“Curious way you have of civilizing me,” he muttered as he sat at the head of the table. The chair was deucedly uncomfortable, rubbing against his shoulder blades and arse. Or perhaps that was his discomfort with the situation.
“All in good time,” she said under her breath. They spoke so quietly that the rest of the class could not hear, but that mischievous sparkle had entered Suzette’s gray eyes again.
Fletcher could tell the girl was eaten up with curiosity, but he’d be damned if he knew what to tell her. He barely understood how to explain this strange situation. All he knew was that he seemed to be particularly susceptible to Seraphina. With a flick of his fingers, he entreated Sera to bend near. Her soft flower smell wrapped around him. He needed to identify what that scent was or it would drive him mad. Too bad he’d never been much of one for flowers. Not many grew in London’s dingy alleys.
“How bad do you wish me to be?”
Her faint dimple was close enough that he could taste it—if only he dared. “As bad as you wish to be.”
He lifted a single eyebrow, but she didn’t back down from the challenge. “Let’s have at it, shall we?” Resting an elbow on the tabletop, he crossed a foot over his knee. “Miss Suzette?”
“Aye, sir.” She smiled so sweetly that he’d have never guessed the mouthy attitude she’d demonstrated a minute ago. “I’m quite pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I’m sorry I can’t say the same.”
Her eyes widened, but she still seemed to be enjoying the game. “Do you not like meeting new people?”
“If I believe the acquaintance is worthwhile, certainly.” It was all he could do not to laugh. “I have my doubts as to your…usefulness.”
“My usefulness? Like I’m a handkerchief? Why you’re a game one, aren’t you?”
“Patience,” Sera counseled, patting Suzette’s shoulder. “Do not allow him to know what a lout you think him. Be calm.”
“Calm?” Suzette glanced over her shoulder. “I’d like to scratch his eyes out.”
“It is a terrible temptation, isn’t it? But only imagine…” Sera bent low over her pupil and whispered in her ear. The whole time, her gaze remained locked with Fletcher’s, and mirth danced in her eyes.
He’d pay good money to know what she was whispering. Instead, he faked a yawn. “Are you hens finished chirping yet?”
The game continued as such for nearly ten minutes before Suzette was replaced with another woman. Saying rude things to them all proved difficult, but he managed. A thread of good humor wove through the sniping, particularly when the fourth woman asked him if she was a hen, did that indeed make him the cock of the walk?
Through it all, Sera never lost her proper demeanor. She hovered over her girls, giving them quiet words of advice and occasionally providing a gentlewoman-like riposte.
Fletcher found himself coming closer and closer to toeing the line of good humor and bald-faced antagonism. It was all because of Sera. He wondered how far he’d go to make her lose that perfect, facile easiness.
Though, he was the only one suffering under such difficulties. She seemed to think him an unruly challenge and no more. If he cupped her warm cunny in his hand, would she be driven to slap him? He gave himself a shake at the inappropriately timed thought.
After almost an hour, when Fletcher had verbally sparred with half a dozen, the door to the rear of the room opened, revealing Charlotte Vale and Lady Victoria Wickerby. Matched wrinkles of concern decorated their brows. With another comforting pat on the shoulder of the current student, Sera cruised toward the rear of the room.
The trio conferred in heated whispers. The other two seemed displeased with Fletcher’s presence in their little domain. Their hands flew in small gestures, and Miss Vale even pointed at him. Sera glanced at Fletcher, and keeping his sights on the woman he was supposed to be angering became nearly impossible. His immediate instinct was to rush in and defend Sera, but she didn’t seem to need him.
She wouldn’t need him at all if he hadn’t destroyed her chance at working for her precious school. The strange clenching in his chest was reminiscent of guilt, though he hadn’t felt it in years. He meant her for better things. A life and a pampered existence at his side that was everything she was worth.
Whatever Sera said apparently soothed her friends. They both shook their heads, but the worry eased from pinched features.
The woman he was supposed to be provoking, a slender blonde, suddenly giggled. “Don’t tell me I’ve finally bested you?”
It took concentrated effort to drag his attention back. “Of course you have, sweetheart. If you want to believe that, you may.”
She rolled her eyes and sucked air through her teeth. Shaking a finger under her nose only irritated her further.
“Ah-ah,” he warned. “I don’t believe Miss Miller would think you’re keeping your temper well.”
“Indeed I don’t.” Sera had finished her conversation and stood behind them again. “But that’s quite all right. I understand how trying Mr. Thomas can be.”
“That he is, miss.” The blonde girl—Fletcher thought he ought to be able to remember her name, but it escaped him—twisted in her seat to turn her pinched eyes up at Sera. “Are they all such?”
“No, don’t fear. The men who come to the soirees are good, kindhearted men. They’ll be on their best behavior in an attempt to find the right woman to be their helpmeet for life.”
Fletcher heard the message implicit in what she didn’t say—that he was neither good nor kindhearted. She was going through this trouble in an attempt to earn the money. Any other woman would accept what he’d made inevitable. Not Sera.
He wasn’t going to make it any easier. The line he had to walk was fine indeed. Too much kindness and closeness and he’d be tempted to collect what he yet couldn’t. Treat her too abruptly and she’d have no intention of marrying him once he secured a position in the earl’s consortium.
“Remember,” she said, her voice everything appeasing. “There’s no requirement to accept any of the gentlemen callers. There never is. We only ask that you give them a chance to make a positive impression.”
“As long as they’re clean and have a steady job, it won’t be hard at all to make me happy,” the blonde woman said with a laugh.
Sera smiled indulgently. “That’s all well and good. Separate into small groups and practice the forms of address, if you please. Lady Victoria will be in shortly to practice your elocution. Mr. Thomas and I shall have to depart.”
A chorus of good-natured groans went up from the women. An unidentified voice in the back of the room complained that she’d not had her turn to “test out the mister.”
That one was lucky by half. She sounded so bawdy that if she hadn’t lucked into Seraphina’s little charitable program, she’d have ended up working for Mrs. Kordan in two shakes. Or rather, two wiggles of her bum.
“Fear not, ladies.” Fletcher stood. “If Miss Miller entreats me to return again, I fear I’d be powerless to say no.”
“If that’s true, it’s no thanks to us,” crowed Suzette from the second row. “It’d be Miss Miller with the crookin’ of her finger.”
“Hush now,” Seraphina said as she ushered Fletcher from the room. “There’s no need for pointless crudity.”
He knew quite a few instances where pointless crudity was not only needed but demanded. There would be no exploring such instances with the woman who walked down the hallway at his side. Merely the mention locked her spine more rigidly than the most restrictive corset. The tips of her ears had gone pink with an incipient blush.
Lady Victoria and Miss Vale sat in the tiny parlor. A length of embroidery draped over Lady Victoria’s lap in the general occupation of ladies at large, while Miss Vale sat poring over a fashion magazine at a round table. The scene was oddly comfortable, with a fire flickering behind the grate and late-evening sun angling through the windows to gild the room in golden light.
Fletcher had lived in squalor. He’d lived in opulence. Through the years, he’d even enjoyed tangential exposure to elegance on the rare occasions he received invitations to aristocratic offices.
Comfort was something he had little knowledge of.
In fact, he hardly knew what to do with himself. He stood awkwardly by the doorway, thumbs slung in the pockets of his waistcoat as Seraphina stepped in to collect her cloak. Lady Victoria graced him with a nod of acknowledgment. Miss Vale looked up from her fashion plates, but the expression framed by her cloud of messy hair remained imperious.
Seraphina smiled at both of them. “I’m off. The girls are waiting on you, Victoria.”
A tiny frown wrinkled Miss Vale’s brow. “Won’t you stay? We’ll leave together.”
“Not tonight, thank you.” She remained everything graceful and smooth.
Lady Victoria obviously wished to say more, but a look at Fletcher checked her words. It shouldn’t have. He was the last one to be dragging Seraphina off from pillar to post. He’d gladly leave her there if he thought she’d stay.
He knew she’d take a hansom cab and show up on his doorstep anyhow. Much better and safer to take her back in his own carriage than have her wandering alone, deep into the slums.
Once Seraphina had said her goodbyes and Fletcher endured enough silent warnings, they loaded themselves into the carriage. Seraphina watched the view slide by the window while Fletcher watched her.
He shifted in his seat, spreading his feet until his boot tips brushed the wide circle of her skirts. He’d always despised sitting in the rear-facing seat. He liked seeing where he was going—and he knew each and every back alley by heart. It must be different for Sera. She’d been gone for so long.
“How much do you remember?”
“Both too much and too little,” she answered immediately. Then she seemed to realize her response and blinked the unfocused haze out of her eyes. She twitched at the seams of her skirts, aligning the stripes to perfection. “That was silly of me. I’m not even sure what I meant.” She offered him a celluloid imitation of her regular smile, pale and stretched thin.
“I believe it made perfect sense.” He’d been there more than once, that place between innocence and cynicism.
“Still, unmeasured words are the hallmark of an unorganized mind. Unmeasured words are the quickest way to determine a body’s true emotions.”
“Determining emotions can be rather handy on occasion.”
“Ah, but see?” She looked back out the window but peeked at him from the corners of her eyes. “To hang one’s feelings out for examination is the height of vulgarity. Like hanging out one’s wash on a Thursday.”
“Is that so awful?”
“Certainly.” She was cool and composed, but under the thick sheaf of her lashes lurked humor. “It’s terrible. One might as well instruct the servants to wait ’til the next week and simply work longer on Monday.”
He’d been blessed to avoid the ignominy of scrubbing his own undergarments. Before his father had the money to hire a washerwoman, Fletcher had worn what he’d managed to squirrel for himself, be damned how white or clean—or not—it was. He’d known no better, being only about hip-high. After that, his father had begun collecting women. First they did laundry. Then they hired it out when they spent too much time on their backs.
“I see,” Fletcher said, when really he didn’t see at all. The codes and regulations of being a woman were too much to order into a chain of logic. They simply didn’t make sense.
Most of the time he was damned glad he had a dick.
Back at the house, Hareton waited patiently to open the door and to take Fletcher’s hat and Seraphina’s cloak. She took infinitely more time to peel off her gloves finger by finger. The skin at her wrist was tissue thin and showed the faint blue lines of her veins.
He coughed. “I’m off,” he blurted abruptly.
Hareton looked nearly bewildered and moved to hand back the hat. Fletch waved him off. “No, no. To change. I’m off to change.”
Seraphina’s brows rose. “Do you dress for dinner even when you’re not entertaining?”
“Isn’t that what’s done in all the finest houses?”
She cast a judicious eye up to the randy-angel ceiling. “Yes.”
He resented that implication, but he couldn’t deny the truth. He didn’t particularly care to. Dressing in eveningwear every night when the footman served him soup seemed like a lot of work for no reason.
Though if it provided him the opportunity to see Seraphina in a diaphanous evening gown, with miles of creamy skin on display, he might be tempted to reconsider. That wouldn’t be likely any time soon, however. Though Seraphina’s clothes were finely made, they exposed nothing of her flesh. She was always wrapped from chin to toes.
He shook the image out of his head. “As a matter of fact, no. We do not dress for dinner here. I’m going out.”
“To oversee your businesses.”
“Tonight to Fair Winds.”
She flicked her dove-gray gloves against her palm. “I hope you don’t expect me to know what that means.”
“The Fair Winds is a public house that I own. It caters to sailors, captains and dockworkers.”
She smiled. “Naturally, it would be down by the docks, I suppose.”
“Naturally. The only neighborhood worse than the stews. Plenty of drink, loose women and revelry.”