Marriage of Mercy

‘So do I,’ he assured her.

She returned her attention to Lord Thomson. She squeezed his hand gently and he opened his eyes.

‘Lean closer,’ he said, with just a touch of his former air of command.

She did as he said.

‘I’m dying, you know,’ he told her.

‘I was afraid of that,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll bring you Quimby Crèmes tomorrow.’

‘That’ll keep death away?’ he asked, amused.

‘No, but I’ll feel better,’ she said, which made him chuckle.

She thought he had stopped, but he surprised her. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

‘I believe I do,’ she replied, after a moment.

‘Good. What’s to come will try you. Have faith in me,’ he told her, then closed his eyes.

She left the room quietly, wondering what he meant. The solicitor stood in the hall. He nodded to her.

‘Coming back tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Yes, indeed.’

Lord Thomson’s relatives were returning from the breakfast room, arguing with each other. They darted angry glances at the solicitor as they brushed past him and ignored Grace.

‘You’ll be back tomorrow?’

‘I said I would, sir.’

‘Grace, I believe you’ll do.’

‘Sir?’

He followed the relatives, but not before giving her a long look.

As she considered the matter later, she wondered if she should have stayed away. But who was wise on short notice?

Chapter Two

Mr Selway knocked on the door of the bakery the next morning before they opened for business. Apron in hand, Grace unlocked the door, wondering if he had been waiting long.

He didn’t have to say anything; she knew. ‘He’s gone, isn’t he? Mr Selway, I’m going to miss him,’ she said, swallowing hard.

‘We are the only ones,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to know.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘Please attend the reading of his will, which will follow his funeral on Tuesday.’

Surely she hadn’t heard him right. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

He increased the pressure on her arm. ‘I cannot say more, since the company is not assembled for the reading. Be there, Grace.’

And there she was, four days later. The foyer was deserted, but Mr Selway had told her they would all be in the library. She opened the door quietly, cringing inside when it squeaked and all those heads swivelled in her direction, then turned back just as quickly. The family servants stood along the back wall and she joined them. Mr Selway looked at her over the top of his spectacles, then continued reading.

This reading was different from her father’s paltry will. Mr Selway covered a wide-ranging roster of properties, even including a Jamaican plantation, part-interest in a Brazilian forest, a brewery in Boston and a tea farm in Ceylon.

‘T’auld scarecrow had his bony fingers in a lot of pies,’ the gardener standing next to her whispered.

She nodded, thinking about Lord Thomson’s generally shabby air. She tried to imagine him as a young army officer, adventuring about the world. Her attention wandered. Before his relatives had descended on him, Lord Thomson had had no objection to her borrowing a book now and then. She thought of two books in her room behind the ovens and hoped she could sneak them back before the new Lord Thomson missed them. Not that he would, but she did not wish to cross him. Grace was a shrewd enough judge of character to suspect that the new Lord Thomson would begrudge even the widow her tiny mite, if he thought it should be his. Books probably fell in that category.

Mr Selway finished his reading of the properties devolving on the sole heir, who sat in the front row, practically preening himself with his own importance. The solicitor picked up another sheet and started on a much smaller inventory of items of interest to other family members, ranging this time from items of jewellery to pieces of furniture. She listened with half an ear.

The servants were given their due next, some of them turned off with a small sum and thanks. Others were allowed to keep their jobs, probably, Grace reasoned, no longer than it would take for the new Lord Thomson to decide them superfluous. Still, a pound here and a pound there could mean the world to people on the level she now inhabited.

Mr Selway put down that document and picked up the last one remaining in front of him. He cleared his throat, looking uncertain for the first time, as if unsure how this final term would be received.

Without a look or a word, Grace knew instinctively that whatever the term was, it would fall on her. She looked around the room in sudden panic. Everyone had been accounted for and Mr Selway had explicitly insisted on her presence. She started to ease toward the door, afraid for the attention soon to be thrust upon her and wanting only to return to the bakery. She stopped moving when Mr Selway looked directly at her.

‘There are two final items in the will, recently added, but no less attested to,’ he said. ‘One is a small matter, the other a large one. Let me mention the small one first. I will read what the late Lord Thomson dictated to me, only one month ago.’ He cleared his throat and took a firm grip on the document. ‘For the last five years at least, I have been kindly treated by Mr and Mrs Wilson’s assistant, Grace Louisa Curtis. She has never failed to bake precisely the biscuits I craved, and—’

The new Lord Thomson groaned. ‘Good Lord, next you’ll tell me that my uncle is bequeathing her a brewery on the Great Barrier Reef that we have no knowledge of! Let her have it and be damned.’

Now dependent on this new marquis for whatever thin charity he chose to dispense, his relatives laughed. Grace cringed inside and started sidling toward the door again. It looked so far away.

Mr Selway stared down the new marquis and continued. “Knowing of her kindness to me, when none of my relatives cared whether I lived or died, I have arranged for Miss Curtis to take possession of this estate’s dower house and its contents for her lifetime.”

‘Good God!’ Lord Thomson was on his feet, his face beet red.

Mr Selway looked at him and then down at the page. ‘… for her lifetime. In addition, she will receive thirty pounds per annum.’

‘This is outrageous!’ the marquis shouted.

‘It is a mere thirty pounds each year and a small house you would never occupy,’ Mr Selway said mildly. ‘Do sit down, Lord Thomson, I am not quite finished.’ He glared him down into his chair again. ‘As I said, this was the easy part.’

Grace stared at the solicitor. The colour must have drained from her face, because the gardener standing next to her guided her towards a stool that a footman had vacated.

‘I don’t want this,’ she murmured to the gardener, who shrugged.

‘Since when has what we wanted made a difference?’ the man whispered back.

‘Go on, tell me the rest,’ Lord Thomson exclaimed. ‘Lord, this is a nuisance!’

Mr Selway put down the document and folded his hands over it. ‘Lord Thomson, it will probably come as a surprise to you that your predecessor had a son.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ the new marquis said. ‘A bastard, no doubt.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ the gardener whispered, but not in a soft voice. The back row of relatives turned around, some to glare, others to titter.