Proper Scoundrel (3 page)

Marcus drew his hand back. “Miss Emmy, I’m going to put this penny on the floor where you can reach it. Then I’m going to sit and watch the puppets from over there.” He pointed to a spot near the wall, not too far distant.

When he straightened, Marcus saw that Jade had witnessed his failure. This time, however, when he met her gaze, she looked away, and the rigid set of her spine lessened, though not to a great degree.

Not sure what that meant and still hoping to see Emily smile, Marcus shrugged inwardly and moved away. The puppet show had started.

The room erupted in laughter as Ivy’s German pup, a Dachshund named Tweenie, made her entrance with the brim of a bottoms-up top hat between her teeth.

With everyone’s attention on the pup, Emily picked up her penny.

“It’s a sausage doggy,” a boy said. “A red one. Look, she’s standing.”

“She’s begging,” his mother said. “Your penny! Put it in her hat.”

Once they understood Tweenie was collecting admissions, the process went giggling-quick, until peppermint-stick-boy refused to give up his penny.

Marcus laughed and stood calling for their attention. “After the show, I’ll give you each a penny to keep. Give the one you’ve got now to Tweenie.”

Soon Ivy’s pup stood begging before Emily, who appeared as enamoured of the pup as the penny. With a shy bit of hesitation, she turned to look at Marcus, her lashes coyly shadowing her eyes.

Marcus wanted to whoop, but he nodded solemnly instead. “Go ahead, Emily. I’ll give you another.” He lowered himself to the floor, his back against a gilded side chair.

Face pink, Emily opened her fist over the top hat, but her penny stuck to her palm, before it dropped “plink” inside.

Tweenie had finished collecting so Marcus patted his thigh, and the Dachshund waddled over to set the hat beside him. Then she climbed into his lap, circled thrice—stepping once where she ought not—and curled up to sleep.

Emily’s gaze followed the pup, and now she looked up, eyes wide, at Marcus. He glanced down at his hand stroking Tweenie’s sleek red back and swallowed his smile.

Ivy pitted Sergei the wolf puppet against Hector the hedgehog. “Be quiet now, I need to sleep,” Hedgehog told the audience as he settled down to snore.

Sergei the Wolf wrapped himself in the cream wool pelt of a sheep and approached the sleeping hedgehog.

“Wake up. Wake up,” the children shouted to hedgehog.

Emily split her attention between the stage and Tweenie. When she glanced at him, Marcus crooked his finger to call her over.

Emily looked quickly away.

A minute later, she climbed from Lacey’s lap and sat beside her, as if to watch the puppet show from there. Then, at the rate of about an inch a minute, Emily began to sidle toward Marcus, until she sat closer to him than Lacey.

“Take off one of your slippers,” Marcus whispered. “If you do, Tweenie will do a trick for you.”

Emily began to struggle with a slipper.

Out of nowhere, Jade knelt to help her.

Emily stroked Jade’s hair lovingly.

Again Marcus experienced an odd yearning to belong—different, mature, dangerous—and he pushed it aside.

“Pull Emily’s stocking toe out a bit,” Marcus said, then he gave Emily a conspiring grin. “Now, Emmy, reach your foot over here and wiggle your toes.”

He wasn’t sure who looked more puzzled, Emily or Jade, but at Jade’s nod, Emily did as he bid, and a minute didn’t pass before Tweenie’s head popped up.

The pup crept slowly from Marcus’s lap and toward Emily’s foot, making Emily slide back, until Tweenie caught the sock’s toe between her teeth.

Emily gasped and pulled her foot full back, but Tweenie wouldn’t stop tugging on her stocking, pulling it this way and that, as he backed away.

The child caught the game and, that fast, a tug of war ensued between Emily and Tweenie.

When Emily fell back giggling helplessly, the puppet show came to a halt, and Marcus saw tears on more than one amazed face.

Jade looked soft, and ... approachable, and Marcus knew a gut-deep ache for something he shouldn’t want, didn’t deserve, and couldn’t have, because he owed a lifetime of responsibility to the brother he had all but destroyed.

“You can’t stay,” Jade said, firming his resolve with her own.

“I know,” Marcus said, wishing he could leave immediately.

Whether the sudden round of cheers and applause lauded Emily’s giggles or Ivy’s puppets didn’t matter. Though Marcus needed to find another place to stay in Newhaven, from which to conduct his investigation, he felt damned good about the way his attempt to soothe Emily turned out.

Though sorry he’d lost Jade’s good opinion, he wondered how he could lose something he’d never had, but devil-a-bit, that’s the way he felt.

In one last pull, Tweenie won the tug-of-war and raced away with Emily’s prize sock, then Ivy came out to present the child with a new pair from the assortment he carried to reimburse Tweenie’s victims.

Marcus had lost one of his own to the pup the night they’d spent on the road. Ivy—or Tweenie, he should say—kept a number of Sussex women employed knitting socks of all sizes.

After Marcus distributed another round of pennies, Lacey Ashton approached him. “I came to thank you, Mr. Fitzalan, for your patient efforts to temper Emily’s fear.”

“A rewarding diversion, Miss Ashton, and my pleasure.”

Then Jade stood before him, and Marcus nodded a greeting. “If Emily’s father is the man who frightened her witless,” he said, “no wonder your low opinion of men.”

“Which are you?” Jade asked, nodding toward the puppet stage. “The wolf or the sheep?”

Marcus tugged on his ear. “I, er, believe I’m the hedgehog —like you—prickly for the most part, but soft when ... soothed.

His nemesis stiffened once more.

Marcus nearly smiled. His skill and his need for an inconspicuous place to stay in Newhaven, coupled with Jade’s need for a man of affairs, made Ivy consider them a perfect match, and Marcus thought, sure they were, like kindling and fire, they were a match.

“In the event that I am willing to reconsider your employment,” Jade said, charging the silence, and him, with a fool’s hope. “Do you care to explain the other bit of business Ivy said you have in Newhaven?”

“I’m afraid I cannot,” Marcus said. “’Tis a bit of private business on behalf of the Earl of Attleboro that I am not at liberty to divulge.”

“Score one for loyalty,” Jade snapped as she turned to oversee the arriving teacart—this minute an elegant hostess, the last, a scandal in black leather.

Everything about the woman put him on alert, made him want to know her ... in every sense, including the biblical, except that he’d ruined what little chance he had.

Marcus knelt and welcomed Tweenie’s diverting kisses. He’d rather have Jade Smithfield’s, of course, but enthusiasm won over disinterest on the best of days, and despite his regret, Marcus found himself laughing.

The small cake thrust under his nose came as a surprise.

Tweenie’s tail slapped Marcus’s leg, either in response to the cake, or its giver, or both.

“Is that for me?” Marcus asked Emily, who offered it with a trembling hand and raised chin.

His brave china doll nodded solemnly.

“Thank you, Emily,” Marcus said, accepting it.

Biting into it, he made sounds of delightful appreciation solely to entertain her. “Eccles cakes stuffed with currants; my favourite.”

Emily stood watching him, a cake of her own in her other hand, a light in her eyes, no smile on her face.

“Would you care to join us for tea?” Marcus settled himself once again on the floor, his back against the wall.

Emily nodded, more or less.

“Tweenie, as you can see, likes the centre of my lap, so if you’d like to pet her, you may want to perch here on my knee. Would that be comfortable for you?”

Emily hesitated, then sat, shocking him out of countenance, her back straight and stiff, so Marcus took care not to brace her. Better for her to fall, without support, than to run because of his touch.

With Tweenie’s unsolicited help, she finished her cake quickly, and began petting the pup whose eyes closed in contentment. Eventually Emily relaxed her posture as well, before she slumped exhausted against him.

Tweenie caught the movement and settled her puppy snout in Em’s small lap. Before Marcus knew it, both were sound asleep, a frightful warmth filling his cold scoundrel heart for serving as their pillow.

At peace, his eyelids heavy and in danger of closing, despite the cacophony about him, Marcus saw a pair of silver satin slippers topped by the striped hem of a gown, and his heart thumped and sped to attention.

Struck anew by the scandalous beauty, all thought of sleep fled.

Emily shivered, taking his attention, and because he couldn’t give her his coat without waking her, he rubbed her arm.

Jade’s hand grazed his as she bent to place her shawl over Emily. Then she regarded him, an energy like heat lightening, silent and invisible, passed between them.

Jade closed her hand into a fist, and frowned down at him. “I will speak to you when she wakes. In the library.”

“Does this mean you have reconsidered my position?”

“Let us say that I am wavering.”

“You despise me,” he said.

“In almost every way,” she said. “Save one.”

Marcus tilted his head for her to continue.

“Emily hasn’t laughed or stepped within reach of a man, not even my retainers, since I’ve known her.” Jade turned and made her way across the room.

“I adore you,” Marcus said watching her, surprised and chagrined that he’d spoken the thought aloud.

“You do not adore me,” Jade said unexpectedly, a week or more later and out of context, as they stood bent over her desk perusing a stack of ledgers seeking the root of her financial problems.

Marcus straightened to regard her. “You heard that?”

“No, but others did. Your avowal has been the topic of discourse for days. I told the women this morning that you said you adored me because I had about decided to hire you. Since they believe otherwise, I decided to set the record straight, here and now.”

“You knew I said it, and yet you hired me? I’m astonished.” More so because the gossip had not changed her mind. “The women were right,” he said. “It’s not because you seemed inclined to hire me.”

She waved away his comment, chin high, hard protective shell in place. “You see me as a challenge, but I will not fall at your feet as scores of women have likely done since you cracked your first smile. You’d simply like to ... to—”

“I certainly would,” Marcus said, accepting her unconscious invitation to spar. If verbal battle she required, then verbal battle she would receive, though he’d prefer to employ more physical tactics.

As his response left her speechless, he lifted a languishing lock of hair off her silken bodice, his fingers so close to stroking the fabric, and the body beneath it, they became warm.

She caught a delayed breath and stiffened as if poised to bolt, though she remained as if frozen, while heat emanated from her in waves.

“I most definitely would like to—” He brought the captured lock to his lips, while her scent—lavender—and her feel—silk—skittered and rushed the blood in his veins.

The Lady Jade Smithfield, he believed, was also up for any challenge, though she might not yet admit as much. Given the fact that she equated brutality with his gender—though he worked daily to change her mind—he was likely the most challenging enigma set before her.

In the same precise way, her ice-queen facade called to him as nothing in his life ever had. That, and her rebellious nature, striking beauty and generosity of spirit, made her unique, vulnerable ... and in dire need of a knight on a white charger, though she’d deny it, and he hadn’t the time, situation, or luxury to argue the point or fulfil the role.