Page 59
“The desperate. Honeydew is a good sort, and he’s kept out true criminals.”
Isidore nodded. “The bridge,” she said. “The wages, the school, the apothecary, the post road. And the midwife?”
His eyes went blank. “Yes.”
She looked around the smelly, dusty smithy again. There was a cot against the wall, with a gray blanket cast over it. This was no house. It was just a place to be. And yet it looked as if he lived here.
“Did your wife lose a baby?” Isidore asked.
“That depends on how you see it. She kept the baby with her, so I never saw the child.”
Isidore looked at the dirt floor because there was too much pain in his eyes. But: “So the baby wasn’t born?”
She didn’t glance up, but his voice continued, rough with that sort of male anger that accompanies pain. “Joan labored for two days. I found the surgeon from the next village, Pasterby, forced him to come. It was too late.” Still not looking, she heard him get up and clump to the wall to fetch the horseshoe.
He put it down on the anvil and struck it with the hammer, a gentler, quieter blow than earlier. “She might have died, even with a midwife here.” Another thump of the hammer. “But she died alone and in pain, while I was riding over to the next village. And for that—”
“She knew you were coming,” Isidore said. “That you were trying to help.”
“For that I pissed on the duke’s marble coffin,” the smith said. He turned to her. “And for that I almost killed his daughter-in-law.”
Isidore nodded.
“Aren’t you going to have a hysterical fit and scream your way out of here?”
“I’m learning so much,” Isidore said. “I’ll send Honeydew to polish the family tomb directly.”
There was a moment of silence and then he made a strange barking sound. Isidore was trying to blink away an errant tear and didn’t realize what the sound was, until she understood he was laughing. And laughing.
Isidore rose and brushed off her back of her pelisse. “Mr. Pegg, I need someone to help me.”
He stopped laughing and looked at her. “I suspect you would not be surprised to hear that I require all duchesses to pay beforehand.”
“The vicar reports that he has many graves without stones, as people haven’t been able to afford them. I told him that the Duke of Cosway would be righting the cemetery, and making sure that each grave has a proper memorial.”
He looked at her. “My Joan has a stone.”
She nodded. “Will you help me make sure that everyone who was not as lucky as Joan gets a stone?”
“Lucky?” he said. And snorted.
“Lucky,” she said. “Unlucky in some ways, lucky in others.”
“Christ,” he muttered. “A philosophical duchess. That’s just what this village needs.”
“Philosophical and rich,” Isidore said.
He got to the door before her and pushed it open. “As I said, Your Grace. Just what this village needs.”
Chapter Twenty
Revels House
March 2, 1784
The next day
The man from London had bulging eyes that reminded Simeon of a tree frog he’d seen in Morocco. He had on a wine-red velvet waistcoat that must have belonged to a nobleman at some point. It strained over Mr. Merkin’s impressive stomach.
