“Gambling?” the widow exclaimed, handing back the leather purse. “Oh, no, my husband would never purchase a lottery ticket.”
“Oh, yes, he would, Mother,” one of her daughters shouted.
“For a good cause,” the middle daughter added. The youngest girl even remembered her father purchasing the ticket.
The widow looked at her three daughters, all of marriageable age, all dowerless, all dressed in castoffs from the congregation, all without a roof over their heads after tomorrow. Then she looked at Ardeth. “Rufus did always say how the good Lord would provide.”
Another carriage and wagon were hired, with men to help them move their belongings to Ardeth’s house. Meanwhile he asked the two older girls to come along with Genie to help their next and final winner, the soldier who had inherited his sister’s five little orphans.
The man looked like he’d rather face the French again. The small flat looked like the French had marched through it. The children were dirty, hungry, and distraught—for the ten minutes it took Ardeth to convince the man that his sister had taken a lottery ticket, that he could hire proper nursemaids (unless he proposed to one of the vicar’s daughters) and take up a position at Ardsley Keep, where the children could go to the free school.
Everyone carried an infant out to the waiting hired coach, even Ardeth. His burden, naturally, was the only one not crying. Genie thought he looked wonderful with a babe in his arms, except for the crow she could swear was laughing on his shoulder.
Now everyone was at Ardeth House, including Daisy, the killer, whom the other women avoided. The men did not. They all—except for the children, who were being fed, bathed, and put to bed by Mrs. Randolph and the maids—listened to Ardeth offer them choices. He would be back to hear their decisions as soon as he completed two more errands.
This time Genie stayed behind. These people were her guests, for one thing, and she had no desire to visit the morgue and morticians, for another. He took James Vinross to help with the details.
When Ardeth returned, hours later, everyone was upstairs, sleeping or counting their coins, except his wife. He told her about his successes; Genie told about hers.
Daisy wanted to go to Canada.
The young soldier wanted Daisy.
The shoemaker’s widow wanted the children, the grandchildren she never had, so they were all going to the colonies to start a cobbler’s shop.
The retired schoolteacher thought he wanted Daisy, too, but knew his heart was not up to it, so he chose a cottage, a place at the new school, and the cats. Miss Calverton was afraid of ships, Red Indians, and being on her own, so she thought she’d keep the cats, and the gentleman, company.
The vicar’s wife and daughters decided they would also teach in the country for a year of mourning, unless they found husbands with their lottery dowries first.
Everyone was to set out in the morning, after the funerals. Ardeth and Genie stayed up another two hours making lists and plans, sending messages, issuing invitations. With hard work and a fortune in bribes, Ardeth was gathering all the dearly departed for one grand send-off: the vicar, the shoemaker, the soldier’s sister, the schoolteacher’s wastrel wife, and the flower seller who had no family that anyone knew of. Only two of Effe’s pickups would not be celebrated in the morning: Lady Wickersham, whose heirs were too arrogant, and Predlow the Pimp, whose demise was too deserved.
“And I could not have done it without you, my dear,” Ardeth said as he kissed Genie good night outside her door.
Marie was still working in Genie’s room, cutting black ribbons, sewing hems on black shawls, adding a black veil to one of Genie’s bonnets for Daisy so no one would recognize her. She helped Genie into her night rail, then left with her mending basket and the promise of a salary increase.
Genie brushed out her hair, thinking about her husband, as usual. She touched her lips where he had kissed her. For once he had been the one to initiate the touch, and not a mere peck on the cheek, either. She wanted more.
This day proved to her what a wonder the man was. She wanted more of him, too. Genie had no idea how he had selected these people to rescue—perhaps he found their names in a newspaper while he sat in Peter’s room—but his actions proved his goodness, his strength, his nobility of spirit. This immediacy of giving, of seeing the results, was far more satisfying than allocating funds or selecting architecture, although schools and hospitals would benefit greater amounts of people.
She wanted to help him do more. He’d seen what a capable assistant she’d been, once she caught on. And she had not turned a hair, having a yellow-haired harlot in her drawing room. And it was her idea to hire a band to accompany the funeral procession, which reminded her that she had not asked him about the music, which led to another excellent idea of how she could spend another few minutes in his company.
Without pausing to think, she knocked on the adjoining door and opened it before he could refuse her entry. She stepped in, saying, “I was wondering about the—”
He was half-naked, his back to her, unbuttoning the fall of his trousers. By the fire’s light she could see broad shoulders, a narrow waist.
He quickly reached for his dressing robe before turning, slipping his arms in the sleeves, and sashing it closed in front.
Genie sighed.
“About the…?”
“Hymn.”
“What him, or whom?”
They were beginning to sound like Olive, who was sleeping with Sean Randolph and his dog, Helen, until the cats left.
Genie forced her eyes away from the vee of curls starting under his collarbone. “Not him, a hymn to be sung at the chapel. Do you have a favorite?”
He was staring at her in her thin bedgown. That one, his baser emotions roared, where he could see the darker nipples through the sheer fabric, and the dark triangle between her legs. This was his favorite. And her hair was down, a sunset all by itself, setting across her shoulders. Heaven help him. “Hymn?” That was all he could manage.
“Do you want me to choose?”
She had already chosen, by coming to his bedroom. They both knew it, and the choice had nothing whatsoever to do with funeral music.
“Genie, you should go.”
“But there is so much to be done, and I had a nap before my sister arrived this afternoon. Was it just this afternoon? Goodness, it seems that days have gone by—we have accomplished so much.”
Decades had gone by, centuries, eons, since he’d felt this way. He rubbed his neck, to avoid rubbing where he ached. “You should go,” he repeated, feigning a yawn.
“Oh, you must be exhausted. Here, let me massage your neck for you.”
Before he could stop her, she pushed him toward the bed, then climbed up to wait for him there. Genie, in his bed. Genie, with her hair and her inhibitions all down. Genie.
Jupiter couldn’t save him now. He sighed and stepped toward the bed. To protect her sensibilities and preserve his modesty, he lay facedown on the mattress. Genie knelt beside him, tugged down the collar of his robe, and began to knead his neck and shoulders. Oh gods.
Then she bent forward and kissed where her hands soothed and smoothed. He could hear her breathing getting ragged, not as ragged as his, but her breath was burning on his bare skin. Her hair was like lightning, trickling against his neck. Her hand strokes were more urgent, her sighs more mews of wanting. Lud knew who was making those groans of pleasure and pain and passion, him or her.
Ardeth clutched the pillow to him like a drowning man grabs a floating log. He was going under anyway, his hold on his good intentions slipping away with the rising tide of desire. Then he did something he had never thought to do, had never known was possible, to save both of them.
Genie heard him sigh, knew he was surrendering to the heat between them, knew he would turn over and take her in his arms, take her to the stars, take her. She nibbled on his earlobe, waiting. He sighed again. She blew in his ear. He sighed.
Then she realized he wa
s not sighing. Her hero had managed to put himself to sleep and the dastard was snoring!
Chapter 19
“Who’s gettin’ hitched, one of the royals?”
“It ain’t no wedding, you clunch,” the driver of an ale cart called back to the drayman behind him on the long queue of stalled wagons. “Can’t you see the coffins?”
Now the second driver could see the wooden boxes under all the blossoms. “So who died? Some nabob and his whole harem?”
“I dunno. Maybe royalty after all.”
Sure enough, the funeral cortege was one of the finest most Londoners had ever seen, and the most festive. The only truly funereal aspect, other than the black armbands on the men and black clothes on most of the women, was a tall, black-haired rider on a black horse who led the procession. The watchers grew respectfully quiet when he passed by, giving the dead their due.
After Lord Ardeth and the hearses, a band played lively hymns, mourners chatted gaily while they marched, children tossed coins and more flowers to the crowds lining the streets, and elegant carriages drawn by prime cattle made their prancing way toward St. Cecilia’s Chapel.
The coffins, the horses, and the children were all covered in flowers, in honor of a lavender seller called Clover by her fellow barrow pushers, just Clover. She had the grandest funeral any poor flower girl could hope for, with most of the Covent Garden market trailing behind. Why not? Their wares were all sold to the earl’s men at dawn. Besides, they were promised a ride to Richmond for the burial, and a good meal at an inn afterward.
The cobbler’s customers and neighbors marched along, their shoes highly polished. Pupils from the schoolteacher’s former academy came to show their sympathy for his loss, as did the congregation of the departed vicar. No one knew whom the veiled woman was bereaved of, but she could not have been terribly grief stricken, tossing flowers to the crowds and kisses to the best-looking young men.
In the carriages rode well-dressed nobs and not-so-well-dressed mourners, a few weeping, a few looking stunned at the sudden changes in their fortunes, and one, a stunning red-haired lady in black lace, fuming… especially when the solitary, unsmiling horseman was in view.
The chapel service was dignified, reverent, and short, with the officiating bishop referring to the list in his hand more than once, and to Lord Ardeth and the promised new roof more than that.
The burials took longer. There had not been enough gravediggers in so short a time, so some of the less-affected mourners dug in, literally, while extra hymns were sung. Clover’s interment received the same solemnities as the vicar’s, the shoemaker’s and the soldier’s sister’s, to the surprise and delight of her friends, who wept as copiously as the bereft families.
Enough bouquets and blossoms were placed at each grave site to cover the fresh earth, so the cemetery looked more like a field of flowers than a final, forlorn resting place.
Ardeth was pleased. Genie was not. Oh, she was happy the hurried plans had gone without much of a hitch—what was a foot or two of dirt?—and no one seemed to feel out of place, the swells and the street vendors reciting the same verses. And she was glad they’d been able to soften the blow of the losses for those who truly mourned.
She was also pleased that her sister and her husband had attended. Their presence meant Peter was well enough to leave behind, and that Lorraine had become less selfish, acknowledging others’ needs and her own debts. Lorraine did make certain, Genie noted, to keep Roger away from Daisy.
The supper afterward was more like a country fair than a funeral repast. Ardeth had sent riders and wagons and hampers and caterers to a small nearby inn that could not have managed the crowds on its own. Now all comers were served, inside and out, locals and Londoners, sad mourner and glad free-meal seeker.
Ardeth was host, lord of the manor, and Father Christmas all in one. He consoled; he consulted; he doled out coins. He spoke to nearly every man and woman present, avoiding Genie, it appeared to her, as much as he could. Even the children received more of his attention, as he and Olive performed tricks for their entertainment.
Miss Hadley and James Vinross did their part in seeing that everyone was content, and that the carriages and wagons and drays were emptied of foodstuffs, then filled with weary revelers. They all left well before dark. A few coaches went to the London docks; two headed straight north for Ardsley Keep rather than wait until Lord and Lady Ardeth were ready to leave town. More tears were shed at the partings, it seemed to Genie, than at the burials.
She was weeping herself, her emotions all muddled. She was glad her new friends would have new lives and that she had helped, sad that so many people had to die, and mad.
She knew it before, of course, but now she had a wider appreciation of just how wealthy her husband was, and how devious. But she was a lady. She would never cause a scene, especially amid this group. She watched Lorraine, obviously uncomfortable among the lower orders, maintain her poise and her politeness. Miss Hadley never appeared flustered, no matter how many times she was called upon to keep the vicar’s daughters away from the local farmers. Genie watched the shoemaker’s widow, how she cuddled the orphans, despite losing her own life’s companion. Even Miss Calverton, checking the cats in their crates, kept her composure in the crowd.
Genie could do no less. She would show her husband precisely what kind of female he’d married in so helter-skelter a fashion… and so permanently.
Because she was a lady she smiled at the right times. She looked serious at the appropriate moments, gave solace and support when they were needed, and handed out a few coins of her own. She was the countess; everyone looked toward her. They might go to Ardeth for bank deposits and deeds and getting things done, but people seemed to seek her approval, too. Genie stood firm despite the maelstrom in her mind, the butterflies in her stomach, and the anger in her heart. If she was up to the task of rebuilding people’s lives, surely she could manage her own. And her husband’s.
She waited until they were home.
Miss Hadley retired early, exhausted. She would have a tray in her room later. James was staying with the travelers at a wharf-side inn until their ship sailed in the morning. Genie sent Marie to her own room—or Campbell’s, over the stables—as reward for all of the maid’s labors.
She knocked on the library door. Then she went in.
She did not wait for him to find an excuse to leave, or someone else to save. If mayhem ruled or he got another hey-go-mad notion, it would have to wait until tomorrow. Now was Genie’s turn.
She had not taken her hair down. She had not put on her sheerest, lowest-cut gown. She was not here to seduce the man. Heaven knew if such a thing were possible; the devil knew she’d tried. She was simply going to set some rules of her own.
“Do not,” she began as soon as she marched across the room to where he was sitting in the leather armchair, sipping a brandy. He stood at her entry, setting the glass down on the floor. Olive started to drink from it, likely celebrating the cats’ departure, if the jug-bitten crow needed an excuse.
“Do not,” she repeated in a cold, clear voice, “ever do that again.”
Olive flew out of the room.
Ardeth pretended to misunderstand. “I doubt the occasion will arise that we need to host a whore and a horde of flower girls.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“Would you like a drink?” he offered. “There must be a fresh glass somewhere.”
“I mean last night.”
For once, Ardeth was without that air of confidence, the certainty that he knew best, that he was in charge, the master. “I, ah… um… I was tired.”
“No man is that tired unless he is dead.”
Now that gave him pause.
Not Genie. She went on. “You played your tricks, one of Herr Mesmer’s discoveries or whatever it is you do.”
He held up his hands, an admission of guilt. “But I did not send you to sleep. I did not touch your mind.”
>
He did not touch her body, either. “No, you ran away. Like a coward.”
No one had ever called him a coward, not when he was wielding a medieval battle-ax, not when he was wielding a metaphorical scythe.
“Yes.” He had no defense.
“How do you think that made me feel?”
Judging from how he’d woken up, frustrated as hell. He kept quiet.
Genie stepped closer and poked one of her fingers into his chest. “You cheated.”
“Cheated? I did not know the rules.”
“Liar.”
“I do not lie,” he swore.
“Very well, do you like me?”
Silence.
“I know that you do. Do you want me?”
Silence.
“I take that for a yes also. You have seen we are well suited, almost partners. You would not treat a partner the way you treat me.”
“I have never had a partner.”
“And you do not now. I am your wife”—she poked his chest again—”not an audience at a performance. We were in our marriage bed, dash it, not a tent at a traveling magic show. I will not play those games, do you hear me?”
A corner of his mouth was turned up, at seeing his sweet little wife turn into a virago. “I believe the neighbors heard you.”
She lowered her voice. “If you do not want to be my husband, say so now and I will leave.”
“No.”
“No, you do not want to be my husband, or no, you will not answer?”
“No, do not leave.”
“Hmph. Well, at least you did not lie.”
“I do not lie,” he repeated.
“No? And what is that in your breeches, more winning lottery tickets?”
Now he had to smile. “I want you to stay. I want you.”
“But?”
“But I do not want to hurt you.”
She made another rude noise. “I have seen you hold a frightened cat. For heaven’s sake, I have seen you hold a baby. You would never, ever hurt me.”
The Hourglass Page 19
