Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Alexander alighted from the carriage and then held out a hand to her.
“I know,” he said simply. He offered his arm and Harriet took it, trying to ignore the thrill she felt at the small touch.
The smell of the river and rotting fish did a good deal to put romantic thoughts out of her head.
She had her reservations about this surprise, but she followed him, his large stride proving a bit difficult to keep up with.
Harriet glanced around again, waiting to see something …
else. A regal ship they were to embark on.
A hidden gem of a building. A bridge … to somewhere else.
She opened her mouth to ask what they were doing, and without even glancing back, Alexander cut her off.
“Just be patient.”
He was enjoying himself rather a bit too much.
“Is this payback for kidnapping you?” she asked.
“You’ve turned quite prim all of a sudden. Wouldn’t have thought you a snob,” Alexander teased.
Under her breath Harriet mumbled, “I just hate fish.” She thought she heard him let out a snort of laughter, but she couldn’t be sure.
He was keeping a quick pace as they cut across the market and toward the river.
When they got to the dirty, brown banks of the Thames, he cut to the right and led Harriet onto a swaying, creaky dock toward a small ship.
Identical, in Harriet’s eyes, to dozens of others.
Do men have special eyes that let them differentiate ships and horses better? she wondered.
And then he led her right up to a delicately balanced wooden board, spanning the water between ship and safety. Harriet stopped short, jerking Alexander back.
“Is something wrong?”
“Are we meant to … walk on that?”
Alexander looked perplexed at the question. “You can skip or run if you’d like. Waltz if you prefer.”
Harriet would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t so suddenly seized with fear. She looked down into the murky water below. A rather perilous drop.
“Is it safe?” she asked, swallowing as if that could make the lump of fear in her throat disappear.
“Not to worry, they have only a few deaths on this plank a year,” he answered, tapping the board with his foot. Harriet wasn’t keen on feeling like even more of a ninny than she already did, so she braced herself for a plunge into the Thames and followed him, teeth clenched in fear.
“I didn’t realize your distaste for kippers went this far,” Alexander joked after they arrived safely on the deck of the boat.
“I can’t swim,” Harriet gritted out. Alexander looked over the side of the boat.
“You can probably stand at this point. The real concern is the eels.” Harriet almost shrieked. There were few things she felt delicate about; large dirty bodies of water apparently made the list. She’d had no reason to encounter one before, thank God.
“I don’t know if …” Harriet began. “I’m so sorry … I don’t know if I’m going to like this surprise.”
Alexander ran his hands up and down her arms, which felt oddly comforting. “We aren’t going anywhere. This is it.” Harriet looked around. The view wasn’t better than it had been on shore. And the smell was, somehow, worse, though in London the stench was pretty much constant.
From behind them came a loud shout: “Stirling! Good to see ya!” A jolly, ruddy-looking man with a weathered face and a full beard approached and reached out his hand to Alexander, the gesture so out of place with the city they’d just left that Harriet could only gawk.
Alexander, however, took the breach of etiquette in stride and shook the man’s hand.
“Harriet, this is Captain Williams. Captain Williams, may I present my wife, Lady Alexander?”
He nodded in a bow, clearly aware of some level of propriety, just unconcerned with it.
“Lovely to meet you,” he replied, smiling openly. Harriet liked him immediately.
“And you, although I’m not quite certain of the purpose of my visit.” Harriet glanced between the two men, hoping someone would explain to her what was happening.
“To talk to me. And the men,” Captain Williams said simply, wiping his hand on a rag hanging from his pocket. Harriet noted wryly that he’d done it after shaking Alexander’s hand, too, as if just being near toffs was dirty.
“Talk to you? … I’m sorry, but I don’t know what I would speak on … I don’t …”
“Nonsense, love, you’d find a way to fill the silence no matter what,” Alexander teased.
Had Harriet been less confused about what was meant to happen, she might have gotten stuck on the endearment.
Alexander and Captain Williams were smiling at her confusion, and Harriet felt a bit frustrated with being left out of the fun.
This surprise was turning out to be not a very nice one so far.
At her no-doubt dour expression, Alexander sobered and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I thought—well, this might be silly of me—but I thought sailors might be more useful to you than any book I have in the library. They know all the worst words.”
Emotion rendered Harriet immobile. This was …
“God’s teeth, I’ve done it! I’ve rendered her speechless,” Alexander exclaimed to Captain Williams.
“I …” she started, but the sentence went nowhere.
“I know Captain Williams from some shipping business I have with him, and I thought he might be useful to you for the dictionary. Sailors have almost their own language.” At Harriet’s continued silence, which he must have read as doubt instead of disbelief, Alexander continued, “If that’s not the sort of thing that would help, then no harm. I’ll take you right back to—”
Rising on her toes, Harriet cut him off with a simple kiss on his cheek.
Oh, she wanted to do more. She wanted to loop her arms around him and squeeze him with all the delight she felt, but that wasn’t the sort of thing they did.
The touches they shared were either accidental or instructional, and only occasionally encouraging.
But never … that. She separated from him and schooled herself back into a more ladylike mien.
“When Stirling here offered to pay me to tell his rib the worst words I knew, I thought he was putting me on.”
Still shocked at the treasure trove before her, Harriet barely had time to organize her thoughts enough to mutter, “I don’t have … I have no paper and pen.”
Alexander reached into his jacket and produced a pencil and a notebook for her. The gift was small and simple, probably of no significance to him. Harriet couldn’t think of a more meaningful gesture in her entire life.
“Come then, let me introduce you to the men, we’ll tell you every word we know. Which I’ll warn ya, ain’t many. And they’re all filthy,” Captain Williams said, turning and crossing the deck and not waiting for Harriet and Alexander.
Which was just as well, as Harriet was simply staring up at him in wonder.
“Alexander … I … thank you,” she said, her hands brushing across the leather cover of the notebook.
He seemed almost embarrassed by her gratitude. He simply nodded toward the captain, instructing Harriet to follow the man.
She had the strongest urge to kiss him again. Only this time, not on his cheek. A real kiss.
A proper kiss. A kiss that might be able to say what words couldn’t.
Words.
Right. Kissing could wait; this meeting would do wonders for the dictionary.