Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter-Thirty-Four: In Which Jessie Lives Happily Ever After

In the morning, a solicitor called in before I had even pulled myself out of bed to inform Mrs. Lewis that her marriage licence and the Reverend had been found together in a shady pub by the docks, but that it was binding and had been registered appropriately. Mrs. Lewis therefore had been declared legally a widow, and the official inheritor of Judge Lewis's estate. She was also informed that the police also declared his death an untimely and tragic accident, and whether this was because of a little leaning-on from the Navy, it wasn't my place to say - only to agree to hand over whatever documents were requested of me to throw the horrible situation one of their Captains had been forced into to light, and to help support his exoneration.

"That was quick," I remarked to the solicitor as I was still tucking my bed-head under an appropriately black widow's cap in the front drawing room. I was wearing an oversized housecoat over the nightgown I had hastily slipped on when Susan knocked on the door to inform me that I had a visitor.

The solicitor grinned at me. Huh. It seems that Mr. Lewis hadn't only been a bully in his own home. He told me to expect to have a sheaf of papers to sign by the end of week, and then the whole sorry business would be put to bed and I would have access to the accounts.

The morning paper, which I was reading over a cup of tea and a light breakfast, when Margaret came downstairs a few hours later, reported the tragedy kindly. They said that the new Mrs. Jessica Lewis was, of course, the same Jessica Franklin who had jilted him at the altar several months prior, but that he had won her over in the end and they had married in secret the night before to prevent the spread of more gossip.

Sadly, her husband was the victim of a housebreaker, according to the reports of the servants to the Bow Street Runners. The household was exonerated of any wrongdoing, and the Ton asked that the new widow Lewis was left in privacy to mourn, until such a time that she was ready to re-enter society.

Of course, unknown to the Ton, Mrs. Lewis was never going to apply join Almack's or host balls. My plan was to liquefy the assets of my late husband, except for my share in the publishing company, and to sell the ridiculous house. Regency stories were always filled with people who had a Town House and a Country House, and while that seemed like a fine idea, I really didn't need anything so grand, gaudy, and frankly, ghoulish. I refused to live in the house where all the wives before me had been killed.

And of course, those servants who wanted to find work elsewhere would be paid a severance that was shockingly handsome. And, by some sort of freaking miracle, though the gossip column reported that Miss Franklin had first come to London with a different gentleman before Mr. Lewis' love and her own good sense had won her back to him, said young gentleman had, thus far, remained unnamed.

Hopefully the event would fall out of the news immediately after I did all of this. All in all, the less said by everyone involved the better, of course, and especially for Thomas. He deserved a chance at meeting someone who was worthy of his admiration.

After I'd had a quick wash and Susan had done me up in my black again, my ex-fiance, his brother and sister-in-law, and the little wee Cooper arrived. They were shown into the drawing room, too, and I took a few minutes to let them settle and to psyche myself up for the conversation to come.

I needn't have worried so much. They'd all read the paper that morning, and Thomas was, surprisingly, a good loser.

"I'm not entirely sure I believe the story as it was laid out, whole-cloth," he said to me privately as the rest of his family partook of the tea that Susan had laid out, and to which they dutifully applied themselves to give us said privacy. "You were genuinely frightened when you sent me for the Runners."

"It's complicated," I admitted. "But it's over now."

"There has always been somebody you loved," he said softly. "Somebody who meant more to you than me. I thought you might have turned yourself to me after--" he stopped and raised his palms to the sky. "But you went with him."