The Danger of Desire (14 page)

Thinking of a man like the captain at all was asking for nothing but trouble.

CHAPTER 10

A
bell rang from deep in the kitchen, and Meggs went rattling down the stairs, trying to shake the graven image out of her head and get back to work.

She set the big-deal table for supper, as directed by Mrs. Tupper, with the most beautiful things—silver and linen and cut glass and porcelain so fine the light passed through it. She set out the big tureen of soup while Mrs. Tupper brought over a platter of roasted chicken, served with potatoes and peas. Spare fare, Mrs. Tupper had called it. Looked like a bloody feast to her. She had to swallow to keep herself from slavering down her face like a mongrel dog.

And then Himself gimped in. He looked tired again—in his body anyways—the limp made his footfalls slow and deliberate. But his eyes were bright and sharp, searching each one of them out in the room. She ducked her head and stepped back, determined to play her part of housemaid to perfection. Anything to get her out of the kitchen and back to what she did best. Bunging pockets wasn’t easy, but it surely beat this working for a living. Mop squeezing had gotten old mighty fast.

At Himself’s nod, Mr. Jinks and Mrs. Tupper sat down on one side of the table, and she and Timmy were directed to the other.

Lord, but he’d really meant it. They really were going to sit down together at the table. She had set the lovely places herself, and still she had not let herself believe the captain would really take his meal with them, as if it were the most normal thing in the universe. What a rum cove, to take dinner with his servants as though they were guests and gentry. Good Lord and all the glowering saints. Her face felt as hot as a biscuit. She couldn’t remember the last time she had sat down at a dinner table, and it wasn’t even the gleaming acre of polished mahogany that filled the dining room upstairs from one side to the other. But she had, once. Before.

For the past few years, meals, such as they were, had been taken on the street, standing up or hunched on a convenient stoop or bench, eating hot pies from a vendor’s barrow. Another memory intruded, of a crude wooden table at old Nan’s, the kiddies all packed in elbow to elbow shoveling what little food there was into their mouths before it could disappear.

“Tanner,” she whispered out the side of her mouth, “watch the captain, when he eats, and do whatever he does. No, you turnip, not the wine. You’re too young. Mind your manners.”

Only they hadn’t got any manners, anymore, had they? Timmy had been a baby, before. He couldn’t remember. He ate like he was in a prison, all hunched over his soup bowl, as if he needed to defend it.

But she had another, dimmer memory in her head. Of linens the color of daffodils and fresh milk in creamy stoneware jugs. And pies. Filling the air with the smell of apples and cinnamon. Meggs reached her left hand up to the edge of the table to finger the intricate curl of the sterling silver fork.

“Don’t even think of pawning it.” The captain’s voice intruded upon her reverie. “Anything missing will be deducted from your pay. At replacement value, not at whatever you get if you fence it.”

He was a sharp cove, no doubt about it. But he didn’t know everything. She slid her hand back into her lap and kept her memories to herself. Daffodils. Creamy milk. And flowers. Flowers fresh from a garden, in pots—no vases—around the house.

And plates. Like this one, porcelain with pale flowers and lines of gold painted round the scalloped edge. Her mother’s hand, so soft and white on the stem of a wineglass. Had they sat at tables like this one? She searched her memory, but the only other thing she could recall was the mellow glow from the candles and the feeling of warmth.

Oh, the soup was good. Potatoes and leeks and cream. Warm and smooth as butter. Heaven.

When the soup was finished, Mrs. Tupper motioned for Meggs to clear the bowls away to the sideboard while she uncovered the serving platters of chicken, potatoes, and peas. When Meggs sat back down again, the captain turned those probing eyes of his to her to make conversation. Or at least his style of conversation, which was more like an interrogation.

“Do you like to steal?”

Nothing like reminding a girl of exactly where she sat in the world, though tonight she might be allowed to be fed her dinner like a nob. She glanced at the cold judgment of his eyes, but didn’t pause. “I like to eat.”

“So I see.”

That was bloody rich—big man like him, who looked as if he’d never missed a meal in his life. She put up her chin and faced him. “It’s like this—if I could eat without stealing, I wouldn’t steal. But I never did figure out how to have the one without doing the other.”

“I see.” He took a long sip of wine, still wanting to find his answer. “So you don’t get even a bit of a thrill when you are successful?”

“Well now, that’s just human nature, innit? But usually I’m too busy worrying about my neck, or Timmy’s, to feel any thrill.” She made herself take a breath and relax, civil like. He was only curious, was all, however lowly it made her feel. “I do like how I feel when it’s done. When a job is over and everything’s done and secured. That’s nice for a bit. But I only ever feel successful after my pockets are empty. And then I have to start all over again, don’t I?”

“I imagine what you must have felt was relief. And perhaps, pride.”

“I like to steal
and
eat.” Timmy laughed from her other side.

The captain smiled at him in encouragement. Meggs frowned. He shouldn’t do that. The captain should be encouraging the boy to be more like him, a gentleman, instead of gallows bait.

“And you’re good at it.” The captain was smiling at Timmy, completely unconcerned with her, though she sent him a ferocious scowl. As if he thought it perfectly all right to let a twelve-year-old boy, with more enthusiasm than sense, loose on the streets of London on his own. Hadn’t she just told him today they worked best together? She’d give him a bloody big piece of her mind. She’d—

Meggs snapped her neck to swivel her look from one to the other. How would the captain know how good the Tanner was, unless ... ?

She rounded on her Tanner. “What did you do?”

Timmy wasn’t holding his cards close. He was bursting to tell her. “Went out just this afternoon, the cap’n and me, on our own.” He was full of manly triumph at having finally gotten around his overprotective sister. “I showed him round, tipped him the dub, so he’d know what it were like. Tailed a nob in his carriage, all the way straight into Mayfair. Took a hackney, we did. I sat up with the driver so’s I could keep a close trail of the nob n’all. You should get your own carriage, Cap’n.” He talked right across her as if she wasn’t there. “A bang-up rig, like a curricle or a phaeton. That ways, I could sit up right behind, like the prime bucks in the park, and tell you where to go.”

She’d like to tell them both where to go. This was her job, her rig, and they had gone off without her. Left her behind like cold bathwater, to mop and clean up after them, while they were out roystering the afternoon away.

“Tanner don’t—”

Himself cut her off, his voice calm but carrying. That voice that could get heard over cannon fire. “You did very well, today. Both of you.” He smiled at her, but it was meant just to make her shut up—it didn’t even warm the corners of his eyes.

She had nothing to give him but surly resentment. “Told you I knew how to eat.”

He ignored her. “Thank you for a delicious dinner, Mrs. Tupper.” Then he cut his sharp eyes across to Meggs.

She knew that look well enough already, though it was softened with the barest bit of a smile, telling her to mind her manners. She bobbed a respectful nod to the housekeeper. “Thank you, Mrs. Tupper.”

“Thank you,” echoed Timmy without any prodding.

Well, there were manners there enough to fill a boat. And dishes enough to fill the wash bucket to overflowing. Lord, but that was going to take an age. And them all filing out, leaving it for her. Mrs. Tupper was handing her plates and platters to carry off to the scullery, so she couldn’t get a moment private enough with Tanner to give him a piece of her mind.

Thankfully, it turned out she didn’t have to do all the washing up alone, though Tanner was playing least in sight. Mr. Jinks and Mrs. Tupper worked right alongside her, Jinks handling all the wet, sloshing bits while she was to dry the plates and take them back up to store in the butler’s pantry between the dining and breakfast rooms.

The rest of the house was quiet, but there was light and a murmuring of voices coming from Himself’s study. She tiptoed her way across the hall parquet, silent as a knife, to listen at the door.

The captain. And Tanner.

She would have burst in. She should have. She was supposed to be protecting Tanner, wasn’t she? She was supposed to take care of him and make sure nothing awful or
nefarious
happened to him.

But her throat felt hot and tight, and she couldn’t keep her mouth from twitching around. He had left her out.
They
had left her out, both this afternoon and now. While she was cleaning and working, they were sitting up here, pretty as you please, talking and laughing.

Her eyes began to burn with heat. Oh, fie and damn. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. Old Nan had taught her better. But—

“Go on,” the captain’s voice was saying, “you’re falling asleep in your chair. Take yourself off to bed.” And then a scrape of chairs.

Meggs ghosted her way across the hall and down the stairs before they had so much as cracked the door. She smothered her rage and fear and frustration by savagely sweeping out the kitchen, until captain sought her out.

“Normally, I would tell you listening at doors was a bad habit, but under the circumstances, I suppose it’s appropriate.”

There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t make her look six ways a fool. So she kept her breath to cool her porridge.

“Come back up to the study. You’ve made a decent start, but there’s more work to be done before we turn in.”

Something in his voice—something remote and hard—made alarm scurry through her like a hungry rat. And that “we turn in”—there weren’t any pallets laid on the floor tonight. She touched the sharp knife she’d nipped into her pocket earlier. It calmed her to feel it tucked close and ready. But the captain was already clomping unevenly up the backstairs, paying her and her knife no never mind.

Did no one in this bleeding house use the main stairway? Waste of all that damn mopping and polishing, if you asked her. But no one was asking.

The study smelled of fire, of something burned that was different from the heat of the coal in the grate. There was a wisp of paper, curled and blackened on the hearthstone. The captain had been burning papers. Probably something he didn’t want her getting ahold of.

But now, he was passing her another piece of paper. “Tell me what you make of this.”

“Dunno. It’s writing, innit? But it’s not right. It’s all my eye and Betty Martin.” She held the paper out, to hand it back. He shook his head and didn’t take it.

“Jibberish, do you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“What language is it?”

She looked again, more closely. “These supposed to be words? So it’s a code then? Like flash patter and the like?”

“Good. Yes, a little.” He was nodding at her, all encouraging.

“And it’s not gonna be the King’s English is it? Didn’t think we had this many two-letter words in English, do we? Then again, I suppose we do, but it still don’t look right.”

“Very good.” The light in his eyes was all for her being clever. Made her feel warm and happy inside when he looked at her like that. Made her forget about needing to keep knives in her pocket. Guess that was the pride he was talking about.

“Can you cipher what it says?” she asked him.

“Yes. I wrote it, as an exercise for you.”

“Well, I dunno what it says.” She shrugged, all nonchalant, but she didn’t like to admit it. That pride again.

“You will, lass. I’ll teach you how. Come here.” He pulled a chair up next to the desk and sat, motioning her into the other. “This is what’s known as a simple Roman code. It’s a basic shift of the alphabet. The secret is to find the most common letter.”

It was like a puzzle, a game. “There—the ‘M’s.’ ”

“Good, that was quick. Now, to decipher it, you have to know the most common letter in English is ‘E’ and in French also. And the most common set of double letters are ‘LL.’ ”

“So some of these is really going to be ‘L’s’ instead of ‘T’s.’ ”

“You’ve already cracked it.”

“Oh, I get it. So I put ‘E’s’ in for all the ‘M’s’?”

“Try it. You write out the alphabet, like this. That’s the code alphabet. Now under the ‘M’ you try an ‘E’, and then fill in the rest of the alphabet in order. Now—”

“Now, I look at the code paper and I put in the underneath alphabet letters.”

“And see if you can make it intelligible. Go ahead.” He smiled and sat back, all gratified satisfaction. Seemed she wasn’t the only one with pride. But it made her smile, too, this pleasing him. Made her insides all warm like pudding.

She had the message decoded, but not understood, in no time at all. “Well, that’s French, innit?”

“Very good. It is. What’s it say?”

“Well, I can read it like. I can make the sounds of these words.
‘Ah,’
well I get that anyways,
‘que ta bouche me couvre de baisers, car ton amour est plus exaltant que le vin.’
But I don’t know what it means.”

His face was all careful, watching stillness, his gaze zigzagging across her face. He was testing her. “I thought you said you’d been taught French?”

Oh, he was scary clever. “No, I didn’t. Said Nan knew French, on account of her being a governess, and used fancy words.
‘On dit’
and
‘comme il faut.’
Used to make her laugh, talking to us kiddies like that. But I don’t know what all them words mean.” She waved her finger at the paper.

He looked at her for a long hard spell, his steel blue eyes probing for the truth. But then he just got up and said, “You’ve done enough for one night. But this will be a nightly exercise, whether I’m here or not.”