“At least you have the grace to look ashamed at such a bald-faced lie,” Plum said, her lips still twitching as she gave in and had a good long laugh. By the time she was finished and mopping up her eyes, Thom had tucked the baby mice away on an old worn cloth, and was standing next to her, watching her warily. “It’s a good thing Mr. Haversham wishes to marry quickly, else I think you’d give the cottage away.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Plum, I know it was wrong of me, but Mr. Palmerston and Manny looked in such need of a little kindness, and he did give me something in return.”
“Oh?” Plum allowed one last giggle to express itself, then schooled her lips into a more seemly position. “What did he give you? Certainly not any coin?”
“No, he gave me some advice.”
A ripple of amusement shook her for a moment, but she kept it under control. She had a suspicion that if she gave in to it, she’d end up witless and giddy. Or rather, more witless and giddy, since she was fast approaching that state. Perhaps it was hunger that was unhinging her mind. Perhaps if she had eaten something earlier, she wouldn’t now be giggling at the thought of her niece giving away the last of their stores to a beggar who offered advice in return. “How very gracious of him. What advice did he give you?”
“Oh, it wasn’t advice for me, it was for you.”
Plum raised both brows as Thom served up two bowls of soup. “For me? Why would he offer advice for me? How did he know who I was?”
“Evidently he stopped in town.”
Thom kept her gaze on her soup, a small mercy since Plum still felt sick to her stomach whenever she thought of the townspeople cackling over her past. That the news had spread like wildfire was not surprising, but what made her furious was the way Thom was made to suffer for her ignorance and Charles’s cruelty. She didn’t mind — much — them ostracizing her, but the drubbing Thom had taken the last few days was untenable. Her conscience rubbing her raw, she fought the desire to immediately pen a note to her intended, informing him of her history and breaking their betrothal. “What’s done is done. I will tell him the truth after we’re married. It’s a matter of self-preservation, not selfishness. I simply have no other choice, and it’s not as if he will be losing out — I will be a devoted wife and mother.”
“Of course you will,” Thom said, just as if Plum were making sense, which she sadly acknowledged to herself as not necessarily true. “You’ll be a wonderful wife and mother, and I completely agree with you that you’re not being selfish.”
“Mmm.” Plum firmly told her conscience to take a holiday for the next two days, and picked up her spoon. “What was the advice the beggar had for me?”
“He wasn’t a beggar, he seemed quite well spoken, although he was rather dusty.” Plum glanced up and caught the look of curiosity her niece was bending upon her.
“He said that sometimes that which you’ve thought is lost, is found, and what you think you have, has vanished.”
Plum blinked for a moment, wondering if it was the lack of food that made Thom’s words seem incomprehensible, or if the old man’s advice was supposed to have some meaning for her. “Well, that was very nice of him, although it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but I do appreciate the fact that he didn’t say something in reference to his…er…cods.”
They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, the heavy drone of bees on the wisteria that hung next to the window the only noise. Plum wrestled with a variety of emotions — anger, fear, and a general all-purpose worry — as she spooned up the last of the soup.
“Aunt Plum?”
Plum dragged her mind from the painful contemplation of just how she was going to explain to Harry about her past. “Hmm?”
Thom stood with their soup bowls before the wash bucket, twisting a threadbare linen between her hands, her brow wrinkled in a frown. “You’re not marrying this Mr. Haversham on my behalf are you? Because if you are, I wish you wouldn’t. I know I’m not of much use to you, but I—”
Plum gave in to the need to hug the younger woman. “No,” she said, patting Thom’s cheek. “I’m not martyring myself for you, if that’s what you think. Mr. Haversham is a very nice man, I could tell that at once. He is a gentleman. He has a library. He wants children. And even if he isn’t wonderfully handsome, I like his face. His eyes are particularly nice, an attractive hazel that seems to change color. And the rest of him is”—a warmth tingled pleasantly within her at she remembered his large, strong hands with their long fingers. She had always had a fondness for a man’s hands, seeing in them a mixture of strength and gentleness that never failed to intrigue her—“just as pleasant. Does that put your mind at rest that I’m not marrying solely to put food in our bellies?”
Thom smiled, then leaned forward to kiss Plum’s cheek. “I hope you will be very happy, Aunt. You deserve a good life. When do you marry?”
“In two days, if Mr. Haversham is able to obtain a special license.” Plum turned and surveyed the small room with its two cots, two chairs, one table, and a collection of broken baskets that Thom fixed up as beds for her animals. “What do you say, Thom, are you willing to give up all this in order to live in a home that doesn’t leak whenever it rains, or allow the cold in during the winter?”
Thom smiled and divided up the last of her soup between the cats’ bowls and the goat’s bucket. “It will be a strain, but I will suffer in silence as best I can.”
Plum laughed again, and in a moment of pure whimsy, threw out her arms and spun around in a circle. “A family, Thom! At last, at very long last, I’m going to have a husband and children of my own! Life just cannot get any better!”
CHAPTER Four
Plum sat stunned to the point of silence as a maidservant combed out her long black hair. That thought rattled around in her mind like a pea in an empty bowl. She had a maidservant, someone who would comb her hair whenever she so desired. Her husband had provided her the maidservant. She had a husband and a maidservant. And a room of her own. Her eyes looked away from the up-and-down motion of the comb as it slid through her hair, and gazed again with wonder at the reflection of the room behind her, a lovely soft rose-colored room that smelled faintly of fresh paint, with a huge fireplace, a fainting couch, and a bed with rose and dark red bed curtains.
The maid’s hand flashed white in the mirror.
“No one has combed my hair for me since I was twenty.”
“Is that so, my lady?”
That was another thing, she was a lady. Not that she had behaved in any other manner, for no matter how poor she had been, Plum had ever acted as a lady should — with the regrettable, if extremely satisfying, exception of the pot and Mr. Snaffle’s cods — but now her husband of five hours informed her earlier, she was also a lady in title. Lady Rosse, to be exact. Harry turned out to be a marquis in disguise, therefore, she was a marchioness.
A fraudulent marchioness, her guilty conscience whispered.
“No. It is too much. I just cannot take it all in,” Plum protested to her reflection. “The husband and the maid and the rose-colored room, yes, that I am willing to accept, nay embrace whole-heartedly with a great deal of happiness and pleasure if not outright ecstasy, but the rest of it, I just cannot absorb. It will have to wait for another time, a time when I can think about it without wanting to scream.”
Edna the maid carefully set down the silver comb and stepped slowly away from Plum. “Why would you be wanting to scream, my lady?”