“Yes.” His heart was still hammering, and his breath was coming fast. They were on the precipice of something big here.
“Then you are wrong.”
Chapter Eight
Charlotte walked away from Jacob, having revealed too much. So she wasn’t surprised to hear him running after her. Lord Ashland was a curious man. He would want to know what she had meant when she said she hadn’t been running from her aunt.
“Where are you going?” he asked a bit breathlessly. He had a nice voice. Smooth and comforting. She imagined that he rarely found himself surprised.
“Back to my lodgings,” she said as she continued to walk, and he continued to match her steps.
“Why?”
“Because it’s where I live.” She was worried because she liked far too much about him. It wasn’t wise to like him this much, and that was part of the reason she’d walked away. He was handsome, but more than that he was compassionate. She couldn’t afford to fall for compassion.
“What do you do there? At your lodging?”
“There’s not much to do in the rookery besides stealing and various other unlawful activities.”
“So why stay there?”
“Where else can one disappear so thoroughly?”
“Weren’t you frightened the first time you went there?”
“I was more relieved. But, yes, I was frightened, too.” They were still walking, and he was still keeping up, and she was cross with herself for answering his questions. She didn’t want him to know any more about her, but her mouth didn’t seem to care.
“And yet you continue to stay,” he said.
“The alternative isn’t acceptable.”
“The alternative being living with your aunt and cousin?”
She stopped. The sun was behind him, so it was difficult to make out his facial expression. “You have a lot of questions, Lord Ashland.”
“I’m a curious person.”
“Curiosity killed the cat. Haven’t you heard that?”
“Is that what will happen to me? If I assuage my curiosity I will get killed?”
“Maybe not killed but hurt.”
“What are you hiding that will hurt me, Charlotte?”
“I’m not telling you.” She began walking again, her steps clipped because she was angry that she’d revealed so much.
“Do you know what the other part of the saying is?” he asked as he caught up to her.
“What saying?”
“Curiosity killed the cat. Do you know what the other part of the saying is?”
“No. But I’m sure you’d like to tell me.”
“But satisfaction brought it back.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.”
“Which rookery are we going to?”
She stopped again to stare at him in astonishment. “Surely you’re not following me all the way to my lodgings.”
“Of course not. I’m accompanying you. There’s a difference.”
She crossed her arms and tried not to be amused by his pleased expression. He was wiggling his way into her good graces, and she didn’t want that, but her heart was certainly pumping quickly enough to tell her it thought otherwise. In another life maybe they could have outwardly flirted and entertained the possibility of more. But not this life. “You can’t go to the rookery.”
“Why not? You do.”
“That’s different.”
“Different how?”
“Oh.” She dropped her arms to her sides and just barely stopped herself from stomping her foot in frustration. “You know it’s not safe.”
“Then you definitely shouldn’t be there.”
“What will it take so you do not follow me into the rookery?”
He seemed to think about that for a long moment. “Let me buy you a hot meal and we can talk.”
“You’ll just pester me with questions about why I left my aunt, and I won’t answer them. It will be money wasted on a meal.”
“Not wasted,” he said softly. “Time spent with you is never wasted.”
She was stunned into silence. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. A kernel of warmth erupted in her stomach, and she had to douse it with the cold reality that she was not here for a romantic involvement with a solicitor-turned-earl. She was here…
Well, she’d forgotten why she was here. Because she’d thought she needed help, but she was beginning to fear that his help was far more dangerous to her than the rookery.
“No one will serve me looking like this.” She plucked at her filthy trousers and twisted her lips in distaste. What did he see in her, a woman dressed as a man, her hair shorn, dirty, and probably smelly as well?
He looked her up and down as if seeing her attire for the first time.
“You’re probably right.”
That hopeful feeling in her heart splintered. “So that solves that. Good day, Mr. Baker, I mean, Lord Ashland.”
He continued following her.
The man was truly vexing. The only way she was going to lose him was if she ran into the rookery and hid among the warren of streets and alleys, but she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t put him in jeopardy because he would follow her.
“I like you, Miss Morris. You’re the most intriguing person I’ve ever met.”
Her steps faltered. People had called her beautiful. Years ago. But her aunt had not liked that. Vainglory was one of the seven deadly sins, and so she had been sure to stamp that out of Charlotte right away. But intriguing? She’d never been called that, and she wondered where that word fell within the deadly sins.
“I’m not sure if that is a compliment,” she said, attempting to sound airy and only vaguely interested but sounding strangled, as if she were fighting tears—which she was.
“Oh, it is.”
“Then thank you. But you’re not following me into the rookery, and you can’t feed me.”
“We can buy food from one of the street vendors and eat at the park. It’s warm enough.”
“Don’t you care if someone sees me with you?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’re strange, my lord.”
“I think you can call me Jacob.”
“I’m not sure I want to. Besides, that’s not remotely appropriate.”
“Too familiar?”
“Not in the ways you are thinking.” Calling him by his first name would indicate a friendship, and she wasn’t positive that friendship with this man was wise.
…
In the end, Jacob won. Charlotte capitulated, and they were sitting side by side on a park bench eating fried fish and watching the ladies in their elaborate gowns and the men in their tall hats parade by.
Jacob was pleased that he’d bought more time with Charlotte. He wanted to know what she had meant when she said she wasn’t running from her aunt, but he could tell that she’d regretted her choice of words, and she refused to explain them. He’d had no choice but to back away from the topic and circle it for another time.
“I lay awake all last night worried that you hadn’t made it safely back to your lodgings,” he said.
“You need to have more faith in me.” She licked the grease off her fingers, and for a moment Jacob was distracted by the motion of her tongue flicking the grease and withdrawing into her mouth.
He cleared his throat, looked away, and squirmed in his seat a bit as his trousers were suddenly tight. She was a sight to see, dressed as a lad with her chopped off hair, but Jacob saw beneath all of that. When cleaned up and clothed appropriately she would be breathtaking.
“It’s not you I don’t have faith in,” he said. “It’s everyone else who lurks in the rookeries.” He paused with his next thought then decided to hell with it. He’d put it out there and see what she said. “It’s just me rattling around in my townhouse. I have plenty of extra rooms for you and the people you’re watching over.”
She looked down at the few bites left of her fish, and he could visibly see he
r swallow as if she had to force the bite down. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
At least it wasn’t an outright no. He sensed that her resolve was cracking, and he moved in to widen that crack.
“What is the result that you want from this, Charlotte? In the end, what do you want to accomplish, hiding from your aunt?”
She raised her head and squinted into the distance. People were shooting them curious looks, but she didn’t seem to notice, and Jacob didn’t care. He was sure that they were a strange sight, a well-dressed gentleman eating on a park bench with a vagrant dressed in an odd combination of clothes.
“At first it was just to get away. To be safe. And then I started to think about my future. I have little to recommend me, but I can read and write. I have read that rich Americans pay English misses a lot of money to teach their daughters our ways. American heiresses are flocking to England in the hopes of marrying a titled gentleman.”
America? He didn’t like thinking of her sailing to America all alone.
“Excuse me for saying so, but the odds are still stacked against you. Especially if you have no letters of recommendation. Nor a title to your name.”
She waved an elegant, but dirty, hand in the air, reminding him that she was related to a marquess. “Do you know how many unscrupulous clerks live in the rookeries? I could make myself a countess or a duchess. I can pay someone to create a whole new person, and no one would know.”
I would know.
“A countess or duchess?” He raised an eyebrow, and she giggled. She actually giggled, and the sound pierced him. It was the most lighthearted he had seen her yet.
“I will admit that is stretching it a bit, but you understand what I’m trying to say. More than likely I will fashion myself a governess who has taught many young lords and ladies. I have some money saved up. Possibly enough for the documents and letters of recommendation, but not enough for the passage to America.”
Or clothes. She didn’t realize what it would take to perpetuate such a scam.
“Moving to America and starting over is very drastic.” He didn’t want to sound preachy. He could tell that she would not approve of being preached to, but someone had to tell her what a difficult task she’d set for herself.
“And running away from my home and family wasn’t drastic? I feel that fleeing to America would be easier than what I am doing now.”
She made a very good point, even though he still didn’t know why she had run from her aunt. Yes, the woman was an ogre and probably impossible to live with, but Jacob had a feeling that something else was afoot here. Something more sinister than Lady Morris’s tyrannical religious life.
“Come live with me,” he said. “I won’t charge rent. You can save your money, and I will help you create a new identity. If you leave London as a new person, no one would know that you had stayed under my roof, so your new reputation would be safe.”
She looked at him with narrowed, cynical eyes. “And what would you want in exchange for such largesse, my lord?”
His face heated in anger. He had hoped that she would think him better than that but apparently not. “I certainly wasn’t propositioning you, Miss Morris.”
She turned away. Her fish was cooling on her lap, the grease congealing into unappetizing lumps, but she didn’t seem interested. Considering how hungry she’d been the day before, he was surprised.
“My apologies if that is the way it sounded,” he said softly.
Her thin shoulder came up in a shrug. “I’ve been propositioned before. It’s not all that shocking.”
His hand curled into a fist, and he wanted to demand the name of the miscreant who had propositioned her, but he held his tongue.
“What is your game, Lord Ashland? Why do you want to save me?”
He paused. “That’s a tough question without an easy answer.” He didn’t want to tell her that she intrigued him far more than was appropriate and that he thought about her at odd times during that day and that he worried about her in the rookery.
“I like you,” he finally settled on. “And I think you need help.”
She turned to study him, her gaze bouncing over his face, looking for deception, he was sure. “You’re different, not like anyone else I’ve met before, but I like you, too.”
He would be hard-pressed to describe what those words meant to him. It was as if he’d run a great distance and his heart was bursting and he was out of breath and exhausted but exhilarated at the same time.
“I will consider moving my lodgings to your place, but only if Suzette agrees to go with me and only if I can pay a fair rent. I don’t want to be a charity case.”
“Agreed,” he said, deciding right there that he would hold her rent money in reserve and give it back to her when—if—she went to America. “But only if I go to your lodgings with you while you talk to Suzette.”
She grinned, the first smile he’d seen out of her. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”
Good Lord, no. He had no idea who this Suzette was and who he was inviting into his house. Mrs. Smith was going to have a fit. “I’m aware.”
She took the last two bites of her fish and stood. “Let’s go then,” she said around a mouthful of food.
“Now?”
“Is there a better time?” She tilted her head and studied him. “Or are you afraid?”
Chapter Nine
Jacob followed Charlotte through the warren of narrow streets and alleys that made up London’s worst rookery. He was amazed that all this time she had been hiding right under their noses and they hadn’t even known it. He was also amazed that he was actually here. He’d heard of the rookeries, of course, but had never ventured into one.
That Charlotte had willingly come here spoke much to the fear she must have lived with at her aunt’s.
There was an odor of unwashed bodies, rotting corpses, and general poverty. He’d heard of the charitable organizations determined to clean up the rookeries, but until now he’d never realized the depth of despair that lurked in these dark streets.
His back itched with the eyes scrutinizing him from shadowed doorways and darkened windows.
Charlotte was a different person here. She pulled her top hat lower over her eyes and made no eye contact with anyone—walking quickly and with purpose. Jacob followed her lead and kept alert, feeling inadequate to protect her.
Before they entered, Charlotte had looked him up and down critically. “You are entirely conspicuous, but it will have to do. People will be curious. They’ll be watching you. Be careful.”
“What about you?”
“They won’t notice me much. I’m one of them.”
“How did Miss Charlotte Morris, the granddaughter and niece of a marquess, become one of these people?”
She grinned, a cheeky, mischievous grin. He wondered if this was the true Charlotte Morris, buried beneath her secrets. There were so many different sides to her, and he wanted to know all of them.
“It wasn’t as hard as you’d think,” she said. “And how did you know I am the granddaughter of a marquess?”
He grinned back. “I have my secrets, too, Miss Morris.”
She rolled her eyes, apparently not at all worried about his secrets, touched the bill of her top hat in a half salute, and led him into the darkness of hell.
Charlotte ducked into a doorway, and Jacob nearly tripped over a toddler to follow her. She jogged up a set of rickety steps that didn’t appear to be constructed well enough to support his weight, but he braved his way upward, trusting her to know that the stairs would not collapse on him. How did these landlords live with themselves, getting rich while taking these people’s money and forcing them to live in such squalid, unsafe conditions?
Nimbly she climbed to the third floor while he labored behind her. Maybe he should take up Armbruster’s suggestion of more physical activity, like fencing. Charlotte opened a door and disappeared from his sight.
He found her in a small, cram
ped room with a tiny window that looked out over London’s belching factories. Two pallets were pushed against a wall, and a small table with two unstable chairs took up the rest of the floor space.
“Welcome to my home,” Charlotte said with a negligent wave of her hand.
“It’s very…quaint.” His dressing room was larger than this.
“You’re very kind to say so. Let me show you around.” Charlotte spread her arms wide. “This is it.”
“Cozy.”
“Quite. I’d offer you refreshments, but we don’t have any.”
“That’s all right. Where is your flatmate?”
“Suzette must have stepped out. She’s usually here at this time of the day. She works as an actress at one of the theaters. I’m not sure which one. She leaves in the evening and returns very early in the morning. Sometimes I think that she has a side job as well, if you know what I mean.”
“Ah.” Suzette was an actress and probably a prostitute, and he’d invited her into his home. Lovely. Mrs. Smith was going to have a fit, but if that was the price he must pay to get Charlotte to safety then he would pay it.
The door opened, and a slight woman entered, carrying a heavy bucket of water. “I swear to God those women at the water pump are the nastiest creatures. Gossiping about others as if their lives were so pristine and la-ti-da.” She put the bucket on the table with a thud. Water sloshed over the sides, and she looked up to see Jacob and froze.
“Oh.” She flickered a questioning gaze to Charlotte.
“Suzette, this is Mr. Jacob Baker.” She shot him a warning look that he took to mean that she was not going to use his new title and he was not to mention it. “He’s a friend of a friend. He has offered to let us rent a room from him in Berkeley Square.”
Suzette’s gazed bounced from Charlotte to Jacob and back. Life in the rookery had taken its toll on Suzette. There were dark circles under her eyes and lines around her mouth. Her skin was robbed of the dew of youth, dull and sallow as if she saw little of the sunlight. Her hair was a dirty brown, frizzy from lack of washing. She was so thin that her gown—once red, now faded to dark orange—hung on her like a sack.
An Unwilling Earl Page 6
