The Proposition (44 page)

While he stared at Mick, he spoke under his breath with chilling quiet. "Get out." Then louder and firmer, "Get out." He lifted himself precariously to his feet, and, from here, he flew into rage. "Get out, get out, get out!" He pounded the desk. "Get out, all of you! He's not my grandson! This is a hoax. I won't have it!"

His pursed lips began to tremble until the movement was so violent he had to put his hand up over his mouth.

Winnie watched Mick take a step toward him, his brow furrowed in concern.

He seemed about to say something, when the old man swung his cane through the air. It cleared everything off the desk. Pens, a book, a pair of glasses moved with such force that they hit the bookcase to the side before they clattered to the floor.

Thumping his cane down, he hobble-pounded around the desk. "You! And her!" He swung his cane to point at Winnie. "Don't think I don't know what she does. This time she goes too far with her passing off her damned creations on me." To Mick, "I saw how you danced with her. The conniving witch is trying to regain her lost property through a man she's invented. Well, I'm not having it." To the room at large, "You're all pretenders, all of you, scoundrels. This is too much! All of you, get out!"

His wife cautiously approached him, trying to help him without being hit by the cane, while the old man was so unpredictable, no one else dared move. With shuffling steps that couldn't match his rancor, he made his way toward the door—"getting out" himself, since no one else seemed inclined to.

He seemed infuriated by his own slow progress, muttering as he went, "So what? So he looks like my son. My grandson wouldn't dress like that. He wouldn't wear a vest with such a loud lining." He looked from one person to the next, as if he didn't know to whom he was addressing the remark. He frowned at Mick, stared a moment, then looked away. "Though he might wear purple," he grumbled. "He loved purple." At the door, he glanced at them all again, issuing another fierce scowl, then asserted finally, as if it were proof positive: "But he wouldn't dance all night with Winnie Bollash, not when there was a roomful of prettier women.
My
grandson would have taste." He stabbed at the floor again with the walking stick as his wife opened the door.

He would no doubt have loved a clean, brisk exit. But physical feebleness dictated he scoot a step, Vivian Bollash taking his elbow, then scoot another step. She guided him as he stabbed at the floor for traction. Stab,
step,
stab,
scoot.
Shaking with age, infirmity, and a strong desire to deny what he obviously feared to believe, he made his feeble way out, his wife at his elbow.

After such an astounding departure, utter silence reigned in the room for at least ten seconds. No one had expected anything like this.

Then Emile Lamont looked at Mick and said, "That was cute. Where did you dig that up?"

"What?" Mick looked distracted: as if trying to grasp the meaning of a seemingly huge, unforeseen possibility.

Could he really be Xavier's grandson? Winnie wondered.

She stepped toward him, laying her hand on his arm as she tried to explain his use of the nickname away. "He must have learned the name downstairs when he went to talk to the cook's assistant." She changed the subject. To the Lamonts, she said, "You have attempted to trick my cousin, but it didn't work—"

"Oh, it worked," Emile said. He turned more fully toward her, folding his arms and leaning a hip on the desk. "He's shaken. But he'll come around and fairly soon." To Mick, "He believes you're his—"

"No," Mick said, stepping toward him. "No. You're finished now. So am I. I was coming up here to tell Arles the whole story. The bet, how you made me seem like the grandson he still longs for, and how"—he paused—"how it just isn't true."

Emile snorted. "Right. That's why you called him that name when you came in. Because you were going to tell him the truth." He snorted again.
"Poppy.
Nice touch, Tremore—"

Mick leaped at him, grabbing him by the front of his coat, walking—slamming—the man backward with the momentum of his anger. He rammed Emile's back into the bookcases against the wall.

"Mick—" Winnie called.

He didn't listen, but lifted the struggling, furious Lamont slightly onto his toes. Into his face, Mick said, "What I 'dug up,' arsehole, is you are conning this old man for a hundred thousand pounds and using me to do it. Well, you're finished; it didn't work." He glanced over his shoulder at Jeremy, who, now pale, had stepped toward the door. "You won the bet," he told him. "Everyone here thinks I'm a viscount. Your brother owes you money—"

Emile hissed vehemently, "There was no bet, you stupid—"

"Shut up." Mick shoved him harder, 'til the man let out an
ooof
of breath.

"Mick, don't be—"

"I'm not hurting him, Win. Not yet anyway." To Emile, he said, "My obligation to you was to fulfill my part in a bet. I did. You owe me a hundred pounds, because I pulled it off. And then you're leaving. You are
not
using me to milk money and heartache out of an old man, no matter how much he might deserve it. And you are not staying here to cause trouble."

He let the man go and stepped back so suddenly that Emile stumbled down the length of one bookshelf. His face, when he turned, though was livid. Leaning toward Mick, he whispered, furious, "The reason you don't want us to have the hundred thousand is you see it coming out of your pocket now: You intend to con him out of the entire duchy, you ungrateful, greedy son-of-a—"

Mick grabbed him by the back of the coat, moving him toward the doorway, escorting the two brothers out.

Winnie followed, frowning. So
did
Mick hear the nickname downstairs? Was he attempting to assume a duchy? By virtue of six weeks' instruction on how to be an English Lord?
Her
instruction? She wished for a moment that she didn't know him to be so
…
quick-witted, so adept at improvising and taking advantage of whatever came his way.

As Jeremy and Emile were handed their things from the cloak attendant, Jeremy stammered, "W-we'll call the police on you, Tremore. We won't let you get away with this."

"I've done nothing wrong." He pushed them toward the main front doors, then stepped out behind them into the night with Winnie following. "Have a good walk to London," he told them.

"You won't get away with this. I'll see that you—"

"You won't see that I'm anything. Tomorrow morning I'm turning over your counterfeit bills to the authorities. If you have any sense, you'll be as far from England as possible by then. Don't ever come back."

Jeremy let out a high, foolish laugh that came out in a giddy burst. He stood under the portico, silhouetted against the river torches, his hat in his hand, his cloak clutched to his chest. "You—you—" He struggled for words for a moment. "You ratcatcher." Rather prosaically, he added, "Who do you think you are?"

There in the odd light from the riverwalk, Mick blinked, frowned, then shook his head. He looked down. "I don't know," he said, "I don't know."

* * *

In the entry alcove as they came back in, Winnie leaned toward Mick and asked, "Did the cook's assistant tell you the name?"

Mick bent his head to her, touching her back, her spine. "No," he said, "but I don't think that means anything." His voice grew more hushed as they whispered together. "She told me about the kidnapped grandson and the reward from years ago. I was going into Arles's study to tell him, to set the record straight from one end to the other. But when I saw him—" He broke off. "I can't explain it. He so reminded me of my own grandfather. That's what I used to call him.
Poppy.
The name isn't that unusual, is it?"

Winnie took his arm. Such a warm, muscular arm beneath his evening coat. Then he lifted it to put it around her shoulder, and they leaned into each other. They stood there almost as if consoling one another.

"I don't know how unusual it is," she told him. "I don't know what to think."

He brushed the crown of her head with his lips.

No, she didn't know what to think, except that she loved him, whoever he was.

* * *

When they returned to the ballroom, the most amazing thing happened. As they entered, a small commotion was already in progress. Winnie raised her pince-nez. And—egad!—she watched a small tail-thing scoot from the sidelines out among the dancers in the center of the ballroom floor.

Pandemonium. The dancing stopped. The orchestra faltered. Men called out as women screeched, lifting their skirts and trying to flee out of its way as it darted between feet and around dresses.

Winnie—Winnie herself—took off after it, leaving Mick behind. She ran straight out into the middle of the huge dance floor and held up her arms. "Don't anyone move," she said. "You'll frighten her. It's Mick's ferret. She's gotten loose."

She glanced at Mick and saw him, his head tilted at her, smiling the sweetest smile.

Everyone grew still, exactly as she'd asked. The little thing skittered around feet, visible one moment, lost the next. A man near Mick—the very man who was part of the couple who'd been at Abernathy and Freigh's when the ferret had last gotten lose six weeks ago—said, "Oh, I hope you can get her. My pet monkey ran out of the house last month, and we never found him. I've been distraught ever since."

People bent down—though a few, mostly women, climbed onto chairs.

Someone called, "Here it is!" Then, "There it goes!"

For the most part, the gathering tried to help the new young lord in their midst locate his unusual pet.

The ferret didn't matter. Because there was something about Mick that wasn't a fake anything. And Winnie herself felt more real somehow, running around, looking for the little animal that meant so much to him.

Alas, though, Freddie eluded everyone again. Mick called her and called her, but she was either too frightened or too weak to come.

He was philosophical about it. He shrugged as they began dancing again. "It's all right," he said. "The night is won. We did it. Let's enjoy our success."

Surprisingly, it wasn't hard to do. Winnie found herself smiling and smiling at Mick. She worried for him a little, because he didn't always smile back. He was quieter than usual. But the music and the swirling rhythms of dancing seemed eventually to penetrate his mood. Indeed, the night was won. Mick made a brilliant English lord. And she celebrated a success of her own: With a freedom much as she had at the Bull and Tun, she came back to Uelle—to the ease she had known within its walls only rarely since childhood.

Somewhere near midnight, Mick said, "I want to ask you something."

They were dancing in the thick of the crowd, in a sea of shoulders that swirled in unison. Her face felt flushed from exertion. She was happy. "Ask away," she said innocently.

"Winnie," he began, "when I ask you this, I want you to understand, it's just Mick asking. As nice as this evening is, I'm not a viscount or marquess or heir to a duchy, nor do I want to be."

She only smiled. She knew who he was. Her Mick.

He halted a moment, a man facing his misgivings. Their gazes caught, eye to eye, and her smile seemed to give life again to his. After a moment, he let out a snort of humor, shrugged, then laughed outright. He said suddenly, "I love dancing with you like this." He leaned toward her, dancing much too closely, and murmured, "I love you, Win."

Goodness. Her chest filled with warmth, a rush of pure, physical joy to hear the words aloud. He loved her.

"I love you, too," she said, the silly exchange of lovers.

"I know."

She laughed. "You would, of course."

He stared fixedly at her, still smiling as he turned them in waltzing rhythm. "So I was thinking that I'm good enough for you, Winnie Bollash, good enough to ask at least. My question is, Will you marry me?"

She stared. Marry him? She'd dreamed of his asking, of her doing it. She'd played with the idea. But he was joking surely. Still, she smiled so widely at the notion, it made her cheeks hurt. Oh, this man. This bold ratcatcher she had taken in six weeks ago knew no limits, no boundaries. "You know," she said, "you remind me of someone."

"Who?" He made a put-out face. "And that is not an answer, you witch."

She laughed. A witch. Oh, yes. "You remind me of Xavier."

"No-o-o-o." He rolled his eyes. "What an awful thing to tell me." He laughed. "Here I offer to make an honest woman of you, and you say I remind you of your atrocious cousin." More seriously, though, he added, "Winnie, don't kid yourself. That's what I was saying: You're in the arms of Coornish Mick"—he used his old accent—"the soon-to-be-valet who'll have a nice income with a retirement sum one day. And the immediate use of his own cottage on a picturesque estate in a town that could possibly use a resident scholar who writes her papers in Newcastle, then has to take the train to present them in London." He took a deep breath after all that, then said, "Winnie, find a way. Make it true. Marry me."

She frowned. He wanted it to be real. Marry him. What would she do with her tutoring? What would Milton do? How would she sort herself out in a community where she was the wife of a gentleman's gentleman?

The practicalities of it boggled her mind. Yet, try as she might, the idea so pleased her, she embarrassed herself. She looked down at their feet. And, goodness, their feet. How well they moved together! In and out, in and out, between each other's legs. She shook her head, grinning foolishly. Oh, dear. What was she doing? Everything around them, people and ballroom, blurred as she looked up again to meet Mick's gaze.