Authors: Pamela Britton
Clank.
The back of the chair reclined.
His startled eyes moved to the chair as next she pulled something out from beneath the seat. It was a cleverly concealed board that lengthened to serve as a leg rest.
Why, she’d converted it into a bed of sorts. “How utterly clever.”
“It is, rather,” she said, straightening. “One of my grandfather’s better inventions. Go ahead. Try it.”
Rein moved forward, utterly enchanted. It was a sign of his delight that he didn’t even notice the filth—well, not much, anyway. And then he was sighing as the previously uncomfortable armchair, the one with a seat as hard as his cousin Alex’s head, turned into a plush and unbelievably comfortable bed.
“There’s just one problem,” she said as he leaned back.
Blam.
That was the sound the chair made as it fell backward, Rein suddenly given a rather unexpected and close-up view of the wall behind the chair. “Devil take it,” he exclaimed, his hand lifting to his head, which suddenly ached again due, no doubt, to the sudden loss of altitude.
“It has a tendency to do that.”
Just then the leg board slid back, and Rein’s legs bent horizontally as it did so.
“And that,” she said.
And as Rein looked up at her from his position as the human Z, he realized she’d known he would end up in such a position. What’s more, she relished seeing him thus. He could see it in the way her lips stretched and flexed as they tried not to smile. Her eyes twitched and twinkled and very obviously tried not to scream the word,
Ha.
Why, that little minx.
“I think I damaged my head again.”
“That I sincerely doubt. However, there’s a pickled brain in brine water over there. You’re welcome to have it, since I fear you need it more than the jar.”
And that was when he found himself on the verge of laughing, and filled with a sincere admiration for her cleverness in getting even with him for hoodwinking her grandfather into allowing him to stay. But most of all, that was when Rein decided he would have Miss Anna Brooks one day soon. One day
very
soon.
Anna decided to avoid him. Only that was impossible to do when the man one tries to avoid is up the next morning looking as fresh-faced and handsome as the portraits of noblemen she’d seen in an artist’s shop down on Bond Street.
“I have decided to help you at market this day.”
He’d decided to do what?
She looked past him, out the windows behind the brown chair he’d slept in last night. The sun had yet to rise, and Anna had supposed he’d be asleep. Alas, he must have heard her getting dressed, for he even had his brown jacket on, the worn and battered boots he’d traded for those shiny black beauties he’d been wearing yesterday looking too big for him.
“What do you mean, help?”
“Well. Since you seem to be rather busy, I thought I might help you sell your wares, whatever those might be.”
Sell her wares? “Are you daft?”
“At times, yes, but I believe today’s idea falls under the wanting-to-earn-my-keep category.”
She lifted a brow. He wanted to earn his keep, did he, now? Well, he’d have to work hard to do that. Truth be told, she’d promised herself that she’d give him the boot this morning.
Twenty pounds.
Yes, well, twenty pounds didn’t change the fact that he made her feel things she knew she ought not to feel for a man who was all but a stranger.
And if you do not win the competition…
She
would
win the naval competition.
And today is the day you retrieve the material for your sails.
Oh, bugger it. This was exactly the reason she should tell him to go. He made her normally logical brain think illogical thoughts.
“You’ll only get in the way.”
“Not if you tell me what to do.”
“I’ll tell you what you should do. Leave.”
“Leave?” He looked aghast.
“Aye. For in thinking on it, I’ve no notion if you’re even worth twenty pounds.”
He straightened. “I assure you, I am.”
Was he? If his clothes were any indication, he was. She shook her head. “No. I want you gone by the time I return.”
He looked thunderstruck. “You are passing up the opportunity to earn twenty pounds?”
“I am passing on the opportunity to have a strange man, one whom I know nothing about, live with us.” And with that, she turned, hoping he would leave her be and simply do as she asked.
He didn’t. Indeed, what he did was follow her. Anna felt her ire increase. She felt something else, too. His nearness made her aware of how much bigger he was than her, the masculine smell of him drifting down to fill her nose and making her aware that she was all but alone with him, her grandfather asleep on the other side of the curtained-off wall.
“I beg you, Miss Brooks. Do not turn me out on the streets. Alone, penniless, with no place to go.”
And something about that voice, about the utter desperation she heard in it, made her turn, made her glance up at him.
“I am not at all accustomed to begging for charity, but I shall do whatever it takes to gain yours. My head still aches, my memory is still faulty, I have no notion of where to go or what to do. You are all I have, Miss Brooks. Do not turn me out.”
Green eyes, as green as the fields she could see from her rooftop when the skies were clear, stared down at her with such an intensity she heard herself swallow.
“Please,” he added.
Handsome
didn’t begin to describe him. All night long she’d thought about him, thought about the way just looking at him made her feel—edgy, uncomfortable, curious. What worried her most was she didn’t have time to be curious about a man.
“If you do not want the twenty pounds then at least let me stay until I’ve regained my health. I shall pay you the rest of the coin I have.”
No. She shouldn’t.
“Please,” he said again.
And something within Anna stirred. A memory, one of coming to this place and feeling just as afraid, just as alone.
Don’t do it, Anna. Don’t give in.
“One more night,” she said, silently cursing herself for being so soft.
He looked so relieved, so thankful, Anna took a step back for fear he might kiss her.
Her heart began to somersault in her chest at the thought.
If a man like him kissed her…
You’d what, Anna?
She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to find out. And therein lay the crux of the problem. By inviting him to stay for one more night, she opened herself up to more silly fantasies of being carted off to a new life by a man with princely good looks. They were fantasies she hadn’t had since she was a girl.
“One night,” she repeated, as she turned away and opened the door at the same time she grabbed her cloak.
“One night,” he said back.
She didn’t turn, just kept her hand on the door, flicking her cloak around her when she was on the other side. Lord, why had she done it? Why hadn’t she just held firm and told him to leave?
Because you’ve never, not once, had a man ask you for something.
Because he hadn’t demanded, nor threatened, nor gotten angry. Because he appeared to be in genuine need, and Anna Brooks understood all too well what that felt like.
All too well, indeed.
But if she thought she’d escaped him, she should have known otherwise. As she exited the alley that ran between her building and the next—her barrow pushed out in front of her—she was startled nearly out from under her straw hat when a tall form materialized by her side.
He’d followed her down.
“Goodness,” she cried, dropping the handles of her barrow, the utensils she sold at market tinking as she dropped her end. “You scared ten years off my life.”
“Beg your pardon,” he said, the early morning light casting a gray pall over everything, including her.
She took deep breaths, feeling more out of sorts than she ought for being merely startled. “What do you want?”
For a moment his eyes heated, and Anna thought he meant to say something other than what he said.
“I told you abovestairs. I intend to help you sell your wares today.” He glanced into her barrow. “Whatever those wares might be.”
She felt a rush of air leave her as she huffed in disbelief. “Help me? Don’t be daft.”
The look in his eyes faded. He lifted a brow, a habit of his she’d begun to notice. “I didn’t realize that a cloud of uselessness hung over me.”
That made her feel instantly contrite. Gads, she’d turned into a shrew. “’Tis not that I don’t think you’d be useful,” she said, scrambling for a way to soften her words. “’Tis that you’re, you’re…”
Aristocratic. Handsome. Out of place.
“You don’t look like a market maid,” she said.
Silly, silly, silly thing to say.
His brows lowered, and yes, that was a smile that came to his lips. “Ah. I see. I don’t believe I’ve ever had any complaints that I’m the wrong sex before.”
She crossed her arms in front of her, feeling mortified by her own ridiculous words and suddenly uncomfortable at the way he looked at her.
Was that a flirtatious glimmer in his eyes? She could swear it was.
She shook her head, turned away. “I don’t have time to waste,” she said, picking up the handles of her barrow and pushing off, the metal tools protesting her rough handling by jangling loudly. “Follow me if you want, just stay out of my way.”
He didn’t reply, and Anna had to glance out of the corner of her eye to discover he had, indeed, followed her.
Blimey.
She navigated the piles of refuse that sprouted up at odd intervals along the walkway, her nose wrinkling as she passed beneath windowed buildings that housed family after family, sometimes two or three to a room.
“I believe my boots are too big,” she heard him murmur, and when she darted another glace at him, it was to see him looking down woefully. “I am getting a blister on the back of my heel.”
“Welcome to life as one of the lower orders.”
He looked over at her, then around, seeming to limp a bit. “Where is everyone going?”
He must be from wealth, indeed, if he didn’t know that. “To work, gov, some returning from a late night, others out to find employment.”
She saw his eyes settle on a woman with two babes at her feet, their bedraggled appearance revealing their poverty, saw the look in his face turn to one of dismay as he turned away, his gaze falling on the dismal facade of the two- and three-story buildings they passed.
“I never realized.”
She knew what he meant. “No?” she said as a cart with a huge draft horse jangled by. “Then you’re a lucky cull. This is the good part of the rookery.”
He glanced over at her then, his green eyes staring at her in a way he’d never looked before. It was as if he’d rubbed at a piece of glass with his sleeve, his expression turning to one of puzzled curiosity as he looked through it.
“You weren’t born here, were you?”
“I told you yesterday that I wasn’t.”
“Yes, but I suppose I didn’t really believe…”
Believe what? That she could be reduced to such straits?
She took a firmer grip on her barrow and sped up a bit. “Mr. Hemplewilt, I’d like to get myself to market. I’m late and conversation slows me down.”
With that, she sped up even more, expertly weaving her way through pedestrians and carts that choked up like mud through the neck of a bottle the closer they got to Covent Garden. And as the number of people increased, so, too, did the number and quality of the buildings and shops they passed. With each step they took, they cast off the dirt and grime of the rookery and took on the mantle of London’s premium market. When they neared the wide-open square of Covent Garden, she slowed at last.
“Mornin’, Anna,” the rose trader said.
“Roses,” she heard Mr. Hemplewilt say, the clomping steps of his too-large boots on the stone covered ground slowing.
Anna kept on going. Maybe she’d lose him among the barrows and stalls—some permanent, others not so permanent stalls that made the market resemble a busy anthill, people already milling about as they shopped for their wealthy masters, or sometimes themselves.
She was looking for Molly, her best chum. The two of them normally walked to market together and then sold their wares side by side. But her friend had had to leave early this morning to purchase her oranges, so when Anna went to her usual spot, Molly was already there.
“You’re late,” Molly said, a large wicker basket of oranges at her feet, her pretty face and wide blue eyes shielded by a straw hat that matched Anna’s, except hers had a blue ribbon that tied beneath her chin.
“I have reason,” Anna said, looking back in the direction she’d come, the smell of flowers and citrus and vegetables mixing into a familiar smell both pungent and sweet. Sure enough, Mr. Hemplewilt made his way toward them, though he was a good twenty paces behind.
“Is that him?” Molly asked, looking at Mr. Hemplewilt as if he were the Holy Grail. “The man what you clouted with your sail yesterday?”
“It’s him,” Anna said, positioning her barrow next to Molly’s.
Molly looked delighted. “I thought you said he was only staying the day,”
“He stayed the night.”
“Did he, now?” Molly said suggestively, her brown brows wiggling.
“It’s not what you think,” Anna said, feeling her cheeks color yet again. Blast it all.
“Are you certain?”
“I’m certain.”
“And who is this pretty lady?” Mr. Hemplewilt asked as he stopped before Anna and Molly.
“This is my friend Molly Washburn,” Anna said.
Rein stopped before her, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips.
Anna bristled.
“Charmed,” he said in a silky voice.
Every market maid in the square looked at them, from the flowermongers across from her barrow, to the costermongers behind and to the right side of her. Anna felt the urge to turn away. So she did, pulling out her knives and peelers and mashers and other items she sold. She had the end space down a long aisle just so she could hang the things off the narrow walls of her barrow.
“Ah,” she heard a masculine voice say. “They’re utensils.”
“What did you think they were?” she asked without looking at him, feeling… very well, she could admit it, she felt piqued that he’d kissed Molly’s hand.
Gads, she was dicked in the knob for certain.
“I thought they were weapons.”
She turned to him.
“Weapons?”
He smiled. Her heart stopped. Lord help her, with the sun just breaking the plains of the buildings, his eyes looked even more breathtaking, especially with a twinkle in them, one enhanced by the rays of light that turned the gray buildings and square around them a yellow-gold.
“Indeed. Something to toss at the poor blokes overcome by your beauty.”
Her beauty.
She looked away, telling herself to stop being so silly. Men had been calling her pretty since her first days at market. The trick was not to let it affect her.
But it felt different when Mr. Hemplewilt thought her beautiful. He wasn’t like the dirty, unkempt blokes what usually tried to get under her skirts and squeeze her bubbies, that was for sure.
“I sell the tools that help people prepare the vegetables they buy here at the market,” she explained without looking at him, her hands shaking for some reason.
“Do you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Well, then, I shall help you peddle them.”
Anna turned, her eyes narrowing. Molly stood behind Mr. Hemplewilt. Her friend had grabbed two of her oranges, and now held them at the apex of her thighs with a suggestive look.
Molly,
Anna silently admonished. A further glance around revealed several of the other women in the market laughing. Lord, they’d never let her forget this day.
“Mr. Hemplewilt, if you want to help me, you’ll do so by staying out of my way.”
The oranges had moved up to her friend’s breast, Molly wiggling her brows.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Mr. Hemplewilt said.
The oranges moved up to her eyes, her friend moving her head up and down as if eyeing him or, more specifically, his bum.
“Molly, you have a customer,” Anna said, her friend whirling about. She did, indeed, have a customer, a male, one who held out his hands with a wide smile and said, “I’ll take those.”