Chapter 2
The Mayfair Whisper
It is with great delight that this publication reports the latest marvel courtesy of the Dowager Viscountess of W.
One might think that youth is the time for dancing, and courtship.
But Dowager proved them all wrong. Spotted dancing with a gentleman, perhaps half her age.
Her youth might be behind her, but she certainly seems to want to surround herself with it.
This publication looks forward, as always, to whatever comes next.
The dogs had claimed the good settee again.
Temperance noticed this upon entering the drawing room and did not bother to address it. It was a typical occurrence in their household.
Biscuit… the largest of the three, a great tawny hound with a permanently mournful expression that bore no relation whatsoever to his actual temperament…
was stretched across the full length of the cushions with his chin resting on the armrest and his eyes half-closed in the practiced manner of a creature who knew perfectly well he was not supposed to be there.
Beside him, tucked into the corner with her nose buried under his ear, was Midge, small and wiry.
And at the foot of the settee, taking up considerably less space, sat Peabody, short-legged, long-eared.
The scandal sheet lay open on the side table where Albina had left it, folded to the relevant column.
Of course, Temperance had read it twice already.
“One would perhaps read this as a compliment,” Temperance said, sighing. “It’s a testament to your young spirit.”
“Progress,” her mother’s voice drifted back from somewhere down the hall. “I shall write them a note of thanks.”
Trust her mother to turn the worst of situations into something to laugh at.
“You will do no such thing,” Temperance warned.
“Oh, but we must always keep them on their toes,” Albina smirked. “Besides, you know the ton is. Their memory is that of a fish, and they will have forgotten this all by next week when they have the next scandal to salivate over.”
“You’re always optimistic,” Temperance replied.
“One has to be,” Albina replied, shrugging her shoulders. “Otherwise, life will simply beat you down and make you wallow in misery. Why on earth shall I waste my life like that?”
Temperance settled into the armchair across from the occupied settee, tucking her feet beneath and surveyed the room with a quiet sense of satisfaction. It was, in short, a room that was actually lived in.
“Where is Soot?” Albina appeared in the doorway holding two cups of tea, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked comfortable, which was relief to see. “I haven’t seen her since supper.”
Temperance looked up from the scandal sheet.
“She was in the kitchen earlier, trying to convince Mrs. Peel to give her the fish.”
“Did she succeed?”
“What do you think?”
“That cat has more charm than the entire House of Lords combined.”
“Considerably more,” Temperance agreed, as she wrapped both hands around the cup and looked back at the paper.
There was a small, familiar warmth in her chest that she rarely examined too closely…
the warmth of this, of evenings exactly like this one, of the unremarkable and extraordinary fact of being somewhere she was wanted, doing nothing in particular, with someone she loved.
She had not taken it for granted once in three years and suspected that she never would.
After all, she knew what the absence of it felt like all too well.
Temperance and her mother shared one thing in common. Both of them did not like to dwell in the past for too long. But the nunnery that Temperance had spent nearly every waking moment of her life until three years ago had left its mark on her.
Too many of her afternoons had been spent doing something or the other that the Sisters’ at the nunnery had asked her to. Asked being a polite term for being ordered.
It was a different life, and one that she might not have ever escaped from had it not been forcibly shut down. It was only afterwards that she got a chance to reunite with her parents, a father who had never wanted her and a mother who had assumed her to be dead.
Biscuit shifted on the settee and placed one large paw over Midge’s back in a gesture of unconscious ownership but Midge did not stir.
“You think they will feature me in the next edition as well?” Albina said in a cheeky tone.
“They should give you a portion of their profits, if they do,” Temperance rolled her eyes. “It’s no secret that the ton seems to love reading about your little adventures.”
“Can you blame them?” Albina chuckled. “Most of them, their lives are dull as they can be.”
There was nothing to say to that, really. In a way, her mother had a point. But in their society, notoriety like this was not something to be celebrated.
If you were a woman especially. Then, having an interesting life was one of the worst sins you could commit.
“Soot?” Temperance stood up, wanting to move on from the topic.
The cat had a habit of appearing in unexpected places but the back door, Temperance now noticed, was standing open a crack.
Not unusual, in a house where they had long since surrendered to three dogs communicating their desires by the simple method of standing in front of whichever door they wanted until someone gave in. Soot had slipped out in their wake before.
She found her shawl, pulled it around her shoulders, and went out into the garden.
The night was cool and very still and he garden at Wilmington Manor was not, it had to be said, in the condition it had been in when her father was alive but Temperance preferred it this way.
The lavender had spread across the path and there was a climbing thing along the back wall that no one had been able to identify for two seasons running but that produced very fine purple flowers in August and had therefore been granted indefinite residency.
“Soot,” Temperance called.
Nothing.
She moved further in, past the lavender and roses, toward the older part of the garden where the apple trees grew and the wall separating the property from the lane was thick with ivy. Soot liked it back here.
“Soot.”
“If you have caught something and are attempting to bring it inside again, I would strongly encourage you to reconsider.”
There was a rustling from the direction of the apple trees and Temperance stopped.
The rustling continued and then, from beneath the sprawling canopy of the largest tree, a shape detached itself from the shadows and resolved into a boy.
He was perhaps nine or ten, she judged, though the light was not generous enough to be certain. What she could see clearly enough was the state of him.
Whatever he had been wearing at the start of the evening had presumably been respectable but it was not respectable now.
There was mud on his jacket, mud on his shirt, mud across one cheek in a wide brown streak, and what appeared to be a small leafy twig lodged above his left ear that he seemed entirely unaware of.
His hair was disordered in every possible direction.
And cradled in his arms was Soot.
The boy looked up and saw her and went very still.
“That,” Temperance said, when she had recovered herself, “is my cat.”
The boy looked down at Soot and then looked back up at Temperance.
“I found her,” he said.
“I am sure you did,” Temperance studied him more carefully.
A street boy, he was not. But he was equally not any boy she recognized, and she knew most of the children in the surrounding streets well enough by sight.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
Something flickered in his expression, a quick flash of something that was almost indignation, immediately suppressed.
“No,” he said. “I am not lost.”
“You are in my garden at half past nine in the evening covered in mud.”
“I got dirty following the cat,” he said,. “She went under the hedge and I was trying to catch her.”
Temperance looked at Soot, who blinked her yellow eyes and purred.
“She does that,” Temperance said. “Where did you come from?”
The boy hesitated.
“Over there,” he said, with a vague gesture toward the house.
Temperance turned and looked at the house, which was house she had lived in for three years — and then turned back.
“Over there,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“You came from my house?”
“It is not…” He stopped himself. “I came from that direction,” he amended carefully.
“I see. And what is your name?”
“Joseph,” he said after a small pause.
“Joseph,” she repeated. “And do you have a family name, Joseph?”
Another pause, slightly longer this time.
“Crauford,” he said, and then appeared to immediately consider whether this had been wise.
The name meant nothing to her. She filed it away and held out her hands.
“Well, Joseph Crauford. It is late, and you are covered in my garden, and I would like my cat back, please.”
Joseph looked down at Soot and some kind of communication appeared to pass between them, the nature of which Temperance could not determine, and then Joseph looked back up at her.
“She is very soft,” he said. “I was not going to keep her.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Temperance kept her hands out. “Come. It is cold and late and your mother will be wondering where you are.”
Something moved across his face and he looked down at Soot once more, and then, without further argument, he stepped forward and allowed Temperance to take the cat from his arms.
Soot settled against her shoulder and immediately closed her eyes. Temperance looked at Joseph, who was standing in the middle of the garden in his ruined clothes with the twig still above his ear, and felt an unexpected wave of something she could not immediately name.
“Come on then,” she said, more gently. “I’ll take you back.”
They walked back through the garden together in silence. Joseph fell into step beside her without being asked. He was not, she thought, a shy child but he was a watchful one. She recognized the quality as she had spent twenty-two years cultivating it herself.