Chapter 7 #2
A smile curved one side of his mouth, and her breath caught in her lungs.
The effect of a smile from that man was no minor thing.
“Oi!” cried one of the women on the sofa.
Resignation to his fate replaced the humor in his eyes. Clearly, he knew that oi!
“Me teacup won’t be refreshing itself,” said a second woman. “And I have some butter and jam that need spreading, too.”
That got a hearty round of laughter.
Tilly snorted and entered the room, but not to join the women for tea. Rather, she made her way to the dollhouse where several young girls were busy as bees arranging the tiny pieces of furniture inside the little rooms. “What do we have here?”
As she settled into the game of house with the girls, Tilly kept half an eye on Lord Rhys. Between the women and the children, he was being run ragged from one task to the next—serving tea…hanging decorations…extracting a toy giraffe whose long neck had become wedged inside the ark…
And she thought she might’ve been right about him.
She wasn’t sure he was good in the narrow way folk associated with good men.
He didn’t seem pious or particularly upright.
But he had good inside him—good intentions…a good heart.
The point was this Lord Rhys Osborne had no bad in him.
Which to her way of thinking counted for a lot.
How many “good” men had she known that were all bad on the inside?
“Oh, Lord Rhys?”
“Yeah?” he asked over his shoulder. Presently, he was on the top step of a stool in front of the hearth where he was hanging a gold star.
“This tea service won’t march itself back to the kitchen and clean itself up.”
From her place on the floor, Tilly watched his shoulders lift and fall. Then he said, “All right.”
He placed the gold star on the mantle, unhung, as he set to the task assigned him, sparing a harassed glance for Tilly in the process.
Again, she giggled and immediately felt naughty for taking such delight in his travails—then giggled again.
He straightened with the tea tray. “Where is the kitchen?”
Tilly scrambled to her feet. “I’ll show you.”
They weren’t three steps down the corridor when he groused, “I can’t see how this disaster of a day will count as a noble deed.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tilly, all breezy in stark contrast to his plain frustration. “I rather think it does.”
Black eyebrows made for the ceiling. “You do?”
“It’s the intention behind a deed that makes it noble, innit?”
His brow furrowed, her words working on his frustration and wounded pride.
Again, she giggled, and the look of betrayal he shot her only induced another giggle. “Oh, Lord Rhys, but you were outnumbered, and those women were determined to have their way with you and cause some mischief.”
He snorted, and with the release returned that lightness she’d come to associate with this man. Half a smile curved his mouth, and he shook his head.
“A lord at the beck and call of a bevy of erstwhile strumpets?” she couldn’t resist saying as they crossed the kitchen to the scullery, where the washing up happened.
“I’d say you made their day. So, a noble deed, aye.
Now,” she continued, shrugging off her pelisse and draping it over the back of a chair, “have you ever washed a dish in your life?”
“I, erm, haven’t.”
A possibility struck her. “Have you ever even been in a kitchen?”
“Of course,” he said, defensive, then added, “a few times.”
As they stood, nearly shoulder to shoulder, her washing the dirty dishes in the soapy sink and him dipping them in the rinse sink, then placing the clean dishes on a towel to dry on the counter, she marveled. Housework with a lord… Couldn’t this old world offer up some surprises?
Once he’d rinsed the last teacup and set it on the towel, he turned to face her. A question was about to be asked, and she braced for it.
“Why did you cheat Sir Felix at the masquerade?”
She should’ve figured he would ask at some point. “We had a history,” she said tightly.
Lord Rhys’s head cocked. The question within his eyes remained, unsatisfied. “Do you get to know many lords like Sir Felix in your occupation as a lady’s maid?”
Had a man ever asked a question with as much skepticism?
Tilly had a choice.
Lie—or tell the truth.
It was that simple—and that complex.
She supposed a third option lay open to her, too.
An option that had served her well in that complex past of hers.
Run, said the little animal being that lived inside her.
But her feet remained in place, for there was another being inside her, one recently born, in fact, that wanted to answer the question for a single reason—it was Lord Rhys asking it.
“I met Sir Felix in my previous occupation.”
His brow wrinkled ever so subtly, and he looked as if he very much regretted having asked—as if she’d confirmed something he’d been wondering. “Miss Birdwell,” he began, “please don’t feel obligated to answer my questions if I’m being too forward—”
“I was fourteen.” She’d interrupted him, because if she didn’t, she was either going to lie or run and she didn’t want to do either of those things. “Fourteen when life circumstances turned about and I became a strumpet.”
“A strumpet at…fourteen?” But he wasn’t truly asking. “Life circumstances?”
She allowed there was much to parse in that one sentence, so she reckoned she would help him out.
“The lives of poor folk involve a lot of struggle and illness and death. An altogether different set of problems than your lot are accustomed to. So, by fourteen, me parents had both gone to meet their Maker and I found meself alone in the world without two pennies to rub together and two life options in front of me—Saint Mary Magdalen Workhouse or Pizzy’s Pleasure Palace. ”
“Pizzy’s Pleasure Palace?”
“Heard of it, have you?” She’d asked with a little meanness in her heart, truth told. “Perhaps from those wastrel days of yours?”
“It rings a bell.” He didn’t look inclined to say more.
And she didn’t feel inclined to make him. “For various reasons, and mostly because I was young and uninformed, I chose Pizzy’s.” She spread hands helpless to the past wide. “And that was me a strumpet.”
“At fourteen?” he repeated.
“I developed certain attributes deeply appreciated by men at an early age.” Namely, her bounteous bosom.
Lord Rhys somehow managed to look both slightly red and slightly green and altogether like he might need to sit down.
But now that she’d started in on the past, she was determined to keep going.
“After a couple of years”—a couple of years she had no intention of discussing—“Sir Felix came along.” She shrugged.
“He was handsome and a lord and he was everything my sixteen-year-old self ever dreamed of. A knight in shining armor who would rescue me. He made me those promises, and I believed them. But those promises were fool’s gold, weren’t they?
You’ve been around, Lord Rhys, you can guess what came next. ”
His jaw tensed and released. “He abandoned you.”
“Discarded after he’d wrung all the fun he wanted out of me and left me to rot as a poxy, old harlot in my dotage.”
“Then how did you—”
“Isabel.” He didn’t need to finish his question for her to answer it. “She was my knight in shining armor—and that was my lesson learned.”
She’d said that last a little offhand, and from the darkening of Lord Rhys’s brow she could see he didn’t like her flippancy. “What lesson was that?”
“That one’s dreams are precious, and they are one’s own. You can’t depend on another person to realize them.”
He’d gone quiet as he listened and took in her words—her confession.
“And now, Miss Birdwell?” he asked. “Do you have new dreams that have taken the place of the old ones?”
Yes, she almost said, but held her tongue still.
A man like this lord couldn’t understand the dreams of someone like her. Her dreams were pragmatic, not the lofty or high-minded ones born aristocrats could aim for. Her dreams flew closer to the ground.
What would this man—lord—understand of her dream to open a shop?
He’d never washed a single dish in his life until ten minutes ago.
She couldn’t tell this man her dreams.
“Oh, Lord Rhys!” sing-songed a female East End voice from the other side of the house.
Relief pulsed through Tilly. “I believe your services are wanted.”
“Oh, lord,” he groaned, making her laugh, breaking the moment.
“Take heart, Lord Rhys,” she said. “That’s your first noble deed done.”
His brow trenched deep into his forehead. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“I have a day to get on with, and I’ve witnessed enough.” She began walking away. “Send me another note when it’s time for your second noble deed,” she tossed over her shoulder.
Then she was saying her farewells to Lucy and making her way out of Hope House and into a hackney cab, all accomplished with a light step, but a heavy thought in her mind.
The truth was she had the rest of the afternoon free.
But she’d had to leave.
Because if she’d stayed, it wouldn’t have been to witness further noble deeds from Lord Rhys.
She would’ve been staying for him.
Which was an altogether different thing.
It was the sort of thing that could lead her down a path.
And she knew better than to follow paths involving handsome lords.
Even lords with good inside them.
Maybe especially those lords.