Elizabeth Mansfield (3 page)

“But if his mind was preoccupied … if he wasn’t thinking—”

Mr. Chast rubbed his fingers on the bridge of his nose. “Let’s admit that there is a possibility that he dropped the coin into the box, my lord. I shall look into the matter. I give you my word that I shall personally tally up Mr. Dorking’s cash box at the end of the day today, and if there is an overage of a guinea, I shall make restitution to the young lady myself.”

Miss Chivers made a sound of despair in her throat. She couldn’t help herself. The linendraper’s words had upset her. So long a delay would spoil everything. If he didn’t find her guinea until the end of the day, she would not be vindicated before the onlookers, and, what was worse, she would not be able to go home until terribly late.

Captain Rossiter fully understood her feelings. “Oh, no, Mr. Chast, that won’t do,” he said firmly, placing a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You shall tally up the cash box right now.”

“But we can’t do that, my lord. We are in the midst of a business day. Four other clerks use the same cash box. It is a complicated matter to tally the cash. We cannot disrupt our procedures for a mere
guinea.”

“But for a mere guinea you’d besmirch a young woman’s honor, is that what you’re saying?” the captain asked calmly.

“But, my
lord
—!” Mr. Chast objected.

“Captain, please, Mr. Chast. Call me Captain.” The officer looked the linendraper squarely in the eye. “If you have any sense at all of fair play, you have no choice,” he pointed out. “If a mistake
has
been made, you owe it to the young lady to clear her name right now, in front of all these witnesses. That is only just, is it not?”

See
? Mr. Chast said to himself in disgust.
There’s always trouble when you deal with nobs
. Aloud he said, “Very well, your lordsh—I mean, Captain Rossiter. We’ll take the cash box to my office and tally up. It will take some time, I’m afraid. I’ll have Dorking bring you a chair. And a cup of tea, if you wish.”

“No, Mr. Chast, I care for neither chair nor tea. However, you may have them brought for the young lady, if she wishes. But you will tally the cash
right here
, in front of all of us.”

The crowd broke into spontaneous applause. For Mr. Chast, that was the last straw. His face reddened alarmingly. “Are you implying, my lord,” he demanded, drawing himself up to his full height and puffing out his chest belligerently, “that
I
would not make an honest accounting?”

“I am implying nothing,” the captain retorted coolly. “I think, however, that a public reckoning is the only way that would show what happened and leave no questions remaining. It would clear up the matter once and for all. Do you agree, ma’am?”

Cassie Chivers looked up at her knight-at-arms adoringly. “Oh, yes, Captain! Yes, indeed.”

Mr. Chast, realizing that what the captain was suggesting was probably best for business, swallowed his ire. “Very well, Captain Rossiter. As you wish. Bring the cash box here, Mr. Dorking,” he ordered. “Let’s get this over with.”

Mr. Chast summoned two other clerks to his side with a crook of his index finger. Then, pulling the ledger from Dorking’s hand, he dismissed the fellow with an abrupt flick of his wrist. He would not involve Dorking in the tally. The two clerks he’d chosen to assist him were completely objective; thus the captain would have no possible grounds for complaint that the tally was in any way tainted.

The linendraper and his two objective clerks bent over the cash box and all five sales ledgers. Meanwhile, Dorking himself supplied Miss Chivers with a chair and a cup of tea. He could afford to be gracious; he had no doubt that the tally would vindicate him completely. As soon as the girl (whom he still thought of as a cheating “canarybird”) was comfortably seated, Dorking withdrew to the rear of the store and watched the accounting with the rest of the onlookers, a group which now included all the customers, even the well-bred ones.

The captain, having taken a stand beside the young lady’s chair, kept his eyes fixed on the linendraper. Miss Chivers, on the other hand, took this opportunity to study her rescuer from the corner of her eye. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that so breathtaking a hero would choose to enter the fray on her behalf. He was the sort one would expect to wear the colors for a great beauty, not for an ordinary, mousy creature like herself. Robert Rossiter, Viscount Kittridge, was what the
haute ton
would call “top of the trees.” He was tall and sinewy, with wide shoulders and large hands. His soldierly life had browned the skin of his face, but his weathered appearance only added to his attractiveness. His dark hair, as curly as her own, was clipped short in a soldierly style that she usually didn’t like, but in Captain Rossiter’s case she found it quite becoming. The short, tight curls that framed his face gave him the look of a Roman centurion. But what most entranced her were his eyes, the irises a light brown edged with yellow streaks. They gleamed with a piercing intelligence that seemed able to
cut through any false façade and find the truth. The directness of his glance seemed capable of withering any opponent’s will. The overwhelming impression one took away after meeting him was of a controlled strength, a power that was kept in tight restraint under a calm surface. It took no more than a glance at him to tell that he would not be easily bested in a fight. What a formidable ally she had found to fight her battle!

Meanwhile, business remained at a standstill while the customers watched the linendraper and his assistants count the coins and notes and pile them up on the counter in little stacks. An abnormal silence hovered in the air as Mr. Chast and the two clerks totalled and retotalled the figures in the ledgers and counted and recounted the money. Forty-five minutes passed. Finally Mr. Chast stood erect. “Dorking!” he shouted.

Mr. Dorking came running to his side. “Yes, Mr. Chast?”

“You’re a damned fool!” the linendraper snapped under his breath. “You’re a guinea over! The
girl did
give you the money, just as she claimed!”

The clerk winced. “Oh, my heavens!” he muttered, clapping a hand to his brow. “What’ve I done?”

“Come on, you idiot,” his employer ordered, picking up the wrapped package of fabric before pulling the clerk after him, “let’s go and apologize to the young lady.”

They approached the seated girl and the officer who stood beside her chair. “You seem to be in the right of it, Captain,” Mr. Chast announced shamefacedly. “We
have
found an extra guinea in the box.”

The stillness of the air was rent with a cheer from the crowd. The observers had, in agreement with the officer, long ago decided that the sweet-faced girl had to be innocent. Now they were delighted to have their judgment validated, and they showed that delight with enthusiastic applause and cries of “Hear, hear!” and “Right-o!”

Miss Chivers, who’d been too deeply occupied with the problem of dealing with her own emotions to realize the extent of the interest she’d aroused in the crowd, leaped from her chair with a start. She stared at the cheering customers in shock. Then she turned back to find Dorking approaching her, his face ashen. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, miss,” he began. “I’ve never done such a thing before in all my life.”

“Your guinea, ma’am,” the linendraper murmured, holding out the coin and the package as well. “We’d like you to have the fabric with our compliments.”

The girl backed away from him, shuddering. For Miss Cassandra Chivers to find herself the center of so much attention was all too much. She could not bear to be the focus of so many eyes. She could not bear the misery on the clerk’s face. She could not bear the ignominy of being offered the fabric as a gift—a sop for what they’d put her through! And she could not bear that her beautiful knight was witness to this cheap and tawdry scene. Her eyes flew from the clerk to Mr. Chast to Captain Rossiter to the crowd, and then, bursting into tears, she lowered her head and, pushing heedlessly through the crowd, ran to the door.

The humiliated clerk, not knowing what to do, gaped after her. Mr. Chast, too, seemed utterly nonplussed. The captain was the only one capable of action. Without a word, he strode through the throng after her.

He found the shaken young lady standing bewilderedly at the curb. “You’ll be wanting a hackney, I imagine,” he said calmly, taking her elbow and escorting her away from the store doorway where curious gapers were beginning to gather.

“Yes, C-Captain,” she stammered, “but you don’t have to t-trouble. I c-can—”

“No trouble at all,” he said, lifting his hand to signal a passing hack.

“You are t-too k-kind!”

The hack pulled to a stop. Cassie was not so agitated that she didn’t realize she had only a moment in which to thank him properly for what he’d done for her. She tried desperately to overcome her timidity, but her tongue tripped awkwardly over the words. “I don’t know how … to thank … I c-can’t tell you …” she mumbled helplessly.

“There’s no need to say anything, ma’am,” the captain assured her as he threw the driver a coin and handed her into the carriage. “Anyone with half an eye could see you were innocent. It was a pleasure for me to see justice done.”

Before she could utter another word, his lordship tipped his plumed shako and was off, striding away down the street with a long, loping step. Cassie Chivers peeped out the carriage window to watch him go. Her eyes held an unwonted intensity. She wanted to memorize the look of him—the set of his shoulders, the swing of his arms, the manly grace of his carriage. All too soon, however, the growing distance between them misted his outline until he became just a blur on the horizon. It was only when he’d completely disappeared from view that she signalled the driver to start the carriage.

She sat back against the cushions, an inexplicable shiver passing through her body. She had just lived through the worst and best morning of her life, and her emotions were churning within her. The expected emotion was relief—relief that her honor had been vindicated. And there was a feeling of triumph, too, in that vindication. But the surge of triumph could do nothing to assuage the sudden stab of despair that clenched her chest. The cause of the despair was obvious to her; she didn’t have to spend a moment analyzing it. A lifelong dream had been granted this morning: Fate had brought a magnificent knight into her life in a time of dire need. But then, after only one joyful moment, it had taken him away again. There had hardly been any time at all to enjoy the meeting. After the merest of beginnings, it was all over.

Good-bye, Captain Rossiter
, she said to herself sadly. She didn’t need to look into a crystal ball to know that their paths would surely never cross again. Nor did she have to be a soothsayer to foretell that, though her meeting with her red and gold knight had been the briefest of encounters, she would love him as long as she lived.

Chapter Three

It had grown quite dark and a chill wind was blowing up from the north when Mr. Oliver Chivers’ phaeton pulled into the curved driveway in front of his home at King’s Cross. He had just spent a long day at his office in the City and was looking forward to the warmth of his own fireside and a good dinner in the company of his daughter. Therefore, he was both surprised and annoyed when he discovered that another carriage had cut in ahead of his and was proceeding at a deucedly leisurely pace down his own driveway. He removed his spectacles (which made distant objects only a blur), rubbed his eyes and peered out the window at the other carriage. “Who the devil is that?” he asked his coachman querulously. He was tired, cold and hungry. He didn’t want to have to delay his meal in order to deal with callers he hadn’t invited.

“No one as I reco’nize,” the coachman answered as he drew up at the door behind the unfamiliar carriage. “Per’aps Miss Cassie ’as a visitor.”

“Cassie never ’as visitors,” Mr. Chivers grumbled, climbing down from the phaeton. He looked over at the other carriage curiously. It was a businesslike vehicle with the words
Hollings and Chast, Linendrapers
, painted in gold leaf on its side. Was this some sort of delivery, Mr. Chivers wondered? If so, why were they making it at this time of night?

A large, potbellied fellow climbed down from the other carriage and surveyed the house. He seemed awestruck at its size and style. Oliver Chivers smirked inwardly. He loved to see strangers admire his home. He was very proud of the house he’d had built in this newly developed area of north London, and it always gave him enormous satisfaction when he caught an expression of admiration on the face of a passerby. The house, of pink brick and stone, was an architectural beauty, designed in the much-praised Adam style. It had a magnificent pedimented roof, a graceful fanlighted doorway and recessed arches for the windows. For Oliver Chivers the house was a personal triumph. No one looking at it could doubt that the owner was a person of taste and means.

The stranger who stood looking at it now was noticeably impressed. He turned at Mr. Chivers’s approach and removed his hat. “Good evening, sir,” he said, looking down at the smaller man curiously. “This cannot be—can it?—the residence of Miss Cassandra Chivers?”

“It is,” Mr. Chivers replied. “I’m ’er father, Oliver Chivers.”

The coachman, who followed closely behind Mr. Chivers, gave an I-told-ye-so snort. Mr. Chivers wheeled on him irritably. “Damnation, Measham, must ye be always eavesdroppin’ on my conversations? Mind yer business and take care of the ’orses.”

“Tole ye ’twas someone fer Miss Cassie,” the coachman muttered as he walked away.

The stranger, meanwhile, eyed the house admiringly. “I had no
idea
the young lady’s residence would be so … so … substantial,” he murmured.

“Indeed?” Mr. Chivers retorted curtly. “An’ who, may I ask, are you to be interested in my daughter’s residence, substantial or no?”

The gentleman extended his hand. “George Chast, sir. Of Hollings and Chast, Linendrapers. You
may have heard of my establishment.”

“Can’t say as I ’ave.” Chivers shook the man’s hand but peered at his face suspiciously. “Do ye ’ave some business with my daughter?”