Chapter 32

Rufus was at the very least partially right, and Belle felt better about some things in the morning. Approximately the same for others. Worse for a few. In daylight, she could see the full extent of the disuse the property and the surrounding land had fallen into. But she could also see what was left of the house itself—its wood-panelled, higgledy-piggledy Tudor cosiness, the coloured glass windows in the somewhat hyperbolically named great hall, casting gem-bright shadows upon the floor, the fireplace in the drawing room with its ornately carved pilasters, where lions played amongst flowers—and catch whispers of the home she remembered. Echoes not wholly lost to time.

“I don’t know where to begin,” Belle admitted, hopeful and discouraged at once, as she sat on the edge of the table in the kitchen, munching bread and jam.

Apart from a little tired, Rufus looked no less resolute than he had the night before. “Probably with the man in the brewery?”

“I ...” She swung her legs disconsolately. “I don’t think I want to be responsible for a man’s death.” A pause. “Unless it’s Valentine.”

“Then he can be transported. He is not our problem, Bellflower. At least, not personally. He has certainly caused some problems.”

“What if the money is gone?”

“Then we use what we have.” His face darkened momentarily. “If push comes to shove, we can possibly petition my aunt to—”

“How about,” suggested Belle, “we don’t do that?”

“Valentine, then?”

“Under no circumstances.”

“This situation at least partially arose due to his lack of oversight.”

“That’s as may be, but I am sick of my life being a trinket for him to disrupt and disregard as the mood takes him.”

Rufus took up her hand, even though it was slightly sticky with jam, and kissed the knuckles with a courtly flourish. “Then fuck him too.”

“I don’t mean to make things difficult for us.”

“Oh, please. What else was I doing with my life before I met you?”

It was true that he had been in the midst of making some very poor decisions, but could she not have found a way to reach him, to set him free of other people’s nonsense, without permanently entangling him in her own? Unfortunately it was far too late now, and she did not think a round of mid-morning lamentation was fair to him, especially because he might feel obliged to comfort her, as he had last night.

“Very well,” she said, hopping down from the counter. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Smith.”

Mr. Smith, in breeches and shirtsleeves, with a blanket round his shoulders, was sitting on the floor of the brewhouse, which like the rest of Swallowfield stood sadly denuded of its former character and purpose. It was a windowless stone room with an arched ceiling and benches running down either side, which Belle remembered bearing barrels and bottle racks, alongside big, exciting jars full of bubbling liquid.

“Have you decided what to do with me yet?” Mr. Smith smirked up at them with what struck Belle as rather hollow defiance. While he wasn’t soaked through with stale moat water today, he still looked terrible—his eyes shadowed and red-rimmed and his face lopsidedly swollen, dappled all over with dried blood.

“What happened to you?” asked Belle.

“Someone saw fit to hunt me down like a dog, and then I spent a night in an abandoned brewery—what do you think?”

“Before that. You’ve been beaten.”

Mr. Smith made an attempt at a wide-eyed expression, but it just made him wince. “Have I?”

“This is getting us nowhere.” Rufus was leaning casually in the doorway, arms folded. “Where’s the money?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Wherever money goes when it is forcibly redistributed into the economy—small businesses, I assume, the pockets of particular individuals, criminal enterprises?”

Rufus quirked a brow. “Belle, we should inform the Sheriff of Nottingham immediately of this man’s capture.”

“But think of the Lady Marian,” returned Belle, clutching her hands against her heart.

For the first time since they’d encountered him, a flicker of something crossed Mr. Smith’s face. Discomfort, she thought, at being laughed at.

“You admit it, then?” Rufus pressed him, serious again. “That you’ve been stealing from the estate?”

Mr. Smith resumed his blank and sullen stare. “Would it serve me to deny it?”

“It would if you hadn’t,” Belle pointed out, wondering if he would even believe her, “and this was some kind of ... awful misunderstanding.”

“I for one”—that was Rufus—“often leap into moats and embark upon cross-country midnight sprints for all manner of innocent reasons.”

There was a long silence. Mr. Smith’s battered fingers twitched where they rested upon one upraised knee.

“A thief, then,” murmured Rufus, “but not a liar.”

Their prisoner only shrugged.

Belle watched him, perplexed. “Are you perhaps morally unwell in some way?”

“Am I what?”

“I don’t know. Internally compromised and unable to tell right from wrong?”

“For God’s sake”—an expression of irritation flashed over Mr. Smith’s face—“I know it’s wrong to steal. I just didn’t care.”

“Oh,” said Belle. Then to Rufus, “I can’t believe Valentine hired this man.”

This seemed to rouse Mr. Smith from his carefully maintained apathy. “I have a double first from Cambridge and excellent references.”

“Excellent references from criminals?”

“No, from Lord Mulbridge. I was his steward for a while.”

“Until,” suggested Belle, “you stole from him?”

“I did not steal from Lord Mulbridge.”

“Just from me?”

Some complex emotion stirred in the wintry depths of Mr. Smith’s eyes. Possibly shame. “I ... I did not know I was stealing from you.”

“Who did you think you were stealing from?”

“A duke.”

“Belle.” Rufus spoke up, anticipating her. “Irrespective of your feelings about Valentine, it is still not ethically permissible to steal from dukes.”

Belle glanced over at him. “It does make a difference, though, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure it does.”

“It makes a difference to me,” Belle declared. “And not because of Valentine. Because I would always wish to understand the why of something.”

“I do not owe you explanations,” muttered Mr. Smith.

“No”—Belle gave him a sharp little smile—“you owe me significant financial redress, but I don’t think you’re in a position to offer that.”

“What does it matter what I say? You already know I’m guilty.”

Belle regarded him with a touch of impatience. “Do you want to go to Australia? They have enormous spiders over there. Enormous spiders that can kill you.”

There was a long silence.

“Ironically,” said Rufus, “I find myself in agreement with our charming recidivist here. What can he possibly tell you?”

She shrugged. “That’s up to him, isn’t it?” She turned back to Mr. Smith. “Why did you do it, please?”

Another long silence. And then, beneath the crust of old blood and bruises, Mr. Smith’s mouth twisted into something that was almost a smile. “‘Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom, and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me, for that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines lag of a brother?’”

Rufus blinked. “So you’re a bastard? Or a thwarted actor?”

“The former,” returned Mr. Smith, his voice once again stripped of inflection.

“The circumstances of your birth, unfortunate though they may be, do not justify your crimes.”

For a moment it seemed like Mr. Smith might fall back on scorn. But all he said was “I know.” And, with visible reluctance, “I just wanted something of my own.”

“You mean,” Belle asked, “my things.”

The shame surfaced again and was hastily banished. “A home, at some point. The possibility of a family. A life not lived in thankless service to my betters .”

“We all live our lives in service to something or someone,” Rufus said mildly.

“Some of us”—bitterness roughened Mr. Smith’s voice—“get more choices about it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Belle announced, after some consideration.

“Indeed.” Rufus pushed away from the doorframe. “Shall I fetch the magistrate?”

Belle startled. “What, no? I only meant, it’s ridiculous trying to have a conversation with a man who looks like Rumpelstiltskin on a bad day. Is Hannah in the kitchen? Can we have some warm water and a soft cloth?”

“Of course.”

But Mr. Smith, who had an air about him that, while not quite vanity, suggested a preference for precision, in both dress and person, had taken Belle’s comments somewhat amiss. He levered himself upright against the wall, his disdainful gaze sweeping from Rufus to Belle and back again. “What manner of man are you to do the bidding of a woman?”

This only made Rufus laugh. “One who isn’t a dick. Something you could learn from.”

“I’m sorry,” said Belle once he had departed. “I did not mean for my comment about your appearance to sound like criticism. Blood and filth is an unfortunate look for most people.”

“Most people? Who does it become?”

“Triumphant pugilists? Fictional Vikings?”

Mr. Smith stared at her, curious—animated even—for perhaps the first time. “I ... I was not prepared for you to have an answer for that.”

“You should probably be prepared for me to have an answer for everything,” Belle told him.

“I’m sure that will be very useful to me amongst the enormous killer spiders in Australia.”

Belle sighed. “Mr. Smith, I think we would both prefer it if you didn’t have to go to Australia.”

“I would certainly prefer it,” he admitted warily. “I don’t know why you would.”

“Perhaps because I know a little of what it is to feel overlooked and unfit for the world. For your choices to feel either constrained or irrelevant.”

“But I stole from you.”

Belle thought of the dusty rooms and the dark corridors, the collapsing roof, and the tangled courtyard. “I’m hoping you had a lapse in judgement.”

“Honestly”—something wry crept into his voice—“I don’t know what I had.”

The door opened and Rufus returned, bearing a bowl of water, a couple of cloths thrown over his forearm. The former he placed on the floor, the latter he passed to Belle. “As requested, dear heart, and my masculinity remains unimperiled.”

“Sit down, Mr. Smith.” Belle knelt on the edge of the blanket and began wetting the cloth.

“I can tend to myself,” said Mr. Smith, pressing himself against the wall as though he would have liked to tunnel through it.

“I’m sure you can. But I’m going to do it anyway because I’m a monster.”

“There’s no need.”

“Listen”—Belle nudged him in the ankle—“you can’t see yourself. Count that a blessing and let me work.”

So Mr. Smith sat as directed and remained rigidly stoic as Belle did her best to clean him up. The face that emerged was still in a bad way but considerably easier to behold.

“At this point,” Belle remarked, “you might as well tell us how this happened. Oh, was it the ghosts?”

Mr. Smith’s good eye gave a slight twitch. “The ghosts?”

“Yes, the house is full of ghosts. At least one priest murderer, and several murdered priests. Maybe they took exception to your ransacking the place and beat you up.”

“How could ghosts accomplish that? They’re ghosts.”

Belle dabbed carefully at his nose, relieved it was battered rather than broken. “Well, obviously they couldn’t strike you in a conventional fashion. But they could throw furniture at you, drop things on your head, and trip you as you went downstairs. You know, general irate ghost behaviour.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is the work of mortal fists and boots.”

“I am disappointed,” Belle agreed. “What is the point of having ghosts if they do not rise up in defence of one’s domicile?”

Something that could have been amusement warmed the almost translucent grey of his eyes to silver. “You must get your next steward to manage them better.”

Belle glanced briefly at Rufus, to see how he was taking this, and was surprised by the way he was watching them both. Amused, but with a lightness beneath it. Almost a glow. She focused again on Mr. Smith, feeling ... she hardly knew what. Pleased? Reassured? “So who did it, then?”

“I didn’t catch their names. But they were employed by the gaming hell I’d gone to in an attempt to make my fortune with the money I’d taken.”

“You intended to gamble your ill-gotten gains?” murmured Rufus. “Risky.”

“I intended to restrict myself to vingt-un. If one is aware of what cards have been dealt, and what cards are yet to be played, it is possible to calculate the probabilities of success or failure, and make one’s decisions to stand or otherwise on that basis.”

Rufus made a sound of grudging interest. “Ingenious.”

“I told you”—Mr. Smith cast him a look, at least as pained as it was proud—“I am.”

As gently as she could, Belle began to clean his split lip. Once again, he neither flinched nor complained, but his breath was a little unsteady against her fingers. “It does not seem to have done you much good on this occasion.”

“On the contrary, it worked too well. The house insisted I was cheating, reclaimed my winnings, as well as the money I’d brought with me, and delivered the lesson I am still wearing.” Mr. Smith’s control slipped a fraction, his shoulder slumping. “Since I could hardly seek redress for the loss of stolen funds taken from me by an illegal gaming establishment, there was nothing for me to do except come back here.” And there again, in his words and in his manner, was that delicate trace of irony. “I had not counted on the sudden return of the actual owner.”

“And to think,” said Rufus, “you would have got away with it if not for—”

“I would never have got away with it,” Mr. Smith finished for him. “It was a foolish, desperate plan.”

“Let us not forget, illegal and immoral.”

Mr. Smith sighed. “And against the natural order, if that is where your philosophy tends.”

“It is not where my philosophy tends,” said Belle. “I do not believe in natural order. But I have another question.”

“You earlier claimed that you had an answer for everything. You did not say the same for questions.”

That drew a laugh from Rufus. “Oh, it’s both. With Belle, it’s usually both.”

“It seems to me”—Belle tried to choose her words carefully—“that you did not take this position with the intent of doing harm?”

She wasn’t sure if Mr. Smith would reply. He’d been quite resistant to conversation earlier, though having her in close proximity to the wounds on his face seemed to have softened him slightly. Maybe just because he didn’t trust she wouldn’t poke him in the eye. Eventually he offered a single, reluctant “No.”

“And you did not steal from your previous employers?”

“No.”

“Then what changed?”

“Can we get on with having me transported now?”

“Is the truth so unconscionable?”

He shook his head. “No, but it belongs to me. I have lived my life in service to others, to be worthy of others. I will not give up what little I still possess of ... of”—he made an abortive gesture of despair—“myself.”

“I can understand that,” said Belle, because she did. “I suppose that leaves you with a couple of choices, then.”

“Hanging or transportation, I’m aware.”

“I was thinking more—do you wish to stay or not?”

Rufus, who had resumed leaning against the doorframe, now pushed away violently from it. “You cannot be thinking of letting this man go?”

Belle shrugged. “What would be achieved by not doing that?”

“He’s a thief.”

“I think,” she said hesitantly, “being a thief and having done some thievery might not necessarily be the same?”

“Our actions define us.”

“Not always. Not in this case. It seems out of character for him. He has no history of it, nor has he expressed any intentions of continuing a life of crime.”

“Or remorse,” Rufus threw back. “He hasn’t expressed any of that either.”

Mr. Smith interrupted them with a soft, wretched noise, despite the fact Belle was no longer touching him. “It is not necessary to defend me.”

“Well,” she said, “you’re doing a terrible job of defending yourself.”

“I am not trying to,” cried Mr. Smith, once again irritated to the point of an outburst. “When will you understand, I am not going to give you what you’re looking for? I’m not going to explain myself or make excuses, I’m not going to grovel repentantly before your sanctimonious friend, and I’m not going to beg for leniency either. You cannot take any more from me. I will not let you.”

Belle regarded him steadily. “I am not asking you for that. I am asking whether you wish to stay or go. If you go, I hope you will change course re: the criminality, and, in the light of your actions, I’m afraid I cannot offer you a reference. If you stay ...”

“If I stay?” Mr. Smith repeated, looking rather stunned.

“If you stay,” she finished, “I am in dire need of a steward, for my house appears to have suffered greatly in my absence, and I am given to understand you have a double first from Cambridge and an excellent testimonial from Lord Mulbridge.”

Mr. Smith just stared.

“It will require a lot of work. This is not an easy job.”

With what seemed to be a visible effort, he recovered some semblance of his former arrogance. “I do not need it to be an easy job.”

“But please,” Belle suggested, “try not to steal from me again? That would be embarrassing for both of us.”

“I swear upon—” Mr. Smith broke off, apparently out of things to swear upon.

“Your honour?” suggested Rufus. “Your father’s name?”

“Rufus,” protested Belle.

“This is a mistake, Bellflower,” he told her, gentling his tone.

“Then”—she rose, dusting off her skirts—“it’s my mistake to make.”

“It isn’t,” insisted Mr. Smith, surprising them both with his sudden vehemence. “I mean, it is your decision, but—it’s not a mistake. I will make sure of it. On my life, I will.”