Chapter 17 #2
Very, very tired, Sebastian stood at the foot of the bed and crossed his arms, ignoring the pain.
“Explain the clock, Tom.”
“What’s it matter what I say? You won’t believe me; no one’s gonna believe me. I’m good as hanged already.”
“On the contrary, Tom, you appear to be comfortably situated in a Queen Anne bed of considerable antiquity and value. But if you don’t tell me the truth, then you will find yourself before the Watch. And I am not in a patient mood.”
Tom scratched a grubby fingernail at the white sheet—still grubby, despite all the baths.
“I like clocks. I wanted to look at it.”
Sebastian looked at him. Slowly, he repeated, “You like clocks.”
The boy’s skinny jaw jutted. “Knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I might do a better job if you gave me more truth.”
“It is the truth!” He jerked upright, indignant, then winced at the pain.
How he’d managed to climb out of a window with a broken arm, Sebastian couldn’t fathom.
And it’d been three floors up. He’d learnt that much from the interview with his uncle.
Shortly before he barred him from setting foot in the house again.
“I like clocks. And that was an odd one.”
“The Breguet Sympathique. A very rare and valuable one.”
“I wanted to open it up and look inside it, so I took it to my room, to the window where it was light…”
“Look inside it?”
“I told you!” The boy glared at him as though he was stupid.
“I like clocks! I like all them little cogs and bits inside them. I had a watch…filched it off some swell up Covent Garden, but we got unlucky, someone saw and snitched us, and I fell off a roof in the chase—landed in some back yard with high walls, lucky, cause they ran right past me. But the watch was all smashed to pieces under me. All them little goldy yellow shiny cogs and springs and whatnot spread all over the floor. Glittered like fairy dust, they did. Well…I picked ’em up, best I could, and I kept them…
I didn’t tell Jem about it. No good to him, is it?
Can’t sell that, but he would of took it off me anyway, just to spite me, he would.
So I kept it secret, in one of me pockets, and anytime it was quiet, I’d try to fit it all back together.
Never quite could. But I stole a big old mantel clock off a junk stall a few weeks later, and that one was much easier to figure out, all the bits being there, you see. ”
Sebastian looked at him. “You like clocks.”
“I told you!”
He dragged a hand over his face, eyes squeezed shut for a moment. He drew in a breath, and hopefully a large dose of calm serenity with it.
“Very well, Tom. I believe you. You get to live—and to stay under my roof a while longer. But I warn you that if you ever do steal from me, my uncle’s wrath will look as gentle as a mother’s kiss. And likewise if you ever take any of my clocks apart. Especially the Breguet. Do you understand?”
The boy pouted, but a shiver went through him. Relief.
“Yes, sir. I get it.”
“Very good. Now get some rest.”
Tom gave the window a horrified look. “But it’s broad daylight!”
“I don’t care. Go to sleep.”
He left the room before the boy could protest further, hardly caring whether he slept or not, so long as he didn’t have to look at him. The boy would drive him mad. Already had done.
“This is the urchin you rescued, is it? This the boy half of town thinks must be your bastard?”
That’s what people thought, was it? Let them. It was a rumour that did him more credit than harm—he was apparently a man who recognised his obligations. In reality, he’d taken care to sire none, but he’d hardly abandon them if he did. That was a shoddy, ill-bred business.
As was being late to meet one’s friends.
Running a hand through his hair, he went to his room to hurriedly change. His shirt was clammy with sweat—anger, confrontation, fear. That last was old and came from deep inside his pores whenever he faced his uncle down. It stank of shame and rusted blood.
He reset himself with his valet’s help. New shirt, new neckcloth, hair tidied once more. Eyes met him in the looking glass, something savage thrashing deep inside them, an animal trapped in a well. He breathed it away. In, out. Chin up. Calm.
Down in the hall, he took up hat and gloves and left to spend the day like a rational person.
Business talk was all right, and a moment in Hatchard’s. Friends in Bond Street were fine, and something to eat, a little something to drink, they did him good. Dinner, sometime later, he got through. But the theatre…no. Alas, he apologised, he’d promised himself elsewhere.
He went home.
It was quiet in the library, the small fire a whisper in the grate. Times like this, most men probably appreciated a dog on the rug, a benign, unjudgemental presence.
He got Mrs Ardingly instead.
Joshua came to tell him, expression pensive as he stepped around the door. And Sebastian knew, even before the man announced her name.
He wasn’t surprised—not even that she came late, and alone. He wasn’t surprised at all that she came.
He’d been waiting, he realised, as soon as she stepped into the library, Joshua closing the door behind her with an expressionless face that said a great deal.
He’d known she would come. As though this was the necessary bookend to the morning they’d had. All the things left unsaid. All the things they’d left undone.
Of course, he was a gentleman, so he stood as she came closer to the fire, though she wouldn’t quite look at him, not dressed as he was, in his shirt, bootless, coatless, neckcloth cast aside.
But if one chose to call alone on gentlemen at late hours… He would not apologise.
He did bow, though, and she came to a stop just before the fire, a yard or so from where he stood by his chair.
There was only the light of the fire and two candles on the mantel.
She was all shadow and form and the rustle of skirts.
She’d brought in the smell of the night with her, and something sweet, but very faint. Her soap or scent.
“I came…I came to see if Tom was all right.”
“A few more cuts and bruises to add to his collection, but otherwise unharmed.”
“That’s good.”
“Indeed. So I suppose you can go now.”
She jerked, startled by his rudeness. But even in the dim light she could see the smile that edged his mouth, just as surely as he could see her indignant blush.
“Or shall we talk about why else you came?” He moved closer as he spoke, just close enough to take hold of her hand and bring them back to that interrupted moment in the Willow Room.
“You came for the boy, yes. And you came to ask about this hellish bruise on my arm. And you came to ask about my uncle, and to work out whether I need rescuing. I don’t.
” He tugged gently on her hand, drawing her closer. “But I’m still glad you came.”
A pause. She moved a little nearer at his insistence, coming slowly, unevenly, like spooling snarling wool. “How is your arm?”
“I’ll be stoic and say it doesn’t bother me at all.”
“That seems to be your style.”
He smiled, drawing her closer, closer. There was so much doubt in the way she moved. But still she came.
“And your uncle? What happened with him?”
“I barred him from the house.”
“And your life?”
He took a step back, taking her with him. And then he hooked her waist and pulled her down to his lap as he sat back in his chair.
Her gasp was as much surprise as protest. “I don’t know why you think I came here tonight, but—”
“We’re just going to sit.” He gathered her to him. She was sideways on his lap, his arm wrapped around her back. He pulled her closer to his chest. “Like this. And if you’d relax, we’d both be more comfortable.”
A breath shuddered out of her. A letting go—not of propriety, not really, but of vows made in a Sussex church and white sails against moonlight, sailing a little further out of sight.
No doubt it hurt, that anchor dragging through her heart.
Her head came down to his shoulder. Undoubtedly she had her eyes closed, screwed up tight. He could feel it in the tension of her spine.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. The fire held its whispered conversation with eternity and destruction.
London went on all around them. Curtains rose and fell at theatres and wine bottles emptied and rooms filled with laughter and unwise decisions.
But here…here a man held a woman, and both of them needed it.
The texture of her cheek was firm and soft as a peach against his shoulder, the warmth coming clear through the thin linen of his shirt. He dropped his mouth to her hair, no kiss, not yet, but just to drink in the scent of her.
God…she was deliciously warm and soft, getting softer as she relaxed, though she was no voluptuous armful.
Her body was made of sleek, strong lines and muscle.
A body made for doing things—tramping over the Sussex marshes, no doubt, basket on her elbow.
Alms to the poor. Little gifts to shabby fishermen.
Her legs were made for chasing small boys around the garden, arms to carry them when they grew too tired to walk.
He shifted his own arm further around her shoulders. She fitted well there, and even better now some of the stiffness had gone. But she wasn’t quite melted yet.
“What did you say to your uncle?” Her voice threaded into the firelight and the darkness.
“Probably not quite half what you would have done. But the result’s the same. The boy is safe from him.”
“And you?”
His other hand, the one not around her shoulders, had been on the arm of the chair—leaving her free to escape his lap if she wished, though she’d made no attempt. Now he touched her elbow, drawing a trail down her forearm to her wrist. Back up and back down again, three times before he spoke.
“You are wanting me to tell you that I hate my uncle. That what he did to me was wrong. Don’t ask me for that.”
She sat up, away from his chest, turning to see his eyes.
“But it was wrong.”
“Don’t…” The word came out brittle, harder than he’d intended. He went back to stroking her arm, watching his fingers on her skin and suiting his tone to their soft pressure. “Don’t make me a victim.”
She went very still, understanding. He kept up his study of his hand on her arm until she moved it, catching his fingers in hers and squeezing them. Then she lifted his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
It was his turn to go still. They both sat motionless, a hot, heavy suspense of heartbeats. The imprint of her lips tingled, a thousand hawks sighting movement in the grass.
“You are not,” she said, even as she got up, scrambling off his lap and smoothing her skirts, very busily, very thoroughly, afraid of what might happen next. “You’re not at fault for it.”
He stood slowly, perfectly able to predict her next words.
“I should go… My aunt will be wondering… Goodnight, Lord Cotereigh.”