When the Duke Returns

He curled his lip.

“Unless you wish to be counted amongst those who should indicate concern and haven’t bothered,” she pointed out.

“I heard that the young duke is paying overdue bills,” Mr. Pegg said.

“Every bill,” Isidore said. “He is paying every bill that the duchy owes.”

The smith grunted.

Isidore let the silence grow between them.

“We need a midwife and an apothecary,” he said after a time. “The bridge over the river is cracked and dangerous, so the post stopped coming to the village.”

“A midwife?” Isidore said. “Is there a surgeon?”

“Pasterby, in the next village,” the smith said. “I can’t think of anyone who can afford him.” He turned to the side and plucked a horseshoe from the fire with a pair of tongs. It glowed red and smelled like hell’s own furnace, to Isidore. Then, as if she wasn’t there, the smith placed it precisely on his anvil, picked up a hammer, swung it over his head and brought it down with a precise clanging sound.

“Is there a school?” Isidore asked, timing herself between swings of the hammer.

He scoffed. “A school? You must be joking.”

She waited.

“Schools are at the behest of the duchy,” he finally said, turning the horseshoe over with long tongs.

“Was there ever a school?”

“Not in my lifetime.”

“What about a midwife?”

His hammer must have come down slightly askew because the horseshoe suddenly whipped past her cheek and clanged against the wall of the cabin.

Isidore didn’t turn around, just gazed steadily at the smith. He looked a bit white. He put down his hammer very precisely, picked up a stool, and sat down on it facing her.

“What happens if a man kills a duchess?” he said. Almost friendly.

Isidore let her eyes smile, but not her mouth. “Hanging,” she offered.

He put his hands on his knees. “The old duke chose a neighboring smith to put up the standards on the bridge over the river, after I wouldn’t work for him any longer. The man mixed sand with the iron to save money, thinking to charge the duke twice as much and perhaps end up with his expenses.”

“Why did he do it at all?”

“If you didn’t accept the duke’s custom, he’d have you arrested for something. At least, that’s what folks thought.”

“And yet you’re not in jail,” she said. “How astonishing.”

“He was like a very small dog: all bark, no bite,” Mr. Pegg said flatly. “After I refused to do any more work for him, he never entered here again, but nothing the worse happened for that. Nothing that—”

He stopped.

“What?”

“No midwife,” he said. “She couldn’t stay because no one could pay her. I’ve done all right because horses always need shoeing, and the baker’s all right too, because people need bread. But almost all the other merchants are gone. People don’t understand how much the great house matters, out here in the country. They stopped paying servants, you know, or paid them only once a year. No one could manage on half wages. The local people couldn’t work there any longer.”

“So who is working at Revels House now?”

“The desperate. Honeydew is a good sort, and he’s kept out true criminals.”

Isidore nodded. “The bridge,” she said. “The wages, the school, the apothecary, the post road. And the midwife?”

His eyes went blank. “Yes.”

She looked around the smelly, dusty smithy again. There was a cot against the wall, with a gray blanket cast over it. This was no house. It was just a place to be. And yet it looked as if he lived here.

“Did your wife lose a baby?” Isidore asked.

“That depends on how you see it. She kept the baby with her, so I never saw the child.”

Isidore looked at the dirt floor because there was too much pain in his eyes. But: “So the baby wasn’t born?”

She didn’t glance up, but his voice continued, rough with that sort of male anger that accompanies pain. “Joan labored for two days. I found the surgeon from the next village, Pasterby, forced him to come. It was too late.” Still not looking, she heard him get up and clump to the wall to fetch the horseshoe.

He put it down on the anvil and struck it with the hammer, a gentler, quieter blow than earlier. “She might have died, even with a midwife here.” Another thump of the hammer. “But she died alone and in pain, while I was riding over to the next village. And for that—”

“She knew you were coming,” Isidore said. “That you were trying to help.”

“For that I pissed on the duke’s marble coffin,” the smith said. He turned to her. “And for that I almost killed his daughter-in-law.”

Isidore nodded.

“Aren’t you going to have a hysterical fit and scream your way out of here?”

“I’m learning so much,” Isidore said. “I’ll send Honeydew to polish the family tomb directly.”

There was a moment of silence and then he made a strange barking sound. Isidore was trying to blink away an errant tear and didn’t realize what the sound was, until she understood he was laughing. And laughing.

Isidore rose and brushed off her back of her pelisse. “Mr. Pegg, I need someone to help me.”

He stopped laughing and looked at her. “I suspect you would not be surprised to hear that I require all duchesses to pay beforehand.”

“The vicar reports that he has many graves without stones, as people haven’t been able to afford them. I told him that the Duke of Cosway would be righting the cemetery, and making sure that each grave has a proper memorial.”

He looked at her. “My Joan has a stone.”

She nodded. “Will you help me make sure that everyone who was not as lucky as Joan gets a stone?”

“Lucky?” he said. And snorted.

“Lucky,” she said. “Unlucky in some ways, lucky in others.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “A philosophical duchess. That’s just what this village needs.”

“Philosophical and rich,” Isidore said.

He got to the door before her and pushed it open. “As I said, Your Grace. Just what this village needs.”

Chapter Twenty

Revels House

March 2, 1784

The next day

The man from London had bulging eyes that reminded Simeon of a tree frog he’d seen in Morocco. He had on a wine-red velvet waistcoat that must have belonged to a nobleman at some point. It strained over Mr. Merkin’s impressive stomach.

“Yer Grace,” he said, bowing as much as his stomach would allow.

“I am very grateful for your assistance with this problem,” Simeon said.

“Sewers is my business,” Mr. Merkin said. “There’s no one who knows the inside of a sewer better than I do.”

“It’s not really a sewer,” Simeon said. “My father put in a water-pumping system—”

“Sewer,” Mr. Merkin said cheerfully. “Just because it don’t work so well doesn’t mean it’s not a sewer. I can smell its perfume, so why doesn’t your butler here show me the place and I’ll do an assessment.”