Sari Robins - [Andersen Hall Orphanage] (4 page)

“And I was wondering why the men weren’t lining up for the pleasure of your charms.”

“Will you please just hand me the light once I’m inside?”

“Yes, dearie. But don’t blame me when there is nothing in there but creepy crawly things.”

Bunching her skirts, she took a deep breath and pushed her way through the small opening. The edges of the hole scraped against her sides as she slid through, her hands and knees landing on a creaky wooden floor layered with dust. Trepidation made her mouth dry and her heart pound. She tried not to think about bugs or spiders, and especially not the dreaded rats.

“Tsszz.”

She jumped, her hair standing on end and her heart racing. Turning, she glared. “Blackguard.”

He laughed. “It was too tempting.”

Anger, she realized, had erased her fear and she was actually a little glad for his prank. “Hand me the candle.”

She thrust the light into each corner of the space, trying not to breathe in the stifling air. Relief and disappointment swamped her. There were no rats, thank heavens, but no chests of treasure either. There was a plethora of spider-webs…and a large rectangular hump in the corner. Stepping over, she pushed it with her finger. It was a satchel, with what seemed to be a large book.
Interesting
. Crouching down, she wiped off the dust and webs. Leather.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I think it’s a book.”

“Why would someone go to the bother of hiding a book in here?”

“An accident?” she ventured.

“Hand it over, let us have a look.”

Lifting it up, she handed it to him through the opening, then passed him the candle. “I am coming out.”

His face disappeared and so did much of the light. Hold
ing her breath, Catherine climbed through the wooden opening, thankful to be out of there and back in the dusty closet. But where was Prescott? And what was he doing with the tome she’d found?

“P
res?” Catherine called, wondering to where he’d disappeared.

Dusting off her dress, she stepped into the corridor and looked in each direction. Then she saw the open window and recalled that this was one of his favorite childhood sneak-aways.

“Better light out here, Cat. Join me.” Prescott lounged on the roof with his legs stretched out before him, regardless of the two-story drop below. Catherine envied his easy confidence. For her, going out on the ledge was a trial, one that Prescott understood better than most, since he had watched her fall from this very spot.

It had been in her very first year at Andersen Hall. She had been trailing behind a gaggle of older boys, anxious to share in some of their mischief. Marcus had been the leader on this particular outing (no wonder she had been so keen to follow). The lads had stolen gingerbread cookies from the kitchens, hiding them inside their woolen shirts. It had been chilly that day, but the sky was bright
with autumn sun, so most of the children had been playing wage-war in the gardens below.

She had made it out the window and just two steps past its outer casing when her bad leg had slipped, driving her over the ledge. Her desperate fingers had grasped the edge barely in time. Her arms had shaken with the strain of hanging on and her legs felt weighted as they swung wildly beneath her in the thin air.

Her fall had knocked off some slates, alerting the children below. They’d rushed over, shrieking with terror. Catherine had been silent, her eyes tightly closed and her heart in her mouth, reliving her fall from the Caddyhorns’ second-floor window less than a year before.

Suddenly hands had roughly gripped her wrists, yanking her up and over the ledge. She would never forget the darkly furious look on Marcus’s handsome face or the scorn in his tone. “What the bloody hell were you thinking? This is no place for a girl and a lame one at that! You’re no cat.”

She had been labeled for life. Her mortification had only grown when Headmaster Dunn had found out. Marcus had probably come to regret his rescue, since his punishment had greatly surpassed hers (but not her humiliation). Dunn saw Marcus as a leader who had abused his position and Marcus had paid dearly for that misadventure.

“Come on, Cat,” Prescott called, ripping her mind back to the present. “Unless you’re afraid…”

Prescott certainly knew how to pluck her strings. Even if she was terrified, she was loath to admit it.

“I thought you’d left me,” she chided, lifting her bad leg and pushing it through the window opening. She maneuvered carefully, using her hands as much as her legs,
crawling like a monkey. Inelegant, but she did not falter. Her leg didn’t ache so much on dry days like today.

Prescott watched her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly confident that she would not fall. The afternoon sun glistened on his thick, dark reddish mane.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the volume. “The pages are parchment. The book’s probably religious, but it doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen in church.” He closed it. “I’m hoping it’s a collection of juicy bits of blackmail.”

“If so, I’ll burn it.”

“And waste golden opportunities?”

“I will not exploit others’ distress.”

He handed it to her. The book weighed as much as Headmaster Dunn’s Bible and overwhelmed her lap with its large, red, cloth bindings. It smelled of old leather, probably from the satchel it had been stored within.

“Dunn always says that books have souls,” she murmured.

“Well, let’s hope that this one has the devil’s.” At the look on her face, he cried, “I do have morals—”

“Yes, just very flexible ones.” She studied him, trying to untangle his strange obsession with blackmail. “If other people are flawed, then you fare better by comparison?”

He shrugged, but did not meet her eye.

“We all have shortcomings, Pres. It’s what makes us human.”

“I prefer to be a god,” he huffed. “Adonis, if you please.”

Her lips lifted. “More like Pan, to me.”

“Open the damned book.”

She breached the volume and the bindings crackled with disuse. Bold black scratches marked the first page
and she read, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

“Socrates?”

“Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure
,” she replied distractedly, flipping to an inner page.

“A play? How boring. Why bother hiding such a tome?”

“I don’t think it’s a play at all,” she murmured, scanning the page. “Look, this is about tying knots. Intricate ones.”

Yawning into his hand, he pushed himself up onto his heels. “That’s even worse than a play; it’s manual labor.” He stood, easily balanced on the tilted roof. “I’m appalled, actually, that someone thought enough of themselves to put such dry rot onto parchment.”

Looking up, Catherine envied his easy grace. She had to keep herself from glancing down too frequently, or she’d topple. She squinted up at him and he graciously blocked the sunlight from her eyes.

“I’m off,” Prescott declared, flicking dust off of his bright yellow coat. “And you see I was right about you.” He waved his hands wide. “Even while having the benefit of all this beauty, you read a tiresome book. You’ll never catch a man that way, Cat. Men like their women silly.”

“And I like my men clever and modest. So I suppose that means I will have to do without.”

He t’sked. “You have an exceedingly poor view of my kind, Cat.”

“Growing up with the likes of you might have something to do with it.”

“One day, Cat.” He shook his head, exhaling noisily. “One day some poor sod is going to come along and show
you the error of your ways.” Tapping his finger to his chin, he added, “Or perhaps that poor sod might be me—”

“You’ve got the part about the poor sod right, Pres,” she huffed. “But the rest is rubbish.” She grazed her hand across the page, liking the feel of parchment under her fingertips. “I will never marry.”

He was silent for so long, she looked up. He had an odd look on his face.

“What?”

He stared down at her a long moment, and she had the strange sense that he was about to say something important. Then he turned away and looked out over the lawn. “I miss wage-war.”

“The battles?”

“The victory.”

“I never really liked the game.” She grimaced, recalling the times she’d bothered to play and had been the last picked for a troop. “It made me…tense. I always felt like something bad was going to happen.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’d never be good enough. I’d always cause the troop to lose.”

“That’s why you hardly played?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t have any fun if you don’t join the game, Cat,” Prescott offered softly.

“I know. I know. But I never wanted the responsibility for a loss.”

They were quiet a long moment, Prescott’s old arguments hanging in the air between them. He’d always chided her for what he saw as her tendency to assume more responsibility than he considered healthy.

Prescott dusted off his hands. “Well, I need to rally or
I’ll be late.” Assuming his blithe tone once more, he added, “Promise me, Cat, you will at least try to do
something
amusing on this glorious day.”

“Your definition and mine of amusing, Prescott, are worlds apart,” she replied, turning the page and reading.

“Weren’t the Jamisons one of the first families that was burgled by the Thief of Robinson Square?” Catherine asked Prescott as she scanned the page.

When she received no answer, she looked up. Prescott was gone. She must have been so engrossed not even to have heard him depart. Catherine pushed aside a stab of guilt at her ill manners. Though Prescott wouldn’t take it to heart, she knew.

Turning back to the book, she flipped to the next page and read the bottom.

Doubt slithered through her mind. No. It couldn’t be…

A notation was scratched along the side of the page:
Information is the greatest weapon in any offensive!!

She flipped the sheet.

Her heart began to pound as she quickly rifled through the pages.

Westerly
.
Garamond
.
Kendrick
. The names popped out at her, glaring in their familiarity and the connection between them. Each family had been notoriously burgled by the Thief of Robinson Square. There had been whispers, she recalled, about how these families were particularly clutch-fisted when it came to charitable donations. About how they treated their servants poorly, despite living to decadent excess. Some had even hinted that the thievery was a reckoning, of sorts.

Then there was the matter of how the thief knew the exact locations of hidden valuables. Supposedly all of the Westerly servants had been sacked and quite a few from the other families as well. But the thief had never been caught. Apparently no one had even come close to unmasking the housebreaker.

But just as suddenly as the burglaries had begun, they’d ceased, relegating the Thief of Robinson Square to phantom amongst the score of London’s legends.

Until today, perhaps?

Tracing her hand down the page, she reexamined the bindings.

It couldn’t be the thief’s diary, could it? And if it was, why was it hidden in a secret compartment at Andersen Hall? More importantly, how could they capitalize on this find? Could it somehow help the orphanage overcome its financial straits? Was there even a market for such a thing?

Catherine snorted. There was a market for anything in London these days.

Her eyes narrowed and she stared off into the distance, hashing through the possibilities. Were there any rewards outstanding for such information? Could they sell it to the highest bidder?

Doubts about exactly what she had in her lap plagued her. She wouldn’t want to set up Andersen Hall or Headmaster Dunn for a mockery. This journal would have to be, without doubt, the genuine article.

A newspaper clipping slipped out. She read the headline. “
The Thief of Robinson Square Strikes Again.
” Next to the title was a bold, black handwritten star.

Shocked, Catherine slammed the book closed.

“Oh, dear Lord in heaven,” she breathed, her heart pounding, her mind racing. Still, it seemed too preposterous to believe.

Her eyes flew from right to left, ensuring that no one had seen. She knew that she was being overly fearful; she was on the rooftop for heaven’s sake. Still, on the small chance that this was real…

A plan. She needed a plan.

First she’d hide the book, not let anyone notice her discovery. Yet. Then she would talk to Headmaster Dunn. He would know what to do. He always did.

A
fter slipping the book under her bed in her room, Catherine rushed down the hallway toward Headmaster Dunn’s study. Excitement swam in the pit of her belly. Was the tome actually written by the Thief of Robinson Square? Or simply the manifestation of someone’s obsession with the notorious thief who had the ton reeling shortly after the turn of the century? The fascinating journal not only chronicled the Thief’s exploits, but contained charts, maps and lists detailing robbing London’s finest homes. It was almost a guidebook of how to burgle. Still, it was so far-fetched, her doubts lingered.

Catherine rushed into the headmaster’s study, ready to proclaim her news. Her feet froze in their tracks as the words died on her lips.

A tall, broad-shouldered, raven-haired soldier stood staring out the front window, with his brawny back to her. His pristine crimson-and-gold coat seemed out of place in the dingy, book-riddled, paper-cluttered room around him. In fact, the soldier seemed so vibrant the room faded
into the background, leaving only him, filling her gaze. Her heart began to canter and her mind went headily blank, sensations she had not experienced in seven long, drab years.

Catherine resisted the urge to grasp the door handle behind her for support; her knees had turned to jelly. Only one man on this earth had ever made her feel simultaneously silly, giddy and panicked simply by being in his presence:
Marcus
. What on earth was he doing back at Andersen Hall?

Distantly, she noticed that his raven hair was longer, now hedging his broad shoulders. He was taller than when she’d last seen him. Where she had grown an inch or two in the intervening years, remaining just below most men’s collars, Marcus seemed to fill the room with his towering stature. Perhaps it was the white plume perched on his red-and-gold shako, but more likely it was that he stood at least a head and half taller than she.

He had filled out as well. His broad shoulders were a handspan wider, adding to the stirring “v” impression ending at his trim waist, emphasized to great effect by his striking crimson-and-gold uniform. He leaned with one crutch under his arm and seemed to be favoring his left leg. She couldn’t help but notice how his muscular thighs were encased in tight white breeches and how a bandage wrapped his left leg. She distantly wondered at his injury.

Suddenly, he turned.

She was captured by his icy blue gaze, which, as it always had, seized the breath in her throat. She stood dumbly staring at her adolescent obsession, feeling once more like she was witless, and twelve years old.

“Good day,” he ventured with a slight inclination of his head. His voice sounded deeper, with more of a rumble than she remembered, causing an odd quiver in her middle.

This was no lad, she realized, but a
man
. Yet, vestiges of
his youthful appeal still remained: those piercing blue eyes, the black-winged brows, those lips that had spiced her dreams…She would recognize him amongst a thousand men.

He had broken his nose at some point since his departure, giving physicality to his devil-may-care mien. And with the stitches over his left eye and the crutch under his arm he appeared the essence of devastating pirate. The effect was further heightened by the calculating reserve clouding his gaze.

She knew that she should say
something
, but her mind was maddeningly vacant and her tongue thick with knots. Her heart seemed to slow and yet quicken under that penetrating blue gaze.

What would he think of how
she
had changed in seven years? No longer the willowy frail child, she was a woman of two-and-twenty who had filled out with muscle from earnest labor. Yet alone in front of her mirror, she could see the womanly curves just like her mother’s.

Leaning on his crutch, Marcus slowly loped across the space separating them. Her heart thumped wildly and was lodged somewhere deep in her throat. She inched backwards, overwhelmed by the panic that had plagued her whenever he was near. Her back bumped up against the doorjamb; she was trapped by that searing blue gaze.

Stretching out his hand, he reached for her. A small voice in her head called out vague and yet frantic warnings, but she felt the unholy desire to let him touch her, and to give life to her youthful fantasies.

His palm grazed her cheek as he reached into her hair. Tingles danced over her skin where he touched, and they raced from there to her hairline. She shivered, and fought the heady yearning to close her eyes. As if she could, imprisoned by his sapphire gaze. Slowly he disengaged his hand, gently tugging something out of her hair.

Marcus looked into his broad, white-gloved palm. “Cobwebs.” He looked up. “Don’t they let you out?”

Catherine blinked, feeling as if she had been doused in icy pond water.

“Of course we do,” Headmaster Dunn bellowed as he strode into the study from his adjacent private apartments, his outer coat and cane slung over his arm. “Someone else was supposed to clean out the closet, Catherine,” he chided with a slight frown. “Well, there’s naught to be done for it now. Have you finished yet?”

Her mouth opened, but she was so mortified no words would come. So she simply shook her head in the negative.

“Regardless,” Dunn replied as he shrugged on his coat. “What I want, Catherine, is for you to lock that room. No entry by anyone. Nothing taken out from there. Do you understand?”

Dumbly miserable, she nodded.

“Thank you, Catherine. And please bring me the key immediately.” He waved to his son. “You remember Marcus.”

He said it as if it were a certainty, mortifying her further.

“Marcus, Catherine,” the headmaster intoned, motioning to her. “Or rather, Miss Catherine Miller.”

Catherine wished she could pretend nonchalance, but her cheeks were burning as she dipped in a slight curtsey.

“Catherine?” Marcus said her name so melodically it felt like molasses sliding down her spine. His blue eyes narrowed as he slowly nodded. “Cat? Right? The chit who fell from the roof?”

She wanted to sink through the floor and die in a shallow grave. In some respects, little
had
changed. He was the same sardonic Marcus who would just as soon mock her as speak to her. The last vestiges of her childhood fantasies evaporated into mist, and her heart ached to see them go.

“Unfortunate day, that was,” Headmaster Dunn muttered, shooting his son a glare.

Pointedly ignoring his father, Marcus asked, “What are you still doing here?”

Her cheeks burned at his implication.
Shouldn’t you have a real life by now?

“Catherine is my second-in-command, so to speak,” Dunn explained. “She helps me with the accounts, the business side of the orphanage. I don’t know how I would get along without her.” His voice trailed off.

She forced her desert-dry mouth to work. “Luckily, sir, you will never have to.” She would never marry, never have a home of her own. Aside from the fact that no gentleman would want a spinster who’d lived in an orphanage, she had learned from the Caddyhorns the downfall of giving someone legal rights over her. She would never give anyone such power again.

At some point Jared
would
take his rightful place in Society, but she would be a pariah, an oddity who was gently bred but had no place in the
ton.
No, she would live and die at Andersen Hall, a decrepit old maid…

She realized that Dunn was staring at her derriere and she wondered if she was losing her mind.

The headmaster’s brow puckered. “Are those leading strings tied to your apron?”

Whipping her hand around, she grabbed at ivory fabric. “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, praying that her cheeks were not as scarlet as they felt. She faced them again with as much dignity as she could muster. Amusement swam in each of their equally dark azure gazes. She lifted her chin. “Prescott loves his little tricks.”

“Prescott?” Marcus scratched his chin. “The carrot-topped one with the freckles?”

Dunn nodded. “The very same.”

“Are so many of the former charges still around?” Marcus asked, retrieving his other crutch from against the chair and resting both beneath his arms.

“Prescott only comes because of Catherine. He can’t seem to keep away from her.” Adjusting his lapels, Dunn added, “And Catherine enjoys the company, I’m sure.”

She decided to ignore the implication that she had few friends.

Dunn sniffed. “I need you to be a good influence on him, Catherine. Help him find his calling to earn an honorable living—”

“Let’s not get into that now, sir,” she interjected. Even if she did agree with Dunn, it was none of Marcus’s business. They did not need to display dirty linens before
outsiders
.

The realization jolted her. Marcus had been gone so long that she did feel at some level that he was not one of them. Not a complete stranger, but not an insider either. If she could interact with him as an acquaintance, suppress all of the disruptive feelings she’d had for him as a witless girl, then she could actually tolerate his presence. At least without making a complete fool of herself during his visit.

Her heart-wrenching embarrassment eased a bit. She was no longer that twelve-year-old ninny with her heart pinned to her sleeve. She needed to act like the intelligent adult she was, usually.

Marcus raised a brow, noting with cool approval, “She’s protective.”

“Like a mama bear with cubs.” Dunn scratched his chin, startlingly like his son. “Which reminds me, Catherine, I want you to help Marcus get back in the saddle here at Andersen Hall. He needs to review the last three years’ budgets, the expense ledgers. Everything.” He turned to his son. “Catherine’s really got an extraordinary gift with
accounts.” Facing Catherine once more, he added, “I want you to help Marcus in any way that he requires.”

“But…why?” she asked, irritably shoving a strand of hair around her ear. She felt like she was reading a novel and had missed the chapter with the critical plot details.

“He’s on the board of trustees now,” the Headmaster explained. “Took Jensen’s spot, may his worthy soul rest in peace. So he needs to be up to snuff on all of the workings here.”

Catherine shook her head, her mind swirling. “When did this happen?”

“At the special vote of the board.”

“Special vote…” she sputtered. “Since when…how long…”

Pulling his watch from his pocket, Dunn flicked it open and studied its face. “Marcus has served his country well in the King’s army and now he’s volunteered to serve equally as well at Andersen Hall. He’s on leave because of his injuries and we have the benefit of his counsel.”

Marcus was staying…seemingly indefinitely. She pushed aside her own qualms and instead focused on how illogical it all seemed. He’d always hated it here. The ill parting, his oath never to return…“But…”

“Well, hell hath frozen over,” Mrs. Nagel declared from the open doorway.

“Ah, Mrs. Nagel,” Dunn stated quickly, snapping the watch closed and shoving it back into his pocket. “Marcus has returned to the bosom of his family. Please welcome him home.”

Catherine noted how Marcus cringed slightly at the word “bosom,” or was it “family”? His face quickly became impassive once more. If she had not been looking
directly at him, she might have missed his discomfiture. Something definitely was amiss.

“I never thought I’d see the day.” Mrs. Nagel sniffed.

Dunn wrapped an arm about her small shoulders. “Marcus is a war hero, Mrs. Nagel. After all he’s been through, he’s seen the error of his ways in staying away for so long. He is here to make amends and help out Andersen Hall. We certainly could use his invaluable support.”

Dunn shot his son a meaningful glance, and Marcus piped in, “I am so grateful, Mrs. Nagel, for the opportunity to serve Andersen Hall…”

The words reeled, Marcus then Dunn, and back again, weaving mollifying declarations about a brush with death, reform, grace and forgiveness into a web of whimsy.

To Catherine’s chagrin, Mrs. Nagel was almost in tears by the end of the syrupy account. Well, Catherine was not so easily swayed. It all sounded too trite for the son who had angrily sworn never to return. Too smooth for the father who’d spent seven years in quiet mourning for his lost child. Something definitely was not being said here.

“When you have time, I have a few questions, sir,” Catherine declared.

“I’m sure that you and Marcus would like to catch up,” Dunn asserted. “But he only just arrived and he and I have much to discuss.”

“Most assuredly,” Marcus agreed. “Seven years’ worth.” Catherine couldn’t believe that he said it without a trace of sarcasm in his tone.

She eyed the men warily, sensing a stratagem of some sort. But since when were Dunn and his son on the same side?

“If you will excuse us…” Dunn herded the women toward the exit. “I would like a word with my son.”

Catherine opened her mouth, but Dunn interjected,
“I’m sure that you would love an opportunity to make yourself presentable, Catherine…”

Her cheeks burned, but before she could think of something witty to save face, the door closed behind her with a hard thud.

“You really should straighten up.” Mrs. Nagel t’sked. “You look a fright. One might suppose that you had used your skirts to sweep the floors.”

Gritting her teeth, Catherine dusted off her apron, then gave up, realizing that nothing was going to help.

“I’ll have Betty pour you a bath,” the matron suggested. Her gaze brightened. “And I’ll ask Cook to bring young Marcus some spice cakes.” The woman actually blushed. “I suppose I must stop thinking of him as young Marcus now. He is a man of the world. We must give thanks for his homecoming.”

Catherine crossed her arms. “Don’t you think it a bit odd that Marcus has returned all pleasant and smiles after such a frosty absence?”

Mrs. Nagel’s lips puckered. “Give the man a chance, Catherine. He almost died serving his country. That changes a person.”

“Enough to go from hating this institution to suddenly sitting on the board of trustees? The man didn’t show one speck of interest in Andersen Hall for seven years and now he wishes to lend a hand? It makes no sense whatsoever!”