coward he’d been—not only to run away, but to cut off all communication from a man he’d once considered a second mentor. A man he’d admired and called friend.
He wouldn’t live that way anymore.
“I’ve all I want,” Howard added, “except your friendship. But I can write perfectly well with my left hand, and I can even muck through a bit with my right. Father McCrone wouldn’t tell me where your letters came from, and you were always moving on. But if you’ll write to me yourself, I’ll write back.”
“I will.”
Howard nodded, then extended a boot toward Simon’s satchel. “Is that a copy of How to Ruin a Duke?”
Surprised, Simon looked down at his stashed belongings. Indeed, the book was poking from beneath the leather flap of the traveling bag. “It is. I read it along the way. I know a lady with a fondness for it.”
“Do you, now?” Howard’s eyes crinkled, knowing.
“I do. She’s the luthier I mentioned.”
“She’s a lot more to you than that, judging by the look on your face. Well, if you’ve already read your book, you can leave it with me. Everyone’s been talking about it, and I haven’t got a copy. I want to know how it ends.”
Simon handed over the volume. “It ends in seduction and scandal, of course. But the amusing part is the journey, not the destination.”
“I’ve always thought so.” Howard smiled, the old familiar smile that made his eyes into crescent moons. “Keep Amelia in mind if that lady of yours wants an apprentice. Not as a favor you’d do out of guilt, but as a favor you’d do a friend. I’ve been setting aside the guilt money you sent. It could serve as an apprenticeship fee.”
There was little more to say then except good-bye, a series of good-byes that felt like farewells. Or au revoirs, as the French said. Until we see each other again. This wasn’t the end, wasn’t a door closed on the past. It was the continuation of a path Simon had once lacked the courage to walk. Now he strode it with gratitude.
And he took his place on a coach returning to London.
The four days seemed just as long as they had on his journey northwest, but this time he felt much lighter. So light he could have run alongside the carriage. So light he could have played a tune to the sky. Lavender’s blue, diddle diddle…
When he arrived in London, tired and travel-worn, he didn’t return to his lodgings. He made his way at once to the familiar corner of Bond Street, thronged as ever with London’s wealthy and influential. There was no place he wanted to be but Fairweather’s. No face he wanted to see but Rowena’s.
But Fairweather’s was gone. Closed. Abandoned. The painted sign had been scraped and covered over with flat white. The shop window was empty.
With the curtain gone, Simon could see the bare workroom. No tools, no wood, no hedgehog. No Rowena.
She had given up, after all.
Chapter Nine
“There is nothing so difficult to describe as happiness… It is easier to enjoy it than to define it.”
From Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb
“The business name is Fairweather’s,” Rowena instructed the sign painter with a touch of exasperation. “It’s spelled like the word ‘fair’ and the word ‘weather.’”
The painter, a well-meaning but careless man, had already jumbled the spelling once. Fortunately Rowena had caught him after he painted Ferrywheater’s, a name surely pulled from his imagination, and made him begin again.
“The spelling is f-a-i-r,” she added. “As in, ‘It’s fair for you to repaint the sign at no cost.’ And w-e-a-t-h-e-r. The kind of weather that comes from the sky.”
“Not the sort of whether that implies doubt,” a voice behind her chimed in.
She went stiff, startled like a doe. She knew that voice. She hadn’t expected to hear it again so soon, maybe not ever.
But here it was. Here he was.
A smile spread over her face, seeping through her whole self. “Simon Thorn.” She turned to face him, tempted to throw herself into his arms—but stopped. “You look worn to a thread! Are you quite well?”
He was hollow-eyed and stubbled, his clothing rumpled and in need of freshening. “I’m well, all right. I’ve just been traveling for eight of the last nine days.”
Had she been smiling? Now she was beaming. “You went home!”
“No, this is home. London is home. But I did go back to Market Thistleton.”
“And how was your journey?”
His expression was more pensive than happy. It was peaceful, even through weariness.