“The way you hold yourself calls too much attention to your . . . form.” She cleared her throat. “You lean rather than stand and sprawl rather than sit. Yet when you walk, you carry yourself with a strident sort of”—she rolled her shoulder—“disregard for who might be in your way. And you look others in the eye a moment too long. It unnerves them, I’m afraid.”
She glanced at him again. “This is what I have observed.”
He nodded to her fishing line. “Move your bait.” There were worse things, he realized, than hearing her observations.
“And you are too forward,” she went on. “And blunt. You aren’t discerning in what you say.” She glanced again. He realized it unsettled her to say this. He smiled.
“There, I’ve said it,” she finished. “Your bearing. That’s the worst of it. If you make the slightest effort to refine these superficial things”—she looked down the canal—“you will be well on your way.”
“That bad, am I?”
“Your choice of dwelling would go a long way toward appeasing your brother. This boat, I hope you don’t mind my saying, is in terrible repair. It’s filthy and piled with nets and rigging and God knows what. Short of a seagoing expedition, you could not possibly require these items. When I first discovered you, I couldn’t believe any man would willingly reside here, let alone a gentleman.”
Ah, but isn’t that the point? he thought.
“If the house in Henrietta Place is not to your liking,” she went on, “why not sell it and take a house that suits you? Something on the water, if you like. If you must be on a boat, why not a respectable yacht on the Thames? You cannot be comfortable here. You cannot.”
“And you’re comfortable where you live? The dower house in Portman Square?”
“I do notice when you answer all of my questions with your own questions. Please tell me you know this.”
“Yes, but do you take my point? You’ve trotted yourself out as the authority on high society, and now you’re trying to sell me a bill of goods about it. I’m merely asking if your experience in this world has been worth the effort.”
“Well. It’s better than here.”
“Certain of that, are you? You’re making quite an effort to leave that esteemed address.”
“I’m trying to leave my situation under Ticking’s authority,” she said. “The dower house itself is perfectly lovely.”
“So you say. But if the new duke is so oppressive, why didn’t you return to your childhood home after your husband died?”
“Oh, my childhood home has been sold.”
He stared at her. “Sold? To whom?”
“The highest bidder, I assume. I wasn’t consulted.”
“Why not?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Everyone in Liverpool assumes that I am a fixture of the dukedom now—and what a lucky girl. What interest have I in my childhood home? I’m a duchess now. The house was the first thing my father’s board of trustees sold after he drowned. Their primary interest was the survival of the company, not his personal assets.”
Beau set down his pole. “What of your brother? Was he not living there?”
“Teddy was staying with the duke and me the summer that my parents intended to travel to America. They never came back, of course, and he has been with me ever since.”
“But surely some family member was consulted before they went so far as to sell your parents’ house.”
“They sought permission from the new duke. Naturally. My husband was dead by then.”
“Because if there’s a duke in the vicinity, he must be the authority.”
She nodded. “In the absence of other male relations—yes. From what I gather, my father’s trustees assured His Grace that the money from the sale of the house would be put into Teddy’s trust with the rest of his inheritance.”
“Oh, I see. And Teddy became a golden goose.”
“The irony is that I don’t even think Ticking realized Teddy’s potential for wealth until he’d been told about the sale of the Liverpool mansion. He had been openly hostile to me since his father and I married. I am so very common in his eyes, don’t you see? Never mind that my dowry saved the entire family from bankruptcy. He was loath to even allow me to inhabit the dower house.”
“But now he keeps you under lock and key.”
She nodded. “Now he is terrified that I might discover a way to provide for myself.”
“Ah, yes, which you have done. The books. Soon to be in great demand in America.”
“God willing.”
“How have you managed to get your hands on your father’s books, if his trustees go about selling houses out from under you?”
“Oh, these are old books, best sellers from years ago. Papa printed too many copies, and they were piling up in his various warehouses. His goal had always been to sell them to a new audience. He thought France or Bavaria initially, but the books are written in English, after all. America is an obvious market.”
“And the Liverpool trustees support this venture?”
“They are focused on publishing new books by new authors in England. This was how my father made his fortune, and they are less willing to try new things now that he is gone. Selling old books in a new market is a risk.”
“One you are willing to take.”
“What choice do I have? If I can make a go of the American book buyers, then I shall have my own money, and we won’t have to worry if or when Teddy’s inheritance will be doled out.”
“And these trustees, they just gave you the old books?”
She cleared her throat and looked down at her pole. “In a manner, yes. I wrote to them and asked if Teddy and I might have them. I did not say why, to be honest, and they didn’t care. They were happy to have the free space in the warehouse, I believe. They are my books now, mine and Teddy’s. We are the children of Theodore Holt. Really, they always belonged to us.”
Beau hissed between his teeth. “You’ve balanced it all on the head of a pin, haven’t you, Duchess?”
“The plan has been many months in the making. I have found a young lawyer who is willing to help me without alerting the duke. I found your brother and a means to ship the books. You see now why I have been so motivated to train you?”
“That I will never see.”
“It was the only thing your brother wanted and the only thing I had to offer.”
“I will concede that I am impressed with your wherewithal. Very impressed, indeed.”
She nodded and opened her mouth to say more when her fishing pole quivered from sudden tension beneath the water. She gasped slightly and looked up, her expression a mix of excitement and uncertainty. He paused, struck by the sheer hopefulness in her face. When had he ever seen a woman with less guile? She charmed him without even trying.
He stepped behind her, placing his hand on hers, holding the pole steady from around her body. It was a simple gesture, practical and necessary and brotherly. If he hadn’t done it, she would have dropped his pole in the canal. Still, the contact of his skin with the warm softness of her glove felt like the first correct thing he’d done all day. After that, it was easy to hold tighter, to edge closer. His chest bumped the back of her shoulders, and his legs were lost in her skirts.
“Careful,” he said, very close to her small, white ear. “You’ve got a bite.”
“Oh, but I think I can do it,” she said. She grasped the pole with both hands, and Beau widened his stance, allowing her to lean into him for balance.
“He . . . he must be a whale,” she said, straining against the pressure on the end of her line. She staggered a step, pulling harder, but then the line went suddenly slack. She stumbled and fell back against him.
Beau reacted but not fast enough. Before he could move, one of the sharp, decorative flourishes on her hat gouged him in the eye.
“Oof,” he said and released the pole to grab his eye.
In the same moment, the line and pole went taut again, more sharply
this time. The duchess held on tighter with one hand and reached her sagging hat with the other.
Beau shouted again, dodging another glancing blow by her hat. He darted from behind her to take the pole. “Let me have it.” He grunted the words in the exact moment the great beast on the end of her line gave another forceful yank. The duchess shouted, clung, and tipped. While he watched in horror, she flailed and fell, hat-first, into the freezing water of Paddington Lock.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After the heart-in-her-throat sensation of dropping through open air, Emmaline felt the hard thwack of cold water against the side of her face. The slap was loud and painful, a jolt that she heard and felt in the same stunning moment.
Next, breathtaking coldness swallowed every part of her body, sucking down arms and legs, chin and scalp. It rushed into the tightest area beneath her corset, the arch of her foot inside her shoe, the back of her neck. It froze the scream in her throat. She gasped instead, taking in a mouthful of rancid water. She spit and coughed, gulping for breath, all the while, bubbles—hundreds and hundreds of bubbles—rose through the layers of her dress and petticoats, belching on the surface of the water as it pulled her down, down, down.
Almost too late, it occurred to Emmaline to kick.
She flailed against the water and threw her head back, pointing her mouth to the sky. Her winter boots were worthless under the surface, slicing through the water like rocks tied to her feet. Kicking only served to twine the wet fabric of her skirts—now heavy and bunched—around her legs.
Suddenly, there was more water—a great, rising splash—and she had the panicked thought that whatever canal-dwelling creature had pulled her in was now lumbering forth to devour her.
But then she saw a white shirt plastered across tanned muscle, she saw blond hair, sopping wet, thrown back with a whip of his head.
Rainsleigh. He burst from below the surface and darted to her, scooping the water in great, muscled strokes.
“You’re all right,” he barked over her gasps and thrashing. “You’re all right. Careful. Stop kicking. There’s a good girl. Breathe. Breathe, Duchess, breathe.”
She made an indistinguishable sound of fear and disbelief, and he clamped his arm around her waist and tugged her against him. He was warm and strong and inexplicably buoyant.
“Your bloody skirts weigh ten stone,” he grunted, hauling her more securely against him. “Stop struggling, Duchess. Can you go limp? This will be easier if I’m not made to fight you.”
She nodded but did the opposite. It was a reflex to tense. Going limp felt like giving up. And the coldness. Her arms and legs were rapidly going numb. If she relaxed, she would lose control altogether.
“No, loose, Duchess,” he said, breathing hard into her ear. “I’ve got you. I cannot pull you to shore if you’re as rigid as a plank. Allow your body to go soft. Move with the water, not against it.”
With stilted movement, teeth chattering, Emmaline nodded and tried again to unlock her freezing muscles. “I . . . I’m . . . it . . . ” Her thoughts were a jumble of terror and the overwhelming sensation of numbing cold.
“You’re all right,” he said again. Above them, his dog barked furiously from the side of the boat. “Peach!” he yelled. “Quiet!”
To Emmaline, he said, “Keep your mouth closed. Canal water will make you sick for a month.”
He’d been furiously treading water, his legs in constant motion against her skirts, his free arm massaging the surface, but now he gave one strong kick and stretched out, dropping his shoulder into the water and shifting her, tucking her against his side.
She scrambled, clasping her own freezing hands on top of the arm banded around her waist. He spoke softly into her ear, assuring her with inconsequential praise. Now they were tilted, lying sideways in the water but somehow more afloat. In a matter of strokes and kicks, they were nearly to his boat.
“H-how will I climb to the shore?” she stuttered, teeth chattering. “My skirts. Too wet for me to pull up. And I . . . I cannot be seen. Especially now.”
“Well, you can’t remain in the water. No one swims in this canal, Duchess. It’s just not done.”
Emmaline ignored his joke and darted her gaze from water to boats to shoreline. She saw only the old man on the next boat and the two boys. The man watched placidly from his deck, smoking his pipe. The two boys had left their game to run to the shore, excitedly pointing and exclaiming at their progress.
When they reached stern, the viscount’s stroke changed to sharp thrusts that bobbed them around the edge of the boat to the wall. He lunged, catching the barnacle-frothed ledge with his hand. His legs, which had been kicking smoothly beneath her, now scrambled for purchase against the side. Emmaline reached out too, straining, but the wall was too slick to catch hold, especially in wet gloves.
“Wait,” he said, breathing heavily. “Give us a moment. I have you. Catch your breath.”
Emmaline shrank back, panting.
“Put your arm around my neck,” he said.
She hesitated only a second and then looped herself to him, bringing them almost cheek to cheek. Their breath mingled, his labored and strong, hers hissing through chattering teeth. Her body was suctioned to his side, and he held them both aloft in the water. She could not remember a time she had been so intimately and confidently held. Her parents or nannies must have carried her as a child, but she had no memory of it, and Ticking never embraced her, thank God.
His body against hers felt hard but also completely alive. Muscles strained, his chest pumped for breath. The arm at her waist was as unyielding as an iron manacle. He was warm and solid. She had the illogical urge to burrow into his side. She wanted to never let go.
“Are you all right?” he asked, craning back to look at her. “Were you hurt? Do you feel a cut or gash?”
She shook her head, and she felt her hair hanging wet and heavy down her neck, fanning out around her shoulders on the surface of the water. She reached up to her head. “My hat,” she said.
“On the bottom, if we’re lucky. It nearly put my eye out. You fell because I was fighting that bloody hat.”
She winced and tried again to look behind her. She had survived. She was frozen, and submerged, and hardly on dry land, but she had not drowned. She had not been devoured by marine life. But how would she return to her carriage? What of dry clothes and dry hair? How would she explain the loss of her hat? Ticking prized the hats above all other mourning attire. His valet distributed them daily among the women in his household from the duke’s private collection.
“I’ll go back for it if I must,” sighed Rainsleigh, watching her, “but I won’t like it.”
She shook her head. The very last thing she wanted him to do was leave her. She looked around again. The rancid smell was more pronounced here, and a foamy gray residue slid in around them, catching on the wet sleeve of her gown.
Above them, the two watchful boys burst between the boats and dropped to their hands and knees to marvel over the fall and rescue. The dog leapt to the stern of the boat and started barking anew.
“Peach, quiet!” Rainsleigh shouted. To the boys, he said, “Give us room, lads. Better yet, make yourselves useful. There’s a guinea for each of you if you’ll stand on the path and keep watch. But do it casually, without calling attention. I am well aware of your proficiency for feigning innocence.”
The boys exclaimed at being enlisted and darted to do his bidding.
Now he looked at her. “Right. Out you go. Try again to catch hold of the side.”
She looked at the slimy black wall, swallowed, and released the arm around his neck to slowly extend it.
“Bloody gloves,” he mumbled, watching. “Will they come off?”
Emmaline endeavored to peel back the sopping leather from one trembling hand. It wouldn’t budge. Her fingers were numb. The wet leather was unyielding. It terrified her to hold to nothing, and she wrapped her right arm around his neck and tried again, struggling with the
glove beside his ear.
“Leave them,” he said, edging her up to the wall. “Try the wall again, and use your feet. Go slowly and feel for the grooves between the stones. Dig in for leverage.” He guided one wrist and connected her hand with the lip of the wall. “Hold on. There you are. Brilliant. Other hand too. Squeeze, Duchess. Force your fingers to work.”
When she clung to the side, he released her waist. She gasped and reached back for him.
“No, don’t let go—and don’t kick. You cannot swim in boots and a bloody dress. Here, I’ll lift you.” He closed in behind her again and wrapped his hands around her waist, hoisting her up. She threw her elbow onto the top of the wall. “That’s it,” he called.
She followed with her shoulder, her chin. She clung with all of her might, her heart hammering.
“What . . . what will you do?” she said, barely able to talk with her chin lodged against the top of the wall.
“Climb out and pull you up by the arms. Do not let go of that wall. I’m strong, but not strong enough to hoist you up from behind while I tread water. Can you hold tightly until I’m out?”
Emmaline nodded, despite her serious doubt. She squeezed her eyes, determined not to drop from the wall. When she felt his warm solidness leave her, she squeezed tighter. She heard a splash. When she opened her eyes, he was surging up, his palms planted on the ledge and his leg thrown on solid ground. He surged again and vaulted entirely out, dousing her with water and scrambling to his feet. Before she could blink, he spun and dropped before her. Fetid canal water dripped into her eyes, and she blinked and looked down. His feet were level with her face, bare and almost blue from the cold.
“Well done, Duchess,” he said. “Ready to bid farewell to Paddington Lock?”
Emmaline nodded, hunching against the wall with renewed strength. She took a deep breath. Before she’d exhaled, he slid his hands to her forearms, heaved, and pulled her out.
One for the Rogue Page 9
