All Through the Night (6 page)

Anne turned to meet Jack’s gaze. An unexpected and thus unexpectedly charming dimple appeared in one cheek and self-mocking humor lightened her tone. “Colonel Seward here has saved society from becoming habitual by offering himself up as unknown territory.”

“How obliging of him.” Vedder’s voice was chill.

“Ah,” Mrs. Wilder started uneasily. “I have assumed too much. Do you not know Colonel Seward, Lord Vedder?”

“Yes, madam. I do.”

They eyed each other with the formal antipathy of two strange dogs.

“Vedder? Is that you, Vedder?” a female voice demanded.

Jack turned his head to find a small flotilla of females bearing down on them. Their leader, a handsome, sumptuously clad woman in her late twenties, reached them first. Lady Dibbs. Her eyes swept over Anne and Vedder and found Jack.

“Vedder, cruel man,” she said. Though she addressed the viscount, her gaze never left Jack’s face.

Was there some personal recognition in her eyes?

“We ladies have depended on you to make the stakes at the gaming table interesting and yet you stand here. How so, sir?”

Vedder bowed. “I am remiss, Lady Dibbs. But I must beg your indulgence. You see, I found Mrs. Wilder in need of company.”

The implication, Jack noted dispassionately, though meaning nothing to these late arrivals, was not lost on Anne Wilder.

“You are mistaken, sir.” Anne’s voice was rich and smooth as new cream. “Colonel Seward has been most charmingly attentive.”

This time Jack’s glance was startled, but, as her words made introductions inevitable, he had no time to consider why Anne should come to his rescue. Dutifully Jack bent over the other women’s hands, taking the opportunity to study Lady Dibbs as he did so.

She had a small though ample figure. Like Sophia North, her expression had a bold and demanding quality to it. Dressed in gilt satin and lace, she moved restlessly, the gems draping her throat and hanging from her ears winking in the light with each sharp movement.

“Found Mrs. Wilder alone, did you, Colonel Seward? And you,” she said, turning to Anne, “still soliciting for your soldiers, dear?” Her tone suggested that such petitions had resulted in Anne’s solitary condition.

Even Anne’s finely crafted repose was no match for such calculated cruelty. Rosy flags stained her cheeks.

“How fascinating,” Jack said.

“Sir?” Lady Dibbs fell eagerly on his murmur.

“Well,” Jack mused, “I have been wont to think of a certain number of those soldiers as
my
men. I know for a fact that Wellington thinks of quite a few as
his
and, well, the prince regent has proclaimed them
all
his men so I find it interesting you should choose to gift Mrs. Wilder with them.”

A smile quirked Lady Dibbs’s thin lips.

“Well, of course, they are, all of them, England’s men and, as such, England’s responsibility. Indeed, you remind me of my obligations, Colonel, and I thank you. I pledge you a thousand pounds, Mrs. Wilder. For our soldiers.”

A little gasp of appreciation arose from the group.

“Another
thousand pounds, that is,” Lady Dibbs declared, her eyes glittering like the jewels around her throat.

Jack looked to see Anne Wilder’s reaction to such munificence. She did not look particularly impressed.

“Then another thousand it shall be,” she replied softly. And with barely a glance in Jack’s direction, Anne excused herself to go look for her charge.

The cold wind sifted through the hansom’s floorboards, soaking through the thin kid leather of Anne’s shoes. She ignored the discomfort, turning up the collar of her wool mantle and peering out at the wintry streets. Across the river the sun slowly sank toward the horizon. A few more streets and she’d arrive at the Charitable Society for Soldiers’ Relief and Aid—or the Home, as the local denizens called it.

Anne settled back. She had much work to do there and she looked forward to it. For two weeks, ever since she and Sophia had been introduced to Colonel Seward—and he’d made his interest in them clear— she’d been plagued with anxiety. Each knock on the door brought her heart thundering to her throat. Each time the footman brought her his card—and there had been three such times—she’d gone to receive him certain he’d come to arrest her.

She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have preferred that because she could not for the life of her determine if he came to call on the Norths because he suspected her or because he was as drawn to her as she was to him. And she
was
drawn to him. She found herself taking pleasure from his visits and looking forward to his company. Which was insane!

The carriage came to a halt and the driver opened the door. She hastened from the enclosed carriage and up the shallow stone stairs to a set of tarnished brass doors.

One swung open. A boy of twelve or so doffed his cloth cap and stepped back for her to enter. She halted inside the foyer.

“Hello, Will,” she said, blowing into her hands.

The boy eyed her critically. She liked Will. Without his pragmatism and worldly advice she wouldn’t have accomplished what little she had achieved here.

“You didn’t show up none too soon, Mrs. Wilder,” he finally said. “The weather turnin‘ nasty and we gots twice as many people in here as normal. We ain’t gonna make any good impression on them lords and ladies lookin’ like we do. You know religious types likes their poor folks in nice straight lines.”

On some other day Will’s jaded perceptiveness might have made Anne smile. Not today. Come early this evening, a group of sober and extremely wealthy patrons would arrive to tour the Home. If she could impress them with the good being accomplished there, they might donate more money. More important, they might donate their expertise. The people she’d invited had long experience with running charitable institutes, something she sadly lacked.

“We’ll do what we can, Will. Where’s Mr. Fry?” she asked, looking around for the administrator.

“In the kitchen,” Will said. She pushed open one of the myriad doors leading to the main part of the building and entered, squinting in the dim light.

The Home had been a popular theater in a former incarnation. It still wore some signs of its former glory. Giant gilt pillars strained beneath the mostly collapsed balcony and chipped, garishly painted boxes hovered in the dark above a long-abandoned stage. The velvet curtains had long since come down and been slashed into squares to be used as blankets. All the chairs and most of the benches had been removed.

Now hundreds of people—more than she’d ever seen in here before—sat on the floor and leaned against waterstained walls, murmuring together in a low incessant pitch, like the ghosts of long-dead choruses. Their collective breaths created a cloud of vapor in the cavernous room.

It was cold and dark and dank, and in spite of all those crowding together in the room, it still seemed like an echoing, empty shell.

It never failed to depress her, yet she knew that for many it was a refuge of unparalleled comfort. So much want. So much need. Blank eyes followed her as she made her way toward the back of the room and the tiny kitchen. Occasional hands lifted, bestowing blessings and curses in equal portion. She couldn’t blame those who cursed her. What right had she to wear a woolen coat, when they had no shoes?

“We must get mittens for the children, Will,” she said softly.

The boy shrugged, matter-of-factly kicking out of his way a man reeking of alcohol. “If you be thinking to warm their hands, won’t do no good. The mittens will be stolen within the hour and the yarn unraveled and sold for food. What’s—”

“What are cold hands when you’re starving?” Anne finished for him, fighting off a sense of futility.

“That’s right, Missus Wilder,” Will said cheerfully.

“I’m not very good at this, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically.

“Aw, that’s all right, Missus Wilder,” the boy said magnanimously. “You gots too soft a heart is all, and them what has soft hearts don’t think so smart.” He tapped his finger against his forehead and Anne found herself wondering if Jack Seward had once been a boy like Will, tough and unsentimental and frighteningly able to deal with whatever horrors life handed him.

Jack with his stark, blasted archangel beauty and sharp, knowing eyes. She bit her lip, struggling to clear his image from her thoughts. She’d no right to think of Jack as anything but her enemy. In the past weeks she’d lost sight of that.

Will led her into the kitchen area. There were fewer people there. The stove squatting at the opposite end of the room did not heat this far, and its sullen glow was little augmented by the few tallow candles guttering noisily in wall sconces. Those near her huddled together, pooling whatever warmth their bodies could generate.

Rumor said Jack had spent his first years in a place like this. Only worse. Much worse.

“Where is Mr. Fry?” she muttered, scanning the room.

“Perhaps he went back up front,” Will suggested.

“Find him, Will. Tell him I have to talk to him about the finances. Before these people arrive.” Mr. Fry couldn’t reveal how much money she’d given him. She hadn’t the subscriptions to warrant such sums, and they would know it.

“Aye, missus.” Will sketched a short salute and darted through the crowd, winning curses from those he stepped on in his haste.

“Mrs. Wilder?” An elderly woman plucked at her sleeve with gnarled fingers.

With a sense of despair, Anne looked down at the eager, attentive face turned up toward her. “Yes, Mrs. Cashman?”

Mary Cashman’s son John had sustained a severe head wound while under Matthew’s command. It had resulted in his discharge from the navy. His fate more than any other gutted Anne with guilt.

“Did you ‘ear anythin’ from the Admiralty Board yet, ma’am?” the old woman asked hopefully.

“Not yet, Mrs. Cashman. But we will not stop until we have your inheritance.”

Cashman had spent two years hounding the Admiralty Board for his back pay so that his mother might no longer need to beg. Finally, angry, drunk, and frustrated, he’d stumbled into a rally of disgruntled would-be revolutionaries breaking into a gunsmith’s shop. Too drunk to run, Cashman had been the only one apprehended.

He had been tried, found guilty of insurrection, and hanged. His last wish had been that his back pay should go to his mother.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cashman.”

If John Cashman had not been on Matthew’s ship . . . Pointless. Too bloody many “ifs” crowded her thoughts. If John hadn’t been under Matthew’s command ... If Matthew had married his childhood sweetheart, Julia Knapp . . . If she’d been able to love him as he deserved ... If Jack and she had only met earlier . . .

The elderly woman nodded bleakly. She was tired and beaten down and ill and she wanted only two things: her son exonerated and her inheritance.

“He weren’t no traitor, ma’am,” she said quietly. “He ‘ad courage, Johnny did. ’The Gallant Tar‘ them papers called him, and I guess he was.”

“Mrs. Cashman—”

“Hush, now, ma’am.” Mrs. Cashman put a grimy finger over her cracked lips. “We won’t rock the boat. Just hold the course a bit longer. All will come right . . .”

“Yes, Mrs. Cashman.”

The old lady smiled. “Don’t look so, missus. You have your own worries and frets. Losing a man like Captain Wilder. Johnny said he was the finest, most decent gentleman he ever served under.”

“Aye, a true gentleman,” a bleary voice behind her announced. “And a bloody awful captain.”

A man clomped out of the shadows, braced up on a wood peg and supported by a rude crutch. He was missing both an arm and a leg.

Mary Cashman hissed at him. “What you want to be sayin‘ somethin’ like that for, Frank O’Shea? After all Mrs. Wilder done for you.”

O’Shea’s lower lip stuck out defiantly. The scent of cheap whiskey blanketed him. “Got me worse than killed, your fine husband did. A gentleman playing at war!”

Anne had no reply. She stared at the ruin of a poorly severed arm, the peg where a leg should have been. Matthew had not only killed himself but sacrificed an entire crew with his inexperience and wanton courage.

She could have stopped him; she couldn’t have. Her thoughts twisted together like snakes, venomous and corrupting.

Abruptly the fight went out of O’Shea. His eyes watered and he blinked. “Don’t throw me out, ma’am. I don’t know wot got into me. I h’aint got no other place to go. I only meant that the captain was too much the gentleman. He ‘adn’t the guts for war, if ye know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Anne replied faintly.

“See?” The drunk cast Mary Cashman a righteous glare. “Mrs. Wilder knows ‘er ’usband ‘adn’t no place commanding a ship.” His head bobbed on his thin neck like an overripe apple on a slender branch. “He shoulda been ’ome, pettin’ ’is ‘ounds and takin’ tea with ‘is lady wife.“

His words fell on her ears like a curse. Anne stared at him as guilt welled and gibbered within her.

He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. The movement and drink served to unbalance him. His crutch clattered to the floor and he foundered on his one remaining leg.

Anne reached out to him just as he fell. He gasped, grabbing for her, his eyes widening with panic and embarrassment. She caught him. For a second his face, so near to hers, tightened with self-awareness and fury.

Why, Anne realized in startled despair, he was a young man. Probably not much older than herself. He’d once had prospects that war and Matthew combined had seen an abrupt end to.

“I ‘ate being crippled!” O’Shea ground out through clenched teeth, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I
’ate
what I ‘ave become.”

“I know. I know,” Anne murmured, easing him gently to the ground. Mrs. Cashman clucked her tongue and retrieved his crutch.

He snatched it from her and turned away. “Go ‘way,” he said sullenly. “Go the bloody ’ell away.”

“You gots other things to worry about,” Mrs. Cashman said to her. “I’ll take care of O’Shea here. You gots all them noble people comin‘ to look at us, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes. I do,” she said. She knew she was babbling but the words just poured forth trying to stop the inner voice that shouted condemnation at her. “I have to find Will and Mr. Fry. It’s imperative that we make a good impression—”

A thick coil of hair suddenly slipped free of her careful coiffure and unraveled over her shoulder. She looked down. Her skirts spread over the floor, damp with stains. Her gloves were soiled and dirty.

Appearances meant so much to these people. A woman could fund a charitable institute, but she must never allow herself to become involved in the sordid workings of it. Only a coarse, vulgar woman would do so, and coarse, vulgar women did not get support from rich, well-bred ones. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. So much for good impressions.

The simple fact that Anne Wilder roused a deep yearning in him did not exempt her from observation. So Jack had followed her to this tawdry section of the city where his thief had pawned her stolen goods.

He stopped a discreet distance from the converted theater that now acted as a charitable institute, and warmed his hands by a chestnut vendor’s brazier, occasionally stomping his feet against the sloppy, ice-crusted mud. The rain began in earnest. He adjusted his collar time and again, but the water dripping from the brim of his hat still found a way to trace frigid rivulets down his back. He deliberated over whether he ought to go in after her. She might be meeting someone in there who dealt in stolen goods. Workhouses were a fine place to meet criminals. Still, he held back.

Because he didn’t want to see her in that place.

Though it wore the tawdry air of an abandoned theater, the Home still exuded the aroma of a workhouse: sweat, gin, and desperation. He could smell it from here, nearly two blocks away.

Anne had probably never known the type of people who ended up there: men and women who experienced sex as nothing more than a bodily release because their minds and spirit were too numbed to partake of any other portion of it, children who would trade anything or anyone simply to live another day. People like he’d been.

As minute bled into minute he found himself growing anxious. She’d gone in there alone. Yes, she was their benefactress, but Jack knew firsthand how little that meant to a desperate man. What if she’d gone out a door leading into an alley and been accosted? What if she’d met someone in a lonely corridor in the building itself? What if—

He wouldn’t rest until he saw she was safe. He crossed the sleet-blackened street, bracing himself against the scent and look of the place as he strode up the stairs to the front door. Twenty-five years ago he’d left a place like this. He’d never gone back inside another one. He didn’t want to go now.