Elisabeth Fairchild (19 page)

“Been sitting on it for me, have you?” she asked.

Quinn chuckled and chirruped to the nag.

The House of Commons

Roger sat in the same pew John Bellingham had, remembering the day of Spenser Perceval’s murder, the moment he stood too close to ill-made history, helpless to stop disaster unfolding. In his mind’s eye, he played the image of Lord Arden, dead brother clasped in his arms, weeping while Bellingham sat head in hands, face forlorn, filled with the inevitability of his own doomed future on the gibbet.

Melancholy had haunted Roger’s father’s countenance in the years following his mother’s demise. Peace relaxed those troubled features, a red-nosed, sallow-cheeked peace, only on the day Father drank himself to death.

Two disasters Roger had been unable to stop, two of far too many.

He came today in the hopes he and Dulcie might stop future disasters. As a goal, the idea consumed him, drove him, gave life higher purpose. He dared hope, too, that his silence, extended absence, and neglect had not destroyed all hope of sharing that goal with the intriguing Miss Selwyn. He made habit of withdrawing from those who mattered to him. In entrusting him with her deepest secrets, in exposing to him all scars, Dulcie now mattered to him. That made her a danger--a weakness. He wanted her, needed her, and yet, in the same breath he feared growing too dependent.

From beneath his hat brim he watched an orange girl enter the Commons, basket of golden globes slung low on her hip. Dulcie! One word sprang to mind for this woman who took so naturally to her various costumes, who did not scorn his request out of pique. He had turned his back on her, and yet she chose not to turn hers on him.

One word to describe her. Rare.

Excitement and a heightened awareness chased Dulcie’s fears away. She walked without hesitation across the Commons, gaze sweeping the crowd, measuring men, seeking her quarry, Lord Sidmouth. Roger’s note instructed her to wait by the door to the member’s chamber, to catch Sidmouth’s eye, to say a certain phrase that would win her his complete attention.

Anger and fear must not best her wits. She would not waste either. Fear kept her wary, alert. Anger burned away the debilitating edge of fear. It kept her moving.

She did as instructed, catching Sidmouth’s eye. “Something juicy, milord? Fruit worthy of your attention. Fresh from Mr. Castle’s hothouse, sir.”

The name made him pause, or was it the words? They sounded improper--words worthy of none but a harlot. For a wild moment, Dulcie wondered just what it was she communicated to the man who stared back at her, eyes gleaming.

He palmed the note she passed him along with an orange, smoothly enough, looking her up and down with a nervous attentiveness. “Wait a bit, lass,” he instructed. “I will bring you something for your trouble.”

She nodded. “Mr. Castle said you might have something for me, sir.”

He left her to ordinary customers, to the challenges of leering old gents, who made free with their hands, pinching at her buttocks, reaching into the basket that they might brush hand against hip or breast. Dulcie backed away from the most lascivious of the lot, into the path of another orange girl, hazel eyes alight, cheeks colored with ire.

“Wha’ are you doing here, dearie?” she demanded. “This is my spot at this time o’day, and not enough trade for two!”

Heads swiveled to observe their confrontation. Sidmouth stopped uneasily in the doorway to the Member’s chamber, wide-eyed, rabbity, prepared to bolt.

Roger’s letter had indicated she must wait for Sidmouth’s reply--a secret correspondence ill-delivered with so many eyes upon her.

Dulcie might have quailed under ordinary circumstances. The anger of humiliation saved her. Old men, who pushed themselves on young women half their age enraged her. A foolish orange girl who would fight her for the privilege of such degradation angered her. Roger infuriated her. Was he any better than these old men, who would taste fruit, only to cast it aside half eaten? That she succumbed to Ramsay’s skilled seduction, and then expected him to be in love with her, angered her most of all.

So much anger. The old man and the orange girl found it unleashed upon them.

“Your spot, you say?” she snapped. “Well, dearie, you are welcome to it. Welcome to customers who would pinch fruits unavailable to them.” She shoved the current lecher into the orange girl. “I leave you in capable hands, sir.”

She stalked away, head high, cheek’s aflame, her temper not so far gone she forgot her purpose. She headed in Sidmouth’s direction, held her basket toward him, and brushed past, that he might easily drop his message among the fruit.

She did not look at him, did not look to see if he took advantage. His clumsy bump against the rim of the basket told her all she needed to know.

Sun hot on her shoulders, she allowed panic to surface. Her knees went wobbly as she headed outside, scattering a cluster of pigeons in a flurry of wings.

A bent old man tried to block her way with a wave of his begging cup. She had had her fill of men, all men. She brushed him aside.

“Pretty maiden!” he called. “Spare a copper.”

She ignored him, intent on getting the note to Roger now, by way of Quinn. Head down, she plunged into the crowded street, stopping in her tracks only when he called again.

“Do you not know me, Dulcie?”

She did not recognize the raspy, age roughened voice. His mention of her name turned her around.

A bent-backed old man with a bulbous nose and full white beard pressed gloved hand to his breast. “I am cut to the quick,” he said.

Roger! His appearance resurfaced her anger.

“I should be asking if you have not forgotten me,” she snapped. “You avoid me of late.”

With an angry flourish she turned the basket between them, keeping her distance. He bent forward upon his cane, blue eyes too bright, too clear for an old man. She did not see him take the note, did not know he had dipped into her basket at all until he slipped a tattered glove to peel the bright fruit in his hand, the pungent tang of it’s violated skin perfuming the air.

She took the steps at a trot, anxious to distance herself from secrets and schemes, from his all too clever hands.

“Are you angry with me?” He followed at her heels, the question voiced around a section of orange.

Across New Palace Yard, basket swaying at her hip, toward the stairs leading down to the river at Westminster Bridge she headed, stepping over puddles, skirting rivulets of water that kept this area eternally damp. With undisguised annoyance, she admitted, “Yes. I am angry.”

“In what way do I offend?” He stood at the top of the stairs, a mock old man with the cocky stance of the young, popping sections of orange into his mouth.

How could he eat fruit so close to the stench of the river? It rose to fill her nostrils like the effluence of an overfilled chamber pot, as unpleasant as her memories of the freedoms she had allowed him.

“You used me,” she snapped.

“Keep your voice down.” He tossed his orange peel past her into the river. It plopped into the current and sank, like a misshapen carp briefly surfacing.

“You throw me away as thoughtlessly as you throw away an orange skin.”

“Poppycock, my dear.” He kept his voice low, his manner uneasy, gaze darting, studying the area about the water stairs with the wariness of a cat.

She headed down the empty steps, no one to hear them argue, no one to see an old man scamper like a boy after an orange girl.

He caught up to her, closed the distance between them with breathtaking swiftness, sliding his arm about her waist. He would not allow her to shake him, did in fact take control of her movements for a moment, backing her against a pylon, pulling her toward the underside of the bridge, where rude pallets gave evidence of the homeless who sheltered there at night. His gaze skating nervously in every direction, breath fast against her cheek. His fear smelled of oranges.

“There is no one to hear us. I would know.”

His gaze ceased its nervous wandering, settled on her. “I do not throw you away,” he argued softly. “To the contrary.”

She twisted away from the sweet descent of his bewhiskered mouth, saying primly, “I do not care for lecherous old men.”

He drew back, lips pursed, darted another look over his shoulder. “You are certain no one is about? Our safety depends upon your answer.”

“Positive.”

His back to the river, he divested himself swiftly of the old man beard, mustache and eyebrows, tucking the hair into an inner pocket of his cloak. She made a move to slip away.

“Wait.” The urgency of that single word stopped her.

Chin high, she waited while he removed his painted leather nose and brushed sticking gum from mouth and cheeks.

“Did I get it all?” he asked.

She did not want to touch him, and yet she could not allow him to risk revealing his identity for her. She plucked sticking gum from his brow, and chin, from the divet above his lip.

In touching him her anger dissolved.

He grabbed at her hand, pressed her palm to his lips, his eyes too blue, his mouth too soft.

“I never throw away the heart of a perfect fruit.” He said, voice seductive, orange scented. “Of its flesh I would savor every drop. Have you no appetite for me after the last taste we had of one another?”

Her pulse raced. She could not seem to slow her breath. “That should never have happened.”

“Do you think to convince me you feel only regret for what has passed between us?” He pulled her closer. “Would you have me believe you do not yearn for kisses, right now, as much as I do?”

His breath rushed in her ears. Lips brushing hers, he backed away, as if to prove, by way of her lips pursuit, the point he made, in whispering, “Such behavior, if it became habit, might get in the way of our work.”

“So it might,” she agreed tersely. Breaking free from his hold, heart aching, she ran to the base of the steps.

She had flagged down a river taxi by the time he caught up. The barge nigh, she turned to face him. “I do not require your continued company.”

“Ah, but I require yours,” he said. “More than you may know.”

She jumped aboard the barge as it scraped briefly the riverbank and paid the bargeman to take her to the London Docks. The boat rocked as he leapt in behind her, flipped the man a coin, and followed her to the windblown prow that most of the passengers avoided, reading Sidmouth’s message as he went.

The wind tugged at his coat-tail and disordered his hair, briskly catching the paper he tore into a thousand bits carried into the choppy oblivion of the river. “Why do you follow me?” Her voice fluttered.

“I need you,” he said.

She cocked her head, hair wisping in the wind, dark strands he longed to tidy. Water pitched across the barge’s stunted bow, cooling them with a fine spray.

“To go with me to Manchester,” he said, his mind on the note.

A hint of panic flit across her features. “Manchester? Whatever for?”

“Trouble brewing,” he said simply.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Road to Manchester

They headed north, brother and sister this time, as she had asked. He had promised her father, who evidenced concern that she wanted to go so far, that he would keep her safe.

“I have no doubt he will do so. You will be a good girl and do just as he says, will you not?”

“I will,” Dulcie agreed, thinking of his hands on her, of her voice saying, yes. Not at all what her father had in mind. He could not so blithely let her go, would be ashamed of her if he knew the waywardness of her actions.

“What manner of brother and sister are we?” she asked Roger as Quinn plucked from the wardrobes three changes of clothing that were to serve as traveling attire. She could not look at the clothing, at the strange buttons and tapes, without thinking what it would be like for Roger Ramsay to undo them.

 “A most unusual brother and sister,” he teased, mischief in his eyes.

She blushed and lowered her gaze. She did not like to be disgraced in front of his man, Quinn. She did not like to think anyone might consider her no more than another of “Rogering” Ramsay’s conquests.

“Our business in Manchester?” she asked crisply.

“Weavers.” The light in his eyes dimmed. He presented her with a slender, calf-bound volume. “Study this.”

Study she did, as if her life depended upon it, and well it might. She buried her nose in the text whenever the coach stopped its rocking progress, for the baiting and watering of the horses, for the changing of teams, at the shabby inns and posting houses where they took nightly shelter.

She buried herself in the belief he really needed her assistance, that he valued her company, that she was not just a bit of dalliance to amuse him.

His behavior seemed in agreement with her mood. He helped her in and out of the coach, his hands on hers, on her waist, his shoulders bumping hers in the swaying vehicle. And yet, there was nothing flirtatious in glance, or word, or manner. Brotherly, he was, completely in keeping with the part he played. Her father would have been most pleased with him.

And she should have been. Was it not what she wanted? This show of respect?

Yes.

No.

It wrung her heart. Confused her completely. She felt the fool--for falling for him--for believing he might love her--for allowing him the freedoms that she had. How could he go on, as if nothing had happened? Not a word, not a sign to indicate he cared? That he wanted her? As she wanted him.

Night she ached for him, for the magic of his hands, lips and tongue. Every morning she looked for indication in his eyes, sign that he suffered in silence.

A week, at a grueling pace, it took them to rush their way north, a week in which they spoke to one another of little other than weaving, weavers and the recent mechanization of the craft. She waited for him to broach the topic of her seduction, to acknowledge what had taken on the quality of a dream. But, he was all business--with a life and death sort of focus. The color of him burned unwaveringly bright, his attitude one of self-assurance and forward drive.