Wedding Matilda (Redcakes Book 6) (13 page)

She found her strength again, pushing him away. “How could you?” she rasped. For the first time in her life, she sounded like her brother when he had been at his most broken and bitter. “How could you make me forget, even for a moment?”

He held up his hands. “What?”

She pointed a shaky finger at him. “I have no right to comfort while my son is missing. Stay away from me, Ewan Hales. Don’t tempt me again.” She turned away from him and made her way down the street.

When she heard footfalls, she knew he was following her, but she didn’t have the energy to turn around and face him, and certainly didn’t want to continue their confrontation so near her home. Just what she needed: further confirmation that she was a wanton slut.

She already felt like one; she didn’t want to offer her family any proof. What had happened to her self-control? She didn’t even have the excuse of bad advice this time. The mistake had been all her own fault.

When she reached her front gate, she turned back. He lifted his hand in farewell. When she put her hand on the gate’s latch, he proceeded down the street.

Inside her house, all was quiet. Her family had gone to bed. No drama of any kind, but also no news. She could only hope tomorrow would change things. The fire had been lit in her bedroom and as she warmed, her mind quieted, like a landscape after a storm. She fell asleep easily, at first.

 

The next morning, she still felt groggy as Daisy helped her dress. She had tossed and turned after midnight, unable to shake the horrible realization that Jacob had been gone almost a week. If neither Jacob’s father nor the Gipsy horse trader were responsible, who was? Who was Izabela’s lover?

Downstairs, she poured coffee from the pot and stared at the rack of toast. She needed to eat so that she had the strength to search for Jacob. Her father had aged a decade in the past few days, and even her mother’s serene face was unusually lined. Ewan had not appeared. Had she chased him off for good? Gawain sat in an armchair, staring at the ransom note as if some clue remained to be found.

She took a bite of toast, the eggs smelling too sulfurous to touch, and the sausages seemed off, though surely Mrs. Miller would never allow it, and went to lean over Gawain’s shoulder.

“‘i am rite you want yer baby. You goin to pay for the littl one. 5000 pounds,’” she read.

“I think it’s a fake,” Gawain said.

“What do you mean?”

Gawain’s wife, Ann, dropped her knitting and leaned forward in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

“The first letter of the first sentence isn’t capitalized but the second is. See?” He waved the paper at Matilda.

“What does that prove?”

“They are trying to make themselves sound more ignorant than they really are,” Gawain said. “Probably someone with more education than it seems.”

“I don’t see how that helps us. Both Mr. Bliven and Mr. Majewski are intelligent men.”

“Yes, but we can safely rule them out anyway. Tell me, is Izabela literate?”

“Of course,” Matilda said. “I’ve never seen her handwriting, but she read stories to Jacob and consulted Mrs. Beeton’s book, read shopping lists.”

Gawain made a noise and returned to staring. Ann resumed her knitting.

“Have some more toast, dear,” her mother said. “You should try some of the lemon curd. It’s from Hatbrook’s farm.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Matilda muttered. While normally it behooved all of the family to stock and use a relative’s various products, she couldn’t care less at the moment who had made the lemon curd. She didn’t even want to eat the bloody lemon curd.

Mrs. Miller came into the room. If Sir Bartley had aged ten years, the housekeeper had aged twenty overnight. She looked ready to be packed off to a small cottage in the country.

“Your sister is here, Miss Redcake, with Mr. Courtnay.”

Sir Bartley’s head came up. “Good, another cool mind on the case.”

Matilda’s two bites of toast lurched in her stomach. She didn’t want to see her happy sister, nor have to feel guilty again about the ruined wedding. Her father, on the other hand, heartily approved of Rupert Courtnay.

Mrs. Miller nodded. “I shall send them in to the breakfast room, then?”

“Must have left Liverpool very early. Probably drove one of Lewis’s horseless carriages,” Gawain said.

“Yes, Courtnay did say he’d just acquired one,” Sir Bartley remarked.

The door opened and Rose bounded in. Normally a rather languorous girl, courtesy of her lung issues, she did not bound, or have pink cheeks. Yet Matilda saw her sister transformed.

Behind her stood the solid, graying form of Rupert Courtnay. A bit mysterious, he nonetheless had the charm to find himself in the lower rank of aristocratic circles. Matilda had thought that Rose took him on not to be a spinster, but as she saw her sister’s beaming face now, she would have believed it a love match.

Rose pulled off her gloves and held out her hand. On it was an ornate gold ring. A wedding ring.

Matilda reached for a chair and half-fell into it as her mother pushed her chair back and rushed her youngest child.

“You married without us?” her mother asked.

Rose nodded. “I’m sorry, but I could not wait a day longer.” She smiled shyly at her new husband. “Forgive us. We could not make it a ceremony, but at least this way I could talk Rupert into taking the week as we had planned for our honeymoon trip and return to Bristol.”

“Are you staying here?” Matilda realized she’d spoken much too loudly when Ann stared at her.

Rose waved her hands. “I cannot imagine there is room under the circumstances. No, we went to a hotel. Mr. Hales is staying there as well. He said he would be here directly.”

“Why?” Sir Bartley asked. “Doesn’t he have his new duties in London?”

Gawain narrowed his eyes at Matilda, then shared a glance with his wife. Matilda didn’t like the direction her brother’s thoughts were heading. He saw too much with that brilliant cynic’s mind of his. “No doubt he wants to help.”

Rupert Courtnay cleared his throat. “I understand there has been a ransom note?”

“On Friday,” Gawain confirmed. “I have it here. Let’s go out on the terrace so you can see it in the light.”

Mrs. Miller reentered the room, followed by Ewan. Matilda was thunderstruck. Her housekeeper hadn’t even announced him, or asked permission. What, was he a member of the family now?

Gawain nodded at Ewan, and he followed her brother and Rupert out of the room with scarcely a glance at her. Matilda dropped her forehead into her palm, while Rose took a chair next to where their mother had been sitting. Her beautiful blond mother and beautiful blond sister all but touched heads as Rose shared the details of her simple ceremony in a hushed tone.

Within two minutes Matilda was ready to explode. She pushed her chair back and rushed from the room. Climbing the stairs, she went to Izabela’s room and began to tear it apart.

“It would be best to be methodical,” came her father’s voice from the doorway. He breathed hard from his climb up the staircase. “Let me help you, Matilda.”

She turned to her father. Saw his red hair rapidly going white, what was left of it, his homely face that she had mostly inherited, and all but fell into his arms, gasping with unshed tears.

Ewan leaned on the balustrade around the terrace, listening as Gawain and his new brother-in-law took the ransom note apart and put it back together again. He frowned when he saw Rupert Courtnay rubbing his fingers together after he had held the note. Was there a substance on it?

“What are you doing with your fingers?” he asked.

Rupert glanced at his hand. “Some kind of powder?”

Ewan bent his head over the note and sniffed. “Well, I’ll be. Do you smell chalk?”

Gawain stared at him as Rupert smelled his fingers. “I think your friend is right.”

Gawain narrowed his eyes, his damaged skin wrinkling around the network of white scars. “Chalk,” he muttered.

“The adulterant in the flour,” Ewan said, feeling sick.

“You think Douglas Flour had something to do with this?” Gawain asked.

“More likely that Matilda handled this, or Greggory did, after messing with a flour sample,” Ewan said.

Gawain rubbed his chin. “I don’t think Greggory has ever touched the note.”

“Did Matilda?”

“She is more likely to have done so, but I don’t think she did. It’s an evil talisman to her, you understand.”

“I’m not sure who you are,” Rupert said, turning to Ewan.

“I was Sir Bartley’s secretary in London,” Ewan said. “Then Lord Judah’s, but now I am the regional director of Douglas Industries.”

“Maybe you are behind the kidnapping,” Rupert said, his stolid face betraying nothing.

Gawain grinned. “All this to get Matilda’s attention? She’d be more likely to kill him when she found out. This is, after all, the sister who refused to marry the father of her illegitimate child when she had the opportunity.”

“Ah. You are courting her?”

“It’s no laughing matter,” Ewan said quietly. “I do want to marry Matilda, even though she won’t believe me after the things I’ve said in the past.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Gawain asked.

“I told her that I, the heir of an earl, could not marry her. But you know, I feel that I must. Who says I need to be in Society? I am engaged in trade. I don’t have a proper upbringing. Who can blame me for marrying where I will?”

“Marrying money,” Rupert said. “No one blames any aristocrat for that, these days. Not enough money in land.”

Gawain bared his teeth and chuckled. “Matilda a countess? I love it. I’ll throw in my support.”

“Thank you,” Ewan said, taking his proffered hand. “And the earl is strapped for cash, I understand. But we’ve got to find Jacob. She won’t be able to move forward otherwise. That’s where all this nonsense about marrying Bliven came in. She’s desperately unfocused.”

Gawain nodded. “I agree with you. You can’t turn her head with romance now. Let’s verify she never touched the note.”

“Walk me through the circumstances of it,” Rupert said.

Behind them, the French doors opened, and Daisy walked out with a tray containing a coffeepot and cups. “It’s chilly out here.”

“Thank you,” Gawain said. “Put it on the table there.”

Daisy curtseyed after she had obeyed and left. Ewan went to pour the beverage while Gawain spoke.

“It was rolled up and pushed between the neck and the collar of Sir Barks, Jacob’s puppy. Ought to have smelled like dog, rather than chalk,” Gawain mused.

“I think chalk was rubbed into the paper. Maybe the lotion on my skin extracted some of it. Rose is insisting I treat a mild skin condition I have with some potion of hers.”

The man seemed faintly embarrassed at this display of wifely love.

Gawain nodded. “She has learned everything my mother knows about treating her lung condition, then branched into other remedies. She loves to make beauty treatments. Something to do in the country.”

“I don’t mind,” Rupert said, almost dreamily. “It doesn’t smell bad.”

Ewan cleared his throat and passed out the steaming coffee. Gawain took his cup and said, “I held it. It went into a cabinet for the night, on top of a tea service in the breakfast room. I have no idea why I left it there. Yes, we’ve had it for a few days now, but we could look at it in the cabinet, you see. I didn’t take it out again until last night. Now that you mention it, I did see a streak on the paper.”

“Chalk?” Rupert asked.

Gawain shrugged. “I suppose. What do we do with that information?”

“I think you should ring the factory and ask Greggory if he touched it,” Ewan said.

“And speak to Matilda. Do you want to do that?”

Ewan nodded. They left the coffee tray outdoors and went inside to the telephone room, standing around Gawain as he spoke to Greggory, who verified he had never touched the note.

“Can I speak to Mr. Hales?” Ewan heard Greggory ask.

Gawain handed him the earpiece.

“I understand you’ve taken over management of Douglas Flour,” Greggory said.

“True,” Ewan said.

“Are you aware of their warehouse here in Bristol? I didn’t know it existed until the manager at Bristol Flour told me.”

“It wouldn’t have been important. We found chalk in the flour in the London facility.”

“I know, but what if someone at Douglas Flour is out to attack the Redcakes? Could they have both ruined the flour and taken Jacob? What if he is in their warehouse here in the city?” Greggory asked, his voice betraying nervous excitement.

E
wan wished he’d had his cards ready, but a telephone call from Corwin Vare in Southwark to the nondescript Bristol warehouse belonging to Douglas Industries took care of his bona fides. The local manager, Albert Pigge, had done his best to make Ewan feel unwelcome by placing him in the lower, visitor chair in front of his imposing desk. Ewan made a mental note to check the finances of this warehouse to see if Pigge deserved such an elaborate personal setup. He doubted it, given the utilitarian nature of the Southwark branch. “I was not aware your office even existed, Mr. Pigge.”

“Mr. Vare prefers to forget any other part of England exists, Mr. Hales,” Pigge said with a snort. The rotund manager hooked his fingers around the armpits of his purple velvet waistcoat, exposing old sweat stains.

“You report to Mr. Vare?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Why does the flour for the Redcake’s factories come in from London, rather than from your establishment?”

“We mostly deal in rye flour,” Pigge said. “We do old-fashioned stone-grinding here.”

“So you have nothing to do with Redcake’s, then?” He thought he might have wasted a meeting for Jacob’s sake. Meeting Pigge was useful for his own new position, though.

“Not here in Bristol, but we do ship down to the London Redcake’s. The bakery makes a drop scone with our flour and maple syrup. You knew about Douglas Maple Syrup?”

Ewan shook his head. “Does that fall under my purview, do you think?”

“Oh, yes.” Pigge leaned forward, giving Ewan a good view of the man’s untrimmed nose hair. “Tapped in Vermont, you know. Very interesting business. Wouldn’t mind spending some time in the United States myself.”

“I shall keep that in mind. Tell me, who is in charge of that?”

Pigge spoke for twenty minutes on the subject of his favorite part of the business before winding down. Ewan thought he looked too slender for both his overlarge head and his animal appetites.

Eventually, Pigge shook his head. “Still, I’d be sorry to leave Bristol. Land of my ancestors and all that. But the crime, sir.” He shook his head mournfully. “Why, that business with Jacob Redcake just sets your hair on fire, don’t it?”

“Jacob Bliven,” Ewan said, his interest aroused.

“Oh, right, he has the father’s name?” Pigge tsked.

“Miss Redcake had hoped to marry the boy’s father, and he desires it as well, naturally, but he’s on his deathbed. Such difficulties they’ve had, you know, with his travel to India.”

Pigge snorted. “You don’t say. Well, that explains the boy’s surname, then, if the father has had some involvement.”

“Sir Gawain attempted to get them a special license,” Ewan confided. “But now it appears to be too late, with the kidnapping. Miss Redcake can’t leave Bristol, you see.”

Pigge’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes, I do see. Such a tragic tale.”

Ewan leaned forward, mimicking Pigge. “Tell me, how did you learn about Jacob? I thought the family was keeping the tragedy very quiet.”

“Well, you know, sir.” Pigge bared his teeth.

“Yes, because I was still employed by the family a week ago,” Ewan pointed out.

“It’s local gossip, sir. You can’t expect a leading family to be running about Gipsy camps and the like without word getting out.”

“So you didn’t hear anything beyond servants’ gossip, then?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I do wonder who is trying to destroy the family. First the flour and now the child. Does someone want the family out of Bristol for good? You know, there was a great deal of resentment when old Sir Bartley moved the family to London, a great deal.” Pigge smacked his lips.

“Many years ago now. It’s been what, at least six years.”

Pigge shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I always walk the floor about this time. Keeps the workers in line.”

“And you get your exercise,” Ewan said with a nod. “An excellent notion.”

As Pigge stood, his chest puffed. “Thank you, sir. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. And please keep Vermont in mind.”

“I will.” Ewan stood as well, wondering just how he could discern how disliked the Redcakes were in Bristol, and who their enemies were. It seemed the flour adulteration and Jacob’s kidnapping might be linked. Except the flour problem had originated in London.

 

Matilda felt too agitated to sit, so she’d spent a fair amount of the day pacing around her home. Greggory had been by with a great deal of paperwork to go over. She’d signed the documents without really looking at them. How long had it been since she’d visited the factory or her office? She couldn’t find the energy to care. Everything showed on her cousin’s face, so if there had been anything important to do she’d have known by his expression.

Her father had paced with her at times, not complaining about her lack of attention to the business, while her mother sat in front of the fire, remarking on a chill that was not actually in the air.

The desolate peace of the parlor was disturbed when Gawain and Ann entered the room at teatime. Her brother slapped a sheaf of papers on the piecrust table at the side of one sofa.

“Your special license,” he announced. “If you still want to marry Bliven.”

Matilda stopped on the rug in front of the window. Hadn’t she called Gawain off? Perhaps not.

“Why wouldn’t I want to marry him?” she said, picking up the papers to peruse them. She had dreamed that if she married Theodore, a knock would come at the door and Jacob would be there. Why couldn’t she shake the notion that marrying his father would save her child?

“You might want to marry Ewan Hales,” Gawain said.

“What?” her father said. Her mother glanced up from the afghan she was worrying between her paint-stained fingers. Not that she had touched a paintbrush since she’d arrived.

“He has indicated he is willing,” Gawain said. “He’ll be Fitzwalter someday. It’s an excellent match. Almost as brilliant as Alys’s marriage, and very unexpected for you, Matilda.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Mr. Hales had a chat with Gawain,” Ann said in a slow, patient voice. Normally, her voice was quite musical, but Matilda knew she had another style that she used for talking to the patients she sometimes saw in her role as an Indian healer.

Matilda chuckled. A fallen woman, nearly past her youth, with a two-year-old son, had two eligible suitors? Of course, one was dying and the other had recently been her family’s employee, but still. How droll. She giggled.

Gawain frowned in her direction, then put his hand on their father’s shoulder and bent to speak in the older man’s ear. Matilda wondered what he was saying. An instruction to talk Matilda into one suitor or the other, given the fact that she wasn’t doing anything to run the factories lately? She laughed again.

Her life had fallen apart, despite having worked so hard to rebuild it after Jacob had been weaned. Suddenly, all that effort seemed the silliest of pastimes. Who had she been kidding? Life had been bound to punish her for those sins. Lady Bricker, whose bad advice on how to obtain a proposal from Theodore Bliven, had helped put her on her path in the first place, had lost her first child to a stillbirth and hadn’t conceived again. For a long time it seemed that Matilda had been so lucky; blessed, really. And now, all ashes. Her child gone and her brother conspiring with her father to take her position away.

She found it nothing but funny. She started to laugh, hard enough that she’d have bent at the waist if her tight stays hadn’t prevented her. Light-headed from the effort of breathing, she reached for the mantelpiece for balance, then stumbled.

Hands caught her under her arms. She muttered a protest. Her vision failed.

Sometime later, she found herself blinking on the sofa, concerned faces staring down at her.

“You fainted,” Ann said kindly, her large dark eyes fixed on Matilda’s wrist, where she was checking her pulse. “Have you been eating, Matilda?”

She just giggled, a hollow sound this time.

Ann glanced over her shoulder. “Some poppy syrup, I think, to help her rest, then beef tea.”

Matilda attempted to keep her giggles to herself while people moved around, speaking outside of her hearing. She didn’t attempt to rise. What was the point?

Eventually, Mrs. Miller came with a little cup full of some brownish fluid and a piece of toast. Ann insisted she drink, then chase the foul stuff with a bite of toast. Eventually, the giggles stopped and her thoughts, hazy and convoluted though they had been, faded into nothing.

 

That evening, Ewan sat in his hotel’s front parlor, reading the local newspapers, which were piled, edition after edition, on a table. He hadn’t been invited to Matilda’s home or indeed heard anything from the family. Why was he here if they wouldn’t let him help? He had expected to hear from Gawain. At least he’d put in a day’s work at the warehouse, reviewing the books.

He flipped through the paper, checking advertisements, and then returned to the front page. On page three, something finally caught his attention: the Redcake name.

He frowned as he read the article. It appeared that Redcake’s had been buying up wheat fields. Odd, when he didn’t think they had any flour factories, but maybe that was next on Matilda’s list. She must have been planning to eventually cut ties with Douglas Flour as a supplier, just as the London bakery had. Had one of his subordinates decided to punish her for that decision by adulterating the flour, thereby destroying her business before she could ever use her wheat?

How did Jacob’s disappearance fit into this?

He threw down the paper and ran his fingers through his hair, then went to the window. It was full dark out now, much too late to make any use of this information. Why hadn’t Matilda told him about buying the farms? He supposed the kidnapping had come so fast after the flour problem that she hadn’t thought the possibilities through before being distracted.

He had to wonder, though. Could Jacob be imprisoned in a Douglas Industries building? If he was even alive.

 

Ewan went directly to the Redcake home after breakfast the next morning. Much too early for a call, but he didn’t care. They needed to take some action, and he wanted to be involved.

“She isn’t well,” Mrs. Miller confided in the front hall.

“What do you mean?” Ewan asked.

“Sir Gawain’s wife is keeping a close eye on her. She went a bit hysterical yesterday.”

“How can that be a surprise? She’s lost her child.” He handed her his gloves.

“It became worse, Mr. Hales. I’m not sure what was going on, but Sir Gawain bustled out of the parlor late in the day, demanding I bring the poppy syrup. I think the poor lamb had fainted.”

Ewan frowned. “The last thing a fainting woman needs is poppy syrup.”

Mrs. Miller sighed. “Lady Redcake is all but a physician. She must know best.”

“Maybe last night, Mrs. Miller, but not now. I have discovered some new information and I must see Miss Redcake.”

Ewan looked up as he heard footsteps on the stairs. Sir Bartley came down. Ewan nodded his head respectfully, then plowed forward.

“Did you know about the wheat fields, sir? That Matilda was buying up local farms?”

Sir Bartley glanced up at the ceiling. “I am not involved in the operations anymore.”

“This is long-term planning, sir. If her suppliers thought she was going to cut them out of business, they might have taken action.”

“Like Douglas adulterating our flour.”

“And taking Jacob to distract her,” Ewan said.

The cast of Sir Bartley’s mouth became grim. “Who knew about this?”

“I was looking through a weekly paper last night. A local. The news was a couple of weeks old.”

Sir Bartley nodded. “Anyone would have known, then. I’ll speak to Matilda.”

“I’d like to talk to her myself. I’m working for Douglas now. I need to understand, so I can reassure my people. A word in the right ear might make all of these problems go away.”

“You can’t see my daughter. She’s in Ann’s care.”

Ewan stared his former employer directly in the eye. “I have to insist, sir. The situation is much too important. I cannot imagine your daughter not wanting to explain herself if it will help her cause.”

Sir Bartley shook his head, then pointed a gnarled finger toward the stairs. Ewan nodded, then went up. Social niceties didn’t matter much to him right then.

He went to the door that led to a bedroom over the front of the house. It appeared to be the best room, so he knocked, then entered. The room’s decorations were an older style, some kind of busy, red-and-black–patterned wallpaper, red velvet drapes, dark heavy furniture.

A log cracked loudly in the fireplace, the noise drawing his attention to the armchair pulled in front of the fire. There sat his Matilda, in a dressing gown, an afghan of riotous blues and oranges pulled over her lap. She clashed terribly with the room, between her copper hair, her blue wrapper, and the afghan.

“You don’t belong here.” He’d spoken aloud before he meant to, but his lover scarcely moved her head. Frowning, he went to her and knelt at her side. Her eyelids weren’t closed precisely, but they weren’t open either. When he put his hand on hers he felt cool skin. He reached for her wrist and felt her pulse. He didn’t know exactly what he was feeling for, but when he tried his own, he found it much stronger. Was that the difference between a man and a woman, or was hers more subdued than it ought to be?

“Matilda,” he said, rubbing the afghan over her right thigh. “Matilda, I need you to pay attention to me.”

Her head tilted at a strange angle. She licked her lower lip, very slowly.

“Matilda, it’s Ewan. In your bedroom.”

She blinked, her eyelids stopping again at half-mast.

“I’d like to ravish you,” he said in a conversational tone.