The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway (The St. Croix Chronicles) (3 page)

Chapter Four

At this age, I was expected to arise at a decent hour, to be ready for breakfast without complaint, and to eat all that was placed before me.

Betsy, older than I by only a handful of years, made sure that I would pass Fanny’s most critical muster, haranguing and wrestling me into a bath. As she was my company from the moment I awoke, I had no chance to peek at the letter I’d stolen, and barely a thought for it this early. I was exhausted.

“How on earth did you get so dirty?” she demanded, more a complaint as her work-callused fingers scrubbed at my scalp. “As if you were rolling about in the fireplace!”

“Maybe I was,” I began impishly, only to suck in a breath as she pushed my head below the surface.

Clueless she may have been, she was also skeptical—and out of time to question my antics in the direct way she had. Quickly, ignoring my half-hearted struggles, she forced me into corset and underthings, whipped my hair into a semblance of propriety with more pins than I feared it could hold, and tucked me into a pale blue day dress.

“Scarper off,” she ordered, in unknowing mimicry of the orders I’d received the night before. Unlike Red Lettie, Betsy’s Bow Bell accent had been softened by her time serving. “And why are you smiling, you daft girl?”

I had always adored her. “For you,” I offered, and briefly embraced her as dear friends do—I was an impetuous thing then. It turned her apple cheeks fiery. Muttering, she pushed me bodily out the door.

Fanny was waiting at the breakfast table, already set with Mrs. Booth’s fine fare.

I was a titch late, but I trilled a sweet “Good morning!” as I slipped into place.

Fanny was always an old woman to my young eyes, a widow in widow’s weeds and sterner for them. Her blue eyes were often kind in those early days, but flinty with determination, and her mouth was permanently set in firm lines. I was a devil’s child, and well I knew it. Eventually, our regard would turn more to friendship and chaperoning than strict teaching.

Not, however, today.

After breakfast, wherein we spoke of the day’s agenda, I learned I would have a free period to spend as I liked. “Mrs. Booth will stay while I attend to affairs,” Fanny told me.

Fanny did not often tend to personal affairs. A quick recounting of days, and I sobered. “Of course,” I said, gently as my fifteen years of worldly understanding could shape.

Today, the thirtieth day of October, was the day Fanny always reserved for her late husband. God rest him.

“I will read, then,” I added, to ensure that she would not worry for me. I could read for hours. There were many books in Mr. Ashmore’s study—that is, my father’s study—and I enjoyed reading through them when at all possible. I was young enough that I was allowed this small luxury.

“I shall instruct Mrs. Booth to keep you from the impractical and irresponsible subjects,” Fanny said, with an air of finality I didn’t bother to argue.

Esther Booth was a sturdy woman of impeccable work ethic, married to the butler who ran the household. Booth and his wife were without children of their own. I well knew, even then, the subtle indulgences they permitted me, and as long as I minded myself, they were happy to allow me to read what I liked. This afforded me the opportunity to browse the library that had once belonged to my father, and now belonged not to me—as it should—but to my absent guardian.

Even at fifteen years of age, I had considered Fanny’s mode of thinking to be outdated and offensive. That she would assume the study to be a man’s domain—to wit, Ashmore’s by rights of simple legality, at least until I inherited at one and twenty years—has always been a sore point between us. After all, they were my father’s books, my father’s desk,
my
father’s possessions. Ashmore was never here to enjoy them. He did not read them; they did nothing for him.

While for me, they opened ways of thinking that I had not previously dreamed of. Galileo, Angelicus Finch, Shakespeare, Socrates, and so much more I had yet to devour. There were books on science and philosophy. Treatises on politics historical and, until twenty years ago, current. There were even books on adventures taken by travelers living and dead, successful and otherwise.

What use had I for tutors and lessons when all I needed to know came bound with gilded pages? What right had that upstart Ashmore to lay claim over a whole room he would not use? My father’d all but lived in this study, his mark apparent in the various possessions he’d left behind, of wondrous make and foreign design. It was mine.

Yet, alas, Fanny’s mind was not identical.

So I smiled and languished through two hours of lessons. Comportment and refinement, lettering and all those things a lady would need when she stepped into Society proper.

How I ever managed it in those early years, I simply do not know. Likely all in thanks to the promise of laudanum I would be allowed that night.

And to the laudanum I was not allowed and claimed anyway.

I confess that I stole a sip mid-morning, for no particular reason than that I was bored, and my head given a mild ache.

I had survived half a pianoforte lesson with my governess when I recalled the paper I had not been afforded an opportunity to read.

Of course, by day, I couldn’t very well chase my collector quarry, and so I resolved to wait until night. That was the responsible thing to do; and wasn’t I quite the adult, sorting my priorities?

Only once I’d remembered it, that mysterious scrap of paper with its coin haunted my every waking breath. My concentration, abysmal to begin with, shattered, and the third time Fanny corrected my fingers upon the keys, I believe we’d both given up.

Yet it was the day for her gravesite visit, so my governess was forgiving. “There, now, you’ve worked a difficult piece, Cherry. Shall I ring for tea?”

I seized the reprieve. “Please!” And then moderated my tone to a more composed, “If you would be so kind.”

Her smile approved of my self-correction. Yet she did not leave the room to acquire Mrs. Booth’s services. Instead, she relied upon the ringer, a tasseled rope near the door and matched to one in near every room.

I wanted to dash upstairs and find that letter, to read it and solve once and for all who that collector was, what he wanted with
my
quarry, but I did not. I could not.

Instead, we made idle talk until the tea could arrive. Most centered on the bits Fanny read in the Society papers. A countess’s gardens in late bloom, the proposed marriage of a viscount set for spring. Prospects for marriage and the customary columns written by salon ladies with little better to do than devise ways to bedevil me with the many rules and demands of a so-called fashionable woman. Or, at least, bedevil girls like me—creatures of dreams and ambition, if any existed at all above the foggy divide.

Fanny adored fashion, which explained why she made sure we visited Madam Toulouse’s dress shop every month. Tools of science and periodicals were too fine for the stipend allowed us, yet day gowns simply could not go un-purchased when fashion turned so drastically.

I could have happily turned one of Ashmore’s dueling pistols onto my own forehead rather than suffer this drivel.

Finally, an opportunity came. “Fanny, have you heard of a Mr. J. F. Strangeway?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Why ever would you ask?” And then her eyes narrowed, back straightening further than I thought it possible. “He hasn’t come calling, has he?”

I must not have kept the horror from my face, because her dry, “Ladies do not scowl, Cherry,” also allowed for a smile of her own. “You will soon change your tune.”

Never. At fifteen, I knew full well what it was to marry.

“It was a name I read,” I said, not a lie, but hardly the whole of it, either.

“Oh, is he returned to the scandals?” She shook her head. “Mark my words, my dove, the Strangeway name is a long and storied affair not fit for the consumption of young girls.”

What could possibly be so varied from the usual scandals that
his
was a name to avoid reading of? It seemed hypocritical, at worst, and deucedly mysterious at best.

“So,” I drew it out in deliberate goading. “He’s a wastrel, then?”

Fanny’s exclamation almost made me laugh outright, but I smothered it lest she lose the conversation in a lecture. “Where
do
you acquire such things?” she demanded. A pause, and then she shook her head as Mrs. Booth carried a tea tray in. The silver shone brilliantly, as I had come to expect from my industrious housekeeper. “Yes, you certainly could call him that,” Fanny continued. “Best to avoid him when at all possible, and should you meet him at a function, refrain from partaking of his company longer than it must require for a greeting.”

“Why?” I studied the tea with a sudden pang of hunger. I hadn’t considered a snack, but the pastries upon the plate looked all too appetizing.

“During your mother’s time,” she said, surprising me with her ready answer, “the Strangeway name was one of wealth and mystique. Unfortunately, the family squandered all they had. If the Strangeway son is returned, he is only one more impoverished Irish immigrant, I’m afraid. Far flung from his family of old.”

“Is he sniffing about for an heiress, then?”

“Cherry St. Croix!”

I paused, cake halfway to my mouth, and realized all at once what I’d said. This time, I shoved the cake in my mouth to ensure I wouldn’t lapse into a fit of humor. The sound I made was apologetic. Barely.

Fanny worked hard to undo the marks of the street. I hadn’t quite softened all the corners, but I would learn. In time.

As Fanny droned on and on, about this soiree or that lesson, this appointment or that function, I worked it over in my thoughts.

So, I had been right. Mr. J. F. Strangeway was, in fact, a wastrel—a good-for-nothing, likely a fortune-seeker.

No wonder the keeper of the bounty desired to call in the debts owed. A man like Mr. Strangeway could not possibly expect to repay such a fortune without a marriage, and no decent family would marry a man whose name had fallen so far.

Such was the crux of it; the bitter pill which those who fall from grace must suffer.

So, then, why did he continue to fritter his time in the stews?

It made no sense, but then, men were prone to nonsensical things. A bought woman and a chancy game were often all a man needed to soothe the day.

Men as him were ripe for a charmed picking.

It seemed an eternity until Fanny departed, somber and quiet. Out of deference for the occasion, I forced myself to read peacefully for a quarter of an hour. Booth came into the parlor, my requested tea tray balanced easily in his hands, deposited his burden upon the lacquered table, and left again.

The instant I heard the door close—the moment I heard the rhythmic
step-thunk-step
of my one-legged butler clear the hall—I flung the tome to the patterned settee and ran, skirts in hand, up the stairs. The noise was akin to a stampede, or so the shout from my surprised housekeeper suggested, but I ignored it.

I shut my boudoir tight, found the letter, and unfolded it. The coin I’d expected slid from the corner, to
thunk
heavily against the Oriental rug that kept the worst of the drafts away during London’s wet winters.

The note was succinct.

There is no progress.
Your allotted time is wasted.
They took our own
,
now we’ll take theirs.
Sullivan’s orders stand Tuesday.

The hand that printed this was not fine, but it was boldly lettered, punctuated by numbers and another name.

730Praed
.

Cramped together as it was, I could only just make out the name of the street north of the remnants of Hyde Park. An address, perhaps? A location? Praed Street was, of course, a commonly traversed one, placed square within Paddington and near enough to St. Mary’s Hospital to be an easy jaunt.

Yet Paddington, for all its proximity to a hospital, was not a place to step lightly. By night, I was sure it would be filled to the brim with cutpurses, ruffians, abram men and their ilk. By day, it would be just as busy, for its setting practically in the center of all would guarantee traffic of the pedestrian and horse-drawn kind.

There was no other name than Sullivan’s attached to the strange missive, and though I had expected something pertaining to the identity of my rival, I had not expected a warning.

It sounded a threat.

Was Sullivan the collector? Was he something else? I knew of no Sullivans ensconced above the drift, yet that meant little enough. I did not much care to spend my time memorizing the names of the lords and ladies I had no love for, and the gossip columns were dry, boring stuff for reading. What I retained there could have been contained in a thimble.

I knelt, sweeping aside the layers of my dress to fish the copper piece out from under the vanity it had rolled beneath. The size of it surprised me; a full nail’s width larger than any of Her Majesty’s currencies and a bit heavier, beside.

I held the imprinted copper to the light, squinting as I sat back on my bed. The paper crinkled as I turned the piece this way and that. The indentation had been all but ground away, as if worn time and time again by some action of rubbing.

There were letters. An
I
, I think. An
R
and an
H
, and the remnants of an
S
. A hole bored in the top marred the rest.

A pendant, then; not a coin as such.

Though a
B
was visible at the right side, most of the facing had been smoothed away on the left, leaving me with what looked to be some kind of masted sky ship, much like those that comprised Her Majesty’s Navy. Its aft was rounded, a cloud of what I took for steam lopsided from the wear.

What kind of clue was this?

My hands, each holding coin and parchment, lowered to the pool of pale blue my day dress had become on the neatly tucked bedclothes. I stared at nothing in particular for a while, then gave up on nothing and briefly considered the glint of light upon the remnants of ruby red liquid within its crystal glass.