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What a weight the lad carried. Shaking his head, Will pulled all the coins from his pocket and slipped them into the folded handkerchief that already held what looked like three or four pounds. Whether he meant for the children to ever have to use their ill-gotten goods or not, if he could lessen George’s burden a little by adding to their treasury, he would by God do so.
He was halfway down the stairs when he passed George heading back up. “Good morning,” he said, smiling, then gave the boy a sharp second look. The youngster had clearly bathed, his cheeks pink and his hair slicked back against his skull.
“Good morning. Have you seen Rose?” George asked, continuing up to the second floor. “She likes to sleep in, but if I could smell the baking bread this morning, I know she did.”
“I have not seen her.” Little Rose didn’t seem likely to flee on her own, but as the thought had occurred to him, Will turned around to follow the boy back upstairs. Just as he reached the upper landing, though, Rose’s door slammed open. Shrieking, the little girl, wearing nothing but a thin shift, ran up the hallway, Emmeline and Hannah on her heels.
“I didn’t agree to no damned bath!” Rose yelled, diving under a hall table.
“Oh, good God.” Will didn’t know whether to avert his eyes or jump forward to assist. Clearing his throat, he pulled out his pocket watch to give himself something else to look at. “Do you need any help?” he called, half turning away.
“No, we’re fine,” Emmeline answered. “Merely a disagreement.”
“Deirdre says baths give you the ague and then a physician puts leeches on you and they eat you!”
“Leeches don’t eat you,” George said. “They suck out your blood. Take your bath, Rosie. It’s not so bad.”
“Rose, you will not get the ague from taking a bath,” Emmeline said, leaning one arm on the hall table so she could bend down to view the girl. “You will get clean, and you will smell very nice. I put lemon in the bathwater.”
At the top of the landing Powell cleared his throat, making Will jump. For a large man, the butler moved more silently than a blasted cat. “Sir,” he said, “there is a person in the foyer. He doesn’t have a calling card, but he says he needs to speak with you.” He leaned closer. “Regarding the Fletcher children, he said.”
Will glanced at them, Rose still under the table and George not looking the least bit surprised at his sister’s aversion to bathing. “He said ‘Fletcher’?”
“Yes, sir. I did not confirm their presence, as Mrs. Pershing said they are serving as young Pershings, but he insists on speaking to you.” His chin lifted. “Shall I send him away?”
“No.” Will gestured for Emmeline, and she straightened to join him. “We may have a problem,” he said, and told her what Powell had relayed to him.
“Perhaps he’s from the orphanage,” she suggested, “here to see how the little ones are being treated.”
“That makes sense, I suppose.” It didn’t, but he had no better explanation. Best, then, to stop speculating. “I’ll go speak to him.”
She put a hand on his arm. “We’ll both go. Hannah, George, please see what you can do with Rose.”
“Death first!” Rose yelled.
The fellow stood in the foyer, Edward unobtrusively changing out a bouquet of flowers nearby and no doubt keeping an eye on the stranger. A brown greatcoat, too large, some good-quality Hessian boots, black trousers, also too large, and a black beaver hat, too small and held in his hands, made him look well-dressed but a little… off plumb all at the same time.
In addition, his hair needed a stern cutting, while nothing could be done for his beak of a nose. A young man, he was, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, Will would guess, though the oversized greatcoat made him look younger. “Good morning.”
The fellow twitched like a dog that thought it was about to be kicked, and spun to face the stairs as Will and Emmeline descended the last few steps. “Good morning. You would be Mr. and Mrs. Pershing, wouldn’t you? Thank you for seeing me.”
Thin lips, a bright smile, and a missing bottom front tooth, hazel eyes, and dirty fingers pinching the brim of his hat—Will took it all in, the same way he would evaluate anyone who sat opposite him at a negotiation. This one he would sum up under the category of “dressing above his station to impress his social superiors,” but generally most guests who came to call at a grand house wore their best, be they ambassadors or farmers.
“You have our names,” Will said aloud, nodding. “What do we call you?”
“Oh, a thousand apologies, Mr. Pershing. Your butler asked for a card, but I don’t have one on me.” The young man patted his coat pockets as he spoke. “The name is Fletcher. James Fletcher.”
Emmeline made a small sound beside him and wrapped her arm around his, but Will kept his gaze on the stranger. “Is it, now?”
“Since I was born. You see, I had to let my younger brother and sister, George and Rosie, go off to St. Stephen’s orphanage, on account of me being too young and not approved by the magistrate to raise two babes. But I’ve turned eighteen just last week, and, well, imagine my surprise when I went to the orphanage to collect the little ones, and they wasn’t there any longer.”
The hand around his arm dug in hard enough that she was going to leave a bruise. “Will,” she murmured under her breath.
“I see,” Will commented, keeping his voice cool and level. “Would you happen to have any proof that you are who you claim to be?”
The lad spread his arms. “Just myself. Ask ’em, if you don’t believe me. Didn’t they tell you they had a brother? I’m hurt.”
“Why don’t we go into my office, where we can chat?” And so he could figure out what the devil was going on without alerting the children or the rest of the household. A brother of age meant that George and Rose weren’t precisely adoptable any longer, and even though he and Emmeline had only borrowed them, he imagined—even without a solicitor’s understanding of the law—that they didn’t have the standing to do that, either.