Theo found her eagerness both touching and heartbreaking—all the more so because such an event would have been scorned by most of the London ladies of his acquaintance. He hadn’t the heart to destroy her innocent pleasure by hinting that she might do better to stay away, never mind suggesting she assume the hopeless task of attempting to dissuade her mother from obliging Sir Valerian. In fact, all things considered, there was only one thing he could say.
“Miss Drinkard,” he said with a little smile, “I hope you will honor me with the first waltz, in spite of my lack of respectability.”
As if to prove himself worthy of this honor, he bowed deeply from the waist, and she responded by spreading the skirt of her apron and sinking into a curtsy.
“The honor will be all mine, sir,” she said,
“I shall look forward to it,” he said, and was surprised to discover that he meant it. “But now I suppose I’d best go and wash up for dinner.”
He would have suited the action to the word, but she cried, “Oh, I almost forgot! A letter came for you in today’s post.”
Ethan! Thank God! With any luck, it would say he’d got Theo’s letter and was returning hotfoot from London to sort out whatever was in the wind at his mill. Theo followed Daphne into the hall, where a couple of letters lay on the small table near the front door. To his surprise, she handed him not just one, but both of them.
“The other is for Mrs. Jennings,” she explained. “Would you be kind enough to take it up to her? She has the second room on the left, on the opposite end of the corridor from you.”
Theo agreed, and was soon knocking on the older lady’s door. She opened it, and he surrendered the letter to her.
“This came for you in today’s post,” he explained. “Miss Drinkard asked me to bring it up to you.”
“Thank you,” she said, receiving it with hands clawed by arthritis. “Such a good boy . . . so like your poor mother.”
Theo hastily denied having done anything remarkable, but returned to his room much shaken. So like your poor mother . . . Had Mrs. Jennings known his mother? Had she recognized him as his mother’s son? It was all nonsense, of course. Mrs. Jennings was three parts senile. Granted, Theo had no very clear memory of his mother, who had died when he was still in the nursery, but if a certain painting hanging in his ancestral home was anything to judge by, he did indeed look very much like her . . .
He was still pondering the implications of Mrs. Jennings’s cryptic utterance as he broke the seal on his own correspondence, but this had the effect of driving all other considerations from his mind. It was indeed from his brother-in-law, but it made no mention of the letter Theo had sent him. Instead, Ethan was (he said) pleased to inform Theo that his father’s will had been granted probate, and his exile was at an end.
“I’m free,” Theo murmured stupidly, staring at the paper in his hand. “I’m free to go.”
14
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would.”
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
HARD ON THE HEELS OF his unexpected liberation came the realization that he could not take advantage of it. The vague notion that he lacked funds to arrange for the hire of a post-chaise (for he had no intention of once more subjecting his person to the rigors of travel on the common stage) was given the lie by Sir Ethan’s assurances that Theo had only to present himself at his brother-in-law’s bank, where instructions had been sent by that same day’s post instructing that Theo was to be advanced any sum he required up to a maximum of twenty pounds sterling.
No, Theo was under no financial obligation to remain in Lancashire. Nor could he flatter himself that his departure would leave the mill understaffed, for although the quality of his work had undoubtedly improved over the course of his employment, he could not convince himself that his absence would have a negative effect on production.
Still, the fact remained that he could not leave. Not now. It was very clear that Ethan was not coming, and although Theo could not say whether his continued absence was due to ignorance or willful neglect, it clearly behooved him, he thought with a trace of annoyance, to look after his brother-in-law’s interests until such time as he could prevail upon Ethan to look after them himself.
If he were honest, however, there was another reason, one far more compelling than any sense of family loyalty toward his sister’s husband. In truth, he could not leave without ensuring Miss Drinkard’s safety. He was not sure exactly what plans were being hatched in her mother’s dining room, but it seemed to him that Sir Valerian’s party, added to Mrs. Drinkard’s ambitions for her daughter, might prove to be a volatile, even an explosive combination. He could not go without first being certain Miss Drinkard came to no harm through her own quite innocent involvement.
In fact, he realized with dawning conviction,
