there? But I don’t disagree. No gypsy blood in Tommy that I can see.”
“Gypsy blood?”
“So they say.”
“They say a good deal too much round here,” Anne said, folding her arms and scowling. “And don’t I know it.”
“Aye, which is why you’d do well to stay far from the likes of Jasper King. You mark my words, young lady, he’ll bring you trouble or my name’s not Hilda Fairway.”
Anne got to her feet, having had a belly full of town gossip and feeling out of sorts for it. “Just make sure the dinner tonight does us both proud, Hilda. I’ll see what I can make of Jasper King myself, for I won’t see a fellow accused and condemned without the chance to make a case for himself.”
Mrs Fairway shook her head and returned to her stove, stirring a pan there with a resigned expression. “On your head be it.”
“Will that be all, sir?” Repton asked, holding out a pristine white cravat with as much care as if he were handing over a sleeping babe.
“It will,” King replied, placing the pristine length of fabric about his neck and deftly tying it in a simple but elegant knot.
“And what are you up to tonight, you old reprobate?” If it were possible, Repton became several degrees chillier and put up his chin.
“I shall dine in the kitchen. Mrs Fairway said I might do so if I were to give her a hand with the clearing up, seeing as her kitchen maid is being kept in the dark so as not to tattle the news around town.”