This Wicked Gift

COURTNEY MILAN

THIS
WICKED GIFT

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

EPILOGUE

THIS WICKED GIFT

Courtney Milan

For Mass-yo (with a dash), the best little brother
that staged protests and hunger strikes can buy.
 
We wanted to do everything for you
,
and you were too smart to let us.

P.S. You know that thing with the face, shoes,
Germany? Sorry about that. But can you stop mentioning it every time we see
each other?

London, 1822

I
T WAS FOUR DAYS
 
until Christmas
and four minutes until the family lending library closed for the evening.
Lavinia Spencer sat, the daily ledger opened on the desk in front of her, and
waited for the moment when the day would end and she could officially remove
her five pennies from the take. Every day since summer, she’d set aside a coin
or five from her family’s earnings. She’d saved the largesse in a cloth bag in
the desk drawer, where nobody would find it and be tempted to spend it. Over
the weeks, her bag had begun to burgeon. Now, she had almost two pounds.

Two pounds in
small, cold coins to the rest of the world.
For Lavinia, the
money meant pies.
Spices,
sugar and wine to mull them
with. And, once she scoured the markets, perhaps a goose—a small goose—roasted
alongside their usual turnips. Her two pounds meant a Christmas celebration
that would make Papa sit up and smile. Six months of planning—but the effort
had been
 
worth it, because
Lavinia was going to deliver a holiday meal just like the ones her mother had
prepared.

The business they’d conducted today had
been frenetic. Lavinia finished adding columns in the daybook and nodded to
herself. Today’s
take—
according to her records—had
been very fine indeed. If she hadn’t miscalculated, today she’d let herself
take
 
six
 
pennies from the till—half a shilling
that made her that much more certain of goose, as opposed to mere stewing fowl.
Lavinia took a deep breath. Layered atop the musk of leather-bound volumes and
India ink, she could almost detect the scent of roast poultry. She imagined the
red of mulled wine swirling in mugs. And in her mind’s eye, she saw her father
sitting taller in his chair, color finally touching his cheeks.

She reached for the cash box and started
counting.

The bell above the door rang—at a minute
to closing. A gust of winter wind poured in. Lavinia looked up, prepared to be
annoyed. But when she saw who had entered, she caught her breath.

It was
 
him.
 
Mr.
William Q. White—and what the
 
Q
 
stood
for, she’d not had the foresight to demand on the day when he’d purchased his
subscription. But the name rolled off the tongue.
 
William Q.
White.
 
She could never
think of him as simply a monosyllable last name. His name had rolled off her
tongue, as it happened, far too many times in the last year for her own good.

He took off his hat and gloves at the
threshold and shook droplets of water from the sodden gray of his
 
coat. Mr. William Q. White was tall
and his dark hair was cropped close to his skull. He did not dawdle in the
doorway, letting the rain into the shop as so many other customers did.
Instead, he moved quickly, purposefully, without ever appearing to rush. It was
not even a second before he closed the door on the frigid winter and entered
the room. Despite his alacrity, he did not track in mud.

His eyes, a rich mahogany, met hers. She
bit her lip and twisted her feet around the legs of her stool. He spoke little,
but what he said—

“Miss Spencer.” He gestured with his hat
in acknowledgment.

Unremarkable words, but her toes curled in
their slippers nonetheless. He spoke in a deep baritone, his voice as rich as
the finest drinking chocolate. But what really made her palms tingle was a
wild, indefinable
 
something
 
about
his accent. It wasn’t the grating Cockney the delivery boys employed,
nor
the flat, pompous perfection of the London aristocracy.
He had a pure, cultured voice—but one that was nonetheless from somewhere many
miles distant. His
 
R
s had just a hint of a roll to them; his vowels
stretched and elongated into elegant diphthongs. Every time he said “Miss
Spencer,” the exotic cadence of his speech seemed to whisper, “I have been
places.”

She imagined him adding, “Would you like
to come with me?”

Yes. Yes, she would. Lavinia rather
fancied a man with long…vowels.

And oh, she knew she was being foolish and
giddy about Mr. William Q. White. But if a girl couldn’t be foolish and giddy
about a man when she was nineteen, when
 
could
 
she
be foolish? It was hard to be serious all the time, especially when there was
so much to be serious about.

And so she took a risk. “Merry Christmas,
Mr. White.”

He was examining the shelves. At her
words, he turned toward her. His eyes slid from her waist up to her face, and
Lavinia ducked her head and stared at the stack of pennies in front of her to
hide her blush.

He didn’t need to speak to make her giddy,
not when he looked at her with that breathtaking intensity. For one scalding
moment, she thought he was going to address her. He might even step toward her.
Her hands curled around the edge of the desk in anticipation. But instead, he
shook his head and turned back to the shelves.

A pity.
Not
today, then.
Maybe not any day.
And with Mr. William
Q. White ignoring her again, it was time for Lavinia to set her fancies to one
side and give herself over to seriousness. She counted the coins from the cash
box and piled them into stacks of twelve, making sure to exactly align the
pennies atop each other before starting a new pile.

Lavinia prided herself on her ability to
get the take exactly right. Her longest stretch of perfection was thirty-seven
days in a row, spanning the entirety of October. That run had been ruined by a
penny’s difference on November 4. She had no intention of letting October’s
record stand, however. It had been twenty-two days since her last error. Today
would be number twenty-three.

She’d counted and double-counted every
transaction. If she was so much as a ha’penny short, she’d eat Mr. William Q.
White’s extremely wet hat. Her hands flew as she placed dirty coins into
careful piles. Four, six, eight, and with the loose coins, that made seven
shillings, and four and one-halfpence. Less than she’d imagined. She bit her
lip in suspicion and glanced at the tally in the ledger.

Trepidation settled in an indigestible
mass in Lavinia’s belly. There, written in black and white in the daily ledger,
was the final sum.
Ten shillings, four and one-half pence.

She wasn’t half a penny short. She was
missing three full shillings.

Lavinia recounted the coins, but there was
no error.
Of course not; Lavinia did not make errors in
accounting.
Nobody would take her to task for the missing coins. Her
father was too ill to examine the books, and her brother would never question
Lavinia’s jurisdiction over the shop.

Still, she did not like to question
herself. How had she made such a stupendous error? She felt a touch of vertigo,
as if the room were spinning in circles around the ledger.

She knew what she had to do. It hurt—oh,
how it stung. Those three shillings could be the difference between a small
goose and no goose at all. But with her father’s creditors
clamoring,
and the cost of his medicines growing almost monthly, the family could not
spare more than a handful of pennies’ loss each day. Lavinia slid open the
drawer to make up the difference from her precious Christmas hoard.

She always placed the bag in the same
spot—precisely halfway back and flush against the left side. But her fingers
met no velvet mass lumpy with coin. She groped wildly and found nothing but the
smooth wood of the drawer from corner to corner. Lavinia held her breath and
peered inside. There was nothing in the drawer but a cracked inkwell, and
that—she checked—contained nothing but bluish smears.

“Hell.” It was the worst curse word she
could imagine. She whispered it; it was either that, or
shriek
.

She wasn’t missing a few shillings. She
was missing the full two pounds. All of Christmas had just
disappeared—everything from the decorative holly down through her carefully
planned menu.

“Vinny?” The words were a tremulous query
behind her.

With those words, the rising tide of
Lavinia’s panic broke against an absolute certainty. She knew where her
precious two pounds had gone.

Lavinia placed her hands on her hips. She forced
herself to turn around slowly, rather than whirling as
 
she wished. Her brother, still wrapped
for the blustery weather outside, smiled weakly, holding out his hands in
supplication. Water dripped from his coat and puddled on the floor.

James was four years younger than her, but
Mama had always said to subtract ten years from a man’s age when calculating
his sense. James had never seen fit to prove Mama’s formula wrong.

“Oh.” He peered beyond her to the coins,
stacked in grim military ranks along the edge of the counter and the ransacked
drawer.
His lip quirked.
“I see you’ve, um, already
tallied the cash.”

“James Allen Spencer.” Lavinia reached out
and grabbed his ear.

He winced, but didn’t dodge or protest—a
sure sign of guilt.