“My woman, do you mean?” Nye asked with quiet menace, bringing his face closer. A gurgling sound was all the other could manage by this point.
“Steady Will,” Gus cautioned, but Nye ignored him, turning to Mina.
“What is he after?”
“From what I can make out, he’s drunk and looking for a doxy,” Mina answered coolly. She shot a malicious look at the young man, but his eyes were now bulging, and his sole focus was Nye. Mina thought of frightened, harmless Cecily cowering in the attic bedroom and found she had little sympathy to spare him.
As suddenly as he had seized him, Nye thrust him from him and the other man fell to his knees, gasping for breath and tugging at his cravat.
Nye’s lips twisted with contempt. “Get out,” he enunciated and strode past him, catching Mina’s elbow and towing her across the passageway with him.
“You’re not welcome, my lad,” Mina heard Gus telling the stranger sternly. “Best take yourself and that fancy gig o’ yours and leave.”
“What were you about? Skulking there in the dark?” Nye growled, propelling her toward the staircase.
Mina raised her chin. “You never told me to go near the private parlors,” she said pertly. “You said the taproom and the cellars were out of bounds, nowhere else. I had just finished cleaning the window in the first of them, that was all.”
Nye’s gaze was piercing, and Mina felt herself color. “Then I credited you with more sense than you deserve,” he retorted gruffly, and Mina bristled all over. Though why it should bother her if William Nye thought her a fool was beyond her. She found herself opening her mouth to make a smart retort before thinking better of it. “If you don’t want to be taken for a doxy again, you’d best keep to the parlor or above stairs of an evening,” he spat. Then pushed her in the direction of the staircase and Mina watched him slam through the door into the public bar.
She stood rigid a moment, before turning to look out of the window onto the courtyard. The objectionable stranger was climbing back into his high perched carriage. Mina watched as he scanned the lanes and hedgerows as he wheeled back out of the yard and onto the road. He was certainly taking a much slower pace on his way out then he had on his way in. Doubtless imagining Cecily fleeing him into the night like a poor frightened little rabbit. After a few moments of waiting to make sure he had truly gone, Mina turned and made her way quickly to the kitchen to boil some water for tea. While it boiled, she retrieved her things from the first private parlor and stowed them away in the scullery and then helped cut a few slices of currant loaf which she buttered, not knowing when Cecily would last have eaten. Last of all, she took some milk, remembering that was how most of the girls at school had taken their tea. Then she stole away upstairs to join Cecily.
*
“I have fresh bread and butter for you, Cecily and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea,” Mina told her, setting the bread and butter down on a bedside table and filling the silver teapot with tea leaves and hot water.
“I declare I couldn’t eat a thing!” Cecily’s bottom lip wobbled as Mina helped her undo her pretty bonnet and took her cloak. “I still can’t believe I’m truly out of his clutches.” Her hand clasped Mina’s. “Oh miss, he must have been ever so angry,” she said, tearing up again. “His temper was the most wicked I have ever seen.” “I had thought my guardian, Sir Matthew’s temper was terrifying,” she confided artlessly. “For he grows cold as an icicle. But Mr. Brinson’s was in a wholly different league.”
“And how is it that you are acquainted with Mr Brinson?” Mina asked, hanging Cecily’s bonnet on a peg.
“Oh!” Cecily’s eyes fell. “He—he is an acquaintance of my cousin’s friend. I met him through Vanessa at a party and afterward again, we bumped into him in the park. He—he seemed so very obliging and kind then that I always looked out for him.” Her eyes fixed on Mina appealingly. “My cousin also thought him a most affable and charming person.”
“Your cousin Vanessa?”
Cecily nodded her head dolefully. “So, you see, it was not only me that was quite deceived.”
“I take it Vanessa is very young,” Mina said dryly.
“Oh no, she is nineteen, quite the same age as me,” said Cecily naively and Mina reflected that Hill school had not prepared her for the snares of fortune hunters at all.
“I take it that Sir Matthew was not aware of this connection?”
Cecily quailed and shook her head. “N-no,” she admitted. “You see, Mr. Brinton said that his reputation had been sadly soiled by some unfair rumors which meant my guardian would quite take against him, if he knew of our friendship. Vanessa agreed that it seemed most unjust.”
“So now it turns out those rumors are likely well-founded,” Mina pointed out.
Cecily’s bottom lip wobbled. “Y-yes,” she agreed, ducking her head. “Oh Miss Walters,” she gulped. “Whatever am I going to do? Sir Matthew is going to be so very angry with me!”
After some gentle but firm questioning as she poured the tea, Mina ascertained that the most Mr Brinton had subjected Cecily to had been some rough words and a little manhandling. Cecily had most imprudently allowed herself to be persuaded to sneak out of a tea party to meet with him in the garden of her unsuspecting host. She had then been bundled quite roughly into a waiting carriage and threatened with all manner of eventualities if she ‘played Mr Brinson false’.
Mina was not sure if the scoundrel had meant to actually marry Cecily or to blackmail her guardian for her quiet return, she only knew that she had to do her best to try and minimize any damage Cecily might have wrought upon her reputation. Speed was really was going to be of the essence, she thought as she watched Cecily force down a piece of bread and butter and drink a cup of milky tea. It occurred to Mina, that her old pupil had not evinced any curiosity whatsoever as to how Mina had wound up at The Merry Harlot. Such was youth, caught up only in its own toils and troubles, she thought wryly.
“I’m going to have to go back downstairs now,” Mina said firmly. “To see if I can find some conveyance to take you home.”
“Oh!” Cecily’s eyes widened. “But couldn’t I stay with you, Miss Walters?” she pleaded, looking much younger than her nineteen years.
Mina reached across and patted her hand. “Cecily, you must see that your return is imperative. If you were to remain away from home overnight without your guardian’s permission, I’m afraid your reputation would be quite ruined.”
Cecily’s lower lip wobbled. “But I would be with you,” she said. “No one could be more respectable!”
Mina sighed. “You sit here and finish your supper. I will be back shortly.” She wasn’t looking forward to this interview with Nye. Indeed, she suspected he would be most angry when he knew how she had willfully misled everyone earlier. For an instant, she remembered how he had referred to her as his woman, and the color in her cheeks deepened. She couldn’t focus on that right now. She needed to sort out this situation with Cecily.
A quick scout around downstairs for Nye was fruitless, and Mina deduced he must be in the public bar. She would have to use strategy, she thought with determination, as he had expressly forbidden her from entering the taproom. Thoughtfully, she took up the hurricane lamp from the hall and carried it out of the front door and into the yard outside.