The Scoundrel and I: A Novella (6 page)

“Please tell me why I have spent the afternoon being fitted for a ball gown,” Elle said when they were some distance away from the modiste’s house. He had asked her if she minded his riding in the carriage with her. Now she regretted allowing it. Enclosed in the tight space, even with glass windows on both sides, she felt his nearness too acutely. He was so large and handsome and smelled so deliciously good and his attention was entirely upon her.

“Told you already,” he said. “Tomorrow my uncle aims to attend Lady B’s ball, and you don’t have a ball gown.”

“Lady B?” She stared at him. “Lady
Beaufetheringstone
?”

“The very one.”

“But . . . But . . .” Minnie spent half of her time reading the gossip columns and the other half telling Elle, Adela, and Esme all about it. “Lady Beaufetheringstone is an important hostess.”

“She’s a darling,” he said.

“Captain—”

“Anthony,” he amended.

“I am not a member of high society. I do not belong at a high society ball.”

“You will tomorrow night. Seraphina will see to it.”

“But—”

“Come now,” he said with a half-smile. “Isn’t dressing up in a pretty gown and dancing at a ball every girl’s dream?”

“Perhaps for some,” Elle admitted. “But even so, a
dream
. Not reality. I know nothing about how to comport myself in a London ballroom.”

“Comport?”

“The rules of etiquette. Surely you understand.”

His black brows lifted. “Never gave it a thought.”

“You would not have, would you? You, in your uniform littered with medals, with your face and—and—and
height
and absolute disregard for rational sense would certainly never need to know anything about the rules of society. I have no doubt that you flash that handsome smile and say ridiculously charming things, and nobody notices that you have just broken twenty rules of etiquette and mangled the English language in the meantime.”

“You think my smile is handsome?”

“I have just insulted you and you did not even notice it.” She turned her face to the window. “I cannot believe I am here. In this carriage. I cannot believe I spent the past two hours being fitted for a ball gown that costs more than my yearly wages. And you know very well that your smile is handsome.”

“If my smile’s handsome, must be a reason for it,” he said so mildly she had to peek at him from the corner of her eye. A perfect example of the smile in question shaped his lips, and she knew he meant
she
was that reason.

She snapped her attention back to the window.

“Did notice the insult,” he said after a moment’s silence. “The compliment suited me better.”

She turned her face to find him regarding her with perfect equanimity. A special little bloom of pleasure inside her felt distantly familiar and so very good.

She rolled her eyes away. “You are incorrigible,” she said.

“And you’ll do fine tomorrow night. A girl like you—”

“Woman.”

“—with your snappy tongue and haughty nose—”

“Haughty
nose
?”

“Poking right up in the air when you’re put out, just like the titled ladies of the
ton
. High society’ll adore you, Elle.”

“I never said you could call me that.”

“Won’t, if you don’t like it.”

But she did like it. She liked it enormously. He pronounced her name like a caress, and perhaps it was spending hours wearing a gown studded with diamonds, or all the chocolates, but she had the most pressing urge to ask him to say it again. Her name. His voice. Like a caress.

“You may,” she said.

He grinned.

Of course he grinned. This was all his plan, his ridiculous lark. Not
his
future at stake. Not his real life. He could amuse himself with her troubles now and, when it was all over, be none the worse, while she would be in prison.

“If you don’t want to go to the ball, Elle, you needn’t. We’ll find another way to replace that type,” he said, entirely destroying her righteous indignation.

“You keep using that word.”

“A man’s bound to repeat a word every so often. Tell me which one you don’t you like and I’ll do my best to avoid it.”

“We,” she said.

His brow knit. “What other word would I use? But damned if your speech ain’t finer than mine. Beg pardon—
dashed
. All right, teach me a new word, Madame Printer. I’m all prepared to expand my vocabulary.”

“There is no other word for ‘we’, of course.” Her cheeks were burning. “You . . .”

“You?”

“
You and I
. But I already told you that.”

“And I remember it.” He tapped his fingertip to his head and his smile broadened. “Not entirely empty up here.”

He was a ship captain in the Royal Navy. Men did not win the command of vessels worth thousands of pounds, and the ruling of dozens of other men, unless they were intelligent.

“I do not dislike it when you use the word ‘we,’” she finally said, too quietly probably.

“Happy to hear it.” His voice was a bit rough. “You’re all right with it, then. The ball tomorrow?”

“I am afraid I will embarrass you. I . . . I don’t know how to dance.”

His eyes widened.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, twisting her fingers together. “I never learned. I never had the time.” Or the opportunity. For five years after her mother died and her father disappeared—years in which girls like Mineola, Adela, and Esme had attended country fairs and the occasional party at somebody’s home—Elle had scrubbed the floors of her neighbor’s house and fish shop in exchange for a pallet in the corner of the kitchen and food. Five years of raw hands and aching back and fish oil stench that would never wash away, until her grandparents appeared from America and rescued her.

“I don’t give a damn if you know how to dance or not,” he said.

“
Whether
I know how to dance. Then why are you gaping at me?”

“You just used a contraction.
Twice
. Didn’t think it was possible.” He spoke with sincerity, but the slightest crease in one of his cheeks marred the effect.

She pinched her lips to prevent a smile. “Can you never be serious, Captain?”

“Life’s too full of misery, Elle,” he said, abruptly sober. “No point in lingering in worries when a man can do something to make it better.” He leaned forward and grasped her hand lightly. “Try not to fret, will you?” he said. “We’ll work this out.”

It was too much for her—his strong fingers, his wonderful scent, the honest sincerity in his gorgeous eyes. Obviously she was not as immune to scoundrels as she wished. She withdrew her hand and clasped it with her other in her lap.

“I am afraid I will not impress your uncle and that this all will have been for naught,” she said. “I wish I knew how to go along at a ball. I truly do.”

He leaned back against the squabs, entirely comfortable while her pulse was racing.

“Daresay you could simply stand there and look prett—” He straightened and his gaze sharpened.

“What is it?” she said.

“An excellent idea’s just occurred to me. Needs refining, though. I’ll have it all worked out tomorrow.” His smile blinded. “Where to now, Miss Flood?”

“Brittle and Sons, please.”

“Nearly dark already. I’ll take you home.”

“No.”
She swallowed over the alarm in her throat. “No. Please, to the shop.”

“As you wish, ma’am.” His smile dimmed a bit, but he did as she wished.

~o0o~

The young curate from the charity church, Mr. Curtis, was departing when Elle entered her flat. She knew immediately the message in his gentle greeting.

“She is worse this evening, isn’t she?” she whispered as she untied the ribbons of her bonnet.

“I am afraid so. I encouraged her to take some broth, but she refused. Perhaps she will do so for you.”

“I should not have gone out today. With the shop closed, I should have remained at home with her while I am able. Instead I—” She dressed up like a costly doll and blushed like a ninny beneath the gaze of a naval hero. “I wasted the afternoon.”

“I cannot agree, Miss Flood. You must allow yourself some pleasures, especially now. Your grandmother is happier knowing that you are happy. She informed me with great animation that you have a suitor.”

“A suitor?”

“I wish you well in it,” he said with a kind smile, donned his hat, and departed.

In the bedchamber, her grandmother’s eyes were unusually bright.

“You are late tonight,” she said in a labored whisper as Elle crossed the room. “Were you . . . with him?”

Elle’s pulse beat like a little drum. “With whom, Gram?”

Her grandmother’s lips crinkled into a smile. “Young Sprout told me . . . about your gentleman caller.”

“The
grocer’s
boy? What on earth—What stories is Sprout inventing now? And why did you tell Mr. Curtis that I have a suitor?”

“Miss Dawson . . . called this afternoon.”

“Minnie? She called here? While I was—”

“With a gentleman.” Gram’s papery smile widened, and quite abruptly Elle decided that she did not care if the grocer’s boy or Mr. Curtis or Mineola or everybody in London knew she had spent time with a scoundrel if it gave her grandmother this pleasure.

“I was not precisely
with
him, Gram,” she admitted. “He is helping me with a—well, a very important project for the shop that I must complete before Mr. Brittle and the others return from Bristol. But what did Sprout have to do with it? Did he deliver the flour and tea while Minnie was here?”

“She paid him a penny . . . to wait at the shop . . . then to come tell me.” Her weary eyes were shining. “He said the carriage was glamorous.”

“You don’t care about carriages. You want to know about the gentleman,” Elle said with certainty. “But there is nothing to tell, Gram. He is”—tall and handsome and delicious smelling and ridiculously charming and she was definitely not immune to scoundrels—“the usual sort of man, I suppose.”

“Gabrielle, you are . . .” Her grandmother’s chest constricted and her lips tightened momentarily. “A poor liar.”

“How do you suppose that?” Elle said, hiding the lump in her throat.

“Even before today . . . I knew,” she whispered, her pain so close to the surface.

“What did you know?”

“That you are happy.”

Happ
y
?
Aching over her grandmother’s pain, yes. Panicked over the missing type, certainly. Happy, no. Not since her grandmother had fallen ill.

“Gram—”

“Your voice . . . step . . . breaths were lighter yesterday.” Her eyes were closing. “After I rest, you must . . .” Her voice was barely audible. “Tell me about him.”

But there was nothing to tell. Nothing real. This was a game to him, a momentary diversion. She had no maidenly virtue to lose; naïve fool that she had once been, she had given that eagerly to lying Jo Junior. She had nothing like that to fear from the naval captain. And her heart was incapable of making the sort of attachment to a man that she had for her grandmother and once had for her grandfather and mother. So after Elle watched her grandmother fall into sleep, she went into the kitchen and prepared dinner for herself as she did every night. That she had no appetite for it she refused to attribute to the nervous tingles that had beset her stomach for two days now. It was so much easier to blame the cakes and chocolates.

~o0o~

Again wearing his uniform, which Cob had brushed and polished, Tony drew in a long lungful of moldy air and lifted his hand to knock on the door of the miserable flat into which his former first lieutenant had moved his family after he lost everything he owned except the clothes he’d worn playing cards that night.

Mrs. Park answered it. Hollow-cheeked, with dark circles beneath her eyes and her collarbones poking through her exceedingly modest gown, she was still a fine looking woman, pretty, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight—a few years older than Elle.

Adamantly putting out of his head the little print mistress, he bowed.

“Good day, ma’am.”

“Do come in, Captain,” Mrs. Park said softly, stepping away from the door. Everything about her except her bony frame was soft; her cottony blond hair, her pale eyes, her unsmiling lips, and her tepid voice. No spark in her eyes. No snappy color in her cheeks. No animation in her words. But of course there wouldn’t be; she’d been a widow only a few days, and from what John had told him, she’d been fond enough of her husband.

“May I offer you tea?” she said limply.

“No. Thank you.” He glanced over her shoulder hopefully. “Little ones about?”

“The children are napping,” she said. “We walked to the cemetery this morning to visit my husband’s grave. They were tired when we returned home.”

The cemetery where John Park had been laid to rest was miles across town. Poor girl couldn’t even afford a hackney coach to visit her dead husband.

“Glad to send a carriage the next time you wish to go,” he said, a sinking sensation in his gut as he watched her dull eyes and even duller movements as she went into the sitting space of the tiny flat.

“You mustn’t go to such trouble for us, Captain. You have already been tremendously generous.”

Sick, sharp guilt replaced the sinking sensation.

“No trouble,” he said. “My honor.”

She sat on a hard wooden chair.

“Will you have a seat, Captain?” she said, gesturing, then fell silent. He’d had a number of occasions to speak with her over the five years during which her husband had served as his first officer, and she’d never been more animated than she was at this moment. By now Elle would be peppering him with queries.

Shoving Gabrielle Flood from his thoughts once again, he set his hat on the table between them.

“Mrs. Park, I’ve news to share with you, the sort I don’t like to have to share, truth be told.”

Her features remained bland. “News, Captain?”