Stroke of Genius (10 page)

A predator on the prowl for the fattest antelope
, Crispin decided. The fellow was presentable enough, but unless the gent had exceedingly deep pockets, he was destined for disappointment.

And if he’s Grace’s cousin the baron,
Crispin thought with a grin,
he won’t appreciate an interruption from his American relations right now.

Grace loosed an exasperated sigh. “Oh, I give up. My cousin the—” She clamped her lips tight for a moment. “Lord Washburn can find his own way to our table.”

She grasped his arm and began threading her way through the crowd.

“
Our table
,” Crispin repeated with amusement. “I’m delighted you’ve come round to my way of thinking.”

“I’m only inviting you to supper because you’d invite yourself if I didn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she squeezed between two knots of revelers. “Then I will consider my obligation to thank you for your assistance this night fulfilled.”

“You know, I’ve never been to Boston.” He pulled her up short. “Do men there appreciate being dragged about by their women?”

“I thought you wanted to sup with us.”

“I do, but I also want to render assistance to one in desperate need of it,” he said. “I know you’re an American, but if you don’t wish to be thought hopelessly bumptious, you might want to take your cue from the ladies around you.”

Grace frowned. “So now I can’t even walk across a courtyard in a manner that pleases you?”

He smiled down at her. “Unless I’m mistaken, pleasing me is not your goal. You walk enthusiastically and personally I like enthusiasm in my women.”

“I’m not at all
enthusiastic
about your likes or dislikes.” 

“Good. If there’s anything Polite Society disdains, it’s enthusiasm. One must seem not to be enjoying oneself in the slightest if one wants to be considered sophisticated.” He tucked her hand neatly in the crook of his arm. “Now, let your fingers rest gently without grasping at my sleeve as if you hoped to dislocate my shoulder.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Perhaps not consciously. I will allow that I can be trying at times and you didn’t truly mean to yank me along like a recalcitrant poodle.”

She laughed and eyed the dark curls that brushed his shoulder. “If you were a poodle, you’d be in serious need of a trim.”

 “Yes, well. See to it you don’t do it again.” He patted her hand at his elbow as if that might keep it in the proper place. “Now if you would be seen for a lady of fashion, you must wait and allow a gentleman to part the crowd for you.”

“I see,” she said with a wicked glint in her eyes. “But where ever shall we find a gentleman?”

Crispin grimaced at her. She was getting too good at this game for his comfort. “That is a bit of problem, but perhaps I can serve in that capacity for the length of this short lesson.”

He threw the tip of his walking stick ahead of him with each jaunty stride and, as usual, the crowds parted. Some moved aside because they recognized him and admired his talent.

Some moved because the stick wasn’t just a fashionable accessory.

“And here we are, Grace,” he said, stopping a few yards from the supper box. “I’ve delivered you safe and sound to the bosom of your family.”

“So you have.” She turned and laid a hand on his forearm. “I do wish you thank you, in all seriousness. Heaven only knows what might have happened to me on the Dark Walk without your assistance.”

“I doubt they teach that sort of thing in heaven, but I, however, have a pretty good idea.” He brought her knuckles to his lips and gave them a soft kiss.

She pulled her hand away and gave his chest a swat. “Must you make light of everything?”

“Indeed I must,” he said. “I’ve seen the dark side of life, Grace. I want no part of it for you.”

She studied his face for a moment and he realized he’d said more than he ought. It wasn’t like him to let his guard down so.

Then she cocked her head. “Very well, let us banish the dark for the next few hours. Come. I’ll introduce you to my father and Cousin Mary.”

“And don’t forget your cousin the baron,” he said as he followed her toward the Makepeace box. “Mustn’t deny the riffraff the fun of mingling with the high-in-the-instep crowd.”

Chapter 9

From whence does genius come? Is the ability to create a fluke of nature or a gift from the gods?

Pygmalion would have said it was merely a matter of survival.

Twenty-two years earlier

Peel’s Abbey, a Cheapside House of Pleasure

The garret was an icebox in winter and a furnace in summer, but it was his. The air was musty and the ratter was long overdue, but when Crispin retreated to the garret, it was as if he escaped into a castle of his own and drew up the drawbridge. He made a pallet for himself among the old trunks and dressmakers dummies and stashed his few treasures in one of Madame’s old cigar boxes.

He opened the box now to assure himself it was all still there. The broken Horn book he’d taught himself to read with. A scrap of chalk, a few sheaves of precious paper, the finished black king and queen from the chess set he was carving from a length of discarded teak he’d found down on the wharves. He’d talked the butcher on the next block over into saving him bone scraps. That should do for the white pieces when he got to them.  

Everything he made had a purpose, but there was no reason it couldn’t also be beautiful. In the squalor of Cheapside, beauty was his refuge, his sanctuary. And since he could find so little of it, he was forced to create it every chance he could.

His black king had a fierce scowl on his royal face, terrible to behold. He thought the black queen looked a little like the sad woman he barely remembered. The one he’d called mother.

There was one more thing in his cigar box. He rarely took it out, but he did so now, carefully unfolding the bit of fine linen. It was all he had left of his mother and it didn’t even really belong to her.

It belonged to that nameless
Him
.

Crispin spread the handkerchief across his thigh and traced the faded monogram. The gold threads were starting the fray, but he could still clearly make out the CRS. The R was much larger than the other two, so he knew it stood for the family name of the man to whom it had once belonged.

But since Crispin didn’t know what that name was, he’d gotten into the habit of reading the letters in order and thinking of the unknown ‘gentleman’ as “Cris.”

So close to his own name. Crispin. Cris. Close as two sides of the same penny.

But there was no question as to which side of the coin had landed face down in the dirt.

Chapter 10

Pygmalion spent most of his time by himself, but it never occurred to him to be lonely.

Unless he was in the company of others.

“What the devil is this?” Homer Makepeace demanded, forking up a paper-thin slice of meat and eyeing it with suspicion.

“Ham,” Lord Jasper Washburn informed him loftily. It was bad enough he’d been seated by the husband of his American cousin. Did the man have to display new depths of uncouth manners at every turn?

“How can you tell?” Makepeace pinched off a bite and wolfed it down. “Can’t hardly taste it. Why, it’s so thin, I could read a newspaper through this thing!”

“Homer, dear, that’s the point,” Cousin Minerva said, beside him. “Imagine the skill it takes to carve ham that thin. Vauxhall is positively famous for it.”

She and her husband debated the respective merits of beefsteak versus a crock of beans for “filling a body up” while Jasper glared down the table at the spot that should have been his, right between his sister and Cousin Minerva’s surprisingly comely daughter. He wasn’t
that
late in arriving for this interminable supper. They ought to have saved him the choicest place in deference to his title at the least.

Instead, the plum seat was occupied by a big hulking commoner, a Mr. Hawke.

Jasper shouldn’t have been surprised.
Like calls to like.

“So, since we’re new to each other,” Mr. Makepeace said between bites. “A little about me. I started working in cotton as lad, learned a bit about the fabric game. Then I got to tinkering with a mechanical spinner one day, and damn me, if the output didn’t increase out of all knowing with the changes I made in the thingamajig. Now I own three factories all cranking out cotton thread by the bale. We’ll branch into weaving the fabric next spring. Now, tell me, Washburn, what do you do?”

Jasper dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. It wasn’t worth the effort to show he was affronted by the American calling him by Washburn, a name reserved only for his intimates. The man ought to call him ‘my lord’ or Lord Washburn at the least. But haughty disdain was lost on this fellow.

    “Actually, my good sir, breeding is everything,” Jasper said. “In this country, a man is defined not by what he does, but by who he is. Suffice it to say, I am an English lord.”

That should over-awe the bumpkin.

“All right,” Makepeace said affably, “what does an English lord do?”

How the man missed the point!

“I have a large country estate and various business interests.” Neither of which were terrible healthy at the moment, but that was none of this American’s affair.

“That must take some managing, I’d expect,” Makepeace said as he crammed another bite in his mouth.

For someone who complained about the Vauxhall ham, Homer Makepeace was consuming quite a lot of it.

“Actually, I have a staff and an agent who handles the day to day running of the estate and a man of business to see to my financial affairs.”

What little there is of them.

But that would soon change. All he need do was marry well. Jasper took a sip of the excellent vintage. At least the American knew how to choose a good French wine. He glanced down the table at the young Miss Makepeace. If her father was truly the captain of the cotton industry he claimed to be, the chit would come to the altar with a sizeable dowry.

“Trade is considered tawdry here,” Jasper went on to explain. “A gentleman does not work with his hands.”

The corners of Makepeace’s mouth turned down as he digested this information. Then he turned to the far end of the table. “What about you, Hawke? What do you do?”

    “I work with my hands.” The commoner shot a cocky grin across the table and raised his goblet to Makepeace in a mock salute.

Insufferable puppy.

“Homer, dear,” Cousin Minerva said, patting her husband’s forearm, “I told you about Mr. Hawke, remember? He’s the famous sculptor.”

Oh,
that
Mr. Hawke. This one would bear watching.

“It appears I’m a tawdry tradesman and you work with your hands, Hawke.” Homer Makepeace’s belly jiggled with a laugh. “Then I guess that makes us no gentlemen.”

“Guilty as charged,” Hawke agreed.

“Mr. Hawke is doing a sculpture of our Grace,” Cousin Minerva said happily.

Jasper blinked in surprise. The artist was notoriously exclusive and charged the earth for his work. The bust of Lord Finchley reputedly cost over ten thousand pounds and the damned thing looked just like him, warts and all. Hiring Hawke was a pastime best indulged in by the truly well-heeled.

If Homer Makepeace had engaged Crispin Hawke without even knowing it, he must really have the blunt.

Jasper gave Cousin Grace a fresh perusal. The familial relationship was sufficiently distant not to be an impediment. And the breadth of the Atlantic would insure the gauche American family remained sufficiently distant as well once the nuptials were over.

Grace was easy enough on the eyes, but if her seated height were anything to go by, she was a veritable giantess. She towered over his petite sister.

Jasper was not an especially tall man. Dainty little morsels like that courtesan he’d chatted with earlier held more appeal for him.

Pity he couldn’t afford her. But he might be able to once he married. Provided he married well.