Scoundrel in My Dreams

by Celeste Bradley

  Fortunately for Wilberforce, such a change was not discernible to the naked eye. All the staff remained satisfactorily terrified.

  Young Evan, however, was catching on. Wilberforce gazed at the young boy flatly, but even as the lad considered him in turn he was having trouble suppressing a grin.

  “I held her tight, all the way down, Wibbly—er, Wilberforce,” Evan assured him. “I made sure she didn’t hit the floor.”

  Wilberforce tilted his head slightly. “I trust this incident will not be repeated.”

  “No, sir. We only wanted to try it the once.”

  Melody somersaulted off Evan and rolled into Wilberforce’s shins. She lay across his gleaming shoes and looked up at him with one finger in her mouth. “I’m hungry.”

  Wilberforce bent slightly to gaze down at his Melody-covered feet with both hands clasped behind his back. “I believe Cook is baking lemon seedcakes at this very moment, little Milady.”

  Large blue eyes widened appreciatively. “Can I give one to Papa?”

  “I’m sure Cook will be thrilled to select the very finest example for his lordship’s consumption.”

  Melody giggled at the big words. Then she clambered to her feet and dashed away down the hall to the servants’ stair. “Bye-bye!”

  Evan stood and dusted himself off. “You know she just finished breakfast.”

  Wilberforce cocked a brow infinitesimally. “And you did not?”

  Evan snickered. “There’s always room for lemon seedcakes.” He turned with a careless wave of his hand. “See you, Wibbly-force!”

  Wilberforce remained standing in the hall. Outwardly, he seemed ever the portrait of stern serenity. Inwardly, he was somewhat less so.

  Only last evening, Lord Bartles had bid him good evening with an absentminded, “Sleep well, Wibbly-force.”

  Dignity, old man. Always dignity.

  As the morning sun finally penetrated the dingy attic windows enough to denote the coming of day, Laurel opened her eyes and blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling of whitewashed beams and angled eaves. For a long moment of sleepy confusion, nothing came to mind. Not her room at Amaryllis’s house. Not her old room at her childhood home. The sloped ceiling almost looked like . . .

  An attic.

  Reality flooded her sleepy thoughts, waking her with a cold start. I am locked in the attic of a gentlemen’s club.

  Righteous fury swept her. I am going to kill Jack.

  Oh yes. Kill him dead. Truly dead. Stomp him a few times, then don gay florals and dance on his grave while reciting dirty limericks at his funeral. That kind of dead.

  Vulgar irreverence helped quell the panic enough for her to rise from her bed of piled linens and roll her head stiffly on her sore neck. I’m starving. I’m so hungry I’m imagining I smell—

  “Food!”

  There, set out on a small side table that she hadn’t noticed last night, was a covered tray. Laurel dashed eagerly across the room in her bare feet, only afterward thinking in alarm of the shattered pottery on the floor.

  It was gone. The entire attic was clean swept. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken it was much neater in general than it had been last evening when she’d been rooting through the crates and boxes for projectile weapons.

  Looking down at the table in front of her, she realized that it and the rather fine little chair beside it had not, in fact, been present at all last evening.

  “Elves.” Or servants, although servants who participated in kidnapping were just as guilty as Jack, in her opinion.

  She lifted the shimmering cover of the silver tray and grunted at the plenty offered there. A large loaf of fine white bread. A thick wedge of cheese. Gleaming red apples in a circle around them. Fresh and plentiful. Plain, but she evidently wasn’t meant to starve.

  “Well,” she said to the empty room. “It seems as though I am not leaving here anytime soon.”

  The walls did not reply but only seemed to inch a little closer. She closed her eyes. Thinking about it would help nothing. Eating, however, would keep her strength and her courage up. Gazing down at the plate, she realized that there was nothing there with which to eat. No fork or knife. Not even a spoon.

  No servants then. Oh, a loyal servant might do his master’s bidding and partake in kidnapping, but even the lowest chambermaid knew how to put together a tea tray. This little meal was Jack’s doing and Jack’s alone.

  Picking up the large wedge of cheese in both hands, Laurel took a wide bite and chewed angrily.

  Men!

  After her meal, she covered up the remaining food for later. Dusting her hands, she decided to inventory the contents of the room thoroughly, if for no other reason than to keep her sanity. She might find almost anything in these piled boxes. Perhaps at the bottom of one of them lay a key for this—

  Frowning, she looked around at the room. What was it for? There was a large main attic for storage, so this wasn’t truly needed for that. It made a handy gaol. Did this gentlemen’s club often keep prisoners?

  Four whitewashed walls. A door. A big hearth, but not one equipped for cooking. A large grimy window. And . . . She walked closer to one of the walls. Hooks, in the wall, a few feet apart. Yes, in the opposite wall as well. Hooks for . . . string? Twine? Parallel lines . . .

  Laundry lines?

  She was locked in a laundry.

  Giggles bubbled up that were half panic and half absurd coincidence. In a way, it was all because of the laundry, wasn’t it?

  It was the washerwoman who had turned Laurel in nearly four years past. Three months with no menstrual cloths to beat against her board and the woman had drawn the only logical conclusion about her ladyship’s younger daughter.

  The washerwoman was a respectful woman and not inclined to gossip; at least that’s what Laurel’s mother had claimed. Laurel rather thought a bit of coin must have changed hands as well as information, for the laundress soon retired with her butcher husband to a cottage in the country.

  Laurel remembered the entire confrontation clearly, although with a gloss of horror and humiliation that had not dulled in the slightest over the intervening years.

  “You wicked, selfish girl! How could you have done such a thing to this family?” That was her father, who was much kinder than her mother.

  “You slut!” Mama had never been one to mince words. “You dirty, filthy creature! Who is it? Who is the foul blackguard? Your father will call him out at once and put a bullet in him! I shall see to it myself if he misses!”

  Intersperse the above with several hearty and well-aimed slaps and one might get a sense of the moment. Throw in being dragged to her room by her braid and locked tightly away and the picture grew more clear.

  Then color it in with six months of imprisonment and stark isolation as her belly grew and her soul shrank until she was reduced to the basest pleading. Not that it did an ounce of good.

  All of that was nothing compared to the thirty-six hours of terrifying labor, which she was completely unprepared for. How could an innocent girl know anything of the grueling contractions and rending pain? Laurel had thought she was dying. Then she’d wished she were dying.

  Then that faint wispy cry . . . and then the midwife’s brusque pity.

  Until the moment that the midwife told her that her daughter was dead, Laurel had somehow believed that Jack would return and set everything to rights. Right up until the moment when she’d been left alone with her empty womb and her broken heart, she had believed.

  Like a silly child listening to fairy stories.

  Or like a gullible idiot, robbed and left for dead.

  She’d kept Jack’s secret—the secret of Jack. Through the blows and the insults and the imprisonment, she’d held her tongue and believed. Her parents had never even entertained the notion of Lord John Redgrave as their daughter’s despoiler.

  He’d been Amaryllis’s suitor and he’d been gone for months. And anyway, he’d never paid any attention to Laurel that they were aware of. They�
�d forgotten him as soon as he’d been thrown from the house.

  Much the same way Jack had forgotten her.

  In his rooms, Jack finished tying his cravat and turned away from the mirror. Melody lay on her belly in the middle of the carpet, little stocking feet waving in the air.

  “Do you have a papa, Papa?”

  “I had one once. He’s dead.” It did not occur to him to speak less than frankly. Melody seemed to appreciate truth.

  “Do you have a mama? Uncle Aidan has a mama.”

  “She is also dead.” Everyone was dead. Everyone except for him.

  And now, apparently, Melody.

  I should marry Laurel. Dull surprise struck that he had not thought of it before this moment.

  How terrifying, he thought with distant panic. I am no sort of husband.

  His first decision was to lock Laurel in the attic—not an outstanding first effort! Yet he had no choice. Melody was obviously hers. He could not rightfully keep them apart. Yet to keep Melody—not alone, after all!—he’d be willing to wed a caged tiger.

  Pondering that very tiger, upstairs in her cage, Jack absently stepped over Melody in order to reach his surcoat where it hung on a peg in his wardrobe. When he turned back, shrugging it on, he happened to glance down at the little pile of things that lay on the carpet before her.

  Tilting his head, he peered closer. It didn’t look like much. A rock, a feather, a tatty hair ribbon. And a dirty white skinny braid tied in a pink ribbon?

  “Is that horsehair?”

  “Uh-huh! That’s from the mighty Balf-zar! He’s a lightning horse!”

  After a moment racking his memory, Jack recalled some mention of a large white horse purchased for the underfootman Bailiwick so that he could ride with young Evan. “And the feather?”

  “That’s Pomme! He’s a pirate!” She held it up and watched mournfully as it sagged, all stiffness gone from the much-abused quill. “It was beautifulest in his hat.”

  Colin’s bride, Prudence, had told a story about a theater troupe led by an outrageous character named Pomme. Intrigued, Jack knelt on one knee and picked up the stone. “Where did this rock come from?”

  “It’s not a rock,” Melody confided. “It’s Uncle Aidan’s heart.” The stone was rather heart shaped, now that he looked at it. Melody went on. “He gived it to Maddie and Maddie gived it to me.”

  So Aidan really did have a heart of stone. Jack grunted, amused.

  The ribbon, it turned out, was from Maddie as well, and as Melody chattered on, Jack realized that it was finding that very ribbon that had given Aidan the clue that Maddie was trapped in the attic by her mad late husband.

  Jack ran the ribbon thoughtfully through his fingers. So many adventures. Danger that he’d not been able to protect her from. High times on the road that he’d not been part of. He was glad that she’d spent the last several weeks wrapped in laughter and love.

  He only wished he could have been part of it.

  Still, if he could not add to the treasures, he could at least give Melody something to keep them in. Standing, he brushed absently at his trouser knees. Now where did he put that . . .

  Ah. Rummaging on a shelf stacked casually in books, he found a seashell from a beach in Jamaica, a gold coin from a sunken ship, a tiny porcelain snuffbox from China, and there in the back, yes. Pulling it out, he turned to hand it to Melody.

  She squealed when she saw it. “A treasure chest!”

  It was just a carved wooden box, really, but it had taken his fancy for the very reason that with its domed lid and intricate little iron latch it looked exactly like a wee pirate treasure chest.

  “For wee pirates,” he told her, as she squatted down immediately to pack her treasures away. The poor feather suffered a few more indignities before the lid could close completely, but if Melody didn’t mind, Jack was sure that Pomme fellow could bear it.

  Jack glanced back at the jumbled pile of his accumulated bits from all over the world, then back down at Melody’s gathered little pieces of her short little life. The resemblance was unmistakable.

  Our child.

  Yes, well . . . he’d delayed facing the tiger long enough. It was time to go back to the attic and learn the truth.

  Seven

  There was no flying crockery this time. When Jack unlocked the attic chamber door, he found Laurel standing by the enormous grimy window, gazing down at the street below through a single carefully cleaned pane.

  He should greet her. That’s what people did. “Good morning.”

  She flicked him a dismissive glance and said nothing. By the stiffness in her shoulders and the way her folded arms pressed tight to her sides he was fairly certain she was not at all calm on the inside.

  Well, neither was he. “Our child.”

  “Yes, our child.” Her tone was acid. “Or are you preparing an argument to deny it?”

  He hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. That was an alarming development. Imagine his chaotic thoughts actually turned to utterance! He’d be locked up in Bedlam for certain.

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m not denying anything.”

  Another cold glance. “So polished. How do you do it?”

  Embarrassment was as foreign as most other emotions, so Jack didn’t take her tone personally. He was here for a purpose. “Melody—”

  “It makes me ill to think you didn’t even know it was me.”

  Jack opened his mouth, but the tumbling thoughts in his mind would not come out. I knew. Somewhere inside, I knew you were not Amaryllis. I suppose it was the only truth I could accept, for if you were Amaryllis then what I needed would not be so wrong, or at least would be easily repaired. And I needed it so very badly. I think if I had not had that night, I would not have lasted till morning. There was a pistol in my belongings. I’d come close before, after the nightmares. . . .

  But none of that would spill from his lips.

  Blast it, he must try! He must make her understand!

  He looked at her fully for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You . . . saved my life—that night.”

  She didn’t turn her head, only gazed out the window. “And to repay me you ruined mine.”

  He looked away. “Yes, I did.”

  Laurel knew what he wanted. She could feel it coming off him in waves, like heat from sun-bleached stone. His awkwardness aside, she understood him perfectly, as always. He wanted her to forgive him so that he could keep Melody.

  However, Laurel would believe nothing that came from his lips. Nothing. She had heard it all before, the promises, the pleading, then the rages and the punishments. She knew intimately how one could be convinced and imposed upon in captivity.

  “I want to leave,” she told him coldly.

  “Where . . . do you wish to go?”

  She closed her eyes. “Far, so far away. Somewhere that I can breathe, and live and be free. Somewhere that no one wants to own me, or push me, or use me. I want to wake up my baby every day and see her laugh and smile and play and know that she can never be taken from me again.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to meet his gaze. “Will you give me what I want?”

  “I . . . cannot.”

  She rolled her shoulder high and dropped her forehead to rest on the cool glass. “Then I have nothing more to say to you.”

  Jack stared at this Laurel, who was nothing like the Laurel he’d known. She was so wary, like a wild creature in a cage. So filled with rage, in fact nearly brittle with it, as if a single word would shatter her damaged walls and turn it loose upon them both.

  Yet he had to make her listen. He had to come out of himself to reach her, to make her understand that Melody was home.

  “I suppose you’re wondering . . . This is my club. We live here, ladies and all. For Melody, you see. It’s all for Melody.”

  No response. He went resolutely on. “It was a secret at first . . . or they thought it was, Aidan and Colin. They kept Mellie in their rooms and snuck food . . .” It
made her sound like a pet in a cage. Best not approach that topic too closely. He went on, stumbling and feeling more and more as though his thoughts might start spilling out his ears before he could lay them upon his tongue.

  “The staff . . . the members, too, all those old codgers, they’re all mad for her. . . . Melody does that to people. She makes them . . . It’s uncanny, really. . . . If you knew her—”

  She spun on him then. “Well, I don’t, do I? I don’t know my own daughter!” She advanced upon him, each step stiff with rage. “Everyone here, ladies and codgers and servants, they all love my daughter!” She sneered. “I’m so bloody happy for them I could spit!”

  She spun on her heel and stalked back to the window, pressing both hands open on the glass. Jack could imagine how it would feel, cool and hard, like ice on her hot palms.

  She was right, of course. It was horribly unfair that the lowest footman at Brown’s had more knowledge of Melody than her own mother did.

  So Jack went on, doggedly determined, clumsy words and all. It was hard when she was so icy and silent, but in a way it was easier as well. She couldn’t possibly think any worse of him, after all. He kept trying. He would be willing to do anything to keep Melody.

  He had to keep her. Without her he would go back into the darkness, never to return to life.

  “If you would vow to stay in London—we could . . . share her.”

  “If I cooperate with you, you mean. If I give in and do things your way, you’ll deign to give me a bit of time with my own child.”

  “Well . . .” This wasn’t going well. He probably ought not to mention the marriage part quite yet. “Yes.”

  “No. I won’t share her with you. I won’t stay in London. I won’t allow you to dictate my life to me. I will take her and I will flee so far from you that you’ll never so much as get a glimpse of our skirts!”

  “That’s not . . . You’re not being—”

  “What? Rational? Obedient? A proper lady?” She snorted. “If I were a proper lady, Melody would never have been born. Or don’t you remember my mouth on you, your hands on me?”

  Oh, he remembered all right. The briefest reminder sent heat flooding into his trousers and blank lust flooding into his already-compromised thoughts.