by Zoë Archer
“Shall we, Mister Coffin?” She gave him a pert smile while the owner and the clerk continued to stare. She looked expectantly at his arm, and he realized that she was waiting for him to offer it to her.
“Abso-damn-lutely.” He stuck out his elbow.
As the owner gasped, Lady Xavier laughed softly and placed her fingers lightly on Will’s arm. He almost jumped. She wore gloves and he was bundled underneath his coat, shirt and underwear, but he felt her touch all the way to his boot heels. He was ready to jump out of his skin when Lady Xavier came within breathing distance.
And then they were out on the curb. Night had fallen completely, but the street was full of curious faces peering at the fancy carriage parked outside the hotel.
Reluctantly, he separated himself from Lady Xavier. “Thanks, ma’am.” He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat. “I thought I was going to have to teach those boys their ABCs.”
“It is I who should thank you,” she said, her voice a touch gravelly. “And apologize.”
He frowned in surprise. “Ma’am?”
She gazed down at the space between them. “I was unforgivably rude to you yesterday.” She tipped her chin up. “It was wrong to offer you money, instead of treating you properly. Like a gentleman.”
A startled chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “I ain’t never been called a gentleman before. Lots of other names.”
“But you are one, Mr. Coffin. You were brave and gallant, helping a woman you don’t even know. Most would have ignored the problem, but you didn’t. That makes you a gentleman.” A crease appeared between the dark arches of her brows. “And I apologize for not considering that.”
Where he was from, people didn’t use soft words very often, and hardly ever about him, so hearing himself described in such a fashion, and by a woman like Lady Xavier, didn’t sit easily on Will’s shoulders. He shifted uncomfortably.
“How’d you find me?” he asked suddenly.
She must have sensed his awkwardness, because her answer was light and cheerful. “You told me that you were staying ‘by the docks,’ so I had my footman make some discrete inquiries about any Americans staying in Wapping. There were several Americans in the area, although I had to investigate them all before locating you.” She looked around, taking in the dirty, crowded streets and unsavory establishments lining them. “It has been a very educational day.”
He suddenly understood what all this meant. It was clear she was out of her element—she belonged far away from Wapping, in grand houses with servants and beautiful things. She had traveled far from home, with considerable risk to herself, if yesterday was any indication, in order to find him and right a perceived wrong. He was stunned.
“And now you’ve lost your lodging,” she continued, “though I can’t say it was a great loss. You ought to delouse yourself as soon as possible.”
“Maybe later,” he said, still amazed. “But I’ve got to find someplace new to sleep before it gets too late.”
Now it was Lady Xavier’s turn to look surprised. “Find someplace new? But I thought it was understood.”
A prickle of worry danced down his spine. In his experience, when women had that look on their face, trouble was soon to follow. “What’s understood?”
As though it was the most obvious fact in the world, she answered, “You’re staying with me.”
Chapter Three
The decision had been made in an instant. As soon as Olivia and Will Coffin left the horrible squalor of his lodgings, she knew immediately what she was going to do, what she had to do, and she hoped that the sureness in her voice didn’t betray the uncertainty she felt in her heart.
And so, without knowing much about him beyond his name, she invited the American to lodge at her home for the night.
“After all,” she explained as they rode towards Bayswater, “there are no fewer than four unused bedrooms, and it would be a terrific waste to leave them unoccupied.” Another plan was ripening in her mind, but she wouldn’t give voice to that—not yet.
“Four, huh?” Coffin tugged thoughtfully on his mustache. “Seems like a lot of land lying fallow.” Still, she could see that he wasn’t entirely convinced.
She leaned forward added sincerely, “Please, Mr. Coffin. You would be doing me a great honor.”
Her heartfelt request seemed to win him over.
“You sure I won’t be causin’ you any trouble?” he asked.
“None, whatsoever,” she answered firmly. Which wasn’t entirely true. The physical logistics could be easily managed, yet she could not help wondering what the society wags would make of Lord David Xavier’s widow giving temporary accommodation to an American man she had met, literally, on the streets of Wandsworth only the day before. It could cause a minor scandal.
“I won’t refuse your hospitality, ma’am,” Coffin said with a grin, which she felt rather than saw in the semidarkness of the carriage. “It’d be downright churlish of me to say otherwise.”
“That’s very obliging of you, Mister Coffin,” she answered, and somehow a smile worked its way onto her own mouth. He did that to her—made her want to smile without really knowing why.
“I’ve got somethin’ that belongs to you,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows in astonishment. “What?”
He reached into the pocket of his long coat, forcing him to lean forward a bit. She pressed herself lightly back into the squabs without thinking. He was such a big man, his size and physical presence nearly overwhelmed her. Will Coffin had an air of living on a much larger scale in landscapes that could barely be contained by her imagination. She would be frightened of him if she didn’t know that he was, by her own words, a gentleman. Yet as he moved back to pull something from his pocket, she felt herself relax a fraction. There was something unpredictable and raw about him, that thrilled her even as she recoiled from its strangeness.
“This is yours, ain’t it?” He held something out to her.
She looked down and saw the yellow paper cover of Lorna Jane of Glittering Gulch sitting in the cup of his generous hand. She flushed. She didn’t admit her love of the cheap little books to anyone. They were the reading material of the great unwashed, those without literary discernment or taste, who valued sensationalism over intellectual refinement. Whenever anyone asked her what she was currently reading, Olivia mumbled something about Trollope or Ruskin’s edifying essays, while The Laughing Ghost of Killcross Manor; or, Love’s Revenge sat silent and accusing in her bedside table.
Will Coffin had already put the book into her hand, and she stared at it with hot cheeks.
“It’s all right,” he assured her easily, leaning back. “I know it’s yours. I just thought I’d return it to you.”
Olivia’s fingers tightened around the now-battered novel as she looked up at Coffin’s rangy body stretched out in her carriage. “What makes you so sure it’s mine?”
“I didn’t think any of those men we met yesterday were much for readin’,” he answered with a laugh. Then she sensed a sharpening in him, a honed perception, as he added, so low she thought he misheard, “And it smelled like you.”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, more stunned than offended.
He straightened, then shifted around on the seats which had been, only moments earlier, perfectly comfortable but now could not fully contain the length and breadth of him.
“I forgot to give it back to you yesterday. So I took it with me, and that’s when I noticed.”
“That I smell like a book,” she finished.
“No, the book smells like you. The jasmine perfume or toilet water or whatever it is you call it, and orange, and somethin’ else. You,” he concluded.
“Ah, well,” was about all she could manage as she slipped the book into her reticule. It was such a personal observation—no one she knew would ever admit to having their own scent let alone acknowledging someone else’s. Surely in their six years of marriage, David learned the different notes of her o
wn smell. But such knowledge was intimate, reserved for only a spouse and valet or maid.
Somehow, Will Coffin knew her enough to trace her scent—and the visceral animality of this turned her blood hot and sluggish.
“You like readin’ about cowboys,” he said.
When she didn’t answer, he pointed to her reticule. The corner of his mouth turned up and disappeared under the wide brush of his mustache.
She didn’t prevaricate. “Cowboys, pirates, buried treasure, abducted princesses, haunted woods,” she enumerated proudly. “All of it.”
He whistled in appreciation. “I didn’t know ladies read stuff like that.”
“They don’t. At least,” she said with a shrug, “they don’t admit it to anybody. Most claim that such reading is beneath them.”
“You don’t think so,” he pointed out.
She shook her head. “I like being entertained. And I love reading about places I’ll never go and people leading lives more exciting than mine.”
“Like cowboys,” he said with a grin.
“Like cowboys,” she answered, smiling right back.
They could have gone right on smiling at each other if the carriage did not stop in front of her house.
“Here we are,” she said as the footman opened the carriage door. “Princes Square. Home.”
Will stepped out of the carriage and stared up at the biggest pile of stones he’d ever seen outside of the Denver Opera House. But nobody called the Opera House “home.” When Lady Xavier said that she had four spare bedrooms, he’d imagined narrow little halls with cots, the kind of accommodation he normally got when staying at a two-story ranch. But this place had to have four stories at least, not counting the basement where he could see a mess of people bustling around in a kitchen and the tiny lights at the very top. It wasn’t a particularly wide house, but it sure was tall.
“You live here alone?” he asked Lady Xavier as she stood beside him.
“It’s only me,” she said. “And the servants, of course. Which makes for around twelve altogether.”
“Jee-sus,” he breathed. He would have stared indefinitely, but out of the corner of his eye he saw two of the servants trying to take his saddle down from the roof.
“Easy, boys.” He stepped forward, and carefully grabbed the saddle from their hands, then cradled it against him. “I’ll take that.”
Lady Xavier gazed at him, puzzlement in her lovely violet eyes. “Wouldn’t that be better off in the stables?”
“This saddle cost me two months’ wages.” He lovingly ran a hand down the tooled leather skirts and silver conchos. “I took it with me from Denver to New York, and over the Atlantic. So if it’s all the same, I’ll keep it close by.”
He saw the servants exchange looks with Lady Xavier, and off her nod of agreement, they backed off. He didn’t mind. From the looks of things, folks in London didn’t fully appreciate the value of a good saddle, and if they thought him peculiar, it didn’t make much difference to him. A man’s saddle was one of his most prized possessions, and damn if he’d let a little something like English folly mess up his priorities.
Besides, Lady Xavier looked as though she understood. Whether it was just politeness on her part or real understanding, he didn’t know, but he did appreciate it. He was quickly beginning to see that she was a lot different from anyone else he had ever met, English, American, or otherwise. And she was definitely the most interesting woman he’d ever known.
“Show Mister Coffin to the Vetiver Chamber, Herbert,” she said to one of the servants pulling Will’s bag and Winchester down from the roof. She wasn’t imperious, but she wasn’t embarrassed to give someone directions, either. A middle aged man and woman in uniform stood on the front steps and bowed and curtsied in greeting as Lady Xavier ascended the stairs.
“Mister Coffin will be staying with us this evening.” She gestured to Will as he came up behind her. “Have Lily and Sarah draw a bath for him. And is there anything you’d like particularly for dinner, Mister Coffin?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll eat just about anything so long as it’s dead enough.”
“We’ll be sure to give the capons an extra throttling before serving them,” she said as the servants bowed away. She turned and followed them, expecting him to do the same, but he stared after her for a few seconds.
Goddamn it if he didn’t feel a tug at the front of his britches. It was the same tug he felt in the carriage when he’d admitted that her damned book smelled like her. He didn’t know what he was thinking, sniffing after her like a wolf on the hunt. She wasn’t a pretty piece of corsetry he could woo and lay without much ado. She was a damned lady, someone so far above him he couldn’t see her with a high-powered telescope, and he was a no-name cowboy deadbeat who was going to spend one night under her roof and then find himself someplace more his class to stay.
“Coming, Mister Coffin?” she called to him. “Dinner is in a half an hour and we don’t want to keep Cook waiting.” Even though he knew he should just grab his saddle and go, he followed.
When Will Coffin joined Olivia a half an hour later in the drawing room, he was bathed and combed and wearing what she suspected were his best clothes. She saw his eyes flick to her dinner gown, green velvet and lace, which she had selected precisely because it was one of her oldest and most simple dresses. However, compared to his well-worn white cotton shirt, red and gold striped vest, and black wool jacket and pants, she might as well have been clad entirely in peacock feathers.
“Are you settling in all right?” she asked with a bright smile.
“Ma’am, I’ve never seen a home as pretty.” He returned the smile. “Though nothin’s half as pretty as the lady who lives here.”
She laughed off his easy compliment as a bit of western hyperbole. Instead, she focused her attention on the man standing in her drawing room. His coat and hat were gone, and the gaslight tempered by frosted glass shades revealed a face that, Olivia surmised, was exceptionally handsome beneath the large mustache. She could see the fine, angular planes of his cheeks, high and defined, and the square line of his jaw before it disappeared under the mustache’s unruly bristle. He did need a haircut rather badly, and his clothes were store-bought and well used. But for all that, he captured her attention in a way she was not fully able to comprehend.
The threat of George Pryce seemed very far away at that moment. She felt herself exhale for the first time in several months.
“Shall we go down to dinner?” she asked.
“Surely, ma’am.” He stuck out his elbow and she rested her fingers as lightly as she could on the hard muscle of his arm. She did not think her etiquette books would endorse running her hands up and down Will Coffin’s tough, lean arms, even though that was what she wanted to do very badly.
“This is the dining room,” she said, as Mordon, the butler, ushered them inside. She watched Will Coffin look at the long mahogany table surrounded by twelve chairs. Despite the place settings, it seemed empty and unused, and even though it was well-maintained, there was something derelict about the table, down to the enormous silver epergne squatting in the middle. “We used to eat in this room quite a lot when we entertained, but after David died, I mostly take my meals in the morning room, which is much less formal.”
“I don’t blame you,” Coffin said. “It could get awful lonely in a big room like this.”
Which was true. She had tried valiantly to eat alone with nothing but the company of the servants and eleven other chairs, but she’d grown so uncomfortable that she lost weight. The doctors had feared for her health, but once she switched to the morning room, her appetite returned.
She now took the seat the footman pulled out for her. Will eyed the footman with distrust as he offered him the same service.
“It’s all right, Mr. Coffin,” she assured him. “That’s Lawrence’s job.”
Once Coffin had settled himself, he looked down the length of the table. He sat at one end, Olivia the other. “Are we
expectin’ any other company?”
“No, it’s just us.” She felt a peculiar shiver at the word us. She hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Then how come I’m sittin’ all the way in East Jesus, and you’re all the way out there?”
“I...” She gazed up and down the expanse of the table, where five large mahogany chairs separated her from Will Coffin. It did seem ridiculous, the space between them. “This is how we normally took our meals.”
“Hang on a minute.” With a clatter, Coffin collected his plate, silverware and napkin and relocated himself at her elbow. She resisted looking at the servants, even though they were too well-trained to show shock or disapproval. But she was certain the kitchen would be full of talk later tonight.
“Ain’t that better?” Coffin asked, settling in and grinning. She smiled right back at him.
“Much,” she answered.
Let them talk, she thought to herself. She hadn’t enjoyed a meal so much in years, and it hadn’t even begun.
“I read some of that book of yours,” Will said.
“Which book?” Lady Xavier asked, laying her soup spoon to the side of her bowl. She’d only taken a few sips, while he’d had to fight the urge to tip the rim right up to his lips and drain the damned thing. If he ate this good every night, he’d wind up as fat as a heifer ready to calf.
“The book with the cowboys and the dumb girl, Liza June.”
She laughed. “Lorna Jane. Yes, she often reminds me of a less intelligent vole, poor thing. She never quite thinks things through.”
Some servants quietly removed their soup bowls. He had never been waited on before—at least, not with this much ceremony as though everything he’d touched had turned into a milagro—but the servants came and went with such silent reverence it made him wonder if he had performed some miracle without knowing it. Did they save his bathwater, too?