Not that I am one, exactly.
I cover the distance through town with purpose, dodging crowds with my head down and stealing glances like a jumpy cat. Near the shore I round the Sloop Inn on Wharf Street, whitewashed with flower-lined windows and dark placards beside the door, one of which reads,public telephone.
Perfect.
I squint in the dim front room and find the telephone booth—but someone already occupies it. I hang about and smile at the publican, who rushes about with a towel slung over his shoulder and a dirty apron ’round his middle. “Ho there, what’ll it be, missy?”
I meet the man’s hard look, brimming with the one question I dare not ask outright:Do you know me?“The telephone,” I say instead. One way or another, I will have my questions answered.
“Afraid there’s a wait.” He whips his dish towel over his shoulder.
That’s when the guest inside the booth begins speaking loudly. Angrily. “That isn’t what I told you to do. It’s one hundred pounds or nothing,” comes the muffled growl. There’s a familiar slant to it that makes my skin crawl. “No. No! Listen here, I won’t stand for it.” A pause. “Well, you’d better figure it out. And quick.” The man’s voice slices through the calm.
Suddenly AJ’s jolly nature doesn’t seem so silly. I mentally close off my ears and smile at the man behind the bar who’s shelving a tankard. “You wouldn’t happen to know the name Anwen Dunn, would you?”
He plunks down the tankard and plants both massive hands on the bar, frowning down at me. “’Course I do. And who might you be?”
“Is she ever about?”
He gives a snort, twisting back to his work but still eyeing me curiously over his shoulder. “Not Anwen. She’s too good for these parts. Gone off and taken a new name, ain’t she? Isabella de…something.”
“Montfort,” I add softly. So my mother the opera singer is also Anwen Dunn from Cornwall. “And Dunn House—”
“Were her humble beginnings. All the Dunns lived there. She weren’t content to stay, though.”
“Has she a new home?”
“Anwen Dunn lives everywhere and nowhere. Like a butterfly, touching down for pollen now and again. I expect she’s mostly abroad.”
Right. She’d be traveling, wouldn’t she? I must have gone with her sometimes. To France, at least—which is how I learned the language.
“Well, fix it, then!” The angry man’s voice rachets up, startling me. “I’ll not stand for this. We’re dealing with several thousand pounds now, and this is unacceptable.”
I lean my head on my hand, tipping my face away from the telephone booth. “Quite a wind coming off the water these days, isn’t there?”
He eyes me. “No more ’n usual.”
“We’ll speak later,” snaps the man in the booth. He slams down the receiver. I swivel away as the door bangs open and tug my hat down to shield my face.
The telephone man stalks past, smashing his hat onto his head, and I glance up from under my lashes for a glimpse of this rather uncouth man who plainly has the means to order others about. His stance is shockingly…familiar. Suddenly I cannot catch my breath. He looks back over his shoulder and I know exactly whose face I shall see, even before I see it.
AJ.
“Miss.” The publican’s voice makes a faint impression upon my mind. Pain spiders up my scalp behind my eyes. “Miss.”
“Oh.” I swivel toward him, fingertips to my forehead. My vision is swimming as an odd pain lodges in my chest. “Yes, I’m sorry.” I cannot shake the wrongness of what I’ve just witnessed.
“Would ’ee be wanting to place a call, then? The box is open.”
“Right. Thank you.”
I separate myself mentally from what I’ve just seen. It’s simply not what it looked like. AJnot standingfor something, finding itunacceptable,is laughable. Besides, it isn’t as though he was conducting business in that booth. The man hasneverbeen one for investments. Has quite an adverse reaction tothem, he said once. Nasty business, that. Much simpler to take odd jobs.
I misheard. I do that sometimes.
I follow the publican and wait as he makes the connection, writes the charge on my card, and leaves me to the call. I swish the curtain closed and a wretched sense of betrayal curls through my denial. I sit in the wrongness of that encounter until the solicitor’s voice comes on the line. “Yes?”
“Mr. Gould, it’s Merryn Winthrop.”
