None of them were Jonathan, and that was their chief flaw.
But the truth buffeted her at night as she lay in her quiet bed; she wanted him. More than she wanted to breathe. She lay rigid in the dark, eyes squeezed closed, imagining again his hands on her body, and she put her own hands on her body, an attempt to relive it, to soothe herself, to arouse herself, and burn away the need.
Nothing worked.
She’d done the right thing, of course. It wasn’t as if there was anything to be gained but pleasure from it. And there certainly was a good deal to lose.
She just needed some air that wasn’t being breathed by spoiled aristocrats and poets.
She wove out of the room, past the countess, her destination the windows flung wide at the end of the south parlor.
And then suddenly Lord Prescott stepped around the corner.
She gave a start, and clapped a hand over her heart. “Good heavens, Lord Prescott, you gave me a start.”
“Miss de Ballesteros, you refuse to speak to me. You won’t meet my eyes. And yet you accepted my gift, which has given me cause to hope. I haven’t seen you wear it. Might I assume that you are overwhelmed, or perhaps still mulling my offer? I must know . . .” He extended a hand awkwardly, and then drew it lightly down her arm. It was all she could do not to flinch it away. “I must know your mind. Or dare I hope . . . your heart.”
She’d known she’d be able to dodge Prescott for only so long. Panic knotted her stomach.
“I’m flattered indeed by your offer, Lord Prescott, and by your too generous gift,” she began gently. “Was there a condition attached to the pearls?”
“Only that when you wear them, you will be mine and mine alone.”
Oh. Only that.
“You are indeed insightful, and I must thank you for your patience. I am a bit overwhelmed, and I feel somewhat shy, you see, since the pearls arrived. My apologies if I have been less than gracious.”
“Believe me when I say that I would be all that was kind and generous, Miss de Ballesteros. The finest modistes at your disposal. Your own carriage. Servants to command.”
The offer had indeed been generous. It had in fact stolen her breath to think that a man had calculated her worth in pounds.
Her worth when she was naked and compliant, that was.
How did he know she wasn’t covered all over with fur, or boils, or iridescent scales beneath her clothing? He wanted her primarily because everybody else wanted her. She knew a bit about manufacturing demand.
But he was a man of enormous wealth, and he of course assumed she had a price. For didn’t everybody?
“I fear I would make a terrible mistress, Lord Prescott,” she said bluntly, desperately.
He smiled slightly at that. “I doubt it, with your Spanish blood. I’m told your mother had quite a gift. And I am an excellent teacher.”
She went still. And then a furious flush washed the back of her arms and up to her collarbone. Her eyes stung with humiliation.
And Prescott would likely interpret all that color as appealing bashfulness.
No one would ever imply that, for instance, Lady Grace Worthington’s mother had quite a “gift” for pleasuring men. Or assume that she naturally would have inherited said gift. What the devil did that mean, anyway? No, Lady Worthington was a coddled, precious jewel, a commodity, of a certainty, but one who would go, in all likelihood, to the highest bidder, who would then perpetuate the coddling. She would know safety and respect for the rest of her days.
All of the men here viewed everything and everyone through a lens of class and context. Not one of them could imagine Tommy as anything other than what she was—an object to be adored and wooed and competed over, but certainly not a lady.
If Jonathan were here . . . she pictured The Doctor dangling from Jonathan’s fist, and suspected something similar would be happening to Prescott right now, for the implication. For the offer.
Except that Jonathan hadn’t the right.
He had no right.
She was suddenly as furious with him as if he was the one who’d made insinuations about her skills, even though presumably he knew better than anyone. She was furious with him for the way he kissed her, for the way he’d made her want him, and for stripping her down to her true self, and for making her nights sleepless ones, and for reminding her of what she wasn’t and what she couldn’t have. And for making her days decidedly colorless by his absence. For making her limbs feel like lead today, because gravity was more punishing when he wasn’t about. Damn him.
She closed her eyes briefly against the image of him walking away from her.
She’d sent him away.
And she wondered if he had no use for her now that they were friends only.
But she also remembered the look in his eye when she had. That watchfulness, that held breath, that fixed guarded intensity in his eyes. He’d been waiting . . . for something. Cognac and satin.
None of this could be helped. One of them had needed to be sensible.
She couldn’t leave her eyes closed for long, for there Prescott stood, dark and gangly and maybe resembling a marionette, but wealthy enough so that his clothes were beautifully made and hung on him properly.
And then she heard herself speak the words, gently, as if in a dream.
“I’m afraid my price is higher, Lord Prescott.”
“Than pearls? Than a town house? Than the allowance I described? Name your price.”
She paused, and she felt oddly as though she were delivering her own sentence.
“I cannot be bought for anything less than your name.”
It took Prescott a moment to realize what she was saying. And then his expression shifted subtly, and his head tipped. He studied her, assessing, reassessing.
“I never realized that was your game, Tommy.”
It wasn’t an accusation. He’d said it thoughtfully. As if he was suddenly evaluating her in a new light.
“It’s not a game,” she said simply. “Now, if you’ll allow me to pass?”
He stepped aside, and she made for the windows.
There wasn’t enough air in the world today to clear her head or make her feel better.
BY EARLY EVENING it was drizzling, which suited her mood.
Tommy shoved her key into the lock of the Building of Dubious Occupations and turned it with an excess of feeling, pushed open the door, and let it slam shut behind her.
The entire building shivered as if Rutherford was in and stomping about, which he was not.
So intent on a cup of tea and a warm fire was she that she nearly missed the scrap of torn foolscap that cartwheeled away from her in the downdraft of the closed door.
She chased it, and bent to pluck it up and carried it with her into the rooms. She couldn’t light the lamp quickly enough, and yet her hands were trembling, so it was slow going. And then when light flared into the room, she immediately inspected the foolscap for a message.
There was nothing at all one side of it, apart from half of an advertisement for Klaus Liebman & Co.
The irony.
She flipped it over, and there it was, the tiny message scrawled in charcoal.
She lowered it again.
A flush of a different kind started up along her arms, and she closed her eyes, and indulged in a tiny hosanna.
And then she picked it up, and closed her eyes, and kissed it.
For this particular message had given her an excuse to compose a message of her own.
AMID THE STACKS of invitations for Jonathan was one simple folded and sealed sheet of foolscap. He seized it. He stared dumbly at his name scrawled across it. Then he broke open the seal and devoured the words. There were only a few.
Jonathan lowered the message, struck dumb.
For a moment he stopped breathing.
And then he slowly lifted his head from it, blinking, surprised.
Could it be . . . could it be that the sun was shining for the first time in weeks? What o
ther reason would there be for the fact that the dining room seemed saturated in dazzling color? And was that . . . did he hear . . . singing? Of course, it might be the residual strains of “Bah, Bah, Black Sheep” trapped in his brain, stirred to life again, like a fever.
Then again, it was entirely possible it was his heart singing. Poets had an unfortunate tendency to ascribe vocal chords to hearts. He was skeptical, but less of a skeptic than he might have been once.
And breathing . . . breathing was suddenly a fresh new pleasure. As if he was doing it for the very first time. The air was wine. He read the message again:
I’m contemplating something dangerous. I did promise to tell you. Care to be involved? Come today?
—Your friend, T
“What are you smiling at, Jonathan?”
His father sounded amused.
Jonathan gave a start.
He’d completely forgotten his father was sitting at the table with him. And not even the fact that he sat at the table breathing the same air could affect his mood. His father looked more colorful, too, somehow.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he said simply, at last.
His father swiveled toward the window, saw clouds outside and frowned faintly.
But when he swiveled back to Jonathan again, Jonathan’s chair was empty, and still rocking a little from the speed with which he’d abandoned it.
Chapter 19
THEY DIDN’T SPEAK WHEN she opened the door to his knock.
They didn’t speak on the stairs, or in the passageway.
And for an absurdly long, ever-so-awkward moment after she’d let him into her rooms, where a fire crackled and a pot of tea sat in the center of the little table, neither of them spoke a word.
At last he said softly. “Miss me, Tommy?”
A little silence.
“Didn’t we just see each other?” She took pains to sound bored.
He gave her a slow smile.
Then Jonathan mouthed, “Liar.”
She smiled and turned away abruptly, and she seemed, of all things, to be fidgeting. Two little spots of color sat high on her cheeks.
“You’re looking well,” she said politely. Which was funny, since she wasn’t looking at him at all.
“Of course I am. Why don’t you tell me what dangerous thing you’re contemplating now?”
And so while Rutherford thumped overhead, Jonathan listened to Tommy explain what they were about to do.
It was sheer lunacy, of course. He’d expected nothing less of her.
Mad, dangerous, foolish. Quixotic.
After a long silence to absorb, through which he surreptitiously examined her for new bullet wounds or any other marks and was relieved beyond all proportion not to find any, the first question out of his mouth was, “Should I wear an eyepatch?”
Clearly he’d already decided to do it.
“An eyepatch?”
“Or a wig?”
“Do you mean . . . like a barrister?”
He sighed exasperatedly. “For God’s sake. I resemble my father. At least somewhat. He’s hardly an anonymous man. A mill overlooker with a particle of intelligence might be able to piece together who I am.”
“Firstly, overlookers aren’t known for their particles of intelligence, particularly this one. And no one on the face of the earth would believe him even if he did piece that together. For what is the nature of your reputation, Mr. Redmond? In what context are you usually found? You see, everything has its uses, including a reputation you’ve found somewhat burdensome of late. Is it that you want to wear a disguise?” she asked indulgently. “Will you sulk if you aren’t allowed to wear one?”
He regarded her in cold silence for a moment.
“I don’t have to do this at all,” he proffered casually. It was very much a threat.
She arranged her features in an unconvincing expression of contrition. “I think it will all happen so quickly—it needs to happen so quickly— a disguise will not be necessary. In fact, I think it will be most effective if you look exactly the way you do now.”
“Which is how . . . ? Desire incarnate?”
She just smiled and slowly shook her head, but her cheeks did look a trifle rosier. “Like a Gentleman, with a capital ‘G.’”
“And what will you be do doing while I’m inspecting the mill at the behest of the owner?”
The mill, ironically, his father wanted more than anything else in the world, and wanted more by the day, simply because he couldn’t have it. The mill the Duke of Greyfolk wanted.
“Distracting the overlooker.”
“And how will you distract the overlooker?”
“Oh, please,” she laughed merrily.
She was distracting. He’d allow her that.
IT CAME INTO view about two hours into the ride in a hired carriage driven by someone Tommy trusted to take their money and keep his mouth shut: a behemoth of orderly red brick glowing in the sun, five stories spread out over a pretty acreage of trees and meadow, narrow rectangular windows punched in at even intervals. A benign enough looking building. Chimneys endlessly fed wisps of black smoke into the blue sky. The river shimmered alongside. A building that must have been the dormitory for the children sat a good hundred feet or more behind it. Always locked, Tommy told him. Always locked and guarded. And surrounded by a wall nearly twice the height of Jonathan.
The sort of wall no child could ever hope to scale.
It represented everything his father lived for: progress, potential, and profit.
Immense profit. And Jonathan felt his own blood quicken with the potential of it, and a tingling begin in his fingertips.
He saw it as clearly as they did.
But surely profits fueled by the sweat and blood of children were tainted.
Surely they didn’t have to be fueled by the blood of children?
And did his father know that? Did the duke? Did they care?
The boy was named Charlemagne Wilkerson. Charlie for short. He was eight or nine years old, perhaps younger—no one knew for certain, Tommy told him. A scrappy little fellow who’d been beaten by the overlooker more than once. According to her contact at the Bethnal Green workhouse, Charlie been sold to the mill owner less than a year ago, and worked as a scavenger or a piecer, which meant he scrambled under the gigantic, incessantly moving frames and wheels with a brush sweep, beneath the wheels of the machines, lest little bits of cotton clog them and bring commerce to an untimely halt, or he ran between frames to tie the snapped bits of cotton.
Scavengers, Tommy explained, often must throw their bodies flat on the floor to avoid being scalped or run over by the wheels. That’s why the littlest ones were used.
Many a child had been scalped that way.
“So be careful how you get his attention. You could kill him.”
He was humbled by the things she knew.
“I might say the same of you,” Jonathan said. Except the “him” he was referring to was the overlooker.
She knew it, and gave a smile that bordered on the sultry. Her job was to keep the overlooker, a nasty piece of work named Mr. Tabthwaite, occupied, if not enthralled, while Jonathan found Charlie somewhere on the factory floor and slipped out of the building, child in tow.
What could possibly go awry?
Fortunately, he had a plan. Or rather, two plans.
The first was a mad plan, but could nevertheless work well, indeed. He had little Sally to thank for the inspiration.
The second plan involved his pistol and a lot of running and dodging.
And he wasn’t certain whether he was doing this mad thing for Tommy, or doing this for himself, or whether there was any distinction anymore.
All he knew was that he wanted her to admire him the way he admired her. He wanted to be brave for her.
“GOOD DAY, MR. Tabthwaite. I’m Lord Ludlow of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, and this is my assistant, Miss Edwina Burns. You’ll be expecting us, I believe.”
H
e concluded this with a faint, politely imperious smile.
The man stared up at him. One of his eyes was strikingly smaller than the other, and both had that peculiar, flat lightlessness of the truly cruel. His eyebrows were half an inch wide, and curled in an unruly fashion upward, like the antenna on an insect. Tabthwaite’s hair was oddly glorious, a mane of carefully tended brown.
Jonathan was reminded of the children who were scalped beneath the machinery.
He saw Tommy’s eyes looking in the same direction.
“I dinna ken a Lord Ludlow.” Tabthwaite said it with an abruptness that bordered on insolence, but his eyes kept wandering toward Tommy, as surely as if they were magnetized. Tommy rewarded him with a smile that was as demure as her neckline was dangerous. The man smiled faintly in response. A reflex. It was what men did when they saw Tommy.
He jerked his attention forcefully back to Jonathan when Jonathan spoke again.
“Mr. Romulus Bean, Esquire, your current employer and payer of your wages, will have informed you of our visit today. He is the very model of efficiency, so I’m certain he has done his duty. Perhaps it has slipped your mind?” It had the faintest whiff of censure, delivered in cutting aristocratic tones. “Miss Burns, if you would please make a note of this.”
The name “Romulus Bean” straightened the man’s spine. He cleared his throat.
“What be the nature of your visit, Lord Ludlow? Are you wishin’ to buy the mill, then?”
“Miss Burns,” Jonathan said crisply. “If you would show Mr. Tabthwaite our papers.”
Tommy produced a sheaf of frightfully crisp and official looking documents, decorated with gleaming seals, enormous important looking signatures scrawled at the bottoms, and thrust them into the hands of Tabthwaite, who accepted them, puzzled.
“By order of his majesty, we are here on a matter of public safety. Our visit regards a redheaded boy named Charlemagne Wilkerson, who is employed here. Our research has revealed that he is the last surviving member of a Scottish village, which perished in a strain of plague known as Chrysanthia Pestis, or the Violet Plague. You may know it more commonly as the collywobbles. Young Mr. Wilkerson is most certainly a carrier of the disease.”
Julie Anne Long - [Pennyroyal Green 08] Page 18
