Chapter 9
· · ·
Garret supposed he should be pleased. Lady Brentwood, the dinner party’s hostess, had seated him beside one heiress and across from another. Since the moment they’d been seated, his mother had shot him encouraging smiles from down the long table. This was his opportunity.
If only the heiress on his right had not been Miss Penelope Grant.
As the first course was served, Garret watched with envy while Liam turned to Lady Lucy Holland and said something to make her smile.
Lady Lucy was the daughter of the wealthy Earl of Whitstable.
Her dowry was at least thirty thousand, and Liam had obviously decided to pause his usual brooding and make an effort to charm her.
Miss Grant’s family was even wealthier than Lady Lucy’s, but Garret had no chance of charming her. He simply hoped she didn’t cry.
“Miss Grant,” he said, turning to her with a smile. “What do you make of this weather? Unusually warm for this time of year, isn’t it?”
Miss Grant, gaze fixed on her plate, froze with one hand on her fork and the other on her knife. She seemed to tremble—or at least the expensive ivory silk gown she wore shook—and finally managed a very quiet sound. She did not lift her eyes or turn her head toward him.
“Perhaps you are used to it. You are from Wiltshire, yes?”
She made the smallest bob of her head, but she still didn’t move or look at him. Garret almost wondered if it would be kinder not to speak to her. He glanced at Liam again, who was listening attentively as Lady Lucy explained something with exaggerated gestures.
“Do you prefer London or the country?” Garret asked.
Miss Grant shrugged. She brought her glass, which shook violently in her hand, to her mouth and tried to sip her wine.
Without thinking, Garret reached over and steadied the glass, accidentally touching Miss Grant’s smallest finger in the process.
She gasped and drew back so quickly the wineglass almost flew from her hand.
It was only Garret’s quick reflexes that prevented the catastrophe.
He managed to grasp the glass securely and set it, with a clink, on the table.
The sound seemed to echo, and conversation paused as people glanced his way.
Garret smiled and lifted the glass as though saluting them.
Beside him, Miss Grant was as red as the wine in her glass.
Garret placed the wine in front of her and sipped his own.
He needed quite a large sip of wine to fortify him for the next several hours.
He would have given his left foot to leave the party right now, but his mother seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts and pinned him with a steely glare.
Somehow, she managed to both glare at him and smile at her dinner partner.
Garret took a breath and decided perhaps the best course of action was to relieve Miss Grant from needing to speak to him.
Instead of asking her questions, he would just make remarks she could either acknowledge or not.
Soon it would be time to turn to the lady on his left.
He need only ramble on for a little while.
“I spend a great deal of time in Ireland,” he said, lifting his own fork and not looking directly at Miss Grant.
“The weather there is sublime.” He went on, saying as much about the weather as one man was capable of.
But as he spoke, his thoughts began to drift.
Miss Archer hadn’t exactly been a model dinner companion last night, but he’d found conversation with her easy.
Exhilarating, even. He never knew what she’d say next.
Or do next.
Which reminded him of the kiss they’d shared. Best not to speak of that, so he said the next thing that came to his mind. “Do you know anything about chimney sweeps?”
Miss Grant must have been surprised at this turn from the safe topic of weather, because for the first time, she glanced over at him.
“I’ve recently learned that some of those children who clean our chimneys are not doing so voluntarily. They are sold to the sweeps for a paltry sum and are basically treated as slave labor.”
Miss Grant’s pretty brown eyes widened. She still hadn’t spoken, but she wasn’t shaking from fright any longer.
“Appalling, I know,” Garret said, encouraged by this turn of events. “It’s dangerous work for a grown man, much less a child.”
Miss Grant actually nodded at that, though her cheeks turned pink afterward.
“Once I attended a dinner party where one of the chimneys caught fire.” He gestured to the fire in Lady Brentwood’s massive fireplace at the other end of the dining room.
“None of us knew what to do, but a quarter hour later, a child who couldn’t have been older than seven arrived with a sweep and was sent up the flue.
The child was so black from soot, I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.
His or her face was black except for red-rimmed eyes.
I suppose the ashes and dust must irritate the eyes and nose horribly. ”
He sat back, no longer thinking of Miss Grant but remembering that child and wondering if Tamsin Archer’s siblings looked the same.
“The fire was eventually extinguished,” he said, almost to himself.
“But when the child descended the chimney, he or she clutched a hand close. I couldn’t help but see the red welt of the burn that seared the child’s flesh. It was awful.”
He heard a small noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob. Garret cut his gaze to Miss Grant and noted tears streamed down her face and she held a handkerchief at her nose.
Oh no.
“Miss Grant, are you unwell?”
With a cry, she rose from her chair and ran from the room.
Garret stood, as did all the gentlemen present, and caught his mother’s accusatory gaze.
“I have no idea what might be the matter,” he said, to his mother and anyone else who would listen.
Mrs. Grant rose and went after her daughter, and after a little while Garret and the other gentlemen took their seats.
Garret reached for his wine again and caught the eye of the lady who was seated on his left.
“Do you think she is ill?” he asked the lady, whose name he could not recall.
She gave him a peevish look. “Not ill but certainly upset. Perhaps, in the future, you might refrain from regaling young ladies about the horrors of child labor at the dinner table.”
Garret finished his wine and signaled for more. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
· · ·
Garret arrived at the pawnshop just after seven the next morning. The shop was dark, so he went around to the back and tapped on the door. Mrs. Archer opened it. “Oh, it’s you.” She frowned at him and began to close the door in his face.
“Mama!” Tamsin grabbed the door and opened it.
She frowned at Garret. “What are you doing up so early? I thought nobs slept until noon.” She looked extraordinarily pretty this morning.
Her dark hair was down and loose about her shoulders, and her eyes had lost that vacant look.
Was it his imagination, or did her face look a little fuller and her cheeks less hollow?
He held out a greasy packet of paper. “I thought you might like to break your fast.”
“Wot’s this now?” Big John opened the shop door, lifting his nose in the air. “I smell sausage.”
“Sausage rolls,” Garret said. “If you’ll let me in.”
“Let the gentleman in,” Big John said.
Tamsin moved aside so Garret could step into the back room, which was rather small with the four of them.
Garret looked about for a place to set the rolls, but the only table was covered in the detritus of some sort of machine.
Big John plucked the package out of his hands.
“I’ll take that. Mary, come into the shop. We can eat there.”
“What about Tamsin?” Mrs. Archer asked.
Garret pulled another wrapped package from his voluminous coat pocket. “I have more for her.”
Mrs. Archer made a sound that was somewhere between disapproval and acceptance then followed the pawnbroker through the shop door. “I think she’s starting to like me,” Garret said.
“I’m sure she likes you about as much as your mother would like me.” She took the package and set it next to a cup of tea on the table. “Tea?” she asked him.
“No, thank you.”
“Wise choice. These tea leaves are older than I am.” She sat at the table, setting her food in a clear spot amid all the metal pieces spread out.
Garret took the only other chair, enjoying the sight of her eating.
She didn’t pick at her food or try to be dainty about it. She ate with obvious enjoyment.
Just like she kissed.
No, he still would not allow himself to think about that or else he’d be plagued with those thoughts all day. “My mother would like you. She appreciates people with common sense, and you seem to possess quite a lot of that.”
Tamsin shook her head. “She appreciates wealthy people with common sense—of which I’m sure few exist. She would not want you slumming it at a pawnshop in Covent Garden or driving about Town with a woman dressed as a groom in search of a chimney sweep.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Perhaps it was a blessing his mother had no idea where he was or with whom.
He’d left home early this morning to avoid another lecture about his failure at the dinner party the night before.
He decided a change of subject was in order.
“What’s all this?” he asked, gesturing to the metal gears and gewgaws on the table.
“The innards of this automaton.” She gestured to the lovely orange and yellow caterpillar. “I’m trying to fix it.”
“How will you know what’s wrong with it?”
“Trial and error, I suppose. I have an idea.”
“Really?” He leaned closer, intrigued, as she lifted a small metal piece.
“This is one of the levers. When it’s raised or lowered, the caterpillar’s feet move. See this crack?”