Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress (7 page)

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 encouraged 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.

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.

After a glass of the detestable mineral water, then came another outing if Emily felt up to it: perhaps to a bun shop, a coffeehouse, or the winding delights of elegant Sydney Gardens. Here they met the women of Bath, a less credulous bunch than the men, but quite willing to be plied with costly dainties and polite conversation.

After these interludes came church. St. Mary's Chapel, a small classical building of golden Bath stone, occupied one corner of Queen Square, and Emily had rented a pew therein at an exorbitant rate. “All the better to encourage regular attendance,” she guessed, and indeed, she went to services each day they were performed. Augusta usually accompanied her, letting the familiar rites and ancient words of comfort wash around her. She did not like the raw reminder of the inscrutable hand of the divine, of love enduring beyond death; still, she went to hold Emily's hand. The countess always wore a veiled hat so no one would notice the tears that sometimes tracked down her cheeks.

Augusta noticed nonetheless, though she pretended not to.

Before dinner there was time for a rest; after dinner, another. Then came the lengthy preparations for the evening's outing: an assembly, the theater, a musical entertainment. Mrs. Flowers always wore pastels and was bright and blithe. She danced, she laughed, she flirted—but not
too
much. No one seemed quite right as a potential lover; for no one could she imagine dispensing with her candied, mannered shell and succumbing to raw passion.

For several days she did not see Joss Everett. Why should she, though? He was in Bath for business, and she had given him the means of conducting it.

Perhaps she would have been less helpful had she known her aid would take him from her presence.

Five days passed like this: days of quiet ease broken by sudden tides of loneliness that dragged at Augusta at unexpected times. She had come to think of these fits of melancholy as an object: a boulder balanced at the top of a steep hill. If she let it tumble, it would roll over and crush her. After she lost her parents and Colin Hawford within the span of a week, her shoulders had been bowed and the boulder had fallen. Wrenching it back into place had taken agonizing months, and its equilibrium had felt precarious ever since. She knew now how easily knocked away were the chocks of love, of everyday life, of expectations.

And so when the boulder tipped, she smiled more brightly, added more flowers to her hair, laughed at every little joke. Day by day, the number of callers for Mrs. Flowers increased. Everyone liked to be with her, sunny and cheerful as she was.

Well. Not everyone, but enough people. At least…it ought to feel like enough.

On the sixth morning, Augusta flipped idly through
The
Times
in the drawing room, looking for the new advertisements for Meredith Beauty's translucent soap. The soap was a marvel, hard and pure as a topaz. The advertisements should be much larger; she would write a fawning letter of persuasion to the trustees later.

The butler interrupted her perusal by entering with a letter delivered by “a grimy boy dragging about a Bath chair.”

Augusta's stomach gave a curious flutter. Could this be Joss's erstwhile messenger? “How grimy was the boy?”

“Extremely grimy.” The butler's nose wrinkled as he handed Augusta the salver bearing her note, then departed.

She folded the newspaper and left it on the drawing room's window seat, then pounced upon her letter. Indeed it was from Joss; already she knew his writing, strong and deeply slanted.

I flipped a penny to decide whom to approach next, and Whittington won. If you would like to take part in the negotiations, meet us in Sydney Gardens at midday. Be Mrs. Flowers at her Mrs. Flowers-est. I should like to see what she is capable of.

She toyed with the idea of declining the summons; it would be unwise to allow Whittington to see her. But the frisson that shimmered through her body was more excitement than nervousness. Joss wanted to see what she was capable of.

Or he wanted to see her?

The thought seemed to lighten the air in the swaddled, textured drawing room.

Mrs. Flowers was meant as an escape, was she not? So, this would be an escape.

***

Augusta thought of Sydney Gardens as the still grander stepsister of the elegant arrangement at the center of Queen Square. Tacked onto the eastern side of Bath, one entered not through a mere gate, but through an imposing hotel of stone. After paying admission to the gardens, one was granted access to acres of elaborate glee: smooth paths for walking, a labyrinth for losing oneself, a green for springing one's horses, a canal to cross over or boat along.

As soon as Augusta had deposited her fee with a servant and stepped onto the winter-dry grass, Joss was at her side. Dressed plainly as usual, he would have blended into the shadow of the hotel had he not been so cursedly handsome.

“You are early, Mrs. Flowers. The clock reads only half past eleven.”

“Yet you were waiting for me.”

“A man can but hope, and hope that hope is rewarded.” He looked her up and down, and a smile lit his features. “My heaven, Mrs. Flowers, you have outdone yourself. ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?'”

“Naught but the blinding print of my gown.” She did a little twirl, sharing his smile. She had dressed according to her name, just as Joss had requested. Beneath her frilled parasol, far too frail for the March wind, her bonnet was a frenzy of silk blossoms and curling feathers. The accompanying gown had been purchased ready-made from an unassuming Bath dressmaker; it looked as though a garden had sneezed on it, all covered in blooms of riotous color and form. To complete the effect, Augusta had bought a handful of early-blooming phlox in a vivid, showy pink, and pinned it to her spencer.

When she looked in the glass before leaving Emily's house, she had laughed.

“You asked for Mrs. Flowers. Sir, she is at your service. Though might I ask why she is needed?”

“Indeed you may. I shall even answer you.” He guided her to a scrolled wooden bench, then seated himself next to her. “I did not actually flip a coin to decide with whom I would attempt to speak next. Rather, I sent letters requesting appointments—all without
man
flirting
, I assure you.”

“Applause and felicitations.”

“Thank you. There was one exception; before writing to Mr. Duffy of the foundry, I decided to visit it.”

She lifted a hand—gloved in fussy ruffled lace, naturally. “Hold one moment. Are you admitting that you engaged in a hen-witted espionage caper?”

Beneath the brim of his hat, Joss shot her a dark look. “No. Nothing of the sort. I merely took a walk through a part of Bath I had never yet visited.”

“Hmm.”

He ignored this. “The smell was like nothing I've ever encountered. Tar and burning things. Acrid and dreadful. I know we must have metal, and foundries must have coal to make it. But if Sutcliffe could sell his land whole rather than stripping the coal from it—well, it seems to me that would be better.”

“It wouldn't be better for you, as his man of business. You could almost certainly see the coal sold at a decent price.”

He looked away, in the direction of the canal just visible through winter-bare branches. A few brave souls were punting along the chill ribbon, their voices floating on the breeze with occasional snippets of song. When the punt passed beneath a delicate ironwork footbridge, the sound vanished.

“It wouldn't be better for the tenants,” he said. “They are farmers, not miners. Nor would it be better for the land itself, which would become barren. Yet I know that to sell off the land outright would be worse for the estate. Perhaps we could buy it back one day, though, whole and unharmed.”

“
We
could buy it back?”

“We. Sutcliffe and me. Or more likely, his son, if Ted proves less of a—” He pressed his lips together. “Proves inclined to careful stewardship of his holdings.”

“And what do you need of me?”

He shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky, where sparrows or starlings or some sort of small bird arrowed, joyous and quick through the air. “I thought you might enjoy the amusement of an outing outside the stifling comforts of your rented house. Have you noticed how many men have tipped their hats at you, my dear fake widow? Perhaps this was my true motive: I wanted the smug satisfaction of being the man who sat at your side.”

Did he mean it? Of course he did not; the odious expression of amusement was spreading over his features again. “Enjoy it while you can,” she said primly, “for when Lord Whittingham presents himself, I shall have to leave you behind.”

“Must you? I have no doubt that his lordship would be as delighted to see you as is every other man of your acquaintance.”

“Every man?”

“Oh, well—perhaps half. As I said on the occasion of our first meeting in Bath, I haven't spoken to everyone.”

“Nor have I, so you needn't make me sound like a hussy.” She said this without heat, turning over the idea in her mind. Meeting Lord Whittingham would be a delight, a reminder of the years before she lost her parents. And it would knit her, in some small way, to Joss's side. It would be a place to fit, to belong, for a sliver of time.

He offered to open that window between her and others—or no, he asked her to open it herself.

“I shall think about it,” she added. “We still have a bit of time before he arrives.”

“If you stay for our meeting, say whatever you like, as long as you somehow discuss Whittingham giving money to Sutcliffe. I don't even care for what reason, honestly. If he wants to pay Sutcliffe to strip naked and dance through the streets of Bath, that's quite all right with me. I don't know who would want to see it, but Sutcliffe would certainly be willing to do it.”

Augusta grinned. “I simply
must
meet your employer again.” She recalled the baron as cheerful and impulsive, but then, she'd only met him and his baroness once at a ball. At which no one, to her knowledge, had stripped naked.

“You might be required to meet him eventually, but let us hope not.”

Another passing man—vaguely familiar as a recent caller in Queen Square—tipped his hat to Augusta. She waved and smiled with her fluffy glove and friendly smile.

“Would he do as a lover, do you think?” some imp made her nudge Joss in the ribs and ask in a low voice.

There was no unsettling the man; he only leaned back against the bench and stuck out his boots, the picture of comfort. “I think not. Though I cannot judge male beauty with anything like the proper eye, he appears too languid for you. See how slowly he walks?”

“That could be because he wants to hang back and look at me more.”

He arched a brow. “If he's that fascinated, then he ought to have the stones to turn around and speak to you. Unless you wish for a lover with no stones? That would seem to defeat the purpose, though.”

This was what the imp had wished for: Joss Everett, shaping words like
lover
and
stones
with his beautifully cut mouth. Warm and liquid, desire swirled within her. “I am quite sure that you ought not to be speaking this way to me,” she managed.

“I am quite sure,” he countered, “that you are right. But I am also quite sure that you like it. There is no need for you to play Mrs. Flowers with me.”

Odd indeed, that the widowed part she played was far more innocent than her unwed true self. Yet Mrs. Flowers had to be bright as sunlight, where Augusta burned low and hot as fire.

Figuratively speaking. She shivered; within her dainty gloves, her fingers were cold.

“Perhaps you might satisfy my curiosity on one point, Augusta. If Mrs. Flowers is not meant to be wealthy nor wellborn, what is it about her that appeals to so many men?”

“Her lack of wealth and birth is to keep them from entertaining notions of marriage. Aside from those dreadful flaws, she is everything a man should wish.”

“Which is?”

Twirling the flimsy handle of her parasol, she considered. “Pleasant, soft-spoken. Cheerful. So feminine—observe the gown, if you will—that she is a creature entirely without threat. Generous with laughter and with flaunts of the bosom.”

He gave her a sidelong glance so quick she almost missed it. “I have observed no such behavior. Are you depriving me of bosom-flaunting?”

“Yes, but you are a special case. As you just informed me, there's no purpose to being Mrs. Flowers with you because you know she doesn't exist.”

“And what of the other poor fellows of Bath?” Joss nodded toward the smoothly paved path, along which yet more individuals and couples promenaded. “With this figment, you shall spoil them for all other women. Then they shall be left with nothing.”

“Exactly right. Nothing but a beautiful memory.” The words were unexpectedly piquant on her tongue. She savored the taste.

“You sound a bit bloodthirsty,” Joss observed. “But I'm sure that cannot be your intention, since you have just told me that you mean to be both soft-spoken and cheerful.”

“I would find it easier to be so if you were a bit more soft-spoken and cheerful yourself.”

“Rot,” he said in a voice of perfect cheer. “Though I
can
be agreeable. Do look at the path: several gentlemen are walking in this direction. Perhaps I might identify one who will do as your lover.”

She should have paid the extra sixpence for tea; her mouth felt dry. Moistening her lips, she offered a honeyed smile. “How industrious you are. Which one would you suggest?”