The Danger of Desire (13 page)

God help him.

He fell back on duty to regulate his uneven breath. “Do not play me false,” he repeated, for his own clarity. And sanity. “Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Aye, sir.” She was still unfazed, as if she had no bloody idea the dangerous fuse she had nearly lit inside him. “You’re a hard man, Captain.”

“You have no fucking idea how hard.” He let the silence stretch taut between them and never let his gaze waver. Never showed so much as an inch of softness. To show her the danger she courted when she played with him, however unknowingly.

Eventually she looked away. “Maybe I don’t like the idea of working for a hard man.”

He smiled at her, to show just how much of a bastard he was prepared to be. She wouldn’t look at him in fascination now. “You have no choice.”

Her gaze snapped back up to his, her eyes dark and feral, as wary as a trapped animal. God’s balls, they were like to bite each other to death before this was over.

“You’re a clever girl. It’s strap or stretch on a gibbet. You must see, I can’t let you go now, after everything I’ve told you. Not knowing where I live, what it is I’m planning to do, and for whom.” He got up slowly and worked his deliberate way around the desk toward her. “You know everything about me—my name and rank, where I live, and that I’m working on an important secret assignment for His Majesty’s government. And I really don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t even know your real name.”

She let out an angry little huff. “Makes no matter. You can call me whatever you want. You will anyway.”

“I would prefer to call you so you’ll
answer,
and experience has proved your actual, Christian name will work best.”

Another sarcastic breath. “Big of you, to assume I’m even a Christian.” She was trying to goad him. And he knew it. Even as she spoke, she was up from the chair and moving behind it, keeping the small safety of the furniture between them. Clever girl.

But he wasn’t going to rise to her bait and give her any justification for trying to bolt. He wouldn’t chase her. Instead, he stopped and hitched his hip onto the front edge of the desk. “Yes, I am assuming.”

She shrugged again, that uncomfortable twitch of her shoulders. “Well, Christian or Turk, Meggs is the only name I can remember.”

It was a lie. But a relatively unimportant one. As she said, her name really made no matter. He only wanted to know, because he
wanted
to know. To know some part of the true
her
. “All right, Meggs it is. And Tanner?”

“Tanner, or Timmy will do well enough.”

“All right, Meggs. I hope we understand each other quite plainly. This business is deadly serious, and there is no going back for us. No room for error. But I’m a man of my word, and you will be paid your seven hundred and fifty pounds for your services at the satisfactory conclusion of our tasks. So let us waste no more time on lies and gamesmanship, and get back to the task at hand. I am going to trust you. The toffs, as you call them, are actually the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. One—or at least one of them—is stealing secrets and passing the information to the French.” He watched her closely for her reaction. “We need to find which one of the Lords Commissioners it is and put a stop to it, by gathering enough evidence to see him hung.”

“Stealing secrets from the Admiralty? That’s treason,” she whispered. “I mean, I’m not one to quibble. Stealing is stealing, though everyone’s got their reasons. Stealing a handkerchief’ll get you hung. But treason. Treason will see you drawn and quartered before your heart stops spurting blood. Makes nipping a few gold thimbles here and there seem merely impolite. Cripes”—she blew out a big breath—“you do know how to pick ’em.”

Her shock and pallor seemed genuine enough. “I didn’t pick. This task was assigned to me. I don’t have a choice, and now neither do you. Or the boy.”

The mention of her brother sobered her out of whatever sharp shards of resentment still remained. Or perhaps she was simply too intrigued by the thought of the crimes and the money ahead. “Don’t you get nothin’ outta it?”

“Perhaps.” He could give her that much. “I get to have my career back and my ship,
Dangerous.
”

“Oh, aye, that’d be the one they give
you,
all right.” She gave him the beginnings of a tight smile, her cheeky humor slowly reasserting itself. “Well, it’s only ever two things—love or money.”

“I don’t take your meaning.”

“Only two real reasons a toff, a lord, would commit treason—either he needs the money bad, or he believes in the cause. It’ll be better if it’s for money. Believers are the worst. Zealots they are—willing to do anything. The thought of being tried for treason don’t faze ’em. Better hope yer man’s in it for the lour, or this could get messy.”

Oh, she was damn sharp, his larcenous little lass. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that. I know I will. Give me the jim-jams, zealots.” There was that hard twitch of her shoulders, as if she could shake off the feeling like a wet dog. “Right, then. Lords Commissioners. These toffs all know each other, then?”

Sharp as a penny tack, this Meggs. He could at least let himself admire her professional acumen. She was a supremely able partner in crime. “Yes, they meet regularly at the Admiralty Building.”

“And that’s where your traitor’s stealing secrets to sell?”

“He’s definitely not
my
traitor, but yes.”

She mulled over that information, scrunching up one eye in dissatisfaction at the direction of her thoughts. “That makes it tricky, you wanting to dip ’em all. A couple of men gets dipped on any given Sunday and that’s bad luck. These toffs get to talking, and come to find they’ve all been bunged, and that’ll put the wind up all of ’em. We gotta plan this out careful like. We gotta do it in a way they don’t associate losing their purses with the Admiralty. Can’t just wait for them to waltz out of the Admiralty and fall to our business in Charing Cross. We’ll have to follow ’em, one, maybe two at a time, if we split up. No. Timmy’s got the skills—he’s a prime foyster and a good fag-ger—but we work best together.”

At that moment her stomach growled with such resounding resentment even he could hear it. She needed to be fed.

“You leave that to me. Go down to the kitchen and get some breakfast, and then you can begin helping out in the household as best you can at the moment, with light chores and cooking.”

She favored him with another long, scientific look. “Cookin’? Ain’t you ’fraid I’ll poison you?”

“And kill the goose that will lay your golden egg? No. And besides, you’ll have to eat everything you make—and sit at table to eat it with me—and so will the boy.”

“Across there?” She gestured over her shoulder to the large dining room sitting empty across the hall. “At that table, together? Under all those sparklies? You never!”

So she’d given herself a tour of the place. Of course she had. She was a professional.

“Yes, perhaps even at that table, under that chandelier.”

“Well, I never.”

“Oh, you will, Meggs. You will.”

When Meggs made her way back to the blissful, reassuring warmth of the kitchen, she was astonished to find Timmy being fed up by a stout, no-nonsense woman with sky gray hair, and hands like a butcher.

“Where’d you come from?”

The woman straightened from the stove and favored Meggs with a critical inspection. “You’ll be the girl, then. Let me have a look at you.” She put her hands on her hips and gave Meggs twice over before she nodded. “You’ll do very well, I’m sure, but we’ll get two things straight. Number one, don’t be mouthy. Number two, do what you’re asked, when you’re asked, and we’ll have no trouble at all. Now, I’m Mrs. Tupper. I’ll be keeping the house for the captain and teaching you how to go on. You can start by eating your porridge, and when you’re done you’ll take the coffee tray up. Likes his coffee good and strong, the captain.”

“You were here before—last night, then?”

“Of course. There you are, dear.” She set another steaming bowl of porridge on the table. “Sit. Eat up while it’s hot. Now where was I, Tims? Lord Bless me, Tupper and I—that’s my mister, Tupper—have known the captain since he were a wee midshipman on
Resolute
. Years ago it was. How the time does fly. All right, Tims, you take that bowl to the scullery, and then your job is to take the hot water over. Be careful with that pail. That’s it. They’ll build up your strength, those pails will, till you’re as strong as a gunner.”

Mrs. Tupper turned back to the stove. “The captain’ll want eggs and toast, I’ll wager. Properly done.” She heaved a cast iron fry pan about as if it were made of air. “Now, my girl, have you ever done kitchen or scullery work before?”

Meggs spooned down the creamy porridge. “No.”

“Housemaid? Laundry?”

The porridge was sweet and warm and solid in her belly. Bliss. “Not a bit of it.”

“Well, you’ll learn, dear. You’ll learn.”

And learn she did, towed along like an anchor in Mrs. Tupper’s smooth wake. In the course of one morning, Meggs learned where to find the silver and table linens, and how to set a proper table. How to lay out the coffee service. How to dust without mis-arranging things and how to make a bed. How to ladle out soup.

To be fair, she already had a good nose for where to find the silver in a house, but the rest was as new and unknown as a faraway West Indies island.

She learned how to scour a pot with only her left hand scrubbing, as Mrs. Tupper was constantly reminding her to keep her injured hand dry.

“You mind that fin, girl, or the captain will have both our heads.”

But Meggs knew how to learn a thing or two for herself. Through the course of the day as she fetched and toted and hauled and emptied, Meggs was unsurprised to find that brisk, sturdy Mrs. Tupper had been, for the greater part of her life, a navy wife, living aboard ship with her husband, Tupper, until he was badly wounded in action at Toulon. She also learned that Captain McAlden, who had been a mere lieutenant then, had, along with his friends, been quite the heroes and had saved Mr. Tupper’s life. Nothing was too good for the captain in Mrs. Tupper’s opinion. She had come all the way up from Dartmouth, down the coast in faraway Devon, to keep house at his request.

And she wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense, questions about palm trees or straggling. Meggs hopped to it all day long, until the afternoon waned and she was as worn out as an old dishrag.

Each meal seemed to start almost as soon as the last plate from the previous meal had been scrubbed and stored away. Mrs. Tupper was as demanding and uncompromising as old Nan had ever been, but Meggs liked her. As with Nan, a body knew where they stood with Mrs. Tupper. She was firm and tough, but she wasn’t mean or hard. She never so much as cuffed her, despite numerous mistakes. And when she got it right, the lady took a delighted pride in her accomplishments. Put her in mind of Nan, more and more.

Except Mrs. Tupper fed her more. Loads more. Every time she turned around, there was a bit of bread and butter or cheese. Or coffee and milk.

Oh, Lord, she hadn’t had milk like that, fresh and thick with cream, in so long. Since before. Before she’d become what she was. Before she’d ever learned to have a care in the world. And she was going back to that, by all the saints, her and Timmy both. That was why she was here, working like a red-faced skivvy. So she could get her money and leave London for good, and put it all, everything she’d become and done, behind her.

And when she did, they’d have a home of their own, like this one.

It was a fine house, though not much lived in. Now that she was assigned to clean the rooms, she took a sort of proprietary interest in them. In the great, big pond of mahogany she polished in the dining room and the lovely parkland of walnut parquet she mopped and polished on the floor of the drawing room. At least the dining room had table and chairs. The drawing room was strangely empty, the few bits of furniture and rugs piled up in the corner, waiting for Himself to unpack and set them to rights.

The only room, besides the bustling kitchen, that gave hint to the life of the house was his study. This was where he must spend most of his time. The room certainly seemed to reflect his personality, or at least as much as she knew about him. A large desk dominated the room, with two straight-backed chairs marched in front of it, as if he liked the people he dealt with to be uncomfortable, or at least not at ease. She certainly hadn’t been.

There was no great, important portrait painting of either Himself, or an ancestor, on the wall. There were some smaller ones of ships propped on the bookshelves, a single pair of prints of bee anatomy behind the desk, and a mirror set so high above the fireplace mantel she couldn’t even see herself, but other than that it was plain and spare.

But there were loads of books. If he had really read them all, she was surprised he didn’t have a squint. And not just on the shelves, but piled on the corner of the desk and open on every surface, scattered here and there, as if he were looking at them all at once. As if they were all vying for his attention. The books were the only thing not neat and tidy and squared away.

And there were more rooms, above. Meggs looked up the curve of the baluster to the bedchambers. Where Himself would sleep.

Mrs. Tupper told her she wasn’t needed to go in there to clean—Mr. Jinks would see to the captain’s things. But she had a brain, hadn’t she? And all her stupid brain seemed to want to do was imagine what might lay behind the closed door.

Would it be helter-skelter with books, like the study, or would it be like the man himself, straightforward and contained? Have to be a powerful big bed to house a man like him. And there it was again, a picture of him, etched across her brain, colors and all, lying on that bed, tawny and naked as the day was long, looking up at her with those pale, hawk bright eyes.

Lord almighty, what was wrong with her? Her brain must be disordered from all the rich food, the work, and the skull bashing. A girl could get herself into deep, deep trouble thinking about a man like that.