This Wicked Gift (2 page)

“What,” she demanded, “have you done with
my two pounds?”

I
T WAS WARM INSIDE
 
the lending
library, but William White still felt cold inside. His hand clenched around the
solitary bank note in his pocket. The paper crumpled in his fist, cutting into
his palm. It had been ten years since anyone had wished him a merry Christmas.
Fitting, that it would happen on this day—and that Lavinia Spencer would be the
one to do so.

Christmas was a luxury for the wealthy—or,
perhaps, an illusion for the young and innocent. William had not been any of
those since the winter evening a
 
decade
ago when he’d been cut off from the comfortable life he’d been living.

He stared past the books shelved in front
of him, their titles blurring with the smooth leather of their bindings. The
scene clouded into an indistinct, foggy mass.

Tonight, a solicitor had finally tracked
him down. William had been leaving his master’s counting house, having just
finished another pitiful day of pitiful work, performed for the pitiful salary
of four pounds ten a quarter. As soon as he’d set foot outside, he’d been set
upon by an unctuous man.

For one second, when the lawyer had
introduced himself, a flush of uncharacteristic optimism had swept through
William. Mr. Sherrod had seen fit to remember the promise he’d made. William
could come home. He could forget the menial work he did as a clerk. He could
abandon the grim day-to-day existence of labor followed by sleep and
bone-chilling want.

But no.
It turned out Adam Sherrod was not
generous. He was dead.

He’d remembered William in his will—to the
tune of ten pounds. Ten pounds, when he’d been responsible for the loss of
William’s comfort, his childhood and, ultimately, William’s father. Ten pounds,
when he had promised most sincerely to take care of William, should it be
necessary. It had become necessary ten Christmases ago, and Mr. Sherrod had not
lifted a finger to help.

William had no real claim on Mr. Sherrod’s
money.
 
He had, in fact, nothing
but the memory of a promise that the man had kicked to one side. But still,
he’d remembered.

Thus dissipated one of the elaborate
dreams he’d fashioned to motivate
himself
on the
hardest days. He would never return to Leicester. He would never be able to rise
above his father’s errors; hell, he would never even rise above his fellow
clerks. This evening, he’d been damned to live in the hell of poverty for the
rest of his life. There would be no salvation.

That last legacy should have been no
surprise. After all, it was only in fairy tales that Dick Whittington came to
London as an impoverished lad and ended up Lord Mayor. In reality, a man
counted himself lucky to earn eighteen pounds a year.

So yes, Christmas was for the young. It
was for blue-eyed angels like Miss Lavinia Spencer, who would never be
confronted with the true ugliness of life. It was for women who wished
customers a merry Christmas without imagining the holiday could be anything
other than happy. Christmas was not for men who’d had one of two fantasies
shattered in one evening.

It was the second fantasy that had drawn
William here.

Miss Spencer was slim and vivacious. She
couldn’t help but move her hands when she talked. She smiled far too much. She
blushed far too easily. And her hair was forever falling out of its pins into
unruly cinnamon waves that clung to her neck. She was one of those souls who
remembered countless trivialities—names of
 
customers,
names of cats, the health of everyone’s spouse.

If he’d received even a fraction of those
ten thousand pounds, as promised…Well, that was a subject for many a cold and
lonely night indeed.
Because he’d have found a way to get her
into his bed, over and over.

William paused, his hand on the spine of a
book, and attempted to banish the image that heated thought conjured.
Miss Lavinia Spencer, undoing the ties that fastened her cloak.
The wool would fall to the floor in a swirl, and those cinnamon waves of hair
would slip from their pins. He couldn’t think of that. Not now. Not here. It
was not, however, his strength of mind that sent the vision away. It was the
sound of speech.

“Vinny, you have to understand.” The
recalcitrant whine of her brother was barely audible from where William stood,
obscured by the shelves.

Over the past year, the elder Mr. Spencer
had come into the shop less frequently. William had noted with some disapproval
that it was Miss Spencer who’d taken his place downstairs. She’d greeted
customers and accepted deliveries. Her brother, James, had been conspicuously
absent from useful employment.

“It was just a temporary loan. He needed
the money to pay the guards so he could get at his goods without his creditors
finding out.” James ended on a querulous note, as if his bald assertion yearned
to become a question.

“
Bribe
 
the guards, you mean.” That was Miss
 
Spencer—incorruptible, of course. She
was speaking in an almost whisper, but the shop was quiet enough that William
could hear every word, echoing amongst the books.

“But Mr. Cross promised me ten percent!
And he even drew up a proper partnership agreement. Since you never let me help
in here, I thought I could find a way to pay Papa’s bills on my own. I was
going to buy you a Christmas present. When’s the last time you had a new dress,
Vinny?”

“I’d rather have my two pounds. You
 
are
 
getting to the part where you took the
money without asking me?”

“I thought I’d be able to slip it back in
before you found out. After all, Mr. Cross’s warehouse was supposed to contain
three hundred bricks of tea, and several casks of indigo. Ten percent would
have been a fortune.”

There was a moment of disapproving
silence. “I see. Since you do not seem to be weighed down by exorbitant
shipping profits, I must conclude your foray into trade was unsuccessful.”

A sullen scuffle of shoes followed. “After
I gave him the two pounds, Cross told me we needed fifty more to pay the excise
men.”

“I see.”

William had heard of similar tricks
before. It was the sort of fraudulent promise made by ruffians who preyed on
the greedy and the indolent—a pledge of fabulous wealth, soon, if only the mark
in question handed over a tiny amount. It started with a few shillings. Next,
the
 
trickster would require three
pounds for a bribe, followed by fifty for customs. The fraud only ended when
the target was bled dry.

“Well, of course I saw through him
 
then,”
 
the younger Spencer continued. “I
called him a cheat. And then he told me he’d have me up in front of a
magistrate for failing to deliver on my promissory note.”

“
Your
 
what?”

“Uh.”
James drew the syllable out. His hesitance
echoed among the books. “You recall that partnership agreement?”

“Yes…?” She did not sound the least bit
encouraging.

“It turns out that paper I signed was
actually a promissory note for ten pounds.”

The inarticulate cry of protest Miss
Spencer made was not angelic at all. William peeked around the corner. She was
seated on her stool, her head in her hands. She rocked back and forth, the seat
tipping precariously. Finally she spoke through her fingers. “You didn’t
 
read
 
it when you signed it?”

“He looked honest.”

Wood scraped against the slate floor as
Miss Spencer pushed her stool back and stood. William pulled his head behind
the shelves before she could spot him.

“Oh, my Lord,” she swore, downright
unrighteous in her wrath. “A man offered you a partnership predicated upon
attempted bribery, and you didn’t question his integrity?”

“Um. No?”

William did not dare breathe into the
silence that followed. Then James spoke again. “Vinny, if I must appear before
a magistrate, could we claim—”

“Be quiet,” she snapped furiously.
“I’m thinking.”

So was William. Frauds and cheats, if they
were any good, made excessively good barristers for themselves in court. The
common person could not risk a loss at law. William would not want to stand in
young James’s shoes before a magistrate.
He gave it even odds the boy would prevail.

“No,” Miss Spencer said, almost as if
she’d heard William’s thoughts, and decided to correct him. “We’d win, but we’d
have to pay a barrister. No magistrate.”

“Vinny, do we have ten pounds? Can’t we
make him just go away?”

“Not if we want to pay the apothecary.”

There was a bleak silence. Likely, Miss
Spencer had forgotten William was in the room. If he were a gentleman, he’d
have apologized minutes ago and taken his leave.

“We are not without options,” Miss Spencer
said.

Options.
William had a fair idea just how many
options Miss Spencer had. He suspected the number was equal to the population
of single men who frequented the library—and perhaps included the married men.
As the reading men of London
were, by definition, neither
blind nor completely idiotic, he knew there were many others who entertained
charged fantasies about Miss Spencer. In fact, he rather suspected that old
 
Mr. Bellows, the wealthy butcher,
would offer her marriage if she gave him the slightest encouragement. Ten
pounds would be nothing to him—and the butcher was hardly alone in his lust.

William could not countenance the thought.
He could not envision her beneath that fat, toothless man. And besides, the
upright Miss Spencer chided her brother about bribery and petty theft. She
would never stray from a husband, no matter how many teeth the man lost. If she
married, William would never be able to pretend—not even on the darkest,
loneliest nights—that he would one day have her.

He’d had enough dreams shattered today.

“I have a plan.” There was steel in Miss
Spencer’s voice. “I’ll take care of it.”

“What must I do?” James asked instantly.

Miss Spencer was silent. “I think,”
she
said quietly, “you’ve done enough for now. I’ll take
care of it for you. Just give me his direction.”

Silence stretched, ungracious in its
length. Finally her brother heaved a sigh.
“Very well.
Thank you, Vinny.”

Like the foolish coward that he was, her
brother complied. William could hear the scratch of pen against paper. James
hadn’t even asked her what her plan entailed, or insisted that he take care of
the matter himself. He didn’t care what she might have to sacrifice for him.

William’s fists clenched around the bank
note in his
 
pocket.
If he
were a gentleman, he’d hand Miss Spencer his ten pounds and solve all her
problems.

Then again, William hadn’t been a
gentleman since he was fourteen.

No. His ten pounds—his last, minuscule
legacy from childhood—would buy him the one fantasy he had left. If she had to sacrifice
herself, it might as well be in his honor. She’d wished him a merry Christmas.

Well, she was going to give him one.

T
HE ADDRESS HER BROTHER
 
had inked was
still damp on the page when Lavinia’s reverie was interrupted.

“He calls you Vinny?”

She looked up and felt her cheeks flush.
It was Mr. William Q. White, leaning against the shelves.
Of
all the people to intrude at this moment.
She’d thought the conversation
had been quiet. She’d thought him safely ensconced back in the finance section,
behind five shelves of books. Obviously she’d been wrong on both counts.

How much had he overheard? How embarrassed
ought she to be at playing out that ridiculous drama in front of this serious
man? Had she said anything stupid? And how absurd was it that, despite all that
had transpired in the last half hour, her heart raced in pitter-patters because
Mr. William Q. White had actually
 
started
 
a
conversation with her?

As she always did when she was nervous,
she began to babble. “Yes, he calls me Vinny. It’s a pet name for—”

“I know your Christian name, Miss
Spencer.” His gaze did not move from hers. Instead, he walked across the room
to her and stepped behind the counter. He stood too close. If she’d been
sitting in a regular chair, she’d have had to crane her neck. Seated on a
stool, her feet swinging well above the ground, she still had to lean her head
back to look him in the eyes.

He smiled at her, a long, slow grin. In
giddy excitement her stomach turned over. That dangerous curve of his lips was
a new expression for him.
 
Assuredly
 
new.
She would have remembered
another one like it. Lavinia swallowed.