Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage (12 page)

Stephen narrowed his eyes at him. “I’ll let you in, Redmond,” he said, “but watch your step.”

“Right,” the man answered with a world-weary sigh. “I’ve heard that before.”

Stephen reluctantly stepped aside, and Mr. Redmond walked up to the counter, where Jilly stood with a nervous smile pasted on her face.

Did she sense as well as Stephen did that this sour-faced man was the bearer of some sort of bad news?

“Are you the owner of Hodgepodge?” Mr. Redmond asked her, his voice reedy.

Otis gave a small cry, but then he pursed his mouth and proceeded to fumble with his shoe. He almost had it off, and—

“Otis,”
Jilly whispered.

He looked at her, his eyes filled with fear and something else—the determination to slay a giant.

She shook her head.

He slowed, then stopped removing his shoe.

Stephen considered the scene before him. Why on earth would Otis remove his shoe unless he were about to use it to defend Jilly? Stephen didn’t like the man, either, but he had no idea who he was. Was Otis simply following Stephen’s lead? Or did he have reason to expect trouble at Hodgepodge?

This possibility only put Stephen more on guard.

Jilly looked back at Mr. Redmond. “Yes,” she said, as if she were about to go to the guillotine. “I am Miss Jones.”

Otis bit his thumb.

“Very well.” Mr. Redmond reached into his coat pocket. “I’m here to give you this.” He handed her a piece of paper. “It’s a legal document regarding your property.”

Without looking at the paper, Miss Jones held it to her mouth and gave a little giggle. Then Otis followed suit. They looked at each other as if their lives had been spared.

Otis lowered his brows and Miss Jones drew herself up.

“I see,” she said with the gravitas one would expect from a business owner. But her mouth still showed a bit of laughter at the corners, and her eyes, palpable relief.

What disaster had she averted?

Stephen had a great craving to know. If he had a special affinity for unmanageable ladies, he had even more of one for unmanageable,
mysterious
ladies.

“Leases on this street haven’t been renewed in years due to an oversight,” Mr. Redmond said. “Either pay the new fees, or move.”

The lightness in Miss Jones’s expression vanished. “But I own this house.”

“Yes, she does.” Otis came to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “So go away, little man.” He raised his chin. “Please see him out, Captain Arrow.”

Stephen would have liked to pick up Mr. Redmond by the back of his jacket and sling him into his carriage, but he knew it would probably only bring more trouble to Hodgepodge.

“You need to explain yourself clearly,” Stephen said to him. “And waste no time. Our patience is short, and justifiably so. This sounds like another government ploy to raise taxes.”

“It’s no ploy.” The little man’s voice sounded smug as he looked around at them all. “Didn’t you know the actual dirt beneath the homes and businesses of Mayfair is owned by someone else?”

“That’s terrible!” Jilly cried.

“Are you sure about that?” Stephen demanded to know.

“Yes, I’m certain,” Mr. Redmond replied.

“You don’t have to be so demmed happy about it.” Otis crossed his arms over his chest and went into a full pout.

Mr. Redmond lifted one brow and looked at Stephen. “If you live on this street, the same particulars of this document will apply to you. I’m starting on this corner and working my way around to distribute copies to everyone.”

“The hell you say,” said Stephen.

“Bluster all you want,” Mr. Redmond said in a bored voice and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “What’s your name?”

“Arrow,” replied Stephen in a testy voice.

Mr. Redmond sifted through his stack and removed a single sheet. “Read it and weep.”

Stephen yanked it from his hand and stuffed the paper in his shirt pocket.

“You’d best examine the document well.” Mr. Redmond was cool. “Anyone who’s late may have the land leased out from under them.”

“You can’t mean that,” Stephen said.

“I do.” The man didn’t blink.

“What would happen to the person who owns the house?” Jilly asked.

“You’d be told to move.” Mr. Redmond sighed as if he were terribly tired of having to go over this devastating news with yet another dimwitted Londoner.

“But you can’t very well move a house,” Otis insisted.

The man shrugged. “The house could be brought down and a new edifice put up. The destruction of the home would be your loss, of course. However, this is Mayfair. Who can’t afford to pay their lease in the wealthiest part of London? I say if you can’t afford to live here, it’s your own fault.”

Miss Jones sank onto a stool. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this lease situation when I bought Hodgepodge?”

“They probably didn’t want you to know,” Mr. Redmond said. “Either that, or they’d forgotten themselves. As I said, this lease renewal is long overdue. Thankfully, someone brought it to the attention of the proper authorities.”

“Someone?”

“I’ve no idea who,” he said. “All I know is that it’s true. Dreare Street is in arrears.”

“Everyone is?” Captain Arrow asked.

Mr. Redmond nodded. “Everyone. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must finish alerting the neighborhood.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” Otis said.

Mr. Redmond brushed by him, and Otis shrank back. When the man left, he pulled out a handkerchief. “Excuse me.” He buried his face in the floral fabric. “I’ve got to recuperate.”

He gave a loud sob, threw open the door to the back corridor, and ran to his room.

Stephen saw Jilly’s face was pale when she stared at the paper in her hand and then slowly folded it into a tiny square.

“Will you be all right?” he asked her.

“I think so,” she returned stoutly, but he saw her fingers tremble. “What will you do?”

“I’ll have to pay it. I can’t afford to have someone else come in and take the land from me. Then I’d not be able to sell the house. They could pull it down, do what they want with it. I’d be left with nothing. Nothing but my pension.”

Miss Jones took a breath. The air was heavy between them.

“You’re afraid of something,” he said. “Something that happened before you got this news.”

Her full, rose-pink lips thinned. “Why would you say such a thing?”

He shrugged. “Because you let your guard down at the theatrics. The difference between that woman and the bookshop Miss Jones is remarkable. And when Mr. Redmond walked in, Otis was about to clock him with his shoe—and he didn’t even know who the man was.”

“That’s silly,” she said with a sniff, and played at stacking books on a table. “Otis is eccentric.”

Stephen watched her attempt to appear relaxed. But she couldn’t do it. Her knuckles were white.

“And as for me at the theatrics,” she went on, “I told you, I realize there’s a time and a place for fun, and that night was one of those times.”

He reached out, pried her hands off the books, and grasped her fingers. “I want to know everything about you.” Her hands were so small and delicate in his. “Tell me.”

She pulled her hands back, and her dark brows lowered dangerously. “That wouldn’t be appropriate, Captain.” Her voice was cool—although he sensed fear in it, too. “I’ll see you tomorrow when you’re able to work on the ledge.”

“Very well,” he said.

She was a terrible liar. She
was
in trouble. She’d been afraid of Mr. Redmond for her own reasons, and he was determined to find out why.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“It’s time to get serious about selling books,” Jilly said to Otis over supper that night. “We need money, and quickly.”

He paused, his fork in the air. “I hate to suggest this, but perhaps you shouldn’t have
me
selling the books.”

Good. He’d finally realized what she’d known all along. “Yes, well, we both know a female shopkeeper is anathema to some people,” she said. “Then again, so is a man who wears the kinds of shoes you do.”

She grinned and looked down at his feet. Today he had on turquoise slippers, each adorned with a single, short peacock feather on top. They were absolutely shameless.

“The point is,” Otis said, looking up from admiring his footwear, “I’m too emotionally attached to the books. I thought I adored only shoes, but the books—they’re like my children, too, even the ones I haven’t read. Their covers are grand, their pages smell sweet—in a musty, bookish way—and their titles are enchanting.
Candide
.
Don Kicks Oat
.”

“Don Kicks Oat?”

“You know, the one about the Spaniard and the windmills.”

“Ah,
Don Quixote
!”

“The very same,” Otis replied, unruffled, and drank a swig of beer.

“I can appreciate that sentiment,” Jilly said, “but we’ve got to do better.”

Otis put his tankard down and shook out his sleeve so that the lace showed to advantage. “You’ll sell all the books now,” he insisted. “I’ll stick with cooking, baking our daily scones, cleaning both the bookstore and our private living quarters, running errands, and keeping an eye on the latest fashions on Brook Street.”

“Fair enough.” Jilly smiled. “But even if I take over the selling of the books, we haven’t the customers to purchase them.”

“We need more people strolling by,” Otis agreed. “I do my best to attract notice with my waistcoats and shoes, but it’s not been enough. Especially if it’s foggy, as it is almost all the time. Who can see me through the shop window?” He cast a glance at her gown. “We’re going to have to work on your appearance, my dear.”

“Me? Why?”

Otis pursed his lips. “Now that you’re incognito, you’ve lost that
je-ne-sais-quoi
you frankly never had but were on the cusp of having—if you’d only let me spend your clothing allowance.”

“I put it away to buy Hodgepodge.”

Otis sniffed.

She gave a little laugh. “You must agree purchasing Hodgepodge was more important than my looking lovely for Hector.”

Otis shrugged. “Put that way, I must agree.”

“Besides,” she said, “you yourself said the fog gets in the way of people admiring your waistcoats and shoes. We have to have a plan that works not around my fashion sense but the fog.”

“And the street’s reputation for having bad luck,” Otis added with a shiver.

“And our lack of time. I’d have to sell half my inventory, at least, by the time Mr. Redmond comes round again, to make the kind of money I need to pay off the lease, and I just won’t have the hours in the day to do so.”

Jilly bit her lip. Three large obstacles to success: bad weather, superstition, and a shortage of time. What could one do about any of them?

“We can’t accomplish this enormous task by ourselves,” Otis said in a soft, hesitant voice. “We need people to help us. But we’re all alone in this world, aren’t we, Miss Jilly?”

“We’ve got each other,” she said firmly, and grasped his hand.

He nodded and gave her a misty smile. “I’m here to protect you. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she said, although she was simply indulging her dearest friend. There was no way on earth Otis could protect her from Hector or anyone else. Throwing a shoe at Hector’s head—or the head of one of his minions, as Otis had at first supposed Mr. Redmond to be—wouldn’t stop her ogre of a husband from dragging her back to their village.

“We’ll come up with a plan to save Hodgepodge.” She kissed Otis on the cheek. “I’m off to bed now. I want to read some of Alicia Fotherington’s journal.”

In bed, she opened the diary and began to read about the young lady of good family who’d married a prosperous man named Lyle Fotherington and moved to Dreare Street two hundred years earlier.

It’s a happy place, this street,
Alicia had written,
and prosperous. Fat-cheeked children, smiling mothers, fine gentlemen, and pleasant shopkeepers abound. Lyle’s servants welcomed me with a bouquet of flowers picked from the back garden. The house is brand-new. Lyle had it built for us. It’s small but elegant, standing at the end of the street as if a sentinel over the rest of the houses. I believe I shall have great good luck in my new life as the wife of such a kind man.

Jilly’s heart warmed toward the woman. She remembered when she, too, hoped for the best from her marriage.

She felt guilty continuing to read when her candles were in short supply and she could ill afford more any time soon. But the words of the long-gone mistress of 34 Dreare Street fascinated her.

The bustling street fair is the highlight of my week
, Alicia painstakingly put down in her tight scrawl.
Every Wednesday I go down one side of the street and up the other with my cook and lady’s maid, bargaining with the vendors and exchanging greetings with our neighbors. We always come back to the house with the merriest grins on our faces. I purchased a fine bolt of rich damask which will become my gown for the Christmas ball and supper. And tonight Cook roasted a plump rabbit she bought at the fair. Lyle was well pleased, except for my cheeks, of course. They were pink from lingering too long in the sun.