Secret Admirer

by Michele Jaffe

  Half a mile away, Lawrence heard the explosion. For a second he was struck by the eerie beauty of the orange flash against the predawn blue of the sky. Then he realized where it was and what it was, and he ran like hell.

  —a man who had booby-trapped the entire building so it exploded into an infernal spectacle that lit up the night sky around London and kept Lawrence’s men occupied digging through the wreckage for survivors for hours afterward.

  They did not find any.

  Chapter 23

  Lawrence stood over the line of bodies but did not really see them. He wanted to clench his hands, but they seemed to be locked in place. Later he would learn that it was because they had been seared by the heat and were badly burned. Even then he didn’t care.

  He had charged into the mass of rubble before the flames were out. It was he who recovered blind Mrs. Slipson’s precious silver-plated goblet from King Edward’s coronation celebration. He who brought out the strange globs of gold and gems that had once been the prized merchandise in Mr. Carter’s shop. He who dug through the scalding bricks, heedless of the blisters on his hands and arms or the fact that his pants were smoldering. It was he who uncovered the bodies of all four of his men. He worked harder than all the others put together, and they all knew why.

  It was he, Lawrence Pickering himself, wiping the soot out of his eyes and leaving clean streaks on his otherwise blackened face, that finally had to admit they weren’t going to find Lady Tuesday Arlington’s body.

  There were only two conclusions he could draw and he forced himself to draw them. Either she had been closer to the source of the explosion than his guards and been entirely burned. Or she had not been in the building. Which meant that she was somehow working with whomever had done this and had managed to escape.

  He fairly well hated both options. Because as he had combed through the debris like a madman, clawing away bricks and tables and charred pieces of other people’s lives, he had realized that he wanted to see Lady Tuesday Arlington again. Wanted it so bad that it made him ache inside.

  If she really were responsible for exploding the building, my friend, would she have told you to evacuate everyone?

  Maybe she only wanted to get away with her husband’s murder and could not bring herself to kill innocent people.

  Then why hadn’t she gotten rid of the guards. Surely they were innocent, too. And—

  Shut up, Lawrence said to the speaker in his head. He was tired of having him there, tired of hearing Rafael’s subtly accented voice like some Spanish conscience whenever he had a single negative thought about Tuesday. About Lady Arlington.

  Besides, if he agreed with what the voice in his head was telling him, that she was not responsible, then she was dead.

  He was not ready to believe that yet. Not until he saw some trace, until some small piece of her surfaced. Lawrence found himself hoping that she was a murderer and hardened criminal and had escaped, rather than that she was gone. Only because he did not want responsibility for her death. Only because he wanted to yell at her for staying in the building, for making him bring her with him. Not because she had been more full of life, stronger and more courageous and more exciting than anyone else he’d ever met. Not because he needed to see her smile at him again the way she had when he’d kissed her in his coach.

  Let her be alive.

  Shouts, arms waving, jolted Lawrence from his thoughts. Tom was barely visible through the smoke, but his voice carried. It would have reached Lawrence across two continents, because what he said was: “I’ve found her!”

  Lawrence took the shortest route to his man, crashing straight through the still hot ashes of the building, sending a stream of red sparks up in his wake.

  Grub stepped in front of him when he was only six feet from Tom. He put a hand on Lawrence’s chest. “I don’t think you should, sir.”

  “Get out—”

  But Grub did not budge. “I mean it. There’s no reason you need to see. She’s gone, sir.”

  Lawrence did not say anything, just stepped around the other man.

  She was lying in a field across the street from the former building. It looked like she had been thrown from it with the force of the explosion, then buried under the chimney. She lay in a ditch, the chimney lay across her body and her body on top of her arm, which, judging from its strange angle was probably broken. But that hardly mattered since there was blood caked around a huge gash to her head and since, as far as Lawrence could make out, she was not breathing.

  She had been blameless. Not a murderer, or a murderer’s accomplice. Somehow he had known that all along. And still he had gotten her killed.

  She was not going to smile again.

  He bent over and lifted the chimney off of her, an act three of his men could not have performed together, but which he managed and made look easy. Then he stooped and gathered her to his chest and walked by the cordon of his men, all silent now, to his coach.

  No one knew what happened in that ride back to Worthington Hall, but reports said that Lawrence’s face was pretty streaky when he got there.

  Part III: Love

  Chapter 24

  Lawrence’s first act upon getting back to Worthington Hall was to summon Ian’s wife, Bianca, the famous doctor, and make her do things to Tuesday. From her he learned that he had been right about Tuesday’s arm being broken but wrong about something else. She was still breathing. Barely. And, Bianca explained, she had lost quite a lot of vital fluids from the gash on her head.

  “Is she going to live?” Lawrence demanded. “I mean, past today?”

  Bianca guided him away from the bandaged, still figure lying on the bed. “Let me look at your burns, Lawrence.”

  “Bianca, tell me.”

  Bianca faced him. “She may regain consciousness for a brief time, but I would say that the chances of her coming back permanently are remote.”

  Remote was a word Lawrence understood well. It was what he became as soon as she had spoken. He did not notice as she rolled up his sleeves and applied a special ointment and bandages, did not flinch even when she advised him that the preparation she was putting on his calf was going to sting, did not respond when she noted that from what she had seen of Lady Tuesday Arlington the night before she was a strong woman and had as good a chance as anyone of surviving, did not say anything as she left. He just sat in Tuesday’s gray chair, her favorite chair, pulled up to her bed and was remote.

  After many hours, when daylight had returned, he started talking to her.

  “You know, I really enjoyed fighting with you,” he said, then felt stupid. Why would she care about that?

  He lapsed into silence again for an hour, then startled himself by saying, “You can’t die, Tuesday. It is all wrong. Because—”

  And suddenly he was telling her a story. He hadn’t thought about the incident since it happened, but for some reason he had to share it now. He knew he was practically babbling nonsense but it didn’t matter.

  “There was a man, one of the sailors, on the first ship I commanded in Spain. His name was Orlando, a name from out of one of those old romances, and it suited him. He was a quiet, nice, charming man. And he was an artist in the galley. I have heard people say that men signed on to the HMS Phoenix because they wanted to sail with me, but I actually think it was word of Orlando’s cooking that spread.” Why was he telling her this? And why was it so hard? It was not as though she was listening.

  “We were only three days out from our last reprovisioning when we encountered a Spanish galleon. We engaged and eventually blasted them out of the water. But they managed to get one shot off at us, at our kitchen, and Orlando was hurt.” Actually, it had blown the entire bottom half of his body away, but Lawrence was not going to tell her that, even if she couldn’t hear. “It was pretty clear that he was not going to make it. I was passing through my cabin, which was being used as the surgery, when he reached out and took my hand. He sai
d he wanted to say something to me, wanted it to be a warning to others. And he told me a story. About how he had been in love with a woman back in England, deeply and completely in love, but too shy to ever tell her so. He always thought that if he did something, made himself worthy, then he could propose to her, which was why he had signed on to serve with me. But instead, he was dying, dying loving her, dying without ever telling her his feelings. He wanted me to make sure all the men on the ship knew his story so they would not be too shy with the women they loved.” Lawrence snorted. “With that group, shyness around women was not the problem.”

  Then he grew serious again. He raked a hand through his hair. “Everyone laughed when they heard. But as I listened to him all I could think of was how lucky Orlando was. Because he had never looked into the eyes of the woman he loved and seen disappointment or hate or contempt.” Never had to hear her call him a monster and a lowlife. Never had to watch her disappear from the coach yard and leave you sitting there, trying to believe her promises that she would return for you and your brother in just a few hours even when you knew they were lies. Never had to face that same woman years later when you were rich and she was poor and tell her you forgave her and put her up in a house in the country on the condition that she never bother your brother because he believed she was dead, it was just easier that way, dammit, and none of her goddamned business.

  He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands and gazed at Tuesday’s unmoving figure. “I was a fool, Tuesday. I should have listened to Orlando. I should have told you I was falling in love with you.”

  Lawrence did not know what he had expected, but the fact that she did not stir made his insides clench tight. He moved closer to the bed and took her unbandaged hand in his. God it was cold. She was so cold.

  I just want to be numb, he could hear her saying.

  No you don’t.

  Why, isn’t it working out for you?

  “No,” he answered aloud. “It isn’t. It wasn’t. But if you die, I am going to be numb. Forever. And it will be your fault.”

  He must have lost his mind. He never spoke like this with anyone, and he certainly did not hurl idle threats at all-but-dead women. “If you die, Tuesday, I am going to hole up in a cave and never come out. Except to get dressed up in the way you don’t like. Puffed up for a royal visit, I think you said. Every day. In my cave.”

  Nothing.

  “And I’m going to breathe loudly. And toss coins in the air constantly.” He stopped.

  He hung his head over their joined hands and whispered, “Tuesday, I can’t believe I let this happen to you.”

  He was about to pull his hand away when he felt it. A squeeze, a slight pressure. Maybe.

  “Tuesday can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “Tuesday?”

  Nothing again.

  But he had felt it. He had. He needed something that would illicit a strong reaction from her. Something that would pull her back to the surface. His ran his mind backward over everything that had happened in the time they had spent together. The ball, giving her the necklace, their conversation in the nursery (God there was so much he wanted to share with her), playing cards, her forcing him to strip at the end of a fake rapier and get into the bath (he smiled despite himself), that kiss in the coach, the scene at Miles’s (she had been in control the whole time, he now understood), meeting Jack, standing outside her window as she painted, listening as she described the murderer from four pieces of evidence he had barely noticed, coming into her studio for the first time and being utterly and completely overwhel—that was it.

  He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Uncivilized.”

  Nothing still.

  “The first time I saw you, Lady Tuesday Arlington, I thought you were the most uncivilized-looking woman in the world.”

  If that did not agitate her, nothing would.

  It didn’t. She did not move. She did not respond. Her pulse did not even change.

  Lawrence dropped her hand, no pressure restraining him this time, and moved away from the bed. He leaned his forehead against the wall and made his face very hard and rubbed his aching right shoulder with his hand. He had let her die, he had as good as killed her, he was a killer, like that other time, just like in Spain with—

  He was a fool and an idiot and he did not deserve her anyway, he told himself. Which was good, because she was not coming back.

  “What does it mean?” a hoarse whisper asked from the bed.

  Lawrence turned around and stared. His heart stopped.

  “You can’t just revive me from death with riddles and not tell me the answer.” Her eyes were open and she was looking at him. She had bandages around her head and across one arm and bags under her eyes and her lips were chapped and she was the most exquisite being he had ever seen.

  She tried to reach out to him with her bandaged arm and winced. “Tell me. What it means. To look uncivilized.”

  The chances of her coming back permanently are remote, Lawrence heard Bianca warning. He stood beside her and took her hand and let the words fall out. “It means that you are the kind of woman men duel to do a favor for. The kind of woman over whom wars are fought. The kind of woman who makes words like ‘reputation’ and ‘duty’ sound pretentious and empty, but who gives ‘honor’ new luster. The kind of woman who is completely incompatible with the dictates of polite society.”

  Her forehead creased. “Is that good?”

  “It depends on how you feel about polite society.”

  A pause. “How do you feel, Lord Pickering?”

  “I’ve spent my life working to get it to accept me.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes moved away from his.

  “Only to discover that I am allergic to it.”

  “Allergic?”

  “Yes. I knew a man once whose tongue lost feeling any time he ate anise seeds because he was allergic to them. Polite society seems to have the same effect on me. I just did not realize it until I met you.”

  Lawrence never knew how he ended up, boots off, carefully stretched out on the bed next to her. They faced each other on her pillow, their clasped hands between them. Gently, he placed a kiss on her forehead and wrapped an arm around her. Her eyes closed and her cheek rested against his shoulder, and he felt extraordinarily marvelous.

  “Tuesday?” he whispered a moment later, but she did not answer.

  For a long time they lay there like that, Lawrence afraid that if he moved, if he shifted at all, she would go away forever. The burns on his arms and legs ached but he did not notice. He was aware only of her too shallow breathing and the too cold length of her body next to his.

  What if this were all? What if she were gone now? What if she had slipped not into sleep but unconsciousness again? There were so many things he needed to say to her. To show her. He still hadn’t given her a proper kiss. Or found out what her favorite food was. Or seen her in a silver gown. Or a lavender one. Or in nothing. He still hadn’t shared with her his plans for Jack. He still hadn’t spent an entire night with his face nuzzled in her hair and her legs tangled with his and his arms wrapped around her. He wanted to tell her everything, about growing up, about how proud he was of some of the things he had done, about what had happened in Spain, about Rafael and—at least about some of it.

  It had been a long time since Lawrence had prayed, but he prayed that night to anyone who would listen.

  He must have dozed off because when he opened his eyes evening light was filtering through the windows. It took him a moment to remember why he had a knot in his stomach, but then he felt Tuesday’s limp body on his arm, in the exact position she had been in before, and it flooded back.

  He was half-afraid to look at her. He finally forced himself. Slowly, he tilted his chin down and out of the corner of his eye saw her smiling up at him.

  “I didn’t want to move because I was afraid I would wake you,” she purred. She did not sa
y that having him in her bed was like having a dream come true and she did not want it to end.

  “You are alive.”

  The way he said it made it sound like he was accusing her of a crime. “I’m sorry. Would you rather that I—”

  His lips came down on hers, and her heart stood still and he kissed her the way he should have kissed her a dozen times before. His mouth tasted sooty and delicious to her, his tongue skimming the edges of her lips was a firebrand stirring sparks throughout her body. The aches in her legs, the sharp pains in her arm and head and shoulder and back all vanished in the heat he ignited inside her.

  Lawrence did not want to hurt her, knew he should move slowly or not at all, knew she had been badly bruised, but when she brought her good arm up and twisted her fingers in his hair and urged his lips against hers harder, he could not stop himself. His bandaged hand slid down her body and cupped her bottom, pulling her on top of him. She arched her hips into him and her neck went back and he lost himself in the magic of its silky smoothness.

  Through her nightshirt the hard points of her nipples rubbed against his chest, making them both moan. Everything they had almost lost became kindling in the heat of their desire. With one arm she ripped his linen shirt from him, and with his bandaged fingers he took a ridiculous amount of time unknotting the stays of her night shift. They laughed at their ineptitude and held each other and helped each other and each delay only made their hunger that much more intense. When they later made a hasty attempt to gather up their clothes, Tuesday’s nightgown appeared to have been sliced down the middle, Lawrence’s boots were lodged in the next-door neighbor’s yard, and his breeches were at the other end of the studio with tooth marks on them.

  The planes of his naked, warm, hard body pressed against her was the most extraordinary feeling. She smoothed her good hand down his rippling back, along the curves of his chest, across his stomach, her eyes following her fingers, marveling at his beauty.