Notorious Pleasures

Page 18

“Friends.” He sat back in his seat, ignoring her warning. “Is that what I really am to you? A friend?”
She blinked. She hadn’t expected the question. “Yes, why not?”
He shrugged, eyeing her moodily. “Why not indeed. Friend is such a very… benign… word. Do you kiss all your friends the way you kissed me last night?”
Her eyes had narrowed—she had been waiting for the shot. But still she couldn’t quite control a small shudder. His mouth had been hot. “I’ve told you I do not wish to discuss last night. It’s in the past.”
“And forgotten?”
“Yes.”
“Funny.” He stroked his chin. “I find it rather hard to forget it myself. Your lips were so very soft, so very sweet when they parted beneath mine.”
Her body heated at his words. She couldn’t help it, and she felt that same spark of desire. He could light it within her so damned easily.
“Stop it,” she said low. “What do you think you’re doing?”
It was his turn to look away. “I don’t honestly know.”
“I’m marrying Thomas,” she said. “In only five weeks now. If we are to have any sort of brother-sister relationship, you must forget it.”
His mouth twisted as if her words were obscene. “Can you?”
She lifted her chin, saying nothing.
“I thought not,” he murmured. “That’s ducky. Just ducky.”
He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a book. He tossed it wordlessly onto her lap and went back to staring moodily out the window.
Hero looked down. It was a volume of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. She traced the embossing on the leather cover, her eyes suddenly welling with tears.
*      *      *
“OH, MRS. HOLLINGBROOK, you have a letter, ma’am!” Nell Jones came into the home’s kitchen, waving a bit of paper in the air.
Silence looked up from the sad little lump of biscuit dough she was attempting to roll out. Really, it hadn’t been one of her better culinary efforts.
Nell caught sight of the dough and wrinkled her nose. “Here, let me finish that while you have a seat and read your letter.”
Silence gladly relinquished the rolling pin. She brushed off her hands and washed them in a basin before drawing up a chair to the kitchen table. Mary Darling had been playing with a pot and a big spoon on the floor, but when she saw Silence sit down, she crawled over and demanded to be held.
Silence picked her up and kissed the top of her head. In the last seven months, Mary Darling’s hair had grown in thick and inky black, a mass of corkscrew curls.
She set the baby on her lap and showed her the letter. “Now who do you suppose it’s from?” she asked as she carefully lifted the seal.
“Is it Captain Hollingbrook?” Nell asked. Overhead came a thump and then what sounded like a stampede of oxen across the floor. The children were supposed to be doing their afternoon reading under the supervision of the maids, but somehow the daily event often turned into a melee.
Silence sighed and turned her gaze to the letter. “Yes, it’s from William.”
“You’ll be glad of that, I’m sure, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes,” Silence murmured absently.
She deftly kept the paper from Mary Darling’s interested fingers as she read. William wrote about the Finch and its cargo, a storm they’d weathered, and a fight among the ensigns.
“Have a bit of patty-cake,” Nell said to Mary Darling, and handed her some of the biscuit dough.
A seabird the men had shot and the sighting of a French ship… Silence skimmed down the page, following the neat handwriting of her husband, coming finally to his signature—William H. Hollingbrook. She stared blankly at the page, before she began over again, reading more slowly, searching. But she knew already—there were no jokes they shared between just the two of them, no endearments, no expressions of wanting to come home or missing her. In fact, the letter could’ve been written to anyone.
“Is he well?” Nell asked.
“Well enough.” Silence glanced up and noticed that Mary Darling was carefully breaking off bits of the biscuit dough and placing them in her mouth to chew with a thoughtful expression. “No, sweetheart. ’Tisn’t good not cooked.”
Nell smiled at the baby. “She thinks it is.”
“Won’t it make her sick?” Silence asked worriedly.
Nell shrugged. “It’s mostly flour and water.”
“Still…”
Silence began to unwrap the baby’s fingers from the sticky dough. Mary Darling naturally didn’t think this a good idea and voiced her protests loudly.
Someone knocked on the front door.
“Shall I see who it is?” Nell asked over the baby’s cries.
“I’ll get it,” Silence said. She scooped up the baby and swung her around. “Who do you suppose it is? The king or queen? Or perhaps just the baker’s boy?”
Mary Darling giggled, distracted from the loss of her dough. Silence set the baby on her hip and went to the door. She pulled it open and looked out. On the step was a handkerchief knotted neatly. Silence glanced at it and then quickly searched the street. A woman was washing her step across the way, two men walked side by side trundling wheelbarrows, and several lads argued over a small terrier dog. No one seemed to be paying her any mind.
Silence bent and picked up the handkerchief. The knot was loose and came easily undone, even using only one hand. Inside the handkerchief was a handful of raspberries, perfectly ripe, perfectly unblemished.
“Gah!” Mary Darling cried, and grabbed two, stuffing them into her mouth.
A small scrap of paper was revealed now, and Silence plucked it out from under the berries. One word was written on it.
Darling.
Silence glanced back at the street as Mary Darling snagged three more berries. It was the oddest thing—no one looked in her direction, yet she felt as if watching eyes were upon her. She shivered and reached for the door, beginning to shut it.
A shout came from up the street, and four men trotted around the corner. Between them they held a ragged elderly woman who struggled in their grasp.
“Let me go, yer buggers!” she shrieked. “I ’aven’t done it, I tells ye.”
“Dear God,” Nell said quietly from behind Silence.
Silence looked at the maidservant and back to the street. People were peering out of windows and doors, coming to see what the commotion was about.
“Stand back!” one of the men cried. He waved a thick cudgel over his head.
A stream of filthy wastewater poured from one of the houses, narrowly missing the group. The four men trotted faster.
“Informers,” Nell spat. “Poor woman. They’ll have her up before the magistrates for selling gin and collect a nice reward in return.”
“What will happen to her?” Silence abhorred what drinking gin did to the people in St. Giles, but at the same time she knew that most who sold it were simply trying to make enough money to feed and house themselves.
“Prison. Maybe worse. Depends if she can pay for witnesses or not.” Nell shook her head. “Come inside, ma’am.”
With a last glance at the retreating informers, Silence closed the door and barred it.
“What have you there?” Nell asked.
“Raspberries,” Silence said, showing her the kerchief.
“In October? That’s dear.” Nell turned and started back toward the kitchen.
Dear indeed. Silence picked up a berry and popped it into Mary Darling’s mouth. A month before, she’d found a baby’s girdle on the step, and the month before that there’d been a packet of sugarplums. In fact, every month since Silence had found Mary on her doorstep, there had been a small anonymous gift left for the little girl.
And each had a note with but a single word written upon it: Darling.
The same note that had been left with Mary herself. The reason Silence had given the baby the name Mary Darling.
“Have you an admirer?” she whispered in the toddler’s ear.
But Mary Darling merely smiled with red-stained lips.
“DO YOU THINK a man can change?” Hero asked that night at dinner.
She poked at the cold beef upon her plate. It was just her, Cousin Bathilda, and Phoebe, and Cousin Bathilda had pointed out that it was hardly thrifty to have Cook put on a grand meal for a quiet supper at home.
Still. Hero did dislike cold beef.
“No,” Cousin Bathilda said promptly. Rarely did she ever not have a decided opinion.
“What kind of change do you mean?” Phoebe asked.
The candlelight sparkled on her spectacles as she tilted her head in interest. She wore a bright yellow gown tonight, and it made her seem to shine in the little family dining room. The table was a nice, intimate size, and the fireplace, ornamented with white and blue tile, was just big enough to make the room warm and cozy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hero said vaguely, though of course she did know. “Say, for instance, a gentleman has a decided fondness for gambling at cards. Do you think he could ever be persuaded to quit?”
“No,” Cousin Bathilda reiterated. She slipped her right hand beneath the table while staring fixedly straight ahead. There was a small scuffle under the table.
Neither Hero nor Phoebe made any sign that they had noticed the transaction.
“I think it might depend upon the gentleman,” Phoebe said thoughtfully. “And perhaps on the nature of the persuasion.” She picked up a tiny piece of her beef and slipped her hand beneath the table.
“Nonsense,” Cousin Bathilda said. “Mark my words: No lady has ever been able to change a gentleman, by persuasion or otherwise.”
“Pass the beetroot,” Phoebe murmured to Hero. “How do you know, Cousin Bathilda?”
“It’s common feminine wisdom,” that lady said. “Take Lady Pepperman.”
“Who?” Hero asked. She helped herself to the beetroot, even though that was cold as well, before passing it to her sister.
“Before your time,” Cousin Bathilda said. “Now listen. Lord Pepperman was a well-known gambler and a very unlucky one at that. Once gambled away his clothes, if you can credit it, and had to walk home in nothing but his smallclothes and wig.”
Phoebe snorted and hastily covered her mouth with her napkin.
But Cousin Bathilda was in full sail and didn’t notice. “Lady Pepperman was at her wit’s end, so she decided she would teach her husband not to gamble.”
“Indeed?” Hero asked with interest. She chose a bit of beef and held it under the table. A small, warm, soft nose nuzzled her hand and then the beef was gone. “How did she manage that?”
Panders, the butler, and both footmen were too well trained to show anything but boredom on their faces, but all three men were leaning closer to Cousin Bathilda.
“She told him he could gamble as much as he wanted, but only in his smallclothes!” Cousin Bathilda said.
Everyone in the room—including the servants—gaped at Cousin Bathilda.
Then Phoebe closed her mouth and asked diffidently, “Did that work?”
“Of course not!” Cousin Bathilda said. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Lord Pepperman continued to gamble, except now he was clad only in his smallclothes. Went on for a year or more before he lost nearly everything and tried to blow his brains out.”
Hero choked. “Tried?”
“Succeeded only in clipping off the top of his ear,” Cousin Bathilda pronounced. “Man was a horrible shot. Can’t think why Lady Pepperman married him in the first place.”
“Hmm,” Hero murmured as she digested this cautionary tale. Truly she couldn’t think how she could apply it to Lord Reading.