Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

“It was not a long time you were in that place, I understand,” Mr. Carsington said.

One minute was too long, she wanted to cry. She made herself remain still, very still, looking straight ahead.

“It felt like a long time,” the boy said. “It wasn’t as long as some stay there, though. Mr. Welton died in the winter, and it was spring when Mr. Tyler took me on.”

“I’m sorry you were there for even a few months,” Mr. Carsington said. “But you had no one to take you in, I suppose, and it was that or an orphanage.”

“I heard some of them are worse than any workhouse,” Pips said. “Worse than prison. I know I was lucky, sir. And I got out, didn’t I? Now I pretend it was a bad dream.”

“That’s probably best.”

“All I have to do is do what I’m told,” Pip said. “And do it the best I can. Mr. Welton said I must always do my best. Mrs. Tyler says I had too much schooling and speak too fine. But if I could learn from Mr. Welton, why can’t I learn from Mr. Tyler? If I could learn from books, why can’t I learn from doing? Why do they think I can’t?”

Mr. Carsington must have heard the anxiety in the boy’s voice, for he said sharply, “There’s no reason you can’t. There’s no need for you to go back to the workhouse. If you lose your place with the Tylers, you must come to me, and I will find you a place. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the boy said, in a rush of relief.

“Never mind thanking me,” came the gruff answer. “Take Daisy for a good run. She’s getting fat from want of exercise. She needs to run and play. Unfortunately these elegant ladies don’t run and play. And so the dog will only grow fatter, and stupid and lethargic besides. We can’t have that.”

“No, sir.”

“Pip, I am charging you with running and playing with Daisy and keeping her lively—and out from underfoot of the workmen,” Mr. Carsington said. “You’ll see to this for me?”

Charlotte couldn’t help smiling. He’d paid a good deal more attention to Daisy than one could have guessed.

He’d paid attention to an insignificant apprentice, too. She’d heard in Mr. Carsington’s voice a degree of compassion and generosity that surprised her. Rakes, in her experience, were among the most selfish and self-centered of men.

“Indeed, I will, sir. You are very good to take the trouble to explain.” The boy sounded as surprised as Charlotte was. “Where may I take her to play?”

“Keep to the gardens and park—such as they are—and watch where you’re going. We are not yet properly civilized here, and offer a hundred ways to break your skull. Try not to trip over anything or fall into the ponds. Some of them are as thick as marshes, and you’ll find falling in much easier than getting out again.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She heard footsteps dashing away and Daisy’s short bark.

Heavier footsteps came nearer. She edged farther into the shadows.

“You are the most deluded woman in the Northern Hemisphere if you think you can hide from me there, when you are wearing a light-colored dress,” came the deep voice. “You were eavesdropping, Lady Charlotte. Yet one more to add to your long list of unfortunate habits.”

She stepped out from the gloom. “I came here for solitude,” she said, putting her chin up. “I could hardly accomplish that if I came out and joined in the conversation. Or should I say ‘interrogation’?”

“It was an interrogation,” Mr. Carsington said. “I spoke to Tyler. I did not want the boy to be beaten on account of someone else’s error.”

Her hands clenched. She made herself unclench them. “I wish you had told me,” she said. “I should never permit such a thing.”

“That’s what a woman would say,” said Mr. Carsington. “Since you are a woman, Tyler would humor you now and beat the boy later.”

“And since you are not a woman, what then? Why should he not beat the boy later, whatever you said?”

“Because Tyler understood that he should have to answer to me, and because he could see that I was quite capable of beating him, should he disregard my wishes.”

Her gaze shot to Mr. Carsington’s hands. He had not yet put on his gloves but held them in one hand. It was not hard and callused. It wasn’t soft, either. It was unfashionably large, the fingers long, not thick yet sturdy and capable. She was sure that a blow from those hands would not be a gentle one…though their touch could be gentle enough when he chose.

Devastatingly so. She remembered the light brush of his fingers…

She hastily returned her gaze to his face. In the dappled light of this corner of the stables, it was hard to read.

“Then I thank you,” she said. “It was kind of you to take notice of such a thing and take trouble over a boy you don’t know.”

“I know him now,” Mr. Carsington said. “I had only to notice his eyes to understand he’d met more than his share of trouble.”

She could not prevent the quick inhalation but it was the tiniest of gasps, scarcely noticeable, she hoped. “His eyes?” she said, keeping her voice noncommittal.

“You were too dizzy to note it, I don’t doubt,” he said. “The boy’s eyes don’t match. One is blue, the other a sort of green. Uneducated people can be superstitious about such things. The devil’s work or a sign of bad luck, they call these oddities, when it is merely an innocent quirk of nature. This combines with other factors to make Pip’s position less secure than it ought to be.”

“The Tylers seem to think him overeducated,” she said.

“His schooling is a drawback,” Mr. Carsington said. “Yet another is his uncertain parentage.”

The last sentence was a blow, and she felt as though a heavy fist delivered it to her heart. But on the outside she was composed, as cold as ice.

“People can be…so unkind…to children with defects or without parents,” she said through stiff lips. “As though…as though it were the child’s fault.”

He ducked his head to look at her more closely. “Good gad, are you crying? Well, what a softhearted creature you ca

n be at times, to be sure.”

“I am not crying,” she said with a sniff. “And if I was, what of it? You are softhearted, too. I heard you assure the boy that he would not go back to the workhouse.”

He would not let her lead him into the detour. He bent nearer still, and even in the uncertain light, she felt the falcon’s gaze, too keen. “Something is wrong,” he said. “You are not yourself. You’ve been behaving strangely ever since you stumbled on the water bucket.”

She saw the boy’s face, as sharp and clear as life, in her mind’s eye.

Grief came, sudden and vast, like a rising ocean wave. She saw it sweeping toward her, threatening to swallow her as it had done ten years ago.

Utter despair. No way out.

No. Not again. If she sank into that darkness again, she’d never come out.

She brought her hands up, grasped the back of Mr. Carsington’s head, and pulled him to her as a drowning man would seize a rope.

She pressed her mouth to his, and kissed him, as though she were dying in fact, and he offered life.

The small, happy lifetime he’d given her yesterday.

He wrapped his arms about her, as though he understood. He held her as though for dear life, as though he sensed the danger.

Make me forget.

As though he understood, he deepened the kiss, and sorrow melted away in the sweetness of their mingling. The taste of him was like a honeyed liqueur, cool at first on the tongue yet flooding her senses with warmth. Happiness.

This is right.

She dragged her hands down over his arms, feeling the muscles shift under the coat, under her touch. She spread her hands over his chest, broad and hard, and made it, for this moment, her own. Like a blind woman, she discovered him with her hands, and the chill of shame could not withstand the warmth of touch and the sense of belonging: she to him, he to her. Shame and grief dissolved. The past dissolved and with it the loneliness of the time since.

Only now remained. Only now mattered.

Now was his mouth, sliding from hers to mark her throat with its warm imprint. Now was his hands covering her breasts, molding to them as though imprinting their shape on his palms and fingers. Now was the movement of his fingers, over her bodice, and the tingle of her skin, under layers of clothing, as it awakened to his touch.