Ways to Be Wicked (11 page)

Though of course pleasing an audience was truly only a small part of why she did what she did.

When it was over, and Molly had sung her own bawdy song—which involved much suggestive wielding of her wand—to rapturous applause, a crew of boys scrambled to push a long, low, carved structure onto the stage, carved in ripples, painted a rich dark green. Seaweed, apparently.

And then Sylvie learned what the trumpet was for.

It sounded, a noble golden peal over the theater, and a hush fell.

Sylvie heard a creaking noise, and looked up. A great, silk-flower-bedecked swing, suspended on a pair of chains, was being lowered from the stage rafters by two sweaty boys. There was an urgent scuffling noise from the wings, and Sylvie saw, to her astonishment, a woman, eye-poppingly buxom, curved, as a matter of fact, as extravagantly as an hourglass, waddling because the bottom half of her was tightly wrapped in a resplendent, sparkly purple mermaid tail. Her hair was long, brilliant with henna, and sparkles no doubt fashioned of paste and streamers of something no doubt meant to be seaweed clung to it.

“ ’Er Majesty,” Rose whispered.

“If she gains even ’alf a stone, that swing will snap like kindling,” Molly muttered bitterly.

Ah, so this was Daisy Jones.

Sylvie watched with fascination as they quickly got her settled into her swing—it did make a subtle, if ominous, groaning sound when her posterior was centered on it—and her hands, shiny in gloves that reached her elbows, gripped the chains. The boys then raced to get behind her, scrabbled frantically and in vain for a moment to get enough traction to push her into motion, and then Daisy, rapping out a soft and colorful epithet by way of encouragement, finally gave them a little assist by flapping her tail. The three of them got the swing going to and fro, the chains creaking musically, the trumpet sounded again, and the red velvet curtain swooshed up.

“DAISY!”
The crowd bellowed in gleeful greeting.

Daisy waved with regal cheer and blew kisses from her fingertips to them, a number of whom pretended to catch them on their own fingers, apply them to their own mouths, and swoon. She gave her tail some vigorous flaps, and soon the swing was soaring above them, and men were trying to get a look underneath it for a glimpse of her magnificent posterior. Daisy’s long, dyed-red hair was affixed to the front of her, and her torso was draped in some sort of clever sheer fabric. Her hair flew up tantalizingly, but remained within the bounds of the legal.

Oh, come all ye laddies who e’er set sail and

gather round fer a glimpse of me beautiful tail. . .

And Daisy’s voice, though it reached handily to the rafters, would never be mistaken for “exquisite.”

“A mermaid on a swing?” Sylvie said quietly to Rose.

“It’s an underwater world, Miss Chapeau.” Tom Shaughnessy’s voice was a low murmur behind her, and somehow it managed to travel along her spine as though a finger had been dragged lightly there. She felt the gooseflesh rise on the back of her neck. “We create fantasy here at the White Lily. It’s a dream, if you will—mermaids playing beneath the waves on swings.” He looked out at the crowd, and a satisfied smile curved his mouth. “A
lucrative
dream.”

He met her eyes for a moment, then slowly took his gaze away from hers and watched the proceedings—Daisy sailing through the air on a swing that was indeed looking just a bit taxed by her girth—as intently as a scientist or a judge. He glanced below at the audience, his brow crinkling a little, as if wondering how many men would be flattened beneath Daisy should the swing give way.

“Or a nightmare,” Sylvie murmured.

Tom turned his head sharply toward her then. And his face became studiously expressionless.

“I suppose it’s all in how you view it, Miss Chapeau,” he said evenly. “You’ve earned your wages for tonight. You may collect them from me tomorrow, if you wish.”

Once again she saw the gleam of his watch in his hand, and he slipped away to oversee some other aspect of the show.

The show was over, the crowd was gone, and the theater was nearly quiet again. Sylvie watched, as one by one, the girls filtered out the back door of the theater into the night dressed in their own clothes, fairy costumes, wands and wings tucked away in the wardrobes for the evening.

At the side door of the theater, where a small crowd of admirers waited, Sylvie peeped out.

Flanking the door were two enormous men, one missing an eye and not bothering with the formality of a patch; judging from the rest of his attire, perhaps he’d feel overdressed in one. The other man was as wide as he was tall, his mouth pulled up into a permanent half grin by a scar ironically in the shape of a smile itself. Instead of a left hand, he sported a hook, which he lifted in farewell to the girls as they wandered away in pairs, a steely little twin of the slice of moon curving above.

From inside the door, Sylvie watched Molly helped by a footman into a very fine unmarked carriage, saw her slim stocking-covered ankle flash, heard her laugh almost shyly, then she vanished inside to meet the sender of the little fan.

Watching Molly board the fine coach was almost disorienting; Sylvie could almost see herself as she’d been a year ago, when Etienne had begun his pursuit—beautiful, flush with the triumph of that beauty. A fine carriage waiting for her outside the theater, inside it an unimaginably wealthy and important man bearing gifts just for her.

“G’night, Sylvie!” Rose raised her hand in farewell, turned away to trudge off through the streets of London to her own rooms.

“Can I escort ye safely anywhere, Miss?” The man with the shiny curved hand bowed politely. “Ye mus’ be the new girl Tommy ’ired.” He smiled; the few teeth still embedded in his gums gleamed like skulls in a cave. “Me name’s Poe. An’ this is Stark.”

Stark, the man missing an eye, bowed, too, and said nothing. Sylvie wondered if perhaps Tom had deliberately advertised for men who were missing parts of their bodies.

“Th-thank you, Mr. Poe, but no.” She smiled politely, hoping it wasn’t impolite to show her full complement of teeth to a man with so few of them, and backed into the theater again.

And into utter silence.

Sylvie availed herself of a candle, but as she began to make her way up the long flights of stairs to the top of the theater, she saw a light burning softly in Tom Shaughnessy’s office, which seemed to be a library of sorts; she saw shelves lining the walls. She stopped to peer from the shadows. Through the space made by the open door she was surprised to see Tom, shirtsleeves rolled up, quill in hand, head bent, writing something so slowly and painstakingly he reminded Sylvie of a schoolboy practicing his letters. He glanced up, turned his head to the side in thought, and she watched him massage the fingers of one hand with the other, kneading them methodically, thoughtfully, stretching and fanning the fingers, a half smile on his face at something he’d perhaps been thinking.

She took a moment then to boldly admire the line of his profile, not like Etienne’s, which was clean, elegant, refined by centuries of his flawless bloodline the way the sea polishes stones to smoothness. Tom’s profile was more difficult to interpret; it offered more interesting places for the eye to land. And despite Tom Shaughnessy’s own version of polish, his clothing that bordered on gaudy, she noticed now that he radiated. . . calm. He glittered: his eyes, his smile, those coat buttons...but at the core of it was this quiet sort of...certainty.

Or perhaps it was ruthlessness.

And then he pressed his palms against his eyes, briefly, and took up his quill once more, dipped it, continued to diligently write. As though he’d given himself an assignment requiring completion tonight.

His memoirs, perhaps,
she thought, half-amused. Like
Don Juan,
or
Casanova.
But the tableau, Tom bent over his desk, struck her as odd. Surely London was filled with gaming hells and pubs and places where men like Tom Shaughnessy could find entertainment and feminine company and more women over whom to fight duels. The contrast between the coarse, merry mayhem of hours earlier, the swift violence in the dressing room before the show, and this quiet Tom bending over the desk was incongruous.

She wondered about his mistress. She didn’t wonder whether he
had
one; there was no question in her mind that he did. He must. Sylvie wondered who she was. A titled widow? A professional courtesan? Who would appeal to Tom Shaughnessy?

Was he in love with Kitty, the dancer who had disappeared? Or did he really “turn ’er off” for being pregnant to set an example for the other girls? Did he make her pregnant and keep her in Kent, and dutifully visit?

Men like Tom Shaughnessy.
She realized, suddenly, that she wasn’t certain what this meant.

She’d been too busy to be afraid today, and yet, when she gave it some thought: this was a man who had known highwaymen, whose theater was run by a surly dwarf, whose dancers had no doubt been plucked virtually from the street. Who had, with lightning speed, snatched a burly man up by the cravat and calmly threatened to kill him earlier this evening.

In the moment, Sylvie had believed he would do it. And in the moment, in the flames of her temper, she had to admit that she’d almost hoped he would.

When she’d seen Belstow’s hand rise for a blow, as if it had simply been his
right
to strike Molly. . .

Standing in the White Lily’s cheerful faux grandeur, she began to wonder whether it had truly been Etienne she’d seen standing at the harbor, or whether her own guilt and nerves had conjured him from some other vision of a tall, broad-shouldered man. Whether it truly had been Etienne’s voice she’d heard saying, “I beg your pardon” as he peered into the coach. Had he followed her through Paris to London, somehow?

In the dark of this odd theater, she could almost believe she had imagined him, that it had been some other man entirely, and that only the events inside the White Lily were real.

A dream,
Mr. Shaughnessy said. A
lucrative
dream.

Of nearly all of the places she could have landed in Paris, she imagined Etienne was least likely to look for her in an establishment such as this. Etienne’s taste in entertainments ran to the rarefied and refined, to the very best of everything. Which had perhaps naturally led him to Sylvie Lamoreux, for she embodied all that was finest of beauty and grace.

It was difficult to believe that she might have hurt Etienne by leaving suddenly. Sylvie wondered whether one truly longed for someone, could truly love, when nothing had ever been denied.

And whether it mattered at all.

Weariness tugged at Sylvie’s limbs, her eyelids. She would sleep hard tonight.

And so she climbed the quiet stairs again, counted the doors in the darkened hallway, and thus found her room again.

She knew a moment of gratitude for the place to sleep and the lock on the door, a moment of nervousness about her unusual environment, which strangely had begun to feel more comfortable than she’d almost prefer it to; then, her body, in its wisdom, took her to sleep.

Chapter Nine

T
OM WAS ENJOYING THE FEEL
of cool morning air— there was mercifully still some damp in it at this hour, some freshness—and the horse he’d hired was a splendidly game animal, taking the road quickly in long smooth strides. Hiring a horse cut the time of the journey to Little Swathing in Kent in half; he wasn’t eager to board a mail coach again anytime soon.

Someday he would keep his own carriage. He knew just the one he wanted, just the horses he would choose. Not gray to match the typical English weather, as so many of the titled chose, but something bright, something with a bit of flash: a quartet of bays, perhaps. Or four black geldings, white stars between their eyes or white stockings round their forelegs. He’d even been to Tattersall’s, to plan and dream.

He could buy the horses and carriage now and keep them if he chose, for there was a mews behind the White Lily, but Tom was selective about his expenditures. He had decided sometime ago that this particular expenditure could wait, that his journeys about London could take place in hired hackneys and horses and carriages sent by friends. His capital was needed for other things: to pay his

employees, for example. To build pirate ships.

To hire beautiful Frenchwomen on a whim.

He half smiled to himself at the thought, but the sudden image of green eyes and flushed cheeks tensed the muscles in his stomach in a way that surprised him. The thought brought a difficult-to-define, distracting pleasure; it carried with it more of an edge than thoughts of beautiful women usually did. He’d watched her last night, smiling and bending and swaying in time with the other girls, and though he could find no fault with her performance, he could not take his eyes from her. She seemed wrong, and yet unimaginably right at the same time.

Odd to think that two such dramatically new things should drop into his life on the same day. Both, in their way, had thrown him ever-so-slightly off course, leaving him, for the first time in years, feeling uncertain of his footing; but both, were perhaps, temporary.

He shook the thought of Sylvie Chapeau away as the cottage came into view. He tethered the horse and pushed open the little white gate, took the flagstones up to the door, to the other new thing.

He’d decided, at last, he should come, at least once, and to do it at once. To ascertain whether in fact it was true.

Mrs. May greeted him at the door. He offered a tense bow to her, and she offered a swift, nearly begrudging, curtsy in return, and polite, stiff words of welcome. Tom imagined there wasn’t a good deal written in etiquette books about such occasions, and so he defaulted to quiet politeness for the moment.

Mr. May hovered at the ready, should the infamous Mr. Shaughnessy do anything untoward; Tom saw him out of the corner of his eye, then heard him moving about in another part of the house, making purposeful sounds, picking things up, putting them down, to make his presence known. Somewhere else in the house he heard the voices of older children.

It had taken some very determined coaxing to earn his way over the threshold of this cottage. He’d had the door shut in his face more than once. Mr. May had halfheartedly threatened him with a musket, but Tom had stood his ground; he’d recognized the musket’s vintage; it probably had more kick than it did firepower; it would probably harm the shooter more than the target.

And then Tom had come literally hat in hand; he’d come bearing gifts; roses and sweets, and once, in a stroke of originality, a ham.

And then he’d begged.

And really, in the end, very few could withstand a full charm assault from Tom Shaughnessy, which no doubt explained yesterday’s letter. Certainly the Mays’ pretty daughter Maribeth had scarcely even tried; she’d developed a taste for adventure, a man or two before she landed beneath Tom, and had finally run off with another man entirely. He’d all but forgotten about Maribeth until her letter had arrived a few weeks ago.

“He’s yours. You’ve only to look at him. The hair gives it away.”

Ah, romance,
Tom thought now, in retrospect.

And when he’d read the letter...he’d gone cold. The blood had left his hands and rushed into his face to heat it.

He was tempted just to crumple it and get on with the business of building a bawdy empire.

He did crumple it in fact. Squeezed it in his fist. Where it all but pulsed, the damn thing, as though he’d crushed in his hand a heart.

And so he’d smoothed it out again and stared at it, darkly angry. The anger was strangely unspecific. With himself? With Maribeth? With fate, for casting something in his path that had nothing at all to do with the plans he’d forged from persistence and work and danger and sheer cleverness?

Maribeth had left the boy—Jamie, she’d said his name was—with her parents, who had despaired of their daughter long ago. Her parents were considerably more respectable and conservative than their daughter, if impoverished. They lived in a small cottage in Kent with their other children.

So he’d thought about it. And as a formality, perhaps, Tom sent a letter—polite, formal—requesting to see the boy.

He’d been coldly rebuffed.
“Given your occupation, we think it best for him that you don’t see him,”
was the essence of the reply the Mays had sent.

Which is why, in the way of Tom Shaughnessy, seeing Jamie had become a quest.

And in the way of all of Tom’s quests to date, he’d been successful.

Mrs. May brought the boy to him in their sitting room, leading him by the hand.

His name was James; he was not yet two years old, Tom had been told. His hair was a silky sheet of copper, his baby-colored eyes already turning gray.

Silver, Jamie’s Grammy Shaughnessy would have called them, had she lived to see her grandchild.

Tom, for an instant, couldn’t breathe. He could see it. The child looked like him. Just like him, so much smaller, and yet...would grow to be an
entire person
who would look just like him.

The little boy stood and stared back at Tom with bald, unblinking amazement, as surely as though Tom was a dancing bear or a firework. It was both a little flattering and disconcerting, though Tom imagined that everything new that entered Jamie’s world was treated to the same stare.

And then Mrs. May released the boy’s little hand, and took a seat on one of the two settees that faced each other, each worn, and nearly as curved as a smile from years of being sat upon.

A judge presiding,
Tom thought, mordantly amused.

Awkwardly, he remained standing, hat in hand. He couldn’t very well
bow
to the child. Or shake his hand. He was. . . miniature. Everything about him was miniature, the tiny hands and feet, the little ears, that round, delicate head.

So Tom sat down stiffly on the settee, for all the world as if he’d come courting.

What on earth did one
do
with a toddler? And why on earth was he here, after all? The Mays seemed to have it all in hand, and from the sounds heard in the rest of the house, had managed to keep other children alive and fed.

Jamie toddled toward Tom, unable to resist the newness of him.

There was a ball on the braided rug near Tom’s feet, a little thing made of leather, a toy. Tentatively, Tom leaned over and rolled it across to the boy.

“Ball!”
Jamie bellowed, looking shocked and delighted. He fumbled at it with plump little starfish hands; when he managed to pick it up, a smile scrunched his face nearly in half, as though joy had split it right open.

Jamie tottered over to Tom and generously held out the ball.

After a moment’s hesitation, Tom took it. “Why thank you, my good man.”

Jamie patted his hands together, pleased to have given a gift.
“Ball!”
he reiterated on a piercing squeal. Tom fought a wince, certain the sound had drilled through his eardrum, fought the impulse to twist one finger in his ear to check.

“Yes, and an
excellent
ball it is, too,” Tom agreed. He knew the language of babies, he just wasn’t about to speak it, and he wasn’t convinced that babies wanted to hear it from adults, either. He admired his gift for a moment, to Jamie’s wide-eyed pleasure, then rolled the ball gently across the room for Jamie to wobble after.

Two, three steps, then—oh no!—
splat.
Down he went.

Jamie didn’t burst into tears, though he did look surprised, as though he fully hadn’t expected his legs to betray him. And then, hands on the floor for leverage, round bottom in the air, he pushed himself upright again and continued his pursuit.

He gets that from me,
Tom thought.
Single-minded determination.

The very thought that anyone—let alone an entire, tiny human being—would have gotten anything at all from him stunned him breathless again.

He watched the boy.
My son,
he thought, trying out the words in his mind to see how they felt.
My son.
Foreign, as it turned out. Two little words, but immense in their implication, like a great mountain he couldn’t see around.

He turned suddenly, to find Mrs. May watching him.

It was perhaps even more disconcerting to see the faintest hint of compassion softening her cool, stern vigilance.

This was when he quickly stood again.

“Well, thank you, Mrs. May. I’ll just be off then.”

He bowed, and left the two of them before she could even rise to her feet, as surely as though hounds were on his heels.

After a breakfast of very good bread and hot tea in the kitchen with Josephine and Mrs. Pool, Sylvie was led back upstairs to a very handsome sitting room. Soft shades of cream and blue were everywhere in the worn but tasteful furniture and the decent rugs and heavy curtains. There was even a little hearth, dark now as the weather was warm and the east-facing window allowed in a good deal of morning sun. Sylvie had abandoned her widow’s weeds and was wearing muslin, elegantly cut, subtly striped in a soft shade of willow. A narrow band of lace edged the neckline.

She saw Josephine’s eyes widen a bit when she took in the dress. No doubt she had a sense of its cost. But she said nothing; she merely settled Sylvie into the chair across from her and handed across a basket full of snipped-out segments of black flannel.

“Pirate hats,” she said matter-of-factly, brandishing one she’d finished with a flourish, to show Sylvie how they should look. “Next we’ll do the sashes and pantaloons and cunning little shirts, and dresses for the sea nymphs. Though
those
willna be much more than togas, and I’m thankful fer that, fer Mr. Shaughnessy, ’e does ’ave ’is ideas, one right after t’other, an ’e wants everything done straightaway. First the costumes and song and the sets— and that’s The General’s bailiwick, ye see, the sets are— and then the lot of ye’ll be in rehearsals in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And Mr. Shaughnessy, ’is ’and is in all of it, ye ken. Not that I’m complaining, mind ye,” she added hurriedly, “but I’m ’appy fer yer ’elp. And we’ll take in all of yer costumes as well, as they’re too big for ye.”

“Pantaloons?” Sylvie almost breathed the word. “There will be pantaloons?” Even in Paris, pantaloons for women were scandalous.

“They will look like skirts,” Josephine said with some relish, “but we’ll sew ’em together so that we can ’ave a leg in one side and a leg in the other. They
will
be pantaloons. Mr. Shaughnessy does have ’is ideas,” she reiterated admiringly. “And then we’ll write a song.”

“‘We’ll’?” Sylvie repeated.

“Mr. Shaughnessy and I,” Josephine clarified benignly, deftly stitching a pirate hat into shape.

Sylvie stared wonderingly at Josephine, who could very well pass for the wife of a curate, with her round cheeks and mild eyes.

Josephine looked up, noticed Sylvie’s astonished perusal, and smiled sweetly. “Oh, me ’usband, ’e dinna mind. ’E’s known Tom fer simply years, which is ’ow I came into Tom’s employ. First wi’ the sewing bits, mind ye. Then ’e discovered I’d a bit of a musical flair.”

She bent her head again to her sewing, then glanced sideways through her lashes at Sylvie, and said in a humble hush, as though confiding a secret, “and ’tisn’t difficult, ye ken, to rhyme things with lance, or joust. It all jus’ . . . comes to me, like. ’Tis a gift.”

Tom was relieved to be back again in the White Lily, in his office, among plans of his own making. He knew the way forward from this room—how to make shows, hire and discharge employees. He knew how to talk to a man with a hook for a hand or to a beautiful woman or to a rich investor or to a man threatening to shoot him at dawn.

But he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with the miniature version of himself.

He would write to Mrs. May and thank her for her time, then send money quarterly until the boy was grown, and this would dispatch his duties in this particular situation. Doubtless it wasn’t unusual; he was certain more than one man had found himself in similar circumstances.

Somewhat relieved at how tidy this solution felt, Tom turned to his stack of correspondence gratefully. Mrs. Pool had anticipated his return, and a tray of strong tea, which she had clearly only recently brewed judging from the heat and aroma of it, waited for him. He poured a cup of it as he sorted through his mail, and found wonderful news:

Viscount Howath would be pleased to invest in the Gentleman’s Emporium.

And that completed his group of investors. They were all in.

He leaned back in his chair and took a sip of tea, rolling it about in his mouth as if it were the taste of victory itself, and the sweet heat and enormity of triumph swelled in him and momentarily overtook every other concern. He knew a moment of awe: Tom Shaughnessy, former street urchin, would soon own one of the largest buildings in London, and the wealthiest men in London would flock to it in order to be entertained.

Tom allowed himself a moment to dream, to allow the dream to spiral outward to when the building was renovated and alive with entertainments, each floor a fantasy of escape and pleasure.

And then he reined his dreams back into the needs of the present, which included the creation of a song for female pirates. And he ought to see The General, who no doubt was in the workshop, begrudgingly supervising the frantic creation of a pirate ship and a great oyster for Venus to rise up out of, and swearing and hammering things.