Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress Page 7

  Joss shook his head. “It is still being unloaded, as you just saw. We can walk. It’ll take only a few minutes.”

  “But there might be rain!”

  “Let us bring your umbrella.”

  Sutcliffe chewed at his lower lip. “Do you have brandy? I need something to settle my stomach.”

  To another man, Joss might say, Surely it’s a bit early. You haven’t even dined yet. To Sutcliffe, he only said, “Surely there’s a decanter somewhere in the house.”

  “Quite right. Quite right.” Off darted the baron through a side doorway; he returned even before the door had managed to close behind him. “Right, indeed. That was some sort of drawing room. Last tenants must have left this. What luck!” He brandished a glass bottle in which an inch of sediment and syrupy liquid sloshed.

  “Excellent.” Joss feigned a smile. “Off we go, then.”

  After he located an umbrella, the two men began their short walk. In the few minutes it took to pass from the crisp facade of Queen Square to the older houses of Trim Street, Sutcliffe kept up a constant stream of talk about the way Lady Sutcliffe had plagued him about wanting to accompany him, but that would have meant bringing their three children, and they would take up the best bits of the carriage seat and never cease talking, and then they would want to take the waters, which he hadn’t ruled out himself, not that he needed it because he was in fine form except for these cursed letters, which surely he had done nothing to deserve.

  So quick and determined was his flow of talk that at one point Joss had to tug him back from the path of a Bath chair. Twice did a wild gesture smack a passerby; Joss hastily apologized as his employer strode on, oblivious.

  When they reached the Trim Street house, Sutcliffe asked to see the landlady. A pleasant-natured, stoutish woman met them in the cozy, cluttered entryway. Somehow Joss was shunted backward, laden with the foul-looking decanter and Sutcliffe’s umbrella, as his cousin stepped forward with a bright grin to request an introduction.

  Mrs. Jeffries, a widow of late middle age, professed herself honored to meet “a real lord.” Her curtsy to Sutcliffe was all the baron could desire; his kiss on her hand, all she could wish.

  “My good woman,” said the baron with another flash of straight teeth, “I wonder if you might arrange for a teapot of hot water to be sent to the drawing room? Mr. Everett and I will be talking in there.”

  “Not boiling one another,” Joss added. Not that either of them were listening to him.

  “Mr. Everett’s lodging doesn’t cover use of the drawing room, my lord.” The woman’s cheeks went red, and she looked uncertainly from Sutcliffe to Joss. “But if it’s not in use right now, I’m sure I wouldn’t mind just this once.”

  Sutcliffe held up a hand. “Not necessary, Mrs. Jeffries. It was my error entirely. Mr. Everett and I shall speak in his room, if we might just have that hot water. Extremely hot, I mean. Just off the boil.”

  “Of course.” Looking relieved, she curtsied again. “And I’ll have some tea things put together too, my lord.”

  Joss’s stomach expressed interest. He had not, after all, partaken of any biscuits or tea with Augusta before escaping to the chilly outdoors.

  “No need, no need. Just the water—and a cup, of course. Wouldn’t want you to go to any extra trouble.” With a smile that left the landlady dithering, Sutcliffe caught Joss’s arm. “Show me up, Everett.”

  “I wouldn’t mind tea,” Joss murmured.

  “Eh? What’s that?” Sutcliffe looked confused, as though the unexpected words were a fly buzzing around his head. His free hand wandered to his coat pocket.

  “Never mind. Follow me.” Up the stairs they went, three flights in all. Each one narrower, until they reached the top of the house.

  “Good God,” Sutcliffe wheezed. “We must have climbed all the way to heaven.”

  “Let us see if you still say that when you see the room.” Joss unlocked the chamber and showed his cousin inside, setting the umbrella and decanter on the floor by the door.

  He could scarcely imagine what the room looked like through Sutcliffe’s eyes. Had the baron ever entered servants’ quarters? Had it occurred to him that a floor could be other than carpeted or marble, or that some ceilings sloped under the line of a roof instead of soaring high?

  Yet the plain wood was clean, the plaster of the unpapered walls neatly whitewashed. Mrs. Jeffries kept no slatternly servants here. True, there was a small leak in the roof above the room, but Joss had put a basin on the floor until such time as the leak was repaired. The patchwork quilt spread across the bed had been pieced together from velvet and satin scraps. Jewel-bright and supple despite its age, it had probably been created from snipped-up gowns by some long-ago lady’s maid or daughter of a wealthy house. A little taste of luxury in this small room.

  “How interesting this room is!” Sutcliffe seated himself on the narrow bed, bouncing to test the tension of the ropes. “Why, it’s like living in medieval times, isn’t it? Only you’ve no fire. There ought to be a great fire with a sheep on a spit. And a servant bringing tankards of mead.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Joss said drily, seating himself in the wooden chair at the writing desk. He moved aside a stack of correspondence. “Now. Show me the letter.”

  Sutcliffe pulled forth a single sheet and stretched it out to Joss. Unfolding it, Joss read the spiky, ink-clotted capitals aloud. “‘One thousand is not enough. Make it five. Delivered by the end of the month or your wife knows all.’”

  He caught Sutcliffe’s eye. “It’s succinct, if nothing else.”

  “Lady Sutcliffe can’t know, Everett. She’d leave me and take all her money. The marriage settlements—ah, her father knew what he was doing. Her fortune is all held in trust for the children, not for me.”

  As Joss held the crackling paper in his fingertips, several replies came to mind.

  The first, that if Sutcliffe cared so much about having money, he could spend it less freely and hold fast to what he had.

  The second, that Joss’s grandmother or mother ought to have been so lucky as Lady Sutcliffe, to have money tied to them irrevocably by legal strings even after marriage.

  The third was yet more pointless, but Joss said it all the same. “I think you ought to tell your wife the truth, Sutcliffe. The law does not permit her to leave you or take her children from you. Not even if you recognize the maid’s child.”

  For that was the crux of the matter: after decades of flirting with servants and doing God only knew what else with them, Sutcliffe had impregnated a housemaid. The woman had been sent away, and with Joss’s influence, given a stipend to ensure her comfort and health. Sutcliffe was indignant that the woman had been so foolish as to fall pregnant.

  Joss was not of the opinion that blame lay with the younger, weaker, poorer person.

  Sutcliffe shook his head. “Lady Sutcliffe can tie up her money, though. She and her father have already put me on a spending allowance. Why—”

  Tap tap. The door swung open to reveal a young maid holding a tray that Joss recognized as his landlady’s finest. A pewter affair with blocky handles, it bore a white porcelain teapot with rows of tiny hand-painted flowers. Also the finest in the house. There were two cups on the tray, bless Mrs. Jeffries, but Joss knew Sutcliffe intended the pot of hot water for his exclusive use.

  “Thank you, my dear,” said the baron, setting the tray atop Joss’s desk. As Joss tugged his papers from beneath the shining surface, Sutcliffe spoke again to the maid. “What a pretty little thing you are. Do you like magic?”

  “Thank you, sir. I mean, my lord. Yes, my lord.” A pale slip in her late teens, she nodded and curtsied again. Her mobcap slipped down her forehead. As she pushed it back into place, Sutcliffe tapped her nose, then ran a forefinger around her ear.

  “Aha!” He pulled back his hand, open-palmed, to reveal a shi
lling. “For you, my dear. It was inside your head all along.”

  The maid covered her mouth, giggling.

  “Add another coin to pay for the hot water,” Joss said drily.

  As Sutcliffe took out another coin, he asked, “Do you have a special fellow, my dear girl?”

  Before the maid could answer, Joss rose to his feet. “That will do. Thank you, miss.”

  The maid looked from Joss to Sutcliffe, then bobbed another curtsy and departed. Joss turned on his cousin. “Sutcliffe. Good Lord. What were we just talking about?”

  “My allowance?” Sutcliffe poured out some of the steaming water into a cup, then pulled forth the leather pouch from his breast pocket. Untying its cord, he shook out a quantity of small green blades into the cup. Somalata, as always. After a pause, the baron popped a few dry blades into his mouth before stowing the pouch again.

  “We were talking,” Joss continued after this ritual was complete, “of your financial difficulties at present, the greatest of which comes from your unwillingness to leave the female servants alone. That being the case, I would appreciate it if you would not harass the maids in my lodging house.”

  “It was only a magic trick,” Sutcliffe said carelessly, sipping at his brew. Joss knew from experience that further conversation would be pointless until the cup was drained.

  In the meantime, Joss took another look at the new blackmail letter. Unfolding it before the window’s light, he saw no watermark. No identifying information on the paper itself, and the letter had been stuck closed with a plain wafer rather than a seal.

  However, the postal stamp was interesting. Rather than being sent from London as the first two letters had been… “This letter was posted in Bath,” Joss observed.

  “Exactly. That’s why I’ve come.” Sutcliffe swallowed the last of his beloved swill, chewing at the sodden blades. He then retrieved the decanter from his Queen Square house and splashed its contents into the cup, sediment and all. Tossing this back in one quick gulp, a tremor shook his thin frame. “Not bad, not bad.”

  “Sutcliffe, do you still regard these letters as credible? Five thousand pounds is an ungodly sum of money. Perhaps a creditor is taunting you.” It was possible, for Sutcliffe owed money to half of London. Though as the baron was on good terms with nearly everyone who knew him, his debts hadn’t caused him difficulty in the past.

  “I must take them seriously,” the baron said. “The first letter knew the direction of that silly maid who got into trouble. Jenny.”

  “Jessie,” Joss corrected.

  “And, you’ll recall, that letter was addressed to Lady Sutcliffe rather than to me. If I didn’t open all her ladyship’s mail, I’d have been in the soup for sure.”

  Yes, that had been the first letter: simple information, designed to poison the baroness’s mind against her husband. Libel, Sutcliffe fumed to Joss. But of course it wasn’t. His adultery with the maid—whether he had forced her or not, Joss had no idea—was not libel at all, but a fact. As was the child now growing in Jessie’s belly.

  The second letter, sent to Sutcliffe himself, had demanded money for silence. Sutcliffe’s reaction had been to send Joss to Bath, to seek money in secret. The baron had also seized all of his wife’s correspondence, in case the blackmailer should go back on his word and contact the baroness again.

  Joss refolded the letter. “There’s no way you can sell enough of your land to raise this money. Almost everything you possess is entailed or part of Lady Sutcliffe’s dowry. I did try”—rather clumsily, he did not add—“to find someone interested in purchasing your available coal lands, but you must know that selling land in haste does not fetch the highest price.”

  Sutcliffe sighed, shaking the empty decanter. “You’re right.” He sank back onto the narrow bed, the ropes creaking as his weight shifted. “Are there any more gems we can sell?”

  Joss could not abide the plural pronoun. “You sold all of the Sutcliffe jewels as soon as you reached majority. Everything you have is paste, except for what Lady Sutcliffe brought to the marriage.”

  “I could replace those with paste too.” The baron brightened.

  “No. You could not. Her ladyship would certainly notice the difference in their appearance.” Joss rose, pacing the breadth of the room and back. His boots thumped dully on the bare planks, echoing the disappointed sound of his heart. “Sutcliffe, you promised me ten percent of anything I sold for you. A hundred pounds for selling your thousand pounds’ worth of land.”

  At Joss’s stern request, the baron wrote, signed, and sealed this promise before dispatching Joss to Bath. A paltry sum for his freedom, but it would do. He wasn’t afraid to work for his bread; he just wanted it to be honest work. Sane work. Work that did not include an employer’s constant ingestion of alarming substances, or that employer’s even more alarming requests.

  “What,” Joss added, “do you intend to do now?”

  Joss did not really expect a sensible reply. This expectation was fulfilled.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Sutcliffe’s booted feet drummed against the wooden baseboard of the bed. “That’s why I came to you. I need your advice, Everett.”

  It had been years since Joss felt gratified by such a statement. Probably not since the year after he entered Sutcliffe’s employment at the age of twenty-one—a full decade ago—and realized that all advice, like all good intentions, would soon be abandoned.

  He could but try, though. “As you say, there is no putting one’s trust in a blackmailer. I believe we must find and stop this person.”

  Joss thought of Augusta’s list of names, of the final name in particular. Lord Chatfield. Knows things. A convenient talent, considering the blackmailer seemed now to be in Bath.

  “You must take care of it,” Sutcliffe said. “I can’t be involved. Had to put it about that I wanted to visit Bath for my health. I moaned so much about my foot, Lady Sutcliffe really thought I had a touch of the gout. Excellent performance. It was excellent. I say, do they have a theater in Bath? There must be one.”

  “You are not going on the stage pretending to have gout.” Joss pressed at his temples.

  The baron laughed, a shrill arpeggio like the honk of a clarinet. “What an idea, Everett. You really are too much! No, no, I only want to get out and experience a bit of Bath society.”

  “Fine. Only see that you leave the maids alone.” Joss toyed with the idea of asking Sutcliffe whether he was acquainted with Lord Chatfield. But as the reclining Sutcliffe’s jaw worked at a new spear of somalata, Joss thought better of the matter.

  He wondered dimly if a man who knew things was aware of Mrs. Flowers’s true identity. Not that it mattered at the moment. At any moment.

  “I shall see what I can do about the matter,” Joss decided. “I’ll send word to your lodging when I have more information.”

  “Good, good. Knew you would handle it.” Sutcliffe stretched, cracking his fists against the sloped ceiling, and looked up with some surprise. “I’ll be off, then. Have my carriage called, will you?”

  “You didn’t bring it. We walked from Queen Square.”

  “Well, have it sent for, then.” Sutcliffe laughed. “Everett, honestly. With only a few days’ absence, did you forget how gentlemen travel?”

  No, he hadn’t forgotten that. But he had forgotten the strain of maintaining constant courtesy. Of soothing Sutcliffe and diverting the man’s whims.

  Family was family, and that loyalty had carried Joss long beyond the point he would have stayed in service to a stranger. But this sojourn in Bath was a matter of business, not family. Not with Joss remaining in his own meager lodging instead of joining the baron’s household, treated with less respect than a servant not of the master’s blood.

  Business it had probably always been. Sutcliffe had always regarded Joss as capable and convenient, but he had never been encoura
ged to regard Joss as family. Not with Joss’s mixed birth—his wastrel of a father and his mother who had become little more than a servant in the house she had once graced as a daughter.

  “I place one condition on my assistance,” Joss said, opening the chamber’s door for his cousin. “At the end of this month, whether or not you or your blackmailer has prevailed, I shall expect the greater of one hundred pounds or ten percent of land sale proceeds. I will draw up the paper tonight and bring it for your signature the next time I call.”

  “There’s that maid again!” Sutcliffe preceded Joss down the stairs. “Look, she’s tidying in that bedchamber. Would she like another shilling, d’you think?”

  “I will take your response as agreement,” Joss said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Eh? Dash it, I’m going to give her another shilling. I’ll be right back.”

  “No.” Before Sutcliffe could pursue the blond maid again, Joss caught his elbow and dragged him down the remaining stairs, telling him all the while of the novelty of a ride in a Bath chair.

  Within a few minutes, the baron was off, being trundled away to Queen Square by a grinning youth who had just had a shilling pulled from his ear.

  Shaking his head, Joss remounted the stairs to his attic room. A tiny pleasure awaited: a pot of still-hot water and a clean china cup. He could use some of his own tea leaves to brew a bracing cup or two.

  Nothing exotic. Nothing on which he relied, panicked, like his cousin depended on that small leather pouch. Just normal tea, like normal Englishmen drank.

  It sounded fiendishly delicious.

  But business first. Quickly—before the water could cool much more—he penned a few notes to the remaining names on Augusta’s list requesting an appointment.

  Seven

  In the days following the walk in the garden, little occurred to mar Augusta’s new routine in Bath. To the Pump Room each morning with Emily, where as they made their slow promenade, their new acquaintances smiled at ever-cheerful Mrs. Flowers as London never had at Augusta Meredith. Each smile felt like a victory; each tiny flirtation blossomed within her breast.