Miss Billings Treads The Boards Read online

  She stared at him. “Yes, I do. Abner told me to toss it on a bonfire somewhere, because it was worthless, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “Thank goodness for that!” Hal exclaimed. “I have glad tidings for you, Mrs. Hampton. Your Giotto is worth a little fortune.”

  Kate opened her mouth in disbelief and threw herself on her knees by the bed, grasping his arm. “Are you sure?”

  “This seems to be the season for confusion. It appears that Abner mixed up your sketch with another and gave you erroneous information. It’s only a little fortune, though,” Hal assured her. “It would probably only keep my rascally nephew in neckcloths and tight pantaloons for a year or two, but I think it would be enough for you to maintain a frugal household.” He watched her reaction. “At least, until you find yourself a husband, my dear Miss Billings.”

  She bowed her head over his arm and burst into hearty tears. With an effort Hal rested his other hand on her head. Her hair was soft and curled loose on her neck. Touched as never before, he fingered the curls as she sobbed into his arm. How terrifying your future must have appeared, he thought, and how ladylike you were about it.

  Someone scratched on the door, and it opened. The innkeeper’s wife stood there, holding a covered tray. Kate raised her tear-stained face from Hal’s arm.

  “No need in carrying on so, lovey. I’m sure he’ll be right as a trivet in a day or two!” the woman exclaimed as she set the tray on the bedside table. She winked and poked Hal in the ribs. “Of course, you’ll have to go easy on him for a few nights!”

  With a groan Kate put her head back down on Hal’s arm.

  “She’s shy about those things,” Hal explained. “We’ve only been married a little while.”

  The landlady laughed and poked Hal again. “It’s the shy ones you have to look out for, gov’nur.”

  “How well I know,” Hal replied fervently, and Kate resisted the urge to bite his arm.

  “Here’s them powders, now,” the landlady said. “When your little lady gets around to it, she can put some in this glass for you, and you’ll sleep like a baby.”

  “Thank you.”

  The landlady watched Kate another moment. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” she asked Hal in a loud whisper.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  When the landlady closed the door behind her, Kate raised her head from Hal’s arm. “You are completely unscrupulous, my lord.”

  “Me?” he asked innocently. “I was merely being an agreeable husband. You will be easy on me, won’t you?”

  Kate glared at him. “I won’t dignify that vulgar remark with a reply.” She found the powders and dumped them in the water glass, stirring furiously. “Drink this,” she commanded. She thrust the glass at him, then pulled it back. “No, first tell me what my Giotto is worth.”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand pounds, if I remember right,” Hal said.

  Kate sank into the chair again.

  “If you want to look in my wallet, Abner gave me the name of an art dealer here in Leeds who can verify that amount. He’ll probably try to buy it from you. Now don’t be such a watering pot! You’ll dilute the headache powders,” said Hal, reaching for the glass, which was tipped at a precarious angle.

  Wordlessly she put her arm carefully around his shoulders and helped him drink the potion, then removed one pillow and eased him down. She sank back into the chair, her eyes on Lord Grayson, but her mind miles away. If I am prudent, I can manage for years, she thought, a smile on her face. I’ll never again be at the mercy of such dubious characters as Squire Leavitt.

  “This is such good news, Hal,” she said at last. “You cannot imagine. If I buy a little place in Kent, I can have a garden, and a cow, and …”

  Hal put his hand on her arm. “You don’t want to rush into anything, Kate,” he said, his voice already starting to slur. His eyelids drooped, and he struggled to keep them open. “Think about it. Please.”

  Kate was on her feet and over to the bureau. She looked back at the marquess, startled at the intensity of his words. “In your wallet, you say?” she asked. He was asleep, his hand still stretched out toward her. You dear man, she thought. Was ever anyone’s news more welcome?

  She found the paper in a moment and opened it. “‘Socrates Cratch,’” she read out loud. “‘Dealer in fine art and gentlemen’s estates.’” The direction was unfamiliar to her, but she could ask the landlord. She pocketed the little paper. I can be out of here by nightfall and on my way back to London, she thought.

  She picked up the bonnet she had flung aside before she began to tend to Lord Grayson’s wounds, and retied the bows firmly under her chin. I can practice such economy and never be dependent on anyone again. The thought felt so good that she said it out loud.

  Before she left the room, she went to the bed and stood there, looking down at Lord Grayson, admiring his improbably long eyelashes. Why is it that some men are so blessed? she thought. It hardly seemed fair. She smoothed back the hair from his forehead and noted the shadowy whiskers on his face. “You could use a shave, Lord Grayson,” she said softly. “Perhaps I will make that my last official duty as your wife before I fly this coop.”

  She rested her hand lightly against his cheek. To her great surprise he stirred and kissed her palm, then settled more comfortably in the bed. She stared at him, wondering if he was awake, then decided it was merely a dream. “What can you be thinking?” she asked and shook her head.

  She closed the door quietly behind her and hurried down the stairs to see all the Bladesworths assembled in the dining room. Malcolm held out his hand to her. “Come, my dear, and join us!”

  Ivy nodded and motioned her into the room. “We are all heading for the Banner Street Theatre in a moment. It will be a family expedition, since we have all worked so hard for this moment. The rest of the company will be there, too. Are you going out, too, my dear?”

  Kate accepted the cup of tea that Ivy held out for her. She took a sip, preparing a lie for these good people and not sure why. Surely the Bladesworths would rejoice at her good fortune. “I thought I would inquire of the landlord for an apothecary so I could purchase some strawberry salve for Lord Grayson’s neck.” She set down the cup, angered at herself for prevaricating. “I … I’ll be on my way.”

  “Certainly, my dear,” said Ivy. “We will meet you back here with the best news.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kate agreed fervently. “Wonderful news.”

  The landlord stood in the hall with her trunk. “I’ll take it up to your room directly, Mrs. Hampton,” he said.

  “No, wait,” she said and knelt on the floor by the trunk. The Giotto sketch was wrapped in oilcloth and preserved carefully in the bottom. She removed it. “Now you may take the trunk upstairs, sir. But first, can you direct me to Walton Street?”

  The landlord gave her directions, and she hurried from the inn, the Giotto clutched in her hand, a smile on her face. I’ll be an independent woman by nightfall, she thought.

  Ch apter 7

  The office of Socrates Cratch was in the very center of Leeds, next to the Corn Exchange. It amounted to nothing more than a shopfront to Kate’s eyes, having one small, dusty window with tired curtains and the word “Cratch” over the little door in serviceable black letters. Clutching the Giotto to her breast, Kate knocked.

  “Come.” The voice was barely audible. Kate took a deep breath and opened the door. She was short enough not to have to stoop and was only grateful that Lord Grayson was not present. He probably would have banged his forehead on the sill and laid up yet another wound to her account.

  A man as little and old as his office sat at a desk several sizes too large for him. His pince-nez drooped on the end of his nose. When he pushed it up and looked at her, his eyes seemed magnified as an insect’s. His tidiness was at odds with the clutter about him in the cramped office. He was as neat as a pin.

  Kate stepped forward, careful to avoid the piles of papers that formed a
path from door to desk. “Mr. Cratch?”

  He nodded, rose, and extended a hand. “The very same, my dear.” For all his apparent age, he twinkled surprisingly young eyes at her. “It has been, by my calculations, roughly two centuries since someone of your obvious pulchritude walked through that door. Do sit down, if you can find a space.”

  Kate stared at him and then laughed. “La, sir, you cannot be a day over eighty-five,” she said, teasing in the same vein and wondering, at the same time, when she had suddenly become so saucy. It must have something to do with association with the Bladesworths. I am becoming flexible, Malcolm, she thought, and shook Cratch’s hand.

  He glared at her and then smiled to ameliorate the effect. “You are an astute observer, Miss …”

  “Miss Billings,” she supplied.

  “I am eighty-three this month, you flippant baggage! It only seems like two hundred years. Ah, yes, move those books and sit down. Billings, did you say? Not Katherine Billings?”

  Kate could only stare again. Why is it that everyone in this part of England seems to know my name? “Yes, Mr. Cratch. How do you know my name?”

  He was looking at the rolled-up oilskin in her lap. “I’ll even wager I know what is in that packet, Miss Billings. Stout angels bumbling through an Italian sky!” His voice was triumphant. He bowed to an imaginary audience and sat down again. “I rest my case.”

  Kate blinked. North England appeared to be populated entirely by eccentrics. “The mystery continues, sir,” she said. “How do you know all these things? Do you read tea leaves or palms?”

  He laughed and squirreled around his desk until he unearthed a sheet of paper. “I received this missive yesterday from my friend Abner Sheffield, who, I believe is your late father’s solicitor, and also a surveyor of antiques?”

  Kate nodded, mystified.

  Down went the spectacles on Cratch’s nose. He peered over them at the letter. “Among other tidings Abner assures me that I might be blessed with a visit from a lady named Katherine Billings.” He looked at her. “Provided that a certain Lord Grayson located her. I see that he must have. My dear friend and colleague Mr. Sheffield assured me that you would have something I was looking for, a sketch by Giotto.”

  He said the name lovingly, pronouncing it correctly like an Italian, and then gestured across the desk. “Come, come, my dear Miss Billings. Unroll it.”

  She did as he said, unrolling it carefully, and then standing back to look at it again herself. The angels still hovered over the barely roughed-in forms of two shepherds sleeping on the ground. The background was sketched in more prominently and displayed three Wise Men on Italian-looking camels.

  Socrates Cratch clapped his hands in glee. “Ah, this is a treasure!” He pointed to the camels. “The actual mural does not contain these beasts, but Giotto mentioned them in one of his letters. Art scholars had been sure they did not exist.” He clapped his hands again. “Miss Billings, this is a prize.”

  “My father gave it to me for my birthday,” Kate said softly, taking back every distressing thought that had circulated through her brain about her father and his frippery ways, as far as art was concerned. “Indeed, it was his last gift to me.”

  Cratch nodded, his eyes kind. “Mr. Sheffield alluded to something about that in his letter. My condolences, Miss Billings, but I trust you will discover that you have been well provided for by your father.”

  After another long look at the sketch, Cratch rolled it up and handed it back to her. He sat at his desk again and clasped his hands together. “I am prepared to pay you handsomely for it. There is a pre-Renaissance scholar in Belgium who has a companion sketch, without camels.” He leaned toward her across the huge desk. “Now, if this were the time of the Borgias, he would probably have you poisoned, to obtain his sketch.” He laughed when she gasped. “But as it is, he is willing to bow to modern convention and pay you four thousand two hundred fifty pounds.”

  Kate leaned back from the force of the news. “That much!” she breathed. “Oh, Mr. Cratch, you can’t imagine what that means to me!”

  “I think I can, Miss Billings,” he replied. “A lady of your obvious quality who traipses across town without an escort is likely down on her luck. You should be able to live quite comfortably on the interest, if you know how to keep household.”

  “Oh, I do,” she declared and handed the sketch back across the desk. “Sir, I will sell it to you.”

  The little man clapped his hands again. “Well done, Miss Billings!”

  In the matter of an hour’s business the deed was done. For all his age and apparent decrepitude, Socrates Cratch let no flies rest on him. He produced official-looking documents, and she signed them after a careful reading, which had Cratch nodding his head in approval. “You’re no ninnyhammer, Miss Billings,” he chortled. “I expect you will be wise with this money.”

  “I must be, sir,” she said quietly as she looked up from the document at long last and reached for the pen.

  After more applause from Cratch she sat back while he scurried next door to the Corn Exchange, returning in surprisingly short time with the money. He handed it to her, eyeing the reticule on her arm.

  “It’ll never all fit in there, Miss Billings.” He leaped up from the desk, energized by his good fortune, and rummaged in another corner of the tiny office. He produced a small canvas bag, covered with the dust of years. Kate coughed as he brushed off the bag and the dust rose in circles about the room.

  “There you are, my dear. Plop the ready in the bag, and for the Lord’s sake, look out for cutpurses!”

  Kate did as she was told. “It will be safe as houses, Mr. Cratch,” she assured him. “I intend to be very careful about my future.” She held out her hand to him. “Thank you.”

  He shook it and held the door open for her. “Anytime you have another Giotto sketch, you need only remember Socrates Cratch. I plan to be here at least another one hundred years until 1918!”

  Kate hurried back to the inn. It was noon and she was hungry, but she ignored the rumblings in her stomach. She thought about stopping at a tea house, but she had never taken a meal unescorted before and did not now. As she hurried along the crowded market streets, she thought about the lie she had told the Bladesworths and resolved to ease her mind in that regard. She asked directions of the nearest apothecary from a constable. It would only take a moment to buy the strawberry ointment she had claimed as the reason for her sojourn and return to the inn.

  The apothecary shop was empty, and the druggist inclined to be garrulous. He commented upon the weather, the state of York’s economy, the trouble with magistrates, and the difficulties of getting a really close shave from a barber while he blended a pot of the ointment. He handed the jar to her over the tall counter, and she stood on tiptoe to reach it.

  “Of course, for all my troubles, I’m in better trim than that poor marquess, ain’t I?”

  Kate’s hand froze on her reticule. “Poor marquess?” she managed finally as she removed a coin.

  “Have you been living in a cave, missy?” he asked and leaned over the counter. “It seems a bloody riding coat and a riderless horse turned up near Wickfield. Belongs to a marquess, a blighted cove name of Lord Grayson, some aristo from Kent who lives in London.” He took her money. “A Bow Street Runner has already been in here this morning, asking me to check with everyone who buys anything that might be used to doctor a wound.”

  Kate dropped the ointment in the satchel with the money.

  “Heavens, sir,” she said faintly. “Do they think he’s alive and hidden somewhere?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? I think he’s dead under some bush.”

  Kate turned to the door, hoping that the light in the shop was dim enough to hide the paleness of her complexion.

  “One moment, miss!” the druggist called.

  She stopped, rooted to the spot, then turned slowly on wooden legs.

  “Say now, what are you using that ointment for?” he demanded
, his brows drawing together in one line.

  Kate resisted the urge to pick up her skirts and sprint from the store. She raised her chin and stared back at him, hoping that her heart really wasn’t leaping about visibly in her chest. “I have a rash,” she declared.

  “Where, missy?” he insisted, his eyes boring into her.

  “I refuse to tell you, sir,” she said, her voice frosty, her knees knocking together.

  To her relief he burst into loud laughter and winked at her. Kate fled the shop. She walked briskly, forcing herself not to look over her shoulder at Bow Street Runners, real or imagined, who were bearing down on her in platoons. They were probably circulating about Leeds, asking everyone if they knew the whereabouts of persons only recently arrived from Wakefield who might have seen something. It was only a matter of time before they arrived at the Scylla and Charybdis and questioned the landlord.

  Hal woke up to an empty room, which suited him. His bladder was full to bursting. He sat up cautiously, waiting for his head to begin booming again. It was silent this time; there was only the threat of a dull ache by his ear and on the back of his neck. He stood up slowly, ready to grab the bedpost if the room started to revolve.

  It did not. “Good,” he said out loud, then knelt down as though on eggshell knees to hunt for the chamber pot.

  When he finished his business and slid the pot under the bed again, he was glad to crawl back between the sheets. I am either weak with hunger, he thought, or still not up to my best effort yet. I can only pray that when my darling Kate Billings and I eventually marry, she will not ever feel the need to thump me with a candlestick. I shall be a most compliant husband and lover.

  The thought pleased him as nothing else had before. Making love to Kate Billings, no, Kate Tewksbury-Hampton, Lady Grayson, would be a most agreeable occupation. Hal chuckled.

  I have saved myself through eight years of Spanish service for the king, and onerous imprisonment, holding out for marriage with someone I love, and not someone my family appoints. Married love is a modern notion, he thought. I have seen too many of my friends marry those chosen for them and then cheat without a qualm. Whatever the faults of my character, I am not a hypocrite.