Chapter Nineteen

in which sam weds

I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

It was cowardly. I knew that. But I did it anyway. I waited until the whole household was asleep then packed all my admittedly sparse possessions into the large shopping basket, left the last of the money I’d saved from the sale of my phone to cover my final expenses, and slipped into the predawn light.

When Thomas Cooper arrived at his shop that morning to open, I was dozing on the stoop, clutching the basket on my lap. And wearing his bonnet.

“Hey, little buddy,” I greeted him, when he shook my shoulder kindly.

“Good morning, Miss Franklin,” he said quietly. “I would call it a pleasure to see you so early in the day, only for fear that the reason is an unhappy one.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, even as I wiped at the dried tear tracks on my cheeks.

“Oh, Miss Franklin,” he said softly, pity softening his gaze.

It made something in me bristle. I didn’t want his pity. Or his softness.

“Hey, so, I was thinking,” I said, accepting his help to stand, and wincing at the soreness in my back from crouching on the stoop. I dusted off my skirts instead of meeting his eyes. “Wanna get married?”

“I—” He turned red as a tomato and then blurted: “Yes!”

After I’d given him a brief song and dance about how my visit with the Goodenoughs had come to its natural conclusion and I’d decided to act on my infatuation with the grocer’s son, we were on the next coach bound for London.

Thomas proposed to me in turn as soon as we arrived at the final stop—a tavern in Cheapside—three days later. He even went so far as to get down on one knee in the rushes covering the floor, stale beer soaking into his trousers, as he offered me a dinged-up ring he’d found in a pawn shop.

And I smiled, and tittered, and blushed, because Thomas Cooper was a good man and I was using him for my own security. The least he deserved in return was my enthusiasm.

It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t Margaret Goodenough, love of my fucking life.

I had already resigned myself to a loveless security-marriage once—I figured I could do it again, and this time follow through. There were worse things to be than adored by one’s husband, after all, and it wasn’t like we wouldn’t have a whole lifetime together for me to fall in love with him in return.

Because we were going to be married.

Married to Thomas, and not Daisy. Married for real, with a ring and a license.

It galled. But what else could I do? I couldn’t stay in Bath, couldn’t live in Southampton with Finch and Eliza, couldn’t strike out on my own. As Lewis had once pointed out, with no character references and no papers, the only options available to me were to become a wife, or a sex worker, passed off from one person to another, never finding true friends, never being safe and self-sufficient, never being known to anyone.

No. Thom was the far more appealing choice.

The more—as Lewis had once put it—delicate route.

I could do this.

I could fucking do this.

It was only the third time I’d started over. I was a pro at it by this point. And the third time was supposed to be a charm, right?

Right.

Damn this century.

~

My fiancé and I were eventually bound for Mevagissey, on the southwestern tip of the island (on the English channel, triangulated between Tregony and Lanjeth. See? Boggle ). There, Thom’s father had a cousin with no sons and a thriving living as a baker that would be going spare as a result.

But first, we’d overwinter in London. Thom, to learn his new trade from his brother Joseph, who was also a baker, and me, to help his sister-in-law through the last trimester of her pregnancy.

(As if I had any effing clue about getting babies out of people.)

The first night we’d washed up on their stoop, Mrs. Anne Cooper, just pregnant enough that getting up from her chair was a challenge, had greeted the news of our engagement and our request to stay with her with gentle joy.

“Now, love,” she had said, noticing the tightness around my eyes and misinterpreting it for post-engagement jitters. “Never mind you none about your wedding night.” She patted her impressive belly and smirked knowingly. “There ain’t nothing wrong with lovin’ your husband all the way through the mattress.”

I’d chuckled at Thomas’s blushing protest of his sister-in-law’s crude insinuations.

Thomas had been sent to sleep with the stable boy who served in the livery for this part of town, for there were no spare rooms at his brother’s besides the one they put me in. And it wasn’t the done thing to let an engaged couple sleep in the same room. The room I was given was already decorated as a nursery, sparse and cheap, but filled with affection for the child on its way. These Coopers were only slightly better off than their Bath relations, but I had no illusions that Mrs. Cooper didn’t work just as hard as her husband in the bakery that made up the ground floor of the building.

From that day on, Thom and I worked just as hard: stoking fires, mixing dough, kneading bread, selling loaves. (Finally learned the value of the coinage, ha!) Dusk came and we slept; dawn came and we woke, and did it all again. Days passed. Then weeks.

And I hated London. Because, let’s face it, I was a cranky introverted old mog, and my fiancé was a himbo extroverted husky. Where Thomas Cooper thrived in the sweaty, cramped bakeshop or the bustling, noisy, river-reeking city, I just wanted to be left alone in a cottage for the next decade or so.

I would get one, eventually. The old cousin had promised one, by the sea no less, but first Thom had to learn how to bake, and I had to learn how to wife.

But mostly I hated London because this was where Daisy wasn’t.

And yet, it could be worse.

It nearly had been. I learned that the gossip pages in the ladies’ magazines reported that Sir Lewis’s blushing bride had returned to the Canadas soon after their honeymoon to care for a sick relative back home. How convenient for him. How fortuitous for me.

It took a month for us to settle with the City Coopers, another two weeks to get enough time off from bread-and-impending-baby duty to visit the courts and apply for a petition of marriage, a week again to arrange for the first reading of the banns, and then suddenly it was the last week of October.

I’d been in the Georgian era for a full year.

Helluva trick .

~

For the third Sunday in a row nobody stood up in the little church crammed onto the corner beside Cooper’s bakeshop to declare that they saw an impediment to my forthcoming marriage. For the third time I found myself in a foul depression afterward, insides twisting viciously when my secret hope that Daisy would slam through the big doors at the back, throw herself down the aisle, collapse at my feet, kiss my hem, and beg me to come home again had failed to materialize.

But who was I kidding?

I had left her .

Already very familiar with my moods, Thomas suggested that we take in Hyde Park to clear our heads. It was free to the public, and as the day was bright and shining, I agreed. I wanted to wash London out of my nose, and a garden seemed like an ideal place to do that. We spent a few of Thom’s precious shillings on a cab, and disembarked in front of a bookshop. I couldn’t help but stop in and ask if the publication of Daisy’s book had been announced yet. It hadn’t. I wondered if she had even finished revising it yet, if she’d sent it out. And if she had sent it out, had she already received her offer letter, or if it was only rejection after rejection.

If I’d screwed everything up and no one wanted to take it.

Or worse, if Daisy had abandoned it.

The year 1807 was only three months away, and while I didn’t know in what month The Welshman’s Daughter s had been published, the date felt like it was rushing toward me along the tracks of history like a runaway train. Either the book would be a triumph or I would be smooshed on the rails.

Distracting me from my worry, Thom directed us through the wrought-iron fence that marked the entryway to the park and down a gravel path, where it seemed that most of the city had had a similar inclination to take advantage of the sunshine. The October breeze was temperate enough that I wore just a shawl, a gift from Anne, though we had to walk close to keep the wind from cutting away our words.

We admired the couples far more handsome than ourselves—wives who could afford to just visit each other all day and husbands who dined at clubs instead of on whatever their wives ordered from their cooks. Thomas grinned at me, sideways and sly, when the rich couples passed by, puffing out his chest to mimic their toffee-nosed self-important struts, and I laughed, not embarrassed by the roughness of my dress or my husband-to-be’s calluses.

Thomas was honest, and so was his work. More than that, it brought him joy.

I could be proud of him for that.

And he made me laugh. I hadn’t laughed in weeks .

I could do this.

I could do this.

“Are you nervous, almost-nearly Mrs. Cooper?” he asked as we strolled. “Faith, I think I’m near fit to burst with the idea of getting to sleep beside you this time next week. Just sleep, mind. The other things sound fun enough, but what I’m anticipating most is waking up beside you in the morning light. Doesn’t that sound grand?”

“It does,” I agreed, and I meant it.

He pushed a stray hair back behind my ear and smiled sweetly at me, then jerked his hand away and blushed. His innocence should have been endearing but instead it reminded me of just how young and inexperienced he was, how desperate he was to find love and win the heart of a good wife. Of the expectations riding upon both of us, of the restrictions of this time and place.

I tried to smile but it tangled up under my tongue. In my time this boy wouldn’t be blushing from merely touching the woman he was about to marry. In my time we would have been lovers already. Where I had once found this prolonged courtship endearing, I now found it tedious.

If people would just stop being so goddamned invested in manners and start worrying about feelings , then maybe I wouldn’t be here, trapped in a loveless engagement.

I was just contemplating whether it would be better to go back to the house and see how Anne was faring—she was taut as a blimp, ready to pop any day—when in my peripheral vision a figure approached.

I turned to greet the man, assuming the person was one of Joseph and Anne’s friends, (or else why would he be approaching?) and blanched.

Holy shit .

It was George Lewis.

He was dressed for walking, sporty but no less cruel than the last time I’d laid eyes on the son of a bitch. A grin was stretched across his pink face, a vindictive rictus of savage pleasure.

I took a step back, away, and he kept coming. I couldn’t run, not now, not with so many eyes on us, curious about the disparity of our obvious social situations, the way he tipped his hat at us as if we were friends. As if the last time I had seen him he hadn’t been screaming obscenities down the nave of a church.

“Hello, mousie,” he said.

“Fuck off,” I snarled.

Thom, perplexed by the violence of my answer, stepped between us. Lewis raised his walking stick and prodded Thomas to the side indolently.

“Thom, move,” I told him, worried that the next swing of the walking stick would be far less gentle if he didn’t.

Lewis darted in and grabbed my hand to finish the ritual of greeting, kissing the back of my glove against my will.

“Miss Franklin,” he said, his grin razor sharp, his eyes calculating. His voice still sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

I tugged my hand free and crossed my arms behind my back to keep any and all appendages out of grabbing range.

“My lord Jackwad,” I replied.

Lewis sneered. “And that young man lingering like an orange shadow behind you would be your young Mr. Cooper, I presume?” His opinion of Thomas was abundantly clear by his moue of distaste.

“Screw you. What are you even doing here?”

“I was passing through Cheapside just now, and, to my amazement, I heard a very familiar name being called out in a pokey little church. Now, mousie, whose name do you think that was?”

“Fuck. You.”

“Such language, mousie,” Lewis sneered, amused by my grim determination. “Quite unbecoming in a lady.”

“And also not your problem,” I sneered.

“Actually, it is,” Lewis replied. He doffed his hat and bowed ironically at us, but his eyes were darting all over the place. Still worried about his reputation. “I shan’t have my wife cussing like a sailor.”

“I’m not yours. I never said ‘I do.’ I never signed the registry.”

“And who was at the wedding to say otherwise?” Lewis chuckled and leaned in as if sharing a delicious secret. “Who is familiar enough with your signature to prove the one on our certificate is a forgery?”

“Samantha is my betrothed,” Thomas blustered, hand on my shoulder protectively, trying his damnedest to find some moment to dive in heroically, and finding himself woefully out of his depth. “And I’ll thank you to—”

“The adults are talking, Cooper,” Mr. Lewis cut across him, whipcrack sharp and commanding enough that Thomas actually cringed.

Oh, that poor boy, I thought. He has no idea what I’ve stuck him in the middle of .

“Samantha is with me,” he tried again, screwing up his courage.

“Is she?” Lewis said with a cat who decapitated the canary grin. “And how can that be, I wonder, when she is already married to me? Unless he already knows how much you take pleasure in adultery, little mousie?”

It was a blow both deliberately and professionally executed.

Swift. Hard. Staggering.

Thomas stuttered back a step, color draining from his face, hands shaking. “Samantha . . . what is he— Surely, he’s mistaken, you aren’t—”

I considered denying it for about four seconds. At second five, I realized that there would be no point. No matter what I said, the rumor mill was already grinding at full speed. I could hear the whispers around us jumping from bystander to bystander like fleas. Joseph and Anne would likely hear of it before Thom even got home, and for the sake of their own reputation and business, convince him it was true.

And, if Thom hated me, jilted me, abandoned me here and now, then it would keep Lewis’s target off his back.

If I walked into this trap now, I could spare Thom from being caught with me. Getting out of it later would be tricky, but not impossible.

Lewis read the decision to capitulate—for now—on my face even as I settled into it.

“It’s true,” I said. I didn’t turn my face from Lewis, didn’t dare put myself in such a vulnerable position. But I was speaking to Thom.

“You’re married ,” Thom burbled.

“No.”

“But you’re . . . you’ve . . .”

I thrust out my chin, determined to remain unashamed. “I have.”

“Miss Franklin—” Thom wobbled. “I—I . . . I—”

And then he turned on his heel and left.

Lewis didn’t even bother watching him go.

The Coopers would be safe.

The Goodenoughs were out of his debt.

Good.

But me? Not so much .

“I warned you I’d make your life miserable,” Lewis purred smugly as soon as Thom was out of earshot.

“And I told you, I’ll give as good as I get.”

Lewis stepped into my personal space and wound a tendril of hair hanging in front of my ear around his finger. From the outside it appeared to be an affectionate gesture. Then he tugged it, hard enough to hurt but not so much that anyone else could tell.

“I do not appreciate being made a nine day’s wonder, Miss Franklin.”

I thought of Miss Donaldson, and of how much my leaving him at the altar must have been spread if she’d heard about it all the way out in Bath.

“And now we will correct it. I will have you under my thumb, precisely where Fen promised you’d be.”

“Fenton paid off his debt to you,” I said, squaring up. “And you can’t blackmail him, not if you don’t want me screaming your secrets from the second floor windows. You’re not owed a bride anymore.”

“And yet I find that I still require one,” Lewis said. “And an heir. I cannot very well marry anyone else while the whole country thinks I’m still married to you.” He pouted theatrically. “I was thinking of killing you. In the papers, I mean, don’t look so alarmed, mousie. I would let it slip that your ship sank on your return crossing, then pick a wife from the mourners come to comfort me. But then, miraculously, here you are .” He tugged again, and this time I whimpered. “Alive and well, and just standing here like a complete dolt in the most crowded thoroughfare in London, where everyone can see that you’re alive and well, you petty bitch .”

“A shame,” I hissed. “I would have preferred to have died.”

Lewis loomed so low that our noses practically touched. “That can be arranged .”

He grabbed my upper arm, digging his thumb hard into my scar. I cried out, the pain dancing stars in the side of my vision, which gave Lewis an opening to shout, “Oh dear, my wife is swooning! I shall bring her to some shade!”

He wrenched me back into a copse of trees. I tried to kick but my Chucks were no match for his tall boots. He clapped a beefy hand over my mouth, hauling me along the path in the opposite direction, until we disappeared from view.

And not a single person cried out or raised an alarm. They all goddamn bought it. Assholes . Or maybe they were all as scared of Judge Lewis as I was.

On the far side of the copse was a path and a conveniently placed carriage with a stylized L on the side—black, like Fenton’s crates. I was shoved inside. Lewis crowded in behind. And, before the door was properly shut, it lurched into motion and we raced recklessly through the streets to god knew where.

~

The first person I clapped eyes on in the Russell Square townhouse was Susan. She was waiting at the door, timid and still, not daring to look up at us, but she was there . I was filled with such an overwhelming flood of relief to see her hale and whole that I nearly hugged her. I didn’t, of course, because Lewis was already dragging me past her, fingers sunk cruelly into my screaming scar. I was thrown into that same horrible parlor, tripping on my dress and sprawling on the rug.

“Miss Franklin!” someone said, bending to offer me a hand. “Really now, my lord, there’s no need to be quite so coarse.”

“Marigold?” I gasped, as she levered me upright.

“Oh yes, the whole bumpkin garden is in town, you know,” Lewis chuckled. “Come to chase you down like the mangy little rabbit you are.”

“No.”

Daisy was here?

Not in this house , I hoped. Please, not here .

Lewis closed the door behind him, locking it with a portentous finality. “Who do you think told me where I’d find you?”

I pushed Marigold off, steadying myself on the arm of the sofa. “Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick,” I growled at her. “Do you really hate me that much? What have I done to—”

“You ruin all that you touch, Miss Franklin,” Marigold said, cutting me off with such venom that I actually took a step back. “But I will not let you ruin Daisy. She means the world to me. Her wit and kindness brought me back from the precipice of my unending grief when I was widowed, soothed my every sorrow, brightened my every pleasure. She made my life worth living again. Until you .”

“Marigold, I—”

“She forgot I existed when you entered the room!” Marigold wailed, cheeks flushed and eyes swimming. “You became her favored sister.”

“No, I . . . she loves me differently than that, we—”

“You pushed her to forgo every bit of society, to chain herself to that wretched desk.”

“I thought you were proud of her writing—”

“There is a hobby and then there is obsession . She does not eat, she does not sleep! You left and she has done nothing but scratch, and scribble, and push me away. Even in your absence you ruin her. Well, no more—I have found a solution.”

“By selling me out to that ?” I threw a rude gesture at Lewis.

“If I must,” Marigold said, prim and grim faced. “Do not be ungrateful.”

“Wasted effort,” I said, struggling to get the world back under me. “I was marrying Thomas.”

Marigold sneered. “A boy you can easily abandon? Oh no, Miss Franklin. I would see you unable to crawl back.”

“Hah,” I said. “You two are so good at colluding, maybe you should be marrying Georgie here. You’re both conniving, masochistic fucks .”

Marigold raised thoughtful eyes to Lewis. He leaned against the sideboard, a drink already in hand, terribly smug and amused.

Oh no, girl, I didn’t mean it . Run, I thought. He’s a red flag on legs .

“Perhaps I will,” she said, mostly just to spite me.

“Perhaps I will ask you,” he replied. “There is no harm in planning for a third wife while the second is in decline, is there?”

“Decline?” Marigold echoed, startled.

I pointed to the welt he’d left on my cheek. “I know that we haven’t been friends, but for the sake of the woman we both love, you have to get out of here, and you have to get the police. Right now. Or I promise you’ll regret this.”

It wasn’t a threat. It was true—and not just because of the misery she was putting me through with this farce. Daisy and Finch would make Marigold regret her bargain.

I hoped.

God, I hoped.

“The constabulary are of no help to you, Mrs. Lewis,” Lewis said. “You are my wife. Well.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Almost. We have yet to enjoy the pleasure of consummation.”

“That’s not happening.” I took a deliberate step away.

“It is,” he said casually. “Or I shall suppress The Welshman’s Daughters in perpetuity.”

Of all the threats I expected him to make, that one wasn’t even on the list. It was so far out of left field that it took me several rounds of confused blinking to even parse what he’d said.

“You what?”

“When Mrs. Kempel sought to rid you from her life, she had such interesting things to say about your time with them in Bath. Your single-minded focus, your obsession with Daisy and her writing. It was singular, Samantha. It was odd .” He pulled a thick bundle of papers from his inner coat pocket, creased like he had been carrying it around for weeks. He likely had. “And so, when I heard from one of my editors that a rather engaging little novel by a M. Goodenough had crossed his desk, I just had to acquire it.”

“She finished it?” I gasped, the words torn from my throat like vomiting seawater. I whirled on Marigold. “It’s done?”

“It is done, for all the good it will bring to the world!” Marigold spat. “Daisy has wasted reams of paper copying it out in fair hand and sending it off to every publisher in Christendom. She turned down entertainments, and dinners, and concerts. She had promised to choose a husband and be settled this season, and instead she has done nothing but waste her time on this! We cannot afford for her to throw herself away. Mother needs her to wed.”

She promised to find a husband this season .

The words rattled between my ears, thundered in my blood.

Daisy had promised.

And she’d found me .

I didn’t know what hurt more, that Marigold would never know, never accept that Daisy had found the love and commitment that her family had been pushing her to seek, or that Daisy had been submitting the book and I hadn’t been there for it. Grief surged hard against my larynx, a burning, angry thing that was too large to swallow. I had missed everything —the anticipation, the joy, the giddy nerves. I hadn’t been there to comfort her during the rejections, and I hadn’t been there to celebrate the sale.

I didn’t think I could resent Marigold any more than I already did, but in that moment, knowing that it was in part her intolerance that had robbed me of those moments with Daisy, I loathed the woman.

Almost as much as I loathed myself for leaving. Even though, clearly, it had been the right choice.

Daisy had finished the book!

“And you—” I turned back to Lewis, still unclear on how he even knew about it, let alone have the power to acquire or suppress the manuscript.

“Oh, did you not know, my darling mousie? I am the black sheep of the family. While I practiced the law, my father and elder brother were in the business of books .”

“No,” I gasped.

“Our mother was a Pickering, and my father married into the firm. My brother became sole director on the passing of our father. Sadly, my elder brother succumbed to consumption only three months ago. Leaving me, fortuitously, with the controlling share.”

Smirking in triumph, Lewis shook open the bundle of papers. My eyes caught on the words Margaret Goodenough , and print run , and debut edition , and my heart jumped up and caught in my throat. This was the publishing contract for The Welshman’s Daughter s, with an indication that the licensing rights had been purchased outright , with no royalties, by Pickering a dozen in all, and all of them shuffling like beaten dogs. Slowly, the serving staff collected, ashen faced and grim, to bear final witness. At the forefront of the phalanx, Susan stood with her chin raised, a small smile playing around determination-bruised eyes.

Blood pooled on the final step, where Lewis’s head had struck the ornamental molding, splitting his skull like an egg.

He was still alive.

More’s the pity.

He was twitching, jerking, eyelids fluttering, throat working, and no one, not a single person under that roof lifted a hand to help him. Not one .

Slowly, quietly, I descended the stairs, lifting the train of my calico dress away from the gore he had scattered in his wake.

“Su-sur-surgeon . . .” Lewis begged as I crouched on the final tread.

Blood bloomed around him in a gory, glossy halo. I reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the publishing contract. I tucked it against my heart, safe between my chemise and stays.

Then I leaned down and pressed my face against the side of his. His eyes widened, mouth working, lungs laboring, body shaking.

And I’m not ashamed to admit that I smiled when I hissed just one word into his ear:

“No.”

By the time I had straightened, the Right Honorable George Henry Lewis was dead.