Chapter 11
Eleven
Sebastian was at breakfast when his uncle called.
The major might be a creature of late nights and debauchery, but he kept his military habit of early rising. His was a vital, animal energy, and despite everything, Sebastian couldn’t help but occasionally admire it.
“Damn you and your French chef,” said the major, walking into the breakfast room unannounced and taking one of each kind of pastry from the table.
He stacked them in his left palm in lieu of a plate, then dragged a chair back and sat down, taking a large bite of the first. “Unpatriotic and irresistible. How you don’t beat Prinny’s girth, I’ll never know. ”
Sebastian sipped his coffee, the newspaper spread on the table by his plate. “Moderation, uncle. Moderation.”
The major finished his first pastry in one more bite. “Still beating that stick, eh? And still got it up your arse.”
Crumbs fell onto the major’s blue coat, a dusting of icing sugar on one of the brass buttons. Sebastian hadn’t slept. Was in no mood for his uncle.
But then…he seldom was. It never paid to show it. He refilled his coffee.
The boy had slept fitfully, waking in fear and pain, the one feeding the other and making each worse. It had been…distressing.
He could have ordered a servant to take the watch.
Indeed, he’d told himself he would, once those first six hours had passed and the next dose of laudanum been given.
But by then dawn wasn’t too far away, and the earliest servants were already busy around the house at their own business.
And besides…she was trusting him to care for the boy.
So the night’s watch was his, and all the damned frustration and fear of it.
You couldn’t demand someone live, for God’s sake.
You couldn’t reason with them when they were terrified and sweating with pain.
It’d been the doctor’s talk of internal damage that’d most worried him, horrible images of secret inside places bleeding and swelling…
“Some internal infection, some inflamed organ…”
He’d imagined telling Mrs Ardingly the boy was dead. “Something inside him,” he’d have to say, or the doctor would, “some internal damage…” He’d sat there all night, watching, useless, and imagined that.
Of course, he’d thought of other things too.
He’d thought of how small a boy’s frame was, how fragile the bones, how easily hurt by a bigger man.
At seven or eight or nine, he’d been better fed but no bigger than this boy.
He hadn’t really imagined—couldn’t imagine, never having been much around children—how little they were.
The boy had sweated and groaned on the sofa, bony arms and legs and ribs and elbows, and Sebastian glanced at his own tensed fist and wondered… wondered how anyone could.
And then Sebastian had turned his face to the dark window and thought instead of boats.
He’d seen boats in the clouds and boats by moonlight, and it had seemed, at the chill grey hour of five in the morning, that bonnets and dresses and boots couldn’t quite compare to sails against stars and moonlight on water…
“Last night was an interesting one,” his uncle said, dispatching half of his next pastry with another bite. “Everywhere I went, I heard a different story of you. You and your Pretty Pariah.”
Sebastian turned a page of his newspaper. “Oh?”
“Lady Frances apparently brought her to her picnic. Quite the coincidence, her taking a sudden interest.”
“Fortunate, indeed.”
“Pah. She’s in on your wager, is she? I suppose you’re taking that as encouragement, that she’s exerting herself on your behalf.”
“I’m the optimistic sort.”
The man gave a short laugh. “As if you’d ever even spit on chance and hope.
You’re as calculating as a snake. And taking your Pariah to the picnic was a smart move, all right.
Not so many stiff manners, not so many eyes, company mixing freely, and yet it has that air of exclusivity—not everyone got an invite. ”
Like you?
His uncle would never be haut ton, for all that his sister had married herself an earl.
All the brute strength and bravado that had served him in the military held no weight in London.
It only made people think harder of that foundry.
That’s what the man could never understand.
And the more he paced and snarled, a wolf denied a bone, the more shoulders would turn against him.
“You’ve been dressing her up too, I hear. Hoping the Pretty outshines the Pariah, are you? Handley was cursing your name.”
“How gratifying.”
“But then I heard you never turned up at the Lloyd’s ball. Not like you to snub one of society’s darlings.”
“You know how life is. Full of surprises.”
His uncle scoffed, brushing pastry crumbs from his thick fingers all over the tablecloth. He fixed Sebastian with eyes like a waiting gin trap. “But what I heard last was far stranger still.”
Sebastian scanned the business pages. Terrible, the price of wheat.
“I hear rumours of you carrying grubby children through the streets, the Pretty Pariah at your side. The Pretty Pariah coming here. With you. Alone.”
“Ah, but you forget the child.”
“Oh, chaperone, was it?”
Sebastian only smiled slightly and sipped his coffee. “We discovered a badly injured boy on our return from the picnic. Mrs Ardingly, as you can well believe, was determined to help. I offered some assistance.”
“What boy? Some ragged street thief, from what I heard.”
“Who can say?”
“And you brought it here?”
“Here was as close as anywhere.”
His uncle stared at him for a moment, then broke into a sharp laugh. “By God, but this is hilarious. Caught in your own traces! I suppose you did promise to find her ten men for her cause. Volunteered yourself first, eh? Are you thinking nine more will follow, like chicks after a mother hen?”
“No, but if it annoys Handley to think so, by all means, spread the word.”
“Devil take Handley, what I want to know is what Lady Frances makes of it all.” He helped himself to yet another pastry, chewing ruminatively.
There was something rather bovine in the power of his thick jaw.
“How well is your plan going to go if she gets wind of you cosying up to this pretty widow at night? Or is making her jealous your new goal?”
“Cosying? With a gutter rat bleeding on the rug? That’s rather more your aesthetic than mine.”
His uncle’s eyes narrowed. Fifteen years ago, he would’ve cracked Sebastian across the jaw for that. But he couldn’t touch him now.
Oh, how he hated him for it.
The man stretched a mocking smile over his anger instead.
A gruesome mask. He sat back, his heavy weight making the chair creak.
It was all muscle, no matter how many French pastries he ate.
His body was never anything but muscle. “So you really brought the boy here? And all at the widow’s pretty pleasing.
” He shook his head, laughing. “Cote, my boy, are you sure you’re still the piper in charge of this particular tune? ”
Mrs Ardingly arrived not long after his uncle had left, apologising for being late, as though this wasn’t an hour many people were still abed.
Her aunt was with her, big and bustling in brown velvet trimmed with creased lace and smelling strongly of both lavender and camphor.
The latter didn’t quite seem to have vanquished the moths.
Mrs Ardingly also wore an old dress, one he’d not yet seen, of brown and cream striped cotton. She looked like a faded shop’s awning. And he was certain all of her new morning dresses had been delivered. He pressed thumb and forefinger together as she spoke. This was not the time to mention it.
“And then Reverend Moore came to call,” she was saying, “which meant we were much delayed in calling at St. Agnes’s—”
“St. Agnes’s?”
“The workhouse. We had a great deal of involvement with it last year and know several of the staff well. The superintendent was able to give us a bottle. For the lice.” She delved inside her reticule as she continued to speak. “But how is the boy? That’s what we’re desperate to know.”
Lady Pemberthy nodded rapidly, both the ladies looking raptly at him.
“He’s well. Or so the doctor says. He called early, before breakfast. It seems…
it seems there is no internal damage after all.
” And what a fool he’d felt on learning it this morning, after all the night’s burning worry.
“There’s the broken arm, of course, and the bruising.
But it seems likely he will make a full recovery. ”
Lady Pemberthy let out a great gust of breath, pressing a hand to her voluminous chest and murmuring praises to the Lord. Mrs Ardingly only looked at him, her smile a soft brightness in her eyes. He looked away, gesturing to the door. That the boy lived was hardly due to him.
“I’ll take you there now.”
“We’ll need a bathtub,” Mrs Ardingly said at his left shoulder as he led the way, her aunt at his right. “And lots of warm water. Towels or old sheets.”
“I’ve got some clothes for the poor mite,” said Lady Pemberthy, hefting a bag at her hip. “We had plenty in the donations box to choose from. Two sets of trousers and three shirts and a nice padded nankeen jacket.”
Mrs Ardingly was holding the bottle of lice treatment in her hands, clasped somewhat reverently.
Or perhaps the reverence was all in her eyes, in the glow of do-gooding that suffused her face, making her cheeks pink.
He glanced away as he pulled keys from his pocket and found the right one for the door.
An image of three wise men bearing gifts came ironically to mind, but that was the very opposite of reverent.
“You locked him in?” Mrs Ardlingly frowned at the key he turned in the lock.
“If you remember, he kept threatening to escape.”