The Spinster’s Secret

Chapter 1-2

Edward held out his own hand. Miss Chapple saw the missing fingers, hesitated for a brief fraction of a second, and then clasped it. Her handshake was as warm and welcoming as her smile. “Toby spoke often of you.”

“And he spoke often of you.”

“He did?” He saw something in Miss Chapple’s eyes—a dark flicker of grief—before she released his hand. “He was the best of cousins.” She turned towards the pretty blonde. “May I present Mrs. Dunn?”

He was shaking hands with Mrs. Dunn when the thump thump of a cane heralded Arthur Strickland’s arrival. Strickland entered the parlor leaning on the ebony cane, an elderly woman on his arm. “My sister,” he said. “Lady Marchbank.”

Lady Marchbank was as cadaver-like as her brother. She was dressed entirely in black, from her black lace cap to the black hem of her gown. A female grim reaper, was Edward’s involuntary thought. He squashed it hastily and bowed. The resemblance between brother and sister was strong: the tall, stooped postures; the long, bony faces; the wrinkles folded into deep, disapproving lines.

A clock struck six somewhere in the house, a ponderous sound. “I should inform you, Mr. Kane, that we dine plainly at Creed Hall,” Strickland announced as the last echo died away. “And for the sake of our digestion we preserve the strictest silence.”

Mattie studied Mr. Kane surreptitiously while she ate. Goliath, Toby had called him, and she understood how he’d come by that name. He was an uncommonly large gentleman, taller than she was by a good half foot, and solidly built. He looked as if he could carry the weight of a coach-and-four on those broad shoulders.

Mr. Kane had dark hair and a tanned face crossed with pink scars. She knew his age: thirty. The same age Toby would be if he were alive.

Mattie traced the scars scoring across his brow, bisecting an eyebrow, curving down his cheek. She examined his left ear. Most of it was missing. Her gaze dropped to his hands. They bore scars similar to those across his face. Three fingers were missing on his right hand, and one on his left.

Had his sword been cut from his hand? Did that account for the missing fingers?

She imagined him weaponless, trying to ward off an attack . . .

Her ribcage tightened. Mattie looked away from Mr. Kane’s battered hands and forced herself to think of something else. Outside, rain came down in torrents. A cold wind leaked through the cracks in the window casement. The clink of cutlery was loud in the silence: the scrape of a knife across a plate, the tiny clatter of fork tines as her uncle speared a piece of boiled mutton.

What did Mr. Kane think of so silent a meal? Perhaps he was grateful. He didn’t look like a man skilled at small talk, a man who could turn a pretty phrase as easily as he could tie his own shoelaces. He looked like a fighter.

A fighter who’d lost a battle and had almost died.

Her gaze crept back to him. Mr. Kane seemed undismayed by the food. I’ll have no sauces in my house, her uncle was fond of announcing. No spices. Food boiled in plain water is all that one requires.

Pig swill, Toby had called it the last time he’d been home. He had gone down to the village inn to eat his dinner—and smuggled back a roasted chicken and a plum pie for her afterwards.

Grief tightened Mattie’s throat. She looked down at her plate and blinked back tears. I miss you, Toby.

After dinner, the ladies retired to the drawing room. Arthur Strickland poured two small measures of port. Edward sat back and braced himself for more questions about Waterloo.

“When did you return to England?” Strickland asked, sipping his port.

“Last month.”

Strickland glanced at Edward’s ear, his hands. “I hadn’t realized you were so seriously injured.”

“I wasn’t,” Edward said, ignoring the broken leg that had kept him immobilized for months. “A friend of mine lost an arm. He contracted fever and almost died. I stayed with him until he was well enough to travel.”

“Gareth Locke,” Strickland said.

Edward nodded, and tasted the port. Too sweet.

“Tobias’s friend.”

“Yes.”

The three of them—Gareth and Toby and himself—had been inseparable since their first day at school. They’d gone through Harrow and Oxford together, had caroused together, soldiered together, almost died together.

And now we are two.

Edward looked down at his port. The color reminded him of blood—and with that thought came another rush of memory: the blood-and-smoke smell of the battlefield, the din of cannons, the soft sobbing of a dying soldier.

Toby hadn’t wept. He’d died instantly. And lain alongside Edward for all of that terrible day . . .

Edward’s stomach clenched. For a moment he thought he was going to bring his dinner back up. He shook his head, breaking the memory.

“I hear Locke inherited a baronetcy from his uncle,” Strickland said.

Edward’s stomach settled back into place. “Yes.”

“Lucky man.”

Edward remembered the expression on Gareth’s face when he’d bid him farewell yesterday. He shook his head again. “I think he’d have preferred to keep his arm.” And his sweetheart. Not even a baronetcy had been enough to reconcile Miss Swinthorp to marriage with a one-armed man. A brief statement had appeared in the newspapers two days after Gareth’s return to London, announcing the termination of their engagement.

Stupid b***h. Edward clenched his right hand. Even after five months, a dull twinge of pain accompanied the movement.

He unclenched his hand and looked down at it, at the stumps of three of his fingers, and felt the familiar sense of disbelief, the familiar pang of loss. Would it ever fade? Or would he always mourn his missing fingers?

At least he’d not had a sweetheart to be repulsed by his injuries.

Strickland grunted, and then struggled to his feet, leaning on the cane. “Please join us in the drawing room.”

Edward stood. “It would be my pleasure, sir.”

Strickland made his way slowly to the door. Edward followed. They traversed the corridor at a snail’s pace. “My niece reads to us in the evenings,” Strickland said, stopping outside a paneled door.

“How delightful,” Edward said, remembering her contralto voice. “Poetry?”

“Sermons,” the old man said, opening the door.

Sermons? Edward almost balked. If you can face Napoleon’s army on a battlefield, you can face an evening of sermons, he told himself, and he squared his shoulders and followed his host into the drawing room.

Like every other room he’d seen in this house, it was a bleak chamber, paneled in dark wood. The furniture was stiff, the fire too small for the grate. All three ladies had shawls draped around their shoulders. He thought he saw Mrs. Dunn shiver as she bent over her embroidery frame.

Edward chose a mahogany armchair. Despite its apparent sturdiness, the chair creaked beneath his weight. He shifted slightly, trying to make himself more comfortable. The chair creaked again, more loudly. He took that as a warning and stilled.

Miss Chapple presided over the teapot. “Tea, Mr. Kane?”

“Please.”

The clink of china was loud as she placed teacups on saucers and poured for himself and her uncle, not because she was clumsy—the movement of her fingers was deft and unhesitating—but because the room was so silent. “Milk?” she asked. “Sugar?”

Edward shook his head. Milk and sugar were things he’d learned to do without on campaign.

He accepted his cup and sipped. The tea was weak and tepid—but it rid the sweet taste of port from his mouth.

Her duties as hostess done, Miss Chapple stood and took a place to one side of the fireplace, where she didn’t block the meager heat. Edward drained his teacup and cast a longing glance at the door. Could he claim tiredness as an escape?

Not when it was barely half past seven.

He sighed, and placed the teacup back in its saucer.

Miss Chapple opened the leather-bound book. She looked at Edward. “I shall be reading from Sermons to Young Women,” she told him. “By the Reverend James Fordyce. Are you familiar with the work, Mr. Kane?”

“Er . . . no.” He sat back in the armchair, making it creak again, and composed his face into an expression of interest.

“Sermon Two,” Miss Chapple said. “On Modesty of Apparel.” She glanced at Mrs. Dunn briefly, as if some silent message passed between them, and then began to read aloud: “Let me recall the attention of my female friends to a subject that concerns them highly . . .”

Edward stopped paying attention. He gazed at the fire and allowed Miss Chapple’s voice to flow over him. She had a surprisingly attractive voice, low and melodic, lulling him towards sleep . . .

He jerked back to full attention. The clock on the mantelpiece had advanced twenty minutes. Miss Chapple still read from the book of sermons: “Is not a constant pursuit of trivial ornament an indubitable proof of a trivial mind?”

Edward glanced swiftly around. Had anyone noticed he’d fallen into a doze?

No.

Lady Marchbank was listening with fierce attention, her lips pursed in approval. Arthur Strickland was watching his niece, nodding as she spoke, agreeing with Fordyce.

“Will she that is always looking into her glass, be much disposed to look into her character?”

Mrs. Dunn, blonde and pretty, was also listening intently, her eyes fixed on Miss Chapple’s face, but . . .

Edward narrowed his eyes. Mrs. Dunn’s lips moved silently, as if she was counting under her breath. He glanced at her hands. Her fingers tapped against her knee as she listened—tiny, almost indiscernible movements.

Was she counting something?

Edward returned his gaze to Miss Chapple. He scanned her from head to toe. She was extremely plain, her brown hair pulled back severely from her face and her mannishly tall figure garbed in an unflattering gray gown.

Edward’s gaze lingered on her breasts for a fleeting moment before he wrenched them away. She’s reading a sermon, he admonished himself. And she was Toby’s cousin. His favorite cousin.

Edward observed Miss Chapple more thoughtfully. Toby had spoken highly of her. There must be something more to her than was visible at first glance.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment. When he opened them again, the clock hands had advanced another fifteen minutes.

Edward sat up straight, blinking. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The armchair uttered a creaking groan.

“The less vanity you betray,” Miss Chapple read, “the more merit we shall always be disposed to allow you.”

He focused his attention on her, trying to guess her age. She was well past girlhood. Somewhere in her twenties, but precisely where was hard to determine; her skin was as smooth as that of a girl in her teens.

Edward studied her, trying to see a resemblance to Toby and finding none. Miss Chapple’s hair was an indifferent mid-brown, her nose unremarkable and quite unlike Toby’s jutting beak. An ordinary face, although he thought she might have dimples when she smiled. The only feature of note was her mouth, which was too large for beauty. But a lush mouth could never be a fault in a woman.

Miss Chapple’s figure was as generous as her mouth; she had none of Toby’s leanness. The gray gown was overlarge, as if attempting to hide her abundant curves; it only succeeded in making her look heavier than she was. Edward found himself glancing at her breasts again, and looked abruptly away, fastening his gaze on Mrs. Dunn. Her lips moved infinitesimally as her fingers tapped lightly against her knee. What was she counting?

He watched Mrs. Dunn’s fingers and listened to Miss Chapple. “. . . has been thought the most common—”

Mrs. Dunn’s forefinger tapped once on her knee.

“. . . the rankest—”

Another tap.

“. . . and the most noxious—”

Another tap.

“. . . weed that grows in the heart of a female—”

Another tap.

Edward suppressed a grin. She was counting the thes. He settled back more comfortably in the armchair, ignoring the creak it made, and turned his attention to Miss Chapple again. How much longer could the wretched sermon be? Miss Chapple’s voice was as soporific as a lullaby . . .

The jerk of his head dropping forward woke him. The clock told him he’d lost another five minutes. Edward glanced around. No one had noticed. He swallowed a yawn and managed not to rub his eyes.

“. . . that leads the world,” Miss Chapple said, a note of finality in her voice. She closed the book and glanced at Mrs. Dunn. Her eyebrows quirked a silent question, her lips twitched fractionally, a dimple showed briefly in her right cheek, and then all expression smoothed from her face and she was dull and drab and nondescript again.

“Excellent,” Strickland said, in his dry, cracked voice. “Excellent. Don’t you agree, Mr. Kane?”

“Yes,” Edward said, his tone heartfelt. It was indeed excellent that the sermon was over.

Mattie wrote by the light of one sputtering tallow candle, huddled in her blanket. He removed my garters and my stockings swiftly, and then his hands skimmed higher.

And then what?

She laid down the quill and flicked through the pages of the countess’s diary, searching for a description of a similar moment. Ah, here was one that would work. Heat flushed beneath my skin and a wild eagerness began to rise in me.

Mattie dipped the quill in ink and copied the sentence. The hour was approaching midnight, everyone long asleep, but the house was far from silent. Hail battered against the windowpanes, the shutters rattled and banged, and wind whistled down the chimney, stirring the ashes in the grate and making the candle flame flicker.

She closed the diary and continued with her story: His hands roamed across my body, and there was such strength in his touch, such gentleness, that I couldn’t help trusting him. That I, a courtesan, should trust a man, seemed incredible, and that it should be this man, with his fierce pockmarked face and his brutal reputation, seemed even more incredible. But trust him I did, and I yielded eagerly to his passion.

Mattie wrote for another hour, until the candle was in danger of guttering, before finally laying down her quill. She looked at the pile of pages with satisfaction. One final chapter and Chérie’s Memoir would be finished. A whole book—the history of Chérie’s time as a courtesan—for which her publisher would pay a lot more than he did for each confession.

And when she was paid, she could leave Creed Hall.

Mattie hugged the blanket tightly around herself, shivering, building the dream again: a boarding house beside the sea. There would be no dark paneling, no fires that were too small for their grates. The boarding house would be bright and cheerful and warm.

She yawned and stretched, catching the blanket as it slithered from her shoulders. “Freedom,” she said aloud, to the rattling, banging, whistling accompaniment of the storm.