This proved about as effective as one might expect, which was to say, not in the least. Silas managed a quick look around him, to find that every lady in the place was pressing past her neighbors to peer inside the office.
The only person who moved to obey was Mrs. Williams, who grabbed her daughter by the elbow and pulled her from the room. The young lady looked over her shoulder and caught his eye as she disappeared from sight, her lips forming words Silas couldn’t make out in the din. She might have said “thank you”, but he couldn’t be sure.
Then all hell broke loose.
“What in God’s name were you doing? How could you take advantage of an innocent girl? Have you no shame?” Miss Danby must not have expected answers to any of these questions, for she spoke so quickly there was no possibility of getting a word in. “Jane is going to kill me! How will I ever face her?”
“Who’s Jane?” Silas ventured.
“Mrs. Williams!”
She must mean the younger Mrs. Williams, not the one who’d been knocking his brains round his skull.
“We’ll never live this down.” Miss Danby looked to be bordering on hysteria, though he knew better than to invoke that word at this juncture. “You need to leave,” she continued, obviously struggling to hold back tears. “Don’t ever come back here.”
“Right.” There could be no other outcome, after how they’d caught him. There was no point in trying to explain that Miss Williams had been the one to kiss him. He should never have let himself be caught alone with her in the first place.
Sacked after a single night’s work. Was he cursed to ruin anything he touched?
Silas nodded curtly and walked to the door. The crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. It seemed that no one wanted to be tainted by close contact, though they were happy enough to whisper and gawk as he passed. He turned over his shoulder at the last minute, remembering the money he’d been promised. “Should I close up my table first? I left the chips there when you asked me to help search for that woman.”
He wasn’t sure if Miss Danby had found the errant gambler they’d been searching for when he found Miss Williams, but it hardly seemed to matter now.
“I’ll get someone else to handle it,” Miss Danby said tightly.
“The ones in the drawer on the left belong to Miss Williams. She left them behind after her play, but someone should return them—”
“Justgo!”
Perfect. So much for his sixty pounds.
* * *
Victory did not taste as sweet as Hannah had hoped.
It had been easy enough to endure the initial yelling and lamentation that awaited her back at the house. That part was actually reassuring in an odd sort of way, as it proved she’d finally succeeded in destroying everyone’s ill-conceived plans for her future after all her false starts. The hard part came the next morning, when Hannah arose refreshed and content, to find that everyone wasstillin hysterics. (Although she hated it when men called ladies hysterical, she was allowed to use the term herself when it was appropriate, and it certainly fit here.)
Mama had been up sobbing all night, as Eli informed her. Hannah had taken breakfast in her room to avoid her family, but her brother had barged in on her despite the fact that she was still in her nightgown and wrapper.
“What on earth happened last night?” Eli asked. “She’s in a terrible state, you know.”
“She needn’t be in any sort of state,” Hannah replied. “She only needs to stop trying to marry me off when I’ve told her a thousand times no.”
Her bacon and hot rolls filled the room with the most delicious scent, but the conversation was ruining her appetite.
“Did you know that she doesn’t plan to go back home to Papa?” Hannah continued. “She wants to live with one of us forever. Did she tell you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Eli looked confused. “She’s a grown woman. It’s not for us to tell her whether to go back to Devonshire. The more pressing issue is why you decided to ruin your good name with a man who has no income to support you.”
“You mean to say you’ve sacked Mr. Corbyn?” That made her feel a bit awful. But of course they would. In her rush to carry out her plan last night, Hannah hadn’t had time to think about what would happen next. Still, the sixty pounds she’d promised should be more than enough to tide him over until he landed somewhere else. He would be all right.
Speaking of which, how was she going to get it to him? Where did he live?
“What did you think would happen?” Eli looked cross, which was such a rare occurrence that Hannah honestly couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen it. He was normally mild-tempered. “We can’t keep on a dealer who took advantage of a lady for the whole world to see.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Not half as sorry as he’s going to be.”
