Dukes Prefer Blondes (The Dressmakers 4)

“I wish you would wait until Lord Bredon returns ­before—­”

“He left me in charge of domestic matters,” she said. “I was not five paces away when he told you so. Did he not say to you, ‘Give my lady every assistance’?”

“Indeed, he did. However, as the family solicitor, I’m allowed to give advice. It’s my duty, in fact. And I advise you to wait until his lordship returns.”

“You haven’t found a place for the boy,” she said. “I can employ him here. But whether I can or cannot isn’t the issue. If not for those two children, I should never have met my husband. I’m now in a position to do something for them, and I mean to do it.”

Clara told Westcott she’d arrange for removing Bridget from the Milliners’ Society. After all, Clara was one of the society’s sponsors, and her sister-­in-­law, Sophy, was one of the founders. While Clara remembered Radford’s warning about showing favoritism to Bridget, she knew this was altogether different. Bridget would simply be going on to do what all the girls there hoped to do: find respectable employment.

At present, Clara wasn’t sure exactly how she’d employ her, but she knew the answer would come soon enough. She’d made up her mind to have the two siblings. She’d been trained to deal with every sort of domestic crisis. It followed that she’d know what to do when the time came.

Not long after Westcott left, she wrote to Sophy, asking her to help arrange for Bridget’s departure from the Society.

Then Clara went down to inform her in-­laws.

Sentiment,” said her father-­in-­law, with a wave of his hand, after Clara had explained her reasons for sending for the Coppys. “You would never make a proper barrister, madam. One must look at the facts with a cool, considering eye. One must disengage one’s emotions. The only emotions needing to be engaged are those of the judge and jury.”

“I don’t see what sentiment has to do with this,” Clara said. He was, as one would expect, intimidating, and more so than her husband. As he ought to be, considering he’d had several more decades’ practice in the theater that was the courtroom. But she could not let him cow her any more than she’d let his son do so. “We post rewards for information. The police and others reward informers. While neither child informed, precisely, they did lead me to my husband—­”

“Indirectly.”

“And indirectly, I’ve placed them in danger,” she said. “I realize the lives of pauper children are hard and hazardous, conditions no one person can cure. However, I embroiled myself in the Coppys’ affairs, and they’re likely to suffer as a result. You know what those gangs are like and how ruthless they can be. The boy is frightened, and I don’t doubt Bridget is frightened for him—­though she would be right to be frightened for herself as well. I cannot in good conscience leave these two children as they are. I promise to make sure they do not disturb your household in any way. If that happens in spite of my efforts, they’ll be placed elsewhere. But they must be placed, sir. They have—­indirectly or not—­changed my life, and I will not turn my back on them.”

“You would never sway a jury with that farrago,” said her father-­in-­law.

“She might very well do so, George,” said his wife.

“Ah, well, she’s prettier than most barristers.” He gave a short laugh, so like his son’s. “Very well, Clara. Do as you like. You’ve been charged with sparing us every possible disturbance. We may certainly indulge this little idiocy of yours.”

“George.”

“Well, it is idiocy, and you know it, Duchess,” he said.

But Clara knew he was only being irritating for the fun of it. And so she smiled and left them to debate the matter in the way they liked best.

London

Wednesday 25 November

Jacob Freame wasn’t smiling. He was pulling at the new whiskers he’d been growing so his enemies wouldn’t recognize him. They’d come in pretty thick, but to Squirrel he still looked like Jacob, only hairier.

Hairier and madder than Squirrel had ever seen him. Squirrel made sure to keep his distance from those big fists.

Husher didn’t look worried. He never did. He only stood by the door, arms folded, listening.

“A lord!” Jacob said. “Him?”

“If it ain’t all over London yet, it will be,” Squirrel said. “Not but I expect they was talking about it at Jack’s already.”

Rumors always seemed to get to Jack’s coffeehouse quickest. A lot of them started there.

“We should’ve gone all together,” Jacob said. “We could’ve watched for our chance and done for him quick.”

Maybe not, Squirrel thought. In London you had Raven walking the streets day and night and crowds you could disappear into easy. You could lay for somebody in Fleet Street, say, near the Temple Gate, late at night.

In Richmond, Raven was harder to get at. Now he’d set himself up so high, getting at him meant much bigger trouble than before.

“Don’t look like no chance now,” Squirrel said. “He’s off to some castle a hundred miles away. Maybe two hundred. Not but what you always say leave the nobs alone.”

“Never mind that. Tell me what the yokels say.”

The yokels had a lot to say about everything. Squirrel knew to keep it short. “Everybody knew the minute he hired a post chaise. They was talking about it everywhere, him leaving his bride so sudden. Then word come down about what happened, how he was only going for a funeral and coming back, and how there was more servants coming to work at the house.”

More servants meant more eyes on gates and doors and windows and more ears listening for trouble, but Jacob didn’t look worried. He was walking from one end of the room to the other, fooling with his whiskers. Thinking.

“If he didn’t take the Long Meg with him, he’ll be back soon enough,” he said. He looked at Husher. “You’ve seen her. Would you leave her a minute longer than you could help it?”

Husher grinned, showing crooked brown teeth, and not a full set, neither.

“I dunno when he’ll be back,” Squirrel said. “That’s why I come here. You said to watch him, is all, and I can’t, can I, him in a post chaise, and me—­what?—­runnin’ after?”

“Don’t be a halfwit,” Jacob said. “What good is it to me what he does a hundred miles away?”

Not much good in London, or anywheres else, Squirrel thought. It didn’t look like the best idea, finishing off a brand-­new nob everybody was watching and talking about. Even with Husher helping, it could go wrong. Then the hawks would hunt them down and put ropes round their necks and leave them to dangle slow on purpose while everybody watched. After that, the hangman’d sell off their clothes and the doctors would get the corpses and cut ’em up.

Jacob stopped walking. “We’re going back,” he said.

Husher grinned and nodded.

Squirrel told himself they owed it to Chiver to finish Raven off. But his voice sounded squeaky when he said, “Now? He won’t be back—­”

“Not now. Use your head. We’re going to get ready first.” Jacob smiled. “We’re going to make sure nothing goes wrong. Except for him and his fine lady, ha ha.”

Husher laughed, too.

Chapter Eighteen

THE BARRISTER . . . 2. Who can tell a

ll the windings and turnings, all the hollownesses and dark corners of the mind? It is a wilderness in which a man may wander more than forty years, and through which few have passed to the promised land.

—­The Jurist, Vol. 3, 1832

Friday 27 November

Westcott delivered the two Coppys in the early ­afternoon.

He must have devoted the trip to Richmond to terrifying them. This would explain why, when presented to the duke and duchess, the siblings stood stiff, white-­faced, and tongue-­tied.

After surviving this ordeal, they went with a footman belowstairs, to meet the rest of the staff—­and make a good impression, Clara hoped. If they didn’t, the servants would make their lives difficult.

At present, however, she had to pass her own test.

The duke was regarding her with one dark eyebrow upraised. It was the same way his son would look at her from time to time, as though debating whether she owned anything resembling intellect. It produced the same irritation. But these Radford men couldn’t help themselves, and one couldn’t expect His Grace, at eighty, to change his personality.

She’d written to Radford about the Coppys. She was sure his reply would question her intelligence and accuse her of sentimentality. But she knew she was right in this, and if she didn’t begin her marriage by standing up for what she believed in, his powerful personality would crush her. Besides, had not Grandmama Warford told her husbands could be educated?

Too, Clara watched the way the duchess interacted with her husband. She’d had decades to learn how to manage a too-­intelligent Radford male.

“The boy,” the duke said. “Not much in the brain box, has he? Another reformed juvenile delinquent like the one the French dressmakers adopted?”

His son must have told him about Fenwick.

“I believe Toby’s brief experience in Jacob Freame’s gang chastened him,” Clara said. She’d been amazed at the transformation. The brashness and insolence had vanished.