The Proposition (21 page)

Useful. Mick looked down at the sharp razor itself, pearl-handled. It was the smoothest-feeling blade he'd ever held. He liked the feel of it on his skin. It cut clean.

He looked at the hand that had hold of it. There wasn't a mark on it, not a scratch or bite, because the hand didn't dive into the rat holes of life. If he wasn't careful, he'd have himself do-nothing gentleman's hands. Yes, hands that had time to think—but look what he thought. How to trade his good ol' flavor-savor mustache for a look at a pair of legs he wasn't supposed to touch. On a woman he couldn't have.

The really stupid part, though, was he picked up the shaving brush, clacked it around in the soap cup again, then lathered his lip up. He razored the damn beginnings of mustache off, shaving his lip again for Winnie. Because he was hoping for another damn, pointless look.

* * *

Ironically, down the hall, Winnie was also standing before a mirror. She had, however, a slightly different prospect. Ten feet from the mirror, she looked at the full-length reflection of her body, stark naked.

She could never remember taking off her clothes by the light of day before, simply to look at herself. She had never thought not to, she had simply never done it. This morning, though, with her nightgown off, before she drew a stitch over her head, she turned to the mirror to survey herself.

Her body. She was immediately struck by how long her legs were. She'd never thought of them. But yes, they were long, and their muscles were good, well-proportioned. Her legs were firm. They were pretty. It was the first time she could honestly like any part of herself. They'd always been covered up. She'd never looked. Now that she had—well, marvelous: The only part of her that was pretty was one that no one would see, not even the faintest shape.

And the rest of her—oh. Her breasts were two little funnels on her chest. Her waist was small, but her hips and buttocks offset any advantage that brought. They were too full, making her into a pear.

Her eyes settled at the top of her legs, at the apex between. The hair there was dense, tight-curling, and dark cherry blond, only slightly deeper in hue than the hair on her head. Winnie touched it. It was wiry. Like—

Like a mustache.

She tried to envision what Mick Tremore looked like here. She couldn't. The small bits she'd seen on stone cherubs, the baby penises (there, she'd thought the word!), had always seemed so vulnerable. Cherub male parts in the flesh, she always thought, would look like little snails without shells—an idea that most certainly didn't suit Mr. Tremore. Adult stone men had fig leaves where their widges should be. She was sure that was wrong. Which left only imagination.

And a word. She formed it silently with her mouth.
Widge.
Her lips looked as if they were blowing a kiss. What did one look like? And hair. Did a widge wear a mustache?

She found herself feeling uneasy, silly, peculiar—giggling as she donned her clothes for the day. Just as she was getting her hair up, there was a knock at her door.

She jumped guiltily, then thought, Oh, goodness, Mr. Tremore was so forward. There he was outside in her sitting room, knocking on her bedroom door.

When she opened it, though, it was Milton. "May I come in, m'lady?" He looked grave.

"Yes. Certainly. Is something wrong?"

He frowned. He stammered. "I— Well, yes—" He finally said, "I've been with your family"—he cleared his throat—"for a very long time, and I have never intruded, my lady." She waited for him to go on. It took him a moment. "I was there on the night you were born."

"Yes, Milton. What's the point? What is bothering you?"

"Well." He drew his small frame up and stiffened his mouth. "Well," he repeated, "Mrs. Reed and I were discussing it, and we think—" He blurted the rest. "We think it would be better if Mr. Tremore moved downstairs with me."

Edwina sank down into the chair by her bed. She stared at him. "Why?"

He frowned. "My lady, you are living upstairs with a man—well, who is— We didn't think— No one thought— But, well, now— And he clearly finds you—"

"You think it's immodest of me to have him staying above stairs, his room on the same floor as mine?"

"Yes, m'lady."

Goodness, such a judgment from Milton, who tended to be generous with her. Winnie nodded, expressing her understanding.

"There are eight empty rooms below stairs," he proceeded to tell her. "Mr. Tremore could have any of them. I can make one up, tell him, help him move—"

"No." She shook her head quickly. "I'll tell him."

Milton was right, of course. She couldn't have a
…
a gentleman sleeping under her roof, just him and herself alone upstairs. Why hadn't she thought of it in this light before?

She repeated, "I'll tell him. I'll explain." She glanced at Milton, the most loyal family she had. "I appreciate it," she said. "Thank you for saying."

He nodded. "Your best interests," he murmured. "I've watched you grow up into a fine young woman, Lady Bollash." The form of address for the eldest daughter of a marquess; he had never made the transition, always addressing her with the same respect. He continued, "I am proud to work for you. I don't wish to see you"—he hesitated again—"unhappy when he goes. I'd stay by you, it's not that—"

Ah. It wasn't for form's sake that he wanted to move Mr. Tremore, not for the sake of gossip or appearances. He feared she'd succumb to ruin itself.

"It's—" He continued, "Well, I do think, if Mr.
Tremore
were to sleep downstairs in the room next to mine, it would be better."

"Yes, it would be." She nodded again, then repeated herself. "I'll tell him."

* * *

Winnie was going to make short work of the obligation. She would go downstairs, find Mr. Tremore, and tell him straight off. She'd explain that he'd become—what? A man. He'd become a man to her and to the others around them.

How awful. She couldn't say that. What had he been before?

God knew. She only knew that now he fit a different pattern. It didn't matter if a ratcatcher was given her finest room. But it mattered if Mick slept within tiptoe of her bed, especially given that she stood before it recently, looking at her own naked body while wondering about his.

It mattered. And she'd say.

Then she hedged. At the foot of the stairs, she veered toward her laboratory. There, she sat and stared blankly at her notes, trying to think how to phrase it.

Chapter 14

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W
innie intended to mention to Mick all that day that it would be better, all things considered, if he moved himself and his things downstairs. She intended to, but didn't do it. She didn't know why she hesitated. It was her house. She could make the decision. Yet there never seemed an appropriate moment.

Moreover, Mick was moodier than usual, unsettled. It was a new or at least a less often seen side to him. All day long, he seemed lost in thought. She set him up to do his drills and exercises on his own, using a mirror and a gramophone. When she checked on him half an hour later, though, he only sat, staring into space, running his finger over his bare lip—surprisingly, it had been shaved again. The muscle at the side of his jaw, the one that squared it so perfectly, flexed morning till night. In the end, she simply funked the task of speaking to him about moving downstairs. She'd do it tomorrow, she promised herself.

Then tomorrow came, and she couldn't find him.

Mick occasionally left for short periods of time. "To attend to my business," he always said quite formally. Edwina was never sure exactly what he did. He had animals to which he attended, she knew. He had friends, she suspected, he taunted with his new wealth and manners.

She heard him return about noon. She was down the hall from her lab in the library, reading, when she became aware of him knocking around in the mudroom at the back of the house in a way Milton never did—Mick usually had mud
on
him. She could hear his kicking off wellies, as if he'd come up through the back garden.

A few minutes later, she recognized his footfalls in the hallway, coming toward her, though his tread was a bit heavier and more jangly than usual.

Then he appeared into the doorway and announced, "It's the carriage house."

"What's the carriage house?"

"The rats. That's where they are. They have a nest. Let's go get 'em."

She laughed. "You want me to catch rats with you?"

"It's fun," he said. He grinned, the most relaxed she'd seen him in a day or two. Fun. He was the Mick Tremore again who thought everything, life itself, was fun.

She sat back in her chair, smiling despite herself. It wasn't such a bad way to see things, she decided. She wished her existence were fun or at least that she thought it was as often as he did. "It's work," she contradicted. And he was dressed for work. He was wearing heavy boots and old clothes.

He came over, lifted her, or tried to, by the arm. "True, but exciting work. Come on. You don't have to help or watch, but you should see what I'm talking about. It's your carriage house."

She let herself be stood up by the arm, then raised one eyebrow at him. "Do you kill them?"

"The rats? Of course."

She frowned. "Is it bloody?"

"Not for me, though I'm sure the rats think otherwise—the dogs and ferrets get messy." He made a mock-exasperated face. "Winnie, they're rats. They're dirty, ugly rats, who each have fifty or sixty babies a year, and those babies start dropping babies by two months. You figure it out. That's a lot of little things scooting around, eating your horses' oats, burrowing into your walls, getting up into your carriage—"

"Ewww," she shuddered, then wrinkled her nose. "Still, they're animals."

He laughed with that rumble that always caught her up into it somehow and made her want to smile back. "You're right, loov." She'd told him a number of times that it wasn't
loov
but
love,
and in either case that it was an unseemly form of address, yet still he insisted on using it. He said, pulling her forward, "We should go buy them cheese, leave it for them each night, maybe put a little bow on it. Oh, come on." He used her arm to turn her and put her ahead of him, then he pushed at her back.

When, over her shoulder, she threw him a worried look, he only wiggled his eyebrows in that funny way he could when he was thrilled with himself. "Shiver me timbers, mate," he said gleefully. He did his old accent, only thicker: Cornwall, the land of pirates, with a Cockney twist. "We'll pint th' carrich 'ouse wiv ther blewd."

It was a relief to see him in fine spirits again.

She went out with him to the carriage house, thinking, Yes, here was the opportunity. While he was doing something that made him feel good, she'd tell him he was moving downstairs. Why was she making it such a tribulation? It wasn't. He'd shrug; he wouldn't even care.

At the end of her drive in front of the carriage house, she saw a donkey cart. He'd borrowed it from a friend to transport his dogs and ferrets. In the back of the cart, Mick's entire retinue barked and kicked up a commotion the moment he and she came into view.

From the wood cart, he unloaded half a dozen boxcarriers, two ferrets to a box. Five small dogs clambered down, but not until Mick whistled for them. Magic jumped at his heels. The little dog was alert in a new way, more excited. Into the carriage house Winnie went, following this animal act—Mick with carriers under both arms, more dangling off his hands, dogs nipping at his heels, a bevy of small beasts to whom, it seemed, he sang. Whether to control them somehow—for they seemed to follow with it—or as an expression of his own absorbed contentment, he hummed a low tune, the Pied Piper.

Inside the carriage house, he squatted, setting boxfuls of ferrets onto the floor. The dogs continued to make a ruckus. But when he moved his hand through the air at them and said, "Hey," every one of them quieted and sat—six motley little terrier faces looking up at him expectantly. "You wait," he told them.

She watched him move—he stooped, stood, bent to slide a ferret box across the floor, motioned to a dog, each of which listened with rapt attention—as he explained to her.

"Ratting's a sport where I come from. A useful sport that neighbors do together. Growing up, I ratted barns, poultry houses, and mines with sometimes as many as a dozen men…
"

He said more, but she heard only bits. She watched, mesmerized. Methodically, he sat dogs at intervals, then slid ferret boxes, turned them, looked, turned one a few more degrees. Periodically, he assessed the space, the placement, as if he had an analytical plan. All the while, he jangled—tools swung from his hips as he moved, off a wide leather belt he'd strapped on: collars with bells, a coil of string, secateurs, a long, slender wood club, a short metal cosh.

Over the edge of the belt against his hip was folded a pair of old leather gloves. He wore heavy boots. They clunked as he walked. His trousers were tucked into them, while into the trousers was tucked a tight-fitting knit shirt, faded red, open at the neck. Old work clothes, similar to those the day she'd first seen him, though these had considerable more dignity, all fascinated properly, no one chasing him: Mick in control.