Bound by Your Touch (18 page)

Now Sanburne laughed openly. This caught the woman's attention; she craned her head around the door to have a look at him. When her attention lit on his rings, she made a little
tsk
of surprise. "What's Polly to do
With you,
then?"

"I don't know," Lydia said. "It seems she knew a business associate of my father's—a Mr. Hartnett."

"Oh, I'd say she knew him."

"Perhaps you will explain it to us," Sanburne suggested with a charming smile. "But the stairwell doesn't offer near as lovely a view as your flat, Mrs. . . ."

The woman snorted. "Mrs. Ogilvie, and the flats more trouble than it's worth—seven pound a month for less room than you'd give a mouse. You're more than welcome to it."

A bank note flashed in his hand. Lydia took a mortified breath; Mrs. Ogilvie scowled at the note as though he'd offered a glowing coal. "I don't want your money," she said. "I'm not like me sister."

"Consider it a fair exchange," Sanburne suggested. "We're quite puzzled by why your sister would contact Miss Boyce. As she says, her father was acquainted with Mr. Hartnett, but we don't understand his connection with your sister."

"Well. I can't tell you what she wanted of you, but I know a thing or two of what she had from
him."
Mrs. Ogilvie glanced back to the note. "And she did eat me out of house and home."

Lydia peered over her shoulder into the small, dark room. The roof sloped, so there was barely space to crouch at either end of the room. But the place was neat, and tried to be cheerful. A pretty chintz sheet draped a small table by the stove; another lay across the cot shoved under the eaves. A fern sat on the win-dowsill, soaking up what sun it could get. And the walls were decorated with framed prints, some of them professional beauties. Making a quick decision, she said, "Why, you have a picture of Mrs. Chudderley! Viscount, look—she has a picture of Elizabeth on her wall! The viscount is a great friend of hers," she confided to the matron.

"
Viscount,
you say?" Now the door swung fully open. "La dee da! What's Polly about, poking around in
your
affairs? Don't tell me she's crossed you."

"Indeed not," Sanburne said.

"Well, then. I expect you can afford
this."
She took the money. "Don't pay to be proud, they say. Though you might count it a poor trade, for the story's quite simple. Come in, then, but the tea's run out and I've only got the one chair."

Inside, Lydia tried to resist the seat, but Mrs. Ogilvie insisted on it, clearing away a newspaper and a very fine sketch. Lydia commented on the picture.

"My youngest did it," the woman said, and handed it over for inspection. "Quite a hand with the drawings. And she adores her aunt Polly. That's Polly, there."

Smiling eyes, and a gentle quirk to her mouth. "She's very lovely," Lydia said, and felt unaccountably displeased by the discovery.

Mrs. Ogilvie shrugged. "Flash, is what she is. Mores the trouble—Mary looks up to her for it. Worries me. Bright as a button, Mary, but with her auntie's eye for trouble." She gave Sanburne's money a litde shake. "Don't think it's for me. 'Twill go to Mary, all of it.

Now, as for me sister. I'm not sure what I can tell you. She's never been one to confide in me."

Lydia waited for Sanburne to reply, but he seemed content to let her speak. She cleared her throat, treading tentatively into murky waters. "You recognized Mr. Hart-nett's name. Was Miss Marshall... close with him?"

Mrs. Ogilvie's mouth took on a wry twist. "Now, there's one way to put it. Are we going to speak plainly, or do you fancy ladies like to dance around the matter?"

"Plainly," Sanburne said, with a wink in Lydia's direction. "Miss Boyce does not enjoy dancing."

Mrs. Ogilvie looked at her as though reconsidering her decision to let them inside. "There's a shame. Whyever not?"

Lydia felt herself turning red. "Um—"

"She thinks she isn't good at it," Sanburne said

"I never said so," she shot back—although he was right, of course.

"La, lass! I could think of worse partners," Mrs. Ogilvie said, with a brief but encompassing look over Sanburne's form. "Make merry in May, I say. December comes all too quickly. At any rate, we'll speak plain, then. Polly was in Hartnett's keeping." She gave a philosophic shrug. "Some eleven years now. Took up before the wife died, and kept on ever after. He had set her up over in St. John's Wood—good as married, she said; what's the use of a ring? But when he passed, it left her in a fix. Not a penny for her in the will. There's the use of a ring, says I. Landlord had her out within two days. I took her in, fed her, gave her a floor to sleep on. But it came to enough when the men started coming by to harass her. A rotten lot, they are: bunch of petty swindlers and thieves. I've Mary to think of, don't I? And she took a dislike to Reggie—caused trouble between us, last night. Couldn't have that, even if she is me sister."

Lydia had latched on to a single word. Everything else paled in comparison to its significance. "Thieves," she said softly. Could Miss Marshall or her friends have gotten to the shipment? But how?

"Oh, aye. Had that look to them, at any rate."

"Did Mr. Hartnett know she kept such company?"

Mrs. Ogilvie gave a sour smile. "I've no idea, miss. Although I heard them mention him a few rimes—did sound like he was right cozy with them. Called him Johnny."

She sat back, shocked. This did not square. Surely her father's old friend from university was not familiar with petty criminals!

"Don't mean to upset you," Mrs. Ogilvie added. "I'm sure your father has nothing to do with it."

To Lydia's discomfort, the reassurance sounded patently insincere. "Of course he doesn't," she said forcefully. "Do you have any idea where we might find your sister, then?"

The woman sighed. "Wish I did. I told her Molly Malloy might take her in. They're friends from back in the day. But Molly hasn't seen her. Maybe ask at the gin palace down the lane. I smelled it on her, a couple of times. Couldn't rightly blame her, what with the troubles she's been through of late. Say." This was for Sanburne, as she nodded toward Mrs. Chudderley's photo. "Tell me about that one. I like to look at her, I do. But tell me she's a mean, wicked thing, won't you. For I don't believe in justice, if her heart's as kind as her face."

I could tell you a thing or two,
Lydia thought.

"Alas," said the Viscount, "I can tell you no such thing." Lydia gave him a disbelieving look. "Elizabeth is all sweetness and light."

"La!
Elizabeth,
is it? That's right friendly. Around here, it's not till an engagement that a man gets so forward." Her brows waggled suggestively.

Rolling her eyes, Lydia came to her feet. But if Sanburne took notice of her intention to depart, he ignored it. "We're very old friends," he said. "She was raised on the neighboring estate."

"Estate," Mrs. Ogilvie cooed, looking about as reverent as if he'd shared the secret to immortality. "Well, isn't that something. I expect she has a big fancy carriage, and a wardrobe full of dresses, all velvet and sateen."

The floor began to vibrate. Lydia looked with alarm to her feet. It felt as if her wild thoughts were coming to fruition, and the building was about to come down. But as the shaking continued, she realized that an audible thumping accompanied it: someone was climbing the stairs to the garret.

As Sanburne and Mrs. Ogilvie nattered on about the magnificent Elizabeth, a whisde began to penetrate the walls. At this sound, Mrs. Ogilvie's pleasant disposition faltered. "Why, that's Reggie! He's supposed to be at the workshop!"

"Oh,
ytsi
ⁿ
Sanburne put his hat back on. "We'll bid you good day, then."

"You can't go out—he'll pass you on the stairs. I'm the only one in, this time of day." Mrs. Ogilvie was turning white. "God in heaven! One look at you and he'll think I'm whoring again, he will. He'll take one look at your fancy clothes and try to kill you. Out the window," she concluded abruptly.

Lydia, still shocked by the main admission, did not catch the significance of this last bit. But she did notice Sanburne frown toward window.
"Really?"he.
asked.

"There's a little ladder to the roof. You can wait it out there."

Sanburne shrugged and began to cross toward it. Catching on, Lydia grabbed his arm. "I beg your pardon! I will not be scrambling on roofs!"

Sanburne stopped. "No?"

The matron was clearly in a panic—she had clawed back the mattress and was stuffing Sanburne's cash beneath it. "It's perfecdy safe out there," she said distractedly. "Why, on a fine night, Mary and I like to go out and see if we can spot any stars."

"I could always shoot him," Sanburne offered.

"No!" Lydia and Mrs. Ogilvie said at the same time.

"Then let's go for a climb." He began to wind open the window. "Oh
yes,"
he said as he looked over the sill. "Come, Miss Boyce, there's a nice little balcony for you to jump to."

The whistling was growing louder with each passing second. She was badly tempted to tell Sanburne to go ahead: surely Reggie wouldn't kill a woman?

A rough shove at her back had her stumbling forward. "Hurry up," Mrs. Ogilvie puffed in her ear. "Bless you, miss,
hurry"
And then Sanburne was taking her by the waist and lifting her out into the soft spring air.

She looked down—and jerked backward, right into his arms. The children playing knucklebone looked very tiny from this height.

"Don't do that," he said mildly, and stepped out after her.

"Don't do what?"

"Look over here instead." He took her hand and planted it firmly on the windowframe. "Simply step around to your right. I'll be right behind you. Come, Miss Boyce—it's an adventure."

Her knees were shaking so badly that she wondered whether they would support her. She sidled along the narrow ledge—one could not, in fairness, call it anything so dignified as a
balcony
—to the point where the dormer ended and the flat roof began. On a deep breath, she stepped onto it—and prompdy fell to hands and knees, scrambling forward to a spot sufficiently removed from the eave. She turned in time to see Sanburne step onto the slate. Beyond his head was a sea of rooftops: dormers filled with cracked windowpanes; chimneys balancing at odd angles against a vast and empty sky.

She scooted back against the side of the dormer.
An adventure, indeed.
Humans weren't meant to have such views. "It will collapse beneath our weight."

Sanburne lowered himself to sit beside her. "It's sturdy enough for an elephant, Miss Boyce. And what a view!"

She did not agree. The skyline raised a queer feeling in her. It brought to mind a game she had once seen for sale in the Strand, a moveable model of the West End, with litde bridges and palaces and houses, a miniature Buckingham Palace, tiny carriages to push along the finely painted paths of Hyde Park. But the game had glossed over this slum. So many buildings, huddled and cracking. She had no idea what the names of the streets were, here. The thousands of people they housed might as well have not existed, either, for all they were meant to matter to her. They were in the heart of London, but it could as easily have been Egypt to her. "Mrs. Ogilvie does not come up^here to look for stars," she muttered. The sight of this dark, tangled sprawl must make her garret feel like a palace—a bulwark against the tide of poverty stretching out before them.

"No," Sanburne said quiedy. "I imagine not."

"It's not fair," she began—and then stopped. It was a childish observation, and he would no doubt laugh at her for it.

His hair brushed her cheek as his head turned toward her. His breath warmed her neck as he spoke. "You look angry," he observed. "Not with me, I hope."

"I am not angry," she said stiffly. She felt embarrassed, although she didn't understand why. "I simply don't understand why we had to climb out the window."

"Hostess's rules, darling. Bad form to brawl with her husband."

Her gaze settled on a pigeon. She had never expected to feel envy for such a creature, but its confident hop across the shingles made her covet, rather urgently, the luxury of wings. "I do not like heights."

"I would tell you I won't let you fall," he said. "But perhaps I shouldn't."

"I hope that doesn't mean you intend to push me!"

"It means fear has its own pleasures."

She gave him a sidelong look, but could muster no answer to that piece of rubbish.

"Behold its miraculous effects," he said. "I have my hand around your waist and you haven't taken note."

She looked down in startlement. He was right. But there was nowhere else for his arm to go. "That's no pleasure. That's necessity."

He laughed. "How lowering. But when my hand lifts ..." He slid it slowly upward.

She caught her breath, her eyes widening. The scoundrel was going to—

"Et voila,
"he said. "Not necessary in the least."

His fingers rested on a part of her anatomy that had no business being touched by him.

"Now," he murmured in her ear, "you can say I am taking shameless advantage of this situation, or..." His fingers tightened slightly, cupping her. "You can praise my creativity. Either way, you're no longer thinking about falling."