Proper Scoundrel

by Annette Blair

  Jade Smithfield’s ebony eyes widened, and she paled slightly, before a crimson blush scuttled up her neck.

  Marcus nodded, certain she’d got his point. “I apologize for my impertinence, though not for my admonition, and I am genuinely disappointed that we will not be working together.”

  Jade’s clenched hands relaxed slightly, her composure returning in slow determined measure. “With Ivy staying, you will be forced to catch the public coach for your return journey, but since it won’t be along again until tomorrow, a room will be prepared for you.”

  A few minutes later, a brawny, barrel-chested older man—

  Jade’s resident doctor cum housekeeper—introduced himself to Marcus as Beecher. With twinkling eyes and fond looks for the children scampering about, Beecher led Marcus from the bedchamber to which he’d been assigned and into a main-level ballroom. Ornate with gilded wainscoting and festooned mirrors, the stately room held an array of fussy gilt chairs facing a puppet stage in the throes of preparation.

  The minute Marcus stepped into the room, the assemblage of women and children stilled and quieted, as if they knew he’d displeased their benefactress. But no, on second look, their reactions reflected nothing so simple as displeasure. Some of them had stepped back, others placed hands on hearts, touched their children or each other. Like game in a hunter’s sight, all were frightened and too stunned to move.

  Ivy warned him that most of Jade’s cygnets had been assaulted—by husbands, fathers, strangers, males all. He knew they had been battered physically and emotionally, and still, Marcus stood stunned in the face of their terror. Judging by the children, their mothers’ experiences had been, at the least, witnessed. At the worst, Marcus refused to consider.

  Drawn by the silence, Ivy peeked from behind his puppet stage and grimaced. He came and made the introductions. Ivy— Yves St. Cyr, Puppeteer—revelled in his role as friend, mentor, and father-figure to half the children in Sussex ... even to the ones who’d grown up, or should have done, at any rate, the scoundrels and scandals especially.

  After the silver-haired puppet-master’s introduction, most of the women relaxed. Ivy must seem as safe as Jade’s retainers, though not nearly as old.

  The children calmed, because their mothers did, all but one cowering blonde moppet, her wide-eyed china-doll gaze directed straight at Marcus himself. Even from across the room, he could see that his presence terrified her.

  Damn it, he’d left enough damage in his wake for one lifetime, Marcus thought. He did not want to leave one woman, or child, with nightmares, especially not as a result of a swift appearance in their lives.

  Since he would leave Peacehaven tomorrow, he had no choice but to counter China Doll’s fear today.

  Chapter Two

  Marcus distributed pennies to the children farthest from china-doll, to calm her before he reached her. “Here’s a penny for each of you,” he said as he distributed the coveted coins, “to pay to watch the puppets. Drop it in the hat when it’s passed.” Marcus spoke loudly to make his intentions known to parents and children alike and calm them all.

  The next child primped as he turned to her. Marcus smiled at her mama and handed the coquette-in-training her penny. “Why, your dress is the same pretty blue as your eyes,” he said, making those indigo orbs bigger.

  Marcus looked up, like a stallion scenting a mare, and saw that Jade now stood inside the ballroom watching. He’d considered her magnificent in black leather, but her scandalous splendour paled beside her ripe feminine allure in a full striped skirt of ebony on silver, her generous breasts snug in a short black bolero.

  She appeared more seductive, if that were possible, especially with those slight ruffles at wrists and neck. Yet despite her feminine regalia, her stance left no question as to which of them retained full charge.

  Marcus hoped she changed clothes because she took his warning to heart. He’d hate to see her ravished in business ... or otherwise ... except by him.

  Mocking himself for the foolish thought, Marcus gave his overnight hostess his frank approval with a nod—sorry he’d acted the wrong end of the stallion. Then he sighed for what he’d never gained, but lost anyway, and looked about him.

  Standing among so many families, however broken, made him remember his childhood yearning to be part of a family. That particular need vanished, of course, when he became a man and discovered that scoundrels had more fun than husbands. He regarded his hostess with speculation, wondered at her inscrutable gaze, shrugged inwardly, and continued passing his pennies.

  A minute later, a bold little miss stroked his coarse whiskers. Marcus chuckled, gave her a penny, and caught Jade’s I-told-you-so brow. Yes, he thought, around her, he would need to shave twice a day.

  When Jade turned and left, Marcus moved on. One boy challenged him to a duel, another said he’d rather have a peppermint stick than a puppet show for his penny.

  China Doll seemed both cowed and fascinated by him. He’d wager she worried as much that he’d try to give her a penny as he would not. She might allow herself to breathe, if she could receive her penny without him stepping near.

  Challenged in a way he had not been for some time, determination compelled Marcus forward, until panic filled China Doll’s eyes, and she lowered her head and hunched her shoulders, as if to make herself smaller and less visible.

  Marcus stopped where he stood and regarded the woman who held her. “Good day to you,” he said. “Will you tell me your little one’s name? I do not think she is of a mind to tell me herself.”

  The woman paled. “I ... I’m not Emily’s mama. My name is Lacey Ashton, and I’m her friend,” she said. “Her mama left her in our care ... for a while.”

  Ah, like he and his brother ... Emily must feel lost, abandoned, frightened, which deepened Marcus’s compulsion to erase her fear, of him, at least. Who knew what had befallen her parents, but this was not the time for questions. “I see that Emily is shy,” he said. “But how will she get her penny if she’ll not accept it from me?”

  Lacey stroked the child’s tawny curls. “I don’t know. If she doesn’t get her penny, how will she see the puppets?”

  Marcus took half a step closer, knelt on his haunches, and waited for Emily’s shoulders to relax. Then he reached over, intending to lift her chin with a finger, but the closer he got, the more she trembled.

  Marcus drew his hand back. “Miss Emmy, I’m going to put this penny on the floor where you can reach it. Then I’m going to sit and watch the puppets from over there.” He pointed to a spot near the wall, not too far distant.

  When he straightened, Marcus saw that Jade had witnessed his failure. This time, however, when he met her gaze, she looked away, and the rigid set of her spine lessened, though not to a great degree.

  Not sure what that meant and still hoping to see Emily smile, Marcus shrugged inwardly and moved away. The puppet show had started.

  The room erupted in laughter as Ivy’s German pup, a Dachshund named Tweenie, made her entrance with the brim of a bottoms-up top hat between her teeth.

  With everyone’s attention on the pup, Emily picked up her penny.

  “It’s a sausage doggy,” a boy said. “A red one. Look, she’s standing.”

  “She’s begging,” his mother said. “Your penny! Put it in her hat.”

  Once they understood Tweenie was collecting admissions, the process went giggling-quick, until peppermint-stick-boy refused to give up his penny.

  Marcus laughed and stood calling for their attention. “After the show, I’ll give you each a penny to keep. Give the one you’ve got now to Tweenie.”

  Soon Ivy’s pup stood begging before Emily, who appeared as enamoured of the pup as the penny. With a shy bit of hesitation, she turned to look at Marcus, her lashes coyly shadowing her eyes.

  Marcus wanted to whoop, but he nodded solemnly instead. “Go ahead, Emily. I’ll give you another.” He lowered himself to the floor, his back against a gilded side chair.

&n
bsp; Face pink, Emily opened her fist over the top hat, but her penny stuck to her palm, before it dropped “plink” inside.

  Tweenie had finished collecting so Marcus patted his thigh, and the Dachshund waddled over to set the hat beside him. Then she climbed into his lap, circled thrice—stepping once where she ought not—and curled up to sleep.

  Emily’s gaze followed the pup, and now she looked up, eyes wide, at Marcus. He glanced down at his hand stroking Tweenie’s sleek red back and swallowed his smile.

  Ivy pitted Sergei the wolf puppet against Hector the hedgehog. “Be quiet now, I need to sleep,” Hedgehog told the audience as he settled down to snore.

  Sergei the Wolf wrapped himself in the cream wool pelt of a sheep and approached the sleeping hedgehog.

  “Wake up. Wake up,” the children shouted to hedgehog.

  Emily split her attention between the stage and Tweenie. When she glanced at him, Marcus crooked his finger to call her over.

  Emily looked quickly away.

  A minute later, she climbed from Lacey’s lap and sat beside her, as if to watch the puppet show from there. Then, at the rate of about an inch a minute, Emily began to sidle toward Marcus, until she sat closer to him than Lacey.

  “Take off one of your slippers,” Marcus whispered. “If you do, Tweenie will do a trick for you.”

  Emily began to struggle with a slipper.

  Out of nowhere, Jade knelt to help her.

  Emily stroked Jade’s hair lovingly.

  Again Marcus experienced an odd yearning to belong—different, mature, dangerous—and he pushed it aside.

  “Pull Emily’s stocking toe out a bit,” Marcus said, then he gave Emily a conspiring grin. “Now, Emmy, reach your foot over here and wiggle your toes.”

  He wasn’t sure who looked more puzzled, Emily or Jade, but at Jade’s nod, Emily did as he bid, and a minute didn’t pass before Tweenie’s head popped up.

  The pup crept slowly from Marcus’s lap and toward Emily’s foot, making Emily slide back, until Tweenie caught the sock’s toe between her teeth.

  Emily gasped and pulled her foot full back, but Tweenie wouldn’t stop tugging on her stocking, pulling it this way and that, as he backed away.

  The child caught the game and, that fast, a tug of war ensued between Emily and Tweenie.

  When Emily fell back giggling helplessly, the puppet show came to a halt, and Marcus saw tears on more than one amazed face.

  Jade looked soft, and ... approachable, and Marcus knew a gut-deep ache for something he shouldn’t want, didn’t deserve, and couldn’t have, because he owed a lifetime of responsibility to the brother he had all but destroyed.

  “You can’t stay,” Jade said, firming his resolve with her own.

  “I know,” Marcus said, wishing he could leave immediately.

  Whether the sudden round of cheers and applause lauded Emily’s giggles or Ivy’s puppets didn’t matter. Though Marcus needed to find another place to stay in Newhaven, from which to conduct his investigation, he felt damned good about the way his attempt to soothe Emily turned out.

  Though sorry he’d lost Jade’s good opinion, he wondered how he could lose something he’d never had, but devil-a-bit, that’s the way he felt.

  In one last pull, Tweenie won the tug-of-war and raced away with Emily’s prize sock, then Ivy came out to present the child with a new pair from the assortment he carried to reimburse Tweenie’s victims.

  Marcus had lost one of his own to the pup the night they’d spent on the road. Ivy—or Tweenie, he should say—kept a number of Sussex women employed knitting socks of all sizes.

  After Marcus distributed another round of pennies, Lacey Ashton approached him. “I came to thank you, Mr. Fitzalan, for your patient efforts to temper Emily’s fear.”

  “A rewarding diversion, Miss Ashton, and my pleasure.”

  Then Jade stood before him, and Marcus nodded a greeting. “If Emily’s father is the man who frightened her witless,” he said, “no wonder your low opinion of men.”

  “Which are you?” Jade asked, nodding toward the puppet stage. “The wolf or the sheep?”

  Marcus tugged on his ear. “I, er, believe I’m the hedgehog —like you—prickly for the most part, but soft when ... soothed.

  His nemesis stiffened once more.

  Marcus nearly smiled. His skill and his need for an inconspicuous place to stay in Newhaven, coupled with Jade’s need for a man of affairs, made Ivy consider them a perfect match, and Marcus thought, sure they were, like kindling and fire, they were a match.

  “In the event that I am willing to reconsider your employment,” Jade said, charging the silence, and him, with a fool’s hope. “Do you care to explain the other bit of business Ivy said you have in Newhaven?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot,” Marcus said. “’Tis a bit of private business on behalf of the Earl of Attleboro that I am not at liberty to divulge.”

  “Score one for loyalty,” Jade snapped as she turned to oversee the arriving teacart—this minute an elegant hostess, the last, a scandal in black leather.

  Everything about the woman put him on alert, made him want to know her ... in every sense, including the biblical, except that he’d ruined what little chance he had.

  Marcus knelt and welcomed Tweenie’s diverting kisses. He’d rather have Jade Smithfield’s, of course, but enthusiasm won over disinterest on the best of days, and despite his regret, Marcus found himself laughing.

  The small cake thrust under his nose came as a surprise.

  Tweenie’s tail slapped Marcus’s leg, either in response to the cake, or its giver, or both.

  “Is that for me?” Marcus asked Emily, who offered it with a trembling hand and raised chin.

  His brave china doll nodded solemnly.

  “Thank you, Emily,” Marcus said, accepting it.

  Biting into it, he made sounds of delightful appreciation solely to entertain her. “Eccles cakes stuffed with currants; my favourite.”

  Emily stood watching him, a cake of her own in her other hand, a light in her eyes, no smile on her face.

  “Would you care to join us for tea?” Marcus settled himself once again on the floor, his back against the wall.

  Emily nodded, more or less.

  “Tweenie, as you can see, likes the centre of my lap, so if you’d like to pet her, you may want to perch here on my knee. Would that be comfortable for you?”

  Emily hesitated, then sat, shocking him out of countenance, her back straight and stiff, so Marcus took care not to brace her. Better for her to fall, without support, than to run because of his touch.

  With Tweenie’s unsolicited help, she finished her cake quickly, and began petting the pup whose eyes closed in contentment. Eventually Emily relaxed her posture as well, before she slumped exhausted against him.

  Tweenie caught the movement and settled her puppy snout in Em’s small lap. Before Marcus knew it, both were sound asleep, a frightful warmth filling his cold scoundrel heart for serving as their pillow.

  At peace, his eyelids heavy and in danger of closing, despite the cacophony about him, Marcus saw a pair of silver satin slippers topped by the striped hem of a gown, and his heart thumped and sped to attention.

  Struck anew by the scandalous beauty, all thought of sleep fled.

  Emily shivered, taking his attention, and because he couldn’t give her his coat without waking her, he rubbed her arm.

  Jade’s hand grazed his as she bent to place her shawl over Emily. Then she regarded him, an energy like heat lightening, silent and invisible, passed between them.

  Jade closed her hand into a fist, and frowned down at him. “I will speak to you when she wakes. In the library.”

  “Does this mean you have reconsidered my position?”

  “Let us say that I am wavering.”

  “You despise me,” he said.

  “In almost every way,” she said. “Save one.”

  Marcus tilted his head for her to continue.

>   “Emily hasn’t laughed or stepped within reach of a man, not even my retainers, since I’ve known her.” Jade turned and made her way across the room.

  “I adore you,” Marcus said watching her, surprised and chagrined that he’d spoken the thought aloud.

  Chapter Three