Three Nights with a Scoundrel: A Novel (20 page)

Stunned, she released his arm.

“Stay,” he commanded. His hand shot to her face, roughly cupping her cheek. His gaze bored into hers—as though with a forceful look, he could bolt her to the wall. “Stay. No matter how long it takes. I will come back for you. Do you understand?”

She nodded numbly. He left her no choice. “Wait. Your coat.” She slid the garment from her shoulders and thrust it at him. “It’s cold out there.”

A word fell from his lips. Judging by the sharp crease of his brow, she guessed it to be a vicious curse. His hand slid back into her hair, and he gripped tight. Then, with those same blasphemous lips, he kissed her full on the mouth.

The kiss was bruising, potent. Far too brief.

By the time she recalled how to breathe, he and his coat were gone.

A teapot appeared before her face.

Lily looked up, into the round face of the woman holding it. Thick, hoary eyebrows rose, disappearing under the brim of a white lace cap.
More tea?
the landlady’s expression silently inquired.

Gathering a borrowed blanket about her shoulders, Lily smiled politely and shook her head. She’d scarcely sipped from her first cup. At her elbow, a plate of food remained untouched. Since it had been served to her, the edge of a freshly pared bit of cheese had already gone crusty and dry.

How many hours had she been here? Morning could not be long coming. To stave off panic, Lily pressed one hand flat to the planks of the tabletop, worn glassy-smooth by decades of use. The cool, solid surface calmed her pulse.

Julian would come for her. He’d promised.

Dear God. What would she do if he didn’t?

She’d never felt more helpless in her life. She didn’t even know where she was. If she could decide where to go—out in search of Julian, back home to wait—how would she get there? Walk out on the street and hail a hackney cab? She’d never hailed a hack in her life, ever. There’d always been a servant or friend to do it for her. Perhaps she could send word to Amelia. But what would the message even say?

The older woman sat down across the table from her. Did she mean to attempt conversation? This would be a challenge, unless the landlady could read lips, too.

Lily said, “Thank you. For everything.”

The woman gestured rapidly in response, and Lily shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the hand signs. You see, I never learned.”

The woman’s amazement was obvious. As if Lily had just confessed to being illiterate, or unable to count.

She knew such a manual language existed, of course. In the first year following her illness, her tutor had shown her an alphabet formed with the fingers. But Leo didn’t take to it especially well, and after that failed experiment, Lily had declined to learn any more signs. With whom would she use them?

Except—apparently, she could have been using them with Julian all this while. How did he know this language? Why had he never told her? She was so confused.

From a nearby shelf, her hostess gathered a slate and nub of chalk, then resumed her seat and applied herself to the use of both. When she held up her work, Lily read aloud from the slate.

“Anna.” She looked up. “That’s you? You’re Anna?” At the woman’s nod, Lily extended an open hand. “May I?”

Anna passed her the slate and chalk, and Lily carefully inscribed her name on the small square of slate. Beneath it, she wrote,
Thank you
.

Smiling, Anna moved her hand back and forth in the universal gesture of “no thanks are necessary.” She took back the slate and worked over it for a few minutes. While she did so, Lily managed a sip of cold, too-sweet tea.

After a minute, Anna handed her the slate.

“‘Friend of Jamie welcome,’” Lily read aloud. Puzzled, she frowned at the slate. She knew Anna could not hear her. The question escaped her lips anyway. “But … but who is Jamie?”

A sudden vibration jarred her focus. Her teacup did a frantic dance on its saucer. Something heavy had fallen, or perhaps a door had slammed shut? She looked up, and there was Julian. His clothes were sodden, and he’d lost his hat. Dark hair clung to his brow in wet, matted locks. He looked like hell, and not himself at all. But he was here, and he was standing, and he was—so far as Lily could see—all of a piece.
Alive
.

“Me,” he said. “I’m Jamie. She means me.”

“We can talk up here.” Julian took Lily by the hand and led her up the narrow staircase. “Mind your head,” he said, adding a palm-to-pate smack for emphasis.

He knew Lily wanted some explanation. And after the night she’d just passed, he couldn’t deny her that. But they couldn’t discuss matters downstairs in the kitchen. Dawn was already breaking, and soon the milkmaid would be coming round, the day’s baking would commence … For this conversation, they needed privacy.

It was time to tell her the truth. Or at least part of it. He knew Lily understood they came from different places on the map of English society. What she didn’t comprehend was the vast dimension of the gulf between them. This morning, he would acquaint her with its insurmountable nature, in no uncertain terms.

They emerged into a cramped garret, occupied by only a narrow slice of window under the eaves and a wobbly cane chair.

“Sit here,” he told her, stripping off his wet coat. For himself, he extricated an old crate from the furthest reaches of the eaves, overturned it, and sat down—squarely within the shaft of sunlight thrown by the window, and as far away from Lily as the space would permit. Which amounted to a distance of about four feet. Less than ideal, but it would have to suffice. Whatever follies he’d contemplated last night, he could never allow them to become reality. He’d exposed her to people and places she should never have encountered in her life. Worst of all, he’d put her in true danger. Leo had paid with his life, just for calling Julian friend. He could not allow Lily to suffer for the same dubious privilege.

“Come closer,” she said. “I want a proper look at you. I haven’t yet satisfied myself on the state of your health.”

He shook his head.
Absolutely not
. It had been proven to him, several times in the past few days, that he was incapable of resisting her whenever she came within reach. “I’m not injured. Just wet.”

“Wonderful. So now you’ll catch your death of pneumonia.” She slid the blanket from her shoulders. “At least take this.”

His teeth chattered. “You keep it.”

“Julian, I expect this conversation won’t be brief. I can’t watch you shiver through it. Unless”—she tipped her head—“you’d care to share the blanket.”

He accepted the thing with no small twinge of pride. He’d passed a damned cold night, and it wasn’t much warmer up here in the garret.

“So what happened?” she asked. “Weren’t you able to find them?”

“I found them. But they weren’t Leo’s killers.”

Julian sighed with fatigue. He’d followed those men for hours. Watched them drink, eat, piss in the alley, drink some more. Then take turns tupping the same apathetic whore. Finally he’d overheard enough to gather they’d only recently arrived in London. It was their first adventure in the fair city, as evidenced by the fact they’d lost their way in St. Giles, and only much later realized the apathetic whore had made off with their purses. He didn’t expect it would console the two Scots when they learned she’d left them with the clap in recompense.

So much for his hope of stumbling onto Leo’s murderers. He would have to return to the other plan: drawing out the man, or men, who hired them.

Lily shucked her slippers and curled her feet up, tucking them under her flimsy excuse for a skirt. Despite his chilled state, he knew a warm, buzzing current of desire. Parts of him heated beneath the rough blanket.

“Thank goodness,” she said. “I’m glad it wasn’t them.”

“Don’t you want your brother’s killers found?”

“I do, I do. But I don’t want
you
to find them. Not alone and unarmed in the dark. If the solution to Leo’s murder comes at the cost of your life, I don’t want it. I will live with the mystery, thank you very much.”

She looked close to tears. He hated the fact that he’d put her through another night of anxiety, but it thrilled him that she cared so much whether he lived or died.

“Now, then,” she said, sniffing. “Speaking of mysteries. What is this place? What do you mean, you grew up here? Why does Anna call you Jamie, and how do you know her sign language?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Then do begin.” She leaned forward, focusing intently on his mouth. “But slowly, please.”

“My mother …” He swallowed hard. “My mother was born completely deaf. She came from a very rural, isolated area of Kent where deafness is common. Her cousin was likewise without hearing.”

“How strange. All in one place? I wonder why that is.”

“You, and many scholars. It seems to pass through family lines. It’s so common, signing is like a second language there. For everyone, even the hearing.” He propped an elbow on the windowsill, relaxing into the tale. “Anyway, when my mother was a child, charity toward the deaf was all the rage. You’ve heard of Braidwood and his school?”

She nodded. “My own speech tutors were trained there.”

“His efforts were famous. He made it the fashionable thing to show charity toward the deaf and mute. My mother and her cousin were recruited for employment, offered posts in service here in Town as chambermaids to a wealthy lord’s family. The promised wages were an untold sum for two girls from the weald.”

“So they accepted?” Lily prompted.

“Yes. They took the posts. They were young and afraid, but they had each other’s company. At first. My mother’s cousin took ill and died within a few months of their arrival in London.”

“Oh, no. How tragic.”

“My mother’s lot was worse. She’d never learned to speak or write, knew no one in London. Her employers were older and decent enough, but there was a son and he … Well, he took advantage.” Bile rose in his throat. “Chambermaids are misused by their masters every day, but imagine her situation. She couldn’t fight him off. She couldn’t ask for help. Even if she had, it was doubtful she would have received it.”

Lily hugged herself. “What did she do?”

“She survived, as best she could. When the housekeeper finally saw she was pregnant, she was sacked without reference and tossed to the street. I came into the world a few months later. My mother gave birth to me in a vacant warehouse.”

“Alone?”

“She was afraid of asking for help. Thought her baby would be taken from her, and she’d end up in the workhouse or Bedlam. It wasn’t an unrealistic fear.”

“That was very brave of her.”

“Yes. Yes, it was.” He’d been a help to his mother when he grew older. But Julian knew at any time in his infancy, she could have made life a great deal easier on herself by dropping him on the doorstep of a foundling hospital. She hadn’t. They’d always had each other. Most times, that was all they’d had.

“Why didn’t she go home to her family?”

“She had no money, no means of travel. And she felt disgraced. Ashamed.” He took a slow, deep breath to calm himself. “That’s who I am, Lily. The product of fear, violence, and shame. The bastard son of a lecherous nobleman. Born on the wrong side of the blanket, on the wrong side of Town. Raised in conditions a gutter rat would fancy himself a cut above. We had nothing. No food. No home. No proper clothing. My mother worked when she could; I begged and stole when she couldn’t. The rest of the time, we starved.”

Like an ancient echo, hunger rumbled in his stomach. He’d eaten nothing since those few bites of beefsteak last night. Even before Leo’s murder, he’d done this often—skipping meals, sometimes for a day or more. He didn’t plan it so, but it was almost like he couldn’t allow himself to forget the sensation of hunger. That bitter, gnawing emptiness that had shadowed all his early years.

“When I was about nine years of age,” he went on, “I heard word of this place. A coffeehouse owned and entirely staffed by the deaf. I brought my mother around, and the owner—Anna’s late husband—gave her work as a scullery maid. I ran messages, shoveled coal.” His eyes went to the sloping ceiling. “They gave us this garret for our lodgings. I had a little cot, just there.” He pointed at the floorboards beneath her chair. “First real bed in my life. And at night, I lay down to it with a full belly. For the first time in years, my mother had steady work and friends with whom she could converse. She was happy. I was happy.

“It was only later, as I grew older, that I realized what advantages we should have had from the first, and what a toll those years of dire poverty had taken on my mother’s health. I finally came to understand the magnitude of suffering my fa—” He couldn’t use that word. “… the man who sired me had inflicted on her.”

“And on you, as well. Do you know who he was?”

He shook his head. “He’s dead. She told me that much, when I grew old enough to ask. The son died first, not long after I was born, leaving his father without an heir. When the old man died a few years later, the title passed to a distant relation. I gather my mother took me to the executor of the estate, hoping for a settlement.”

“I suppose she was denied one.”

He nodded.

“Julian …” Lily inched forward on her chair.

“Noblemen,” he said, ignoring her proffered sympathy, “came in to this coffeehouse every day. It was quite the fashionable meeting house, in its time. For years, I smoothed the creases from their newspapers, polished the buckles on their shoes, wiped their spit from the floor. And I watched my mother grow a little weaker every winter.”

“Until she died?”

With a curt nod, he slanted his gaze away.

“How old were you then?”

“Fourteen.” Fourteen. Half a man, and a total fool. “And I wasn’t even there for her. I was in jail when she fell ill.”

“In jail?” Her eyes widened. “At fourteen? For what?”

He shook his head. There was so much Lily didn’t know. Could never know. “I ran afoul of the wrong aristocrat. The details aren’t important now. What mattered was, I wasn’t there for my mother. There was no money saved. She was given an unmarked pauper’s grave.” Determined to prevent an outburst of emotion, he pressed a fist to his mouth. “She gave me life in a dusty storehouse, and I let her die alone.”