Page 40 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
“Why did he come here?” Eliza repeated Phaedra’s question, a furrow creasing her brow. “I wondered that myself. All that he said was that he knew what it was like to be at the mercy of the powerful and ruthless.”
Armande? Phaedra could not picture the indomitable marquis ever being at anyone’s mercy. But she did not interrupt Eliza as she continued, “He was very generous with his money and oh, so much more. He even promised me that he would see my babe had a proper burial and was not thrust into the poor hole. And for my husband—” Eliza brightened, her eyes wistful with hope. “He swears that I will be with my Tom again.The marquis intends to see that Tom is not hanged, but only transported.”
“Only transported!” Phaedra could not refrain from blurting out. “But you would still likely never see him again.” She stumbled over her words, trying to amend the error of her clumsy tongue. But it seemed wrong of Armande to give Eliza Wilkins any false hope of ever being reunited with her husband.
“I would follow him, wherever he was sent,” Eliza said.
Phaedra glanced dubiously at the frail woman, considering it unlikely the woman had the strength to follow Tom Wilkins to the other side of London let alone across the ocean.
“I love him, you see,” Eliza said simply, as though that accounted for everything. Perhaps for her it did, Phaedra thought, staring with envy at the woman’s rapt expression. She felt as though it were Eliza Wilkins who was garbed in silk, and she the one deprived, lacking.
She drew toward the door, preparing to depart. “I am relieved to hear you are being so well taken care of,” she said. “I will not intrude upon you any longer.”
Eliza surprised her by seizing hold of her hand. She gave Phaedra’s fingers a gentle squeeze. “Don’t you go away from here distressing yourself. You are not to blame for anything.”
Phaedra could not meet the woman’s earnest gaze. She did not blame herself for anything her grandfather had done. The guilt Eliza was obviously reading upon Phaedra’s countenance stemmed from a far different cause.
Eliza was filled with hope, believing that Armande was wielding his influence to-save Tom Wilkins from the jaws of Newgate. Only Phaedra knew that at that moment, thanks to her, those prison gates were slamming tight upon Armande himself.
“Where the deuce is de LeCroix?” her grandfather asked for the third time. Pacing the green salon, he consulted his watch,occasionally stopping to wince. His gout was acting up again, no matter how he might pretend to the contrary. He grumbled, “Frenchies. Got no notion of being on time for dinner.”
With only Phaedra and Jonathan Burnell for an audience, Weylin appeared to have forgotten all his quips about not keeping city hours. Phaedra was grateful that only Jonathan had been invited to dinner. There was no way she could have managed even one commonplace to entertain a guest this evening.
She sat poised on the Queen Anne’s chair by the hearth and started to thrust the poker into the grate when she remembered there was no fire to stir. There was something depressing about a empty fireplace. With the grate swept clean, the andirons slicked with grease and stored away until autumn, the soot-blackened opening yawned before her, like a condemned man’s cell the day after-
Phaedra nearly dropped the poker, then silently cursed herself for allowing her mind to keep running on such things. Yet why on earth had word of Armande’s arrest not reached Blackheath Hall? Surely the gossip must be circulating through London by now, and her grandfather and Jonathan had spent the entire afternoon haunting their regular coffeehouse.
“My dear Phaedra.” Jonathan’s voice bit through her like the crack of a whip. She hoped her grandfather did not notice how she jumped, how tense she was.
“Are you well?” Jonathan asked anxiously. “You look so pale.”
Phaedra forced a smile and shook her head. Jonathan was one of the kindest men living, but must he forever plague her with questions about her health? She started to reassure him, when her grandfather answered for her.
“Of course the wench looks pale. That is all the more good it did, sending her off to Bath to drink the cursed waters.” Heleveled upon her the irritation he was feeling toward the absent marquis. “Why can’t you paint yourself up a bit like the other fashionable gels I see, and powder that carrot-top hair? Small wonder the marquis is not here. That dour look of yours is enough to drive any man from our door.”
Phaedra had heard this refrain too often to bother defending herself. Jonathan’s face rarely ever registered anger, but he glared at Sawyer Weylin. “If the marquis can find any flaw in Phaedra, why, the man must be blind.”
The intended compliment came out twisted, an awkward attempt at gallantry from a plain man not accustomed to making such gestures. Phaedra could not even offer him a smile of gratitude. She felt miserable enough without being made more so by the undeserved admiration of an old friend.
Weylin continued ranting at Phaedra as though Jonathan was not even in the room. “More than likely you’ve caught something, likely spotted fever or a pox, sneaking off to Canty Row with my best horses, paying social calls at the house of my assassin.”
“Canty Row! My dearest Phaedra!” Jonathan cried.
His distress was ignored as her grandfather shook his thick finger at Phaedra. “Did you think Ridley would not report the whole of your doings to me, missy?”
“It wasn’t a house, only a room,” she said, thinking of the Wilkinses’ bleak abode. “And as to assassins, you still seem very much alive to me, Grandpapa.”
“No thanks to that villain Wilkins.”
Jonathan’s gaze darted between Phaedra and her grandfather. “But Phaedra! Whatever induced you to go there?”
“I only thought to help Mrs. Wilkins.”
“Meddling” Weylin’s jowls puffed with indignation. “You silly chit. I expect you were taken in by Wilkins’s whining tale. Set out to right the wrongs of your wicked old grandfather, did you?I’m an ogre because I expect able-bodied men and women to do an honest day’s work, and keep their debts paid without looking for handouts. I never in my life asked for charity, and I don’t intend to have my granddaughter running round behind my back dispensing it, either.”
“I would scarce describe Mrs. Wilkins as able-bodied, Grandfather. Wilkins’s tale was perfectly true. She has been very ill since the death of their child.”
“It was kindhearted of you to help the woman, my dear,” Jonathan said. “I only wish you had come to me first. I could have used my patronage to have the poor woman taken into a hospital.”
