Mr. Webb took the note that said "dare" with fingers that trembled. He looked at it a moment, licked his lips, and then dipped his chin in a way that spoke of hesitation. "Mr.—?"
"Wright," Timothy supplied, watching him carefully.
"Mr. Wright," Mr. Webb went on, well-mannered even in the shadow of the noose. "I must first of all ask if you are in the official capacity of reporter at the present moment?"
Timothy narrowed his eyes. "Possibly."
Mr. Webb tried to laugh, but only succeeded in sounding breathless. "I only ask because I want to know how likely you are to believe my story. Something brought you here, and it wasn't an invitation."
Timothy's cheeks burned, but he refused to let himself become distracted by the inconvenient truth. Somewhere, an orchestra started up. "I am here mainly to satisfy my own curiosity," he replied coolly. "I have as personal a stake in finding out who is leaving these notes as you do."
Mr. Webb's eyebrows shot up. "Do you mean to say there's more of them?"
"There may be," Timothy replied, unwilling to go into more detail. He hadn't come to bore Mr. Webb with his life history, only to find the next piece in the puzzle.
"The first I saw of that note was at Mr. Basken's side after he was dead," Mr. Webb said suddenly, handing the clipping back. "I know it doesn't sound likely, but now you know just as much as I do about the matter."
There was truth in Mr. Webb's face. Timothy could scarcely conceal his disappointment. He nodded and was just on the point of leaving, when Mr. Webb stopped him.
"Might I ask what leads you to believe there's more of these notes?"
Timothy studied his face closely, looking once more for anything other than simple honesty in his expression, and finding nothing. "I've seen them. That's how I know they exist. Not the same message, but the same handwriting." He bid him good evening, and left. What Mr. Webb would do with such a statement he didn't know, but Timothy had had about all of the socializing he could take for one night.
He found a chair in a convenient alcove, and rested his leg while he wondered which of all the evening's fruitless happenings to mull over first. He had not a doubt that Sam would eventually drift his way, but in the meantime he had enough other problems to occupy him.
Outside the alcove, which had the double advantage of being placed behind a pillar, Timothy could see snatches of dancers lining up to whirl away with the music. He had never enjoyed dancing—a circumstance owing largely to the indignity of being taught it along with fifty-odd other boys at Sir Williams' without a girl in sight—but he didn't like to think that he'd been robbed of the choice.
He'd been sitting there for nearly an hour, wrapped in his own musings, when suddenly the dancing stopped and someone screamed. Timothy lurched to his feet and crept out of his hiding place, hoping the source of the scream had been caused by nothing more than a torn skirt. But the music had ceased, and a dreadful ripple of murmurs rose from a group of bustles and coattails gathered in the center of the floor.
Timothy hadn't a hope of drawing near enough to see what was the matter, but whispers of conversation began to tell him what had happened. It was more than a torn skirt, but less than a murder—and he was thankful for that. He'd been puzzling over the "dare" note so much that he almost wouldn't have been surprised had someone made a move tonight.
"Really! Is she fainted clean away?" a woman asked.
A man near the center shrugged. "Poor soul—upon my word, I don't know what caused it."
"Such fine feelings," a second woman sighed.
Timothy had never seen his mother faint and was therefore suspicious of women that did, but because he was subject to the same morbid curiosity as the gathered crowd he relocated to a better vantage point to see the unfortunate soul borne out of the way. He didn't recognize her, but knew she must be an important personage if the expense of her dress were any indicator. She reminded him, horribly, of the bird one of his schoolmates had once killed with his toy catapult. The ruffled plumage and ruffled dress looked very wrong lying piled around their bearer.
It was then that he noticed it was Mary holding the door open to the room they were conveying the fainting woman to. By the way Mary focused on the woman, Timothy guessed that she had already seen him and was determined to not do it again. A pang entered his heart.
"You, there—miss," Timothy was surprised out of his reflections by Sam's voice; furthermore, that he was talking to Mary. Somehow the aspiring doctor had worked his way into helping care for the unconscious woman. He should've known Sam wouldn't have missed an opportunity for putting his medical knowledge to use. The Elesolian followed the procession in a position of some importance, looking every inch the doctor he wasn't yet.
"Miss," Sam repeated when he reached the door, though Mary already looked at him with wide eyes. "Would you run to the chemist's and fetch smelling salts? Lady Lancaster is in desperate need of them, and it seems there aren't any to be had in this establishment."
"Yes, sir," Mary murmured, sounding for a moment very much like the young Veridan maid that had come to work at the Wrights'.
Lady Lancaster. Timothy's mind raced, and soon he found himself hobbling towards the front door as fast as his wooden leg would permit. Here now lay his opportunity for explaining himself without imperiling Mary's engagement, as well as an excuse to leave the stuffy atmosphere of the charity ball. It would be dark—no one would think anything of a man escorting a woman along the streets.
He managed to get past the butler by excusing himself for a breath of fresh air, and by some miracle intercepted Mary before she left the side gate. It was dark on this side of the garden, and they were unlikely to be seen. He didn't expect a cordial greeting, or even one that was particularly pleasant, but she rounded on him with the full force of her anger as soon as she recognized him.
"I thought you were a gentleman!" she hissed, turning the key in the gate's lock with alarming violence.
Timothy stared at her as they stepped through the gate. "I lost that opportunity four years ago, you know that."
Mary looked up at him, face half illuminated by the lamppost flare from the nearby street. For a moment she seemed speechless, but then she shook her head and hitched the basket higher on her arm, walking away almost too quickly for him to keep up. "Being a gentleman has got nothing to do with how much your family makes, you muttonhead."
"Mary—"
"It isn't coming to my place of employment when you know—surely, you must know—that being known to associate with young men could cause me to lose my engagement in a very respectable family." Her voice cracked.
Timothy ruffled up his hair in agitation, nearly knocking his hat off for the second time that evening. "Don't cry, Mary—do anything but cry." Did she want to end their acquaintance? The thought sent a knife through him.
"And I don't—I don't want to stop seeing you," she exclaimed as if reading his mind, "But—oh, I don't know!" She stopped; they were under the lamppost. When she looked at him, tears trembled on her lashes. His stomach did a flip. "Why were you here tonight?" she asked, voice small.
Timothy had the distinct impression that what he said next was of the greatest importance. But his mind was a blank, and he felt like a blind man groping in the dark for something familiar to orient himself with. "I never had any intention of ruining your engagement," he began, and she sniffed. "I swear to you that I never did, and I still dare to hope I won't. But I am also trying to earn a living, Mary, and your employers happened to host a very interesting charity ball. No one needs know where I found out about it."
Mary nodded, looked down, rubbed at her eyes with the back of a hand, and sniffed again. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, and her voice caught. "We were there, sitting together, talking of it—why didn't you tell me you wanted to write an article on the charity ball? It wouldn't have been difficult."
Timothy opened his mouth, then closed it again. Why hadn't he? There really was no earthly reason he'd had not to. "The idea never occurred to me," he said, hoping the miserable truth would prove acceptable.
Mary started walking again, clutching the basket close as if for comfort. "Do your parents know where you are tonight?" she asked.
She read her answer in his silence. "You have to tell people things, Timothy!"
That touched a nerve. There were a million reasons he kept himself to himself, each of which a lesson learned the hard way. "I suppose I'm not used to being heard," he retorted, glaring at a puddle he had to sidestep.
Mary stopped again. "How do you expect to ever be heard if you remain silent?"
Timothy stared at her, once again at a loss for what to say. The thought was of such magnitude that he hadn't words to describe it. It burned bittersweet; a painful, terrifying, call to action.
"I'm listening, Timothy—you know I listen to you. Your parents do too, I know it. Everyone that loves you—" Here she stopped, suddenly, as if choked. After a pause she hurried on, the basket crunching in her grasp. "Lady Lancaster is waiting."
Timothy wondered at the change of subject, but didn't dare ask her for clarification. She'd only just calmed, and he didn't know what to do when she flew at him. There was something refreshing in being shouted at; no one else he knew would do such a thing. Could he learn to open up? Would it be wise?
A few minutes more brought them to a shopfront bearing the motif of a mortar and pestle on the sign over the door. Mary put a foot on the step leading up to the door, then changed her mind and turned back to him. "I'm sorry I lost my temper—" she began, but he shook his head.
"I need to hear the truth sometimes." He was half ashamed he'd needed to have those thoughts put into his head. What an idiot he must be!
Mary nodded, blinking back tears, and then shoved a piece of paper at him while studying the cobble. "Don't read it until you go home," she said, then turned and whisked through the door of the chemist's.
Bewildered, Timothy followed.
–––––––––
"Muttonhead" was a 19th century insult to describe a person with a dull wit.
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