The Wallflowers To Wives Collection. Bronwyn Scott
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she wouldn’t like it to be known. Claire might have certain qualms about drawing attention to herself, especially if there was a suitor to impress.
Owen nodded and took the chair next to Jonathon, his expression serious as he dropped his voice. ‘There’s been news.’
Jonathon’s body went rigid. ‘News’, when said that way, could only mean one thing. ‘Thomas?’ It was almost too much to hope for.
‘Perhaps. I’ve prevaricated about saying anything too soon. But if it was me, if it was my brother, I’d want word, any sort of word as soon as possible. But I can’t take this to your father, not yet.’
‘Thank you.’ Jonathon understood. Nothing was confirmed. Whatever Owen was about to share was unverified. It wasn’t proof, he reminded himself. It would destroy his father to get his hopes up and it was likely of a confidential nature. Owen was sharing this out of respect for their longstanding friendship.
‘There’s word that a man meeting Thomas’s description has been located in a farming village near the River Leie.’
Also called the River Lys in French. Leie was the Dutch name. The river formed part of the north-eastern border between the two countries. Jonathon knew it and hope surged. Waterloo wasn’t far from the location. It was probable that if Thomas had been lost and wounded he could have ended up there either under his own power looking for shelter, or taken there to recover by a farmer in a cart.
‘Is that all we know?’ Jonathon tried to keep his voice calm, after all, it was hardly enough to go on. ‘What do you mean by description?’ Thomas looked like him, but that wasn’t saying much. Thomas shared general features with a lot of people: brown hair, grey eyes instead of brown, tall with broad shoulders. His height might stand out to some. He and Thomas were usually the taller men in any given room, just a little over six foot. But surely there were tallish men everywhere. It wasn’t necessarily extraordinary to be a taller man.
‘An Englishman,’ Owen said quietly. ‘The man in the report has your brother’s features and he’s English, or should I say he’s not native, neither French nor Dutch. That’s the part that isn’t quite verified. All anyone knows is that he showed up in the village seven years ago. The timing is right.’
Jonathon rose. ‘I want to go and see him. I can leave this afternoon.’ He would travel to the ends of the earth if there was the slightest of chances. Maybe his French would hold. Maybe Claire had taught him enough to break through his barriers so he could communicate. Maybe.
Owen put a hand on his arm. ‘The informant is coming here. He wants to arrange a meeting. There should be word within the next week.’ It would be the longest week of his life and it might be for naught. There’d been sightings before, some quickly smashed, others lingered with potent hope.
‘Jonathon, it’s been a long time,’ Owen began cautiously. ‘Perhaps I was wrong to tell you. So much time has passed.’
He didn’t have to say more. So much time. Either Thomas was dead, had always been dead, or he hadn’t come home. ‘Why wouldn’t he come back if he could?’ Jonathon voiced the question. Why would his brother stay away for years with no word when he knew how worried they’d all be, how devastated they’d all be?
‘We all wear masks, Jonathon. I do, you do. You put on that handsome smile of yours and no one guesses there might even be an ounce of darkness in you. Why should Thomas be any different?’
‘I just can’t imagine what reasons he’d have,’ Jonathon admitted. Thomas had everything: a family, money, social status. He was well liked.
Owen rose, signalling the conversation was over. ‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves. It might not be him.’ In fact, it was unlikely that it was after seven years. What it could be was dangerous. This could be a trap, an attempt at extortion that played on a family’s desperate hopes. It wouldn’t be the first time. There’d been earlier attempts right after the war to claim money in exchange for ‘information’ about Thomas. Those attempts had devastated his parents.
‘The best thing you can do is go brush up on your French.’ Because Vienna loomed, because if there was a chance this fellow was Thomas, Jonathon would have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Jonathon stood, too. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to find Claire and step up the lessons. He needed to forget about kisses in the Rosedale garden, or lowered bodices, or sherry eyes that sparkled when she looked at him, or the feel of her dancing in his arms. He needed to concentrate all of his attention on the lessons as if his life depended on it, because it did—his and quite possibly Thomas’s.
* * *
Of course, he had to find her first. For a person who claimed her life was uneventful, she was proving difficult to track down. She wasn’t home and neither was Lady Stanhope, which meant no one precisely knew her direction, only that she was out making calls. The butler did, however, know where Lady Stanhope had gone: Lady Morrison’s, the ton’s most notorious gossip. For a man to show up there was nothing short of walking into the lion’s den.
* * *
Jonathon tried there, but it only earned him a tepid cup of tea and crumbly cakes. Once he’d been announced, he had no choice but to put in his fifteen minutes before he could leave again. In exchange, though, he got a rather shockingly long list of possible locations from Lady Stanhope. He might try the Worths or the Penroses or the Milhams, she told him, eyeing him speculatively as she gave the advice. ‘The flowers you’ve been sending are positively gorgeous, Mr Lashley,’ she added with sly calculation. He didn’t imagine it. Every ear in the room perked up at that.
He left the moment those fifteen required minutes were up, but fate was determined to play with him a little. He called at the Worths, the Penroses to more tea but to no avail, the calls eating up more of his time before he arrived at the Milhams, only to be told the ladies were indisposed at the moment by a butler who was a stickler for propriety, even though they both knew very well the lady he was after was inside somewhere.
After a sleepless night and dubious news over Thomas, Jonathon was in no mood for mannerly games. He stepped around the butler and into the hall. He was a man who believed in never leaving a place until he got what he came for and, right now, what he needed most was Claire Welton. He spied a sitting room off the corridor. ‘I’ll wait.’
* * *
Claire couldn’t wait. She blurted out the words, ‘We have to stop. It has gone too far’, as soon as the foursome was seated in the Milham’s garret the next day. She’d been up all night thinking it through and she knew her decision was the right one. Apparently, fate agreed with her. Jonathon hadn’t shown up for the lesson that morning and she knew why; things had got out of hand in the Rosedale garden.
‘It sounds to me like it’s gone just far enough,’ Beatrice argued with a twinkle in her eye. ‘He’s sending you flowers and dancing with you every night.’
Claire gave an exasperated sigh. How many times did she have to explain it? ‘Only because he thinks I have a gentleman whose attentions I would like to attract.’
‘You do.’ May laughed over the rim of her teacup. ‘His.’
‘But he thinks it’s someone else and I’ve let him,’ Claire insisted. ‘He thinks he’s helping me in exchange for the French lessons.’ While that line of reasoning explained everything up to a point, that point had run out fourteen hours and eleven minutes ago.
The words came out in a rush. ‘Last night, he kissed me.’ Everyone began to talk at once, but she raised her voice to be heard. ‘This morning he didn’t show up for the lesson.’ She didn’t want him to quit the lessons over a kiss. He needed them too badly, more than he needed to feel remorse over a kiss. Had it been such a poor kiss that he didn’t want to see her again, not even for lessons? She had thought it was rather nice. More than nice...extraordinary.
‘He kissed you?’ Evie’s eyes were dreamy, but May’s eyes were sharp.
‘Well,