Stealing Sterling (The Dueling Pistols Series)

by Katy Madison

  She looked down at nightshirt he had pulled on her and looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and questioning.

  He felt like a heel. A molester of innocents, a man who never should have aspired to touch her, perhaps she had been trying to tell him something when she protested the daylight. Perhaps in her world, relations only occurred hidden in the dark. Good God, he’d swear she’d never been kissed before. “Nothing happened. You fainted.”

  He wished she didn’t look so relieved.

  Mary was only glad she hadn’t missed anything. What he had been doing had felt so wonderful and wicked and oh, so right. Her knowledge of these matters was sketchy, the role she should play even hazier. She started to say she didn’t need tea, but he had left the room.

  He must have realized her corset was too tight, because she had been stripped of it. Yet, he’d put her in a nightshirt to preserve her modesty. She’d woken to feel her clothes being tugged off. She had a slight headache, and her shoes were still on her feet. She bent over and struggled to push the buttons through the leather without a buttonhook.

  Mary straightened the room, hanging her mother’s wedding gown in the wardrobe, and Sterling still hadn’t returned. She picked up the cup of tea he had left on the dresser, found it tepid, and drank it anyway. Now that her stomach was no longer squished, she realized she hadn’t eaten at all today. She never eaten breakfast because she’d been trying to find Suzanna and well...she was hungry.

  And where was Sterling?

  She sat down in front of the looking glass and removed the pins from her hair. Because she didn’t have her brush, she finger combed it and plaited it in a long braid.

  She picked up the cup and saucer, and with the trailing nightshirt held in her other hand, she made her way down the darkened staircase.

  Sterling stood in the kitchen, leaning against a wall near the stove. She studied his broad shoulders and his bowed head. Her husband.

  A swelling of satisfaction settled under her breastbone. The way he had carried her into the house and his kisses surely meant he wanted to be her husband, perhaps not as much as she wanted him, but enough for their marriage to work. She wanted to move forward and touch him, but shyness held her back.

  “Sterling?”

  He spun around a crockery mug held in his hand. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  Mary took a step back, gathering the neckline of the nightshirt in her fingers. “I’m not sleepy.”

  He stared at her.

  She forced herself to move forward to the table in spite of the intense heat in her face. She was tired, but too full of an edgy anticipation to sleep, to even lie still. “Actually, I’m a little hungry. Is there bread or perhaps a tin of biscuits?”

  “Sit down. I’ll fix ham and eggs for you.” He thumped his mug on the table.

  He had coffee. She could use coffee. “I can do it.”

  “Sit. You just fainted.”

  “I forgot to breathe. I’m fine now.”

  He pointed, and she sat on a straight chair by the solid butcher table in the center of the room. She felt suitably chastised. He opened a door to what must be the larder and emerged with a partial ham and three eggs.

  She folded her arms across her chest hiding the jiggle in her unrestrained figure. “I’m sorry, my corset was too tight.”

  “Don’t ever wear one again.”

  She stared at him. She had thought he liked her corseted figure. He had seemed interested in her waist. “I have to, my clothes won’t fit without one.”

  “Buy new. I can afford it.”

  “I promise I won’t ever lace it so tight.” Was he angry that she had fainted? She stood up and picked up one of the eggs. “I never eat more than two.”

  She replaced it in the larder and took a look around to see what shopping she would need to do, but the larder was well stocked. When she returned to the kitchen he had a big slice of ham sizzling in a pan. She covered the remaining ham and returned it to the coolest part of the larder. Grabbing a towel, she leaned over to get the pot that must contain the coffee.

  “Will you please sit down?” he said.

  “I’m used to taking care of things.” She poured the black liquid in her teacup before setting now empty pot on the stove. “Should I make more coffee?”

  “No. Would it be so terrible if you were taken care of for once?” He folded his arms across his chest and looked at her and then looked quickly away as if the wall had suddenly sprouted horns.

  If she were her sister, she would expect to be taken care of, but she was Mary, the one who took care of everyone else. That was what everyone valued her for. She sat down and tried to appreciate his efforts to make her comfortable and instead felt robbed of the one thing she was good at.

  “Your bath water was too hot, but it should be comfortable by the time you’re done eating.”

  He was very nearly acting as if he was her personal servant, and she couldn’t explain why it made her uneasy. He seemed to be studiously avoiding looking at her. Would there be a resumption of his caresses and kisses after she ate, after her bath? She rather felt he was imposing a number of artificial delays.

  She searched her mind for suitable subjects of conversation. “I’ll put an advertisement in the newspaper for servants as soon as I have clothes to wear.”

  Sterling rested his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Mary lay beside him with her back to him. He wasn’t sure if she was asleep yet although they both should have been dreaming hours ago. He vowed he wouldn’t touch her until she was settled into the marriage. When she was in the bath he slipped into the room and changed out of his clothes into one of the nightshirts he hated. After that he stayed downstairs for a long time staring at the pages of a book and turning them every now and then.

  Mary had padded down the stairs on her bare feet after her bath and peeked in, but he had pretended not to notice her.

  He knew he could pull her into his arms, and she would submit. The thought tempted him, but she had fainted. As much as she blamed her corset, part of it had to be shock at what he was doing to her.

  He wanted her to want him, to need him, to love him. And how likely was that he asked himself. He hadn’t even hoped for love when he asked Suzanna to marry him. Hadn’t hoped for it, because there was no earthly reason he should expect more than duty.

  His wealth had bought him a good wife of acceptable family, and he knew to want more was to tempt fate. Even if Mary did think she loved him, one hint of the man he’d been as Silver John would have her despising him forever.

  But when he had been kissing her and filling his hands with her full curves he’d tasted a pleasure beyond the physical, beyond earthly desire, oh Lord he’d given her his heart.

  As he stared at the ceiling he cursed the dreams of his lonely childhood that had bid him to strive for the fancy carriage and the fancy house just to learn the only thing he really wanted was this woman to love him. He knew the cruelest emotion to an orphan was hope.

  And she was eager to fill the house with servants so they would never again be alone together.

  Mary had spent the week following her marriage with practical matters. Only practical matters, like hiring an upstairs and a downstairs maid, a groundskeeper, a scullery maid, and making sure the cook had menus and a schedule to follow. She’d discussed budgets and additional purchases for the household with Sterling, but there had been no more passion. No kisses, no touches, not even so much as an interested look from him.

  In fact, he hardly looked at her all. Well, except the one time he caught her with her hair down and unbraided and he’d stood staring as if mesmerized for a moment or two, but then when she touched his shoulder that night in bed, he’d gotten up and gone downstairs and slept on the floor.

  She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t make herself over as pretty as Suzanna.

  Sterling was as considerate as ever. He treated her much the same as he had treated her when she was to be his sister-in-law.
But she felt shut out, shunned, held separate when she should be growing closer to him. She missed her father’s absent-minded pats on the head. She missed Suzanna’s twirling around the room filling it with empty chatter. She missed feeling needed.

  Her days were empty and a newly wed woman wasn’t expected to entertain visitors, even if her husband spent long hours working. On a whim, she’d taken a trip to the church and asked the minister where one would take an orphan in Boston. Recruiting a friend for companion, she’d traveled to the orphanage near the docks. Her friend had found the squalor of the living conditions too much to bear and waited in the carriage.

  Children with dirty faces, tattered clothes and runny noses stared at Mary as she walked through the dormitory where the children were housed four and five to a bed with little regard for age. The little ones surely suffered for space.

  A chubby woman with few teeth and a bulbous red nose named Mrs. Crump led Mary through the cramped and sour-smelling building. Mary could only understand about every other word the woman uttered.

  “What do they eat?”

  “Gruel, for they mornin’ meal, round ’bout ten so. Gets a bowl o’ soup and a bit o’ bread for supper.”

  “And for dinner?”

  “Don’t get no dinner, just gruel and soup.”

  Many of the children didn’t look like they had more than skin on their bones and they had the gray look of sailors returning from long voyages without enough fruits and vegetables.

  “Do you remember Sterling John Cooper?”

  “Ah, little Johnny Cooper, he was a rascally one. Pretty child, could always steal himself silly. People trusted those purty eyes o’ his. He stole so much the fences started calling him Silver John.”

  “He was a thief?” Mary tried to keep her voice neutral.

  “Thief and worse. Fair near killed a man, then took off for Spain or some such. ’Spect the law was after him. Why you ask about him?”

  Mary needed time to absorb this. Sterling was a good man, an honest man, she’d stake her life on it. “I’m married to him.”

  The woman put her hand on her chest and reared back. “Lord almighty.”

  “Are the children schooled?”

  “You married Silver John?”

  She’d have to wait on answers to settle this woman’s curiosity. “Are there any records of his parents?”

  “Oh no, child. None of them what’s here left like he was have a mother worth having. No better than she ought to be.”

  “Are you saying his mother was a...prostitute?”

  “Well, I ain’t saying that for sure, but she weren’t no salt of the earth like as not.”

  “Do you know who she was?”

  “No, I might o’ had a guess back then, but that was a long time ago.”

  “You must have been a very young woman then.”

  Mrs. Crump looked pleased.

  “Now do the children have proper schooling?”

  The woman shook her head. “Ever now an’ again some women come down and try to learn the children, but they are wicked wild. The minister comes and reads the bible to them twice a week, though. Most of the healthy ones get apprenticed. Silver, now, he ran away from every apprenticeship got for him.”

  “Destined for better things,” said Mary. Did he realize back then? Or was he just fighting to survive this horrid place. “How many people work here?”

  “Me an’ Mrs. Potter are regular like. There’s a few others what come and go. You can leave money for the care o’ the children.”

  There were at least forty children that Mary saw. “Thank you for showing me around, Mrs. Crump.”

  She left without ceremony and before Mrs. Crump asked for more money that Mary wasn’t sure would make it past the liquor cabinet. This place needed more than money. How had Sterling survived a beginning like this?

  “You went where?” Sterling shoved back his plate on the dinner table and stood so quickly his chair tumbled backwards. Shock and fear coursed madly through his blood. How could she have gone there?

  Mary folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate. “I went to the orphanage where you were raised.”

  Sterling ran his fingers through his hair. His heart pounded. His Mary had seen that...that place? How could she sit down and eat a meal with him, after seeing the filth and squalor where he’d lived? “Why would you do that?”

  She met his eyes squarely. “I want to improve conditions for the children. Organize a society to reform the orphanage.”

  He paced down the length of the dinning room. He felt cut open, raw and exposed. “No, stay away from that place. You didn’t give them money, did you?”

  Desperation clawed at his throat. What did she think of him now? If he had scared her before...

  “I didn’t think money would make it to the children. I suspect Mrs. Crump is too fond of strong drink.”

  “Is that wicked woman still there?” Oh, God, what had Mrs. Crump said? Did she tell Mary about the bullwhip she kept in the cupboard?

  “The children need better food and education.”

  “It won’t help.”

  “Sterling, you came from there. How can you just ignore the conditions?”

  “I’ve been trying to put that place behind me my whole life.”

  She stood and rang the bell for the maid to clear away their plates. “Then you shouldn’t have come back to Boston.”

  Sterling stormed out of the room before he threw a plate. He paced the darkened parlor, but Mary didn’t follow him in. He shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. He sank down onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. He was lost. How could he ever gain Mary’s admiration if she knew his past?

  Truth was, he knew nothing about how to gain her trust. He feared if he touched her, kissed her, he would not be able to stop. And he wouldn’t know if she was frightened or repulsed unless she fainted again. He didn’t know anything about how to live in this world with a woman who had been sheltered from earthly pleasures.

  If he had married Suzanna, he never would have worried about it. He never would have cared if Suzanna loved him.

  Mary didn’t know what to do. She had angered Sterling, and she hadn’t meant to. She just wanted to know and understand him. But now that she had seen the conditions of the orphanage she couldn’t turn her back on the orphans.

  She was tired of spending her nights in a bed inches from Sterling, yet not touching him. Afraid to touch him. She wanted him to kiss her again, but he didn’t. She no longer wanted to torture herself with the idea that she should be tall and slim and blond like her sister.

  As she readied herself for bed she told herself it was time to admit failure. She had caught Sterling in a moment when he was vulnerable and persuaded him to enter a marriage he clearly didn’t want. At least not with her.

  In the morning she would tell him that she wanted a divorce.

  She folded back the quilt to the foot of the bed; the summer night was too warm to need it. A slight breeze from the open window served to keep the heat from becoming unbearable.

  Mary slid between the sheets she had sewn with loving care. She wondered if Sterling would come to bed at all. He would undress in the dark with his back to her, long after she had climbed up the bed stairs. Then he would be out of the bed before she woke in the morning.

  Only as she lay still into the night, she suspected sleep would elude her. She knew almost as soon as she offered herself as substitute for her sister that it was wrong to ignore everyone else’s wishes to steal what she wanted.

  And as Sterling must have learned, stealing didn’t gain the thief what was really needed. There must have been a point when he turned away from a life of crime and relied on his own hard work to get ahead in life. He must have learned that the things worth having, like love and respect were gained more often by giving, than by taking.

  She sighed and turned on her side. She pretended to sleep as Sterling tiptoed into the room. He had removed his shoes in the hallway
outside their bedroom. Either he was very considerate, or he really didn’t want her to waken.

  Mary didn’t move and kept her breathing steady and even. He settled into the bed, lying flat on his back, his hands behind his head. She must have dozed at some point because she woke in the darkest part of the night.

  She could hear Sterling breathing, regular and deep. She turned to her side and studied his silhouette. He was such an admirable man. The conditions of his youth broke her heart. She wished she could comfort him, take care of the rough and tumble youth who had fought to survive when others were beaten by the deplorable hand they had been dealt.

  She, who had lived a soft pampered life, could only admire the strength of his will that had made him triumph over the harsh reality he had been faced with. She wanted to take care of him, pamper and spoil him, but living in close proximity to him in the last week, she had learned he was uncomfortable with her efforts to take care of him. He was more at ease turning the tables and taking care of her.

  She leaned up on an elbow. This would be the last night she spent in bed with him. She would return to her father’s home tomorrow. There was no point in staying. She had spent the evening packing her trunks.

  She wished he could have given her his heart. A wave of longing and despair swept over her. Tentatively, she reached out and laid her palm on his chest. Her hand encountered warm skin and a light springy hair.

  Goodness!

  Because of the warmth of the night, he must have taken off his nightshirt. She knew he didn’t like them, but he had worn one faithfully every night of their marriage. She flattened her hand against his skin, then traced her fingers up the thick line of his collarbone, enjoying the solid warmth and feel of his chest.

  What she wouldn’t have given if he could love her. But the very thing others valued her for, her caring and compassion, was the trait that made him uncomfortable.

  Still, she wished things had been different, but just for a moment, in the darkness she wanted to pretend things were all right, that her husband would allow her to soothe and cherish the child in his heart who had experienced nothing of kindness and love. She leaned over and brushed a kiss on his shoulder closest to her. She started to pull back, but found Sterling had lowered his arm around her. His hand rested between her shoulder blades. Was he awake?