Any Groom Will Do Read online

  We call upon at least one of these new homes each morning, sometimes several, and Aunt Mary and Uncle Arthur consult on paneling and plaster for the walls; carved and forged decoration on banisters and balustrades; wood or even marble for the floors; paint; fixtures and fittings for lanterns and chandeliers; and eventually tapestries and rugs. They’ve not hesitated to make me a part of every meeting, an inclusion for which I am incredibly grateful, and I follow along beside them, taking detailed notes. Frequently they even ask for my opinion. (For better or worse, I am never without one.)

  After we have seen the homes under construction, we return to the studio, where I file my notes, and the three of us render sketches and draw up commissions for craftsmen. If there is time at the end of the day, my aunt and I may call upon an artist or auction house to consider furniture or decorative pieces, while my uncle works in his shop to handcraft his own highly sought-after furniture.

  The days pass in what feels like five minutes, truly. And then it is suppertime, and we are together again around my aunt’s lovely table. Tessa and Sabine bring their stories of the day, and we share ours. The meal rapidly devolves into a jumble of exclamations and questions and laughter. My aunt and uncle bear it so nobly, bless them, and they boast to their friends how young we make them feel. I pray this is true because I adore our new life too much to worry that they regret taking us on.

  They send their best regards to you and the other men, by the way—Mr. Fisk too.

  And oh—I feel compelled to report that Perry has become more accustomed to London life. I have learned to forestall much of her rambling complaints by allowing her to style my hair to her exacting specifications. If she is exceedingly homesick, I enlist Sabine and Tessa for the same treatment. Whether we are on the forefront of fashion or victims of an indulged country maid, I cannot say.

  As this overly long letter finally draws to a close, let me say again how gratified I was to receive your first letter. By no means do I think of you or our last time together with bitterness or regret; please be assured. Quite the contrary. If I’m being honest, I relish every moment we shared together, and I am bolstered by the knowledge that you think of me. When I said I am fond of you, it was true—then and now.

  Oh, and please do not hesitate to write me. The post is painfully slow but it seems to be reliable. I continue to exchange weekly letters with your mother and sisters, and they report also to have heard from you. Any word is awaited with impatience and hope by us all.

  Your wife,

  Willow

  ***

  10 February 1831

  Island of New Pixham

  via Bridgetown, Barbadoes

  British West Indies

  Dear Willow,

  I have just received your letter dated 15 January regarding the visit of my uncle. Thank you for writing to alert me. It is clear from your description that you handled the situation deftly, despite the unpleasantness, and I am mortified that Archibald has imposed himself. Please accept my most sincere apologies. As you make your new life in London, you’ve certainly no use for a verbose relation sniffing around with repeated calls and thinly veiled interrogations.

  It is my great hope that by the time you receive this, his visit will be all but forgotten and that he has not been heard from again. If for some reason he does return, please reiterate to your aunt’s staff that he should be turned away without backward glance. Invoke Mr. Fisk to be ruthless, if you must.

  At the risk of boring you with family politics, Archibald appears to be hounding my mother and brother in Yorkshire as well. He and one of his sons have made the journey to Caldera for an extended stay, and they seem disinclined (as of her last writing) to leave. They’ve installed themselves in the family wing of the castle and make repeated visits to tenants and the sealed mines. My mother is at a loss for how to evict him. My brother is a mild and bookish young man, far more suited to his work as a historian than family protector, and he, too, seems powerless to drive our uncle out.

  I would return to England and deal with him in person (and I may do this yet), but we are making such progress. We’ve tweaked the system of scaffolding and chutes, eliminating nearly all waste. We are sealing thousands of pounds of guano in barrels. We may have double the haul we expected.

  Each of us has fallen into informal roles in the operation—Stoker manages anything to do with the ship, Joseph coordinates the logistics for making port in London and distributing the guano to buyers, and I oversee the actual mining, but we all swing a jackhammer, we all shoulder barrels of cargo, we all toil daily, and no man can be spared. With every new threat from home, I curse Archibald’s name.

  Then again, he did give you cause to write me, and for this I am grateful. If I’m being honest, I live day to day for any word from Belgravia. I welcome any reason you may have to write, even news of Archibald.

  Although my work here is for my family and for Caldera, it would be a lie to say that I do not also believe that, somehow, if you will allow it, I work also for you and me. This is either folly or selfishness or both, because we’ve made no promises—or it should be said that I made no promises—and you are obviously making precisely the life you wanted in London, but still, it could not go unsaid.

  And so now I’ve said it. And now I will cease, except to reiterate how very much I miss you, Willow.

  Yours,

  Cassin

  ***

  15 February 1831

  No. 43 Wilton Crescent

  Belgrave Square

  London, England

  Dear Cassin,

  Please overlook another letter so rapidly on the heels of my last and forgive my brevity and haste.

  I am trying desperately to seal this and see it carried to the Barbadoes mail packet that leaves the General Post Office in St. Martins Le Grand on the first Wednesday of the month. (Yes, I have committed the schedule to memory.)

  But here is my urgent news. I pray God it is inconsequential, but only you may be the judge of that.

  Your uncle has returned to Belgrave Square, several times in fact, although I have refused to receive him. I keep out of sight when he calls, but the staff summons me so that I may listen to his exchange with the butler without being seen.

  Yesterday he called late in the day, oddly late, a new level of rudeness, and my aunt’s butler struggled to remain cordial before I intervened. Archibald was wildly insistent, biting and impatient. He was so set on seeing me that I finally emerged and demanded to know his purpose.

  He claimed that he required a signature—your signature—on “important documents” pertaining to Caldera. When I asked how I might provide such a signature, considering you were half a world away, he said that he himself intended to sign on your behalf—“by proxy,” he said—and needed only to view some other official paperwork that bore your signature.

  Cassin, I believe he meant to forge your name.

  When I pressed for more detail, he said that he had just recently returned from Yorkshire, and the situation at Caldera had grown very dire indeed, that the winter had been punishing on the castle and your family. He bemoaned your absence and your (alleged) “indulgent lack of interest” in your responsibilities. That said, he assured me that he had discovered a new and inspired strategy to save us all. (Clearly he includes me in Caldera’s dire state, whatever it may be.)

  In the beginning, his manner was breezy and light, and he suggested the documents for your signature were inconsequential. But the more I questioned and resisted, the more impatient he became. When I asked that I might read the paperwork for myself, he flashed a thick portfolio of official-looking documents, literally pages and pages of text, and then quickly snapped it shut.

  Ultimately, my refusals sent him away. He was angry and sputtering, bemoaning the ride to Yorkshire he would now be forced to make. I can only guess he means to approach your family for these “proxy signatures.” This leads me to fear for your mother’s wherewithal and stamina against him. At the risk of alar
ming you, I can recount that he came very close to grabbing me up and shaking me, Cassin, just to make me see. (Never fear; Mr. Fisk hovered just outside of view. I was in no real danger.)

  As soon as he’d gone, I dashed off a note to your family and sent it to Yorkshire by private courier. Hopefully this warning will reach them, and they will stand firm against him.

  Regardless, I worry for whatever scheme he may have concocted. I worry for paperwork signed “by proxy” that may bind you or Caldera to God knows what. I worry for your dear mother. I know you are committed to the island and whatever windfall the mining may bring, but if you can be spared, even for a week, I believe that nothing short of your physical presence in England may waylay your uncle and whatever he has planned.

  By the time you read this, it may be too late, but I could not, in good conscience, not report it to you. I will await word from your mother and, if necessary, travel to Yorkshire myself to endeavor to help in any way I can.

  I await your direction in the meantime.

  And I miss you.

  Yours,

  Willow

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  By the third week in April, with no reply from Cassin, Willow made the decision to travel to Yorkshire and look in on Cassin’s mother and siblings herself.

  It had been nine weeks since she’d mailed her urgent letter to Barbadoes and, in theory, some response could arrive any day. But intermittent letters from Cassin’s mother, Louisa, Lady Cassin, painted a miserable picture of Archibald’s return visit to Caldera, his departure in a huff, and now a third visit, this time with wagonloads of materials and equipment.

  And then last week came the most alarming news of all from Caldera. Cassin’s younger brother, Felix, had been injured—how badly, it was difficult to say—by a herd of grazing cattle. Felix’s dog had darted ahead on a country walk, startling a bull. The herd was spooked into stampeding, and Felix was badly hurt trying to save the animal.

  Now, according to Lady Cassin’s latest letter, Felix convalesced in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, while his wife nursed him, and she and Cassin’s sisters managed the uncle on their own.

  It was unconscionable that Archibald repeatedly forced himself on Caldera, but now Felix’s accident? Willow saw little choice but to go.

  “But Willow,” said Tessa, watching as Perry tucked Willow’s warmest gowns and heaviest boots into a trunk, “word from Cassin may arrive any day. What if he does not wish you to go?”

  “Likely, he does not wish me to go,” said Willow, examining a fur-lined bonnet. “But I cannot ignore the distress I read in his mother’s letters.”

  “A distress you can discern despite never having met this woman?” ventured Tessa, shifting in her chair to be more comfortable. Her petite body was now large and cumbersome with pregnancy.

  “I’ve not met her in person, perhaps,” said Willow, “but I have four months of her genuinely lovely letters, not to mention the loyalty borne of marrying her son.”

  “Oh, but you married her son for convenience, not loyalty,” said Tessa.

  “Listen to yourself, Tessa. You could be Sabine for all your skepticism.”

  “Perish the thought. My point is not to dissuade you, Willow; it is to demonstrate that yours was not a marriage of convenience after all.”

  Despite the deterioration of Tessa’s own relationship with her husband, Joseph, her passion for matchmaking had not waned.

  “My decision to go is unrelated to the nature of the marriage,” sighed Willow. She retrieved a stack of glove boxes from a drawer and spilled them onto the bed. “It is the decent thing to do. Cassin’s responsibility to his family is chief in his mind and heart; this I know. He is not here, but I am, and I am his wife, convenience or not. As such, I shall go in his stead. Perhaps I will be of little help, but I can lend support, if nothing else. Cassin’s mother and sisters know very little of the work he’s doing to save the castle. Doubtless, they come across as adrift or unprotected. But I shall not come across as adrift or unprotected. And no one may take advantage of me.”

  “Oh no, they will not,” cheered Perry, kneeling before an open trunk.

  “Thank you, Perry,” said Willow. “I can always count on you, and it gratifies me more than you shall ever know. But let us pack everything we can today. Mr. Fisk wishes to leave tomorrow morning at first light.”

  “And you’re certain you will feel safe, Willow? Traveling alone?” Tessa asked.

  Perry interjected, “Oh no, ’tis very dangerous!” in the same moment Willow said, “Yes, of course.”

  Willow made a face. “We shall keep to well-traveled roads during daylight hours. I cannot tell you the sheer exhilaration I feel at being able to simply set out. To embark on a cross-country journey alone, without worrying about a chaperone or the suitability of it, or whether my reputation will be ruined because I’m a female alone on the road. And here we see another benefit of marriage. I relish coming and going as I please.”

  “You do see the irony,” said a voice from the door, and they turned to see Sabine leaning against the jamb, “of riding merrily away because you are married.”

  Willow smiled, passing a pair of leather gloves to Perry. “What? Because I am married, I am free to go? But also, the reason I go is because I am married? Yes, perhaps. But if it is irony, I embrace it. I love the freedom, and I love—”

  She stopped herself and made a little cough, turning back to gloves.

  “What?” asked Tessa. “What else do you love?”

  Willow considered this, surprised at what she’d nearly said. Eventually, she said, “I love being part of a family, even a family I’ve not formally met. The letters Cassin’s mother has written me have moved me to tears. And his sisters send pages of questions about my life in London and the work I’m doing in Belgravia. I am not accustomed to the attention from anyone beyond the two of you. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it.”

  “You mean you love it,” corrected Tessa, watching her closely. “You said you love—”

  “I love the idea that I might be able to help them,” Willow cut in. “How’s that?”

  “Silly me,” sighed Tessa, “I thought you meant to say that you loved your husband.”

  Willow refused to answer this, but she did roll the notion around in her head. It was useless to deny that she had begun to fall in love with Cassin. It came slowly, letter by letter; memory by memory. It came like the shadow of an approaching man on a sunny day. Step, by step, by step.

  “And what do I know of love?” she heard herself ask. “Even if I fancy myself in love with Cassin, I might have misdiagnosed it. Or misconstrued it.”

  Tessa laughed. “Good lord, Willow, it’s not a rash—it’s a rush of feeling.”

  “Yes, and what if I believe it is love, but in reality, it is little more than my first taste of male attention?”

  “You know what I believe?” said Sabine, stepping into the room. “I believe you allowed Cassin to be the first because you knew.” She raised an eyebrow. “You knew he was correct from the start.”

  Tessa made a low whistling noise. Willow shook her head. “Love at first sight?” she said. “From you, of all people?”

  “Obviously, he suited you,” said Sabine with a shrug. “Even I could see this. Do you believe for a second you would have married him if you did not see some potential?”

  “Yes, of course I would have,” Willow said weakly. “That was the whole of the plan. ‘Any groom will do.’ ”

  Sabine crossed her arms over her chest. “Believe that if it pleases you, but I know you, and I know that you would have never gone through with marriage to a man less perfect than Cassin. Less perfect for you, that is.”

  “Because I loved him?” Willow laughed, pretending the notion was ridiculous.

  “Because you could love him,” her friend said.

  “And now . . . ” Tessa added, gesturing to the elaborately staged trunk, “now, you do.”

  ***
r />   By some miracle, Cassin managed to catch a steamboat bound for England just two days after he received Willow’s urgent letter. He had been in Bridgeport for their two-day supply run, and he departed Barbadoes without bothering to return to the island mine.

  Neither did he take time to write Willow or his mother to inform them that he was on his way. The steamship would have him to England a week and a half before the mail packet would arrive. And besides, it was to his advantage to take his avaricious uncle by surprise.

  Stoker, Joseph, and Cassin had been speculating for weeks about the best time for one of them to return to London. They needed to follow up with the buyers Joseph had managed to procure before he left England. Strictly speaking, account sales fell into Joseph Chance’s purview in their partnership, but Joseph had yet to establish more than an uncertain peace with his new wife in Belgravia. He changed his mind daily about the best timing for a return trip. When Willow’s letter arrived, Cassin made the decision for them all by boarding the London-bound steamboat and not looking back.

  For four weeks, he paced the deck of the steamer as it pushed across the Atlantic, worrying about Caldera and dreaming about Willow.

  If his suspicions were correct, his uncle had ignored his denial for more mining on Caldera land and gone ahead with the unsanctioned idea of excavating a new mine. Not alone perhaps, but if he involved numerous investors, a new mine would be more complicated to shut down, not to mention financed by money pooled among many men.

  However, multiple investors meant the creation of a joint-stock company, and joint-stock companies, thank God, could be formed by only one means, a bloody act of Parliament.

  If this had been Archibald’s plan, Cassin’s physical presence in London and official calls on members of Parliament should be enough to put an end to it.

  After that, the situation would want only an explanation to Caldera tenants. He could only guess the promises his uncle had made them. Cassin could do little more than beg their patience and promise them a better, safer life.