His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(74)
“And now, having told a harmless fabrication, you feel like a confidence trickster?” What did that make Lily, who was fraud wearing a ballgown—or a nightgown.
Hessian’s smile was crooked as he tucked Lily’s lap robe over her feet. “I feel clever, which is very bad of me. The innkeeper volunteered that I sounded as if I’d grown up in the Borders and bided there still. Perhaps I lived near my brother in Birdwell-on-Huckleburn?”
That smile… that smile was not among the smiles Lily had seen on Hessian to date. It brought out the resemblance to his brother, Worth, and went well with the dark clothing.
“What has Birdwell-on-Anywhere to do with Tippy?”
“The innkeeper was showing off, flourishing his eye for detail. Somebody has been writing regularly to Miss Tipton from Birdwell-on-Huckleburn. I grew up in Cumberland and have occasion to know that Birdwell is a market town not far from Dumfries. Her Grace of Quimbey confirmed that Lawrence Delmar had been a braw, bonnie Scot and that he and Walter Leggett quarreled loudly on the eve of your sister’s elopement.”
Hessian’s recitation provoked such a degree of upset, Lily put a hand over his mouth. “A moment, please. Somebody has been writing regularly to Tippy from Scotland?”
He took her hand, his grip warm. “Mrs. Lawrence Delmar. She is among Miss Tipton’s most faithful correspondents. She writes every other month, has no need to cross her letters, and seals them with a family crest.”
Hessian was trying to convey information—facts, implications, conclusions. Lily could not make her mind work to grasp any of it.
“My sister is alive, and Tippy never told me?” Lily wanted to shout, to throw things, to climb out the window and dash headlong for Birdwell-on-Deception. “I don’t know whether to be… but Annie is alive—she was always Annie to me—and surely that is a miracle. I refuse to cry, because this is good news. It must be.”
“And yet,” Hessian said, “you are dealt another blow to learn you’ve been subjected to yet another falsehood. I’m sorry, Lily.”
She did not want his apology, because he hadn’t wronged her by bringing this truth to light. “Hold me, for the love of God, please hold me.”
He plucked her from the chair and carried her to the bed. Lily had turned the sheets back to warm and scooted under the covers, while Hessian tugged off his boots.
“Get in here,” Lily said, untying her dressing gown and flinging it to the foot of the bed. “Get in here and tell me everything you know, Hessian Kettering. I will not engage in strong hysterics, despite the temptation, but neither can I promise you a ladylike vocabulary.”
He draped his coat and waistcoat over the back of the reading chair and drew the window curtains closed before coming to the bed.
He stood for a moment, gazing down at Lily as she lay on her side, willing him to join her.
The mattress dipped, and he was drawing the covers up over them both. “We must conclude your sister is alive and thriving, Lily. She doesn’t need to skimp on paper to the extent of crossing her letters. She uses a family crest to seal correspondence. She has the leisure to write regularly, and in all the years she’s been corresponding with Miss Tipton, her direction hasn’t changed. She’s not haring about after a man who can’t hold a job, not fleeing the law, or using an alias.”
“You are trying to reassure me.”
Hessian tucked an arm under Lily’s neck and drew her along his side. “Is it working?”
His sane, sensible conclusions would sink in after he’d left. What calmed Lily was his nearness. “Some. What did Her Grace of Quimbey have to add?”
Hessian had a way of holding Lily that was at once snug and easy. The bed was immediately warm with him in it, and despite all the clothing—far too much clothing—the fit of his body to Lily’s was comfortable.
Also comforting.
“Her Grace explained London to me. I seldom use my Town residence and haven’t paid much attention to domestic details. Most neighborhoods use the same dairy, the same bakeshop, the same laundresses and tinkers. The dairy maids, night soil men, crossing sweepers—they all share news and gossip, and they carry it from one back entrance to another, one stable to another.”
“You did not know this?” If there was any pleasure associated with working at a coaching inn, it was the sense of having all the news from every corner of the realm. A crop failure in Dorset, a spectacular barn fire in East Anglia, a great fair in Yorkshire—the coaching inns heard about everything in first-person accounts.
“I did not grasp the extent of a wealthy widow’s news sources, and for years before her present union, the duchess was widowed.”
Lily untied Hessian’s neckcloth and drew it off. “How is this relevant?”
The linen smelled of him, of soap and cedar, and faintly of starch. She tossed it in the direction of the reading chair.
“Her Grace of Quimbey keeps journals and thus was able to regale me with astonishing details. Lawrence Delmar was an exceedingly handsome, friendly fellow. The ladies all noticed him, from the maids, to the laundresses, to the occasional visitor paying a call on Walter. Delmar lived in and served as much as a man of business as a house steward. For a young man, he had a lot of responsibility, but he also rose to whatever challenge Walter Leggett threw at him.”