He unhooked one of the lamps, and led her into the labyrinth of small rooms and offices off the kitchen, to the small room that used to house the laundry.
It was here that he kept his scientific instruments—the bright lime-washed walls reflected light, and helped illuminate the instruments at night, when he was most often in Chelsea.
He pulled the felt cover off the beautifully-made brass microscope, and moved the lamp closer to the reflecting mirror so he would have plenty of light.
Beneath magnification, the fabric revealed itself to be a creamy and glistening silk. Rich and enticing. But he resisted the lure, and moved aside to let Lady Claire take a look. “Have you used an optical instrument before? The image you’ll see is magnified—made larger—through a number of progressive lenses.”
He also resisted the urge to lecture. She was a smart girl—she would figure it out.
Lady Claire moved to the eye piece and copied his stance. “Oh heavens. I can see—how marvelous.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“Ivory colored shot silk, with fine gold tissue woven in.”
“Yes. Exclusive and expensive fabric. The kind of fabric only a rich man could buy. The kind of fabric only a very few tailors in the city of London would keep in stock. An old-fashioned fabric, used by an established, old-fashioned tailor, who had made their reputation on the elaborately brocaded, and embroidered waistcoats of the previous era. That narrows it down to two—three at most.”
“And any of those tailors would likely be more than happy to furnish the lofty Duke of Fenmore with a list of their exclusive clients, don’t you think?”
“I do.” Oh, how he liked it when the hunt was afoot. But the rush of pleasure filling his chest surprised him. It went beyond that jangling excitement of the hunt. It went beyond anything he had heretofore experienced.
It was almost...happiness.
Because she was proving herself to be a fine partner. How extraordinary.
“Shall we visit them all?”
“No.” As much as he wanted to do just that, he knew couldn’t expose Lady Claire Jellicoe so publicly as to take her on a tour of tonnish tailors—she was too well known in society, and was like to be recognized. “I’ll send a man while we’re in the Almonry.”
He would send Jinks to put Beamish, the major domo nominally in charge of Fenmore House, onto the task. Beamish knew a thing or two about taking the lay of a ken. “We have other tasks to undertake.”
“If you say so.”
He did. But she not only looked at him—she looked to him. She looked to him as if he could take away her fear, and fill the empty space it left with something easier.
But he had nothing. Nothing of finesse and grace. Nothing to ease her fears but his cleverness.
Nothing but himself.
And Tanner found he was as selfish a creature as Rosing. Because he wanted to show her his cleverness. He wanted to hand her the product of his guile, like the sword of a vanquished enemy. He wanted to give her Rosing’s head on an engraved silver platter.
But that would disgust her.
So instead he would take her by the hand, and lead her into hell.
He said the only thing he knew that was true. “Trust me.”
She smiled that small private smile that seemed as if it were only for him. As if he were everything important and trustworthy in her word.
“I have,” she said. “And I will.”
He knew it for the gift it was.
But he nodded, all confident brusqueness, and said, “Right then. Shall we go?”
He could see her fill her lungs with silent resolution. And then she gave him that quick, bright smile, full of wobbling Dutch courage.
“Yes, please.”
He pocketed the fob, gave his instructions to Jinks, and led her out of the house. They went out the same way they had come—through the kitchen door and back down the alley, and headed back to the water stairs just as the first faint flush of the early summer dawn pinked a ribbon in the eastern sky.
It was the best time to be up and about. All the dirty business of the wee small hours of the morning had long since been done, and villains and victims alike had quit the street to find their respective sanctuaries. Gone to ground like foxes to their dens.
The muddy funk of low tide rose off the water to greet them. The tide was almost full out, but the skiff was still in the water where he had left it, and the far end of the plankway.
After he had handed Lady Claire in, Tanner took a moment to search the shadows beneath the stairs for the urchin he had bargained with to keep it safe. “Lark?”
“Aye, Tanner.” A small shadow moved in the murk beneath the stair, until a thin face became visible in the watery light. “Lukey come ‘round, looking to make a quick snatch. But I gave him the caution, and said it were yourn.”
Tanner fished the promised pennies from his pockets, and tossed them to the urchin, who snatched them up from the air as quick and silent as death. He didn’t like the pinched hollowness in the urchin’s face—the stoic acceptance of a life so mean and tenuous a stiff gale might blow it all away.
“Come with us?” He oughtn’t let pity color his judgment. But then again, if he couldn’t put his judgment at the service of the pitiful, he was less than half the man he thought himself. And far less of a man than he wanted Lady Claire Jellicoe to think him.
“We’re Westminster bound,” he offered again. “There’s another bit of lour in it.”
“How much?”
Tanner named another paltry sum, but added, “And more if you look sharp to Whitehall steps and then return the skiff here when the tide turns.”
The offer was lure enough to the hungry. “Done,” was the immediate reply. The pile of rags resolved itself into the thin shape of a tall young girl—taller than he remembered.
Tanner did the maths in his brain. She must be nearing six or seventeen—hard to tell without parents who remembered—though she looked both a hundred years older and a hundred years younger than Lady Claire. Hunger did that to a body.
But he’d been doing his best to keep her fed. “You’ve grown.”
“People do that, don’t they, when they’ve food.” Her answer was all scrappy sarcasm, that he recognized all too well.
He kept his voice even. “And you’ve food enough from Jinks, now?”
“Don’t like charity.”
“Don’t like being hungry more.” Only sharp, insistent logic would convince her. “And it’s not charity when you’re working jobs like this one.”
“Huh.” A huff of breath was her only response, but she scuttled over to untie the painter, and then seated herself nimbly and silently in the bow of the skiff as Tanner swung the boat out into the stream of the river.
Lady Claire accepted the raggedy girl’s appearance just as silently. But he could see her trying to peer around him in the thin dawn light to try and make the girl out.
“This is the River Lark,” he said by way of introduction. “From time to time, she looks after boats and such for me. Lark, this is...a lady friend.”
The Lark proved just as curious about the lady. She flicked a cutty-eyed glance at the stern. “She your lady friend? Special like?”
“Very special.” Tanner kept his eyes on Lady Claire to see what she made of this particular piece of flummery.
The lady just gave him a quick squeeze of a smile, before she introduced herself, all exquisite manner and gentle politeness. “Yes, I’m Claire. Very nice to meet you Lark.”
“Huh.”
The poor child had likely never been spoken to by a lady of Lady Claire’s rank. At least not kindly.
Behind him, Tanner felt the girl’s disbelieving glare, but soon enough her swift attention turned back to the river.
“Barge coming out from Battersea, Tanner.”
“Ta.” Tanner steered them more toward the west bank, out of the main stream of the river, to avoid larger vessels as the traffic began to pi
ck up.
“Tanner?” Lady Claire asked. “Is that your Christian name?”
He had been waiting for the soft question. “A childhood name.”
She smiled, a small show of some private delight. “I didn’t think dukes had nicknames. Unless they are terribly bad and rakish, and are called Beau or Hell-fire Harry, or some such. Or are very good, and are called Parson. But I’ve never heard anyone call you anything but F—”
“No.” His injunction was swift and low. Although the Lark, and other people like her on the damp, dark margins of London life probably knew more of him than he had ever let on, he tried to keep his identity as the Duke of Fenmore as separate as possible from his streetwise self.
“Tanner will do. A tanner is a coin—a sixpence—which I used to steal quite a lot of. My sister was called Meggs, for guineas she was so good at stealing.”
“Oh, I see. From your sad childhood.”
“It wasn’t sad.” He said it too quickly, but she was looking at him with that terrible combination of concern and pity. “I had what I needed.”
Provided for him by his sister. Unlike Lark, who had no one.
But this wasn’t the time to expound upon his one-man crusade to help London’s abandoned children. So he changed the subject.
“And if I may call you Claire? Or perhaps you’ve another, more familiar name you’d prefer to be called?”
He knew of course, the name her brothers had teased her with when they spoke with her privately. He knew everything about her. But that particular intimacy was one that she would have to choose to share with him before he ever used it.
“Of course you may call me Claire,” she answered. “It would seem a little strange at this point to hold to the proprieties. ”
Another small spate of pleasure warmed his chest. “Thank you, Claire. The next lesson in protecting yourself will be acting like you’ve already got all the protection you need. Like you belong. Swagger.” He let his voice go rough and tumble. “Piss and vinegar. Do you see?”
She pleated that line between her perfect, golden brows, and shook her head. “No.”
“When we get to Westminster, you’ll need to act like you’re my lass, and I, your man. For protection, if nothing else. The world is not, as you so roughly learned from Rosing, a kind place. And this city—and the part of the city where we’re going—is unkinder still than even Rosing.”
“Oh. Yes. I see.” She nodded and sat up a little straighter. “I understand. You mean to pretend, for show. Like that extraordinary show in the alley when you put off those two footpads.”
“Ah. Mick and Duffer Robertson.”
“You know their names? Oh!” Those lovely golden brows shot up. “You knew the from your childhood?”
Tanner almost gave her the truth. He almost said, no, it was not for show—it was very much for real. He almost said he did not know those men from his criminal childhood, but from his criminal present.
But guile—he was full to his back teeth of guile, and he meant to take advantage of each and every inch of ground he could cover with her, even if it meant taking advantage of her pity—told him not to.
So he tended to his savage pride, and asked, “Will it be such a burden to pretend to like me?”
“No.” She said the word carefully, as if she were still mulling it over and wanted to draw the denial out long enough to make up her mind.
“I don’t think it would be a burden to act as if I like you, Tanner.” She tried the name out, like a new taste in her mouth. “Because I do like you. I trust you, even though we’ve known each other only a few hours.”
And he’d known her—or thought he’d known her—forever. And yet, as he looked at her steady, uncompromising gaze, he realized that didn’t know the true Claire Jellicoe—the girl behind the elaborate facade of ‘Lady Claire’ that he had constructed for her—at all.
She was infinitely more than her aura of glistening, golden perfection. She was capable of using her mind. She thought. She understood. And she seemed to understand and accept him.
A little, at least. Enough to be going on with.
“Will it be—” She straightened her chin, and began again. “Will it be a burden for you to pretend to like me?”
This he understood a little better, this small sign of vanity—it was kin to his own savage pride, her vanity.
He would reassure her. “It’s no imposition to smile at a lovely lass, Claire. No imposition at all.”
He watched her smile, and look away, and then color, her pale cheeks turned rosy in the inky purple light of the dawn. But the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. He couldn’t quite read her.
And for the first time in his life, he actually wanted—and needed—someone to tell him what they were thinking. “Claire?”
And he liked saying her name, if for nothing beyond the calming pleasure of it.
“I just realized, that you must do this all the time. With these clothes at the ready, and how you were with the men in the alley—you weren’t surprised. You must do this all the time, with other people, other girls.”
This was more than vanity surely? This was...personal.
Tanner lowered his voice, and leaned toward her. “No. Not all the time. I’ve never acted like I was anyone’s man before, Claire. Nor like anyone but you was my girl. Never.”
The smile that grew up from her lips was small, and trying not to be pleased, but she was disciplined enough not to let it loose. “Now you will make me feel vain. But I suppose any lass likes to think she’s special.”
“Ain’t that the truth, missus,” Lark added in a rueful aside from the bow. “Ain’t that the bleeding truth.”
Tanner made no other answer. But all he could think, as he rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the oars, was that he would make her feel more special yet.
Chapter 9
Daylight spilled slowly over the purple rim of the horizon to the east. Other colors seeped into the morning sky—deep orange-soaked pink rising to push back the purple. The mirror of the river spread the colors over the surface of the smooth water.
Only around the banks was the land separated from the sky by a swath of moving mist, swirling around the humps of buildings and wharves along the banks. The morning was breathtaking and stunning in its vibrancy.
And His Grace’s face, silhouetted against it all, still in gray shadow, looking cool and collected against the riot of warm color.
But Claire knew now that there was nothing cold about him. Nothing placid or unfeeling.
The facade he showed the world was just a high wall, designed to keep all the vehemence within from spilling out into the streets. His aloofness was a bastion of gentlemanly reserve designed to hold the world at bay, and keep his feelings private.
But he looked little like a reserved gentleman now, in a loose old redingote that had seen far better days, over plain spun linen shirtsleeves, a dark suede jerkin and rough looking breeches. He had traded his smart Hessians for heavier, treaded boots and leather gaiters, and completed his tough-ish ensemble by covering his too-well-groomed hair with a slouchy hat.
He looked like one of the rough and tumble fellows her mother would have termed a ‘swell’—dangerous and disreputable, and altogether far more male and potent than he had ever looked looming around the edges of ballrooms. And he had looked potent enough then.
But now he was rather thrilling, actually.
Back in the house at Chelsea, there had been a moment when he had looked up at her from under his brows when he had heard her tread upon the kitchen stair. He had done as neat a double take—looking away absently and then cutting sharply back—as she had ever hoped to see when she had been dressed in her best. But eliciting such a look when she was dressed in plain, second-hand togs?
A thrill had clattered it’s silly way down the length of her spine, leaving her flushed and nearly giddy.
His regard thrilled her.
He thrilled her.
Until sh
e reminded herself it was not a time for thrills or giddiness. The night had already seen enough naive foolishness—that her face was so scratched and bruised was evidence enough of that. And they were on a solemn mission, bringing the woeful news to Maisy Carter’s poor family.
They alighted from the skiff at a place called Deval’s Wharf—a faded sign was painted on the side of a building, spilling out onto the narrow south yard of the old Palace of Westminster.
As soon as they stepped off onto the embankment, the Lark took to the oars, and pulled silently away southward.
“Won’t we need the boat to get back to Richmond?”
“No.” His Grace was already moving purposefully forward, making a silent come-along-and-follow-me gesture with his hand. “By the time we’re done here, the tide will have turned.”
Claire hurried to stay as close as possible to him. The neighborhood looked ominously gray and dreary. Full of moldy menace. “Where do we go next?”
His Grace—Tanner, she reminded herself—stopped and turned back to her, toe to toe. He looked her in the eye, his deep blue-green gaze intent and penetrating.
“Are you still determined? You do understand it won’t be pretty? It will be close and damp and reeking and very, very shabby. As shabby as you’ve ever imagined.” He paused as if he were waiting for her imagination to catch up with his description. “Shabbier. Dirtier. Poorer. Much, much poorer.”
“Yes, I understand.” Claire also imagined his words would prove to be an understatement. “But I am determined.” She said it as much to convince herself as him. “We can do no less for Maisy Carter, don’t you agree?”
“I do.” But he didn’t look glad of it—he looked unhappy and burdened and dangerous, with his eyes shifting right and left, scanning the way ahead. “Right then,” he said. “Follow my lead. Let me do the talkin’ as needs to be done. You’re my lass, then. Special-like, as the Lark said. My mort.”
“Mort?” It was not a word she knew.
“My woman.” He took her elbow, and guided her backward until she came up against the wall at the corner of the street.
After the Scandal Page 12
