Claimed by the Rogue (11 page)

She set her fisted hands upon her hips. The stance was better suited to a fishwife than a lady, but she reminded herself that she didn’t care what he thought of her, or at least she shouldn’t. “As I recall, keeping your promises isn’t precisely your strong suit. If you should renege—”

“I shan’t.” Reclaiming her arm, he folded it into his. “Shall we get on with our tour? Time is, after all, money, and I shall expect my hundred pounds’ worth.”

“Don’t you ever rest?” Robert asked some time later, trailing Phoebe down yet another labyrinthine passageway. So far they’d visited the governors’ courtroom, chapel, girls’ dormitory, boys’ dormitory, sundry classrooms and even the morgue, all of it at a brisk to breakneck pace.

She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “I haven’t the need, but don’t let me hinder you from doing so.”
 

“No, I’m fine. I was only concerned for you.”

“Hmm,” was all she said before darting down another white-walled corridor.

Lengthening his stride, he found himself wondering how it was that such a graceful woman managed to move so swiftly. The indolent maid of his memory seemed to have acquired the gait of a racehorse, not that he considered complaining of it. Admiring the hind view of those slender, swaying hips made for a deucedly pleasant pastime even if the reek of turpentine and lemon oil was beginning to block his nose.

They ended their tour at the infirmary. The strong smell of vinegar permeated the vicinity. A glass-front apothecary cabinet containing myriad meticulously labeled clear jars, a washing bench outfitted with a bandage roller and stacked bedpans, and a leather-bound ledger presumably for recording the circumstances of patients comprised the long, narrow room. Phoebe’s hushed conference with the attending nurse secured their admission. Robert followed her along the queue of narrow cots, all but one of them unoccupied.
 

“Feeling a bit better today, Sally?” Phoebe asked, pausing to rest her hand upon the child’s brow, her swollen jaw banded by a camphor-soaked cloth.
 

The girl, Sally, shook her head, wincing. “Tooth hurts terrible.”

Phoebe stroked a hank of brown hair back from the girl’s forehead. “I’m sure it does, poppet, but at least your fever’s down. Once the foulness finishes draining, you’ll be right as rain.”

Dull eyes looked up into hers. “Yes, miss.”

Most in Phoebe’s position would have moved along, but instead she lingered. “I was going to give this to you later, but now shall serve.” She reached into her gown’s pocket and pulled out a cloth-covered doll.

The fevered little face lit. “Oh, miss, thank you!”

Phoebe tucked the doll into the crook of Sally’s arm and straightened. “Not only a doll, but a
magic
doll. Whenever your tooth troubles you, squeeze upon her and she’ll help keep the pain away.”
 

Looking on, Robert felt his heart give a powerful pull. Phoebe had the makings of a marvelous mother. The earlier scene in the classroom and now this strengthened his resolve to do all in his power to ensure that her future children would be his, not Bouchart’s.
 

Seeing her about to turn back to him, he quickly made a mask of his face. “You needn’t fear infection,” she said archly, misreading him yet again. “Mostly we treat minor injuries, sprained ankles and, in Sally’s case, toothaches. More serious cases are transported to St. George’s.”

“My constitution is that of an ox,” he answered, no idle boast. Given the fevers and pestilence to which he’d been exposed, an abscessed tooth and a few runny noses hardly seemed of note. Stepping away from the beds with Phoebe, he asked, “How did you come to volunteer here?”

She hesitated. “In an odd way, I have you to thank for it.”

“I?” Even strongly suspecting he would regret it, he had to ask, “How so?”

“After we were told you were…lost, I wasn’t entirely certain what to do with myself, how to go on. Coming here began as a crutch, a reason to rise from bed each morning. Over time I began adding days, heartened that it was in my power to do some good.”
 

His kitchen conversation with Chelsea came back to him.
She draped herself in black crepe and bombazine for a full year as though she were your widow in truth. There were times we feared she might take her own life.

“How does your mother feel about your manual laboring?”

She lanced him a look. “You mean my
eccentricity,
or so Mama calls it. She’s pinning her hopes on marriage proving the cure. To be fair, I should admit that she is hardly alone in her censure. Barring Chelsea and Anthony, most members of the
ton
think I’m daft to spend my days fraternizing with orphaned children, whom they’re convinced will amount to nothing more than cutpurses and prostitutes.”

Watching her closely, he ventured, “And Bouchart, what does he say?”

She hesitated, the pause telling or so it seemed to Robert. “Aristide tolerates my employment for the time being, though he too assumes I’ll give it up of my own accord once we’re wed.” She paused, her quicksilver gaze honing onto his. “He’s mistaken.”

“I admire you for following your passion.”

She looked at him askance.
 

A renegade curl clung to the side of her cheek, which was neither pale nor waxen as it had been after her faint but a healthy, becoming pink. Resisting the urge to reach out and brush it back, he shook his head. “No, really I do.”

Admire her though he did, he was in no way inured to how enticing she not only looked but smelled—vanilla from the milled soap she’d always favored, lavender from the eau de cologne she preferred to perfume and some spicy citrusy scent he didn’t recall from before but badly wanted to lick.
 

A baby’s bawling drew their attention outside. Robert joined her at the window overlooking the front lawn. Fifty-odd women and children, the latter of various ages from infancy to adolescence, stood in queue extending from the arcaded entrance gate to the circular drive. The group had multiplied since Robert had arrived. Passing them by, he’d seen more than one cheek tracked with tears, but aside from the occasional wailing infant, they’d waited in stoic silence. It seemed they waited still.

“Good God, there are so many of them.”

Letting the curtain drop, Phoebe sighed. “I know. Every Monday brings the same sad sight. I’d thought by now to be accustomed to it, but after five years it still breaks my heart.”

“Have the London parish houses grown so lax in dispensing relief?”

Her arch look told him he’d said the wrong thing—again. “They’ve not come for alms but to petition that their children be taken in.”

“All babes, I see.”

Expression somber, she nodded. “Only infants of twelve months or younger are accepted, and the mother must stipulate that the child is both born out of wedlock as well as the fruit of her first fall.”

“I gather if those conditions are unmet, mother and child are turned away?”
 

Eyes suspiciously bright, she sighed again. “It sounds heartless, I know, and in a way it is, but we haven’t beds for them all. Truth be told, we haven’t room for the ones we do take. Presently we’re at four hundred and ten and that’s with several of the younger boys and girls sleeping two to a cot.”

He’d thought himself inured to sad, suffering sights, but apparently he wasn’t as hardened as he’d hoped. “What will happen to them?”

“Once they pass the medical examination, they’re sent to the country for fostering. At four or five years of age, they’re brought back here as Lulu recently was, the boys to learn a trade, the girls to train for domestic employment. When the boys reach fourteen, the governors arrange indentures for them; many end up enlisting in the army. Settling the girls is more difficult, but every effort is made to find them suitable situations.”

Like a surgeon probing a wound, he had to know. “And what of those who are turned away?”

She shrugged, but once again her eyes confirmed how very deeply she cared. Silver-blue irises awash in unshed tears—if only she’d look upon him kindly again Robert would happily dive in and drown in them. “Some will be abandoned. Others will starve alongside their mothers. Still others will seek refuge in the workhouses or…worse.” A pained look crossed her face. “Last winter a newborn was discovered in a…rubbish bin behind the hospital kitchen. He’d been dead some hours of exposure, or so the resident physician judged.” She turned her face away.

He reached around her and braced a hand upon the sill, bringing their bodies ever so slightly brushing. “Surely something more may be done? What of the fathers? Haven’t they any say in whether or not their children are surrendered?”

She turned back to glare at him, her quicksilver gaze once more sharp as Damascus steel. “Do you honestly believe that even one of those women standing out there would give up her child if she might choose another course, if she herself hadn’t been abandoned?”

Abandoned—so there it was, the crux of Phoebe’s philanthropic passion. Clearly she felt an affinity with these women who’d been left by their men to fend for their offspring and themselves.

“I only meant that it seems a father should have some rights, some say at the very least. Conceiving a child requires both parties, after all.” Gaze on hers, he owned how very much he wanted to make love with her and babies with her, the yearning so fiercely primal he felt a sudden aching in his loins.
 

“One of the prerequisites for petitioning is that the father must have
deserted
both mother and child.
Deserted
, Robert. I’d think you of all people would understand that.”

He swallowed against the pain pushing a path up his throat. “I didn’t desert you.”
 

She answered with a sharp laugh. “You chose to stay away and leave me to think you dead. If that’s not desertion, what is?”

“I chose to
return
when I knew I might be a fit husband for you in every way.”
 

Her gaze narrowed. “And now you are too late, for I have a husband, or at least I shall before the season’s end.”

Before the season’s end!
Robert felt as though an invisible fist plowed his solar plexus. In the past, controlling his reaction to the pain, pretending to no longer feel or care, had served as his best defense, his strongest weapon.
 

Calling upon that hard-learned stoicism now, he summoned a smile. “What a coincidence, for I too will be embarking upon my next voyage then as well, but not before I have the pleasure of seeing you as a bride, I hope.”
 

Phoebe’s smile dipped.
 

“For now, I am afraid I must away. I have another appointment to attend.”

“Pray do not let me keep you from your pressing business,” she retorted, sounding much like her mother.
 

Judging from her planted stance, he gathered she didn’t mean to see him out. Just as well, he supposed for he needed some time to regroup from the crushing blow she’d dealt.

Heading for the door, he turned back. “What ungodly hour shall I arrive tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “Anytime or not at all, as you wish.”

“If you treat all your benefactors in such a shrewish fashion, ’tis a mercy you have a roof and four walls,” he answered, a deliberate reminder that he was, in point, paying for her company if not her goodwill.

Releasing a sigh, she capitulated, “Oh, very well, nine o’clock sharp, and mind if you’re late I shall bar the classroom door and you may wait out in the hallway until the session finishes.”

“My dearest Phoebe, I wouldn’t dream of being late.”

Stepping out into the hallway, Robert considered that six years was quite late enough. Considering the ticking clock he faced, he didn’t mean to waste so much as a single second more.

“You’re late.” Reclining in a banyan and slippers despite the midday hour, Aristide looked up as his henchman-cum-manservant entered.
 

Dragging sand and reeking of rum and stale fish, Payne offloaded his brimming satchel. “Sorry, I got…tied up. Or ye might say I were busy tyin’ someone else up.” A cackle punctuated the comment.
 

Judging from the booting spilling out onto the carpet, the mudlarks and lumpers employed to steal from moored ships had been industrious that week. Pawning the ill-gotten articles sufficed to keep Aristide in his suite of let rooms in Knightsbridge—and the appearance of style—for now.

“Spare me your excuses.” Aristide picked up his cheroot. “I need you to follow a certain East India Company captain.”
 

Payne wasn’t much for ironing newspapers or blacking boots, but when called upon he was a wonder at making “inconveniences” such as Robert Bellamy disappear. Whether or not such a permanent “solution” would be called for remained to be seen. Certainly Bellamy’s unforeseen return had made a hash of Aristide’s perfectly plotted plans. The six hundred pounds a year Phoebe’s father had agreed to settle upon her was but the beginning. Once Aristide had her in his clutches as his wife, her doting papa would pay dearly to ensure his poppet was gently treated. If he balked, a few well-laid bruises on Phoebe’s fair skin should bring him swiftly around. In the interim, every day Aristide must continue their courtship put a pinch on his purse—and his patience.