The Scoundrel and I: A Novella (2 page)

“The trouble, Anthony, is that you have not found the perfect woman,” said Charles Camlann Westfall, the Earl of Bedwyr.

Captain Anthony Masinter, late of the Royal Navy, cast a glance at Lady Bedwyr across the parlor.

“Can’t agree with you, friend,” he said gallantly. “Seems to me she’s in this very room.”

Lord Bedwyr turned his attention to his lady, whose head was bent to letter writing.

“The perfect woman for
you
.” Cam’s gaze lingered upon his wife and his entire bearing seemed to change, to grow at once taut as though he were readying for battle and as languid as the lace cuffs spilling from the wrists of his coat.

Four years of marriage and still besotted, poor chap.

Tony didn’t go in for that
perfect woman
nonsense. In addition to the rules of the Royal Navy, he lived by one self-imposed rule: treat every woman with utter courtesy and never get within leagues of an altar. That hadn’t been difficult to accomplish while at sea. But in the six months since his dear departed great-aunt gave Maitland Manor to him, he had been home, where hopeful maidens abounded. He liked a pretty girl as much as the next man, but he steered clear of matchmaking mamas and their lovely young leg shackles.

His already sick stomach twisted into a bowline knot.

Blast it
.

Perfect or not, there was only one woman for him now. He knew what he had to do, even if the mere thought of it made him want to head for open sea.

By golly, there was an idea! He would rejoin and ask to be posted to the East Indies. The admirals said if he ever returned they’d give him any mission he liked. Then he would leave her and the little ones at Maitland Manor, with as much money and as many servants as they needed to live like a merry band, perfectly happy without him.

“The captain does not wish to marry, my lord,” Lady Bedwyr said. “He prefers bachelorhood.”

She was not
wrong
.

“I preferred bachelorhood as well,” Cam replied. “Once upon a time.”

Tony frowned into his glass of brandy.

He couldn’t rejoin, of course. Not without his first lieutenant, John Park, who at this moment was being readied for burial in dirt.
Travesty
. No naval officer who had served England
and his captain
so faithfully should be put to rest in the earth.

Two tiny hurricanes whirled into the parlor.

“Mama, Letty says I may not braid her doll’s hair!”

“Margaret always tangles it up!” her sister hollered.

One golden blond, the other ivory and ebony, the twins looked up at the countess with identically pleading eyes.

“Girls,” Lady Bedwyr said calmly, “we have a caller.”

“Uncle Anthony!”

“Captain!”

They launched themselves at him. Into his lap they leapt, one wrapping her little arms about his neck and the other presenting him with the abused doll.

“See what Margaret’s done, Captain!” Letty exclaimed. “She’s ruined Bella’s hair.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said, examining the matted mess of silk. “Daresay there’s a comb about the house somewhere.”

“But combing will tear it all out,” Letty said.

“Then she shall wear a wig like Lady Rowden,” Margaret stated.

Letty’s little brow got dark.

“Here’s what,” Tony said. “I happen to be acquainted with a pair of dolls searching for two little girls of their own. What say you ladies if I bring them over and introduce all of you?”

“Hurrah!” Margaret exclaimed, tightening her arms about his neck.

“Thank you, Captain,” Letty said fervently. “We shall be most, most happy to meet them.”

Tony’s throat was too tight, and not only from Margaret’s snug little arms. He could not be fonder of these mites. But he wasn’t ready for three of his own. Not all at once. Not
all of the sudden
.

Even more importantly, he didn’t want a wife. He’d always been as happy as a drunken sailor on his own, even when he wasn’t actually drunk. Now that his friends were all knotted up in wedded bliss, he was delighted to enjoy the fruits of their domestic tranquility while avoiding it entirely himself.

But he could not avoid
this
.

This was not for pleasure. This was for honor.

From across the parlor he felt his friend’s studying gaze. Blast it, but he shouldn’t have come here. Not today. Not in this muddle.

The earl rose to his feet. “Come, poppets. Let us find your sister and invite her for a stroll in the park.”

They clambered down from Tony’s knees.

“Care to join us, Anthony?” the earl said as the little girls took their father’s hands.

Tony shook his head. “I’ll beg off this time.”

The trio went from the parlor.

“Will you dine with us
en famille
tonight?” The countess’s soft foreign vowels rolled over the words.

“Afraid I can’t.” Tony set down the glass of brandy untasted. The stuff would never taste the same again. How many times rolling on the deep, without another sail in sight, had he urged his first officer to relax and enjoy a peaceful moment of well-deserved leisure? But John Park had been dedicated to his work and devoted to his captain. It hadn’t been until Tony insisted that his lieutenant finally gave a try to enjoying himself like a regular fellow.

Once introduced to the card table, though, John had not enjoyed himself. He had lost himself.

Two years later, it killed him.

“Previous engagement.”
A funeral
. He climbed to his feet. “Much obliged, though.”

“Anthony,” she said. “What troubles you?”

His own idiocy.

“Naught that I can’t fix, my lady.” He bowed. His stomach ached. His head ached. His chest ached. By God, this was almost worse than war.

He took his leave of the countess, barely seeing the familiar street as he mounted his horse, or the people he passed who greeted him. Across his vision instead were Mrs. Park’s horrified eyes the night before as he’d told her to hurry, her threadbare gown, the shabby flat, and the three urchins crying for her attention, all of them bone-thin because their father had spent his every penny—
and more
—on the tables.

If John had come to him earlier, he could have helped. He could have done something. If he’d only known before yesterday…

But he had not. He hadn’t even seen John Park since January, when they brought the
Victory
into port.

Now he would do the honorable thing. Now he would make it right.

After the funeral.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would ask his former first officer’s widow to marry him.

~o0o~

The orbs of Elle’s eyes would not function properly. Her gaze stuck as though by glue to the drainage grate cemented into the cobbles of the alley before her toes.

Fifty-three.

The number of pieces of type irretrievably lost.

Fifty-three.

Not five. Or three. Either of which might be overlooked. Perhaps. But
fifty-three
.

At both dawn and dusk the day before when the traffic was light, then again this morning, she had searched in every crack between cobbles. In vain. So she had returned to the shop and repaired the frame. Then she had reset the text of Lady Justice’s latest broadsheet perfectly, down to the exact mistakes recorded on the proof-corrected page she had read to her grandmother.

Mr. Brittle did not allow her to set type. Of course she knew how to do it. Even before she took the position at Brittle & Sons her grandfather, a pressman in the governor of Virginia’s printing shop for thirty years, had taught her everything he knew. At his knee, her bedtime stories had not been about knights or princesses, but quoins, scrapers, ink-balls, tympans, formes, and platens.

At Brittle & Sons, it was Charlie’s task to compose the type, and occasionally Jo Junior’s. Despite Elle’s eight years at the shop, Mr. Brittle Senior did not believe that women were intelligent enough for the task. The press was far too valuable, he said.

Far too valuable
.

Thirty-nine individual letters, two common words, four spaces, and five punctuation marks were still missing. And the most distressing part: three pieces of type she had recovered were mangled, crushed beneath the hooves of the scoundrel’s horse.

Fifty-three pieces in all.

For fifty-three scraps of metal she would lose her position and be sent to prison. She had no doubt Jo Junior would make it so.

Sitting on her haunches in the deepening shadows, staring at the grate through which the missing pieces had tumbled, as numbness settled in she wondered if Mr. Curtis would take in her grandmother, perhaps into some unused corner of the foundling home attached to the church. He was a kind man. He would not allow Gram to be sent to the poorhouse. Not
now
. Perhaps just until…

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Hooves clopped onto the cobbles at the far end of the alley, echoing between the close walls of the buildings to either side. They grew louder as they neared, moving slowly. As the rider passed by a yard away, Elle glanced up. She recognized the horse. And her numb body lit like dry kindling.

The tight springs of her knees uncoiled.

“Why couldn’t you have
walked
by two nights ago?” It was more accusation than query.

The hoof clacks halted, the animal’s tail swished back and forth once, and the rider swiveled his head and looked directly at her.

Handsomer than she remembered
.

Of course he was. Handsome men were the most heedless of others.

Then she saw the uniform: blue and white, medals pinned across his chest, a gold epaulette on one shoulder, a plumed hat, right down to a bejeweled sword on his hip.

“You are a
sailor
?” She did not know where the words came from. She had never spoken to a man in this manner. Not even Jo Junior. “I might have known.”

For a moment he stared blankly at her with those violently blue eyes. Then the light in them changed, as though he were bringing her into focus.

“Beg pardon, miss?” His voice was entirely unlike two nights earlier, not booming or commanding, but deep and pleasing in a warm-basket-of-freshly-baked-muffins sort of way. So pleasing that she blinked in surprise.

That surprise overcame her for a only moment.

“Now you beg my pardon?
Now?
When two nights ago, if you had had any consideration for anybody other than yourself, I would not even be here to see you stroll leisurely down this alley
now
.”

“Miss, are you perfectly—” Abruptly he tilted his head forward and his very finely shaped lips parted. “Good God,” he uttered. “I nearly ran you over two nights ago. Right here. Entirely forgot till this moment.” A furrow creased his handsome brow. “Have you been standing here since then?”

The woman’s eyes, full of blazing disdain, went round as capstans—soft little brown capstans surmounted by twinkling candles.

“You—You—You,” she stuttered, her pretty pink lips pursing in an O upon each syllable. “You, sir, are a
scoundrel
.”

Tony had no doubt of that.

“Now, it was an honest mistake,” he said nevertheless. “You’re clearly whole and hale and—”

“A
mistake
? You sink a person into ruin and call it a mistake?”

“Royal Navy, miss. With all due respect, sinking people is what I do best.” Tony dismounted. He wasn’t in any humor for a harangue. But by damn, with color staining her cheeks and her eyes lit with feeling, this girl was the prettiest thing he’d seen in weeks. Months. He needed to examine her more closely. And he was entirely guilty as accused. “I’d no notion you were there and I happened to be in something of a hurry.” He took a step toward the girl.

She jerked backward. “Oh? To where were you riding in reckless haste? Your
club
?” She spat the word with such disgust he practically felt it upon his skin.

“Point of fact, no. I was— Well, it don’t matter.”

“It
does not
matter.”

“Glad we agree.”

“
Of course
it matters, you illiterate.”

Her eyes sparked like fire. It had such an abrupt effect on his cock he almost didn’t care that she’d used his family’s favorite epithet for him. Almost.

“Now there, miss, what matters is that I’m dashed sorry I startled you.”

“Startled does not begin to describe what I—” Her voice broke and this time he was certain he felt it, but not upon his skin, rather beneath his ribs. “Ohh,” rushed from between those pretty lips. “Go away. Go away and leave me alone to my fate.” All the fight seemed to drain out of her. Lifting a limp hand, she covered her eyes and heaved in an enormous breath. It was an uncomfortable series of movements, obviously alien to her lithe limbs.

With a heavy tread, she started off.

“Miss, if you’ll allow me to—”

“I am walking away now. If you follow me, I will call the Watch.”

“No Watch on this block at this time of night.”

She pivoted around. “Is that a threat? What do you intend to do, sir? Since you have already flattened me against a wall and ruined my life, do you now intend to accost me as well?”

“No.”

Abruptly he looked so stern and harsh, Elle did not wonder that he was a decorated officer. With that hard jaw and those intense eyes he might intimidate any sailor into submission.

“You’re clearly distraught,” he said.

“You noticed that, did you?”

“I’d like to make certain you’re all right.” He bowed gorgeously. The sword on his hip glittered.

She stared.

But Jo Junior had said all sorts of pretty things, too, before he had used and discarded her and then tried to blackmail her. And she knew better than to trust a sailor.