- -
- 100%
- +
She shook her head. ‘It is better to make a clean break of it. I cannot ask my staff to work half a year, and wait for me to return. It would not be fair.’
‘I see.’
‘And there is your family to consider,’ she said.
‘My family?’ It was strange that she would think of them, since he spent little enough time considering their feelings. ‘If you are thinking of yesterday’s meeting with Arthur, put it from your mind.’
‘It is not that,’ she said. ‘I am sure your father would prefer that there not be a shop girl in family.’
‘My father?’ Stephen laughed. ‘My father can go to hell and take his opinions with him. When he does, I will be Larchmont. And I do not care a fig if my duchess has a shop.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t.’ Perhaps it was just a contrary wish to do the thing that would most annoy Larchmont. Or perhaps it was that she was smiling at him for the first time all evening.
He put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her out of her chair and away from the table. ‘It is plain that talk of closing de Bryun’s upsets you. We can discuss it tomorrow. Or some other time.’ There were weeks left before the season changed and they must leave for home. ‘But we will find a way to handle it that will be satisfactory to all concerned.’ He kissed her cheek.
And as they always did, when he was this close to her, troubles did not seem so important. ‘All that matters is that we are together.’ He kissed her again. ‘Although I do not know what I shall do with my nights, now that I have used up all my time with you. Last night was four, was it not?’
This actually coaxed a grin from her. ‘Nothing happened on the second night. I do not think we should count it.’
‘On our wedding day, you suggested I save my last visit to your bed for a special occasion. Christmas, perhaps. Or my birthday, which is in March.’
‘March is a very long time away,’ she said.
‘It is,’ he agreed.
And quite suddenly, she was in his arms, clinging to him so tightly that it would have taken all his strength to part from her. ‘Then let us make the last night last for ever,’ she whispered. ‘Just promise me, that, no matter what might happen, we will not be parted.’
‘Never,’ he agreed.
‘Then it will be all right,’ she said, as he manoeuvred them towards the stairs and bed. ‘As long as I have you, the rest does not matter.’
* * *
Margot awoke alone the next morning in her husband’s heavily curtained bed. Just beyond the velvet, Stephen was assuring his valet that he had no intention of leaving the chamber until evensong, if then. Breakfast should be brought to the room. Tea as well. Nothing else was required from the servants for the rest of the day.
And then the bed curtains parted again and he returned, throwing himself back on to the mattress. ‘There. Sorted. I will make the night last for ever, just as you commanded. Come to me, my love.’
She did not need to comply, for the force of his return had bounced her to his side. His arms were about her again and she felt warm and protected. The slight throbbing in her cut finger made her snuggle even closer to him. Perhaps there was madness in his family. Stephen seemed quite normal, as did Louisa. But Arthur and the duke... She shuddered.
‘Cold?’ He pulled the comforter over them and she did not have to explain. ‘Let me take care of everything.’
‘That would be nice,’ she admitted. Not even the duke could harm her, if she was with Stephen. Though he had wished aloud that she could be thrown into the river, she doubted that he was liable to carry out the threat.
It annoyed her that one visit from the man had left her ready to give up. But, in her defence, it was one thing to stand up to the likes of Arthur and Mr Pratchet, and quite another to stand alone against the wrath of a peer. Larchmont had almost infinite power and wealth, and he had already taken a dislike to her.
He was also quite mad. The interaction with him had shaken her more than she’d expected. There was something in his eyes that hinted a broken counter was the least of her worries, should she have further dealings with him.
Stephen noticed her mood and made a soft, shushing sound in comfort. ‘What is it that troubles you so?’
She should tell him about the visit from the duke. She should have told him immediately after she had returned. But it seemed there was trouble enough between father and son, without her adding to it. ‘Nothing, really.’ Perhaps, when she had got over the shock of his first visit, she could seek out Larchmont and assure him of their plans to leave Bath. Then she could explain to Stephen that any potential problems with the family had already been settled.
‘You are not worrying about the shop again, are you?’ He pulled her on top of him. ‘Stop it immediately. I have found a solution that will satisfy us both.’
‘Really.’ It was probably the plan to stay in bed with him until she no longer cared. That solution was impractical, though it had certain advantages.
‘You must appoint a manager. What’s the fellow with the ears?’
‘Ears?’ To the best of her knowledge, all men had them. Even the man currently easing her into a more comfortable position on his torso sported a pair.
‘The tall chap in the front of the shop, with ginger hair and...’ Stephen cupped his hands to the sides of his head and flapped them.
‘Jasper,’ she said, embarrassed at noticing a resemblance.
‘Train him up on the running of the shop, just as you said you are training a girl to do the goldsmithing. You might continue drawing your designs wherever we go, just as other women sketch flowers. Then you might visit Bath periodically to deliver them and be sure that things are running smoothly. We could return in summer, of course.’
Jasper was the only clerk she had retained from the dark days when Mr Montague had run the shop. He knew more about it than anyone, other than herself. There had been only a small amount of disruption on the days she had been late this summer.
And Jasper had been the one to encourage Miss Ross to take over the workbench. Margot might not have come to that decision without his help, since she had been set to advertise. But it appeared that it had been a wise one.
‘You are thinking about it, aren’t you?’ Stephen gave her an encouraging smile.
She nodded and smiled back.
‘While I would not normally encourage a woman in this position to think of another man, today I will allow it.’
She glanced down to notice that she was straddling her husband in a way totally inappropriate to be discussing business. ‘You are sure you would not find it embarrassing to have your family associated with trade?’
‘It is not as if my name is on the door. Nor do I mean to stand in the window hawking watch fobs to a holiday crowd. And I have never been ashamed of you.’
It was true. He had been vexed with her, he had lusted after her and perhaps, for a time, he hated her. But he had never given an indication that she was an embarrassment to him.
And Larchmont was not embarrassed, so much as angry. She would assure him of her plan to distance herself from contact with the customers, and remind him of Justine’s relation to Bellston. Her sister still owned half the business and no one remarked on it at all. ‘So we might not have to close the shop at all,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Not if you do not wish to.’
‘I do not,’ she said, relieved to be able to speak honestly.
‘Very well, then.’ Her husband lay back upon the pillows, and placed his hands upon her hips to guide her. ‘You may now reward me for my brilliance.’
Chapter Twenty
Margot had married the most brilliant man in England. It was an overstatement, perhaps. But not by very much.
When the shop had opened again on Monday, she had pulled her senior clerk aside and made her proposal to him. His eyes had widened, just as she suspected hers had, when Stephen had made the suggestion to her. It was as though he could suddenly see possibilities that had not occurred to him before. But rather than accepting out of hand, he had requested that they go into the office and discuss things in detail.
As an employer who was used to being promptly obeyed, she had found it annoying. But as a shop owner searching for a competent manager, she had been secretly pleased. He had wanted to negotiate not just a rise in pay, but hiring of additional staff, changes in the scheduling and the implementation of several of his own ideas as to the display of stock. While he might not know the craft as well as she did, it was clear that he understood the running of the business.
* * *
The next day, as they had arranged, she arrived several hours later than usual to find Jasper, now called Mr Suggins, wearing a smart black suit and smiling over the counter as he welcomed customers to de Bryun’s. The shop was immaculate. The staff was tidy as a paper of pins. The transactions were recorded correctly in the accounting book. There was very little for her to do, other than work with the more exclusive customers and guide Miss Ross in the casting of a hand clasp for a necklace.
Since she did not have to stay late to lock the doors, she was home in time to dine with her husband. After, she climbed into his bed, secure in the knowledge that she did not have to rise from it before the sun was fully up. While she did not precisely enjoy turning the minutiae of business over to another, she could become used to it.
* * *
How things had changed in just a few days. A week had passed and she was enjoying a cup of tea in the private salon, doodling designs for a series of bracelets and actually looking forward to the time that she could go home to Stephen.
Suddenly, her peace was disturbed by the clank of the bell and the crack and bang of the shop door swinging wide on its hinges to strike the frame before slamming shut. While it was inappropriate to scold a customer for carelessness, this one should use more caution, lest he break the window glass.
Broken glass.
There was no need to look into the front of the shop. She knew who had come. And all her plans for their next meeting, to stay rational and pleasant and have a discussion, had fled out the door before it could shut.
He was asking for her again. He sounded reasonable. It was a lie, of course. Reasonable men did not break things to prove a point. Perhaps, if she stayed still, like a rabbit in a thicket, he would not realise that she was here. Maybe he would go again.
Dear, sweet Jasper was lying for her, denying she was in the shop. But it was not working. ‘Now see here, your Grace, you cannot simply barge into the back rooms.’ It was very brave of Jasper to try to contain the man. If they both survived this, she would thank him.
She could hear the duke’s wordless response to opposition: the splintering of breaking glass.
She was up and moving before the last pieces hit the floor. If she wished to prove herself worthy of the Standish name, she must not let him find her hiding in a back room like a coward. When she arrived in the main room, the last of the customers were scurrying out the door and Larchmont’s cane was poised and ready to strike the next mirror on the pillar beside him.
‘Stop this nonsense immediately, your Grace,’ she said. Then followed the demand with a curtsy so that he might not notice her shaking knees.
‘Nonsense, Lady Fanworth?’ He said her name with scorn, as though doubting that lady was the correct term to use. ‘There is nothing nonsensical about my behaviour. It is a result of the surprise I feel to see you still here, after the perfectly reasonable request I made, on my last visit.’ He was smiling at her as though nothing was wrong. Even with their limited acquaintance she was sure that the expression did not bode well.
‘I discussed the future of de Bryun’s with Fanworth,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘And we immediately turned over its management to my assistant. I will remain as a silent partner, until we leave Bath in a month.’ It was an exaggeration. But she hoped it would do.
‘You d-d-discussed it with Fanworth?’
He was laughing at Stephen. She had not liked Larchmont before. In truth, she was terrified of him. But this was the first time she could describe her feelings as hatred. ‘Do not talk about my husband in that way,’ she said, unable to stop herself.
‘He needs his wife to defend him, now?’ Larchmont’s lip curled in disgust. ‘I knew he was a fool. But I did not think him a coward, hiding behind a woman’s skirts.’
‘Stephen is perfectly capable of defending himself,’ she said. Anger was good. She sounded stronger, and thus she felt stronger. She lifted her chin and straightened her spine. ‘But if he is not here to do so, I will not stand in silence and listen to you speak ill of him.’
‘You have spirit,’ Larchmont said in a tone that was almost admiration. ‘That is a shame. It would go easier for you if you did not.’ Then he lashed out with his cane and broke another mirror as a punishment for it.
She did her best not to flinch as the glass crashed to the floor. ‘I understand that you are displeased with Fanworth’s choice of a wife. There is no need to destroy the shop to make your point.’
He glanced around him and then said, in a voice silky with menace. ‘Apparently, there is. I told you to close the place. And yet, a week later, here we are.’
‘I am removing myself from the business,’ she said. ‘I will be gone from Bath in a month. I will rusticate in Derbyshire. Surely that is what you really want.’
‘Do not tell me what I want,’ he said, tapping his cane on the floor. ‘What I told you to do was to close the doors.’
She glanced past him to Jasper, who turned the sign in the window to read ‘Closed’. It would do no good to anyone should strangers wander in and witness the duke’s temper. And they might yet save a pane or two of glass by mollifying him. ‘But, your Grace, as I told you before, it is not so easy as that.’
‘“But, your Grace,”’ he repeated in a mewling voice. ‘Do I need to turn the key in the lock for you?’
‘There is more to it,’ she said, as patiently as possible. ‘There are still orders that need to be filled. And taxes to be paid. I cannot just turn the staff out in the street.’
‘Trifles,’ he barked, waving his stick wide. ‘I gave you a simple instruction. You disobeyed.’
His tone implied that punishment was inevitable. He wished to break things. Most of all, he wished to break her. She could deprive him of that, at least. ‘I obey only one man and he is your son. And I do not think Fanworth agrees with your plans for this shop.’
That was all it took to drive Larchmont the rest of the way to madness. The cane came down hard on a glass display table by the door, striking a vase full of flowers so hard that it shattered against the opposite wall. When the cane came up again, it hooked the chiffon curtain, tangled briefly with it before bringing it to the floor.
Jasper gathered the shop girls and herded them from the room, shutting them in the office for their own safety. Then he came back to defend her.
She caught his shoulder before he could attempt to stop Larchmont from further destruction. If he raised a hand against a peer, he would be lucky not to hang.
He wordlessly accepted her caution, but positioned himself in front of her to protect her from flying glass as the cane rose and fell, over and over. They had repaired the front counter since his last visit—now it was ruined again. A backswing hooked the leg of another little side table, sending a display of perfume bottles crashing to the ground.
‘Enough,’ Jasper said, unable to remain silent. ‘You have made your point, your Grace.’
He glanced at the boy with a raised eye brow. ‘No more? I do not think she is convinced, as of yet.’
By the time he was sure, she had lost three more mirrors and a second display case. And, as always when one was dealing with a member of the peerage, there was little she could do but watch it happen.
He took a deep breath, as though the exertion had winded him, then smiled and leaned upon his cane again. ‘There. I feel much better about the place now. You must shut the doors, if only to clean up the mess. If you open them again, I will return and do just as I have done today.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ she said. Louisa had been right. It was best just to avoid the man if he was in a bad mood. Her husband avoided him as well, probably because his behaviour was dangerously unpredictable. But no one had told her what to do if the mad peer sought you out.
‘I suppose you will go running to your husband over this. If he is smart, he will do nothing, just as he normally does. He has learned to hide from me. I allow it, as long as he keeps his mouth shut in public. But if he crosses me on this, tell him I shall dog his steps about town, until he reveals himself as the stammering idiot he is. He deserves it, for bringing you into the family.’
She had assumed that if she married above herself, she would meet with some objection. It had not mattered to her until now. What harm could snubs and unkind words do her?
But she had never imagined physical violence. Nor did she want to see her beloved humiliated in public, made to suffer for loving her. This madness had to stop, even if it meant the loss of the one thing that had value to her. ‘It will not be necessary to bring Fanworth into this,’ she said, grinding her teeth to stop them from chattering. ‘From this moment on de Bryun’s is no more.’
‘Very good,’ Larchmont said, smiling over the destruction as if it was an improvement. ‘Now that we have settled this matter, we must see if you can persuade me that you are worthy of my name. If not? Further corrections will be necessary.’
She did not hear him go. In truth, she did not hear much of anything for a time. Fear blotted out all other senses. But as her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, her last coherent thoughts were of what he might do to her the next time she failed to live up to his expectations.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Lord Fanworth.’ Mrs Sims poked her head into the salon, where Stephen was reading. Her normally placid expression was replaced with worry. ‘A girl is here, from the shop. There has been some sort of trouble.’
He set aside his book with a smile. ‘What sort of trouble? Has someone lost an earring?’ His smile faded, when he saw the girl, a petite brunette, her starched de Bryun’s pinafore rumpled and her face stained with tears.
‘Tell me all.’
But the girl, Susan, could barely get out a sentence around her tears. ‘A madman came into the shop. Everything is broken.’
Stephen seized her arm. ‘Lady Fanworth. Was she hurt?’
‘I do not think so.’
The girl was useless, if she could not reassure him. ‘The carriage. How soon can it be ready, Mrs Sims?’ Any delay would be too long. It took him only a moment to decide that the girl should wait for it and guide it back, with the driver and two stout grooms. He would set out on foot.
Without the bother of a vehicle, it took only a few minutes to cross the Circus and run down George Street to Milsom. But when he reached the shop, he found the shades pulled, the sign turned to ‘Closed’ and the door tightly locked against him.
Damn it to hell. Why had he not asked her for a key? At a moment such as this, he should not have to be left pounding on the doorframe.
The door opened a crack and a girl who he had not seen before whispered, ‘We are closed, sir.’
‘Not for me.’ Had it really been so long since he had been here that the staff did not know him? He forced his boot into the crack in the door before she could shut it again.
‘Lord Fanworth.’ The ginger with the ears appeared from behind her and opened hurriedly. ‘Of course. Come in.’
‘Where is my wife?’
‘Safe, my lord. But shaken.’
The room was in chaos, the floor littered with broken glass and scattered jewellery. It was silent other than the clank and tinkle of the cleaning in progress and the quiet weeping of one of the younger shop girls. The boy led him through the midst of it, to the private salon where Margot sat on the white-velvet couch, twisting a handkerchief in her hands.
‘What has happened here?’
‘Nothing,’ Margot stared towards the wrecked front room, dry eyed and impassive.
‘A robbery?’ If that was the case, he should never have allowed this to continue. Or at least he could have posted a man to keep her safe.
She was shaking her head. ‘An accident. Nothing more.’
‘An accident.’ It looked as if a whirlwind had got in through the front door and jumbled the contents of the room.
‘Nothing of importance,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But we will be closing the shop after all. If I must replace all of this...’ She swept her hand about the room and gave a light and very false smile. ‘It hardly seems worth the bother.’
‘Closing?’ Had they not just agreed that closing was not necessary? He turned his attention to the new manager, hovering at his wife’s side. ‘Enough of this. What really happened?’
Jasper, the ginger, wet his lips for a moment, as though weighing the punishment he might get for speaking against the one he was sure to get if he did not. And then, he said, ‘His Grace the Duke of Larchmont wishes the shop closed immediately.’ He glanced around him. ‘He was most adamant.’
‘Thank you for your honesty.’
He turned back to his poor, shattered wife and sat down beside her on the soft white velvet of the sofa. ‘This was not the first visit, was it?’
She shook her head.
‘The night you came home with the cut finger.’
‘He cracked the glass of the showcase with his cane.’
‘And why did you not tell me, then?’
‘I thought you agreed with him,’ she said. ‘And then I did not want to make more trouble between the two of you. After what happened when I met your brother...I wanted to do better this time.’
‘My father is not like Arthur,’ he replied. But she had learned that through bitter experience. ‘And you do not need to be better. None of this was your fault.’ It was his. He had known what his family was like. He should have protected her.
‘I thought our plan for a manager and leaving at the end of the season would be a reasonable compromise. I assumed, when I told him... I was wrong,’ she said, looking at the mess around her. ‘Perhaps if I had not provoked him...’
How often had he thought that when growing up? It would do no good to explain to her that she provoked him by her very existence, much as Stephen did, himself. ‘You did not provoke him. There was nothing you could have done,’ he said.
‘Perhaps the shop was a mistake, after all. I should have known better. Everyone told me not to take this job upon myself. But I was so sure I could manage. And now, look at it.’ Her voice was almost too calm, as though she still did not, could not, truly understand what had just happened.
He remained calm as well. It would not do to frighten her again, while she was still recovering from Larchmont. But inside, his blood boiled at the years of injustice. He had felt as she did now, when faced with his father’s random displays of temper. He’d choked on the fear and anger, letting it muzzle him.
No longer.
‘It is over,’ he agreed. ‘You will never be treated this way again. Wait for me here. I will return shortly, with the carriage.’
He strode into the main room, glaring at the frightened clerks. Jasper, the ginger, had opened the cash box and was paying off the staff before releasing them. ‘Do not dare!’ he barked.
Jasper slammed the box shut and jumped away from it, as though afraid that Larchmont’s violence ran in the family.
‘Clean up the mess. Find someone to repair the mirrors. We will open tomorrow, as usual. Nothing has changed.’ He added a second glare to show that it hadn’t. ‘And find Lady Fanworth a cup of tea.’ Then he unlocked the door and went out into the street.