“Plausible.” Timothy downed the rest of his port then stood. He put his hand on Beckett’s arm. “Listen. There is no good end to this story. Either life is a miserable one, whether she murdered a man and fled or is orphaned in the world with no one to rely upon. The woman is alone. A dalliance with her is…” Timothy looked away, swallowing his words. Then he patted Beckett’s arm. “I know you won’t be unkind.”
Another frown. What did that mean? “I’m not known for kindness,” he reminded his friend.
“But you aren’t known for cruelty either,” Timothy said, and his whole voice and body seemed to sag with fatigue. “I’m for bed. Let me know if you wish further inquiry.”
“Thank you, my friend.” Beckett watched as Timothy busied himself about the room, checking the correspondences in the satchel before leaving out.
It was quite a story. And it might belong to Mrs. Reid. It also might not. He still had her paintings, and he wasn’t sure how exactly he would be able to return them to her unnoticed. Stealing her art was not something he was proud of doing. It was low and fueled by his own cowardice. He had wanted to know her better without risking her knowledge of his desire.
After a time, he too went home. But instead of being consumed by a political treatise or a stack of pamphlets, hecontinued to think on Mrs. Reid. Not in lust, as he had before, but in painstaking analysis, the way he might tackle a policy issue or an inconsistency in a bill. What made her passionate? What made her animate to a point of action?
From conversation with her, he’d found her to be passionate about highlighting inequity. She’d not proposed any solutions but wanted him to acknowledge and see them all the same. She was adamant that she did not keep sugar in the house, and the dainties she’d served were flavored with honey. This was a common practice of abolitionists, which she also embraced. Perhaps advocating for justice moved her?
Would that fit with her being a woman scorned? No. He couldn’t see jealousy spurring her. But it would fit if she believed the instructor to be accosting a friend of hers. A sister? And he knew without a doubt she would absolutely do whatever it took to right a perceived wrong.
He was in his dressing gown, in his room, with the fire banked. Still, he looked between the two canvases, propped against the clothes horse, trying to find an answer to his amorphous question. But try as he might to settle and solve the problem, Mrs. Reid was on his mind, and he didn’t know how to cure the ailment. He’d see her tomorrow for their silent stroll in Hyde Park. Perhaps he could find more answers then.
Chapter Nine
The morning wascold and dark. Beckett stamped his feet to keep warm as he waited for her. It was unlike her to be late. He walked in a small circle, wishing he’d worn more layers beneath his oilskin cloak. The rain had been a light mist that drifted into a drizzle, and now threatened to become an even more insistent pattern.
Finally, he heard the church bells strike. She was a full half hour late. Worry struck him. Had she become ill? Had she left without him and been set upon by rogues? He walked to her home, wanting to reassure himself of her safety.
Her manservant Jacobs opened the door. Warmth of the house spilled out, beckoning him. “The lady of the house is still abed, my lord.”
That struck him as most odd. “Is she ill? Does she need anything?” Beckett asked. “This is most unlike her.”
“Indeed,” Jacobs agreed, but did not give any more information.
He waited for more offerings, and when Jacobs gave none, Beckett realized how much access and information his status was usually afforded. But not here. Not with Mrs. Reid, who was nothing to him, not really. She was a means to an end—end of agambling debt for his friend. That was how he must be perceived by her and her staff. She’d once told him that she’d tried to make Mrs. Dove-Lyon release her from this duty of entertaining him. His presence was not welcomed.
Beckett turned to go.
“Shall I inform her that you were here?” Jacobs asked.
Dare he the humiliation of a man who was turned away? A man left in the cold? No, he was able to put his pride away for that. She was ill, clearly. He doubted that the straight-forward, honest-to-a-fault woman he knew was hovering in the corner, bidding her manservant to lie to him. He wished he could help, but he knew not what he could provide. “If it makes her feel better to know that I was here, please do. But if it distresses her, do not.”
He left the decision to the man who knew her better than he did. He walked away from her small abode, feeling more bereft than anything else. Even though he harbored terrible niggling suspicions of her time in Colchester, still, they had a habit, a connection, and he missed it. His questions could wait. He could wait. When she felt better, she would send for him. If nothing else, he was a patient person, as anyone who’d had the misfortune to meet him politically had experienced.
“There now, nothinga good cuppa can’t cure,” Sabine said, helping Nell sit up in bed.
Once her aching legs were straightened, Sabine set the tray on her lap. The smallest pot sat wrapped in towels, while a hopeful scone rested beside it. Nell’s stomach turned.
“I know you don’t like to eat after one of your attacks, but it would do you good to put something in your stomach. One must eat something to keep up our strength.”
While Sabine might refer to her episodes as attacks, Nell thought of them as failures. Her emotions had overwhelmed her, made her insensible, her body tensing all over as she wept and screamed and pummeled her fists at herself. The punishment of succumbing to her depths was extreme, and the immediate aftermath was brutal. Her head pounded, her mouth dry. Even her tongue ached from pressing incessantly at the roof of her mouth for however many hours she suffered.
The episodes were rare now, far fewer than when she’d been a girl. And when she was a girl, the pummeling of her fists did not always land on only herself. She’d bruised her brothers and sisters, her mother and father when they attempted to hold her down to keep from tearing her own hair out. She had finally figured out why they came and sought to keep all those experiences at a minimum.
The problems were always rooted in excess: too much noise, too many people, too big emotions for her to process at a given time. It was why she’d not been allowed to join the art classes Monsieur Cobb taught. When he was alive.
Nell shuddered, which caused Sabine to suck in a breath and put her hand on the tray to steady it. “I’m sorry,” Nell said, her voice hoarse and cracked from yesterday’s screaming. At least, she thought it had been yesterday.
Sabine and Jacobs had managed to get a dose of laudanum in her to calm down before they wrested her to bed. Cook had helped draw a bath, and Sabine squeezed warm water down Nell’s back as she sobbed into her knees. Nell could still feel the pit of hopelessness and betrayal inside of her but felt too raw to explore it at the moment. She did not know how she felt about anything.
“It’s all right, love. Everything is as it should be now.”
Nell lifted her head, suddenly suffused with hope. “My paintings?”
