Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) (6 page)

Matilda did as he suggested, because his reasoning made sense. She kept an eye on the street beyond the windows and saw, bobbing among the crowd, a
bare-headed man of middle years and middle height saunter past, his attire a plain brown.

Mr. Fenwick came to the table and took the seat facing the street, while Matilda faced across the dining area. He set a plate bearing three scones in the
middle of the table.

“You bought scones? Cinnamon scones? Fresh cinnamon scones?”

“I’m from the north. We appreciate a fresh scone at any hour.”

Men bearing cinnamon scones were worth tolerating, at least temporarily. Matilda set her hat on the bench beside her and removed her gloves. The waiter
brought over butter and jam, and before Matilda had properly buttered her scone, the chocolate arrived.

“If you’re trying to bribe your way into my good graces, it won’t work,” she said. “The attempt is delightful,
nonetheless.”

“I’m trying to prevent somebody from following you home,” Mr. Fenwick said, holding his cup of chocolate beneath his nose.

That nose was in proportion to the rest of him and had been broken at least once.

“You needn’t trouble yourself further, Mr. Fenwick. I saw your medium-height, brown-garbed man go by when you placed our order. That was
Aloysius Aberfeldy. He’s a man in love, and he frequently follows me.”

Mr. Fenwick set his chocolate down untasted. “Do you enjoy his attentions?”

“Aloysius isn’t in love with me. He’s in love with my house. These scones are marvelous.” Fresh, warm, light as a wish, and dusted
with sugar. Matilda promised herself she’d bake a batch on the next rainy day.  

“I am quite fond of my horse,” Mr. Fenwick said, sipping his chocolate, “but in love? Surely you indulge in hyperbole.”

Mr. Fenwick’s manners weren’t so much dainty as Continental. He savored his food, tore off one bite of scone at a time, and enjoyed it.

He’d probably be a good kisser, which signified exactly nothing.

“I am indulging in euphemism,” Matilda said, dipping a corner of her scone into her chocolate. “Mr. Aberfeldy covets my house. If he
married me, my house would become his house, absent convoluted trusts and vigilant trustees. Even with those in place, my dear husband could have me
committed at his whim to one of those very quiet estates with very high walls tucked very far in the country. Then he could do with the house as he saw
fit.”

Mr. Fenwick eschewed butter on his scone, for which Helen would have castigated him at length.

“You have a flare for the dramatic, Mrs. Bryce.”

Matilda paused in the middle of what constituted a small orgy, for Mr. Fenwick was
humoring
her, and that transgression required immediate
correction.

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd, sir, that the Almighty, in His perfect wisdom, has given us no commandment against coveting our neighbor’s
husband?”

Mr. Fenwick sat straighter. “There’s the one about adultery.”

“Irrelevant,” Matilda replied. “Adultery contemplates a man’s bad behavior again, with a wife not his own, as if the Deity wanted
to emphasize a point through repetition of the obvious, perhaps. None of the commandments address the possibility of a woman straying onto some other
lady’s preserves. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I’m sure you will enlighten me.”

“I will offer you my theory. Your chocolate is getting cold.”

“While you are warming to your topic. You should have chocolate more often.”

“Perhaps I should. In any case, I think the Creator knew that after a woman has had a glimpse of the wonders of holy matrimony, she will have no
inclination to cavort with anybody else’s husband.”

Mr. Fenwick chewed his scone contemplatively. “People remarry.”

“Men remarry so their children have a mother, or their household has an unpaid drudge who’s also required by the church and the law to grant
her husband other favors. Women remarry lest they starve or worse.”

Matilda was being honest, but she was also presenting herself as a female about whom no sane male would develop wayward notions. She’d been dewy-eyed
and sweet once upon a time.

Fat lot of good that had done her.  

Mr. Fenwick’s gaze remained on the foot traffic beyond the windows. He’d eaten one scone, finished off his chocolate, and was apparently
waiting for Matilda to finish hers.

She’d love to fault his manners, except she couldn’t. “Say something, Mr. Fenwick.”

“We have something in common,” he said. “The status of wife is much desired in certain circles. Among young ladies, to marry well is
considered the accomplishment of a lifetime, though marrying well and marrying happily are not synonymous. You attained the status of wife, though
apparently at the cost of your regard for the institution of marriage. So too, with my situation. I have means and influence many long for, and I
don’t want them. There he is again.”

Matilda wanted to ask Mr. Fenwick what the devil he meant by those Delphic observations, but she instead focused on the passersby. A bareheaded man in a
brown suit strolled past, though he studied the surroundings as if inspecting the marvels of Pompeii rather than a typical London street.

“You’re sure that’s the fellow who was following me?”

“I’m sure. You stopped, he stopped. You moved on, he moved on. He’s passed by here twice while we’ve been eating, as if he
can’t figure out where you got off to.”

The luscious scone, the rich chocolate, the pleasure of airing opinions all turned to so much bile in Matilda’s belly.

“That’s not Mr. Aberfeldy. I’ve never seen that man before in my life.”

Mrs. Bryce of the misanthropic theological theories had become a subdued creature who followed Ashton out the back of the coffee shop and accompanied him
through gloomy alleys and side streets into a tiny back garden.

“We have a problem,” she said, surveying her own back door. “This door locks from the inside rather than with a key. Pippa has likely
sought her bed, and my key fits only the front door.”

Ashton could go around to the front and let himself in, but whoever was following Mrs. Bryce had seen her accept his escort. The sun had set, a single
cricket was trying to ignore the spring chill, and Ashton was not about to leave a woman alone in the gathering darkness if he could help it.

“We’ll improvise.” He extracted his folding knife from his boot and examined the ground-floor windows. The house was old, glazing cost
money, and he was determined.

“That is a nasty bit of weaponry, Mr. Fenwick.”

“Success in life is largely a matter of having the right tools.” If you were a bastard. If you were not, then coin and social connections would
suffice.

The first window had been tightly latched, but the second, which opened into a sitting room, proved accommodating. Ashton used the slim blade to lift the
latch from the outside and soon had the window open.

“Don’t let Helen see you do that,” Mrs. Bryce said. “She’ll get ideas.”

“She needs an entire team of instructors and tutors,” Ashton said, tossing the package into the sitting room and hoisting himself through the
window. “For that child, a single governess wouldn’t stand a chance.” He leaned out the window, scooped up the lady, and hauled her in
after him. Mrs. Bryce was a curvaceous armful of female, agreeably scented with lemon verbena, and he’d caught her by surprise.

A pleasure that.

She yelped, and the instant her feet touched the carpet, she jerked away from him. “You might have simply unlocked the door for me, Mr.
Fenwick.”

He picked up her package and passed it to her. “You’re welcome. Why was that man following you? Does he covet your house as well?”

If Mrs. Bryce thought the lovestruck Mr. Aberfeldy was solely interested in her real estate, she was daft.

“I’d never seen him before. I told you that.”

The parlor was all but dark. Lighting candles or starting a fire in the hearth would mean a trip to the kitchen. If Ashton left the room, though, he
suspected Mrs. Bryce would disappear to her own quarters.

Possibly for the next two weeks.

“You should replace the latch on this window.” He closed the shutters, then the window itself, and secured the latch.

Shutters kept out wind and sun, true, but their first purpose was to prevent an intruder from bashing through the glass and gaining access to the house.
Shutters couldn’t serve that purpose unless they were closed and latched from the inside.

“Thank you for that very obvious reminder, Mr. Fenwick. You neglected to mention that I should chide my maid for not securing the shutters before
retiring. That job, however, is mine, and I was detained by no less person than yourself.”

The parlor was chilly, Mrs. Bryce’s tone was arctic.

“He frightened you.”

Mrs. Bryce’s fear reassured Ashton, because a woman living with only a young maid on the premises and limited security was easily preyed upon.
Weapons might increase her danger, because they could be turned upon her.

“You frightened me,” she shot back, rubbing her arms. “He merely trailed behind me on the walkway, along with a substantial portion of
the neighborhood’s working population. You’re the one who claims that man’s attentions were cause for alarm.”

She was very frightened, indeed. Ashton took off his coat and draped it around her shoulders.

“Have you another hypothesis to explain his casual patrol of the street where he last saw you?”

Mrs. Bryce clutched Ashton’s coat close when he’d expected her to toss it back at him. “Maybe he was looking for you, and he saw you
escorting me from the Goose earlier in the day. It’s been years since I’ve been pursued by any save Mr. Aberfeldy and his ilk. Then you show
up, and I supposedly become quarry of a different sort.”

She’d been pursued by somebody at some time. Ashton saved that admission for exploration when he had enough light to assess her demeanor.

“I’ll need a candle for my rooms,” he said. “Shall we take this discussion to the kitchen?”

Mrs. Bryce led the way through a house grown dark, her steps sure, even on the stairs leading down to the lower floor.

“Is there a cellar below the kitchen?”

“Yes,” she said as they reached a large, cozy kitchen. “For storage and coal deliveries.”

“You’ll want to make sure your coal chute is securely locked.”

In most households, the fire in the kitchen hearth never went out. It could burn down to ashes and coals, which would be carefully banked for the night.
The coals in Mrs. Bryce’s kitchen cast some illumination, enough for Ashton to see that his landlady was pale and angry.

“I know you mean well, Mr. Fenwick, and it’s possible you have spared me a problem with your escort tonight, but I have owned this house for
more than five years without being inconvenienced by criminals. My lodgers, by contrast, are a good deal of bother. Please stop presuming I’m
stupid.”

“I’m trying to be helpful.”

“And failing. I am very mindful of my safety, and Pippa’s. The coal chute is locked.”

He retreated into silence while she scooped fresh coal onto the hearth and worked a bellows that mostly sent ashes up the flue.

This woman did not give up, nor did she let up. Ashton admired her tenacity as much as he disliked her bitterness.

“I’m sorry,” she said, putting the bellows aside and dropping onto the raised hearth. “I ought by rights to dwell in a one-room
cottage in the West Riding, where my shrewish temperament need be endured by only my cat. The income from renting out the rooms upstairs exceeds what I
could make in the cent per cents. Then too, this house is worth more now than when I bought it, and I expect that trend to continue as long as I’m
here to maintain the premises.”

She spouted economics, an improvement over her scolding. Ashton decided to meet her halfway, though he was tempted to snatch a candle and leave her to her
ire.

“I’m more comfortable in the country myself.”

“What brings you to London?” she asked as the fire caught. “Besides the usual platitudes.”

“Duty. I became responsible for properties and the people on them a few years ago. I am obligated to perform certain functions here in London as a
result. I don’t anticipate being in Town past the end of June.”

“You cannot perform these functions through third parties?”

“I tried that. No luck.” Alyssa had set him up with all manner of blushing young maidens, each more tongue-tied and well dowered than the last.

“You can sit, Mr. Fenwick. I’m not some duchess that all must stand on their manners before me.”

Even her graciousness had a bite. Ashton took the other side of the hearth, so the fire crackled between them. Shadows danced on the kitchen walls, and an
old house settled in for another night.

“I’m tired,” Mrs. Bryce said. “I thought being a widow would be the great prize for which I endured years of marriage. I know that
makes me sound like a monster. My husband was unkind, and those who arranged the match knew it. Now I live the smallest possible life, bothering the fewest
number of people. Why would anybody want to follow me?” she asked more softly. “I’ve devoted the last five years of my life to being
nobody.”

Ashton understood her lament, for he’d enjoyed very much being the next thing to a nobody.

“I might have overreacted to what I saw,” Ashton conceded. “If you’re fatigued, I should leave you in peace.”

He knew Mrs. Bryce hadn’t referred to a simple lack of sleep, though. She was weary of contending with a world that refused to accommodate her terms.
Most people gave up that struggle for the lesser effort of merely coping.

She rose and took a twisted taper from a jar on the mantel and used it to light a carrying candle. The light revealed both her beauty and a bewilderment
Ashton suspected she’d die rather than knowingly let him see.

“Good night,” he said, taking the candle from her. “Thank you for sharing your accommodations with me.”

She said nothing, as if sincere thanks were a forgotten element of her English vocabulary. As the fire leaped higher and gave off both light and heat,
Ashton realized she needed him to leave her alone in her own kitchen.