The Scoundrel and I: A Novella (14 page)

“You did not know that I would throw myself at you yesterday? Well, you need not flagellate yourself, Captain. I am not a society belle whose maidenly modesty must be preserved at all costs until marriage. Nor am I a foolish girl, but a woman grown who has made mistakes in the past and learned from them. This time I knew what I was doing. And I enjoyed it. Not only yesterday, but this entire fantastical interlude. It is true that I wish we had succeeded in replacing the type. But it was never your responsibility to do so, and I am actually glad for having had this diversion from my troubles for a short while. So, really, you have nothing about which to feel guilty.”

“Are you speaking sincerely?” he said tightly.

“Of course I am.” But the dull pain in her chest gave lie to that. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home.”

His home? He
wouldn’t
.

“Suspect you’d like the company of your grandmother about now,” he said.

She shut her eyes against a fresh surge of misery. How could a man so compassionate be a profligate flirt? It was not right. It was not fair. But life was never fair. She had known that long before she met Captain Anthony Masinter.

“Why did you come with me?” he said. “Just now.”

“I wanted to be away from Charlie’s accusations. And I was not yet prepared to tell him about the missing type.”

“Let me help you, Elle.”

“He will notice it soon enough. Perhaps he already has.”

“Till you’re certain of it, I’m your man. We’ll work out something.”

“No. This time there truly is no
we
, Captain. Your part in this is finished.”

“Can’t bear seeing your pretty eyes dulled. All because of what I’ve done.”

“I cannot believe you lied to me!” she burst out. “I cannot believe I thought that you were a man of integrity.”

“Blast it, I
am
a man of integrity, at least where you’re concerned. I never lied to you, Elle.”

“How can you insist on this when I now know the truth?”

“You do know the truth, the truth that I’ve lied to everybody for a decade.” He halted the carriage before her building. “And you know all the other truths of any importance. You know that I find you clever and bold and beautiful and sweet and rich as butter, that you turn me inside out, that you’re all I’ve thought about for days—you and that damn missing type,” he growled.

“I do not wish to hear any more of this. I should not have gotten into this carriage.”

He clapped a big, beautiful hand over his face. “Confound it!”

“Confound what?” She hated the note of desperation in her own voice.

“Confound honor and duty and everything I’ve held dear for twenty years! Confound it that I asked a woman I don’t know to marry me because her husband was a friend and I’m to blame for his death. Confound it that they went and had three children, and now mother and children haven’t a penny left or a relative in the country and she won’t accept charity, but I can’t leave ’em like that. And confound it that I knocked you over that night, because I wasn’t too keen on the plan already, never intended to marry, perfectly happy as a bachelor for the rest of my days, still I knew I had to fix this, but now I dread it because I’d give everything I have to kiss you even one more time. That’s confound what, Miss Gabrielle Flood.”

“You are at fault for your friend’s death?” she said thinly.

“My first lieutenant. John Park.”

“Your—He was—
he
was her husband?”

“Aye.”

“What happened to him?”

“I taught him how to game. No. Didn’t teach him. Forced him. Said a man’s not a man if he don’t ease up and enjoy himself in a calm sea. He did it to please me. But he took to the card table too well. Got in over his head. Couldn’t pay his debts.”

“I don’t understand. How did he die?”

He stared over the horses’ ears.

“How?” she prodded.

“He put a pistol in his mouth.”

“
Oh,
Anthony.” She moved close and looked up into his face. “You mustn’t blame yourself because a man could not control his gambling.”

“I should have known.”

She laid a hand on his arm and pressed her fingertips into his sleeve.

“You are not God. You cannot predict another’s actions.”

He looked down at her hand. “I can mend what I’ve broken.”

She drew away. “Like you wish to mend my mistake, though it was not truly your fault. It was my misdeed. I must shoulder the blame. Alone.”

“I won’t allow it.”

“I am not one of your crewmen, Captain. You cannot order me to obey you.”

“By God, when you speak to me like that, I want to—”

“Make me swab the deck?” She offered him a little smile.

“Kiss you. I want to kiss you again more than I want to breathe.” But he was not looking at her lips. He was looking into her eyes.

“You may not.”

“I realize that.”

He swept his hand over his face. “Blast it.” Then he dismounted the carriage and came around it to her. He stood so tall and straight, as though he were on the deck of a ship. He offered his hand, but she climbed down without taking it. He remained by the carriage as she went to the door, then paused.

“Will you . . .” She mustn’t do this. But she was not as strong as her grandmother believed, and she needed this. That she realized it only now made her heart ache even more fiercely. “Will you come inside and allow me to introduce you to my grandmother?”

All expression deserted his features.

“She has been hoping to meet you. She is very ill, and I think a visit would buoy her spirits. And you . . .”

He tilted his head forward, his eyes questioning.

“You smell good,” she said. “And you sound—you
sound
so good. Your voice. Your tread. So confident and yet peaceful, as though all the world is well.”

“My tread?”

A wobbly smile broke over her lips and Tony’s chest constricted like a vise was tightening around his ribs. That she could smile now made him want to scoop her up in his arms and never let her go.

“You will understand, inside,” she said. “Would you?”

He nodded.

When they entered the flat, he knew that as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of it. It was small, smaller than his quarters aboard the
Victory,
the furniture of modest quality and old, and the upholstery and drapes threadbare. Poverty blanketed the place like channel fog, but a quiet dignity fought against it in details throughout. On the minuscule table in the galley were carefully arranged a pressed linen laid neatly with plate, chipped porcelain cup and spoon, and the pieces of type they had taken from his uncle’s house. Above the sofa hung an embroidered sampler of the sort he’d never been able to read as a child. And painted on the walls around a closed door, roses bloomed in spectacular profusion from vines that scrolled up the doorposts and over the lintel.

Dignity and beauty, despite all. Like her.

He wanted to return to Brittle & Sons and wring her employer’s neck for paying her so little, to demand that the world give this woman what she deserved. He didn’t have the right, of course, and she would hate him for it. More than she already did.

Rapping softly on the closed door, she slipped inside. After a moment, she opened it wide for him.

“Captain . . . welcome.” Nearly swallowed in a rocking chair beneath thick blankets, the woman was gray-haired, her flesh spare, her eyes glimmering—and unseeing. Tony had known eyes like this woman’s, and he knew immediately that Elle’s grandmother was blind.

Nevertheless, he bowed.

“Madam,” he said, “I am honored to make your acquaintance.”

Elle’s gaze turned to him full of gratitude. He did not deserve it. He deserved to be strapped to a mizzenmast and flogged.

They remained in the bedchamber for several minutes. Elle was affectionate with her grandmother, and solicitous, but not noxiously so. When her grandmother’s lids drooped, he bade her good day and went into the other room.

Coming out shortly and closing the door, Elle offered him a quick smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

“The printing type,” he said. “You wanted her to feel it.”

“At the governor’s printing shop in Virginia, my grandfather worked as a pressman and my grandmother proof-corrected pages. Twenty years ago, she suffered a fever and was very ill. She lost her eyesight and with it her position at the shop. Then one day my grandfather borrowed five composing sticks filled with type, without telling his employer.” Her eyes were alight.

“Presumably he was not bowled over by a scoundrel while carrying them home?”

“He taught Gram how to read the type with her fingertips. It was some time before she did it with perfect accuracy. But eventually they proved her skill to the chief printer and he hired her anew. I wanted to give her that pleasure, just once, before—” Her voice caught and she turned her face away.

“Did you paint the roses?”

She looked at the twining trellis. “My grandfather did. Roses were always her favorite scent, especially after she lost her sight. When he fell ill with the black cough and we moved to London from the countryside so that I could take the position at Brittle and Sons, she missed the roses in our little garden dreadfully. My wages were never sufficient to purchase real roses, and my grandfather was obliged to stop working. But before he died he painted them so that . . .”

“So that you would never forget.”

Her eyes were clear. “Please drive me back to the shop now, Captain.”

She did not speak to him on the short drive, but when he dismounted and came to her side of the curricle, she took his hand and allowed him to assist her down. Her fingers trembled against his palm.

“It is far past lunchtime,” she said, pulling her hand away and tucking it in her skirt. “I am a bit shaky from that.”

She was lying now, and he had caused this too. “I will see you inside.”

“No, I—”

“I will see you inside.”

Charles Brittle sat behind a desk in the front room.

“Are you well, Gabrielle?” he said with a frown at Tony.

“I am.”

“Brittle, go into the other room and shut the door. I’ve a word to say to Miss Flood and I don’t wish to do so on the street.”

The printer’s eyes flared. “Of all the—”

“Now. Or you will soon regret it.”

Brittle looked to Elle, and she nodded. He went.

When the door closed, Elle turned astonished eyes up to him. “This is
his
shop.”

“I am sorry for this muddle I’ve made. But sorry won’t cut it, I know. I should have told you about John Park, his widow, from the start.”

“You should have, but I understand why you did not. Whatever the case, it is now at an end and I will be glad to shake hands and wish you well, Captain.”

He scowled. “I won’t shake your damned hand—dashed—
damn it
.”

“I certainly will not allow you to
kiss
me good-bye.”

“You think I’d—?” He broke off and swung his gaze away. Then he looked her straight in the eyes with all the intensity of his Mediterranean stare. “Will you accept him?”

“Accept whom?”

“Your champion.” His nostrils flared. “Charles Brittle.”

“Accept him for what? Oh! Oh, no. You have mistaken it. Charlie and I are good friends. Were, that is, until today. But we are quite like brother and sister, you see. He accused you because he worries for me. Ever since Jo Junior—well—that is to say, Charlie only wishes to protect me.”

“He wishes to do more than protect you, Elle.”

She stepped back. “Now, you should leave. I must tell Charlie the truth about the type before he discovers it himself.”

“If they are unforgiving, if they seek to punish you, you must send for me.”

“I shan’t need you. I can manage well on my own.”

It seemed he would reply. Instead he went to the door, but paused there.

“Captain,” she said before he could speak, “I do not want to see you again.”

With a stiff bow he donned his hat and reached for the handle. The door opened wide and Jo Junior stepped into the shop.

“Damn that traffic, Charlie! Hattie complained of the heat the—Oh, I beg your pardon, sir!” His skin glowed, his hair was light with sun, his coat was the height of fashion, and he looked like gold-plated nickel beside a solid guinea. “How do you do?” He bowed and smiled ingratiatingly. Elle could see him already calculating the costliness of the captain’s coat, the quality of his starched linen, the signet ring on his beautiful hand.

Jo’s gaze flicked to her. “G’day, Gabby.” Then he returned his sparkling smile to the captain. “Welcome to Brittle and Sons, sir. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Josiah Brittle, proprietor of—”

“Is this him?” The captain looked at her.

“Is this
he,
” she whispered. “Yes.”

He hit him, a quick, sudden swing of his bunched fist that barreled into Jo Junior’s jaw and sent him staggering back into the doorframe with a shout.

“What in the—”

And the captain hit him in the nose.

This time Jo Junior went to the floor, tripping over the umbrella bin and hat stand and sprawling onto his behind with a clatter of furniture, groans, and crude oaths. Blood flowing from his nose and eyes wide, he cowered in the corner.

The captain loomed over him.

“If you ever again abuse this woman in any manner—” His voice was like gravel. “If you say one displeasing word to her or disturb a single hair on her head, I will return here and remove your limbs from your torso, one limb at a time. Understood?”

Mouth agape, Jo Junior nodded.

Calmly picking up his hat from where it had fallen to the floor, the captain set it on his shiny locks, bowed to her, and departed, taking her laughter and her heart with him.

When Mr. Brittle Senior returned from Bristol two days later, Elle stood beside Charlie and retold the tale of the missing type.

“A body’s bound to make a mistake in life now and again,” Mr. Brittle said, tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat that was stretched from quite a lot of good life. That his good life was paid for by her hard labor and Lady Justice’s demands for equality struck Elle now as remarkably hypocritical. But he was studying her thoughtfully, considering mercy, and she needed this position.

“I could withhold your wages until the cost of the missing type is recouped,” he said.

“Of course.” She would throw herself upon the charity of Mr. Curtis. She would take in sewing work. She would not buy milk or eggs, only enough for her grandmother until…

“But trust is essential in business, Miss Flood,” he said. “And with this little escapade you’ve broken my trust.”

“Mr. Brittle, I understand that broken trust is difficult to mend.” She understood it intimately. “But—”

“Then you’ll understand why I have to let you go.”

The numbness settled in instantly. No need to flare into panic or distress, after all. She knew this road well.

“Very well,” she said. She cast a final glance through the press room doorway, to the desk and work that had been her life for eight years, until a captain in the Royal Navy who could barely read two words on a page came along. Lady Justice’s latest pamphlet was still in the frame and the pressmen were running the pages, one sheet after another with well-practiced fluidity, printing the pamphlets that would be sold on street corners throughout London tomorrow. Pamphlets that would net Brittle & Sons many hundreds of pounds.

Anger rose in her, swift and burning. Taking up her bonnet, she went to the door.

“Father, please,” Charlie said behind her. “You cannot—”

“No, Charlie,” she said. “Do not beg on my behalf. It is beneath you. And it is beneath me. Good-bye now.” She left the shop, and walked home. When she passed the grate in the cobbles in the alley, the place where she had lost much more than a few pieces of metal, she did not even look down.

~o0o~

“You did
what
?” The Earl of Bedwyr was gaping.

“Heard me the first time,” Tony growled.

“I heard you, but I still cannot fathom it.”

“Would’ve done the same yourself.”

“I would most certainly not have asked a woman to marry me for those reasons, you chivalrous numbskull. You are the only fool here with more honor than sense.” The earl wagged his head. “Idiot.”

“So glad I stopped by, Charles. Can’t tell you how much this is helping.”

“Imbecile.”

For a moment the only sound in the room was the ticking of a clock on the mantel.

“And you say she refused you at first, but then changed her mind?”

“Said she thought it over more carefully.”

“How inconveniently fickle of her. Why didn’t you simply tell her that she had lost her chance?”

“Because I ain’t as much of a scoundrel as you, I guess.”

Scoundrel
.

Tony sank his face into his hands, but Elle’s soft, saucy eyes were before him every time he closed his, and he wanted a gangplank and a shark-infested sea to throw himself into.

No. He wanted
her
. He wanted her so much he could taste her—feel her in his hands—smell her hair and skin.

“What will you do?” Cam said. “Marry the widow and her multiple children?”

“Poor thing’s got no one. No family. No money. I can’t leave her and the little ones to the streets.”

“Mm,” his friend agreed grimly. “Or the workhouse.”

Yet if Brittle threw off Elle, she would be in the same boat.

No
. That wasn’t so. Gabrielle Flood had too much spirit, too much good sense, too much intelligence and gumption and daring and willful verve to ever surrender. For God’s sake, she had masqueraded as a Hungarian princess at a society ball. Also, she didn’t have three little ones to feed, clothe, and house. And hundred to one, some man—
some man better than him
—would come along, give her his name, set her up in a fine cottage, provide her with children of her own, and she would make him the happiest fellow on land or sea.

Tony stared at the palms of his hands. Hers were always stained with ink: the fingertips, knuckles, even the palms sometimes. He suspected she didn’t even realize it. Or care. She had a mind and heart bent to a single devotion.

If she were his, he’d buy her a printing house.

He wanted to do it now. He would instruct his solicitor to start looking for a building, and a printing press for sale. He ached to give her what she deserved.

It couldn’t be. If Jane Park had plenty of reasons to reject a gift from a man who wasn’t her husband, Elle had even better reasons. And he would not open her to the potential shame of others misconstruing it.

Perhaps someday—an anonymous gift of a printing press—long after she’d forgotten all about him and would not guess where it came from…

The notion of that future without her was so bleak, he groaned.

“It seems to me that you are going about this all wrong, Anthony,” his friend said, echoing the words Elle had recited to him days ago from Peregrine’s letter to Lady Justice. Bedwyr was a writer too, of course. He knew how to turn a pretty phrase. She wanted that. She admired eloquence; she’d nearly fallen over when she’d met Bedwyr.

Even if he were free of his responsibility to the widow, Elle would never accept him.

“That so?” he snarled. “How d’you suppose I should go about it, then?”

The earl’s eyes widened. “Do you know,” he said, “I have never—not once, not when Westfall was bleeding into the sand and you were beside yourself with grief, not when your damn brother tried to contest your great-aunt’s will and steal Maitland Manor away from you, not even when Seraphina told you the truth about her marriage—I have never seen you so distraught. I never even imagined it was in your nature to be so.”

“It ain’t.”
Isn’t
. He dragged air into his lungs, but they would not fill.

Cam sat forward. “Anthony, you broke through French blockades. And for your entire life you have destroyed even greater obstacles than that. You must devise a solution to this problem that does not require you to marry the widow, one that will satisfy both your honor and Mrs. Park’s future. The unlucky past must not command you now.”

The unlucky past.

Unlucky.

The past…

The past
.

A memory came to him then in a flash, like Saint Elmo’s Light in a squall:
Standing beside John Park on the quarterdeck, looking out across a placid sea, John chuckling, telling the story of how he had met his wife through a midshipman he’d met in port. “The fellow shipped out the day he’d planned to propose to her. He said he and Jane were childhood sweethearts, and he sent me to tell her to wait for him. She couldn’t, of course. She hadn’t a shilling, her parents had died, and she had no friends in port. Only him.” John grinned. “His delay was my win. He had waited too long, unlucky bastard.”

Tony leaped from his chair and flew out of the room.

“Uncle Anthony!” Margaret called as he descended the stairs three at a time. “Why are you running?”

“Nurse says we mustn’t run in the house, Captain,” Letty said.

Scooping them from the bannister where they were hanging like monkeys, he hauled them up in his arms and kissed the top of each little head. They giggled and he set them down, and grabbed his hat from the footman. Donning it at a scoundrelly angle, he bowed to the mites.

“Ladies, I’m off to Newcastle.”

“Bring presents for us!” Margaret squealed.

“Of course.” But he intended to bring much more than presents. He would bring a miracle.

~o0o~

Elle did not tell her grandmother about losing her position at the shop, or anything about the captain. Instead she gathered up several of the smallest pieces of the bishop’s type from the kitchen table, laid them upon her grandmother’s palm, and curled her fingers around them. A ghost of a smile fluttered over the pale lips.

“Dear . . . girl.”

Elle tucked the coverlet around Gram’s frail body, kissed her on the brow, and whispered her love.

“I like him.” The words came so softly from her grandmother’s mouth, Elle barely heard them.

“I do too.” Despite herself. “Good night, darling.” Elle left her grandmother to sleep, passing beneath the painted trellis of roses that she had not really seen in years, not until he reminded her of them, and went to bed.

The following morning when she tried to rouse her grandmother to take breakfast, Gram would not wake.

The morning after that was the same.

Two mornings later, she was gone.

~o0o~

The funeral was modest, held in a sunny corner of the foundling home’s cemetery. Before falling ill, Elle’s grandmother had often visited the children to tell them stories. She had been beloved in their little community, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis said, but Elle suspected they did this to spare her the expense of a burial elsewhere.

As she stood beside the hole in the ground, with dry eyes she watched the gravedigger pile dirt onto the plain wooden box and wondered how Captain Masinter had felt watching his lieutenant buried. She knew he must have watched; his sense of responsibility for others was acute.

Minnie and Esme were waiting for her at the gate.

“Come have a cuppa, Elle,” Minnie said. “I will treat for biscuits.”

“Thank you. But I must look about for a new position today.”

“Elle, no.” Esme said. “Not today.”

But biscuits today would not transform into dinner tomorrow, or rent at the end of the month.

“Madame Couture will hire you until you can find another post,” Minnie said. “All the society ladies will soon return to town. She will need extra seamstresses.”

“Thank you, dear friends.” Elle squeezed their hands. “But I have a plan.” She had the direction of an employment agency across town and a burning need to be as far from Brittle & Sons, Printers, as possible. Lady Justice’s latest pamphlet was on every street corner, but Elle hadn’t even the pennies to purchase a copy. It was foolish to want the final broadsheet. But it was the last of the correspondence between the pamphleteer and her nemesis that Elle had shared with Gram. And because of it she had met a ship captain who opened up her heart again.

That heart beat now shallowly. Emptily. It did not even ache. Instead, she was numb. She would feel again someday, perhaps. For now she must find work.

When she bade her friends goodbye, however, she did not walk in the direction of the employment agency. She walked home. She needed to sit in the rocking chair by her grandmother’s bed. And she needed to see the roses that her grandfather had painted on the walls, to feel the power of love and devotion that even in misfortune had never died.

The grocer’s boy perched on the building’s stoop. Leaping up and tearing off his cap, he mumbled, “I’m that sorry, miss.”

“Thank you, Sprout. She always appreciated your help.”

“She, miss?”

“My grandmother.”

He cocked his head curiously.

“I have just come from her funeral.”

His eyes popped wide. “Gor blimey, miss. I didn’t know!” Then his nose screwed up. “S’pose the cap’n didn’t either.”

Elle’s numb heart tripped. “The captain?”

Guilt washed over the boy’s face. “I’m plum sorry for showin’ him where the key’s hidden.”

Now her heart sped. “He asked you for the key to my flat?”

His head bobbed. “I tried not to tell him, miss. Honest! But he said if I didn’t, he’d send the impressment crew over to nab me right up.”

She imagined the gleam in the captain’s eyes when he had made the empty threat, and she pinned her lips adamantly together. She did not want to smile now. She did not want to know his outrageous humor. She did not want to know
him
.

“After I showed him, I ran outta there quick, case he changed his mind and sent ’em anyway. Then I got to feelin’ poorly about doin’ you wrong. I’d to say how sorry I am for it, miss. Don’t know what the cap’n wanted it for anyhow. Key’s still under the mat.” He shrugged.

“Then I guess we should investigate.”

Sprout followed her up the stairs, her heart beating quicker with each step. When she reached the landing, she sensed something different.
A scent
. Bending to the mat, she took up the key and the scent positively overwhelmed. With shaky fingers she opened the door.

Roses.

Everywhere.

On tables. On the floor. In corners. Spilling out of vases and festooning chairs, on every surface pink and yellow and red and white blooms rampant with color. The most spectacular arrangements were clustered about her grandmother’s bed, their glorious fragrance filling the air.

Elle’s throat closed. Her eyes welled.

Finally, she wept.

~o0o~

Tony glowered at the page he’d been staring at for half an hour without making headway. It was like sailing against a damn trade wind, trying to make sense of the papers the land steward at Maitland Manor had sent. But he’d little knowledge of houses and fields, and he had to muddle through this quick primer. Couldn’t ask a woman to share his estate till he knew it himself. But he was impatient to be done with it. The sooner he could get down on his knee before that woman again—this time without shoes in hand—the better.

The door of his sitting room swung open.

“Disturb me, Cob,” he growled, “and I’ll have you strung up from the crow’s—”

But it was not Cob who stood there.

“You should not have done it.” Her face was blotched, and streaked with tears, her hair disarranged, and her hands twisting a kerchief she obviously wasn’t bothering to use because her nose was a bright soggy mess.

She looked like heaven.

“Why did you do it?” she demanded.

“She didn’t like them?” He stood up and moved to her. “Blast it. I’m sorry, Elle. I wanted to—”