To Tempt a Saint (12 page)
Authors: Kate Moore
“Do you think we’ve sold our souls for clean sheets, real candles, and someone to carry coals?”
“No.”
And some of us haven’t even succeeded in selling our bodies.
And some of us haven’t even succeeded in selling our bodies.
Charlie yawned and slipped down against the pillows. “We aren’t ever going home again, are we, Cleo? Not really.”
“What a thing to say!” She rumpled his hair, the one gesture of affection he permitted her these days. “You are going home as soon as you come of age, and I will live here, not a mile distant. We will see each other every day, and if you don’t marry at once, I will come and redecorate your whole house in the Egyptian style.” She swung her legs off the bed and headed for the door.
“If your husband doesn’t murder you and March doesn’t take me away.”
“Sorry. You’ll not be so lucky. Shall I predict your fate like an oracle?” Cleo held her arm before her eyes. “Wait, I see your doom—a haircut, new clothes, and hours of work with the best grinder we can find, and by January term—school.”
Chapter Seven
C
LEO did not have her knife handy when she encountered her new husband at breakfast. He had returned to the house some time after two, while she lay sleepless in the unfamiliar bed, in the restless city. Apparently, neither her money, which he now controlled, nor her person, which he refused, had the power to move him.
LEO did not have her knife handy when she encountered her new husband at breakfast. He had returned to the house some time after two, while she lay sleepless in the unfamiliar bed, in the restless city. Apparently, neither her money, which he now controlled, nor her person, which he refused, had the power to move him.
In the night his footsteps had paused outside her door and passed, and the blaze of light in his house had gone dark.
Now he sat over an untouched plate, reading a pamphlet from a stack in front of him, looking sartori ally splendid and entirely too rested. She, on the other hand, in an old green wool dress, looked as seductive as a dusty yew tree. And she did not have the first idea how to coax her husband to her bed. She would have to relearn the arts of allurement.
His gaze met hers briefly. “You don’t have to rise for breakfast.”
“Would you rather I lay abed in silks, sipping chocolate while you go to the bank?”
He returned to his reading, and Cleo stepped to the sideboard, loaded with platters of eggs and ham, toast, and pots of jam. She filled a plate and took her place at the table.
Her husband quirked one dark brow upward.
“Am I looking with too much longing on the ham?”
“I won’t let you or your brother starve.”
“I suppose I am so used to our lacks that it will take me a while to grow accustomed to abundance.”
He handed her a week-old issue of the morning paper, folded open to a three-line announcement of their union under the heading “MARRIED.” The paper listed their nuptials with singular appropriateness in a long column of commercial transactions between “PARTNERSHIP DISSOLVED” and “DIED.”
Cleo put down the paper. “It’s official then. I may confidently take up my wifely duties.”
He did not look up. “Would you consider attending a dinner sufficiently wifely?”
“Will it stop Uncle March?”
At the mention of her uncle, his cool gaze met hers. Nothing betrayed his feelings about her question.
“It will help.”
“I have nothing to wear. How is that for a wifely response?”
“I’ve sent for a dressmaker.”
Ahead of her again
. “After our trip to the bank, of course.” Cleo had a long list of plans for her funds.
. “After our trip to the bank, of course.” Cleo had a long list of plans for her funds.
He put down his pamphlet. “I’m not going to the bank today.”
“But we agreed. My brother needs clothes and a tutor for his entrance exams. He needs a haircut.” Cleo’s plate clinked as she put it down. Now that he had access to her money, her husband was going back on their bargain. She had pinned too much hope on a solicitor’s papers and that kiss in the church.
Once, she had accepted kisses, as if she were collecting tributes to her desirability. Her entrance into London society had been managed by a widowed cousin of her father who had been careless at best in her approach to Cleo’s debut. Cousin Lydia’s advice had been—
You’re greener than grass in May, and they’ll all be about you for your papa’s money, so mind your step—
a fair warning that Cleo herself would be of little interest to men.
You’re greener than grass in May, and they’ll all be about you for your papa’s money, so mind your step—
a fair warning that Cleo herself would be of little interest to men.
But oh, how London could go to a girl’s head. To Miss Cleopatra Spencer it seemed that the whole glittering city was present and took notice when she entered a ballroom. She knew better now, or thought she did. Xander Jones was teaching her still more lessons in her own insignificance. London loved money even more than beauty and would flatter and court those who had it as long as they had it, and drop them when it was gone.
The morning room door opened, and Will Jones sauntered in, unshaven and ripe-smelling. “Did you find it?” he asked his brother without any acknowledgment of Cleo’s presence.
Xander Jones held up the pamphlet. “A plasterer named Harris died at Number Forty Bread Street last November.”
“That confirms only one part of Cullen’s story.” Will turned to the sideboard.
Cleo stole a glance at the pamphlet. The Bills of Mortality. Xander Jones was reading the weekly printed record of those who died in London. He had a stack of them beside him on the table. Her breakfast congealed on the pretty plate. She put down her fork. Uncle March read them, too, a habit of his she’d discovered when he moved into their house following her father’s death.
Will Jones immediately began to fill a plate. “You’re not coming with me dressed like that,” he said over his shoulder to Xander. He glanced at Cleo. “She’d do better on Bread Street than you. Put a greasy apron around her middle, and she’ll fit right in.”
“She’s not going near Bread Street,” Xander said.
“Good morning to you, too,” Cleo said to her brother-in-law. He paused in his plate loading but offered no greeting. The two brothers seemed different because of the contrast in their dress, but now Cleo could see that both had the same hard-edged profile.
The scrape of Will Jones’s serving spoon filled the ensuing pause.
“Go naked then, Xan, or come by my place. I’ve got proper rags for you.” Will Jones sat down next to Cleo and dug into the mound of buttered eggs and ham on his plate. Cleo wondered that he could enjoy them with all the smells that emanated from his clothes. Smoke and stale spirits dominated the mix. She shifted to give him room.
He stiffened and shot her a caustic glance. Then he leaned close, one beery shoulder nudging hers, and said, “It’s not polite to think ill of people.” He righted himself and stabbed a piece of ham. “But”—he winked at her—“it’s very smart.”
Cleo turned to her husband. “We have a bargain about the bank.”
“When I go, you go.” He rose and withdrew his pocketbook and put a stack of bank notes on the table. “Amos gives a good haircut. I recommend Mr. Hodge as a grinder. Tomorrow Serena Perez is coming to fit you with some clothes.”
“Am I restricted to the house then?”
His level gaze didn’t change. “Go where you wish. Alice will accompany you. Local tradesmen are quite accustomed to calling. Even at this house.”
The door closed behind him.
She stared at her plate, her appetite gone. She had intended no insult. She knew that tradesmen would call. She was just out of practice with London ways. Her shoulders slumped. It was a poor start to a campaign of seduction.
Beside her Will Jones ate steadily. The scrape of his knife and fork against the china filled her ears. After a minute he stood and leaned over her. She could see his empty plate. “Next time, love, choose your ground more carefully. The battle won’t be won over eggs and a rasher of bacon.”
X
ANDER stood at the foot of Bread Street, choking on its foulness and thinking inconvenient thoughts about his wife. He had dreamed of her naked. She had been under his roof less than a day. He had spent three-quarters of an hour with her in the company of his lawyer, had walked by her closed door, had banished knowledge of her nearness from his conscious mind in the last minutes before sleep, and still she had invaded his dreams, had stepped down the hall on light feet in a white lawn shift to stand beside his dreaming self, reproach and invitation in those green eyes. His unconscious mind had reached for her like a beggar.
ANDER stood at the foot of Bread Street, choking on its foulness and thinking inconvenient thoughts about his wife. He had dreamed of her naked. She had been under his roof less than a day. He had spent three-quarters of an hour with her in the company of his lawyer, had walked by her closed door, had banished knowledge of her nearness from his conscious mind in the last minutes before sleep, and still she had invaded his dreams, had stepped down the hall on light feet in a white lawn shift to stand beside his dreaming self, reproach and invitation in those green eyes. His unconscious mind had reached for her like a beggar.
He was long past unprofitable fantasies about gently bred ladies. At seventeen he had fallen in love and proposed marriage to a widow. Newly arrived at Oxford, he had broken his collarbone in a football match. When his friends carried him to the nearest house, Anne Reede had opened her back sitting room and eventually her arms to him.
In pain, and under the influence of his first and only dose of laudanum, he had been unable to leave the makeshift bed arranged in her sitting room. In that waking daze Anne had passed in and out of his sight, a gentle vision in gray silks, unhurried, unruffled, caring with sweet sternness and ready laughter to her own small boys. She handled his friends’ inquiries with ease and authority, and had procured from them some necessities for his comfort.
On the third day she had shaved and bathed him, and his sleeplessness had had an entirely new cause. She came to bid him goodnight, her own sleepy boys clinging to her skirts, her hands idly ruffling their hair, and he had fallen irrevocably in love. With her unerring perceptiveness she understood his need before he did, and for all her quiet voice and calm manner, she contained a storm of passion. When she became his lover, he learned how strong a streak of sensuality his nature possessed. He offered marriage.
She refused him with gentle firmness, but when he took his suit to her family, they removed her to the south and married her to a man of standing in the world. His collarbone healed perfectly.
So Xander knew a man might dream of fairy princesses locked in their high towers, but princesses always came with nasty dragons. Even an unwanted princess, like Cleo Spencer, had March. It made no sense then that from their first meeting, he had been aware of an electric attraction, more than he had felt in years for any woman. His nerves trapped the charge of her presence, bottling up a most inconvenient desire when his plan was to end their marriage as soon as he found Kit.
Her demand that they make a babe was no part of that plan. To imagine her with his babe at her breast was like offering the dragon a piece of toast on a stick. A babe was permanent. A babe tied two people into a bargain or a contest that could last a lifetime and that did the babe very little good. A babe became an inconvenient boy, stuffed in a closet, blind and choked, ears filled with voices that deceived, accused, blamed, and parted.
He would not bed his bride, and he would banish her from his dreams.
In front of him Bread Street was real enough. It twisted up a slight hill to the west. Buildings of crumbling lath and plaster, soot-blackened brick, and rotting wood tilted against one another, their steep roofs at crazy angles. A foul trickle ran along both curbs and disappeared in black gully holes at the edge of the cobbles. Men and women slouched in and out of the public house on the lower east side and in and out of the fish shop where the curve of Upper Bread Street began. Strings of crisp-fried, shiny brown bloaters hung in the window, six for a penny. Below the fish shop the street opened to the east on a wide, rubbish-filled court.
A group of idlers, as filthy and oddly sorted as the buildings around them, slumped on a low set of steps opposite the court. A stranger who tried pass to them, even in rags, faced a reckoning. They knew their own. A man from a rival street or a lost soul would be set upon, stripped of his possessions, and left to come to consciousness on the foul stones with only the lint in his pockets. According to Will even the police rarely ventured to enter the neighborhood and always came in sufficient numbers for self-defense.
The idlers roused themselves to jeer as a woman at an upper window tossed out the contents of a night soil pot, narrowly missing a donkey cart driver. A grimy urchin with an empty beer can seized the moment to dart from one of the basement dwellings past the loafers, headed for the pub.
Not a chance. A large, leather-faced fellow snagged the boy with one long arm and dangled him by his scrawny legs, shaking loose a few coppers from his pocket. The child slunk back toward his hole with a tear-streaked face.
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