The Lady Who Broke the Rules (9 page)

‘Oh, it’s Charlie!’ Kate declared. ‘The boot boy, you know. I wonder what he wants. I must go and see.’

She was already heading for the door, obviously relieved. He ought to feel the same. Virgil eyed the bed resentfully, wishing he could blame its confused mythology for what had happened. But it wasn’t the bed or the bridge or the carriage.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress and stared sightlessly down at his boots. He had come so far in eleven years. He had the means to put his past to rights now, thanks to a decade’s worth of single-minded, sheer bloody hard work. The relentless pursuit of success, the need to be better, stronger, sharper, quicker than anyone else had been exhausting, but he had never tired. He had reached the pinnacle, just as he’d always known he would. He couldn’t help but see Malcolm Jackson’s death as symbolic. The passing of the old. That his patron’s dying request had coincided with the opportunity to do business with Josiah Wedgwood, Virgil could not help but interpret as an omen. When he returned he would finally make a start on paying his debt to Millie.

He would make his new world, and in it he would finally be free. Virgil got to his feet and looked out of the window, where Kate was talking to a small boy. That she had come into his life at such a crossroads perhaps explained, even more than the impossibility of it, why he had let down his defences. She was the apex, the turning point, nothing more.

Satisfied now that he understood himself, Virgil turned from the window. How could someone who kissed like Kate imagine herself cold? As he made his way downstairs, he couldn’t help wishing for the opportunity to prove her wrong.

* * *

‘Polly sent me.’ Charlie, an irrepressible twelve-year-old, stood at the bottom of the shallow flight of steps clutching a large wicker basket to his chest. ‘She said as how you would be busy and would more’n likely forget to eat and even if you was hungry she wouldn’t blame you for not coming back to eat with the old tartar Mrs Landes-Fraser ’cause one look at that face would put anyone off their grub.’ Remembering too late that Polly had also threatened him with a clip round the ear if he repeated her remarks, Charlie employed his most winsome smile. ‘There’s game pie and cheese and bread and chicken. And wine. And apples. Polly said you might give me an apple if I didn’t drop anything and I didn’t, so I ate it on the way ’cause the basket was awful heavy.’

Kate couldn’t help laughing as she took the picnic from him. ‘Very sensible.’

Charlie lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Polly says you’ve got a gentleman friend here what’s come all the way from Africa.’

‘It’s America, Charlie.’

The boy’s face fell. ‘So it’s not true, then? What they said, Mr Lumsden and Mrs Stratton and Joe and Daisy and all?’

Kate, who had been rummaging through the basket for another apple to give to the boy, instead gave him a sharp look. ‘
What
have they been saying?’

Charlie took a quick step back. Everyone in the big house knew that Lady Kate was one of the better ones, even if she was always banging on to him about practicing his letters, but he didn’t like that look in her eye. It was the same look his mum had when she was thinking about clouting him. Not that Lady Kate would actually hit him, but he’d been on the receiving end of one of her set downs before, and even if he didn’t know half the words she used, he got her drift all right. ‘Nothing,’ he said, taking another defensive step away from her.

‘Charlie, what did they say?’

Her tone made it clear that he would be better to come clean than make something up. Besides, she always knew when he was fibbing. ‘They said he had skin the colour of coal, if you please, my lady. And Agnes, she said that it would make the sheets black. And Mr Lumsden, he said that he most likely wouldn’t have been allowed to stay if His Grace wasn’t ill and wouldn’t have cared if the devil himself was visiting. Then Mrs Stratton, she said we oughter remember that whatever else he might be, Mr Jackson was your guest and so he must be a gentleman. I dunno what Daisy said but Polly clipped her ear. And that’s when Joe said—Joe said…’

Virgil appeared in the doorway and Charlie let out a squawk, his mouth falling open in astonishment. ‘Well? What did Joe say about me?’

‘He said you had a tail.’

‘Charlie!’

But Virgil gave a shout of laughter. ‘What do you think?’ he demanded, moving with impressive speed to catch the boot boy as he made to run, and spinning round in front of him.

‘I think I’ll plant a facer on Joe Coyle for making game of me,’ Charlie muttered.

‘Fancy yourself in the ring, eh?’

Realising that he had not, in fact, brought the wrath of the muscular giant down on his head, Charlie’s spirits quickly recovered. He put up two very small and grimy fists.

Virgil tutted, and repositioned the child’s arms. ‘Like this,’ he said, ‘unless you want a bloody nose. And those feet, do you want to trip over them? Look at me. See. It’s as much about balance as punching.’

‘I reckon you’d strip down mighty fine,’ Charlie said, staring with new respect at Virgil. ‘Do you box, sir?’

‘No. No, never.’

‘You must have, else how would you know how to stand. I bet you were good. Were you good, sir?’ Charlie asked, too excited to notice that his questions were making his new-found hero extremely uncomfortable.

‘I told you, I don’t,’ Virgil said shortly.

‘Did you fight anyone famous? What about that one, you know, my dad told me all about it. Molly—something. He was like you.’

‘He means Tom Molineaux,’ Kate said, giving Charlie a reproving look.

‘I know who he means.’

‘Good grief,
do
you know him?’

‘Do you, sir?

Virgil dug his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. ‘I met him.’

‘Did you—did you
fight
him?’

Charlie’s eyes were wide as saucers. Kate’s expression was more…arrested. Inside his pockets, Virgil’s fists were clenched painfully tight. Inside his head, he could hear them. The shouting. The jeering. The smell of blood and dust and sweat. Baying at them, just as they did at the dogs they set to scrap, at the cockerels they put at each other in the pit.

‘Did you fight him? Molly—Molineaux. Did you, sir?’

‘No! I told you…’

‘Charlie, that’s enough.’

Kate’s voice was sharp, enough to silence the boy instantly. Virgil blinked. She cast him a look, equally sharp, but it was one of concern, not reprimand. And though she couldn’t possibly understand, he knew that she’d sensed enough. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry or relieved. She was chastising the boy gently for his questions, and at the same time slipping him an apple. Charlie was looking sullen as he made for the path back to the main house. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, those memories, but how could he explain? He could not.

Charlie ran off down the carriageway. Virgil picked up the hamper. ‘This looks good. I’m hungry. Where shall we go? I noticed a little arbour with some benches in the garden.’ Without waiting on a reply, he set off with the basket, pushing his way through the overgrown bushes.

‘Virgil!’ Kate called.

‘The sun isn’t exactly warm, but it will be nicer than sitting in that dusty dining room.’

‘Virgil!’

He whirled round on her so suddenly that she stumbled. His face was set, his jaw clenched. ‘I don’t discuss that part of my life. Ever. It’s over.’

It was not the threat in his voice, nor even the frightening stillness of him, but the coiled-up pain, the bleakness which dulled his almond-shaped eyes, that made her back down. His expression had closed over completely earlier, at the mention of the prizefighter’s name. He had retreated, to somewhere dark, frightening. Though she desperately wanted to know because she desperately wanted to help, Kate suspected that whatever part of his past Virgil was remembering, it was something quite beyond her ken. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She reached for him, meaning only to touch his arm in a gesture of—what?—pity, sorrow, understanding, empathy?

She wanted only to comfort him, but he flinched, and then so, too, did she. He made to speak, but seemed to be at a loss for words. Instead he took her hand, and led her silently through the wilderness of the garden to the arbour. She sat down abruptly. Her hands were shaking. Her legs too. She couldn’t understand it. Such a strong reaction, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was she was reacting to. She clasped her hands together, watching her knuckles tighten.

‘Kate.’

He was sitting beside her. He seemed to have the ability to move silently. She smiled wanly.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ Virgil said. ‘Polly’s packed enough to feed an army.’

* * *

They spent the rest of the day examining the house in more detail, from attics to cellar, taking pains to stick to the task in hand, taking even more pains not to touch as they did so. As they made their way back to the main house, the sun was already sinking.

‘A cook, a butler, two footmen, say three maidservants, a scullery maid,’ Kate muttered, biting the end of her pencil, frowning in concentration as she looked at the close-written pages of her notebook. ‘The nursery maid and her own lady’s maid I’m sure she will wish to manage herself, but I think we’ll need two—or do you think three other menservants besides whatever occasional help she needs if she chooses to entertain, of course?’

She looked enquiringly at him. Virgil’s own house, while not the grandest in Boston, was by no means one of the smallest, and was run by one housekeeper, one maid and one manservant. Wealth was power, power was what he needed to pay for his sins, but he had never felt the need to flaunt success with the trappings of wealth. He preferred to speak for himself. ‘It’s just one woman and a child,’ he said.

‘She is the Dowager Marchioness of Hatherton—or at least she will be, if her claim is validated.’

‘Does a dowager marchioness, then, take more looking after than a mere miss?’

‘That’s not the point. It’s not about her needs but her consequence.’

In the short space of time he had known her, Virgil had come to think of Kate’s views as similar to his own. He had forgotten that she belonged in this other world, where consequence must be evidenced in the quantity and quality of servants, amongst other things. ‘I don’t even have a valet.’ He was suddenly bone-weary. ‘The man I brought with me, I hired him in London. He was offended that I wouldn’t let him shave me. What does that make me, in your world?’

‘Self-sufficient. Crotchety, for some reason.’ Kate sighed. ‘Don’t you see, you carry your consequence with you, Virgil. There is an authority in the way you walk, the way you look, the way you talk. It’s not about how many servants are necessary to run a household—were it mine I would certainly do with considerably less—but it is not mine. My father is dead set upon wresting this woman’s child from her at any cost. Giles doesn’t want to believe her claim, despite the fact that it would relieve him of the burden of this stately pile, because it would mean admitting that Jamie is dead. My aunt—well, I don’t have to tell you what my aunt thinks. This woman, Alicia, she has no one to speak up for her. She has no idea what she’s risking, coming here. She most likely thinks we’re giving her sanctuary, when, in fact—oh, heavens, I don’t know what will happen. Surrounding her with just a little of the pomp due to her position may not be much, but it’s all I can do. Do you see?’

‘I guess.’

Kate wrinkled her brow. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I reckon so. Would you really do things differently if it were your household?’

Kate shrugged. ‘I guess,’ she said, smiling faintly at the way the phrase sounded in her English accent. ‘It’s a moot point, since I’m never likely to have a household of my own.’

‘Can’t you just move out?’

She laughed, but not pleasantly. ‘Apart from the fact that it would give both my father and my aunt an apoplexy, I don’t have any money.’ Seeing the look of disbelief on his face, she laughed, this time with genuine amusement. ‘Don’t let all this fool you.’ Her sweeping gesture encompassed the house, the parklands, the Dower House. ‘It has nothing to do with me, a mere daughter. All I have, save whatever pin money Papa allows me, is my dowry. And if I don’t marry…’

‘I know your father has financial troubles, but he has more than enough to set you up if he wished.’

‘But he doesn’t wish, because it’s not the way things are done here in England.’

‘In America, it is not exactly common, but it’s not frowned upon for a woman of independent means to have her own establishment.’

‘Had I independent means, then America is where I’d go.’

‘You’d like it there.’

‘I don’t doubt it, but I’ll have to take your word for that.’

Kate spoke lightly, but he knew her better now. That was just her way. ‘It’s our loss,’ Virgil said, and realised as he did that he meant it.

* * *

With a date set for the arrival of Jamie’s widow at Castonbury, and Aunt Wilhelmina declining to have any part in the overseeing of the mountain of work required to make the Dower House habitable for a confidence trickster, Kate found herself without any time to call her own. As she suspected he would, Virgil suggested that he cut short his visit and continue north to New Lanark. Utterly frustrated by her family commitments, furious at Aunt Wilhelmina, who, she was certain, had made herself unavailable precisely to achieve this very outcome, Kate was relieved and astonished when her brother Giles came to her rescue.

‘I’d be happy to take Virgil out and about a bit, show him some of the countryside,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I’d be happy for any excuse to get me out of here for a while. I’m sick of this whole damned mess, what with our father carping on about taking sole guardianship of his grandchild as if the boy does not already have a mother, and hiding his head in the sand over the mess he’s got us into with his investments. There’s not been a word from Harry for weeks, and I still have no idea where Ross is, and—in short, Kate, I’m in need of some uncomplicated male company and your Virgil seems like a most interesting chap.’

Though she was delighted with the solution, for over a week Kate met Virgil only at dinner, when they were separated by the expanse of the dining table and Aunt Wilhelmina’s determined efforts to keep her nieces from any personal conversation with ‘the American,’ as she called him.