Don Gutteridge - Desperate Acts

“Would I be foolish to suggest that you andMiss Ramsay are beginning to take each other seriously, despite thefrightening discrepancy in your ages?”

Brodie didn’t blush, but he gave Marc amocking chuckle. “She’s not yet twenty-three, hardly a candidatefor spinsterhood. And I’ve been told I look a good deal more thannineteen.”

“But it is getting serious?”

“Yes. But I doubt you’ll be hearing the bannsread any time soon. I have the means to support a wife, all right,but I am determined to do well at the bank – I feel I owe it, andMr. Fullarton, a great deal. He had faith in me before I had faithin myself. I expect to devote the next two years at least tofulfilling the promise he has seen in me. Furthermore, Diana hasbecome devoted to Robert’s children over the past year, and she isdetermined to remain their caregiver until the youngest, littleEliza, is of school age.”

“Despite the dictates of her heart?”

They were approaching Bay Street, where Marcwould turn north a few paces and find himself before the elegant,colonnaded residence of his friend and fellow barrister.

“I admire her loyalty, and we are quitecontent to keep each other company, as we do now, for theforeseeable future,” Brodie said with all the fearless certainty ofyouth. “We understand each other completely, for in a way we areboth orphans.”

Marc stopped. “I knew Miss Ramsay was here inToronto on her own, but I was unaware she had no parents back inMontreal.” As someone who had lost – and found – several parents,Marc was uncommonly interested in the subject.

“She has an older brother and his familythere. He raised her and made sure she was well educated, but bothher mother and father died of cholera when she was nine orten.”

“And like you, also, she is more or lessexiled from her home city?”

“Not quite, though I see what you mean.Robert, you remember, was passing through Montreal in 1836 on hisway home from Ireland. Charles Ramsay’s father had been anacquaintance of Dr. Baldwin, and Robert looked the family up whenhe arrived there in December of that year. He was much impressedwith Diana, who made it known she was looking for a position asgoverness or tutor. So, when the children’s regular governessresigned to get married a year ago last July, Robert wroteimmediately to Charles. Who, it seems, was more than delighted tolet his sister go off on her own to the wilds of Upper Canada.”

“And the rest is history, eh?” Marcsmiled.

Brodie gave his elaborately knobbedwalking-stick a drum major’s twirl. “Well, I’ll leave you andRobert to solve the problems of state. I’m off to The Sailor’s Armsto see if I can prevent the assassination of Julius Caesar by hisfaithless followers. Or something like that.”

“I’d keep an eye on Cassius, if I wereyou.”

***

Marc walked slowly up the east side of Bay Street.It was not yet a quarter of eight. He was early, as he often was,and reluctant to abandon the warm and unseasonable sunshineflooding Front Street behind him. In the steep shadow of BayStreet, the autumn air was chill, with the foretaste of winter init. The Baldwins’ manservant answered his knock and showed him intothe parlour. Taking his coat and hat, he assured him that Dr. andMr. Baldwin would be along in a few minutes. Marc sat down beforethe fire, as comfortable in this room as he was in his ownhome.

Which was where his thoughts now mutinouslydrifted, despite the importance of the evening’s agenda to the veryfuture of the province. For Briar Cottage was the place where hefelt most himself – after a youth spent and misspent in an abortedcareer as solicitor, followed by a boring (and then a bloody) stintin the 24th Regiment of Foot – interspersed with occasional,free-lance investigations into serious crimes. Much of this mostrecent sense of belonging was due to Beth, the love of his life,and the hourly presence of Maggie, their six-month-old daughter.Having expected to be presented with a son, Marc had thought thatit might be quite a while before he “took” to Maggie. But theperiod of estrangement had lasted only the length of time it hadtaken the newborn, asleep in his arms, to open her eyes and sayhello with them. Beth was now back at work, supervising theoperation of her King Street business, Smallman’s – amillinery shop and adjacent dressmaking establishment. Threemornings a week she and the baby, accompanied by their servantCharlene, drove down to the shop and stayed there untilmid-afternoon. Maggie was the principal attraction among theseamstresses in the dressmaking section of the enterprise, andappeared none the worse for the ordeal.

This domestic harmony had been doublywelcomed, for the past few months had been among the most franticand anxious of Marc’s life since his harrowing experiences duringthe uprising of ‘37. On the personal side, his long-time friend,Major Owen Jenkin, had retired from the army and come to Toronto toattend Maggie’s christening and to look for a place to live – asclose to the Edwards as possible. But three days after theceremony, he had had a heart attack while out walking with Marc,and had died in his arms. On the public side, while studying forhis bar exams and apprenticing law under the tutelage of RobertBaldwin, Marc had had to make increasingly more time to composeleaflets, pamphlets and broadsides for Robert and his “Durhamites,”the self-appointed group of politicians and their associates whowere trying to rouse the populace in support of the recommendationsof Lord Durham’s Report. The hard-line conservatives andTories, with their fists on the levers of power, were dead-setagainst them. With rallies and counter-rallies, fulminatingeditorials from either side of the press, veiled threats, andoutright intimidation, it had been both an exhausting and anexhilarating summer.

Somehow Marc had managed to deal with hisgrief and squeeze out enough hours to prepare for his final exams -and still reserve a few precious moments each day to watch Maggietry out yet another variant of her brand-new smile and, later, tohold both of his lady-loves close to him in the warm, breathingdarkness of their mutual room. Last month he had been called to theBar, and was now a full-fledged barrister. Surely his adoptivefather, Uncle Jabez, would have sat up in his English grave andsmiled at the sight. Both had been proven right. Marc had known attwenty that his reckless and adventurous spirit would find nosatisfaction in a stuffy solicitor’s office, shuffling paper, asUncle Jabez had done for two decades. So he had abandoned the Innsof Court for the Royal Military School at Sandhurst. Which decisionhad brought him here to this outpost of empire – to war, love,marriage and, fortuitously, to police work. The latter hadrekindled his interest in the law, not that of a clerk’s cubiclebut the grand theatre of the criminal courtroom. Brodie’s guardian,Dick Dougherty, had been one of its finest practitioners, a modeland an inspiration for Marc. So, the adopted son of Jabez Edwardsof Kent, England was at last a lawyer, here in the capital of UpperCanada!

Robert Baldwin had immediately offered Marc aposition in his own firm, but he had not yet accepted (though hehad indicated he would be ready to “fill in” there, should the needarise). Marc felt, for the time being at least, that he wanted tobe free to move his life and his talents wherever they would do themost good. And right now, assisting the Durhamites in theirstruggle for responsible government was paramount. Nor did anyoneknow how long the struggle might take or in what directions itmight lead. A bloody rebellion had been fought over the issuealready, and Marc had more compelling reasons now than ever to makesure that another one wouldn’t be necessary.

And just yesterday morning, Beth hadwhispered to him the news that she was once again pregnant.