Scandal (6 page)

Chapter Six

“I say, my good man,” Rein said, turning to Molly’s customer. He reached into her barrow and pulled out… something. “Would you like to purchase a…” Rein glanced at the tool. “A thing to go with those oranges?”

“Mr. Hemplewilt,” he heard Anna hiss.

“No thanks, gov, I just want me some oranges.” The man looked over at Molly and leered.

Rein frowned, lowering whatever it was he held. But when the man turned to Anna after paying for the oranges and leered, too, Rein straightened. “Well, then, since your transaction appears to be complete, I’ll thank you to stop looking at Miss Washburn like that,” said the king of flirtatious smiles and suggestive looks.

But that didn’t count.

The man looked up at him—yes, up, Rein having the advantage of a good foot and years of experience in staring down at a foe.

“She started it,” the man said.

Rein took a step forward. “Away,” he ordered, pointing.

He heard a sigh—several of them, actually—and turned. Three flower girls across the aisle were huddled together, the fresh faces smiling at him as if he’d just stormed a castle and offered them the keys.

He pulled his shoulders back. Well, now, that was more like it.

“Lord help me,” he heard Anna murmur. “By day’s end they’ll all be clamoring for his name.”

Rein turned, feeling a pleased smile come over his face. “There is only one lady whom I should like to know my name.”

Was that a blush he saw? He couldn’t tell, for she tipped that hat of hers down, fumbling with her utensils as she did so.

A glance at her friend Molly revealed an encouraging nod, her brows wiggling in silent approval.

Rein decided then and there that he rather liked Anna’s friend.

But Anna looked up right then, saw the look they exchanged and narrowed her eyes. “Mr. Hemplewilt, if you’d like to help Molly sell her wares, by all means then help her. Leave me be.”

“Anna—” her friend said.

“I don’t need your help selling mine.”

And hearing those words, coming as they did on the heels of what could only be described as a jealous look, made Rein feel even better. Excellent. She was starting to like him, only she didn’t want to admit it.

“Ah,” he said, his eyes heating as they observed how pretty she looked, yes, even in that worn out and bedraggled straw hat. “I could be of service. If you’d let me.”

She narrowed her eyes again. “No.”

And that was the problem with Anna Brooks: His normal mode of seduction did not appear to work. Ballocks. He removed the teasing smile and said, “Not even if you have something to gain by allowing me to do so?”

Her expression didn’t change. “I shall leave,” he said, nodding to go along with his words, liking his spur-of-the-moment idea. “On one condition.”

No change in her expression. Stubborn chit.

“You allow me to help sell your wares for one hour’s time, after which we shall take a tally. The person who has sold the most things”—he waved toward her barrow—“wins.”

“Done,” she said, so obviously convinced of his failure that she didn’t even appear to consider that he might give her some competition. Lord, it amazed him how much that stung.

This time it was his turn to narrow his eyes. Picking up the first utensil he felt in her barrow, a sort of bowl-shaped thing with holes in it, he turned and faced the crowd. That number of people had grown in the few minutes they’d been in the square. Rein was surprised to see so many people out and about at such an early hour. Did none of them attend parties? As he eyed the men and women who could only be termed the serving class, he supposed not.

“Peeler for your vegetables,” Anna cried out, startling Rein, who turned and looked at her askance. Within ten seconds she had a buyer, a man whom Rein was convinced was more interested in peering down her dress than the utensil she sold.

“A… thing for your… things,” Rein called out.

He heard Molly snort, turned to her with a lift of his brow. He’d get no help from Anna.

“It’s a sieve,” she explained.

“Molly,” Anna accused. “Do not help him.”

“Can’t help it. My sense of fair play,” she said, turning to peddle her own wares.

Thus ensued a battle of the voice, Rein and Anna crying out to attract potential customers, but it quickly became apparent that Anna had the advantage. And why wouldn’t she? Rein thought. She’d years of experience over him, her savvy eyes picking out the most obvious customer—usually men—her tone and voice and manners suggesting that her inventions would do a lot more than help a person to cook.

Rein seethed.

Seethed until the moment he was struck by an idea. Excusing himself from Anna, who didn’t even deign to look up as he left, he used the coin he promised to Anna to buy a potato, going back to Anna’s barrow and selecting one of her vegetable peelers, something that seemed to sell well. He would find another way to pay her, perhaps by performing at that theater he’d seen advertised for playactors.

She lifted a brow, pausing from her song for a moment to watch as he lifted the vegetable. Rein ignored her, searching the crowd to find the most likely target in the growing throng. When he’d done so, selecting a portly man with chubby cheeks and smile lines near his eyes, Rein lifted the peeler, took aim, and let fly.

A sliver of skin landed on the cheek of his target.

“What the devil?” the man said, turning toward Rein.

He heard Molly laugh. Rein stepped forward to say, “And that, my good man, is only a glimpse of what this device can do.” He closed the distance between him and his subject, slicing at the potato like a beaver did a log.

“A bargain at four pence,” he said with a smile, doubling Anna’s price, for there was one thing Rein knew how to do—a thing that every member of the
ton
could do—size up a man’s worth by the cut and quality of his clothes. He judged this man to be an upper servant of some sort, perhaps even a butler. “Only think of how much time your cooks will save.”

The man eyed Rein askance. But then his gaze caught on the slivers on the ground. He looked back up. “Four pence?” he said.

Rein felt hope, nodded.

“Done,” the man said, digging into his black jacket.

Rein’s smile could no doubt be seen across the square.

“You lying cheat,” Anna said as the man walked away.

“Yes,” Rein said with a smile. “Isn’t it lovely?”

Her lips pressed together, her eyes narrowing until they were nearly shut beneath the brim of her hat.

He used his profit to buy a head of lettuce next. Anna eyeed him once more when he stopped by the permanent stall of an apple merchant and asked to borrow three of the man’s crates. The long-whiskered man agreed, and Rein took the crates to his spot near Anna. Next he took a wicked-looking knife off one the pegs on the Anna’s cart, retrieved the head of lettuce and placed it on the top of crate.

He waited.

Anna waited, too. He could tell that she was sneaking glances at him, her cries to the crowd rising and falling as she turned, walked a few paces and then turned back.

Rein lifted the knife.

Anna snuck another glance at him, brows scrunching together in a frown.

When a sufficiently large group of people walked by, Rein brought the knife down with enough force to shower lettuce pieces through the air.

“Bloody hell,” Anna cried.

Rein smiled at the startled crowd. “If you think that is amazing, just envision what it would do to a side of beef.”

Everyone but a woman looked away. Rein came around the side of his crates, going over to her holding out the knife. “See, not a nick in the edge. Truly an amazing device,” he said with a smile normally used for the women of his social set, the ones he wanted to bed.

“How much is it?” the woman asked, thrusting her gaze down.

“For you,” he said, “a special price.”

The woman giggled, and without asking what that price was, opened up her reticule.

Rein wanted to throw back his head and laugh. He was doing it. Not only that, but he was bloody good at it, and earning more money than Anna. When he glanced at Anna, it was to see her staring at him with her hands on her hips. He had to give her credit, for she didn’t give up. No, indeed, what she did surprised him, for she went and bought her own head of lettuce, only she chose to behead hers in midair, one of the two halves landing at the feet of a bloke whom she smiled at winsomely. She sold the knife for more than Rein had sold his.

Thus began a competition the likes of which Covent Garden Market had never seen. Many a good head of lettuce went to the guillotine that day, the area around Anna’s barrow looking like a produce cart caught in an accident. But Rein had an advantage that Anna did not. Most patrons were women and Rein had no compunction about using the skills he’d acquired in ballrooms to charm the coins out of a lady’s purse.

Thus, at the end of the hour, Rein had won, not only that but he had sufficient profit to pay off Anna. Anna knew it, Rein could tell, for she shot him a glare when a nearby clock tower chimed the hour.

“Cheat,” she said, standing among lettuce entrails as if it were a park and not the remnants of their war.

“Mimic,” he answered back.

“You left me with no choice.”

“You were afeared of losing,” he offered as the true explanation.

But rather than deny it, rather than look away, Anna said, “I was.” And then she did something else that surprised him. To Rein’s utter delight, he gave him a brief smile, just a small one, but one filled with grudging admiration.

“You can stay,” she said.

And he did. The whole day. And at the end of it, Anna had to admit that she liked Rein Hemplewilt. She truly liked him. Perhaps it was the way he’d come to Molly’s defense. Maybe it was the way he’d been so determined to help. But whatever the reason, as she prepared herself for bed that eve, she admitted he was quite a bonny man.

That worried her. That worried her a great deal.

With a sigh, she sat down on her bed, tilting her head back and stretching her spine. She had so much work to do, and the last thing she needed was a man to complicate matters. In the corner of her room lay her life’s work—well, what would become her life’s work. Material for her sails. A pile of fabric she’d scrimped and saved to buy, having spent every last farthing on the extravagant purchase. She needed to convert that material into the triangular design she’d invented. And she needed to do so in time to test the real sails on a ship—for the smaller version sail—her “kite”—needed to be enlarged in order to see if it would work.

But she refused to think of that. Or Mr. Hemplewilt. She stood up. Well, stood up as much as she could in her little attic room, removing her white cotton apron as she did so. The ceiling sloped down on either side of her. But the room was warm and hospitable, the bones of the walls exposed without any boards to cover them. She’d made it her own in recent years, covering the tiny little windows with scraps of material she’d bought from the rag man. Her “drapes” were colorful; like an artist’s palette tipped on its side so that the colors ran together. She’d done the same for a bedcover, painstakingly sewing together pieces of red and blue and yellow fabric until she had a quilt of sorts, one tiny square that she prized above all others made of velvet. She grabbed that quilt now and headed out the tiny door nestled beneath the V of the rafters.

Tiny droplets of moisture did battle with warmer air currents from the attic as she slid beneath a dusk sky, fog having rolled in early that afternoon, as so often happened in London. The exit to the attic wasn’t really a door, but more of a hatch that dropped down. She had to slide her legs through first, then her body. For a second she dangled her brown skirts before she dropped with a thud and a crunch of dried leaves beneath her bare feet. It always amazed her how leaves got all the way up to the third story roof.

She’d discovered her hidden world when she was twelve, though at first she’d hoped the hatch would lead to a storybook kingdom, a land that might take her away from the drudgery of her life. Unfortunately, it hadn’t. Fortunately, she’d found a private haven. On the right day, a body could see clear to the green edges of London. On an evening like tonight, however, fog pressed down and kept sound from escaping. It would be dark before its time, the sun descending behind the rookery with a last gasp of color. Down below, a coal porter sang his song, carts and carriages sloshing and clanking through the mud and muck; like a well-made timepiece, London never stopped.

She settled herself on the bench she’d made out of scraps of wood as one of the many chimney plumes that sprouted up like mushroom caps from the tar and gravel roof spilled a murky black smoke that didn’t have the energy to climb. She sat near enough to the edge of the roof that if she craned her neck just right, she could watch all that smoke fall, swirling and spiraling on its way to pollute the street below. But she didn’t. Instead she lifted her feet onto the bench, throwing the cover around her shoulders and resting her elbows on her knees as she tried to summon the energy to get started on her sails, and to forget about Mr. Hemplewilt.

“Miss Brooks.”

Anna screamed. And for a moment silence reigned over St. Giles. Or so it seemed.

“I beg your pardon. I did not mean to startle you.”

She turned on her bench. “What the blazes are you doin’ up here?” The blanket she clutched around her neck slipped a bit. Anna jerked it back up.

“I came to ask of supper.”

“There’s a pot of stew on the hearth just like there is every night.”

“Is there?” he asked, and the look in his eyes, the way they seemed to turn darker—though how that could be when nothing but a dismal evening sky shone down on them, Anna didn’t know—made her wonder if perhaps he felt the same sort of pull, the same current of energy that she’d felt for him all afternoon.

“There is,” she said.

Leave, leave, leave.

But he didn’t, just continued to stare down at her in a way that made her heart beat harder with each passing second.

“I had a splendid time at market today.”