Authors: Elizabeth Essex
Molly Carter was clinging to Lady Claire’s slim shoulders as if she were the last piece of flotsam in the whole of the sea. “God help her, miss,” the woman sobbed.
Tears were sliding down Lady Claire’s cheeks as well. “I can’t speak for God, madam, but I can speak for
him
.” Claire’s eyes met his. “He will help her.”
“How?” the washerwoman howled.
“He will find out who did this,” she pledged. “He will find who did this, and he will avenge her.”
Avenge.
Such a bloodthirsty word from such an immaculate girl. But he liked it. It suited his plans. Because it gave him permission to do just as Lady Claire wanted, and avenge her as well.
“Nothing will bring her back,” Claire was saying. “And nothing will compensate you for her loss. But we promise you, we will put this right.”
“You mean my girl was murdered? You can’t never put that right.” Molly Carter clenched her hands, as if she would rail against fate.
“No.” Tanner spoke. “But I can promise you that I will make the man who did this pay. I will find the miscreant who did this to your daughter. I will hunt him down, and see that he is hanged by the neck in Newgate Yard, if it is the last thing I do.”
“You do that. Do you hear me?” The woman pushed herself away from Claire and wiped her face on her apron. “You find him, whoever the hell you are. You find the whoreson that took my Maisy, and you get him. And you send me word when you’ve got him, so I can curse his soul to hell, and watch him dance.” And then all her defiant anger seemed spent, and she collapsed down into a chair with a silent, gasping sob.
Tanner looked into her red-rimmed eyes. “Madam, you have my word upon it.”
It was done. He turned toward the door. “Claire.”
But again, Lady Claire Jellicoe was proving to be a great deal less predictable than he had expected. She had her arms wrapped tight around Molly Carter’s shoulders again making those soft, sympathetic noises.
And then she did the most astonishing thing of all. She lied.
Her face was as fresh and open and honest as it ever had been. But she lied through her teeth. “You should know she didn’t suffer, Maisy didn’t.” Her voice was as smooth and soothing as a balm.
A balm Molly Carter wanted to hear. “Thank God.” The woman looked upward, as if in entreaty to a God who had clearly forsaken her, and tried to catch her breath, but tears were still streaming down her cheeks. “Thank God for that.”
“Did she come home, here, to see you often?” Lady Claire’s voice was soft and kind and encouraging intimacy, a much more subtle weapon than any he knew how to wield.
“No, I didn’t like her to.” Molly Carter shook her head, and mopped at her face again with the apron. “She’d gone on to better, hadn’t she? Didn’t like to have her come back here.”
“But she did anyway?”
“Yeah. Yeah, she did, bless her.” Molly Carter was nodding and smiling and crying and wiping her eyes all at the same time. “Said I were her mam and that were that. Came on her half days, at least once a month. Always made sure I had a piece of cake for her here, though I’m sure she had finer up at Riverchon Park.”
“Yes. They treated her very well up there. Just as they ought. She was a hardworking girl. A good girl. And such a good girl likes to come see her mam, no matter if she’s gotten used to better, doesn’t she?” Lady Claire consoled. “When was the last time she came here?”
“Tuesday week it were.” The admission brought on a fresh spate of tears, which Lady Claire dealt with by rubbing the space between the woman’s hunched shoulder blades.
“She came to visit regularly, because she was a good girl.”
“She were. The best,” Molly Carter confirmed on a watery wail. “She were the best. It’s not right.”
“I know it’s not right, Mrs. Carter. I know. That’s why we’ve come. To find out everything we can, and make it as right as we can. To find out everything we need to know about your Maisy.”
Claire kept up her rubbing of the woman’s back and patting her hand and wrapping her arm around her every few minutes to give her a squeeze. And she kept talking, kept on with her soft kindness. “Did she say anything about her work at Riverchon Park? Was she happy there?”
“Excited, she were, that she were to help to see to some very grand ladies soon. Ambitious, she was, my Maisy. Sharp and quick. Could see that when she were but a girl. Too sharp and too quick for the likes of the Almonry. Would’ve ended up in some bleeding kidding ken, with a kidman working her rough till she were stretched for a handkerchief.”
Tanner could envision such a life clearly—it had been his own.
Molly Carter banged the flat of her hand against the table in emphatic denial. But the truth could not be denied, and Claire held on, and never stopped rubbing her heaving shoulders. “So I got her out. Got her into service with a lady I did washings for. Trained her up. Moved her on. Bigger houses, better positions.”
Until last night, Maisy Carter had indeed been lucky—lucky to have had such a mother who could see a clear-eyed way out of a place like the Almonry for her daughter, even if she could not for herself. Not many other children were as lucky, or as loved.
“How she was getting on at Riverchon Park?” Claire probed gently. “How did she like the other staff?”
“Working her way up, she were. Told me she were going to be a housekeeper someday, she was. Had her eye on the higher prize. Saved all her wages, too—never one to spend it on cakes or ribbons and fripperies. Too smart for that. Brought me most of it. But I wouldn’t take it. Wanted her to keep it.”
A penny had a different value here than in Mayfair or Richmond.
“You were very good to her, just as she was very good to you.”
“She were,” Molly Carter repeated. “The best.”
“And she was a very pretty girl. So what about young men? Was there anyone, anyone special, she talked about?”
“She was, wasn’t she? Very pretty.” Molly Carter reached out her coarse, chapped hands and cupped Lady Claire Jellicoe’s soft, bruised face. “Remind me of her, you do. Same blue eyes, and sweet pale hair.”
That someone might think Lady Claire Jellicoe resembled anyone else in the world was an idea so foreign to Tanner that his mind—his constantly, inexorably scheming mind—simply ground to a stop. Because Lady Claire Jellicoe was too unique, too much her own special luminous self, to resemble anyone, especially some poor murdered maid.
“You are so kind.” Lady Claire was smiling, as if Molly Carter had given her the greatest possible compliment, although her cheeks were also wet and shiny with tears. “I imagine Maisy’s prettiness brought her admirers.”
“It did. Had to watch her close when she were a little one—keep her from the kiddy snatchers. And only put her in service with good houses, where I knowed she’d be looked after.”
“Did she ever say she had admirers at Riverchon Park? I thought the footman…” Claire turned her wide, guileless eyes upon him.
“Jesse Lightfoot,” he supplied.
“Yes, thank you. Jesse.” She turned all her attention and comfort back to Molly. “A very handsome young man. He certainly admired her.”
“Told me about him, she did. But she weren’t that kind of girl as has her head turned.” Molly fished out a thin, worn handkerchief, and mopped at her nose. “She were ambitious, she were, my Maisy. Wouldn’t have wanted to let any man get in the way of her plans. Saw what happened to me, didn’t she?”
That there was no Mr. Carter in residence was evidence enough of what had once happened to Molly Carter.
“Hmm. Yes.” Lady Claire was all agreeable sympathy. “So she wasn’t walking out with him?”
“Could be. If’n he accepted the way it stood with her. Could be they came to an understanding.”
“Yes.” Lady Claire nodded. “But a girl that pretty. Men don’t often take no for an answer, do they? They often insist, don’t they? More than insist.”
Tanner heard the tremor in Lady Claire’s voice—the uncomfortable emotional aftershock—and saw the slight shaking in her hand, though she kept trying to comfort Molly Carter.
Molly Carter saw it, too, for this time she put her own hand over Lady Claire’s. “God rot ’em. Never leave you girls be, do they? Take what they want, when they want it, and be damned if they ask. The bastards.” Again her rough, reddened hand came up to gently cradle Lady Claire’s face. As tenderly as if Lady Claire had been her own daughter.
Remarkable.
“Yes.” Claire’s voice was small and tight. But she kept her clear gaze steady on Molly Carter. “I don’t imagine a girl like Maisy would put up with that.”
“No. Did he do that to you?” Molly Carter gave him a cutty-eyed look and tossed a defiant chin his way.
“Oh, no. Not Tanner, ma’am. He’s the one that saved me. Kept it from going any further. Broke the beau nasty’s leg, he did, and cracked his head as well.”
“Good,” Molly Carter said with some small relief. “Good.” Though her eyes lingered on him as if he were a marker for all the evil no-good bastards of the world.
“Did Maisy ever have trouble with gentlemen, like I did?” Claire pushed on, though her voice was so thin she had to swallow to speak. “Did she ever find herself … imposed upon?”
He had always thought of Claire as naturally open and honest, but for the first time Tanner could see that it took a sort of bravery he didn’t understand, for her to be so. A strength hidden beneath the delicate surface of her skin.
Molly could see what it cost her as well, for she was the one to put her arm around Claire and rub her back now. “Bless you, no, I shouldn’t think so. I’d warned her, hadn’t I? Told her how. She kept her eyes open, my Maisy. Kept away from that kind of gentleman.” Molly Carter still thought him somehow responsible—still a stand-in for all unworthy gentlemen. She narrowed her eyes at him again, as if she could see under his raffish clothes and see the unworthy gentleman hiding somewhere underneath.
Funny. He usually feared it being the other way round—that under his gentlemanly tailoring someone would discover that he was nothing more than an impostor. Playing at being the duke until they found him out.
“She must have gotten her smarts and cleverness from you.” Despite her own emotions, Claire was still working to ease Molly Carter’s distress.
“Bless me,” Molly said on a rough half laugh, “but you’re kindness itself.”
“I wish I could be kinder still. I wish I could have given you better news. I wish we had met under different circumstances.”
“Bless me, child. Had Maisy not been murdered, we’d never have met under any circumstances at all. Quality, real quality, you are, despite the fact that you’re here in the Almonry. And with ’im.”
“He only
looks
that way, Molly. He’s really as sweet as pudding underneath that fierce exterior, which he will put to good use finding Maisy’s murderer.” Claire gave him a quick smile before she asked him, “Speaking of, ought we to ask Molly about the fob?”
Tanner fished out the gleaming ornament. “Have you ever seen this?” he asked the washerwoman.
“Dunno.” Molly Carter turned down her mouth and shook her head. “Where’d it come from?”
“From Maisy,” Claire explained.
“Some gentleman give it to her?”
Molly Carter was as clever as she was heartbroken and weary. She had immediately grasped that any man with such an ornament had to be a
gentleman
.
“Oh, no,” Claire was saying. “We think she took it.”
“Never. She weren’t no thief, my Maisy. She’d too much pride to lower herself. Pride I gave her, God help her.”
“No, ma’am.” Lady Claire took Molly Carter’s hand again. “We think she took hold of it because he was trying to kill her.”
It was too much for Molly Carter. But by now her sorrow was mixed with a more characteristic fury. “Oh, damn him to hell. Had to have been one of those bleeding nobs, then. Toffs think they can do what they want, don’t they?”
Tanner saw Claire close her eyes, even though she nodded. “Yes, Molly, they do.”
It took every bit of restraint he had to ignore Claire’s quiet distress. But she had gotten Molly Carter talking and they needed more information. “Why do
you
say that, Mrs. Carter?”
“Stands to reason, don’t it. Never was one of those boys she worked with at Riverchon. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“Why?” he probed again, taken by her absolute certainty.
“You wouldn’t as’ if you’d ever a met the housekeeper, Mrs. Dalgliesh, out to Riverchon. Runs that house and her staff right and tight. Never would have stood for a footman or anyone a’messing with my Maisy. Made me that promise the day I took my Maisy down there. Looked me in the eye, Dalgliesh did, and said it would be so. And so Maisy said it was. No. Had to be one of the nobs. Had to be someone even Dalgliesh couldn’t cross, or was afraid of. Here, let me see the thing.”
This time, it was Molly Carter’s hand that shook as she reached for the fob and peered at it close, stretching her mind to its limit to think. “Poor lamb.” She wiped away more tears with her apron. “I don’t know—you know it brings to mind a gentleman I seen once or twice. I takes washing from his dolly mop up on Little George Street. She’s no more than she should be for a whore, and remembers where she come from though she’s over in Sloan Square now.”
“His name?”
“She called him Taffy, if you can believe that. But when he’s respectable, he’s the Honorable Mr. Edward Layham.”
The name set off an alarm bell clanging in Tanner’s brain. The name was familiar. But he couldn’t remember ever having come across Mr. Edward Layham before—couldn’t remember if he had been on the guest list of Tanner’s grandmother’s ball—or put a face to the man. A mystery.
But he would certainly search him out now.
They
would search him out now.
“Obliged to you, Molly Carter.” Tanner touched the brim of his hat and set his mind forward, toward a murderer.
Chapter Eleven
They left Union Place and Molly Carter with assurances that Maisy’s body would be delivered unto her mother, and all the expenses of a decent burial paid for. Claire was especially reticent to leave Molly Carter on her own to bear the burden of her daughter’s death, but Tanner felt they had already spent more time than he had planned with the woman.