A Bit of Rough

by Jackie Barbosa

  Not to mention that, as she worked, her fingers blackened with ink, and she had to take extreme care not to touch her clothing lest she stain them. To an untrained eye, her coat and breeches might appear simple enough, but they’d been tailored specifically for her so as to disguise her feminine figure while still fitting comfortably, and she did not want to be forced to commission another set.

  Honora had been wearing male clothing since childhood, for her mother had been firmly convinced that girls had every bit as much right to the freedom of movement afforded by breeches and sturdy boots as boys. Moreover, the countess continued to keep several suits of male clothing on hand for occasions when she wished to conceal her sex, and she had made certain her daughter could do the same. What the countess might not be so approving of were the reasons Honora found herself in need of a new set should she besmirch the suit as the result of her current activities.

  As the stacks dwindled to the last twenty or so pages, Mr. Evangelista said, “Why don’t you sit down and rest? I can finish these.”

  Honora’s instinct was to object that she was fine, but the truth was that she was unaccustomed to spending so much time bending and stooping, not to mention standing. With a grateful nod, she sank onto a nearby stool and watched as Mr. Evangelista worked his way swiftly through the remaining copies.

  He moved with an easy, efficient grace that made her think of a large jungle cat, perhaps a leopard or a jaguar. Though, to be fair, she had never seen such animals in life, so she might be imagining their agility and sinuousness quite wrongly. Notwithstanding, the image of a black jaguar lodged itself in her mind, and she could not shake it, especially not when she recalled the power—and the subtlety—of his kiss.

  She had been kissed before, of course. Honora had been launched into society in the usual manner, with her parents footing the bill for a lavish round of balls and parties and the like. At first, she’d found the activities and attention exciting, but the bloom had come off the rose when she discovered most of the people she met were very much like the pretentious pigs and conceited cockerels she depicted in her Mary Weather tales—vain, shallow, selfish, and untrustworthy.

  Still, in the early, heady days before she had concluded that the haute ton was not for her, no fewer than seven gentlemen had asked to pay her court. They had ranged in rank and age from an earl older than her father to a baronet who could not have been more than few months her senior, if that. Of these, Honora had accounted four of them attractive enough in personality and appearance to warrant at least cursory consideration. And so, she had offered each of the four an opportunity to kiss her. One had been so shocked by the forwardness of her invitation that he had immediately withdrawn his suit. The other three…well, suffice it to say that she had concluded kissing was a singularly overrated activity. Why anyone would voluntarily subject herself to such an intimacy when the experience ranged from sloppy and nauseating to dry and boring?

  But now she knew. Because Mr. Evangelista’s kiss had been nothing short of glorious. When his mouth had claimed hers, she’d felt neither distaste or embarrassment, but a strange, curling heat in her abdomen that reminded her of hunger but which was something else entirely. Her body had ached with emptiness and longing, yet the sensation had been pleasurable rather than uncomfortable. She had wanted him to go on kissing her, and when he’d been forced to end it by Mr. Rickert’s return, she’d been frustrated and irritated because she’d been desperately curious to find out what he might do next.

  What was it about Mr. Evangelista that had made her reaction to him so different? Perhaps he was more skilled at kissing, though to be honest, she doubted that could be the whole explanation. Lord Hutchence, at least, had possessed a reputation for being popular with the ladies, and his attentions had been neither clumsy nor awkward; but she could see now with the benefit of hindsight that there had been no real desire for her in him, either. For now she understood what passion and emotion felt like, tasted like, smelled like.

  Taking care not to touch her clothes with her inky hands, she studied Mr. Evangelista from under the brim of her cap. Objectively, she supposed he was not the most handsome man she had ever seen, but he had an appeal that went beyond mere physical attractiveness. He radiated strength and vitality, not just of body, but of character, and that energy fascinated and made her hunger for more.

  As if to punctuate the thought, her stomach rumbled with an entirely different sort of hunger, reminding her that she had not eaten since breakfast. Everyone else in the print shop had likely had luncheon shortly before her arrival, but mealtimes in an aristocratic household seldom matched those of the working class, being generally later to allow household staff time to consume their own meals and also to accommodate the late-night activities the upper classes were wont to enjoy.

  “What I wouldn’t do for a pork pasty right about now,” she muttered aloud, more to herself than to Mr. Evangelista, who had nearly reached the bottom of the pile.

  He glanced at her with raised eyebrows. “Missed luncheon, have you?”

  “And afternoon tea,” she said, shaking her head ruefully.

  “I could ask Mr. Rickert to send one of his sons out to fetch you something. I’m sure he would oblige.”

  “Good gad, no. If I am to maintain my façade as a messenger boy, I cannot behave like a spoiled Corinthian who is accustomed to being fed at a whim.”

  Mr. Evangelista folded the paper he’d just assembled into thirds and placed it with the others. “True, but we could tell him you missed your midday meal to complete this delivery. I doubt he would question that explanation.”

  “Perhaps not, but I don’t think it worth the risk. I can wait. I am not so pampered that I’ll melt away through missing a meal or two. Besides, the daylight is fading. It can’t be long now until Mr. Rickert closes up for the night.”

  As she spoke, Mr. Evangelista compiled another paper and added it to the completed ones. Glancing at the printing press, which George and James Rickert were still operating at a rapid pace, he shrugged. “I’m not so certain. Our presence today means they can get ahead of tomorrow’s work, and Rickert isn’t one to squander his good fortune. I suspect they’ll go on for an hour or more yet.”

  Honora pressed her hand to her midsection at this prediction and then glanced down at the front of her dark blue jacket in alarm. To her relief, she saw no ink smudging the fabric and gave herself a stern reminder to keep her hands at her sides. “Then I shall just have to find some way to keep my mind off of pork pasties. Though it is very difficult, now that I’ve imagined one, to get them out of my head. I find them quite delicious, don’t you?”

  “They can be very tasty,” he agreed, “but I would prefer them if the filling was a bit less bland.”

  “Bland? Truly?” That was the last word she would have used to describe the salty, savory filling of the pork pasties of her acquaintance. “What would you have instead?”

  “One of my mother’s tamals,” he answered immediately, his expression growing far off and wistful.

  “What on earth is a tah-mahl?” she asked, testing the strange word on her tongue.

  He chuckled. “I suppose you could say it’s my people’s version of a pasty. We use a meal made from maize instead of flour to make the dough, and they’re steamed rather than baked or fried, but on the whole, the concept is similar. They can also be either savory or sweet, but the savory ones are usually also made with spicy chilis in the filling and sometimes in a sauce that’s poured over the tamale before it’s eaten.”

  “Like curry?”

  “Similar, but not the same. My part of the world has different spices than India.”

  And here was the opening she had craved since laying eyes on him. She had been certain that his heritage could not be entirely British, but asking straight out had felt wrong somehow. As though she would be questioning his right to consider himself an Englishman simply because he did not look like one. He certainly had every bit as firm a command of the l
anguage as any Briton born and bred, though there was that lilt… Her curiosity would not allow her to leave the question unasked. “And what part of the world is that?”

  “New Spain. Or, as it is now known, Los Estados Unidos de Mexico.” He pronounced the word “Mexico” with the stress on the middle syllable and with an h sound in place of the x.

  As soon as he mentioned New Spain, his coloring and slight accent made perfect sense. Why that possibility had not occurred to her, she could not say, but then, Great Britain was such a long way from the New World. Though, now that she thought of it, certainly no further than the Philippines. Regardless, he was very far from his native soil, and not even in a country where people spoke what his native tongue.

  “How do you come to be living in London? That is, if you do not mind my asking,” she added, wincing inwardly at the forwardness of the question.

  He appeared unperturbed, however, for he responded quickly enough. “My father was born there, to parents of Spanish ancestry. My mother is mostly Mayan Indian, although her family claims descent from one of the first Europeans ever to arrive in the New World, Gonzalo Guerrero, and his Mayan consort, Zazil Ha. As a consequence of my mother’s ancestry, my father became quite a fervent advocate for the emancipation of Mayans and other indigenous Mexicans. My parents were forced to flee the country in 1811 because my father’s beliefs led him to become an associate of Father Hidalgo. Do you know who he was?” When Honora shook her head, he continued, “He was the first leader in Mexico’s War of Independence. Hidalgo wanted not only independence from Spain, but more rights and equality for all the people. After Hidalgo’s capture, my father could not remain in New Spain without risking arrest and execution himself.”

  Honora vaguely remembered that New Spain had won its battle for independence during her late teens, but she knew very little about any of the events surrounding that victory. She wished now that she had paid more attention. “But why come to England?” she wondered aloud. “Would your family not have been safe in America? It’s ever so much closer.”

  “True, but my father had contacts in Great Britain’s government and none in the U.S. He knew he would be able to find work here as a translator, since he speaks and writes multiple languages, including English, Spanish, and French. And indeed, he was soon hired by the British diplomatic service.”

  “I see. I wonder if my Uncle Thomas knows him?” she mused. As soon as the words had departed her lips, however, she wanted to recall them. Not because there was any danger to her from Mr. Evangelista knowing her true identity—not at this point, at any rate—but because it might give him reason to fear she would attempt to ferret out his. “Not that I would know how to ask him, of course,” she added quickly. “I feel fairly certain your father is not called Mr. Evangelista!”

  “No,” Mr. Evangelista agreed, his lips twitching. “In fact, I suspect he would cross himself and immediately rush off to confession if anyone were to equate him to any of the saints. He is scandalized enough that I use it.” Turning, he finished putting together the final paper and leaned his hip against the table as he folded it. “And to be quite honest, hearing you say it makes me feel as though I’m inviting a lightning strike. All in all, I think I would prefer it if you would call me Mr. Delgado.”

  Her heart bounced like an eager puppy that had been offered a special treat. By revealing his real surname to her, he was expressing a profound degree of trust in her, for armed with this knowledge, she could betray him to the authorities. She wouldn’t, of course, but he could not be sure of that. But she knew of one way she could demonstrate that she both understood and appreciated the gravity of his confidence. “Then I suppose you must call me L—” She broke off before pronouncing her courtesy title, not because she thought it would reveal too much about her, but because she did not want the barrier of class between them. “Miss Pearce,” she corrected and then, nodding in the direction of the Rickerts, added, “Or, perhaps Master Pearce for the nonce.”

  A flicker of emotion—recognition of the surname, she wondered, or did he understand why she’d chosen to forgo her courtesy title?—crossed his features before his face broke into a broad grin at her suggestion that he call her Master Pearce. “I may find that a bit of a challenge,” he admitted, then forced his lips into a sober line. “But I shall persevere.”

  At the mock gravity of his expression, she couldn’t suppress a laugh. When his laughter joined hers, a luxuriant warmth spread through her limbs. Never before had she shared such a sense of companionship and understanding with a man who was not a member of her family, and until this moment, she’d never realized how important it was to her to be seen and treated as an equal by a man she admired. Not to mention one she desired in a way she’d never expected to want any man.

  She’d thought herself immune to the needs of the flesh and had considered herself lucky for it, especially once she had learned that any income she earned would belong to her husband if she married. Spinsterhood had never suited a woman better than it suited Honora, for no man had ever interested her enough intellectually or physically for her to feel she was missing anything.

  Until now.

  There was little chance that they would see each other again after today, however. Not only that, but under what possible circumstances could they meet again? They were unlikely to encounter one another in the daily course of their lives, and she could hardly invite him to stop by Pearce House for tea and biscuits, after all.

  No, this would have to be their first and last meeting. But she very much suspected that her days of satisfied spinsterhood were over.

  Chapter Four

  “The law and justice are, at best, passing acquaintances.” – Luke Evangelista

  Lucas’s prediction proved accurate, and another hour passed before Rickert announced his readiness to close the shop for the night. When the three of them finally exited the print shop, the hour was past seven, and the sun had was near enough to setting that the street and sidewalk lay in shadow, though they remained crowded with pedestrian and vehicle traffic. This, however, was all to the good, for the lack of illumination and clear sight lines would interfere with any scout’s ability to penetrate his and Miss Pearce’s disguises, such as they were.

  In point of fact, neither of them was so much disguised as concealed, for each had simply donned an overcoat and scarf belonging to one of the brothers and pulled their hats down low over their brows. From the shop, they walked briskly—but not so briskly as to suggest they were in an unseemly rush—to the home Mr. Rickert shared with his wife and sons.

  Located near the corner in a row of brick terraces, the Rickerts’ apartment occupied the two lower floors of the four-story building. After ushering them through the front door into the narrow entryway and divesting them of their rudimentary disguises, Rickert led them through to the back door. This emptied into a walled back garden and, beyond that, an alley that could be accessed through a gate. By this expedient, Lucas and Miss Pearce made good their escape and thence to the well-traveled Goswell Road several blocks to the north.

  From here, he could walk the roughly two miles to his lodgings on the border between Covent Garden and Seven Dials in half an hour. Indeed, he had walked it in the other direction earlier in the day. He could scarcely expect Miss Pearce to walk alone to whatever neighborhood her family called home, however, as that was not likely to be anywhere near their current location in solidly middle-class Islington. Not that he thought she was not physically up to the task, but even in her present costume, at this time of night she would be a ripe target for cut-purses, pickpockets, and worse.

  He was considering how he might broach the subject of accompanying her on foot to her destination when she stepped to the curb and held up a hand to flag down a hackney. Blinking in surprise, he tried to sort through his thoughts. For him, the cost of a two-mile hackney ride was so exorbitant that he had not even considered the possibility. For Miss Pearce, however, several shillings were likely little more
than pocket change.

  Over the course of the past several hours, he had fallen into an easy rapport with her and been lulled by that comfort into imagining they were equals. That there could be something between them beyond a kiss and an afternoon of conversation. But they were not, and there could not. She was a Lady—with a capital L, for he had not missed her near slip of the tongue when they’d traded names—while he was a commoner and, more to the point, not even an Englishman. He possessed none of the qualities—not of birth, not of wealth, not even of nationality—that would make him fit to sit at her dinner table, much less to occupy her bed. Or her heart.

  The hackney pulled to a stop, and the top-hatted driver gave Miss Pearce a thorough once-over, his expression dubious.

  She hesitated just long enough that Lucas suspected she had forgot she did not precisely look the part of someone who could afford to hire a hackney. Then she turned round to face him and said in a deferential tone, “Come now, sir. Here’s our lift.”

  He blinked at her for a second before comprehension dawned. She might be dressed as an adolescent messenger boy, but he wore a respectable frock coat, his best waistcoat, and good trousers which, while hardly bespoke, befitted a gentleman who might possess the necessary readies.

  “Of course.” Shaken from his bewilderment, he took several lively steps in the direction of the hackney, but allowed her to sprint ahead of him to open the door as if she were his faithful servant.

  “Where to, sir?” the driver asked.

  Mr. Delgado glanced at Miss Pearce expectantly, since he had no idea of her direction.

  She gave a minuscule shake of her head. “Your address.”

  He frowned at her. What was she up to?