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Chapter 25

I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

— Matthew 25:36, The Authorized Version (1611)

Though the yellow post chaise which carried them to the Old Bell in Holborn was not as elegant as Lord Dere's private coach, it was a great deal faster and more comfortable than the stagecoaches which had brought the Barstows to Oxford from Twyford. And what ease to have a man accompany them, overseeing the changing of horses and postilions and ensuring Adela and Jane lacked for nothing! In other circumstances, Adela might have enjoyed herself—nay, she would have enjoyed herself—for she had not been to London since she was a girl.

But these were not other circumstances. Adela sat snugly between Lord Dere and Jane, neither of whom had much to say, the baron because he was a quiet man and Jane because she was miserable and could not speak of her misery in the baron's presence. He knew the reason for their errand, of course. With Jane's permission, Adela had shown her intended husband the summons and accepted gratefully his offer of aid. The morning coaches had already departed, and the baron advised against the evening one because it was slower and would only have them arrive "tired and bewildered," so the Barstows must wait through the agonizing hours.

"Suppose Roger were to die before we reached him?" whispered Jane, when she crept to her sister's bedside in the darkness. "And I abandoned him?"

Adela whispered back in her ear, so they would not waken Sarah or Bash, "He will not, and you did not, dearest." Adela had a worse fear, however: suppose Roger Merritt were not himself and required nursing the rest of his life? How would she keep Jane from returning to him, or how would his care be paid for? Another burden to throw upon the baron, poor man.

I will repay Lord Dere with love and gratitude, if it takes my whole life to manage! she swore to herself.

The Old Bell was a timber-framed, galleried inn built around a courtyard, one of many coaching inns along Holborn. Lord Dere soon secured the girls a room on the first floor, at the greatest distance possible from the noise of the street and coffee room, and though it was already dark, Jane was most anxious to proceed to the Fleet.

"My poor Mrs. Merritt," the baron told her regretfully, "I'm afraid I would not advise walking these streets at night, and I daresay they will be locking the gates soon. We will go directly tomorrow. You have my word."

What could Jane do but give way? Adela embraced her and murmured encouragement, but she too was uneasy. Added to her concern for her sister, she was vexed with herself, for she could not help thinking of Mr. Weatherill. He had grown up so near here, perhaps walking these streets hundreds of times, where the shabby attire she had first seen him wear would pass all unnoticed. Indeed, she found her pulse speeding whenever any man remotely his size or coloring caught her eye. More reprehensibly, when Adela perused Antiquities of Egypt , she had noted the publisher Murray was to be found at Number 32, Fleet Street, and, still more reprehensibly, she had consulted a map and discovered Number 32 stood by Falcon Court, not a stone's throw from the Old Bell.

What is the purpose of knowing this? she demanded of herself. It is not as if Mr. Weatherill will be sitting in Mr. Keele's publisher's office, and if Mr. Weatherill wanted you to know where he might be found, he could have supplied that information at any time in the last month!

Therefore Adela made no mention of her knowledge, and, if it might have passed unnoticed, she would have given herself a ruthless pinch every time she turned to scrutinize some man who was absolutely not Mr. Weatherill.

The following morning, after a hasty breakfast which Jane hardly touched, they set out.

There was no need for a hackney coach, for the walk was short, though vehicles clogged Holborn and Fleet Market, and some of the passersby were rough. The girls clung to either arm of Lord Dere, Jane trembling and Adela all eyes. (She glanced at a heavy fellow who was at least five stone heavier than Mr. Weatherill and who had an enormous carbuncle by his left eye. This was becoming ridiculous .)

And then the outer gate of the Fleet stood open before them.

"Courage, my dears," urged Lord Dere, though Jane could not help herself and was trying not to tug them forward.

When they reached the inner gate, the burly turnkey surprised them by addressing Jane. "Why, it's you again, ain't it, Mrs. Merritt? Thought we saw the last of you and good luck to you, I said. I'm Quint, if you don't recall."

"I remember you," said Jane softly. "Mrs. Eddings wrote to me to say my husband was…unwell."

Quint gave a grim nod. "That's right, ma'am."

"But he's—he's still alive, isn't he? I'm not too late?"

"He's alive," said Quint doubtfully.

"Take us to him at once, my good man," urged the baron, feeling Mrs. Merritt sway against him.

Even if Mr. Weatherill had indeed been present and walking within the prison yard, Adela would not have been able to pick him out among all the wandering souls within the walls of the Fleet, male and female, young and old. The prisoners' expressions struck her as either vacant or cunning, and she leaned closer to Lord Dere as well. This was the place Mr. Weatherill had known from his earliest years?

"Surely the prison does not hold so many," ventured the baron to their escort.

Quint glanced about, as if surprised by the remark. Then he shrugged. "There are visitors, like yourselves, but this isn't so many. Those who have the means choose to live out in the rules, and when the court sits, others pay their five shillings to leave for the day. Warden wants security for that, though, in case they think to take themselves off permanent-like."

"Five shillings!" marveled Lord Dere. "They must have important business to transact, to pay so much for a day's leave. If they were to do it often, I wonder how they might repay their original debt."

Another shrug, as he led them up the steps. "Not all hope to walk out of here." With a sidelong glance at Jane he added, "Some are content enough to make their mischief here for a few shillings a week."

Adela too stole a look at her sister, but Jane was pale and withdrawn. The Barstows had never asked the amount of Roger's debts, but even if they were repaid, was Roger one of those "content enough" to make his mischief here for the rest of his life?

The wretchedness of the place proved effective in driving Mr. Weatherill from her immediate thoughts, and Adela wondered if she would ever forget the close quarters, the smells, the eyes which followed their progress. Bodies spilled from the tap-room (at this hour!), singing or quarreling with each other. Shouts and curses carried through the passages. Idlers infested the stairs.

Keeping her gaze lowered and staying as close as possible to Lord Dere, she failed to notice the hard look one of the idlers gave the group as he emerged from the billiard room, his eyes traveling from Adela to Jane and back.

At one of the open doors in the gallery, Quint halted and knocked on the jamb. "Eddings? Oh, it's you, Mrs. E. How's your patient today? Got visitors for 'im." With an ungainly half-bow, he touched his hat and backed away, leaving them there.

"Come in," called a woman's voice as she bustled up to meet them. "Mrs. Merritt! You've come back, have you? Just in time, I say, 'cause he's fearful bad."

Adela could have shaken the woman for this bluntness, for Jane gasped and slipped across the stifling room, weaving between the furniture to kneel beside her husband's narrow bed.

"Roger? Roger, can you hear me? It's Jane. I'm here. I've come back."

"He hasn't spoken since he broke his head," the withered Mrs. Eddings informed them with barely disguised eagerness. "And Eddings and I've paid fifteen shillings out of our own pockets for his nursing, we have."

From earlier practice Jane was able to stop her ears to her former hostess, but Adela and the baron did not share this skill, and they fairly dragged Mrs. Eddings into the passage, Lord Dere pressing a banknote into her grasping hands and Adela saying, "Please tell us what happened. What was the nature of the accident?"

"He was roaring drunk, of course," answered the good lady complacently (after which Adela snapped the door shut behind her, to spare Jane). "'Twas Monday after the wine club met. Must have been two in the morning, but he goes after Rioting Rob again out in the racket ground—bad blood between those two, you know, because of Merritt's louts beating Rob's son. I wasn't there, sadly, and most of the witnesses were likely little better off than Merritt himself, but the word is he took a swing at Rioting Rob, and the man fell over, but Merritt was so muzzy himself he went right over too, and crack! he knocks his head on the stones, and there you have it. He can't last much longer. He hasn't eaten a thing nor taken any water besides what the nurse tried to dribble in his mouth."

Most of this was Greek to Adela, but she grasped enough to know that Roger Merritt had apparently made an ignominious end to his ignominious career, and she would have pitied him if she were not so furious. What a waste of a life! For this Jane had nearly ruined herself and her family?

"For someone who was not an eyewitness," came a voice from the gloom of the passage, "you've made a fine job of your account, Mrs. Eddings. I have but one correction." The voice took bodily form beside them in the figure of a tall man, shabby but somehow elegant, his dark hair only grey at the temples and sparkling in stubble along his jaw. Extending a hand, he plucked the baron's banknote from Mrs. Eddings' stunned fingers and returned it to Lord Dere. "This won't be necessary, for I paid the nurse's wages myself, as Mrs. Eddings seems to have forgotten in the fervor of the moment."

"Rioting Rob!" squeaked the woman.

Having spent much of the morning imagining Mr. Gerard Weatherill in every man she saw, no matter how dissimilar or unlikely, Adela hardly knew what to do when confronted with this particular man. She stared at him, speechless.

He met her gaze, if not squarely, at least with a touch of defiance.

Lord Dere took a step forward, tucking Adela behind him. "Do we know you, sir?"

"That's the Rioting Rob I mentioned," spoke up Mrs. Eddings, as if they had not just heard her say his name. "The one Merritt knocked himself out attacking! Attacked father and son both, on separate occasions, didn't he? Didn't his ruffians send your son away, Rob, with missing teeth and broken ribs and one eye put out?"

"If it was as bad as all that, I'll go in and finish Merritt myself," growled the man, reaching for the door handle.

"It wasn't—sir," blurted Adela, peeking around the baron. "As bad as that, I mean. If you are—if it is, by chance, a Gerard Weatherill you refer to."

Lord Dere twisted to give her a questioning look, but Adela was watching Rioting Rob's face for her answer, and when she saw it, she said, "His eye was blacked, but it was still there, and he could see out of it, and he complained of bruises, but nothing broken, nor any teeth missing."

"Thank you."

With the eyes of her betrothed still upon her, Adela realized all she had betrayed, and she added in confusion, "Of course, I—we—have not seen him for a month. Since he left Iffley. Have we, sir?"

This clumsy attempt to draw the baron into the conversation only made matters more awkward, but Lord Dere drew her hand through his arm and said with his usual calm, "At least a month, my dear. Which means he likely has made a complete recovery by now. I take it you are Mr. Gerard Weatherill's father? Your son was a splendid fellow, an excellent tutor to my great-nephew and Miss Barstow's younger brother, and we were sorry to see him go. I am Lord Dere, and this is my intended bride Miss Barstow, sister-in-law to the unfortunate man who lies within there."

He nodded toward the door Mrs. Eddings blocked, but Rob Weatherill had straightened at his speech and didn't care a straw for the unfortunate man indicated.

"Intended bride!" he repeated.

Although they owed no explanation of the situation to this person they did not know, both the baron and Adela colored. And while a gentleman would have caught himself and made haste to remedy the uneasiness he had created, Rioting Rob was, clearly, no gentleman.

"Well, well, well," he murmured with a bow that mocked them in its precision. "I have been shut away from the world a very long time, but I see it goes on as it always has."

Shrinking in embarrassment, Adela retreated behind the baron, and had she been less mortified, she would have spared some admiration for the way the slender old man swelled with dignity. Dignity and chivalry.

"Thank you for making yourself known," Lord Dere said coolly. "And now, if you will pardon us…" He extended a hand toward the Eddings' door, Mrs. Eddings responding at once to his manner and scooting away obligingly.

But Rob Weatherill had no intention of being dismissed, and he stepped forward himself. "Miss Barstow, is this what you mean to do?" he demanded. "Marry some ancient lord for his name and money?"

Adela gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth.

"Sirrah!" exclaimed the baron, swelling even further. "You will kindly—"

"What about my boy? You heard the old man—my son the ‘splendid fellow'? No money and no name—he's got me to thank for both those things—but he has his pride. More pride than you have!"

They might all have ended in being hauled before a constable, Adela would think later, for the next instant, the mild-mannered baron—who hardly dared to say boo to his niece—raised both arms to—do what? Assume a fighting stance? Give Rob Weatherill an almighty shove? Seize him around the neck?

But whatever Lord Dere intended in his displeasure, it would never come to fruition, for just then the door flung open to reveal a tearful Jane Merritt crying, "Della—he's gone!"

All was commotion.

They spilled again into the Eddings' chambers, Adela bumping against some of the narrow bedsteads because Jane was hanging about her neck, and the baron striding around them, pulling off his gloves to take up Roger Merritt's wrist and put a finger to it.

After a minute, he hung his head and replaced the man's arm upon the ragged coverlet. "Yes. He's dead, I'm afraid."

Mrs. Eddings screeched in the baron's ear as if, in harvesting Roger Merritt's soul, the reaper had nicked her own toe with his scythe. "Oh, Lord! In my own room! Death! Death! Oh, heavens! Oh, mercy!"

"Gracious, Mrs. Eddings, be silent," urged Lord Dere, even as running footsteps were heard and new faces appeared in the doorway. Grimy hats and caps were removed as the morbid and the curious crowded in, and when Mrs. Eddings made her explanations over and over, Jane must suffer the mumbled condolences of strangers. Not that Jane said anything. She kept her face buried in Adela's neck (which must have been quite uncomfortable, since she was a few inches taller), and it was Adela who had to nod and grimace in approximated smiles, again and again.

Such was the crowd and confusion that it was some minutes before Adela realized that Rob Weatherill was no longer among them.

Like his son, after having visited turmoil and confusion upon Adela's feelings, he was gone.

Lord Dere summoned a hackney coach for the return to the Old Bell.

"You and Mrs. Merritt rest here," he instructed Adela in low tones when he saw them back to their room. "When someone dies there are formalities to be gone through, and I will see to them."

"You are going back to the Fleet, sir?"

"I am. If you need anything, simply call the maid. Food, tea. A meal might be restorative for your sister."

"Oh, sir—how can we ever thank you enough—what would we have done without you—"

But he was already turning away, waving a hand. "Now, now, dear girl, you know I don't like that. You rest. It has been a trying day."

"Yes, but—" she caught at his sleeve. "Lord Dere—sir—at least let me say I am sorry for…the senior Mr. Weatherill's conduct…"

This too he met with a shake of his head, detaching himself gently from her grip. "Never mind it, Adela. Never mind him . There is always a certain amount of unpleasant raillery a man of my age must endure, I suppose, when he chooses to marry. Good afternoon, my dear."

But when he was gone and Adela curled in the armchair by the fire, absently thinking how luxurious the Old Bell was, compared to Mrs. Eddings' quarters, it was not Mr. Rob Weatherill's mockery she remembered. Rather, she thought of her own words and what they had revealed. That she knew the details and extent of Gerard Weatherill's injuries—even to the state of his teeth! (Thinking of Mr. Weatherill's teeth of course made Adela think of kissing him, and she hid her flaming face in her knees.) Her admission meant she had spoken to him of such things, of such relative intimacies! And then to say how long he had been gone, as if she had been counting the days. It all pointed glaringly to her affections for him, she was afraid, and what if the baron noticed? What if he asked her for an account of her behavior?

But why had Rob Weatherill made the biting remarks he did? What did he care, if an old lord should marry a young lady?

There must be some secret injury in his own past, she mused. Perhaps he had loved a young lady once, but she had refused him in favor of someone grander.

Because it could not possibly be that he minded this particular old lord marrying this particular young lady, could it? They were nobody to him, after all. Absolutely nobody.

There was only one person in the entire world who could have told Rioting Rob Weatherill anything about her, and he never would have, would he?

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