The Danger of Desire (16 page)

Hugh couldn’t name the look that washed over her face, but somehow, she got paler, her eyes dark as coals. “Meggs.” Hugh touched her elbow lightly. “Let Mrs. Tupper mother him up for a moment. She has a vast amount of experience with battered-up lads.”

Mrs. Tupper chuckled as she tilted up Timmy’s head. “Don’t I just? Helped patch the captain up a time or two, when he was only a wee bit older than yourself.” She gave the boy a critical inspection. “You’ll do, lad, you’ll do. Now, let’s get you a pot of warm milk and chocolate. And perhaps some clotted cream. The cream here’s not so good as in Dartmouth—the cows here in London being ...” And she was off, rattling copper saucepans.

But Meggs was spitting mad. She’d rounded her elbow out of his grip. “No.”

“Come up to my study.” It was an order, however quietly given. “I’ll buy you a drink. I know I could use one.” He moved off, up the stairs without waiting for her to follow, and she stomped up behind him, each stair step a noisy complaint against his lack of vigilance.

He threw his battered sea coat on the chair in the front hallway and headed for the tray of decanters behind his desk.

“I don’t like spirits,” she groused from the doorway.

“Then read a book while I get one.” He wasn’t normally the sort of man who felt a driving need for spirits, but after only a few days in
her
presence, he began to understand its appeal.

“And I’m not going to read a book, I want—”

“You want to rail at me, like a fishwife, for an
accident
. An accident, which could have happened anytime, and did, according to Timmy, happen all the time before you two came here. An accident, like the one which befell
you
and brought you to my door, in a state of putrefaction the likes of which I haven’t seen outside of the navy. Here.” He shoved a small glass of sherry into her hands. “Drink up. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to feel better,” she insisted stubbornly, afraid to let go of her armor of indignation. She was fair quivering from it. “And you are changing the subject.”

“Which is your brother, and what you plan to do with him once he grows up. Or what
he
plans to do with himself, once he grows up. Or sooner.”

She stood stock still, pale and flat, like the water before a gale. He braced himself, anticipation of the potential violence of the coming storm thrumming through him.

And then, she simply burst into tears.

Oh, fuck all. He had absolutely no idea what to do with a weeping female—especially Meggs, the girl who didn’t so much as shed a tear when she tore open her hand or when they stitched it back together. And now, in the turn of a moment, she had become a watering pot.

“Come now.” His voice sounded stupidly, unnecessarily gruff. “It’s not as bad as all that. He was only roughed up, though I’m sure I aged a couple of years in the process.”

She folded herself abruptly into the chair, staring at the bandage over her hand, as she wiped at her eyes and tried to pull herself back into order. Likely brooding over all the dicey chances life still held in store for her and her brother. For all of them. “What happened?”

“We were over near the docks along Cheapside. Timmy said you used to live near there.”

She tossed up that tough little shrug. “Lived here and there, over half of London.”

“Is that how the two of you have the map of London in your heads? I must have chased you through every back alley from Charing Cross to Covent Garden, and the Tanner showed me hidden paths along the docks not even the rats use regularly.”

“It’s how you stay alive, knowing your way around, and two ways in and three ways out of any street. But what happened? Just give me the bad facts.”

It was no wonder she was a successful thief—she didn’t give up easily. “We had trailed my Lord Cummings down along All Hallows Lane. Some rather unsavory friends, our Lord Cummings has. When I stated my wish that if you had been with us, you could have picked his pockets to find out what he had collected from the gentlemen of the wharves, Timmy said he could do it and darted off unmindful of a brewers dray swinging up from the warehouse.”

“Something can always go wrong.” She shook her head like a dog, insistent in the need to fight. “You shoulda taken me. He’s not careful like he needs to be.”

“And I daresay he learned that. He made a mistake—and I’m more than sure he’ll remember it. Nothing like a little pain to drive a lesson home. I’ve seen it time and time again with boys under my command. He’ll not make a mistake like that again. And I need you here.”

“But he needs me to set him off on a job right. He’s only little.”

“He’s not that young. I went into the navy when I was only a little older than him.”

“It’s just—he’s at this dangerous age. He thinks he knows everything and there’s no possibility of failure—because it hasn’t happened yet. Only it hasn’t happened, because I
do
think about all those possibilities of failure. And I plan for them. Contingencies and backups. He’s too impatient and headstrong to do that.”

“Impatient and headstrong. Difficult traits.” He smiled. Such obvious irony.

“All he wants to do is get the job done so he can eat. All of a sudden, he can’t remember old Nan making him go hungry for not getting it right.”

“While you make yourself go hungry, even if you do get it right?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it? What did you say—impatient, headstrong, and stubborn?”

She had the grace to flush, her face heating like a sunrise, pink and blue at the same time.

“Speaking of impatient, let me have a look at that hand.”
Speaking of impatient
. There were layers and layers of irony, need, and self-denial in this conversation. “You’re keeping it dry?”

“Yes. And clean. Mrs. Tupper helps me change the bandage if it gets too soiled.”

“Good.” Hugh picked up a candle branch and brought it to the other side of the desk, then pulled his chair up close to hers and began to unwind the linen strips. “I saw you taking in the laundry.”

He felt almost ... exposed. Rather like at sea, when he might order the gun ports opened to see if the enemy were prepared to engage. But also, exposing the limits of his own firepower.

But she floated just out of range. “Waste of my time, my skills.”

“No,” he clarified quietly. “I watched you.”

“Oh? Oh.” She tried to pull her hand away on that quick intake of breath, but he held it firm in his own. He could feel the rush of her pulse through her wrist, and her breath grew shallow even as she worked to keep her feelings hidden, crushing her plush, plum lips under her teeth.

“It’s healing nicely.” He stroked lightly along her palm. “Are you afraid? Of me?”

Her response was an honest whisper. “I’d be a fool not to be.”

“And you’re not a fool. And neither am I. I’m a gentleman. If we ever decide to do ... anything about this curiosity, this”—he hesitated and then decided to name it—“attraction between us, it will be by mutual desire. Do you understand?”

She didn’t answer, just watched him with those huge, dark eyes.

“And until that time of mutual desire, nothing is going to happen. You have nothing to be afraid of.” He leaned forward slowly and very gently placed a kiss on her forehead.

And left her in peace.

Instead of shorter, the days seemed to get longer, no matter the number of hours between the late dawn and the early twilight. More scrubbing, more sweeping. Despite her appeal to Himself to let her go out to do real work, the captain still wouldn’t take her out. Timmy, goose egg and all, got to be out of the house all hours it seemed, whereas she was made to keep cleaning.

It was enough to make a mort go mad. And despite all his quiet talk about mutual curiosity, the captain acted as if she didn’t even exist. She’d hardly seen him from one end of the day to the other. Made her surly as a drunk pimp, it did—grouchy with no good reason for it.

And what in the blazes was that awful noise? Meggs paused as she hauled on the pulley rope for the laundry drying racks suspended from the ceiling. It sounded somehow like the clanking of swords crossing. In
Chelsea?

She poked her head out into the kitchen only to hear heavy footfalls shivering the ceiling far above her head. “What on earth is that?”

Mrs. Tupper didn’t even look up from kneading her bread. “Never you mind. You just get on with that ironing.”

“Not bloody likely,” she muttered to herself. The heavy muffled footfalls resounded again, vibrating down so that the copper pots in the rack overhead jangled. And then Meggs heard Timmy’s voice, raised in a shout.

She abandoned the irons and followed the sounds up two flights to the drawing room, where she discovered the reason why all the furnishings were massed in a heap against the side wall and the curtains left fully open to flood the room with light.

The captain and his man Fairy Ears were fighting each other with long, skinny, shining blades. Jinks was stripped to his shirtsleeves, but the captain—the captain was bare from the waist up. He was ... well,
bare
. All tawny skin. And muscles that moved, glowed, and bunched. They had dimension and form, like you could go and put your arms around and hang on to them. Or feel around your shoulders.

Lord help her.

Of course, that was
if
a girl wanted to feel a thing like that, which she didn’t. Got in the way of business, muddied it all up.

They were completely immersed in their deadly business, paying her no never mind, but it seemed to be only an exercise and not an actual fight. Himself directed his man, instructing, “I want to try that riposte again.”

“Right, sir.”

Timmy was here, too, the little shirker. He stood near the corner with a turkish towel but also with a tipped blade of his own. Jesus bloody God and all the bleeding saints. They had been teaching him swordplay.

In another moment, the captain felt the hole she was boring into his back with her stare and stopped. He motioned Timmy to go work with Jinks, who set the boy into a series of prancing footwork. Then the captain walked over to her, still wearing nothing but his skin. It was near impossible to focus on her anger with all that glowing nakedness. She didn’t know where to look.

But the captain didn’t think a thing of it. Sauntered over as if he were in the queen’s drawing room taking tea with the court. “Your brother has caught on quickly.”

Meggs could peacefully shift her gaze across the room to the Tanner, swiping away with his blade like a bloody cavalier. “Yeah, well, he’s a clever lad, in’t he?”

“He’s more than clever. He shows a considerable amount of potential.”

“Do tell.” Meggs wasn’t in the mood for all this chatty, informative taradiddle. She was surly and mean feeling. Hurt really, if she were to be honest. This was her bloody rig, wasn’t it? He’d wanted her expertise. “You lads going to prance around all day, or are we never going to get to the business at hand, of letting me do what you’re paying me for and steal?”

If he was taken aback by her sharp tone, he never let on. He was all stoic, immovable captain, full of what old Nan would have named
sang-froid
. “You’ll begin when your hand’s well enough.”

“It’s well enough to push a bloody mop all day. Don’t know why it shouldn’t be well enough to do fencing or fleecing, whatever you need. So let’s get on with it.”

He chewed on that for all of two seconds. “Let me see.” He reached out for her hand.

She snatched it behind her back. If he saw the blister burns from the irons, he’d find another reason to keep her cooped up all day. “It’s fine.”

He tried that icy-eyed gaze of his. “Aren’t you in a fine pet this morning?”

“So maybe I am. Maybe I get annoyed when I’m doing all the work around here, and you three are prancing about like ...” She ran out of nasty things to say. Where was old Nan now when she needed a cutting word? “Letting Timmy mess about in there, instead of doing his share.”

“It’s good for him. I told you, he’s got an aptitude.” He tossed aside the sword. “You might think of him for a minute, instead of yourself. You might think of what will happen to him if you stay on your present course through life. I know you’re devilishly proud of your prowess as a ‘prime filching mort,’ but you know as well as I, you’ll most likely end your days on a gibbet, and the boy with you. You ought to think of what he might become instead.”

“You bloody ... How
dare
you?” she hissed at him. “You have no bloody, fucking idea what I think about, or what I plan, or what I’ve spent
years
planning to do. I
sold
myself to you like a slave, you blind bastard, for that boy! I’ve done all this, everything, to get him out of the game. I’ve taught him to read and write against his will. I’ve nearly starved myself, saving up every cursed penny I could steal, so that boy, my brother, can have a future.”

Lord help her, she was shouting so loud every ear in the house was sure to be ringing with it, but once she had begun, she couldn’t seem to stop.

“I cut my hand wide, fucking open on the goddamned glass of that wall, so he could have a meat pie! So don’t you
dare
”—she needled a finger into his chest—“tell me what to do. I don’t need advice from a bloody cripple who doesn’t know anything about us, and who’s going to throw us out of here like yesterday’s dishwater once you’ve got what you need from us.”

And with that last blast of meanness, she flung herself down the stairs and ran all the way back to the laundry, where she slammed the door shut in Mrs. Tupper’s astonished face.

Behind her, the house was echoing with empty, waiting silence. She couldn’t stand it.

She yanked a thick shawl off the peg, threw open the door she had just slammed shut, and stomped her way out the garden door.

“And where do you think you’re off to?” Mrs. Tupper stood with hands on her hips.

“Out. I’m sorry—I’m going out.” She had to be out in the air, moving and doing and thinking. She needed ... Oh, she didn’t have the faintest idea what she needed anymore. She had to get away before she said something else ludicrous and mortifying.