Fairchild (31 page)

Skipping over the society announcements a name stopped him like a slap. Shaking out the page, he peered more closely, stunned they had acted so fast.
 

Lord Fairchild announces the engagement of his ward, Sophia Prescott to Captain Alistair Beaumaris, of the 2
nd
Life Guards.
 

He tossed the paper aside, spilling his coffee. “Martin!”

His valet appeared in the doorway like a jack-in-the-box. “Yes, sir?”

“I’ve made a mess. Clear this away, won’t you? I should get on my way.” He wanted to tear the paper to shreds, to knock out Beaumaris’s teeth, to march over to Fairchild house—and what? Heap curses on the Rushfords? Box her ears? Don’t be such a fool, he told himself.
 

Flying out the door, his head pounding like a drum, Tom grimaced against the glare and pulled down the brim of his hat. Not a hackney, he decided. It would do him good to walk, even if it did take an age. There was solace in action. He did not want to examine what lay underneath his seething fury.
 

It took him a good hour, but Tom arrived at his offices at last, walking through the rows of clerks without a sideways glance. “Mr. Bagshot—” began his secretary, but he kept walking, removing his hat, stripping off his left glove.

“In a moment, Smith. Give me a moment.”
 

Smith dropped his gaze to the sheaf of papers clutched in his hands and backed away. Tom gave a self-disgusted huff. He wasn’t fit to speak to others, even after an hour of charging through crowds. Smith didn’t deserve his temper.
 

Letting himself into his private office, he winced and raised a hand to his eyes. Someone had opened the blinds, letting the summer sun pour through the windows. Sharp words gathered in his mouth; already it was warm in the room. By evening the heat would be intolerable. Besides, the light made his head want to split open. He blinked, still shielding his eyes, and realized he was not alone. A woman was sitting in the chair by the window.
 

It was Sophy.

She was dressed oddly, in a plain brown walking dress, nothing like the fragile confections she wore walking to the library or the dashing habits she wore riding in the park. Her bonnet rested in her lap, made of plain straw, with ribbon to match the dress. It didn’t matter that she was dressed like a farmer’s daughter; her hair was like fire in the sunlight.
 

His feet stopped working. Acting on reflex, he grabbed the door frame before his momentum caused him to stumble. “What are you doing here?”
 

She flinched under his verbal attack but squared her shoulders with her next breath. Tempted to turn on his heel and slam the door, Tom reminded himself that this was his office, his building, his turf. He let the door swing closed, stepping into the room and folding his arms, repeating his question by raising his brows.

“Did you never get my letter?” she asked.

He let out an angry snort. “I did. But not until after I had the pleasure of dining with your brother and learning the truth from him. Your fiancé was also present. Surely they told you?” He watched her turn crimson, glad to see her ashamed.

“Alistair is not my fiancé,” she said.

“That’s not what I read in the morning paper.” What was printed there was practically carved in stone. Freeing himself from her stare, he stalked to his chair and sat down at the desk, letting his hands busy themselves with the papers lying on the blotter. “Was there anything else?”
 

“I’d almost given you up,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for hours, before your secretary came even.”

“Smith did not offer you any refreshment?” His words were polite, but his expression unconcerned as he pretended to read a letter. His eyes darted across the page without seeing the words.
 

“I was not hungry,” she said, becoming angry. “I came to apologize. Which is what I’m trying to do. I wanted to tell you, often. But I never could. I liked you too much and couldn’t bear for you to hate me.”

He ignored the trembling in her voice and picked up a knife to sharpen his pen. “Lies make me angry. But it is a relief, knowing the girl I loved was mere fiction. With you it always was madness. Happily, truth has cured my infatuation.”

He said nothing more, sensing but not seeing her deflate. She waited. He set down the knife, swept aside the shavings and drew out a fresh sheet of paper. At last she rose, tying on her bonnet and saying with awful politeness, “I see it’s no use. Please convey my apologies to your mother. Good-bye, Mr. Bagshot.”

“Good-bye, Miss—” he stopped, realizing he couldn’t remember her real name.
 

“Prescott,” she filled in, pausing at the door. She had a bandbox in her hand that he hadn’t noticed before. “I am Miss Prescott. Please, tell me why you despise me. Is it because I am a liar, or because I am a bastard?”
 

Tom looked up and set down his pen. She was still beautiful, straight and strong as Diana, outlined against the dark wood of his door. He hated her for being beautiful, for making it almost impossible to keep his hands steady and his voice cool. “Both, I imagine,” he said, seized with the desire to wound her. “I’m afraid I’ve never succeeded in divorcing myself from the bourgeois morals of my birth. Good-day.”
 

Her flinch was slight, but unmistakeable. White her face went, leached of all color. She looked sick, her expression stabbing Tom in the gut. She drew a quick breath. “I thought my birth wouldn’t matter to you. That to you, I was myself and nothing more. I see now it will never happen. Thank you for reminding me. I will not need to pretend anymore.”
 

She stopped on the threshold and Tom saw that the door had fallen partly open. A crowd of clerks blocked her path, witnesses to this last, dreadful exchange. He could not move, watching helplessly as her simple skirts swayed above her retreating boot heels. At once his employees resumed speaking, their words burying the sound of her footsteps. Still, he felt each one reverberate through him until she must have passed into the street.
 

Only then did he jump to his feet, rushing outside, dodging through the crowd, straining for a glimpse of her. Twice he thought he sighted her, but was deceived by a similar looking bonnet. She must have started running once she left the building. She was gone.
 

Drumming an angry rhythm against his right thigh with a closed fist, he returned inside. Smith was saying something, apologizing for not telling him that the lady—the woman—was waiting. Shutting his ears, Tom waved his words aside, dropping bonelessly into his chair, staring like a lost man out the window, aware of each painful breath, each eye rasping blink.
 

He set his head in his hands, scrubbing his fingers through his hair, as if it could rub away the taint of his words and the thing he had done. He had wanted to hurt her. Well, he certainly had.
 

Smith’s rising voice penetrated his thoughts at last. He looked up to see him bursting through the door, breathless and red-faced, with Jasper Rushford at his heels.
 

“I told him you were busy, Mr. Bagshot! He would not wait! He shoved past me and—”
 

Jasper scowled. “This fool would not let me by. Nearly lost my hat trying to go round him. Whether you want to or not, I’ll see you, Bagshot. Been looking for you all day. They’ve turned me away from your house. Twice!”
 

“What do you want?” Tom groaned. “You can go, Smith.” Smith didn’t hesitate, vanishing through the door like a wisp.
 

“I’m looking for Sophy, dammit!” Jasper said, slamming his fist onto the desk. “Where is she?”

“She left. I tried to follow her, but I lost her in the street.”

“You dog! You lured her here after all! If you weren’t such a commoner I’d call you out! I’ll have to beat you purple instead!” Throwing down his cane, Jasper yanked at his gloves.
 

Tom scowled. “I didn’t know she was here! I got here not half an hour ago! She was waiting here alone all day. Ask Smith, if you don’t believe me.”
 

“A likely story! Why weren’t you here? How would she even know this place?”

“Take a damper,” Tom snapped. “Or I’ll put your lights out. I wasn’t here because I was in bed, dead drunk. And I have no notion how she found this building. I never told her of it!”

Jasper stopped, pinching his lips together. His eyes darted left, right, then back to Tom. “My apologies. I believe it may have been I. Who told her, I mean. Dammit, why didn’t you keep her here? Now how am I going to find her?”

“Go home, I expect.”

“Confound it!” Jasper crashed both fists onto the desk, knocking over the inkstand. “She’s not going back there. That’s the problem. First time I came round your house was to ask you to keep mum. Second time my father sent me to find her. She’s run away! We thought for certain she was running away with you!”

Was that why she had come? Remembering the bandbox in her hand, he passed a clammy hand over his forehead. “She had a box with her.”
 

“Yes, I know,” Jasper said. “And you didn’t ask her to elope with you?’

“Of course not!” Tom snapped.

Jasper’s face turned a violent purple. “Well, why the hell not? She’s bloody in love with you!”
 

“Hah! She lied to me! Spun me a banbury tale— ”

“Flummery,” Jasper snorted. “Lord, you’re tight-laced for a cit. Who do you think you are? A patroness of Almack’s? It was a stupid prank, nothing more! She’s just a scrap of a girl. How was she to see her way out? Here she is, not even eighteen, running away from her family and a good marriage to make her own way in the world and you don’t even propose to her? You’re telling me you’ve been exchanging letters with her, meeting her at masquerade balls, everything too smoky by half, and you don’t even love her? At least if you’d offered her a carte blanche I could kill you! And it’d save me from having to hunt through every quarter of London. Dashed if I know where to find her.
 

“Anything happens to her, I will kill you. I ought to break your bone box right now. Sophy’s sterling. Pluck to the backbone. You, sir, do not deserve her, and you may take that with my compliments!”

Cranking back a fist, Jasper swung, but Tom was quick on his feet. Ducking sideways, the punch grazed him instead of catching him full in the face. Shuffling forward, fists ready, Tom let fly a few jabs, but was blocked by an uppercut of Jasper’s.
 

“Stop this right now!”
 

Jasper dropped his arms, spinning round like a top. Tempted to throw Jasper a leveler now that his guard was down, Tom froze instead. A lady swept into the room, with all the grace of a queen. “Where is Sophy?” she demanded.
 

“Not here, mama,” Jasper said. “Was, but isn’t anymore.”
 

“She did not say where she was going?”
 

“I’m afraid not,” Tom said. “I take it you are Lady Fairchild?” She ignored the last part, refusing to allow an introduction. She looked like a harpy, this woman; an elegant, beautiful, ice-cold harpy, with incongruously swollen eyes. “Come Jasper. We shall continue looking.” Without giving him another glance, she glided away.
 

“She was upset when she left here,” Tom said. “It was my fault. I was not kind. Let me help you look.”
 

Poor girls walked the city alone every day. Only the rich and privileged could afford to hedge their women with maids and grooms and chaperones. Common sense told him Sophy was not a helpless flower, yet thinking of her crushed and alone turned his blood cold. Suppose she got lost? Or was robbed? Or ran foul of London’s teeming underclass?
 

“I think you’ve done enough,” Jasper said, departing with a glare. “No matter what happens, her life is ruined, and you led her into this. Think about that, when you call her a liar.”
 

The room felt very quiet when they had gone. Tom stared at his chair, but kicked it instead of sitting down. Where would she be? He sifted through memories, hoping for some clue. Her family would have found her if she had gone to her sister’s. He had seen her at the park and at the library, but she had no reason to go there. She wouldn’t go places anyone might recognize her, would she? Not if she were truly determined to cut herself free. She only knew her little neighborhood in Suffolk, and her family’s circle in London.
 

And Herefordshire. Hadn’t she said she lived there, once? With the woman who was her mother. Of course.
 

Tom rushed for the door, forgetting his hat. He must check the departing stagecoaches.

Bertha, her mother’s onetime maid, had died three years ago, carried off by a putrid throat. It had been many years since Sophy had heard from the Wilkeses. Still, Bottom End felt like the right place to go. It was a beginning, one that was less frightening than London. There would be people who remembered her there, who might put her in the way of finding work. She could be a teacher, like her mother, or a housemaid, or a milliner’s assistant, or — or anything, if need be. No one in Bottom End would have the audacity to write to Lord Fairchild, not if she told them lies. She had been sent to school. Only seen her father twice. No one would probe further than that.
 

It seemed wrong, putting him in such a light, but it couldn’t be helped. And she was a rather good liar. She’d fooled the Bagshots, until it all unravelled. No, she could not face that again. She would tell the truth, that she was estranged from her family. She would not garner any pity, but she would manage.
 

Lifting her eyes from her gloves, she watched the chickens scratching in the inn yard. The coach would arrive soon. From her handkerchief, she unwrapped the other half of the meat pie she had bought. It was greasy, filled with stringy meat and unidentifiable vegetables, but she had been hungry, and the fragrance of the hot pies had been irresistible. Conscious of her slim purse, she only let herself eat half, intending to save the rest for her supper. But she was hungry now, and tired of waiting.