Discovery of Desire

by Susanne Lord

  Just once, she would appreciate support from Mary’s corner. The lamplight cast a golden glow on Mary’s placid countenance, but that was illusion. Mary was still pale, and was so devoid of spirit and speech, she seemed to have no opinion on any matter.

  “We are living fine, Emma,” Mary said.

  Ow. Mina’s needle sank into the pad of her finger at her surprise in hearing Mary’s voice.

  Mary didn’t look up from her work. “Mr. Mayhew may have envisioned different surroundings, but I will be the first to fall to my knees and thank him for saving me from the workhouse. That was the living I envisioned for me and Sebastian before his generosity spared us.”

  Emma blinked furiously and put away her paper.

  “There is little enough charity in the world, Emma.” Mary’s voice was flat. “No one will help you. The sooner you surrender your campaign of revenge, the better.”

  “It’s not revenge,” Emma said. “It’s justice.”

  Mary said nothing, just applied herself to her needle as if she’d never spoken at all.

  What would justice mean to Mary? Was there justice in a world for a woman who lost her husband before their child was born? Who could work and work, and still not feed and house her son?

  “Mr. Mayhew would want me to bring him to justice.” Emma sliced a strand of the thread with her knife and tested the seam of the piece she worked on. “Wait and see when he calls on us.” She smiled at her. “He is sure to come any day and sweep Mina away—”

  “Don’t, Emma,” she said.

  Emma’s smile fell. “He will, Mina.”

  Mary’s hands stopped in their work. “I think I hear Sebastian.” She set aside her sewing and walked into the bedroom.

  Mina waited for the door to close before looking at Emma. “You’ve upset Mary.”

  “What did I say?”

  Guilt and frustration flooded her. “I left Mary before, Emma. I will not leave her again.”

  “If you wed—”

  “Mary cannot earn enough to survive on her own.”

  Emma bit her lip. A habit of hers when she was thinking. “But Mr. Mayhew loves you. I know he wants to marry you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Perhaps he will want to take on the care of Mary and Sebastian. And once he comes—”

  “He is already here.”

  Emma gaped, silenced at last.

  Mina bent over her sewing. “He is already in England. The letter we left for him poste restante, the letter with our direction, was claimed a week ago.”

  “A week? That must be wrong. He would have come to see you.” Emma’s stare grew heavy. “He would come to see you. Mina?”

  Tears stung her eyes, so she kept her head down. “I don’t know.”

  Emma asked no more questions, and Mina was thankful. She had no answers to give. She was desperate to see Seth, to know that he was all right, to return his money. But nothing between them had changed. She had refused him in Bombay because she was afraid.

  And in London, she was even more afraid.

  * * *

  The children didn’t run here. Seth peered down an alley, shadowed even at ten in the morning. Two hollow-eyed waifs stared back at him.

  This couldn’t be right. He checked the direction again. The nearest building with a number was two doors down. This would be the building.

  But this wasn’t at all a home for Mina.

  “Are you lost, handsome?” A woman’s hand gripped his forearm, the clawlike fingers red and raw. “Lord, you’re a strong ’un.”

  The woman’s hair was an unnatural black, and she smelled sickly sweet, like something verging on rot. But her eyes were the same silvery blue as the butterflies in Brazil. They must have been fine once.

  He pasted on a smile. “I’m not lost, but I thank you.”

  Her lips twisted with what might’ve been scorn. “Are you lonely, then?”

  Christ, London might’ve been Bombay. Might be worse.

  Quelling his revulsion, he patted her hand, before reaching into his pocket. He only had a few tuppence to spare. “Why don’t you go on and have something to eat?” He pressed the coins into her hand.

  Lifeless eyes watched him a moment longer before she shuffled off.

  Christ, Minnie, don’t be here…please. He knocked on the flimsy door, the three soft raps a more ordered rhythm than his heart at the moment.

  Mina and Emma must have been in London…six weeks? Seven? Their journey had been faster than his. Their passage on the new, fast HMS Liverpool had cost him dear, but he hadn’t cared.

  He’d taken a slower route, and on the overland portion, they’d lost a few days, as little Aimee needed a rest from the sea. Just as Georgie had predicted.

  And in the end, he’d only been hurrying to discover all his hopes crushed—no, crushed wasn’t accurate. Wilted. Withered. Rotted.

  He wouldn’t dwell on it now; he couldn’t. There was only so much feeling a man could take at a time, and Mina was what mattered now.

  He knocked again, instantly softening the force after the first rap. Too damn loud, though he’d not meant it to be. Mina would be startled enough by the sight of him. He’d lost half a stone on the voyage and Georgie had shorn his hair above his ears.

  Was no one here? He pressed his ear to the door. Nothing. Faces peeked from windows and alleys. Would one of them know Mina?

  Steps sounded from behind him and he turned.

  “Mr. Mayhew?” Emma’s eyes were huge with surprise, but her smile grew. Behind her, a woman with a young boy at her side.

  And Mina.

  It was Mina that burned away the gray walls and slick cobblestones and peering eyes. His Mina, looking like his angel, looking beautiful…and thin and tired.

  “Hello, Minnie.”

  She stared with surprise, crushing the package she held to her chest, and he couldn’t get to her fast enough. That perfect blush rose on her cheeks and her eyes glowed, and a smile he’d not felt on his lips for months stretched across his face. “There’s a sight a man could get used to.”

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  And he was home.

  All the tension he’d carried for months melted from his body. The tension on that boat, and on the caravan across the desert from Suez, and sitting across the desk from his cultivators yesterday, hearing the bad news.

  Damn, he might release the waterworks if he didn’t brace himself. Her hair was soft under his nose, but he hugged lean muscle and bone. She’d lost weight, as he had. They’d both diminished being apart. “I wasn’t expecting to find you here, pretty.”

  She hugged him tight and whispered, “You’re here. You’re really here and you came.” She pushed him back to look at him. “Are you well?”

  “I’m always well.” He cupped her face. “May not be soon if you don’t stop crying.” God, he’d missed looking into those eyes. They warmed him like no fire could have. “I found them, Minnie. I found Georgie and Aimee alive.”

  Her eyes widened and she covered her lips with a shaking hand.

  “They’re alive and here in London with me.”

  “Alive,” she whispered, and he braced her against him before she dropped to the filthy street. “Thank God. Emma, Mary—Georgiana’s alive. And the baby.”

  Those tears weren’t stopping at all, and he hugged her hard.

  “How, Seth? I thought—”

  “Me too, pretty.”

  She smiled and squared her slim shoulders, wiping her cheeks dry and smoothing her blouse with trembling hands. His little officer again. “Come inside. You must tell us everything.”

  The ladies bustled him indoors and his body tightened at the first sight of the room. Plank floors. A cold hearth. Chairs without cushions. There wasn’t anything here of comfort. “Minnie, wh
y—”

  “Don’t.” She wiped her eyes. “We’re fine. We’re just frugal. We’re warm and we eat every day and Sebastian is well.”

  She pulled him down to sit beside her on the sofa. Emma and the other woman with the child—Mary?—sat across from them on those naked, wood chairs. He nodded at them, but he had a hundred questions. “All right, then. Who’s Sebastian?”

  “This is my sister Mary and her son, Sebastian,” Mina said. “My nephew…he needed a great deal, actually. A place to live and medicine, and there were debts to pay.”

  Mary sprang to her feet, with her boy in her arms, and bent to hug Seth, startling Sebastian into clutching his mother’s neck. “Mr. Mayhew, thank you. I thank God for you every day. You don’t know what you did. Your money kept my son alive. I owe you everything—” Her voice cracked. “Everything and I’ll never be able to repay you or thank you.” She sobbed and buried her face into his shoulder.

  “That’s…” He patted Mary on the shoulder. The poor lady was quaking. “That’s all right, Mary. I’m real glad of that. I’d do anything for Minnie’s family. Sebastian looks like a fine boy.” From what he could see of him, with the lad crushed between him and his mum.

  Mina and Emma joined in on the hugging. A huddle of women. And they weren’t letting him go.

  Well.

  His heart cracked in his chest. Wasn’t a thing more he could do for them. And from how they were living, it seemed he’d not done enough to begin with.

  “Minnie.” He shifted to look at her. He remembered everything just right. Those lips were still the most kissable he’d ever known, and the milky skin and peach blush exactly as he remembered every night in his conjuring of her. He needed to be alone with her, needed to tell her—

  Hell, he needed to tell her he’d failed. Tell her he couldn’t take care of her.

  Tell her Tom was coming to do that for him.

  She searched his face and the smile on her face made him think she’d remembered him just the same, too. Yes, a man would go a long way to find a woman like her. But fourteen sails hadn’t brought him any closer to having a wife, and now he knew with a certainty what was true.

  He wasn’t ever going to have one.

  “Come, Emma.” Mary lifted her head from his shoulder and wiped her eyes. “Let’s leave Mina and Mr. Mayhew alone to talk.”

  Emma was slower to release him. “All right. But I want to hear of Georgiana, too.”

  “I’m certain we’ll hear all of it later.”

  “Where will you go?” Mina asked.

  “To Mrs. Bradford’s. She will like the company,” Mary said. “And we’ll return in a half hour—no, an hour.” She busied herself with Sebastian’s coat. “An hour is the usual amount of time she likes us to visit. Emma, wrap a few biscuits.”

  Seth considered all the bustle that was occurring. Mina’s deepening blush. The way Emma didn’t seem to know where to walk. Mary thrusting Sebastian’s arms into his coat. The way Emma protested that the biscuits weren’t edible, and Mary snapping that it hardly mattered.

  And that they were leaving for an hour.

  Seth heated with embarrassment. What were the women thinking he and Mina might do? He looked anywhere but at what must be the bedroom door. But damned if his roger wasn’t taking an interest in the reunion now.

  But he couldn’t be with Mina. Not ever again.

  In moments, the women had bundled up Sebastian’s things, pulled shawls around their shoulders, and were out the door. Mina latched the door and pulled him to his feet.

  “Minnie, are you all right? I’d given you enough to—”

  “You did. You saved us. We’re fine. I’ve missed you.” She pulled his head down to her mouth and he let her.

  Her lips were as soft and sweet as he remembered. And there was no way to resist crushing her against him and deepening their kiss. Deep as all the love he’d hold inside him. Hold and never let out.

  He should tell her…tell her Tom was coming…

  Slender fingers combed through his hair and tightened. And damned if he didn’t feel those little tugs good and low, right where he was desperate to join their bodies again. His sweet Minnie. She loved him better than any woman ever could.

  Like she knew what he was thinking, her lush mouth smiled under his kiss and he tore his mouth away before it was too late.

  And her eyes were shining, but her lashes were dark and spiked with tears. “I was so afraid I’d never see you again. You claimed your letter days ago.”

  He nodded through his grief, waiting for the air to fill his lungs. “I did, pretty. I needed—I wanted to see about something before coming. Something I’d been planning on for a long time.”

  Mina searched his eyes. “Before seeing me?”

  He moved his eyes off her so he could say what needed saying. “I need to tell you something, and it will be a surprise, but I’m hoping you’ll be agreeable because I think it the best thing for you. You’ll be away from here and taken care of—”

  I wanted to marry you. I hoped I could, thought I could.

  I was wrong.

  He clamped down on all the thoughts vying for dominance in his brain. Hell. He closed his eyes, and sorted them. One at a time. Most important first. “You can’t stay here, Minnie.”

  She blinked. Those long, wet lashes almost fascinating the rest of the words from his head. Almost.

  “This isn’t a place for you and your sisters and Sebastian. Why aren’t you using the money I gave you?”

  “We did. We used eleven pounds.”

  “Eleven—that’s not enough. You should’ve found some decent rooms. A place that doesn’t smell from the sewers and without whores outside the door. And with a fire burning and lamps and a window box with flowers. And you shouldn’t be so damn thin!”

  Mina’s eyes went wide with hurt—and he wanted to smash his damn head into the wall for saying all the beef-headed things he always said.

  And she didn’t say a word. But then…Mina wouldn’t.

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair and said with more calm, “I didn’t… Minnie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Mina took hold of his arm and he forced himself to look at her. She held her chin up, but the hurt was still faint in her eyes. But she wouldn’t cry or rage at him. He knew she wouldn’t. There wasn’t a woman alive who’d tolerate his blunders better.

  He was grateful and humiliated by that at the same time.

  “Mary says a prayer for you every night, and so does Sebastian. You’re like Father Christmas to him.”

  He frowned and shook his head.

  “When Emma and I returned, Sebastian was ill and Mary was desperate. She sold her clothes; she starved. She almost…almost went to the street again. You mustn’t tell her I told you.”

  “I never would, pretty.”

  “She didn’t know what else to do.”

  Hell. It was clear to him what Mary would have done. In London, men might not have the means to keep a wife, but one marital comfort was found too damn easy with the Magdalenes in the streets.

  “The money you gave us erased her debt, paid for Sebastian’s doctor, fed us, kept us safe,” she said quietly. “You did that for us. If you wanted us to do more, I’m sorry. This was all we could imagine doing, because this was so much more than we had before.”

  Only when Mina stopped talking was he able to unclench his fists and breathe. She couldn’t imagine another way of living? Couldn’t imagine living someplace clean and where the sun could find her and with a garden where she could grow things?

  “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath. She wouldn’t be imagining that life if she were married to him, either.

  “Seth? What’s wrong?”

  “I couldn’t come see you the day I returned. I wanted to. But I had to know something first
, and it took time.” He sat on the sofa, not wanting to look at her. “I told you I was collecting ornamentals in Brazil, on top of hunting medicinals for East India.”

  “I remember.”

  “All those seeds I collected…I packed them the best ways I knew how, all different kinds of ways. I left them with cultivators. Good men who knew the best way to bring those seeds to life.” He pushed to his feet, but there wasn’t room to pace. “Some survived, they tell me.”

  Mina took his hand in both her little ones. He steeled himself from taking her right back into his arms.

  “How many survived?” she asked.

  “Ten,” he mumbled. “Ten species out of eighty. That was two years of work. Longer even, counting the sail back and the months they planted and waited. All I got was a hundred pounds for the trouble.”

  Mina went still, and he pulled his hand from hers.

  She let him.

  “A hundred pounds isn’t enough for fixing up my cottage and buildings, and starting a flock of sheep.” He took a deep breath. “It’s not enough for a family.” He looked at her. “It’s not enough, Minnie”—to be safe for you. To marry you.

  It cost him, but he held her eye. His little officer wouldn’t shy from a problem that needed sorting.

  But she couldn’t sort this problem.

  He turned from her. “Seems it’s always the same. All the hard searching, all the prizes for East India, and never…enough left.”

  “You have the money you gave me,” she said. “All except the eleven pounds—”

  He spun from her. “You’re keeping that money.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Minnie—”

  “I won’t keep it. You need it and you have to—”

  With a growl of frustration, he yanked her against him and kissed her. Kissed her to quiet her, to beg her to stop. He couldn’t take any more of Mina’s plain speaking.

  She’d say what he couldn’t bear to hear. That he couldn’t afford to keep her or her family safe. Couldn’t afford to wed her. That he wasn’t a man who could. Tom would be that man.

  His heart pounding in his chest, he lifted his mouth off hers. “Tomorrow, Minnie,” he said gruffly. “Tomorrow you can try arguing with me over that money, but not today.”