Scoundrel in My Dreams

by Celeste Bradley

  The silence of the attic mocked her outburst. She was far, far above the street and no one could hear a thing over the rattle of carts over the cobbles anyway. The walls were of stone and the floor was so solid that the wide scrubbed planks gave up not a creak.

  If it hadn’t been so bright and clean, it would have made a marvelous dungeon.

  The melodrama of her own thoughts twinged at her conscience. She wasn’t locked in a prison. She was locked in a laundry room. That didn’t invalidate the incredible truth of the locked door, but it did add an element of the absurd that made her unable to feel true fear.

  Besides, this was Jack. Jack. Of all the people in the world, she could not think of anyone less likely to do physical harm to a woman.

  Except he wasn’t that Jack anymore, was he? War had changed him. Before the war, she would have sworn that a man like him could never lock her away. No, this wasn’t her Jack. This was an entirely new man.

  This was a man she could happily hate for the rest of her life.

  With her own breathing harsh in her ears, it was a long moment before she realized that there was a sound in the room. She lifted her head and held her breath. The sound continued. It was an odd creaking noise, like a rusty hinge or a squeaking wheel.

  And it was coming from the wall behind the wardrobe. Laurel crossed the room in a few strides and started pushing.

  Melody sat curled up small in the dank little box, thinking that maybe she didn’t want to go to the attic after all. Maybe the lady was gone now. Maybe Evan would go off riding with Billy-wick again and forget that she was up here in the stinky dark. Maybe she should yell down the shaft that she was scared and she wanted to come down.

  Evan would roll his eyes. He wouldn’t say a word, because he wasn’t mean or anything, but he was a big boy and he never got scared. He would pat her on the shoulder and say, That’s all right, Mel. Then he would stick his hands in his pockets and walk away whistling and go find someone braver and more interesting to play with.

  So Melody clamped her jaw shut on that yell for help and shut her eyes against the darkness and covered her ears against the groaning of the wheel things that sounded like they were crying aloud.

  The creaking stopped. Then the inside of her eyelids went pink instead of black. Through the muffling of her hands over her ears she heard someone say something that sounded like her name, only it was all choked and wet sounding.

  She opened her eyes and blinked against the light now flooding into the little box through the open cupboard door. After a second she made out the shape of a lady, standing there, staring at her with both hands over her face. Only her eyes were showing. They were the eyes of the mean lady at the big, cold house.

  Melody drew back into the box. She didn’t want to talk to the mean lady. She’d thought it was a different lady. She’d thought it was a lady who wanted to talk to her.

  Then the lady dropped her hands and Melody could see that it wasn’t the mean lady after all. This lady was different. She had the same eyes and the same hair, but her face was pretty nice, not pretty mean.

  She looked like the queen in the chess game.

  Still, Melody decided that she didn’t want to leave the box. The queen said something all choked sounding again and reached for her, but Melody pulled back from her hands.

  The queen dropped her hands really fast. She looked sad, but Melody still didn’t want to get out of the box.

  Still, she hated to see people sad. “Are you going to cry?”

  The queen blinked really fast. Then she shook her head. “No. No crying.” Her voice was kind of scratchy, like Billy-wick when he had a head cold.

  Melody wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s good.” She wanted to stare at the queen. She didn’t know why. The queen made her feel funny. It wasn’t scary, but it was new. She would stay in the box.

  The queen wanted to stare at her, too. That was good. That meant that it wasn’t rude to stare back. So Melody stared and stared. The queen stared and stared, too.

  Nine

  When Madeleine finished arranging the evidence on the table in the drawing room and stepped back, the four of them studied the entire sum of Melody’s life before she’d come to them.

  A small, tatty satchel, patched in three places. Two little muslin dresses, good enough at one time but faded now. An aged little pinafore, no longer quite white. Wee stockings, much darned. One pair of tiny, worn boots with broken laces.

  “ ‘The mony stopped coming,’ ” Aidan quoted softly. The note itself lay open next to the satchel, the carefully square writing misspelled in pencil.

  Pru, who had never seen these particular items before, was wide-eyed. “The money had not come in a long while, I think.” She reached out a finger and traced the minute heel of one stocking. “These are more darning than not. That’s the way Evan’s would get, when we had no coin to buy more. I’d keep darning and darning until they would shred in my hands.”

  Colin slid his palm up her back gently. “Those days are over, for Evan and for Melody.”

  “So tiny.” Madeleine shook her head slowly. “She’s grown so in just a few months.”

  “This Nanny Pruitt must have been beside herself with desperation.” Pru’s face was set. “She loved Melody so dearly.”

  Madeleine lifted her chin. “We don’t know that.”

  Pru traced a line of simple flower embroidery on the pinafore. “Melody says Nanny was old. She had trouble getting down the stairs, she told me. Yet she took the trouble to work Melody’s favorite flowers into the pattern.” Pru looked up at Madeleine sympathetically. “Accept it, Maddie. You weren’t the first to love her.”

  Madeleine shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, all right. Nanny Pruitt was a kind old lady who didn’t wish to give Melody up. That doesn’t mean that she is in any better condition to take her now.”

  Aidan brushed a strand of hair away from his wife’s brow, an uncharacteristically public show of affection. “I for one am glad Melody was loved. I would like to thank Nanny Pruitt for such careful care.”

  Colin leaned both hands on the table and gazed down at the items as if willing them to speak. “Is there anything special about these items? Anything rare?”

  Pru shook her head. “Common as grass.”

  Aidan reached for the note and held it up to the light of the window. “So this is our only clue.”

  “Hold on.” Colin squinted up at him. “What’s that on the back?” He straightened and rounded the table. Taking the note from Aidan, he flipped it over.

  “Lines,” he announced flatly. “Scribbles. Faded old marks.”

  Pru held out her hand. “May I see?” Taking the note, she stepped over to the window and pressed it to the glass. The marks became very clear with the afternoon light behind them. “I need a pencil.”

  Madeleine reached for the bellpull, but Wilberforce was at her side before she could so much as give it a tug.

  “I have sent Bailiwick to fetch a pencil from the library, my lady.”

  Madeleine blinked. “How . . . prescient . . . of you, Wilberforce.”

  Wilberforce nodded a slight bow. “Thank you, my lady.”

  There came a great gallumphing of feet shod in giant boots as Bailiwick appeared in the doorway, a pencil clenched in his massive paw. “This is for you, my lady.”

  Pru waved a hand without turning around as she squinted at the note flattened to the glass. “Actually, Billy-wick, it is for me.”

  Bailiwick grinned, pleased at her absentminded use of the nickname. Wilberforce remained expressionless.

  Pru took the pencil and carefully filled in the faint lines. Then she lifted the note down and laid it on the table.

  Aidan scowled in disappointment. “It’s nonsense.”

  Colin peered closer. “Is it one of Mellie’s drawings? That shape there—that could be an axe.” He straightened. “Her artwork does contain an unusually high body count.”

  Aidan snorted. “And whose fault is that?
Pirates!”

  The four of them regarded the squat axe-like shape and the long wavy line that trailed from it like a leash.

  Pru sighed. “Is it just a scribble then?”

  “No,” came a voice just behind them. “It is a map.”

  They turned as one to see Jack standing there, rocking backward as if he’d been peering over their shoulders, which he had. Aidan quirked a brow. “Useful talent, that. I’d like to be able to sneak up on Maddie now and again.”

  “Reconnaissance training.” Jack noted shortly. “Now, the map?”

  “If it is a map.” Colin handed it to Jack. “You’ve seen it before. It’s the back of the note left with Melody.”

  Pru leaned close. “It just looks like scribble to me. How do you know it’s a map?”

  “Commanding illiterate soldiers. All they can do is draw, and badly.” Jack held the note for a long moment, gazing down at it. “This shape is familiar. A bit like—”

  “St. James Park! Where we take Melody to feed the ducks!” Madeleine exclaimed. “That’s the axe handle—and the Green Park is the head of the axe.”

  Colin leaned forward and traced the line that arched away from the junction of the “axe head” and “handle.” “Then that could be the Strand, following the edge of the Thames to the east.”

  “And look!” Madeleine tapped a mark with her finger, partway down the Strand, two lines bisecting. “I think that’s for St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

  Pru touched the strange daisy-like mark at the end of the Strand. “So what would that be?”

  Madeleine laughed. “Why, Threadneedle Street, of course! Where all the streets cross!”

  Colin frowned. “Everyone in London knows that crossing. Why would anyone need a map to Threadneedle Street?”

  “Not to.” Jack stared down at the map. “From.”

  Aidan breathed out. “From there to Brown’s.”

  The game suddenly became real. “We found her,” Pru murmured. “We found Nanny Pruitt.”

  “Jack found her,” Colin pointed out. “I take no responsibility.”

  No one saw Maddie kick Colin, but he took a sharp step away from her as an expression of pain crossed his face. “Sorry.”

  Jack turned to gaze at his friends. “Why look for Nanny Pruitt?”

  Aidan blinked at Jack’s question. “To discover Melody’s family, of course. This Pruitt woman is our only link.”

  I’m Melody’s family. It wasn’t Amaryllis in my room on that one amazing, soul-stirring night. It was shy, young Laurel—a girl I’d scarcely spoken to.

  And I’m keeping her in the attic.

  Perhaps now was not the best time to bring that up, despite the fact that Aidan and Colin were wasting their time because of his lies.

  His friends were happy. It glowed from their eyes and the faces of their brides. He would only soil that happiness with a confession of his misdeeds. He’d kidnapped and imprisoned a woman in the hope of making her love—er, marry him. Nefarious indeed.

  No, it was better they remain in blissful ignorance. He couldn’t ask them to make that choice between keeping loyal to him and retaining their honor by betraying him. He himself had no more honor to lose.

  Furthermore, if they knew that Melody was indeed his child and that the proof of that was even now waking up in her attic prison, they would have no need for Nanny Pruitt’s help in tracking down Melody’s “real” parentage.

  And Jack wanted answers. He needed to give something back to Laurel. Perhaps if he discovered that Melody’s short little life had been happy so far, it would help Laurel to forgive him. He wanted to understand what had happened to Laurel three years ago. Obviously, she’d been somehow robbed of her child. The need to know felt like a glowing coal in his gut.

  Curiosity. That was new to him as well.

  As for Colin and Aidan? Well, he likely couldn’t deter them from going. Gazing at his two friends, he found that he was able to bear their company quite well.

  “We’ll go at once,” Aidan said tightly.

  “No.” Despite her earlier briskness, Madeleine’s word was barely a sigh.

  Pru looked away from her friend’s pain. “By the time you get there it will be rather late in the day.”

  Colin nodded thoughtfully. “Tomorrow is Market Day. There will be many more people to question.”

  Jack gazed past them, through the window. “We’ll take Melody.”

  “To the market?” Colin frowned.

  Aidan’s brows rose. “Of course. Once having met Melody, no one could ever forget her.”

  Jack nodded, then turned to leave the room.

  As he left, he heard Madeleine whisper to Pru, “How can he bear to simply let her go like this?”

  I am her father. I will never let her go.

  Not even to the woman who bore her.

  It occurred to him that, as women themselves, Lady Madeleine and Lady Lambert would never understand that—and if they objected strongly enough, his decision might very well cost him the last friends he had left.

  Thinking of the blue of his daughter’s eyes as they shimmered into his gray world, Jack closed his right hand into a fist.

  It would be worth it.

  She has my eyes.

  In the attic, where the afternoon light streamed in slanting bars through the patches of grime on the windows, Laurel could not take her eyes off her daughter. Hungry for every detail, Laurel gazed until her eyes began to burn.

  My eyes. My hair. My mother’s nose.

  Jack’s chin, all tiny and female and adorable.

  Melody’s hands were clasped about her little knees now and her head was tilted as she gazed at Laurel with the same dark-lashed sky blue eyes Laurel saw every day in the mirror, every day when she looked at her sister.

  Mine. My flesh, my blood, my heart.

  Laurel realized that her open hands were pressed to her belly, as if protecting that empty, mourning womb. No more need to mourn. No more need to ache. Melody lived.

  And she was beautiful.

  “Hello.” Was that her voice, all choked and damp? Laurel cleared her throat. “Would you like to come in?”

  Melody shook her head quickly. “I don’t like the attic.”

  Nodding, Laurel looked about the chamber. “Attics can be a little spooky, I suppose.”

  “It’s not spooky.” Melody leaned forward, her skirt rucked up as she sat tailor fashion. “There was a Badman.” She said it quickly, as if it were one word. “The Badman made me climb out the window.”

  Laurel blinked. This must be a story. No sane person would make a child climb out of a window five stories up. “Where is the Badman now?”

  Melody sat back in her little box. “Dead,” she said, her tone quite matter-of-fact. “Maddie says I should say ‘passed on,’ but Papa just says ‘dead.’ ” Melody smoothed the ribbon tied about the waist of her little dress, pooching her belly out in order to see it better.

  Laurel wanted to scoop her up and squeeze her until she squeaked and never, ever release her. Instead, exerting iron control, she decided to mimic Melody’s position and seated herself on the floor before the dumbwaiter, crossing her legs in tailor fashion as well. Melody’s head was higher than her own.

  “Who is Maddie?” Laurel asked casually.

  Melody blinked dark-lashed blue eyes at her owlishly. “Maddie is Lady Blank’ship. She’s one of my mamas.”

  Mamas. White-hot pain lanced through Laurel. She kept her expression pleasantly neutral. “You have more than one mama?”

  Melody picked at a thread in her ribbon. “Maddie is a mama and Pru is a mama, but I don’t have a Mama.”

  Her meaning was perfectly clear to Laurel. Melody had women in her life who mothered her, yet they had not claimed that sacred title as their own. Beneath her towering resentment, Laurel felt a flash of gratitude toward this “Maddie” and “Pru.”

  Although she was beyond tempted to tell Melody the truth, Laurel sensed that now was not the moment.
In fact, it appeared she would be fortunate to lure her own child from a box in the wall!

  “I have apples and cheese,” Laurel announced offhandedly. “If you care for any.”

  “Do you have lemon seedcakes?”

  Laurel cursed her lack of lemon seedcakes. “My apologies, Lady Melody. I do not. I shall speak to Cook sharply on that matter, rest assured.”

  Melody giggled and Laurel felt as though she’d been granted a gift.

  “Still, won’t you join me for a nibblement and a chat? I do get a bit lonely sometimes.”

  Laurel tilted her head and smiled calmly. Luring her child was like tempting a wary bird to her hand.

  She very carefully refused to consider that enticing Melody was like the way Jack was trying to reach out to her. Those two matters were entirely and completely different!

  Melody considered her for a long moment, eyes narrowed. As Melody pondered, she slowly brought a handful of rag up to her face and slipped a grimy corner of it into her mouth. She chewed it contemplatively.

  Laurel watched in barely concealed maternal horror. Heavens, what was that thing? A balled-up knotted portion flopped to one side and Laurel spotted a pair of stitched-on eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce your friend, Lady Melody?”

  Melody held out the limp gray thing. “Gordy Ann.”

  Laurel leaned forward and reached up to gingerly accept it. Goodness, couldn’t Jack afford to buy the child a proper doll? Laurel took the damp corner of fabric between her thumb and forefinger and shook it solemnly. “It is lovely to meet you, Lady Gordy Ann.”

  Melody giggled again. Then she dangled her little booted feet out of the dumbwaiter and primly smoothed her smeared and dusty pinafore before holding out her arms. “Pick me up.”

  Standing so quickly that her head swam a bit, Laurel placed her hands about her tiny daughter’s ribs and hefted Melody into her arms.

  Words like “solid” and “compact” and “warm” scuttled through her mind before being washed aside in the wave of emotion that swept her thoughts clean away.

  Her heart fell with a thud. I love her.