Chapter Nine The Thursday Room #3
Young lady taken through side. Wine spill. White muslin. Black wax. Special cloth burned?
Her heart began to beat harder.
“White muslin,” she whispered.
“Evangeline.”
Mrs Carter nodded. “I remember the gossip. Everyone did.”
Marianne copied the entry carefully. “Who told your sister?”
“Club under-footman who fancied her. Name was Will. Dead now, poor lad. Fever.”
“What did he say?”
“Only that a young lady came through the side door after taking ill at Lady Honoria’s. Not brought by women. Men brought her. Said she was overcome. Said there was a physician or lawyer — Will wasn’t sure. He said she kept saying she wanted her brother.”
Marianne’s pen stopped.
The room swam slightly with steam.
She could almost see it: Evangeline in white muslin, pale and confused, brought not to a solicitor’s office first, not home to Halgrave, not to her brother, but through a side entrance into a gentlemen’s club.
A private room. Black wax. A table set for eight.
Men deciding that distress could be rearranged into consent.
“Miss Vale?” Mrs Carter asked.
Marianne drew breath. “I am well.”
“You look as if you have seen a ghost.”
“No,” Marianne said softly. “Only the route one took.”
She had copied the relevant pages when a sound came from the yard: men’s voices, one low, one laughing. Mrs Carter stiffened.
“Not our men,” she said.
Clara appeared at the doorway, calm but alert. “Lord Fenwick is in the lane.”
Marianne looked up sharply. “Fenwick?”
“He appears drunk, but I do not believe he is.”
Mrs Carter gathered the linens quickly. “Back way.”
“No,” Marianne said. “If I run, he will know I carry something.”
Clara’s gaze held hers. “He may already know.”
“Then we give him something dull to find.”
Marianne tucked the copied notes into the lining of Mrs Finch’s food parcel, beneath the paper wrapping around the cheese. The original laundry ledger she left on the table beneath a heap of ordinary washing. Mrs Carter seized a basket and thrust it into Marianne’s arms.
“If you are seen, you are carrying mending.”
“I do not mend well.”
“Men do not know that.”
Marianne moved toward the side passage with the basket balanced against her hip. Clara went ahead. They had nearly reached the yard when Lord Fenwick stepped into view.
He wore a light greatcoat too fine for the surroundings and a smile too loose to be trustworthy. A second man stood behind him near the wall: not a gentleman, not a servant, but something in between, heavy-shouldered and watchful. Fenwick’s eyes lit when he saw Marianne.
“Miss Vale,” he said. “How very unexpected.”
Marianne lowered her gaze. “My lord.”
“Do you often visit laundry yards?”
“When linen requires it.”
“Yours?”
“Mrs Alderley’s.”
“Ah, yes. Your venerable protectress. Does she send all her young relations through back lanes near gentlemen’s clubs?”
Clara moved one step closer, but Fenwick’s companion shifted too.
The passage felt suddenly narrow.
Marianne adjusted the basket. “Only those capable of finding them again.”
Fenwick smiled. “You are wasted on Halgrave.”
“I was unaware he employed me.”
“Oh, employed.” Fenwick savoured the word. “Is that the arrangement? How reassuring. Society does so prefer arrangements it can name.”
The threat was not subtle. It did not need to be.
Marianne was in a side passage near a male club, dressed plainly, carrying a basket, accompanied by another woman of uncertain status.
It would take very little imagination — and Fenwick possessed exactly the vulgar amount required — to turn the scene into scandal.
“You mistake errands for intrigue,” she said.
“Do I? Then let me escort you back to the main street. For your safety.”
“No, thank you.”
“Miss Vale.” His tone sharpened beneath the smile. “A lady who refuses assistance in such a place risks appearing as though she had reason to avoid witnesses.”
Clara said, “And a gentleman who blocks a lady’s path in such a place risks proving he is not one.”
Fenwick’s gaze flicked over her. “Governess, aren’t you? Lantern House has a remarkable talent for producing instructive females.”
The heavy man behind him moved.
Marianne’s fingers tightened on the basket.
Then a door opened at the far end of the lane.
Sebastian stepped out.
He did not hurry. He did not call her name. He did not make the scene larger than it already was. He emerged from the side entrance of the Corinthian Rooms with his hat in one hand and his face arranged into an expression of chilly surprise that would have frozen a more intelligent man at once.
“Fenwick,” he said.
Fenwick turned too quickly.
The heavy man stepped back.
Sebastian’s gaze moved to Marianne, then to Clara, then to the basket. He understood in an instant that public rescue would be a blade with two edges.
His bow was slight. “Miss Vale. Miss Winslow. I understood Mrs Alderley had sent you to consult Mrs Carter regarding a parcel.”
Marianne inclined her head, relief moving through her before she could prevent it. “Yes, Your Grace. We were just returning.”
“Then allow me to see you to the corner. My carriage is nearby, and Mrs Alderley would never forgive me if I permitted her parcel to be delayed.”
Fenwick looked between them, his smile faltering. “You are acquainted with laundry women now, Halgrave?”
Sebastian’s expression did not change. “I am acquainted with efficiency wherever I find it. You might try the experience.”
Clara’s mouth twitched.
Fenwick flushed. “I meant no offence.”
“No,” Sebastian said. “You rarely mean anything before saying it.”
The insult was delivered with such polished calm that Fenwick had no graceful method of resenting it. He bowed, stiffly, and stepped aside.
Sebastian did not touch Marianne. He simply walked beside her at a respectable distance until they reached the corner where Tom and the carriage waited. Only once they were inside and Clara had been settled opposite did he look at Marianne fully.
For the first time since she had known him, she was relieved by his arrival in a way that had nothing to do with principle and everything to do with the remembered shape of danger narrowing around her.
She did not say so.
He did not ask.