“I sent John round to Morrison’s…” He mentioned the emporium he tended to frequent whenever needing to purchase a gift; a gift he typically let the proprietor choose and send with his name. But not this time. “To inquire whether he’d let me in early. I want to buy a fan for Thea. I noticed she d-didn’t have one at the opera.”
“A parting gift?” Elizabeth sounded aghast. Her fisted hands rose—as though she wanted to smack him!—before she brought them, shaking, back to her lap. “You should be ashamed! A fan—”
Daniel halted the tirade, placing his large gloved hand over both of hers. “Nn-nay. It rankles you should think me so cheap. A fan? As a congé? Pah. You’re completely off the mark. I want her t-to have one I p-pick out, ’tis all.”
“But a fan!” Her irritation over his choice of gift seemed completely over-the-top. Daniel let it slide when she changed the subject with, “You’re unusually verbose today. Perhaps I should always schedule my visits at five minutes after sunrise?”
“When I’m usually snoring,” he snorted on a smile. He squeezed her bare fingers. “Ellie. I would never d-do anything to harm you. But I find I must. You are my one regret in this, how you will p-p-pay for my—”
She snatched her hand free and turned fully toward him. “You’re frightening me. You aren’t leaving England, are you? Are you sick? Injured? Where? What—”
Touched by her concern, he put one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Nay. Nay and nn-nay. But I am hoping to be married—”
“Married!” Alarm made her pull back. Her eyes narrowed at him, steely glints in the slowly increasing light. “Now? But what about Thea? I mean Mrs. Hurwell?”
Not the reaction he’d expected. “What about her?”
“Ah…um. I have a confession to make—about your mistress. About Thea.”
Why did Ellie look guilty?
“I went to see her yesterday and—”
“You…” He hadn’t expected that. “What about?”
“My difficulties with Wylde, if you must know. I needed the advice of someone with more experience. Ah, in the bedroom.”
She’d gone to Thea for sexual advice? Daniel was hard-pressed not to laugh.
For his unsuccessful attempt, he got summarily elbowed in the ribs. “Ow! Ellie. They’re still sore.”
“And I still owe you a jar of cream. But she was wonderfully helpful and, oh, Daniel, I like her very much. And now you’re going to get married?” She sounded distraught. “End things with Thea?”
Never would he have expected such disapproval from this quarter. It hadn’t escaped him either that Ellie expressed zero interest in his potential future wife; nay, all her concern was for his mistress.
Women!
Ellie sighed. “Thea’s not at all what I thought a mistress would be.”
Nay, she wasn’t. “More like a wife.”
“What? A wife!” He’d reduced his composed sister to shrieks.
At least they weren’t critical shrieks. Nay, given her smile and the clapping and the jumping up and down, given the strangling hug she suffocated him with and the shout in his ear, he’d have to say they were shrieks of approval.
“Here?” Buttons exclaimed after the carriage ride “home” took them across London instead. “This is where I’m to let you ‘run a quick errand’? His lordship’ll flay me alive!”
In the act of getting down, Thea paused. She flashed a falsely confident smile. “He need never know. I only need one thing from my room—”
Buttons had already jumped to the ground and circled the carriage, as though to bar her from proceeding. At her explanation, he winced. “Your room, Miss Thea?”
She saw him look again, more warily this time, at their surroundings. The curve of the sun had just crested the horizon, giving him sufficient light to see the ugly street and uglier building she’d directed them to. Using Hatchards as a starting point, which she’d thought a stroke of brilliance, Thea had given her coachman Jem instructions.
“Aye. Until last week, this is where I lived.” The confession was made without inflection.
People were beginning to stir, shutters banging open and the contents of slop jars and chamber pots being tossed into the streets.
Needing to get the distasteful task over with, she stood.
With a shudder, Buttons offered his arm to assist her down. “His lordship will have my head, but I can see sure-like you’ll come back on your own later if I order us turned around now.” After a severe frown at her, he glanced at the driver. “You see them two men over there, in that alley?” Buttons gestured with the back of his head. “Eyeing the mare, they are. Got your whip handy?”
“Aye, I do.”
“Can’t tell whether they want to eat her or steal her, but stay sharp.” Then to Thea, as if issuing a dare, “Let’s see jus’ how fast you can be.”
As she walked inside after several days’ absence, heading down the narrow hallway to her room on the second floor, seeing—and smelling—the bleak accommodations, it struck Thea anew how far she’d sunk.
Was that why she’d insisted they return this morning, after she’d basked in the grandeur of her stolen, illicit night? Why, in spite of her valid desire to retrieve the brush her mother gave her, she felt compelled to remind herself—perhaps to show Buttons—how very much she didn’t belong in Lord Tremayne’s world?
But you don’t belong here either, that intrusive inner voice insisted. You, Thea Jane, were born to gentility. ’Twas shortsighted Hurwell and his selfish cousin who reduced you to these circumstances, condemned you to a future not of your choosing.
Condemned? Time with Lord Tremayne felt anything but a punishment.
Ascending the rickety stairs, heading deeper into the bowels of the squalid place, especially after all the glitter and gleam she’d fallen into, made her recent past all that more embarrassing.
With every reluctant yet determined step, she was never more grateful for Buttons’ solid presence at her heels.
Right before they reached the landing, a sharp double whistle
