Mrs. Jeffries Rocks the Boat (21 page)

Smythe and Betsy sat at the wooden bench under the oak tree in the middle of the garden. It was a quiet, secluded place, perfect for sweethearts. A luminous moon peeked out from behind the branches of the tree, the scent of lavender and summer roses filled the air and in the distance, a night bird sang. But neither Betsy nor Smythe noticed the beauty of the summer night.

They were both too scared.

She was afraid Smythe was going to tell her he wasn’t sweet on her anymore, and Smythe was terrified that once she knew the truth about his past, she’d feel differently about him.

“Go on, then,” she said. She smoothed her skirt over her lap and then twined her hands together to keep them from shaking. “You said you wanted to talk.”

“I’m not sure where to begin,” he said softly.

“Start at the beginnin’,” she advised. “That’s what Mrs. Jeffries always tells us.”

“Yeah, I reckon that’s as good a place as any.” He cleared his throat. “All right, then. Do you remember when you first came to the inspector’s house?”

“I didn’t exactly come there,” she reminded him. “It was more like I collapsed on his doorstep.” The memory was a hard and painful one, but she didn’t shrink from it. Her sense of self, of pride, had grown greatly in the past few years. Perhaps it was because for the first time in her life, people she admired seemed to think she was worth something. She’d finally decided that having been born and raised in the poorest part of London wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. She hadn’t asked to go hungry or watch her younger sister die from starvation. That’s what people didn’t understand about being poor. It’s not a condition that you decide upon. It’s something that’s thrust upon you, like the color of your hair or eyes. Her people had been decent and hardworking. Both her parents had labored long and hard to take care of their family. But they’d died, and she’d been faced with some ugly choices. Just when life had seemed the worst for her, just when it seemed there was no hope or mercy or compassion
for people like her, she’d stumbled onto Inspector Witherspoon’s door stoop.

“Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d sat down on Mrs. Collier’s doorstep,” Betsy mused. She was referring to one of the inspector’s neighbors. “She’s not a bad woman, but she’d have shooed me away, not taken me in like Inspector Witherspoon did. I was lucky.”

“We were lucky, Betsy,” he told her softly. “You were sick and half starved, but so stubborn about earnin’ your keep that you tried to get up off your sickbed and help Mrs. Jeffries scrub floors. I remember how she had to give ya a right good tongue-lashin’ to get ya back to bed.”

“She was wonderful to me,” Betsy said. “She talked the inspector into giving me a position, helped me learn how to speak properly and most importantly made me think I was worth something.” She stopped and gave herself a small shake. This wasn’t about her. “Of course I remember coming here. What of it?”

“Mrs. Jeffries hadn’t been here long, as the inspector ’ad inherited the place from his Auntie Euphemia.” Smythe said.

“I know that,” she said. “You and Wiggins both worked for her, didn’t you? Come on now, Smythe, what’s this all about? Are you still annoyed with me because I didn’t believe that silly story you was tryin’ to tell me the other day?”

“It weren’t a silly story, lass,” he said calmly. “It were the truth. I wished you’da listened men. If you ’ad, this wouldn’t be so hard.”

Betsy said nothing. She simply stared out into the the night. In her heart of hearts she’d known he was telling the truth. He wasn’t a liar. And in one part of her mind, she’d suspected there was more to him man he’d let on. To begin with, there were all those gifts everyone in the household received. Like when she lost her best pair of gloves this winter and men she’d found an even better pair lying out on her bed. And Mrs. Goodge’s expensive medicine for her rheumatism. New bottles were always popping up in her room. No matter how many silly poems he wrote, Wiggins always had a fresh
supply of nice notepaper. Even Mrs. Jeffries wasn’t left out. The gift giver always made sure that she had the latest volume of Mr. Walt Whitman’s poems.

She bit her lip. The clues had been right under her nose. She just hadn’t wanted to see them. Everyone in the household received these gifts, except Smythe. And there were other things as well, like the times she’d seen him going through the post when he thought no one was looking. There’d always be a big white envelope for him. An envelope he’d hide in his pocket when he heard her coming. There had been so many things she could have asked him about. So many times when she could have confronted him about all the little mysteries surrounding him, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to admit it because admitting it would change things. She didn’t want things to change.

“I’ve got lots of money, Betsy,” he continued, when she didn’t speak. “More than enough to take care of both of us for the rest of our lives.”

“Are you rich?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He licked his suddenly dry lips. She didn’t look pleased. “I can give you anything you want, buy you a big house, we can travel, we can do whatever we want.”

“I see.” She knew that she ought to be happy. The man she cared about was telling her she’d never have to worry about being poor again. But somehow, all she felt was a sharp, searing pain in her heart. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “I want things to be the way they were. You’ve lied to me all these years. You’ve lied to all of us. Why? Was it to make us look like fools?”

His heart broke as he heard the ragged misery in her voice. “Never, lass. It was never that. I never meant fer it to ’appen this way. You’ve got to believe me.”

“How can I believe someone who’s just admitted he’s lied to me since the day we met?”

“I never meant fer it to happen,” he continued doggedly. “I wasn’t goin’ to stay. I only stayed because I promised Euphemia I’d hang about a bit and make sure the inspector
got settled in all right. He’d never had a big house or any money. So I stayed until after Mrs. Jeffries come and then you came and then before I knew it, we was out investigatin’ murders and actin’ like a family.”

“But you still could have told us,” Betsy insisted doggedly.

“You’d have treated me differently if I’d said anything,” he insisted.

“We wouldn’t. Luty Belle’s got money, and we don’t treat her any differently.”

“Only because you’ve always known she had money,” he argued. “If I’d come out and told everyone, you’d ’ave all acted like I didn’t have a right to be here. Like I was takin’ a good job away from some poor bloke that really needed it. I’ve ’eard the way you and Wiggins go on about that sort of thing, about people takin’ jobs when they don’t have to have one. I didn’t want you turnin’ on me. Not after I’d come to care for ya.”

She said nothing. In the pale light, Smythe could see her expression. Her face seemed carved of stone. He wished she’d scream or cry or call him names. Temper or tears, he could handle that. Anything but this awful silence. “Say something,” he begged.

With a barely perceptible nod, she shook her head as though she were shaking herself out of a dream. “What is there to say? You’re rich. I’m poor. You’ve stayed on at the house because it was comfortable for you, I suppose. I don’t know. I don’t think I know anything anymore.”

It was the God’s truth. Betsy’s world had suddenly started to collapse upon her. “If I can’t trust you,” she mused, “who on earth can I trust?” There was one part of her that wondered if he’d not told her the truth as a kind of test. To make sure she really cared about him and not his money. Maybe when she could feel something again, she’d get angry over that. She’d not made him jump through any hoops to win her affections. She couldn’t understand why she was so hurt. Most women would be dancing for joy to find out that a man
who was sweet on them was rich as sin, but she wasn’t. Perhaps it was because in a life of hard times, she’d learned to hold herself back, to keep her feelings to herself. That was how she’d survived the awful streets of the East End.

But she’d opened herself to Smythe, shared things with him she’d never told another living soul, and now he was telling her he’d been lying to her for almost five years. It hurt. It hurt so much that it was almost hard to breathe. “I’ve got to go in now.” She started to get up, but he placed his big hand on her arm and pulled her back down beside him.

“Don’t hate me, lass,” he whispered. “For all my money, it’d be worth nothin’ if I lost you.”

She looked down at his hand. “I don’t think I hate you,” she mumbled.

“But what I’ve told ya has changed yer feelings for me, hasn’t it?” he asked. He prayed it wasn’t true. But he was enough of a realist to know that this particular prayer didn’t have a hope in Hades of being answered.

“I don’t know how I feel,” she admitted truthfully. She pulled away from him and stood up. She wasn’t a fool, and she wasn’t stupid enough to let hurt feelings and injured pride stand between her and a man she’d come to care deeply about. “I just don’t know.”

He threw caution to the winds. He loved her. Loved her more than he’d ever loved anything. “Will you marry me?” he asked. “You know how I feel about ya.”

“Oh, Smythe,” she sighed. “How can you ask me that now? I don’t know what I feel anymore. I’m so confused I don’t know if I’m comin’ or goin’.”

“Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking.” He stood up quickly and raised his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Don’t answer right away. I know you’ve had a bit of a shock.”

“A bit of a shock?” she echoed. “Is that what you call it? Let me ask you this. What if the tables were turned? What if I’d brought you out here tonight and told you something like this about me?”

“I’d try to be forgivin’ and understandin’,” he said
quickly. He couldn’t imagine Betsy telling him anything that would make him not love her.

“What if I told you I was married?” she asked. She knew exactly how to get to him.

“All right,” he said, “I’d probably not be
that
understanding. But even if it was somethin’ like that, I’d not just shut you out of my life, Betsy. I’d find a way for us to be together. Please, lass. What we’ve got is worth something.”

Betsy knew that was true. But her sense of anger and betrayal went deep. Deeper, perhaps, than she could make him understand. “I need some time.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know,” she replied impatiently. “Enough to get over the shock and try and think clearly.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

She turned and started back toward the house. Her back was poker straight, and she held her head high, refusing to give in to the awful despair that threatened to overwhelm her. She was determined to get back to the safety of her room before she broke down and started crying.

“Betsy,” he called softly. “Are you going to tell the others?”

She stopped but didn’t turn to look at him. “That’s for you to do.”

“It’s a bit of a mess,” he said.

“But it’s your mess, Smythe. You made it; now you clean it up.”

CHAPTER 9

Hatchet knew he ought to be ashamed of himself, but he wasn’t. Paying for information was a bit of a blow to his pride, but at his age, he’d decided his pride could stand it. In any case, one had to do what one had to do if one wanted results. Besides, he told himself, it wasn’t as if madam hadn’t crossed a palm with silver a time or two in the past.

He twisted slightly in his chair, vainly trying to find a more comfortable postion while he waited for his hostess to return. But the chair, like everything else in the drawing room, appeared to be on its last legs. The stuffing beneath the worn blue silk was knotted in some spots and nonexistent in others. No matter how one shifted or turned, it was dreadfully uncomfortable. The whole place was dreadfully uncomfortable, he decided.

And it smelled as well. The windows were caked with dirt and closed shut. The air was stale, with faint overtones of sour milk and mildewed cloth. Hatchet tried breathing through his mouth as he gazed curiously around the room.

The once-elegant home of the aristocratic Morlands had fallen on hard times. The delicate moldings on the high ceiling were cracked and broken in places, the gold and white striped wallpaper was faded, the chandelier was covered in cobwebs, and the thin velvet curtains were so stained with soot and grime that you had to squint to tell that they’d once been a lovely pale gold. But Hatchet wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The reason he was even sitting here at all was because he’d taken one look at the outside of the huge house and realized that the only things Lady Henrietta Morland had left were a worthless title and this mouldering pile of bricks.