Discovery of Desire (11 page)

Emma hurried to pick up her things. “But shouldn't we stay and—”

“Thomas will return with the same, thin smile he always smiles and ask to speak with me in private—perhaps ask to walk with me—and he'll apologize and beg my forgiveness and it will be dreadful and demeaning.”

Emma stood, her parasol and hat clutched to her stomach. “What if Colin returns? What if you're wrong?”

She wanted to be wrong, wanted to do anything to protect Emma, but she wasn't wrong. She held Emma's eye until her little sister saw the conviction there.

And like two twin blue flames, the temper flared in Emma's eyes. “It's not fair,” Emma spat, shoving her gloves into her reticule. “First, Colin Rivers and now
this
. Do men have no honor?”

Thomas and Mr. Mayhew walked back into the Apogee restaurant, their faces wary, and the slow, sick roll of her stomach nearly drove her back to her chair.

Thomas surveyed the scene, his face guarded. “Mina? I wonder if we might speak in private? Perhaps go for a walk?”

A walk. Oh God—

“No!” Emma threw down her napkin. “No! She will
not
go for a walk!”

Oh dear.

Emma swept her skirt clear of the table and stomped to the door. There was nothing for Mina to do but follow. She hurried to collect her reticule and fold her napkin—

“
Mina
.” Emma called from the door, sounding weepy and exasperated now.

I'm coming
, she mouthed, smiling apologetically at the other diners. The restaurant was rather more full than she'd noticed. Not at all skilled in dramatic exits, she shuffled past the chairs and tables more carefully.

“Mina, wait.” Thomas looked at her blankly. “Where are you going?”

Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her but she faced him. “You're leaving Bombay.”

Thomas swallowed, and that was confirmation enough. His hands hung at his side. “Mina—”

“When?” she asked.

“
Mina!
” Emma hissed from the door, which she held pointedly open.

“Five days,” Mr. Mayhew answered for Thomas, his gaze steady on her. “I need him with me in Calcutta, Minnie. If I'm late, if I miss the crew by a day, an hour, I'd have to follow and I don't know how far I'd get without Tom.”

Her heart ached—for him, for her. How had it come to this? And she searched Thomas's eyes one last time.
Say I should wait. Say we'll marry and we'll take care of Emma. Say you'll be gone a week or two and you'll be back.

But Thomas wasn't saying anything.

She turned for Emma. Her sister would cry in a moment, so she hurried. And when she reached her, her sister's grip was so tight…

Oh God…both of them jilted. No—
unclaimed
. Jetsam.

The thought was mad. Perhaps this whole scheme was mad.

She escaped the restaurant, dragging the salt-soaked air into her lungs. Row upon row of carriages blocked her way across the street to the pier. Clutching Emma's hand, she walked unseeing down the pavement.

“What will we do, Mina?”

Emma's voice quavered with worry, her temper apparently extinguished by fear. Mina ground to a stop and smoothed her countenance, but the most horrible hopelessness dulled her sister's blue eyes. Mina had seen that look in another sister's eyes.

It was the same look in Mary's when her sister had confessed she'd sold her body to feed her son.

“We'll be fine,” she said, her voice blessedly steady despite her heart banging against her ribs. “Everything is fine.”

“Miss Mina?”

She and Emma turned their heads at Seth's loud voice. “
Bother it
,” she breathed.

Mr. Mayhew was gaining upon them quickly with his ground-eating stride. “Minnie, I'm needing to talk to you.”

And Thomas hurried right behind him. “Mina, please, I have to—”

She flung up her hands to silence them. “
Hush
.” Like children, they stopped and gaped. But at least they were rendered speechless. She checked the faces of curious passersby as they watched. Some shred of reason telling her she couldn't put a step wrong now. Not if she was to find a new husband. Not if they were going to survive.

Hiking her reticule up her wrist and with a straightening tug to her blouse, she walked to the men. “There is no need for this display.”

“Won't you let me explain?” Thomas asked.

“We did not suit. That is explanation enough,” she said. “I'll write so we may settle the matter of your bond.”

“I don't care about—”

“
I
care.” She closed her eyes and composed herself. “I care, Thomas.” A fifty-pound bond was no pittance. The hotel was paid through the month. Once they paid Thomas back, what would they have left?

Thomas paled under the white glare of his spectacles, but Mr. Mayhew's focus was unwavering. “I need a minute with you, Minnie,” he said. “Tom can take Miss Emma back to the hotel.”

Confused, she looked at Mr. Mayhew. “I don't see what there is—”

He ducked his head near hers and now she was the one startled to silence. “Just a minute, Minnie,” he whispered. “Please?”

Mr. Mayhew was as grim as she'd ever seen him. And he was too thin. And he'd not eaten the
pav bhaji
she'd ordered for him.

“Fine,” she said. “One minute, and you will see there is no cause for your concern. Will that do?”

She expected a simple yes, but his eyes narrowed in consideration.

“I probably shouldn't have said a minute.” He crossed his arms and pursed his lips in thought. “I'm thinking I'd like your attention for fifteen—no, twenty-five minutes.” His eyes narrowed even more. “That's if you aren't saying much back, which you aren't likely to do—
twenty
minutes should do.”

She bit back a frustrated sigh. “That's—” But it wasn't ridiculous. It was nice. And courteous. And she'd had more than enough of dithering and indecision.

And she appreciated Mr. Mayhew for that small comfort. As looping as his thoughts were, he was not bent to vagueness. She rather detested vagueness. “Yes, twenty minutes is fine.”

She nodded to Emma, who stared as if they were both idiots. Thomas offered his arm but Emma ignored the gesture, turning up her nose and flouncing off in the direction of Benson's Hotel, leaving him to follow like a servant.

Emma and Thomas disappeared around the corner, and she could delay no longer. She faced Mr. Mayhew, and frowned at the baldly pitying look on his face. “I don't require pity. And I don't blame you for taking Thomas away, Mr. Mayhew.”

He tipped his head to the other side. “Why aren't you calling me Seth yet?”

Bother the man.
Even now, his eyes crinkled.

She marched toward the harbor rather than standing stupidly about on the pavement. And she feared she might start to cry if she didn't do something. His heavy boots crunched the gravel behind her, his long stride leisurely compared to her stupid escape to the dock's railing.

She stopped shy of the rail. Why did she come here? The glare off the sea stung her eyes. And England was at the end of all that water. She turned her back to the sea.

“I'm thinking you might blame me, Minnie, so I wanted you to know the truth.” He gripped the rail to lean close and look into her face.

“I don't blame you.”

He watched her carefully. “I didn't tell him. About the kiss I gave you.”

She almost laughed. As if jealousy would play any part in this. “I know you didn't,” she said. “I think I always knew Thomas wouldn't marry me. Before we met, I thought we would suit. I
hoped
we would. Every night on that interminable sail, I hoped.”

Mr. Mayhew frowned and nodded.

“We should have suited. Both our families were of modest means but respectable. And I have some education. Enough to suit a man employed by East India.”

“I know it. You'd be a perfect wife.”

“And he's from Edwinstowe. Did you know that? Our villages are only a few miles apart.” She shook her head. “So stupid of me—as if that mattered at all.”

“It matters. I'm from the Midlands and we rub on fine, don't we? There are plenty of gents likely from the Midlands.” Mr. Mayhew turned to a group of English lingering by the pavilion. “Excuse me, gents. You lot are English, aren't you?”

The men nodded dumbly.

“Any of you from the Midlands?” He waited. “No one?”

“Please, Mr. Mayhew, it is of no account,” she protested weakly.

“I'm trying to persuade this beauty there are gents here from her corner of the world she might marry.”

A hopeful hand shot up. “I'm from Swindon.”

Mr. Mayhew shot him a narrow-eyed stare. “And that's nowhere near the Midlands, is it?”

To her utter shock, a smile tugged at her lips. “Thank you, Mr. Mayhew, but this isn't necessary.”

“Swindon,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“It's fine.” She took a breath, jamming her hand into her pocket to hold her pebble. “I thought matters were arranged, that's all. I can make a new plan.”

He scanned her face, as if checking for the truth there. “Tom's not the man for you,” he blurted, and then frowned at the ground. “He's not, on account of his being in love with a woman he knew before you met. And I know it wasn't right to send for you and get your hopes fixed on marrying when this other woman's got him raked all fore and aft.” He frowned harder and ground his boot over a clod of earth. “But when a man meets a woman that fits him…a woman he can't stop thinking about, that's no common thing. A man can't forget a woman like that.”

A woman that fits him…

She'd sailed ninety-nine days and she didn't
fit
him. And she thought
she
was sentimental. In her pocket, she squeezed the pebble in a punishing fist and yanked her hand out to toss it. Useless, foolish thing—

Mr. Mayhew caught her hand before she could hurl the stone into the sea. “What do you have?”

She jumped, startled by his sudden grab. His hand engulfed hers, the callused fingers strangely gentle and drawing her hand toward him. She unclenched her fist and dropped the white, quartz pebble into his palm. “It's nothing,” she whispered. “It's from my garden in Chesterfield.” The last day…that last time…

“You got yourself a charm.”

She shook her head vehemently.

His gaze was heavy but she didn't dare look into his face. “It's pretty,” he said. “Like a diamond before it's all cut and polished.” He held it out for her, but she didn't take it.

“It's no charm. And it's nothing near a diamond.”

A moment of silence passed, and he slipped the pebble into his coat. “Minnie—”

“Mina.”

“You want to see what's in my pocket?”

She looked up at him and he pulled out a small notebook that looked almost comical in his large hand. He handed it to her. The red leather was worn at the corners and the book resisted closing, as if the pages had been read again and again.

And on each page, poetry scrawled with a careful hand.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
…
The fault is not in our stars, dear Brutus, but in ourselves
…

Mr. Mayhew's head was turned in the other direction, his hands restless on the rail.

She doth teach the torches to burn bright.
Was this his…charm?
She doth teach
…
Romeo and Juliet
. She breathed deep, and something a little like peace settled over her. “I like Shakespeare, too.”

His cheeks were flushed when he turned to smile down at her and take back his book. “I saw those plays but didn't understand half of them. I mean, I understood but not as much as I was meant to. Until I got to Mr. Elliot's and read them a few times. He was a neighbor who had himself a library. He didn't mind my borrowing his books and dictionary. And even then”—he shrugged, fidgeting with the book—“well, Shakespeare couldn't help but write like he knew how.”

“No, I suppose he couldn't. Do you have a favorite?”

He smiled and thumbed through the book. “This one: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries
.
'”

“That's nice. I've never heard that before.”

“
Julius Caesar
. Saw that one in Ripon with Georgie. It's my favorite.”

“Is he writing of fate or destiny?”

“I'm thinking it's the opposite, which is why I like it. Opportunity is what it's about. And boldness. We're on that flood Shakespeare wrote about, Minnie. We're going to find you a better husband—one richer and set to return to England.”

She shook her head. “I can't return, Mr. Mayhew.”

“I wish you'd call me Seth.”

“Emma is—” Her voice sounded without a bit of life so she breathed deep. Their fingers were entwined. When had Mr. Mayhew taken her hand? She pulled but he wouldn't release her.

“Your hand was looking heavy, Minnie, so I thought I'd hold it for you.”

She had to smile a little at that. He was incorrigible. But when she expected to see him wink at her, his ocean eyes held something determined in their depths. Almost as if he believed finding her a husband, and a husband bound for England no less, was his responsibility.

He really was the kindest man.

He held up his little book. “‘On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current as it serves, or lose our ventures.'” He winked. “Right, venture girl?”

“You would use Shakespeare against me?”