She opened her eyes, dark pupils ringed in greens and browns. She rolled up onto her knees, and then sat on her haunches, her back a clean curve. He poured the still-clean but cool basin water back into the pitcher and set the basin on the towels. She put an arm under the hair at the base of her neck and leaned forward, flipping the bulk of it over to cover her face and fall into the basin. He ran his fingers carefully through the tangles in her hair. Once she winced.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It always pulls. It’s the curls.”
“You have beautiful hair. Why keep it so short?”
“It reaches nearly my shoulder blades,” she protested.
“I suppose hair that falls below one’s rump must be hard to care for. I am glad my first time is with you.”
She pulled away, turning her head to look through the tangles at him. Her gaze was here, with him.
“You don’t think I’ve acted the ladies’ maid with all the women about town, do you? Lean over.” He pushed her shoulders down to get more hair into the basin, and then lifted the pitcher and rinsed the soap out. She braced herself with her left hand, using her right to help push the water through her thick tresses.
This was bliss, just the two of them without interruption. Passion was wonderful, and ecstasy celestial, but such quiet intimacy held marvels of its own. Setting the pitcher down, he watched her push onto her knees and reach two hands to her hair. She twisted the length of it, squeezing water out, and then sat up.
“Towel.”
He reached behind him for another dry cloth, and handed it to her.
“Smaller.” He chuckled and gave her a smaller one. She did some sort of special folding, and fashioned a turban of it over her head.
“How did you do that?”
“Ladies need some secrets,” she said, his nude goddess, shining and sparkling in the firelight.
He draped the bigger towel around her shoulders, pulling the ends to him to bring them closer together. He kissed her brow, each eyelid, and then the tip of her nose. Her lids flew open again, her eyes sparkling.
“Checking to see if your face is clean enough. I see we still have some work to do.”
Her expression fell so far so fast, Nash was taken off-guard. Idiot. He had worked so hard to help her feel clean, and he turns around and tells her she’s still dirty.
“Just one last, tiny speck,” he said, trying to salvage her pride. He wiped the warm cloth in feather motions from her nose onto her forehead, then around her cheeks, chin, and finally her nose.
He kissed her again, slower, savoring her soft scent hidden under the mild soap smell. He lingered on her cheeks, and then the corner of her lips, slowly moving toward the center. He pulled her lower lip a bit, and her lips opened a crack.
He took her mouth in a demanding, forgiving embrace, a kiss that carried all he had to give. His passion, his understanding, his hopes, his love. She responded to his gift in kind, a sweet return.
On their knees, hip to hip, chest to chest, their tongues entwined, Nash remade his marriage vows in his mind, promising her no one would ever hurt her again.
In the eyes of the law, she belonged to him, his proud, careful, broken wife. But law or no, he belonged to her, as well.
And God help anyone who came between them.
PART THREE
{ 31 }
“Is there nothing we can do?” Even the committee men who agreed with him winced at the whine in Trefford’s voice.
Nash gripped the arms of his chair, hidden under the table, one nail tapping a tattoo on the hoary wood. He was sick of Trefford, disgusted with Malbanks, wary of Heywood, and terrified that Maddie was sitting home alone for the first time since the dread day at the castle.
She must be home by now. Nash had insisted she sleep, and that she and Kitty eat a decent meal before they left Shaftsbury this morning. His brother’s care and compassion had surprised Nash, and reminded him of the many times Deacon had acted the elder brother when they were boys. How could he have forgotten? Today Deacon hadn’t said anything directly, but his attentions to Maddie and her sister spoke volumes. He might grow into a fine earl. He might be one already.
Nash had to leave before she woke, to get to this blasted meeting in this deuced tavern. The stale smells turned his stomach—as did the conversation.
“I don’t see why we have to approve it.” Trefford’s voice was nails down a chalk slate.
Nash pressed his temple for a moment, gathering his patience. As no one else seemed inclined to speak, it fell to him. “Again, the petition is not illegal. They are within the law. Well within, as they have agreed to the terms we demanded, including changing the date.”
“But the meeting itself is illegal,” Trefford whined.
Heywood rapped the table, finally asserting his authority. He hadn’t met Nash’s eye when he greeted him. Had he gone turncoat? “Home Office advises that we cannot stop it.”
“Home Office deludes itself.” Malbanks flicked a speck from his coat, a shade of orange that reminded Nash of Wetherby. Nash closed that door in his mind before he lost his concentration.
“Perhaps,” Heywood said. “If they do speak sedition, we’re to arrest this time. If they riot, we use force.”
“Riot or immediate incitement to riot.” Malbanks tapped a page of vellum on the table in front of him. “That is the phrase exact. How do you think calling thousands of angry layabouts together, to hear a series of harangues over how ill their fortunes are and how we are to blame, will not incite riot?”
Nash tapped his own piece of paper, the Observer. “It hasn’t yet. Read the advert: A public meeting to talk about reform.”
“I did read it. It also says because the magistrates declined to call the meeting, they are doing it anyway.”
“You know that is play-acting.”
“So is the phrase public meeting.”
Nash scoffed. “Now you think they are clever. Before you thought they were dolts.”
“Only one of them need be clever to write an advert. Surely you can find one clever man in a town full of dolts. They probably imported one from London.”
Heywood rapped the table again, as tired of this argument as the rest of them. “The odd thing is that they seem to be making some effort to stay within the law.”
“Smoke and mirrors. Our spies haven’t found the conspirators, but they will.” Malbanks rapped the table himself, once.
Nash pushed his back into the chair. “What if there is no conspiracy?”
“Nonsense. You’ve been spending too much time with the under classes.”
This was a new tack. Nash stared Malbanks down.
The man looked to Trefford, shrugging. “Didn’t you just marry one of them?”
“Madeline Wetherby?”
“Her surname was Moore, I hear,” Malbanks said. “Family will out.”
How dare he cast aspersions on Maddie? After all she’d been through.
Heywood pressed a hand onto Nash’s shoulder, pushing him back into his seat. He hadn’t known he’d risen.
“Mrs. Madeline Quinn’s brother-in-law is Earl of Shaftsbury.”
“A peer who would rather throw a lawn party than assist us in our time of need. Wetherby, a mere viscount, has promised funds and billets for troops.” Malbanks’s gaze settled on Nash. The man knew the whole of it.
Rage growled from his gut. Malbanks lapped it up, nearly grinning. Nash forced his feelings down. He would not give the bastard any pleasure.
“Be sure to get Wetherby’s money in cash,” Nash said.
Clayton’s voice startled them both. “I second that. This latest Lord Wetherby is a horror, from what I hear.”
Deprived of entertainment from Nash, Malbanks flicked his attention to the older man. “He takes the major general to his hunting lodge today. I say he is a good friend.”
Heywood used his gavel, for the first time. “Gentlemen, let us hold to the topic. We have accepted the petition. The meeting wi
ll occur. Now what?”
“Pull it that morning. Find a way.”
“Fatal. You’d create the very riot you with to avoid,” Nash said.
Clayton nodded. “Quinn’s right. Let them have their say. If they get out of hand, we’ll read the Riot Act and send them home.”
“They will get out of hand, and our yeomanry will be ready.” Malbanks was the first on his feet. “This meeting is over.”
Heywood harrumphed, but could not call back men so eager to be gone. Clayton caught at Nash’s sleeve as he passed. “A word, Quinn.”
“You’re interested in those silks, after all?”
He shook his head, his jowls following behind.
“You know this is all just for show.”
“How is that?”
“Malbanks had Trefford write to the major general. They already control that horde of know-nothings in the guard.”
“They wouldn’t set that pack of drunkards on the people.”
“They might well, if only to act the threat. You know how these things can get out of hand.” Clayton pushed his spectacles up to rub at his eyes.
“The weavers are saying no one is to carry weapons. They would be sitting ducks.” The thought sent a chill down Nash’s spine. Maddie’s sister would be there.
“It’s the numbers they fear. Is there any way to split the rally?”
“There’s only one Hunt. That’s who they want to see.”
“Let’s hope they get to see him, then. But don’t deceive yourself about who is in charge. If you want your view to prevail, it will take more than words.”
“Any stronger words could get me arrested, as well as the workers.”
“A fine line, true, but you’re just the man to walk it.” Clayton clapped Nash on the shoulder. “I understand you need merchandise. Malbanks’s portion of the proposal.”
“We’ve lost it. Only a week to go.” It meant his near-bankruptcy, and his worst nightmare—falling back onto his family for support. Right now, though, Nash could only shrug. All the balls were in the air, and he had to keep juggling them.
“I believe I can make you good. It’s finished cotton, you said?”
Nash stared at him. “If you’re serious, you’re a savior, man.”
Clayton touched the side of his nose with an index finger. “One man’s chaos is another’s opportunity. I’ve had a windfall from the Americas. I believe the trade was twenty for five?”
“Twenty for four.”
Clayton sucked in his cheeks and changed his stance. Nash matched him. Now they could negotiate. Then he remembered they were in a pub, filled with mercantile ears. Clayton looked away, seeming to realize the same. He leaned in. “Make it quick. Four and a half. Accept a bit of unwanted advice from an old man and we’ve a deal.”
“Four and a quarter. What’s the advice?”
“Next time, choose your allies with more care.”
They shook hands, and Nash hurried out of the room and down the street. If this deal held, and Clayton had always kept his word, he had saved their hides. Nash would have to think about that later. A quick check on the warehouse, and he could be home with Maddie by four.
Fear had outstripped reason this summer. Masters and men should both be on the same side. And here they were, less than a week from slitting one another’s throats.
* * * *
As Deacon’s carriage crossed the river Irk, Maddie panicked. She couldn’t be alone, not yet. In the forest of her exhaustion and despair, Nash had coaxed a sapling of hope. But it was far too fragile to live on its own. Not yet.
Kitty leaned out the window to call the direction to the driver. She never let go of Maddie’s hand, a grip that had held through the hours-long ride.
“He’s to let me out past Shude Hill, then go on to take you home.”
Maddie couldn’t lose her. She’d woken, dazed, wondering at how she’d come to be in the blue bedroom again and not Nash’s chambers. Had it all been a dream, and it still that first morning in May? Then she saw Kitty rocking in a chair near the window, and the whole of the day before crushed her back into the mattress.
Wetherby. Nash said she was rid of him, and Deacon had repeated it later at the breakfast table. The thought lifted ten stone from her shoulders, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it would soon tumble her down again. If only he never woke up from the pummeling she’d given him. That would have led to more difficulties, of course, but solved so many others. And what was her death, by hanging, to compare with the endless number of girls saved from his depravity?
Kitty had told Deacon that Wetherby was a poor seducer. She thought he took Maddie simply because she was there and he could. His family had bought her, and she should pay him back.
“Didn’t she just.” Deacon had smiled, the grin tinged with iron. “He’ll not do it to anyone else. I’ll make sure of it.”
The stuff in Maddie’s head had shifted loose. She’d spent years convincing herself what had happened to her was normal, and any hurt she still felt was due to her own weaknesses. Everyone else was more logical, more reasonable about it, and she should just grow up. Seeing Kitty at Wetherby’s mercy had pulled apart that band of shoddy excuses for good. His groping Kitty was wrong, and if that was wrong, how could what he had done to her be right? The band snapped, and her world tumbled apart.
Not a day later, it remained rather gingerly rigged, built on Nash’s still-fresh ministrations of love, Deacon’s protectiveness, and Kitty’s acceptance. Perhaps as she prayed, she could use her own strength to cement these bricks into a whole.
The carriage, which had been traveling at a walk for a few minutes, slowed to a crawl. The buildings here stood so close its wheels had less than two feet of space between them and a courtyard wall. She felt the outrider step off the back, springing them in their seats. Kitty scooted toward the door.
Maddie tugged her back. “Take me with you.”
“Home? Don’t be a duck egg.”
She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant and failing so badly that her eyes rimmed with tears. “I can’t be alone.”
“Nash said he would be home in a few hours.”
“That’s forever. I need to be with someone now. With family.”
Kitty looked at her steadily, that Amazon gaze Maddie so wanted to learn to copy. What did her sister see? An overgrown baby in a lady’s striped muslin?
“You needs be gone by three.”
Nash would be back by three. “You’re a saint.”
“I’m cracked is what I am. Come along.”
They stepped out, into haze and damp and the smell of rotten cabbage and something underneath, worse. Maddie picked up the hem of her skirt, but the ground was swept clean. The filth was in the air. She waved the coachman to leave; he paused to make sure she meant it.
“Clock Alley. For clock-lace, you know? Two dozen families along the sides, privies and ash pit at the back and our own tree smack in the middle.” A girl stood at the pump beside the tree, drawing water. No one else was to be seen.
“Is everyone at work?”
Kitty shook her head. “Some’s too hungry to come out and play. The men are at the worker’s meeting. That’s why it’s safe for you to come in.”
Maddie tried not to think on why her father would not want her in his home, and why she needed to see it anyway.
Perhaps he was ashamed. The houses were two- and three-storey affairs, nearly cottages but built in the narrow, connected way of the city.
“Ours is a through-house, best on the block. Here.” Kitty waved proudly at a narrow three-storey, gray as soot, with one window per floor and just the door below. The designers had tried to make it look like the better stock of housing, but the builders had cheapened the materials. It seemed to sag to the right.
“You’s what bought us this.”
“I?”
“Da used the death money from your people to buy it. We are the only ones living here who own the lease to our home.”
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“Even Nash rents.”
“Da said if he knew as it would get so tough, so much clemming, he would have bought another house, just to lease it to folks for free for a time. Instead he sent me for school.”
“Progressive of him.”
“Guilty, more like. He knew you had a made life, and I think he wanted to give me a chance at a merchant’s trade. Something better than the mills.”
“But you followed his footsteps instead.”
“Started a spinner, so’s my work feeds into his. I love that we can work together. We starve together when the work dries up, so’s I work the mills, as well. Should have stayed in school another year, and really learned my letters.”
“You can read?”
“Slow but sure. With figures, I’m flash as any cove, just like me Da. Wish we had more of them adding up and not as many to subtract.” She unlatched the door and waved Maddie in.
The room was as big as Maddie’s closet, and held three wooden chairs and the cooking fireplace. Straight stairs stood against a wall; a closet in back acted as the pantry. Unlike the cottage Jem Smith and his family inhabited, this one had a small window in the back wall, offering a shaft of morning light.
“You keep a neat home.”
“It ain’t no castle, but it’ll do.”
She moved deeper into the room as Kitty came in, shutting them in. A quarter-moon window cut into the door offered a sliver of light, but even at noon the room was dim.
“Why the shades?”
Kitty glanced at the window, blinded by cloth. “Can’t have too much privacy. Come up and see the looms.”
They sped by the first floor, which looked to hold two sleeping rooms. As they turned toward the top floor, sunlight edged the treads on the stairs.
This floor stretched the breadth of their cottage plus the one behind it. A higher ceiling and four large windows gave good light. Two looms, standard cotton-weaving jennies, took up the bulk of the space, and chairs and stools stood in the front and back of the room by each pair of windows. A narrow cot sat in the back corner.
“I spend most of my time in here, in good weather. Do my spinning at the window while Da works this loom and George works his, there. It’s right nice here.”
An Untitled Lady: A Novel Page 25