“In here,” Jeremy called.
Chase entered. It was a small place, but had been made comfortable. A wooden floor made it into a house if anything did. The gates for the carriage were firmly locked and bolted, becoming a wall. Simple furniture, probably borrowed from the main house, created a little sitting room.
Another door gave off from this one, and he walked to it. On its threshold he saw that it was the bedchamber. Inside Jeremy washed, stripped to the waist, his youthful body bent over the basin while he rinsed his face. He heard Chase, and glanced over. Smiling, he stood and faced the door while he pulled on a shirt. Then he opened the door fully and came out. “I thought it was my mum. I didn’t expect callers. I don’t have any.”
Chase looked around the chamber. “You have made a pleasant home for yourself here.”
“I like it. Mum doesn’t.” He smiled again. “‘We’ll be killed by intruders and you’ll be none the wiser out here,’ she said. As if any intruder would stand a chance with those two, as you learned to your pain. Also, they can shoot better than I can.”
“Is that who taught Miss Hepplewhite? Your mother?”
“It was. Mum was a farmer’s daughter. Tenant on some estate somewhere. But she married an army fellow. Not like you. Just a soldier. He got killed in the war early on, and she went into service to be able to keep me.” He pulled on his coat. “Come and sit down. If you are here, there is a reason I expect.”
Chase and he returned to the sitting room. Jeremy built up the fire a bit and soon the flames broke through the night chill still hanging in the house.
“I would offer you something, but I take meals at the house and there’s not even coffee here.”
“I have no need of anything, but thank you for the good intentions. Miss Hepplewhite suggested something to me. I thought I would talk about it with you, since you may not think it as good an idea as she did.”
“Could be, although she usually has good ideas.”
“She said that there are times when she does not have much use of your services, and that if I do have need of such services then, perhaps you would like to make yourself available to my inquiries.”
Jeremy absorbed that. He frowned vaguely while he thought. “There’d be wages for this?”
“I will match whatever she pays you.”
Jeremy smiled at the floor and scratched his head. “I’ll be wanting a bit more than that, because she doesn’t pay me anything. Not yet. She feeds me and I live here, and she is like my family.”
“Then let us settle on wages that are suitable, since I am not like family.”
It did not take long to do so. Jeremy seemed pleased. “It could be complicated, what with you sending for me and I’m maybe not even here to know it because I’m somewhere for her.”
“We will see if we can keep it from being too complicated.”
Jeremy just looked at him with a half smile on his face. Something amused him, and Chase suspected it was he himself. “What?” he asked, when that gaze continued.
“I’m just thinking how Minerva is the smartest person I know, and you seem to have your wits about you too, but neither of you can see it.”
“See what?”
“Hell, if you are going to share workers and you are going to share a bed, why don’t you just share a business?”
The notion had never entered his mind. Yet it made some sense, especially because their methods complemented each other.
Ridiculous, of course. He could name five reasons why it would never work, and might well ruin too much. Still, he had to give Jeremy some credit for his own wits.
“I will go now. Oh, I had a question on another matter. When you would visit London with the Finleys, where was the house they let?”
“Old Quebec Street. Up a ways off Oxford. It is near Portman Square.”
Chase left Jeremy to go get his breakfast, and let himself out the side portal. The image he had seen when entering the bedchamber held steady in his memory while he mounted his horse. Before Jeremy had pulled on the shirt, while he bent to the basin, marks had been visible as raised lines on his shoulders. He had been beaten at some point. Chase had seen marks like that often enough in the army, only deeper and wider, on men who had been whipped.
These scars had healed better than most. Time had gone far to fade them. That meant they were quite old, and the back on which they were laid had been young. The mere act of growing up had changed them.
Finley had been a brute with more people than his wife, it seemed.
* * *
