Leave a Widow Wanting More, page 5
He held up four fingers. “Cavendish Manor is in beautiful country with good neighbors. Living in London isn’t healthy. And”—he held up five fingers—“while you enjoy the benefits of a large home in the country and a secure financial situation, I’ll be in parts unknown, doing what I do. You won’t have to worry about me getting in the way.”
“Fascinating.” She said it only to respond somehow. He had something of a dramatic monologue going.
“But—and this is my final point, Mrs. Pennington, so listen carefully—I think you’re a sensual woman who’s been too long without a bed partner, and as my wife, you’d have an enthusiastic one. When I’m home.” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. His smile said he felt quite pleased with his points.
She licked her lips and noticed his eyes darken, his gaze drop. He’d meant it about being an enthusiastic bed partner. And she wasn’t green enough to need him to spell out his proposition. But did she want him to spell it out? To say the words, Mrs. Pennington, will you marry me? If he didn’t, she could pretend she didn’t know what he suggested and, in a few miles, exit the coach, and his life, and get on with her meager living.
Or, she could accept his offer as he’d extended it, his six points laid bare. They were, she had to admit, good points. She recited them again, adding some of her own for good measure.
First, she was not long for Hopkins Bookshop, and she didn’t want to be a seamstress. Second, she still wanted to support her son, who did happen to enjoy costly items, so she’d have to get work of some kind, or marry—a possibility she’d not considered till now. Third, she’d always wondered what it would be like to have daughters. Fourth, she liked children. Fifth, though she’d never lived in the country, she rather thought she would like it. It was healthier. It had to be. No smog. And then there was his final point. How had he known she was a woman who liked bed sport? She was so little, other men didn’t normally notice her. Her tiny attributes, as they were, hardly posed a temptation. It had served her well, protected her, but Lord Eaden, he … he saw her.
She shivered.
“Are you well?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
He moved across the coach in one swift movement, settling right next to her. “It’s warmer if we share the seat.”
Scorching, more like. Was this what the Egyptian sun felt like?
“Well?” he asked.
Her body reverberated with the timber of his voice. “I’m thinking.” She had one more option—get him to state his intentions plainly. He asked her to marry him, but he didn’t say it. And, for some reason, she wanted him to say it. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to say yes, but that hardly mattered.
Just thinking the words made her laugh. The famous Lord Eaden proposing to a widowed army wife.
“I’d like to know what you find humorous, Mrs. Pennington.”
“I’m sure you would, Lord Eaden, but as you won’t say what I wish to hear, I won’t say what you wish to hear. We’re even.”
If a voice could sound like a scowl, his did. “You’ve confused me.”
“Now we’re even.”
He lapsed into silence. Fine. She needed to think. His offer tempted her terribly. How could she possibly say no?
She could think of many reasons. First, she had only met him ten or so hours ago, and he thought women physically feeble. Also, he was gruff and domineering.
And bigger, warmer, harder than any man she’d ever met.
As he maneuvered his arm around her shoulders and nestled her against his chest, she realized those, surprisingly, didn’t seem to be marks against him. It had been over a decade since she’d had a man to lean on. He performed that role admirably well.
Ah, but she wouldn’t have him to lean on, not long and not often. She’d be on her own if she married him, the same as before. With greater wealth and social standing, but with more responsibility and a lion-shaped hole in her life.
And, for a reason she didn’t dare investigate, not after such a short acquaintance, she shied from contemplating his constant absence.
Sarah closed her eyes, took a steadying breath, and spoke. “You make excellent points, Lord Eaden. Six of them! My! As a scholar, you do not disappoint. But as a husband, I’m afraid you would. If it’s marriage you’re offering—and mind you, you never asked explicitly—I must respectfully decline.”
She expected him to push her away, throw himself across the carriage, to at least launch into a second monologue. Instead, he patted her hand, squeezed it, and placed a whisper of a kiss on top of her head.
Don’t melt, she warned her body. Too late. “You can’t nice me into submission, Lord Eaden.”
He chuckled. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Maybe. Are you warm now?”
“I was warm before.”
“You shivered.”
She sighed. “If you have reasons for why, after a mere few hours’ acquaintance, we should marry, I have reasons we shouldn’t.”
“Let’s hear them.”
She pushed away, immediately regretting the chill that sliced between them. “As you point out, if I marry you, I will have greater financial stability, a fine home, increased social standing—”
“And an enthusiastic bed partner.”
Images burst into her imagination, full of color, heat, and Henry. Naked bodies, fire-warmed, gold-white hair slipping through her fingers. She swallowed. “Ye-es. And that.” She shook her head to dislodge the thoughts. “That, too, of course. But I would not have help in any out-of-bed endeavors. My son has never met you. I have never met your children and your wards. They may hate me, making my life more of a misery than it is now. Besides, I’m almost entirely certain you only want to marry me to get your hands on Gulliver’s. Everything I own will become yours when we marry, and Gulliver’s is the only valuable possession I’ve ever had. You want it. I have it.” She wagged her finger at him. “I’m sure you’ll do what you have to, even marry a stranger, to get it.”
“Is it?”
What an unexpected question. What did it relate to? This man’s mind moved like quicksilver. “Excuse me? ‘Is it’ what?”
“Your life. Right now. A misery?”
Oh. Well. She looked out the window to hide from his dark, prying gaze and recognized the street. They were back near the bookshop, a few streets away from her tiny, cold apartment. Thank God. “Stop the carriage, please. I can walk from here.”
“In the rain? Hmph. No. All the way to the door with you. And I’ll escort you inside.”
“There’s no need for that.”
His glare could fell an entire army.
She wasn’t an entire army. “Fine.”
He nodded. “I don’t just want Gulliver’s, Mrs. Pennington.”
There he went again, derailing the conversation, moving it about at lightning speed. “Could you stay on one subject, please? Your conversation is dizzying.”
“I won’t lie and say I don’t want Gulliver’s. I do. But it’s not my motivation for asking you to marry me.”
“You haven’t asked.”
He waved her statement away. “If we were to marry, I’d sign a contract saying Gulliver’s is solely yours. I don’t want it by underhanded means. If I wanted it that way, I could have stolen it from Hellwater’s house while he was busy with one of his damned plays. I don’t play dirty, though.”
She believed him. God help her.
He leaned closer. “Now tell me, is your life miserable?”
She looked at her hands, her feet, the seat opposite, anywhere but at him, out the window. “Oh! We’re here. At the door. As you promised. Stop!” She banged on the roof three times and the carriage rolled to a halt.
Lord Eaden peeked out and turned to her, his face a grim plane of shadows. “This is it? This is where you live?”
She pulled herself up as tall as she could.
“Yes. It is close to Hopkins and has reasonable rent. The landlady is … quite nice.” By which she meant the landlady was often quite drunk and so often forgot rent needed collecting.
“I’ll walk you in.”
“No need. I walk myself in every evening.”
“It’s raining.”
“I’ve done it before in the rain, Lord Eaden, I’m a woman of six and thirty, a mother. I’ve been alone for over a decade.” For almost a decade and a half, actually. My, how time slipped away without one noticing. “I can fend for myself.”
He settled back into the seat, and though she couldn’t see the details of his face, she knew he watched her. “If you sicken, will you send a message to me? Will you let me know?”
Well. He was oddly endearing, wasn’t he? Her annoyance melted into … what? Amusement? Not quite. “I’ll be fine, Lord Eaden. No need for melodramatics.”
She stepped down from the carriage but turned before leaving. “Thank you, for your proposal, as incomplete as it was. For a man such as you to offer marriage to a woman such as me …” She shook her head, unable to find the right words. “Thank you. I never guessed when I woke up this morning I’d meet a famous man, let alone consider marriage to him.”
He leaned forward. “Did you consider it? Seriously? For even a moment?” His voice shook the coach like the rumble of a bear in a cave.
“I did. Briefly.” She chuckled. “It was the promise of a good bedding that did it.”
He huffed. “I know you, I think.”
Her stomach flipped. He very well could know her, her wants, her desires, her goals, her soul. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if it were true. She smiled, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see it. “Good night, Lord Eaden.”
“Good night, Mrs. Pennington.”
She shut the carriage door and rushed out of the rain. As she climbed the three flights of stairs to her room, she thought of the man rolling away from her. He was a lion, no a sun, contained by layers of wool and wood. In her imagination, he stretched further and further away from her, and with him slipped the warmth from her body. She shivered as she lit a candle, illuminating the gray walls and tiny metal bed, the chipped teacups and few beloved books.
She placed Gulliver’s Travels gently on a table and tried to shake Lord Eaden from her brain. But the scent of leather and oranges remained. Odd. Only when she went to undress did she realize his coat, huge and well-worn, still hung about her shoulders.
Chapter 7
Henry never made it to bed. Loud voices from the Stevens Hotel tavern arrested his tired footsteps and turned them in a new direction. In the corner of a crowded room, near a fireplace, his assistants engaged in their usual pastime—argumentation. Henry studied them. Miss Smith looked the proper British miss with her honey-colored hair and blue eyes, and Jackson was a strapping example of an English lad with the golden Cavendish looks. They looked more like Henry than his own children did. Ada, Nora, and Pansy looked like their mother, all three.
Henry’s heart pinged, and he shook his daughters away.
Miss Smith sat like a fireplace poker on a chair, arms folded over her chest. She scowled up at Jackson, who leaned with lazy grace against the mantel.
Miss Smith saw Henry first and popped to her feet. “Lord Eaden! I’m so glad you’ve returned. Jackson is being a complete buffoon. Again.”
Jackson slipped behind Miss Smith and plopped in her abandoned chair with an air of exhaustion. “It’s buffoonery to be homesick, then?”
Miss Smith cut Jackson a razor-sharp glance. “Only children are homesick.”
Jackson emitted a half-laugh, half-sigh sound. “What say you, Uncle? Where do you stand on the subject of homesickness?”
Henry suppressed his own sigh. Miss Smith ran headlong, as usual, into a bad argument. And Jack, as usual, baited her. He wouldn’t take a side, never did. Besides, Henry was afraid the hero worship the young girl carried for him would dissolve if she knew what he did. Grown men could be homesick, too. Often.
The intriguing Sarah’s lapis lazuli eyes flashed in his memory, and a wash of homesickness almost drowned him.
“Lord Eaden!” Miss Smith stood near him and pulled him toward the warm corner of the tavern she and Jackson had claimed as their own. “Is everything all right? Did you secure your objective?”
Why did the girl speak like that, as if all life was objectives, goals, and schedules? At least she made his life easier. “I’m fine, but, no. No Gulliver’s.”
Her mouth dropped open. “But how? Success was guaranteed!”
Jackson stood and poured a glass of brandy from a bottle nearby, handing it to Henry. “Nothing is guaranteed.”
“Thank you, my boy. And I’m glad you’ve been listening.”
Jackson shot Miss Smith a triumphant look. She scowled and opened her mouth to argue.
Henry’s lids dropped heavy over his eyes. When had he last slept? “Enough, the both of you. Your bickering is too much for my old bones.”
His young assistants huffed simultaneously.
Jackson hit him on the back. “You’re as fit as a fiddle, Uncle.”
Miss Smith nodded, her lips pursed in a serious line. “Men younger than you are not as well-kept, my lord.”
If they could agree on nothing else, it seemed, his two assistants could agree to esteem him, only God knew why.
“What happened to Gulliver’s?” Jackson asked, sipping his own tumbler of amber liquid. The light from the fire caught Jackson’s glass, warming it, setting it aflame.
Henry’s own tumbler was flat. It didn’t dance with firelight. But as he lifted the glass and took a sip, he conjured a pair of dancing lapis lazuli eyes. “A formidable opponent, nephew.”
His assistants huffed again.
“All is not lost, though. I may have discovered the key to my second reason for returning to England.”
Miss Smith turned from him, but not before she could hide her frown.
Jackson’s eyebrows raised in disbelief. “So soon?”
Henry nodded.
“A new aunt,” Jackson breathed. “Such a woman is more myth than reality.”
Miss Smith whipped around, her face blank. “You’ve known her, then, Lord Eaden? She’s a former acquaintance.”
“No. I just met her today. At Hopkins Bookshop.”
“How can you trust her after such a brief acquaintance?”
How could he trust her? Why had he proposed marriage? His arguments remained solid reasons for a match between them. Unless …
Unless she had hidden sins, hidden proclivities that made her unsuitable to mother a gaggle of unruly girls.
But the way she had held Gulliver’s. The note in her voice when she’d talked about her late husband’s betrayal. The way she’d coldly considered his proposition. He’d learned through the years to read people, to learn those who told the truth from those who fed him falsehoods. “I can trust her.”
Miss Smith’s words were a pitch or two away from a wail. “But how do you know?”
Jackson stepped nearer to her, patted her shoulder. “Gwen has a point, Uncle.”
“What time is it?” It felt like the bloody middle of the night.
Jackson pulled out a pocket watch, battered and faded. “Just after three. Why?”
Henry pulled his hands down his face. Travel dug holes in his bones and emptied his veins until he was a husk, easily blown away by even the most tepid wind. And then, of course, it had rained at least twelve of the forty-eight hours they’d been in London.
Despite the sun’s position in the sky, he needed sleep. No more conversation. He stood and faced the surprisingly united front his assistants presented. “Miss Smith, do you suddenly question my ability to discern a woman’s good character after one meeting?”
“I—”
“Where would you be now if I had not decided in a moment you were good and worthy of help?”
“Here, now, Uncle,” Jackson said. “It’s different.”
“Is it?”
“You weren’t going to marry Gwen. You hired her as a secretary.”
“And she’s a fine one, is she not?”
Miss Smith’s eyes lost some of their petulance.
“Wait.” Jackson’s mouth quirked at the corner. “This woman, she’s a damsel, isn’t she?”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s in distress. She needs rescuing. You are rescuing her by offering marriage.”
Miss Smith’s eyes grew large as saucers. “You’re right, Jack!”
Henry slouched into the chair that had lately hosted both Miss Smith and Jack and stretched his legs out before the fire. “Since when do you two agree on anything?”
“The only time you resemble an old man, Uncle, is when you grumble like that.”
“Oh! It’s true, isn’t it?” Miss Smith clapped her hands, laughing.
“Enough,” Henry said, his words low but firm. “Go organize something. We’ll be leaving London soon enough. Do we have travel arrangements yet?”
“Yes,” Jackson replied. “But we can’t leave until we speak with Harrigan about his last publication.”
Henry scoffed.
“Oh, that man!” Miss Smith growled. “He thinks he can out … out … out-scholar you without taking a step beyond his comfortable townhouse!”
Harrigan was a nuisance most of the time, but he had a keen mind and his powers of observation had revealed a few buried secrets Henry had missed before. “Yes, schedule a time to meet with Harrigan, and the members of the Society of Scholars. I want to see what they’re working on.”
“And the publisher, Uncle.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Jackson pushed.
“Of course. I’ve done enough damage with my books. A plague of pompous British explorers trailed us this last year, leaving abuse and damage everywhere they went.”
“You left quite a few of them bloody nosed and gave most of them the slip,” Jackson said. “I assume Lord Croft never found those temples. That fake map you gave him was quite excellent.”
“All Hassan and Fatma’s work. Artists, they are.” Henry shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. That one book did too much damage. For every British nincompoop explorer we confuse, ten more will come. You know that.”
