The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M. Eden

by Mr. King

Installment IIIin which our Heroine makes a most shocking Discovery about the Town in which she lives!

The squire’s refusal to pay for his cake put Tallulah’s ledgers in tremendous jeopardy. Two nights in a row she spent hours searching for a means of recovering from the financial blow he’d dealt her. If she was quite careful, she could manage it, but she could not endure another swindling from the man. And yet, Mr. Royston Prescott had indicated this was a common practice for the local squire.

Under normal circumstances, she would not have selected a known tease as a primary source of information on such serious matters, but Mr. Prescott had shown her a degree of support that had surprised her. He’d not told her what to do, neither had he defended the squire. He was the closest thing to an ally she had.

She closed up her shop a little early, two days after the incident with the cake, and made her way down the road to the haberdashery shop where she knew she would find him.

She stepped inside and found the establishment empty, though she knew he did excellent business. But Fate was smiling on her. She’d found him at a time when he was not overly busy.

He looked up as she entered. A flirtatious smile spread across his face. “Miss O’Doyle. Have you come to purchase a waistcoat?”

“Wouldn’t I be quite the sight? Walking up and down the market cross while dressed in men’s clothing?”

The twinkle in his eye told her the possibility did not, in fact, horrify him. Why this brought her pleasure, she couldn’t say. Most any other man would have offered words, however hollow, of horror at the idea, accompanied by lofty praises of her femininity. He simply looked more roguish.

Her first impressions of him were proving accurate: he was a rogue, but not the threatening or dangerous variety. In fact, she found herself sorely tempted to smile along with him.

“I’ve come to ask you a question,” she said.

“As I’m not currently inundated with customers, this would be an excellent time to ask any and every question you might have.”

“You say that as if you hope my question will be something overbold.”

He shrugged elegantly and walked with careful and graceful strides to where she stood. He leaned a hand on the table, tipping his posture ever so slightly askew, granting him a casual connectedness to her that might’ve been a touch too familiar for an ordinary man. It seemed almost subdued for a rascal.

“What is your question, Miss Tallulah O’Doyle?” He even said her name in a way that was a touch scandalous. And, heaven help her, she liked it.

Forcing herself to focus on the business at hand, she asked, “Why is it that the squire has been permitted to mistreat so many for so long? Why has no one tried to stop him?”

His eyes narrowed, and his head tilted. “Why do you assume no one has ever tried?”

How had she come to that conclusion? “At my shop when the squire declared he meant to cheat me, not a single person looked surprised or outraged. And you said he’d done this before. I suppose I assumed it’d been ongoing long enough that it would’ve been stopped by now if enough effort had been made.”

Royston shrugged. His posture and expression remained quite casual for one discussing a tortured town. “Your assessment, then, is that Chippingwich hasn’t tried hard enough.”

“Or that even the best efforts haven’t managed the thing.”

“Well sorted,” he said.

She folded her arms, not in a show of defiance but in a match to his playful posture. “I believe you will find I’m terribly clever.”

“Are you?”

She took the slightest step closer to him, lowering her voice a bit. “Clever enough to know that you’re not telling me everything.”

The smile he offered was playful. Was he ever anything other than devil-may-care? He’d shown her concern in her shop while the squire was there, but that had been fleeting and not without a heavy hint of impishness.

He motioned her toward the table not too far distant. It was where he, no doubt, took orders from his customers and offered his customers’ companions a place to rest while they waited.

She took the seat he offered her. He sat beside her, sitting with as much swagger as he employed when on his feet. “What would you like to know? Your every wish is my cherished command.” Had her hand been within reach, he likely would have kissed it. The man never stopped flirting. Tallulah hoped he’d be serious long enough to explain a few things about Chippingwich.

“Am I the only one who finds the squire’s company . . . rattling?” She wasn’t explaining her feelings very well. “He makes me feel as though I’m about to crawl out of m’ skin.”

“I don’t know a soul who doesn’t find his presence uncomfortable,” Royston said.

“And not merely on account of his odor?”

That brought confusion to the man’s expression. “Does he smell strange to you?”

“Doesn’t he to you?”

Royston didn’t answer, but narrowed his gaze further, as if trying to make sense of her confusion. She didn’t dare ask if he heard noises when the squire was about. Tallulah did quite regularly. Mostly, it was a gurgling sound, but sometimes, though, she heard a distant, echoing laughter that sent chills down her spine.

“Someone has obviously tried to stop the squire, but hasn’t succeeded,” she said. “What was tried? And who did the trying?”

“I’ve been here two years now, and there’s only been one attempt I know of to thwart Mr. Carman,” he said. “His reign of terror was a well-known and well-established thing by the time I arrived.”

“And who was the person who stood up to him?”

“The man who owned the shop that you now claim as your own.”

A weight settled on her heart. Her shop had become available, she knew, not because the previous owner had grown too old for running it, nor because he had moved to a larger or different location. It had been available because it had been empty.

“Was his opposition to the squire the reason he lost his shop?”

“Not exactly.”

Not exactly. “What happened to him?”

Mr. Prescott released a breath before he answered. “No one knows.”

“He disappeared?”

A slow nod answered her quavering question.

Cheating the local merchants was not, then, the true threat they all faced. ’Twas little wonder Squire Carman held such power over them all.

“I’d not realized how difficult the situation was.”

“I did tell you that day in your shop that he’s believed to be violent.”

She rubbed at her forehead. “I didn’t take your warning entirely seriously.” She felt her cheeks flush at that admission. She did try not to judge people too quickly, yet she’d done precisely that with him. He seemed to be a rather shallow, swaggering blatherskite, so she’d assumed everything he said was somewhat empty.

The shop door opened, pulling both their eyes in that direction. Kirby Padmore, the proprietor of the local pub, shuffled inside, his expression as weary as ever yet still maintaining kindness and welcome. He was the reason his pub was so popular a destination.

Mr. Prescott rose and crossed to the new arrival, strutting as always. “How may I help you, Kirby?”

“I’m in need of new shirtsleeves,” he said. “I’ve ruined my last.”

Mr. Prescott crossed to the ceiling-tall shelves along the back wall, shelves that held a tremendous amount of fabric, but he did not pull out a bolt. Instead, he reached behind one particularly wobbly pile and removed an already sewn shirt.

Kirby accepted it.

“What did he toss at you this time?” Royston asked.

“Guinness.”

Mr. Prescott looked to Tallulah. “I hope that doesn’t pain you too much, hearing of this senseless waste of a drink your country holds in such esteem.”

“I might be pained, were I not so confused.”

Kirby sighed. “The squire’s temper can run a touch hot. When he’s put out with me, he has a tendency to douse me with whatever happens to be in his glass.”

’Twasn’t difficult to imagine that scenario. “Does he grow ‘put out’ with you on account of you asking him to pay his bar tab?”

“That’s generally the trigger.”

A plague, indeed. “You must miss the years before he was the squire.”

“I’ve never known a time when he was not,” Kirby said.

The man was noticeably older than Mr. Carman. Kirby, like Mr. Prescott, must have come from elsewhere.

“How long have you been in Chippingwich?” she asked.

Kirby paid Mr. Prescott for the shirt that had been waiting for him, no doubt a longstanding arrangement between the men. “I’ve lived here all my life.” With that, he slipped from the shop.

All his life?

Kirby was seventy if he was a day. Mr. Carman didn’t look a day over forty, yet he’d been squire throughout Kirby’s memory.

How was that possible?