Although she was plainly reluctant to do so, she said, “Mrs. Brandt, this is Mr. Dudley. He… he’s an old friend of mine… from home. Mrs. Brandt is my midwife,” she hastily added to Dudley.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Dudley,” Sarah said, giving him her best smile.
He didn’t return it. He was still too flustered. If Mrs. Blackwell was unsophisticated, he was artless. He managed only to bob his head in acknowledgment. His face was still extremely red. Even redder than his hair.
“I’m sorry to have interrupted your reunion,” Sarah said. “You must have a lot to catch up on.” She should, of course, have offered to leave at this point, but instead, she sat down uninvited. Mrs. Blackwell apparently had no idea how to rid herself of an unwelcome guest, and Sarah was going to take shameless advantage of this to find out exactly who Mr. Dudley was and if he could possibly be responsible for the color of the Blackwell baby’s hair. “How long will you be in town, Mr. Dudley?” she asked innocently.
Dudley sat down beside Letitia again, but this time he left a respectable distance between them. “I… well, that is…” He gave Letitia a desperate glance.
“Mr. Dudley actually lives in the city now,” she replied for him, her voice brittle with strain. “We… that is, I… I mean…” This time she gave him a desperate glance.
“I saw the notice about Dr. Blackwell’s death,” he said too loudly, with the confidence of one who has, at just the right moment, invented the perfect excuse for something. “I thought it my duty to call on Letitia… uh, Mrs. Blackwell. To express my condolences, that is.”
“How very kind of you,” Sarah assured him, pretending to believe his every word. “I’m sure Mrs. Blackwell appreciates seeing a familiar face at this sad time.”
“I know I shouldn’t have gotten up,” Letitia said anxiously, “but I felt I had to receive Mr. Dudley.”
“Of course you did,” Sarah said obligingly. “I know you’ll be very careful not to exert yourself too much for at least another week.”
“Is Mrs. Blackwell’s health in danger?” Dudley asked with a worried frown. “Because you may be assured I would never do anything to harm her.”
“I’m certain of that,” Sarah said with false sincerity. “Mrs. Blackwell is the best judge of how well she feels, and I’m sure she will feel better for having seen you, since you were such close friends. Tell me, Mr. Dudley, what brought you to the city?”
“I… Well, I thought being here would be good for me,” he said uncertainly, glancing at Letitia once more, as if for guidance.
Plainly, there was more to the story.
“I suppose your family has a business here and wanted you to take your place in it,” she guessed, even though she’d already ascertained that he could not possibly be of the same social class as the Symingtons, unless he’d fallen on very hard times indeed. His clothes were cheap and ill-fitting, the crease in his pants betraying that they had been bought ready-made off a store shelf.
“Oh, no, I don’t…” He glanced at Letitia again.
She finally took up the challenge. “Mr. Dudley is a very educated man, but the only suitable position he could find was as a schoolmaster until he came to the city,” she explained, giving him a reassuring smile. “Here he has a chance to better himself that he never had in a small country town.”
“He certainly does,” Sarah agreed, managing not to react to the word “schoolmaster.” As she had suspected from the moment she saw him, Mr. Dudley was Letitia’s former lover, and he was very clearly still involved with her. Sarah couldn’t wait to inform Malloy that she’d already found the redheaded father of Letitia’s child. And, of course, an excellent suspect in Dr. Blackwell’s murder. On the other hand, Dudley’s reappearance pretty well proved Mr. Symington hadn’t had Letitia’s lover killed, thereby eliminating a good reason to consider Letitia’s father as a suspect. She had so wanted him to be the killer. “What kind of employment have you found here, Mr. Dudley?”
“Oh, I’m just… I’m a clerk at a bank at the moment,” he said.
“But he has excellent prospects,” Letitia quickly explained. The glance she gave him could only be called adoring.
Sarah tried to see what might have attracted her to Dudley in the first place. He was, as she had already noted, very ordinary looking. Unlike most redheads, he didn’t have freckles, which was one thing in his favor. But his skin was pale, almost pasty, and his eyes were a washed-out blue. His hair was striking in color, but he wore it slicked down against his head in an unflattering style. His arms and legs were long and bony, and he seemed not to know exactly what to do with them. Perhaps he was utterly charming when he hadn’t been caught by a stranger in his mistress’s parlor, but Sarah couldn’t imagine it. On the other hand, his very ingenuousness might have been what attracted Letitia, since most of the men of her class would have been overbearing and arrogant and probably overwhelming to a girl as retiring as she had probably been.
Sarah had been taught from birth how to conduct a meaningless and socially acceptable conversation, and she called upon those skills now. She chatted about the weather and the neighborhood and the city in general, asking Mr. Dudley what he thought about this or that, and of course he never had an opinion. Finally, she accomplished her mission, which was to make him understand that she wasn’t leaving before he did.
“I… I suppose I should be going,” he said in defeat after what seemed an age to Sarah. Letitia looked stricken.
She glanced at Sarah, probably wishing her in Hades, but her social skills had not included training in how to handle someone as rudely determined as Sarah. “I… I hope you’ll be able to call again soon,” she said to him at last, her eyes suspiciously moist.
“Oh, certainly,” he quickly assured her. “I…I’ll make a point of it.”
She gave him her hand. “Thank you for coming. It was so very nice to see you. To see a familiar face, that is,” she amended, remembering Sarah’s presence.
He had to swallow before he could say, “It was very nice to see you, too. I hope I haven’t hindered your recovery in any way.”
“Oh, no! In fact, I’m sure you’ve helped it tremendously!”
Sarah somehow managed not to choke. “It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Dudley,” she said in an effort to get him going. “Perhaps we’ll encounter each other again.”
“I…I’d like that,” he said without conviction, releasing Letitia’s hand with obvious reluctance.
“I’ll ring for the maid to see you out,” Letitia said. “Mrs. Brandt, will you be leaving, too?” she added almost hopefully.
Sarah smiled serenely. “I’d like to speak with you privately, if you don’t mind. I need to find out how you’re feeling.”
Letitia frowned. She wasn’t very adept at concealing her true emotions, and now she wanted Sarah even farther away than Hades. They sat in uncomfortable silence until the maid appeared in the doorway, and Dudley took his leave again.
It was painful to watch the two of them unable to say what they wanted to say because of Sarah’s presence, but she steeled herself to the ordeal. When at last the door had closed behind him, she turned to Mrs. Blackwell.
“He seems like a very nice young man,” Sarah ventured, and Mrs. Blackwell burst into tears.
Sarah hurried to her side. “I was afraid that entertaining a visitor might be too much of a strain for you,” she said, searching for her handkerchief.
Before she could find it, Letitia pulled one from her sleeve and began to weep into it. “You don’t understand!” she insisted.
“Oh, I believe I do,” Sarah said. “You’ve known Mr. Dudley for several years, haven’t you?”
Letitia cried harder.
“You obviously care deeply for one another. Anyone could see it in the way you look at each other, which makes me suspect that Mr. Dudley was the young man with whom you attempted to elope the night you were injured.”