The Sleeping Partner (33 page)

“Miss.”

The girl turned to address the room. “Miss Tolerance, ma’am.”

The girl stepped back and waved Miss Tolerance forward like an ostler directing coaches. Miss Tolerance stepped into a small, old-fashioned parlor crowded with furniture and books. In a large, winged chair near the fire an older woman sat, very settled, as if this was her accustomed place. She wore a green dress of a style perhaps a dozen years old, with a shawl over her shoulders; another shawl lay across her knees, her hands folded unmoving on top of it. Her hair was abundant and gray, piled atop her head and bound there with a gauzy green scarf; she looked as if she might have frozen in the year ‘97 or ‘98. Her face, too, seemed half frozen. It was a handsome face with marked eyebrows, a strong nose, firm chin and well-formed mouth, but the left side of it was utterly without mobility. The woman’s one-sided smile was uncanny.

“Mrs. Godwin?” Miss Tolerance curtsied. The woman in the seat inclined her head a little in response. Two girls, dressed in muslin gowns of more recent style, stood protectively to the right of Mrs. Godwin’s chair. The taller of the two was perhaps seventeen years old; she stepped forward, curtsied and said “I am Fanny Imlay.” She had a strong resemblance to Mrs. Godwin: the same mobile mouth, firm chin and dark eyes. She tilted her head up as if anticipating a quarrel. “This is my sister Mary Godwin.”

The younger girl curtsied. She was several years her sister’s junior, slight, with a long neck and a small, pretty face. Her hair was dark, her eyes large, observant and, Miss Tolerance thought, a little sad.

The woman in the chair mumbled something. Mary leaned forward to listen, then interpreted. “My mother asks that you sit, Miss Tolerance. How may we help you?”

Miss Tolerance sat upon the sofa which faced Mrs. Godwin’s chair.

“I am looking for someone, ma’am. It was suggested to me that Mr. Godwin might be able to help me.”

A look, and with it a communication of sorts, passed between Mrs. Godwin and the girls. Mrs. Godwin spoke again; it was impossible for Miss Tolerance to make out what the woman said.

“My mother was struck with apoplexy when I was born,” Mary Godwin explained. “Fanny and I speak for her.”

“I see.” How must the poor hulk of a woman in the chair opposite feel, to depend so upon her children? The mobile side of Mrs. Godwin’s face twitched briefly into a frown, then relaxed, and she muttered something.

“My mother asks how it comes that you are searching for this person,” Miss Imlay said.

Miss Tolerance had a sense that truth was likely to gain her the most sympathetic hearing. “I earn my bread as an agent of inquiry,” she said directly to Mrs. Godwin. “You may apprehend from my name, ma’am, that I am Fallen. There are very few occupations open to a woman such as I, and—”

Mrs. Godwin made a very urgent grunting sound. One of her hands stirred slightly in her lap, as if she wished to gesture emphatically with it.

“Mama says you must tell her more of this, Miss Tolerance.” Miss Godwin looked as excited as her mother. “Mama is
very
interested in the careers of women who live outside the pattern of society. In her book
Vindication of the Rights of Women—
”

Miss Tolerance frankly stared. Mrs. Godwin was Mary Wollstonecraft? There was great intelligence in the woman’s eye; what tragedy for so powerful an intellect to be trapped inside a broken body. She recalled herself: she had a task to do. “I would be happy to come again and speak of my history at length, Miss Godwin, but at the moment my work is urgent. If I might speak with Mr. Godwin for just a moment?”

Mrs. Godwin grunted.

“My mother says perhaps we may be of help. Mr. Godwin is occupied with a manuscript for publication and must not be disturbed.” Miss Imlay moved behind her mother’s chair and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

Mrs. Godwin muttered at length. Fanny Imlay blushed.

“My mother asks who it is you are seeking, Miss Tolerance.”

“Is that all she asked?”

Mrs. Godwin’s right eye widened. Again she spoke.

Mary Godwin answered this time, with a hint of smugness. “My mother first said that my sister was to be careful to represent what she was saying without embroidery. Then she said that you were sharp to notice that Fanny had not conveyed—”

“I quite understand,” Miss Tolerance said. Fanny Imlay’s blush intensified, and she glared at Mary Godwin. If there was any useful information here, she could not make an enemy of either girl. “As to whom I seek—I was told Mr. Godwin might know where I could find Mr. John Thorpe.”

“Mr. John Thorpe?” There was a silent exchange of looks between the three females.

Mrs. Godwin spoke. This time Miss Tolerance listened carefully and made out the gist of it. “You ask why I believe your husband would know where Mr. Thorpe is?”

Mrs. Godwin inclined her head. Miss Imlay frowned a little, but Mary Godwin smiled.

“You’re very clever! Mr. Johnson has known Mamma since before I was born, and still he cannot understand what she says!”

Miss Tolerance returned the girl’s smile. “To answer your question, ma’am: Mr. Parkin at Squale House referred me to him. I met Mr. Godwin there a few days ago when my inquiry first took me there. I am—” She paused, torn between discretion and the notion of encouraging information from the Godwins. “I am searching for a young woman—”

“Did she run away? Elope? How romantic! How very brave she must be!” That was Miss Godwin.

Mrs. Godwin growled something Miss Tolerance could not parse, and her daughter fell silent.

“I believe she
is
brave, Miss Godwin, but her story is not a romantic one.”

“
Brave.
” The word, like a single crack of a riding crop, was spoken from the doorway.

Miss Tolerance turned. Mr. Godwin stood close behind a young woman whose face was familiar to Miss Tolerance from the portrait she carried even now in her reticule. She rose and curtsied.

“Miss Thorpe.”

In the portrait Evadne Thorpe’s face was soft and rounded, her eye merry. The girl who stood before Miss Tolerance now was slender to the point of emaciation, pale, with a distant expression of anxiety and resentment. Her eye had been blacked some days before. There were other bruises, including a mottled ring of purpling marks around her throat that suggested someone had tried to throttle her. “I understand from John that my sister hired you to find me.”

“She did. Lady Brereton most urgently desires to know, first, that you are well, and second, if you will come home to your family.”

Mention of her sister’s name softened Miss Thorpe’s expression, but only momentarily. Then her face became fixed and adamantine. “If Clary sent you she must believe you are not a danger to me, Miss—Tolerance, was it? I shall trust you this far: you may tell my sister that you found me, not well but better. You may tell her that I will
never
return to my father’s house.”

Mrs. Godwin said something. Mr. Godwin, who had thus far been silent, stepped forward. “Quite right, my dear. Fanny, Mary, I think you may find yourselves occupation for a little while. Mary, have you finished the essay I set you? Fanny, have you fair-copied your poem?”

The girls quitted the room with the air of people who are going to miss the last act of a good play. Mr. Godwin came to sit beside his wife; he took one of her inert hands in his own and looked on expectantly.

Miss Tolerance rose to seat Miss Thorpe beside her on the sofa, weighing how best to speak to her. The best coin she had to offer was her own history, and she would use that if she must.

“Miss Thorpe, I can only guess the nature of your ordeal,” she began. “I know you have been foully misused. If you fear that your sister will not understand or sympathize—”

Evadne Thorpe’s pretty mouth pinched. “She could not understand.”

“Perhaps you wrong her—no, please hear me.” Miss Tolerance extended her hand with her plea. “From my name you may infer something of my history.” Godwin and his wife observed her with interest. “When I left my home my father made it plain that I was dead to him and to my family. But I have recently encountered—” she stopped, remembering that Sir Adam was Miss Thorpe’s brother-in-law. “I have recently encountered a member of my family who is not so determined to cut the connection. I know as a fact that your sister and her husband will welcome you home. I think your older brother, perhaps even your father, will come in time to—”

“My father.” The revulsion in those two words was shocking. “Why do you think my brother John brought me here, Miss Tolerance, rather than to my father’s home? My father gave me to the man who raped me.”

In the silence a door closed upstairs; there was a sound of footfall. Mr. Godwin rose to shut the door to the hall. He returned to his wife’s side.

Miss Tolerance could think of no sentiment adequate to express her horror.

“These kind people—” Miss Thorpe gestured to the Godwins—”have not heard the whole of the tale. Perhaps they, as well as you, should know it. I did not believe it at first, no matter what He said. My captor. But then I escaped, and my father sold me back to him.”

“Sold?” Godwin’s tone echoed Miss Tolerance’s own revulsion.

“Sold.” Evadne Thorpe nodded. “I contrived to slip away from Him. I sent a message to Papa, thinking he would come for me. Instead I was delivered me back to Him. I don’t know what the payment was, but He told me that I was bought and paid for, and if I tried to run again I should simply be returned again, like a runaway…mongrel bitch.” The girl would not speak Huwe's name; as she told the tale her tone became flatter and flatter, until she might have been discussing the weather or a new hat, except for her emphasis on
he, him, his.

“Your captor told you this?” Miss Tolerance asked. “And—forgive me—you believe him? You do not think he said these things to distress you?”

“I know he did, but that makes them no less true. When I escaped the first time I ran—the people I passed in the street must have thought I was a lunatic, barefoot, in my shift with a blanket thrown over it, running through the most horrid streets. When I could run no more I took shelter in a cookshop—the woman there was wonderfully kind to me, and sent her son to my father to beg for help. A woman came, Mrs. Harris, and she was everything kind and comfortable—until she brought me back to Him again. How else would she have known where I was hidden? She brought me back; I saw Him pay her before—then He beat me. That was almost of no moment, not compared to what came next. When He was done with me he gave me to Worke.” Despite a tremor in her voice Evadne Thorpe’s face was as still and cold as alabaster.

“Worke?” Godwin looked puzzled.

“The name of his helper,” Miss Tolerance told him. “Abner Huwe gave you to Worke?” The girl flinched to hear the name spoken aloud, but it was important, crucial, to be clear.

“Only for that once, to teach me a lesson. Worke’s reward, He called it. When they had both finished with me He sent for Mrs. Harris again. To
patch me up
after their celebrations, He said. That was when He told me how he had known where to send her: that Papa wrote at once to tell him where I was hiding.”

“It must have been a lie. No father could do such a thing.” Mr. Godwin’s expression was not of disbelief but of revulsion. “No man—”

“She was meant to be the means to ensure her father’s cooperation,” Miss Tolerance said quietly. “She was a hostage to her captor’s greed and her father’s pride. And the damned bark,” she added to herself.

“What?” Miss Thorpe, Mr. Godwin, even Mrs. Godwin regarded Miss Tolerance as if she had made a joke.

“I beg your pardon. I know what the matter was between Huwe and your father, Miss Thorpe. It could have meant ruin for both men, perhaps even charges of treason.”

“I know.” Miss Tolerance had not thought it possible that Evadne Thorpe could become any more ashen. “This time I brought away proof of it.” Her smile was an awful thing.

“Proof?”

“My father’s letters. Huwe’s ledger. I thought if I had them they would be afraid of me, that they would leave me alone.” Miss Tolerance thought the effect would be rather the opposite, but did not say so.

“Both Huwe and Worke are under arrest,” Miss Tolerance told the girl. “You have nothing more to fear from them.”

“But I would have to—bring evidence against them? I cannot see Him again.”

Miss Tolerance took the girl’s hands in her own strong grasp. “The charges upon which they were arrested have nothing to do with you: Worke killed a man at Huwe’s instigation, and both he and Huwe tried to kill me.” She gestured to the black silk sling. There was a murmur of shocked disbelief. “Your name need never be mentioned—I doubt they will give it out, as it would only lead to further, and more dire, charges against them.”

After a long, thoughtful silence, Mr. Godwin said, “The question, then, becomes, what do you wish to do, Miss Thorpe?”

“Do?” Evadne Thorpe looked at the Godwins. “Sir, if you and Mrs. Godwin will permit me to stay a little longer, until my brother can find some employment for me, sewing or, or laundering—”

She was interrupted by Godwin’s assurance of her welcome, and Mrs. Godwin’s rumble of indecipherable agreement. Miss Tolerance let them finish.

“You have a very good and safe haven here for the moment. That gives you an opportunity to think upon the future. You have nothing more to fear from Abner Huwe.”

“But my father’s part will not be known. There is no way it
can
be known?”

“Not unless you make the accusation yourself.” Miss Tolerance thought to soothe the girl’s anxieties. Instead Evadne Thorpe’s lips pressed together as if to contain an explosion. Her eyes were hot with fury.

“Then I must do so.”

The Godwins regarded their guest with dismay.

“Miss Thorpe, I beg you will think carefully.” Miss Tolerance kept her own apprehension strictly controlled. “With the evidence the magistracy has, Huwe will doubtless pay with his life. To implicate your father—would a man capable of the things he has done balk at lying? How if he said you had gone willingly with Huwe? Juries are made of men; they might take his word against yours.” She paused to let the import of this penetrate. “The details of your mistreatment would inevitably become public.”