cheek.
Wiping her face. The last person to do that was her mother, dead of fever, ten years back. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t cry.”
“Of course you don’t, child.”
“Crying’s pointless. It means you can’t think of anything better to do. There’s always something to do.”
“Always. We must simply decide what it is. Not, however, this morning.” Eunice sat next to her, still speaking in that unruffled, deep voice. “First, you will drink your tea. It’s getting cold.” And the teacup was somehow between her hands again.
“Yes.” She’d just sit here for a while and hold on to it.
“I think, since your father can’t be with you, you should stay here with us.”
She couldn’t stay here. All kinds of reasons not to stay. “I can’t—”
“We have plenty of room, even if we’re rather cluttered with pots. I can’t be easy with the thought of you going back home with no one but servants to take care of you. And there’s that nasty accident at the docks. So worrisome. Let me give you some toast. The toast is better than the muffins today. The bread comes from the baker, and Cook made the muffins. I’m afraid this is not one of her good mornings. She drinks.” As she spoke, Eunice spread marmalade on toast.
She was being managed. It had been a long time since anyone tried managing her for her own good. Maybe she’d let it happen for a while.
The plate in front of her was Sèvres, with roses painted on it. A nice piece of china. Whitby’s had to bribe two sets of customs officials and change ships to get Sèvres porcelain. They sold it in Boston. Good markets in the Americas.
Papa wouldn’t live to trade with Boston again unless she found Cinq.
“You don’t like marmalade?” Eunice said. “There’s a lovely man in Hampstead who sends me pints of it on Boxing Day every year. We never seem to get through it all before he sends some more, and he does make it himself. Have some tea first.”
She wasn’t hungry, but to be polite she took a sip of tea and picked up a piece of toast. She’d get up in a minute and make her good-byes and leave. All kinds of things she had to do at the warehouse. From the hall outside came the sound of something heavy, thumping, and Standish saying, “Do be careful with that,” repeatedly.
“He’s taking them to the salon to unpack.” Eunice filled up the cup. “It isn’t so much the pots, you understand, but they send them packed in straw. Straw everywhere, and sand, and sometimes fleas. He won’t let me give the pots a good wash. I have hit upon a system, however . . .”
It had been weeks since she’d just sat, doing nothing, not thinking at all. Eunice didn’t expect answers or explanations. She was an extraordinarily comforting person to be around. Probably lots of people cried down the front of her dress.
She’d stay just a few more minutes, being polite.
She listened to Eunice talk about pottery. Seemed to be lots one could know about pottery. When she opened her eyes, the light didn’t stab in. And her head hurt less. She drank more tea. Then there were two new slices of toast on her plate, and she ate them, too. The tea was good, of its sort, but she’d send some Russian tea to Eunice.
The door opened. A tall man in waistcoat and shirtsleeves walked in. “Good morning, Aunt Eunice.” He leaned and kissed the woman’s cheek. His black hair was straight and thick as Russian sable.
“My nephew.” Eunice picked up a new cup and began pouring. “He carried you in last night, when you were hurt. Bastian, this is Jess Whitby, who’s come to stay with us a while.”
He sat down and faced her and became Sebastian Kennett.
Seven
SHE REMEMBERED HIM STANDING BESIDE HER IN THE rain. He’d set the tips of his fingers, careful and rough-textured, on her lips, and she’d shivered from it.
“Sebastian . . .” The one soft word escaped before she saw what was in his face. His eyes were like the black ice on one of those marsh ponds in Russia, cold and brittle and hard as steel.
“. . . Kennett,” she finished.
His gaze moved deliberately across her, like he was taking inventory of the parts he’d seen naked. She had the thought that if she reached out and put her hand up to his cheek, her skin would freeze to him, like she was touching cold metal in the winter.
He said, “Miss Whitby. I see you’re out of bed.”
“Up and about.”
Last night, Captain Sebastian Kennett had kept her safe from cold and dark and fear. He’d wrapped her in gentleness warmer than a blanket. This morning, he was Bastard Kennett, who had a deadly name on the docks and no softness anywhere in him. Enough to drive a duck daft, trying to sort it all out.
He was carrying his jacket over his back, hooked in two fingers. He tossed it over a chair and sat down. It was a swell’s coat, cut by some expert on Jermyn Street. That was a lot of expensive tailoring going to waste, if Kennett was trying to look genteel. There was too much tough, stringy muscle on him to make a gentleman. Might as well put a tiger in a waistcoat and call it a pussycat. “You came damned close to being dead. Has she eaten anything, Eunice?”
“Yes, dear. Toast. Do try not to scowl in that intimidating way. I believe she has a headache.”
“She knocked back a gill of straight brandy last night. That’s enough to make her sick, all by itself.” He sounded disapproving and Methodist about it, which was a fine attitude from the man who’d tipped the brandy down her throat.
“It’s not the liquor.”
“What are you doing out of bed? You look like you’ve escaped from a winding sheet.”
If somebody’d asked her, she would have guessed nobs were reasonably civil to people they’d had naked in their bed the night before. Turned out they were rude as starlings. She was always learning new things. She took the tip of her knife and began outlining the roses frolicking around the rim of her plate.
“Your color’s not good. Are you dizzy? Blurry vision?” Him pretending to be a doctor.
“I’m fine. You were right about what you said last night. I just had to wait patient and my memory came back home, wagging its tail behind.” She didn’t rub her forehead. He didn’t have to know how much it hurt in there. “Most of it.”
“It must be frightening, mislaying pieces of oneself.” Eunice set the teapot down. “Is it clear now, what happened to you?”
“Dim in some parts.”
But she remembered the fight. The alley had been slippery with gray rain. They came for her out of the fog and the chill. Kennett’s knife whipped out like red lightning, drawing a line between her and the shadow men. He was fury and wildness, twice as lethal as the thugs who attacked them, a snarling guard no enemy could get past. Impressive. Impressed the hell out of her, anyway.
“Sebastian never tells me what he’s been doing,” Eunice said. “It’s not dull, I suspect.”
“Interesting last night, anyway. He convinced about a dozen men not to drag me off down an alley. Very heroic.”
“Which wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d stayed off Katherine Lane,” the Captain snapped.
A few years back she’d have stuck her tongue out at him. She wasn’t a gutter brat anymore, so she resisted the impulse. “I don’t remember all of it, but I think I may be alive because of you. I owe you a debt.”
“You don’t have to be grateful.”
“If you think somebody who owes you a debt that big is grateful, you aren’t much of a trader.”
She hit the gold with that one. Kennett clamped his teeth over what would have been a fairly ripe comment,
