Scoundrel in My Dreams

by Celeste Bradley

  Button tapped his spoon lightly on the rim of his cup, then laid it on the saucer. Putting his coffee down on the table untasted, he stood.

  “I believe I have something that might come in useful, since we cannot leave the young lady in the altogether. . . .”

  “You knew!” Melody poked her beloved Button in the arm. “You did know, didn’t you? How?”

  Button pursed his lips. “I fear I cannot reveal my sources.”

  Melody folded her arms and sat back on the sofa with a scowl on her face. “It was Uncle Wibbly, I suppose. Men! Always banding together!”

  Button returned the poke, albeit more gently. “Actually, little Milady, it was you who told me. You’d come in with Lady Madeleine the afternoon before and you were full of news, like a little seedpod just waiting to burst. Your queen in the tower.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Then you knew she was locked in the attic! And you did nothing to help her?” She narrowed her eyes at Button. “You, sir, are nothing but a man.”

  Button blinked. “How . . . odd. I am quite sure I’ve never been classified thus before. However, if you are too upset with me to hear the rest of the tale . . .”

  Melody shot him a grumpy glance. “Oh, you might as well carry on.”

  Button bowed gracefully in counterpoint to her rudeness. “As you wish, my lady.”

  When Button rushed away to find something to cover the lady’s alleged “altogether,” Jack opened his mouth to protest that assumption, but Button had already disappeared into the back of the shop. He stayed gone, which left Jack with nothing to do but contemplate the headless mannequin and wonder if the gowns were going to help his case with Laurel at all.

  He realized as he sat there that he wasn’t buying the gowns so that Laurel would forgive him. It would be a desirable side effect, but the fact was that he couldn’t bear for Laurel to don a single black garment ever again. Laurel deserved so much finer a life than that. Laurel deserved silks and satins in every color.

  Laurel deserved cloth of gold.

  So here he was, buying gifts like any other suitor, discussing the lady’s eye color as if he had any right to. It was nice, though, behaving like an ordinary man in the midst of an ordinary courtship.

  “Ordinary” wasn’t a word that often referred to his life.

  That’s because you do mad things like lock a lady in the attic and hide her existence from your friends, and let’s not forget that bit about your hands and where they most certainly shouldn’t be roaming!

  Ordinary seemed further away by the moment.

  “Ah.” Lementeur emerged from the curtained area behind a sort of raised dais with a large box across his arms. He was followed by a young man of startling beauty carrying an assortment of smaller boxes. “Cabot, put the rest of those things in his lordship’s carriage.”

  Lementeur placed his own box on the table and lifted the lid for Jack’s inspection. “This should fit the lady quite well.”

  Jack gazed down at the folded gown and shrugged. It looked like a pile of pale blue silk to him. “It’s a bit plain,” he said.

  Lementeur shrugged one shoulder elegantly. “But of course. It is just the thing for a stylish summer’s day.”

  Jack could only nod. As his carriage began to fill up with items he didn’t quite remember ordering but that Lementeur assured him were absolutely necessary, Jack began to worry about Laurel’s response to the gift.

  It wasn’t a bribe. It was simply a gift. Because he . . .

  And that’s where his mind halted every time. Laurel herself was like a dangerous pit into which he might fall if he wasn’t careful. He was feeling again, and this time he was feeling things he’d never felt before.

  God only knew into what dangerous waters that might lead him.

  Button came to stand before Jack, dusting his hands as if quite proud of himself. “Well, my lord,” Button said, beaming, “your carriage is packed. I shall have the other new day gowns done up by tomorrow.”

  Jack blinked. “This sort of thing . . . doesn’t it take time?”

  Button smiled angelically. “Isn’t it wondrous what happens when cost is no object?”

  Jack was being robbed, openly, gleefully, and with great amusement. He nodded, resigned. At least the bloke’s coffee was bloody good.

  Button spread his hands wide. “And what use is gold without someone to spend it on?” He shook a playful finger at Jack. “You should marry this lady with the sky blue eyes, my lord. Then you would be free to spoil her forever.”

  As Jack took his leave, using as few words as possible, of course, that idea would not leave his mind.

  Spoil her forever.

  He might rather enjoy that, actually.

  As the Marquis of Strickland left, Button, who was now a richer man, shook his head with a sigh. “The mess people make of love.”

  Cabot, always nearby, nodded. “Indeed.”

  Button smiled up at his beautiful assistant. “Fortunately for all the lovers of London, I am as talented at mending as I am at making.”

  Fourteen

  Laurel stretched luxuriantly, murmuring in satisfaction as she woke fully. She was marvelously comfortable, warm as toast and snuggled into a fine mattress—

  Her eyes popped open as her hands gripped the sheets. Yes, sheets. Sheets on a mattress. The mattress was on the floor, but . . . She rolled over and hung her head off the mattress. There was a small carpet on the floor. Several of them, actually, arranged and overlapped until hardly an inch of the sanded wooden planks remained visible.

  The carpets gleamed with the rich jewel tones of costly weave, the colors bright in the morning sunlight that streamed in through the window—

  Her head snapped up. The formerly grimy window was clean. Well, it was cleaner, at any rate. Each pane had been carefully wiped on the inside, and the outside glass in reach of the opening was industriously smeared about.

  He’d done it in the darkness, leaning out the window over the cobbles, likely unable to see what the hell he was doing. He’d done it all in the dark, toting carpets and the mattress and the coal bucket that now stood before the glowing hearth.

  In total silence.

  He’d lifted her into the bed without her knowing. Her eyes widened and she took a peek beneath the covers. Her chemise was still on, though the hem was rucked up to the tops of her thighs. The key still hung around her neck, dropped on the ribbon down between her breasts. If he’d peeked, he certainly would have found the key.

  Yet he’d not disturbed her in the slightest.

  Granted, she was a rather sound sleeper, but she wasn’t unconscious.

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered, impressed. Then she scowled and flopped back onto the mattress, pulling the covers over her face.

  She would not find it endearing. Fine, her jailer tried to keep a nice cell. Well, bully for him!

  Then she smelled bacon. Whimpering with resignation, she peeked over the edge of her covers, tracing the smell to the small table that held a covered tray. Sniffing deeply, she also detected her very favorite smell in the world.

  Buttered toast.

  Her stomach growled ferociously. She’d eaten very little the day before, for once Melody had given her the key, she’d begun to stow her bread and cheese and apples into her valise in preparation for their escape.

  Her belly had not been in favor of that notion at all, and now it paid her back with a cramp of hunger. She swallowed hard. Such ravenous hunger was unfamiliar to her. For so long she’d scarcely cared to pick at her food. It all tasted of sawdust to her. Now, everything smelled astonishingly good. Just as the bright threads of the carpets in the sunlight glowed in her sight. It was as though her senses had awakened the day she’d learned her daughter lived.

  Despite the circumstances, she could not deny that the world was brighter, her heart beat faster, the gray grief had been banished. She felt alive—but that was because of Melody, not him. It had nothing to do with the . . . er, stimulating marquis.r />
  Nothing at all.

  Breakfast, on the other hand, was of vital concern. Grinning, Laurel scrambled out of bed and trotted across the room in her chemise. Lifting the lid, she inhaled in ecstasy. Yes, bacon and buttered toast. A boiled egg in a silver eggcup. However, there was no utensil with which to tap the shell from the top of the egg.

  Men.

  Still, there was a kettle steaming next to the coals and an elegant china teapot ready with fragrant tea leaves waiting inside. Small containers of sugar and milk accompanied it.

  Laurel folded her arms and exhaled in frustration.

  No teacup in sight.

  “Oh, Jack,” she sighed. “Really.”

  She was going to have to pour the tea directly down her throat!

  It wasn’t the least bit adorable, this masculine inability to prepare a proper tray. Not even a smidgen.

  Lifting a slice of toast to her mouth, she took a bite, then froze.

  Across the room, on the other side of her new mattress, there hung a dress on the hook.

  She choked down the bite of toast, blinking in astonishment. It was blue silk, a sweet, happy blue, like a summer sky.

  Her favorite color.

  Her feet crossed the room before she realized she was in motion. Her hand reached for the beautiful silk—

  She jerked it back just before she could dirty the shimmering stuff with her buttery fingers. Dashing back to the tray, she glared down at the distinct lack of napkin.

  Men!

  Then she spotted a pottery pitcher sitting in a washbowl on the hearth, near enough to the coals to warm the water a bit. Perfect. There was no soap, but she scrubbed at her hands in a frenzy, then dried them hurriedly on the rear of her chemise. Scuttling eagerly back across the room, she raised her hands and lifted the dress reverently from the hook. Holding it out before her, she marveled at the elegant simplicity of it.

  She’d never been one for bows or ruffles. That was Amaryllis’s territory. Laurel admired the Grecian purist styles of Lementeur. . . .

  L on the parcels belonging to the lady downstairs. No, that woman’s luxuries had nothing to do with Laurel, hidden in the attic. This gown was a very nice gown, but it would be impossible for Jack to simply wave a hand and summon an artist of Lementeur’s exalted abilities to whip up a gown . . . overnight?

  She held the gown up to her shoulders and looked down. It looked like a perfect fit, even to the length. She laughed in delight, whirling in a circle. Her foot hit a stack of boxes that had remained previously out of sight next to the bed. They tumbled to the carpet, spilling out shimmering ribbons and delicate muslin and slippers and gloves and—

  On the lid of each and every box there was printed a single symbol.

  L.

  Laurel’s mouth went dry. She froze, standing there surrounded by the spilled treasure that amounted to a single complete outfit by the famous and entirely unreachable Lementeur.

  And she’d almost touched it with her buttery fingers.

  Carefully, as if she might ruin it simply by breathing on it, Laurel laid the lovely gown onto the bed and stepped back, her hands behind her back.

  Knotting her fingers together, she gazed at the luxurious, exquisite, and entirely unacceptable gift.

  She couldn’t accept it. Ever. To do so would be to give in, to surrender, to lose.

  “Damn it.”

  It was enough to make any woman cry, to turn away such a beautiful thing. She’d never owned anything like it, for she’d gone straight from girlish muslins to black mourning. This was a woman’s dress, not a girl’s. This was a celebration of femininity and bosom and buttocks and shapely ankles and elegant arms.

  In this dress she would be a match for Amaryllis.

  Rocking meditatively back and forth, Laurel pursed her lips and pondered the fact that if she didn’t wear the dress, then the next time Jack came to the room he would find her in nothing but her brief chemise.

  In no manner was that a good idea!

  So she really had no choice. After all, he’d stolen her other gowns. It was this or near nudity!

  In addition, when she made her escape with Melody she would be able to sell this gown and all its accompanying bits for a sizable sum.

  A slow smile crossed her face. In fact, this wasn’t a gift at all! This was simply a small partial payment on Jack’s infinite debt! A hundred such gowns wouldn’t give her back what she’d been robbed of.

  He owed her this dress.

  Grinning like an idiot, Laurel lifted the gown from the bed and continued her giddy spin, her beautiful new gown shimmering in the sunlight like the rarest jewel.

  Of course, there was no mirror to see what she looked like when she put it on.

  Men!

  At breakfast, Melody was full of her adventures in the garden. Someone, most likely Bailiwick, had told her that seeing a toad would bring good luck. Someone else, most likely Evan, had told her that touching a toad would give her warts. Therefore, in Melody’s mind, warts had become a symbol of luck.

  “Do you have any warts, Papa?”

  Jack paused in the act of lifting a forkful of rather excellent eggs—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an appetite for breakfast!—to his mouth to ponder the question. “I don’t suppose that I do.”

  Melody shook her head sadly. “That’s too bad.”

  Jack felt it only polite to inquire in return, “How is your own wart situation this fine morning, Cap’n Mellie?”

  Melody brightened. “I touched a toad, so I’m going to get one!” She held her index finger high. “Can you see it yet?”

  Jack gazed at her finger intently for a long moment. Then he regretfully shook his head. “No developments as of yet, I fear.”

  Melody scowled. “I hope it comes soon. I don’t want to poke the toad again. It felt nasty.”

  “One might imagine the toad feels similarly about the encounter.”

  Melody slid down off her chair and made her way to Jack’s side by the expedient of walking under the table. She scarcely even needed to duck. Jack leaned back and politely lifted the tablecloth high for her exit. Madeleine entered at that moment.

  “Melody! Pray, go around the table.”

  Melody clambered into Jack’s lap without a single sign of remorse. “Papa needed a cuddle, Maddie.” She curled her short arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. “He hasn’t a single wart.”

  Madeleine blinked at Jack. “Congratulations.” She hesitated at her usual place, then moved closer to Jack and Melody’s end of the table. Wilberforce materialized with his usual impeccable timing to seat Madeleine in her new chair. In mere seconds, a steaming plate of breakfast was centered precisely before her and her milk and tea poured to exactly her preferred consistency.

  Madeleine smiled at Wilberforce. “Exquisite, as usual.”

  Wilberforce bowed. “I shall inform Cook. He will be delighted.”

  As Wilberforce moved smoothly on to refresh Jack’s coffee and switch Melody’s breakfast to the new side of the table, Jack uncomfortably realized that he had never once complimented Brown’s most excellent cook.

  Jack cleared his throat. Everyone froze, their gazes locked on him. Feeling decidedly odd at that point, he gave Wilberforce a stiff nod. “Please add my compliments to Lady Madeleine’s.”

  Wilberforce blinked, which practically qualified as a startled step backward for him. “It will be my pleasure, my lord.”

  When Wilberforce left the room, Jack flexed his shoulders in embarrassment.

  Maddie sent him a small smile of chagrin. “I apologize for the stunned face, Jack. It’s only that you so rarely speak to anyone but Melody.”

  Melody nodded emphatically. “She’s right, Papa. You mostly only talk to me.” She laid her head back on his shoulder. “And Gordy Ann.”

  “Gordy Ann is an excellent listener.”

  Lady Madeleine hid a smile behind her napkin.

  Melody snuggled more deeply into his hol
d. “That’s what Uncle Colin says, too.”

  Laurel had been a good listener, once. If Jack spoke, really spoke, to her, would she care to hear anything he had to say? It seemed an insurmountable task, cracking himself open like an egg before her furious glare. He’d done so many unforgivable things. If it might make any sense to ask penance of himself, he could try to fight free of the silence and the gray.

  He willed himself to be different, to come out of himself, to reach for her, to touch her hair, bury his face in her neck, run his hands over her body, so much more bountiful now after motherhood, so rich and hot and wet to his touch—

  “Uh, Jack?”

  Jack yanked himself out of his heart-thumping fantasy to see the breakfast room empty but for Colin, who stood by the table munching a piece of toast and frowning at him quizzically.

  Jack swallowed, feeling heat in his face. “Good morning. Where did Melody go?”

  Colin worked his breakfast into the side of his face to answer. “I saw her going upstairs a quarter of an hour past.” He snorted. “Where did you go?”

  Oh, I was upstairs as well. Inside the attic. Inside Laurel.

  “Lost in thought,” he replied gruffly.

  Colin chewed and swallowed. Then he grinned. “You were lost all right. I was just about to fetch you a map.”

  Jack stood, tossing his napkin to the table. His plate sat before him, his breakfast now ice-cold.

  He didn’t need a map. He needed Laurel. No, wait. It was Melody who was the important one. It was Melody who brought him out of the bleak place into the light.

  Perhaps it was all three of them that he needed. Melody, Laurel . . . and himself.

  What he needed was his family.

  Fifteen

  In the attic, Laurel sat genteelly at the table, clad in her lovely new gown, feeling like a goddess from the skin out after a breakfast, a quick washbowl bath, and donning the most luxurious underthings on earth.

  With her beautiful daughter cuddled on her lap, showing off her new kitten, life could not be better at this moment. Laurel let the balm of Melody’s childish chatter soothe every missed moment, every lost hour, every empty day of the past, and wash it away in the brightness of their future.