A Reckless Promise (13 page)

Clarice all but flew across the room to fling herself into his arms. “Darby! Oh, sweet, wonderful Darby! I
told
Rigby you'd think of something because Sadie swore you're brilliant.”

“You swore that?” he asked Sadie, who rolled her eyes rather comically as he attempted to disengage the clinging Clarice and steer her back into Rigby's arms.

“I had to do something to stop her tears. You...you were handy.”

“Really? My name popped straight into your mind...combined with the word
brilliant
. Didn't I just say the same about you?”

Sadie plucked at the folds of her gown. “It's a common enough description. I was desperate. Are you desperate, as well, or do you really have an idea, a plan?”

“An idea, Sadie Grace. It takes a bit longer to formulate a plan. Now come along, ladies, let's find your maid, escort you to the duke's coach and get you on your way to Grosvenor Square. Rigby and I have some things to do, but I promise to send 'round a note this evening, to apprise you of our progress.”

“Since Clarice refuses to attend any parties this evening, that seems reasonable enough. The duke has promised me a chess lesson, and I am more than satisfied with that.”

“But—but, oh, Rigby, will you be safe?”

“Safe as houses, as it's said, Clarice,” Darby assured her, silencing Rigby's quick question as to what was happening with a shake of his head, as his idea was still too new and fragile to share just yet, in case a certain long-legged someone said something else
brilliant
and shot it down.

“You're feeling rather full of yourself, my lord,” Sadie commented as he escorted her down the steps to the duke's town coach.

“You're displeased?”

“Actually, I rather like you this way. I've held the reins for a very long time in one way or another, and I look forward to riding in comfort from time to time while someone else manages the horses.”

“But only from time to time?” he asked as he bowed over her hand before assisting her up the step and into the coach.

“Indeed. And by the way, your establishment is most impressive, most especially that balcony above us. I look forward to one day sitting there to watch the world wander by.”

Darby laughed and closed the coach door behind her, stepping back to stand with Rigby as the coachman drove off. How had she known he'd wanted to hear her opinion of his residence? How did she know anything about him, because it seemed she knew more than he believed he'd shared? But she'd let him handle the reins, would she? Was it a far step from that to entrusting him with her secrets? With more than her secrets?

“You know something, Rigby?” he said, putting his arm around his friend's shoulders and turning him back toward the door. “If it weren't for your dilemma, I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed myself quite so much.”

CHAPTER TEN

“I
SAW
HIM
kiss you, you know,” Clarice said as she sat cross-legged on Sadie's bed, and then reached for another lemon square.

They both had pretended to turn in for the night, but once they were snug in night rails and dressing gowns, Clarice had tiptoed down the hallway, to meet in Sadie's chamber without any fear of being interrupted. There had been enough of that from Vivien and Coop's mother, Minerva, all evening long, especially after Darby's note had arrived with the evening tea tray.

“It wasn't really a kiss, Clarice, not in the way you think. He was excited about his idea. Feeling exuberant, as it were.”

Clarice snorted. “You really are a looby, aren't you, for how smart you are?”

Sadie squirmed a bit on the soft mattress, folding her long legs beside her, and began absently running a hand up and down her calf. “Don't see things that aren't there, Clarice, please.”

“Yes, yes, I saw straight through that nonsense about the two of you suddenly tripping over some mutual affection you'd managed to discover in two very brief meetings. Darby only said that to mollify Vivien and the others. The marriage is for the sake of sweet Marley, who will now feel safe and loved and unafraid of the future, knowing her guardian and her aunt will be walking hand in hand with her through the sweet meadows of her life.”

Sadie felt a blush stealing into her cheeks. “That was embarrassing enough when Vivien said it. You don't have to repeat it word for word.”

“I do if I want to see you hide your eyes from me and pretend you see marriage to Darby as a sacrifice you're both making for Marley. Every time you say it, you sound less sure, do you know that? Besides, I think he likes you.”

Sadie's head snapped up. “Why? What do you know? Did Rigby tell you something? Has Darby said anything? What did he say?”

“Aha, you fell straight into my trap,” Clarice said, pointing a finger at her. “I knew it. You do care, don't you? That's another bonnet my Jerry owes me. I'll soon have more than I'd need if I had a dozen heads. I think I'll start in on reticules next.”

“You're much too clever for me, you know,” Sadie said, sliding off the bed and heading for the desk holding the note from Darby. Her betrothed, but far from her beloved. Why did everyone in love want everyone else to share their same condition? Didn't most couples marry for much more pragmatic reasons? Wouldn't she be smart to remember that?

Still, she'd never really had a friend back in the village, neither male nor female. She'd had acquaintances, yes, good people all, but she'd never felt the least desire to confide in any of them, share secrets, giggle in corners, exchange knowing looks that communicated without words. To do so now, even with Clarice, seemed foreign to her, and vaguely uncomfortable.

She'd had her parents, but that was long ago, and her father had believed in strict discipline, her mother in teaching her daughter how to sew a fine seam and keep an orderly house. Sadie's education, although much more extensive than that of most young girls, hadn't extended to anything either of her parents thought objectionable for young ladies.

Which was why the day Sadie had discovered one of John's anatomy books had come as such a revelation to her. Working with him in his infirmary had taken care of most everything else, for good or ill. But she'd never seen her parents share a kiss, never heard either utter an endearment, never been the object of a warm hug or a declaration of love.

John had been no different, and had chosen a bride cut from his same straightforward, no-nonsense cloth.

Sadie knew that was why, from the moment she'd entered Marley's young life, she'd made certain that things would be different for her niece. Marley didn't steal a glance up from her lessons to watch from the window as the village children played on the green; she joined them in their games. She was allowed to sit on a bench in the blacksmith's shop to watch the smithy at work, say “thank you very much” and accept a treat from the town baker, hold hands with the shoemaker's apprentice as he taught her how to skate on the ice-covered pond.

And that was never going to change! Not because of any promise to John, but because of one she'd made to herself. She'd had some worries the first few days, but when Darby had arrived with the puppy, she had finally mentally unpacked, believing she could do no better for her niece.

All the rest of it? Well, that was just Clarice's wishful thinking.

Wasn't it?

“Sadie? Yoohoo, Sadie—have you frozen in place? Did I upset you? I'm so sorry. I suppose I simply want everyone to be happy.” Clarice paused a moment, then added, “And I like being right. That's wicked, isn't it?”

“No,” Sadie said kindly, climbing back onto the bed, this time with Darby's note in hand. “I want everyone to be happy, as well. For the moment, that means you and Rigby most especially. Shall we read this again?”

Clarice shrugged. “I don't see why. Darby will come for you in his curricle tomorrow at eleven, so dress warmly, while Martha and Belinda Henderson will be driven in his coach, with you all meeting at the cottage for luncheon. He doesn't mention then tapping the ladies over the head with a shovel and burying them in the gardens, but clearly he has something planned. I'd come along, to act as chaperone, except that I'm not a maid anymore. Sometimes that's a shame, because people speak in front of maids just as if we haven't got ears under our caps. The things I heard about people that way when I'd accompany Thea's mother to engagements would shock you to your toes.”

Sadie didn't believe she was interested in gossip, especially about people she didn't know, but if it would turn Clarice's attention away from her romantic imaginations about Darby, she'd ask for details her new friend clearly wanted to share.

How nice it was to have a friend, to be a friend.

Clarice scooted backward to reseat herself propped against the pillows. “Now, let me think. All right. There was the time Winnie Fowler had me help boost her out the window at a party, off for some slap and tickle with her lover. I didn't think that was very nice to do to her husband, so I decided not to wait around to help her climb back in, even though she'd given me a copper when she told me to stay right here by the window, Clary Goodfellow, or you'll be sorry. I wasn't sorry, especially when it started to rain.”

“Clarice, you're incorrigible.”

The girl had slipped into a pleasant drawl, probably the same one she was working so hard to conquer, but Sadie thought it charming.

“I know. I also know that Jacob Smith pawned his gold watch and some of his wife's jewelry to pay a gambling debt, then had his manservant locked up for stealing when everything was found under the poor fellow's mattress. Fakes by then, glass for real stones, of course, save for the watch, because he must have found it too dear to copy, and with his wife never the wiser. Struts about with all that glass hanging around her neck, still thinking they're diamonds.”

“I feel sorry for the manservant.”

“Don't waste a moment worrying about Skippy Baxter. He'd been stealing Jacob Smith blind for years. He pretty much had to, seeing as how he had one wife in the village and another in some holler over in the next county.”

Sadie sighed. “I've missed so much of life, not being privy to gossip. Please, is there more?”

“You're like the duchess. She loves my stories. Here's another one. I know that Daisy Fisher did the beast with two backs with her sister Sally's betrothed, except he didn't know it because Daisy and Sally are twins and look as alike as two peas in a pod. Oh, and I can tell you that nose-in-the-air Elizabeth Rumple stuffs her bodices with lambswool wadding, and won't her husband be surprised on their wedding night!”

“Clarice, stop,” Sadie said, laughing, but then an idea struck her. “Do you know anything about the Hendersons? I mean, other than that they're quite wealthy and own a horse farm?”

“Oh, everybody knows about them, no secrets there,” Clarice said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The Hendersons were nothing but dirt farmers up until Sissy Henderson, not a day past sixteen, waved her bottom at that old fool Silas Winkle, telling him the bun in her belly was his—and him, eighty if he was a day, believing her.”

“They married, I imagine. I take it Silas Winkle was a wealthy man?”

“More money than God, that's what they said. And deader than dead not a year later in a tumble down the stairs. Before the cat could lick its ear Sissy was bracketed to her second cousin Fred, and all the Hendersons were deep in clover.”

Sadie shivered. “Murdered?”

It was Clarice's turn to laugh. “Not exactly. The way I heard it, the old bugger was chasing Sissy down the stairs with his breeches at his knees, her in her petticoats, giggling and daring him to catch her. But I only heard that because nobody notices the maid, who saw it all. Everyone said he'd simply lost his balance and fell. It was Fred's sister-in-law Martha—
our
Martha—who swore she saw it all, and sure enough, next thing anyone knew, Martha's Henry was the proud owner of a horse farm, and Martha's been strutting around like the cock of the walk ever since.”

“Some would call it murder. Clearly Sissy lured him to the stairs, and his death.”

“How do you figure that?”

Because I've seen eighty-year-old men stripped down to the buff in John's infirmary, that's why. Seduction wasn't the game Sissy had been playing!

“I don't know for certain, silly. I was only guessing. Is there anything else you know about the Hendersons?”

Clarice thought for a moment, popped the rest of the lemon square into her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss at the taste. “Nothing nobody else knows...or guesses at, the way you just did. Sissy and Fred sure did spread Silas's money around to all the Hendersons, and there's a passel of them. Now there's Judge Henderson and Pastor Henderson and Banker Henderson and Livery Stable Henderson. One of them—Jackson, I think it is—took himself off to England with his share, and now he sends rugs over to his kin all the time. No more dirt floors for the almighty Hendersons! The rest they sell in Henderson's Emporium and Fine Imported Carpets, la-di-da. And it all started with Sissy's wagging tail. You ought to see it now, Sadie, broader than a barn door.”

Sadie ignored that last statement, preferring to return to the subject of Jackson Henderson. “Darby told me that Martha told him—oh, now I sound like a gossip! Clarice, I think you're telling me that Mrs. Henderson's cousin Jackson is in
trade
.”

Clarice shrugged. “You're smiling. Is that good?”

“Not if said cousin is sponsoring Belinda, hoping to snag her a title, I'm sure. I may not know very much about Society, but there's something about any
lingering
smell of the shop
that apparently is considered even worse than murder—when thinking about English history and all the murders that have been winked at over the centuries. I have to tell Darby. This might be useful information for him. Clarice? Did I say something wrong?”

Her friend shook her head and sniffed, a pair of enormous tears beginning their journey down those wonderfully rounded cheeks. “I miss them so much.”

“The Hendersons? No, of course not.” Sadie pushed herself back against a mound of pillows and slid her arm around Clarice's shoulders. “You mean your family, don't you?”

Clarice nodded, pulling a handkerchief from her dressing gown pocket and noisily blowing her nose. “Cousin June should have birthed her baby by now, and Mama isn't getting any younger. And I wanted to tell Uncle Soggy that he's a privy councilor, because he'd be so proud he'd pop his buttons.”

“Ah, Clarice. You can do all of that.”

“No, I can't. I...I used to think, oh, what fun, showing up one fine day on my Jerry's arm, the Lady Rigby, and now you all curtsy to me, you who used to look down your noses at all us Goodfellows. But someone will just tell Jerry everything, like I just told you about the Hendersons and all, and he'll never forgive me.”

“For goodness' sake, Clarice, what did you do? Nothing can be that bad.”

“That's because it wasn't. Not for Clary Goodfellow. It was all in fun, and what else was there to do in Fairfax—that's how I saw the thing. And I never took any money, I swear it. Not even from Georgie Henderson.”

“Who?”

“Belinda's b-brother. Sadie, don't you see? Him and a lot more.”

“How...how many more? Wait, don't answer that. I shouldn't have asked.”

“Too many more, that's how many. Jerry knows something, but he doesn't ask, and won't let me tell him. I don't have to, do I? Everyone else will tell him. There goes Clary Goodfellow, always
good
for a tumble. Oh, God! Thea said it would be all right, and she and Gabe would be with us when we visit, and I'd be all dressed in fine clothes and keeping my chin high and everyone would be wanting to talk to me and say they know me. But it won't be all right, it will never be all right. Not if Martha Henderson tells everyone here about me, and not if Jerry and I go to Virginia and everyone tells him. I can't be anywhere—not with Jerry, not if he isn't to be fighting duels or coming to hate me for who I was. Oh, Sadie...”

Clarice cried for a long time, Sadie holding her close until she gently disengaged herself and called for a tub to be brought to Clarice's chamber. It had already gone past midnight and she apologized profusely to the maids and footmen who dragged out the tub and filled it nearly to the brim with kitchen-fire heated water, and then perched on the edge of a chair while Clarice soaked...just to be certain the girl didn't decide sinking beneath the surface was the only real answer left to her.