Since the Surrender

by Julie Anne Long

  He nodded appreciatively. “Thank you. Fine apple, indeed.”

  He handed it back to Martin, who looked flattered and then made the rest of the apple disappear with one bite and flung the core indiscriminately over his shoulder.

  “Ow!” they heard distantly.

  Good arm, had Martin.

  “Soldier, was ye?” Martin asked without looking at Chase, fortunately spraying juice toward the rest of the crowd, as he didn’t want to miss a moment of his entertainment.

  “Was,” Chase said shortly. It was an easy enough conclusion to draw, given his limp and his age.

  “I works down ’t the docks. Unloading ships when they come in from America and India and the like.”

  “I’ll be off to India in a week or so.”

  “Ye dinna say!” Martin was intrigued.

  “I’m on assignment with East India Company.”

  “I’ve seen them come an’ go o’er the years. Ship’s in the dock now.”

  “The Courage, I’ll sail on.”

  “That’s the one,” Martin confirmed. “Best of luck to ye then, lad.”

  “Have they done the song yet?” Chase didn’t need to explain which song.

  “Nay.” Mr. Martin looked up at the sky, perhaps gauging the time of day. “They sang it but the one time I’ve ’eard. Aye, and see, now ’ere come the hat through the crowd.” Mr. Martin got up on his toes and peered. “They’ve done their bit for th’ day, and then they be off. Canna stay all day, I wager. Need to find a fresh crowd. I’ve ’eard it said they set up in Covent Garden now and agin and over t’ Grays Inn.”

  It had been a fluke, perhaps: the singing of the Colin song while he stood on the outskirts listening.

  Chase was relieved.

  Suddenly, excitement rustled through the crowd, and all around him audience members murmured and gripped each other’s arms in sheer anticipation—sure enough, the puppets had decided upon an encore.

  “And if you thought ye’d never see

  The likes of Colin Eversea

  Well, just take a look at the lot of them, boys!

  Sing along with me

  From their heads to their toes

  They’re all of them rogues

  And have been through history!”

  A song about Colin was one thing; insulting his entire clan was another thing altogether. Despite whether their musical assertions had any merit or not.

  Which, inarguably, they did.

  Chase flung eye daggers at the stage while marionettes happily disparaged his family and the crowd enjoyed it.

  “Love me a good rogue!” Mr. Martin enthused, rising up on the balls of his feet in enthusiasm. “The Everseas, they sound a right good time!”

  “Encore!” The crowd cried, predictably. Hands slapping together thunderously.

  The puppeteers obliged, and another squeaky song rang out, and this time the dance was a more languid one.

  “Georgie porgie puddin’ pie

  Kiss the girls and make them cry

  And while the world is fast asleep

  The lords are all in their cups deep

  The angel looks the other way

  When they come and take the girls away.”

  Chase froze.

  Come and take the girls away?

  Cryptic and chilling as hell, calculated to intrigue…and once again, a bloody angel.

  He loathed being intrigued by puppets.

  He turned on his heel and stormed in the opposite direction, with a cursory tip of the hat to Martin, who looked startled by his abrupt departure.

  It was as difficult, however, to swim against the tide of the crowd here as it was to move through Callender’s crush. The masses did gulp down their free entertainment, and were resentful when someone thought to deprive them of a moment of it, even if they took that moment just to budge their arses.

  “Captain Eversea!” came a sharp little cockney voice from somewhere near his hip.

  “Christ!”

  Liam was delighted to have startled him.

  “How did you know I was a captain, anyway?” Chase said testily.

  “The liedy. Mrs. March. She told me to call ye ‘Captain.’ Or else,” he added admiringly.

  “Did she really add the ‘or else’?” He was fascinated by this.

  “Nay, but she might well as ’ave. Sounds just like ye, she does.” Liam was all admiration.

  “What did you call me instead before that?”

  Liam’s jaw dropped. He was clearly full of awe for how clever Chase was. But he wasn’t about to tattle on himself.

  “You might as well give up, Liam, Not only was I in the army, but I was once a boy and I have three brothers. I have the advantage over you in every regard.”

  “Mayhap ye do.”

  Chase found himself smiling at this guarded concession. “Did you enjoy the puppets?”

  “Are you the person they’re singing about?” he asked shrewdly. He opened his mouth to bellow. “Oh, if ye thought ye’d nivver see—”

  Chase frowned at him so blackly Liam clapped his mouth shut instantly.

  “Have you a report for me, Liam?” he demanded.

  “Aye, Captain. Six men went in. No liedies. Three men came out. But the same what went in weren’t the same what went out.”

  What the devil was going on in there?

  “You’re absolutely certain?” he asked sternly.

  He’d been in that museum. It was more like a mausoleum, in some ways, in terms of its silence. Not exactly thronged with the fashionable set. They needed to go inside and take a look around to see what might be going on there. After dark.

  Doing anything at all with Rosalind after dark started a frisson of pleasure up his spine.

  “Did you recognize any of the men today, Liam? Callender? Ireton?”

  “Nay, and came away with ha’pence only,” Liam said regretfully and meaningfully. “From a man ’oo went away in an ’ack.

  “Good work, Liam.”

  Liam glowed. “Thank you, Captain Eversea,” he said gravely.

  Chase produced a shilling, and tipped his hat to Liam, half sardonically. Chase thought he would walk as far as Black Cat Lane and try to find a hack.

  Liam apparently didn’t think “Thank you” was synonymous with “Good-bye,” which was what Chase had hoped.

  The boy trailed behind him.

  “My sister, she didna return ’ome last night.” He said it casually.

  A peculiar cold sensation plucked at the back of Chase’s neck. “Where is home?” he asked offhandedly.

  “Rooms o’er the shop there.” Liam pointed so vaguely past the square that Chase was certain he was lying.

  Chase kept walking. Strangely panicked. He didn’t want to know more about the boy. Liam continued to walk behind him.

  “Does she always return home at night?” He began to worry that Liam’s sister was a prostitute.

  He was irritated that he was worried at all.

  The boy shrugged. Chase stared at him, not wanting to ask and yet suddenly unable not to. Which made the question come out more sharply than he’d intended.

  “What is your sister’s name?”

  “’Ortensia.”

  Chase sighed. “It’s not.”

  “It is!” Liam insisted, planting his feet three feet apart as though bracing himself against the gale force of Chase’s certainty.

  Chase stared him down.

  “’Er name is Meggie,” Liam confessed. “But I wish it was ’ortensia. ’Tis a right pleasure to say, ain’t it? ‘’Ortensia, ’ortensia, ’ortensia.’” He hopped a hop for every syllable of the name on the cobblestones as he sang out the name.

  “Liam.” Chase needed to interrupt before he went mad.

  “Aye, Captain Eversea.”

  “Are you worried about your sister?”

  “Nay. She’s fat and cruel.”

  “Is she?”

  He was silent. Hopping over the cobblestones thoughtfully.
“She looks like me mum.”

  “And your mum?”

  “Well, she’s dead, ain’t she?” Liam said with some resignation.

  “Is she? I’m sorry.”

  Liam said nothing. He did one more halfhearted Hortensia hop, just for rebellion’s sake.

  “Your father?”

  Another of those shrugs.

  “Have you a surname?”

  “’Tis Plum.”

  Which meant it might be and might not be.

  “Is Meggie truly fat and cruel?”

  “Nay,” Liam admitted after a moment. “Quite nice, actually. Pretty. Pretty as Mrs. March.”

  Chase doubted this very much, but Mrs. March was most definitely his own standard of pretty, so he didn’t debate the point.

  “Where do you suppose Meggie is?”

  A hesitation. Something haunted flickered over Liam’s face.

  “She’ll come ’ome.” He said this with confidence, as though speaking to himself. With a little smile. As though he were the only one in the world who could reassure himself in Meggie’s absence.

  Chase felt an impatience, a pressure rising in his chest. And he was rendered absolutely, coldly silent.

  His impatience wasn’t with the boy, but with the world as it was, and what passed for justice, and for the complications it seemed to be laying in his path two weeks before he would leave this boy, and Rosalind, and his family, and his country, behind.

  He didn’t want to care. It was uncomfortable; his soul ached, creaking, like a muscle unused too long.

  “Is that a new shirt?”

  “Ye’ve an eye for detail, too, Captain Eversea. Mrs. Bandycross. Bought fer a penny. I wanted one like yers.”

  It was much too big for him, but it was a decent shirt and clean, and he supposed it could be considered “like his” in that regard. And Chase knew it had probably been stolen before Liam bought it, since everything in London was capital and could be stolen, bartered, sold and resold, and he didn’t even bother inquiring who Mrs. Bandycross might be. A fence, doubtless.

  If the shirt was clean, the face was not. “Liam, wouldn’t you rather be clean?”

  “Ain’t I?” He sounded surprised.

  How to answer that question? “To an extent.”

  Liam sussed out the meaning of this. “Jus’ get dirty again, wouldn’t I? The water from the wells is fer drinkin’, not bathin’. And fer tea, when there’s tea. Fer when Meggie comes ’ome wi’ enough money.”

  What if Meggie didn’t come home?

  Chase watched Liam and felt the terror of this possibility, and knew that Liam must, too. But children had a gift for imagining the impossible and for hope, and this one was irrepressible. But he was small, and the world indifferent to the likes of him and Meggie, and if there was no one else between Liam and the world, he could still be crushed.

  A hackney was clopping by.

  Chase needed to hail it, desperate to know if a message from Rosalind awaited him at home, to know if he could help her, at least. To be of use to someone.

  To take the worry from her eyes.

  “Goin’ to see Mrs. March?” the boy said slyly, dragging his dirty toes up and down one dirty calf.

  “Ah, so she introduced herself to you, did she? Gave her name to you?”

  “We ’ad a fine chin-wagging a few nights ago,” Liam said as Chase boarded the hack. “About you!” He leaped on the hackney footboard momentarily for the sheer pleasure of being a rascal.

  Then hopped down again, and he and his grin became smaller and smaller and smaller as the hack took Chase home.

  Chapter 14

  It was with a sense of unreality that Rosalind found herself climbing the steep, judgmentally squeaking stairs of a brothel.

  Waaanton, the stairs seemed to squeak. Waanton.

  Chase was behind her. Doubtless watching the sway of her arse.

  Within two days of seeing Charles Eversea again, she’d obligingly parted her legs just a liiittle bit more so he could fondle her more explicitly behind a bookcase, and rejected a marriage proposal, which might have very well saved her honor in his eyes and her own.

  She supposed climbing the creaking, steep stairs of a brothel while ten pairs of curious female eyes bored into her was a natural progression. She’d even been introduced to a woman whose first name seemed to be “The.” As in The Duchess.

  Mortifyingly, the Duchess had looked at Rosalind, then at Chase, and said, “It’s the men who have been somewhat scarce of late, not the girls, so you needn’t have brought your own.”

  Brought his own! As if she were a picnic lunch!

  Chase was all aplomb and ease in the place. “I fear we’re paying a social call today. I have a question about your paintings. I wondered if you owned any Rubinettos?”

  “Who the devil is Rubinetto?” The Duchess was amused. “I’m afraid our paintings do not precisely come with pedigrees. I’m not even certain any of them are signed. We owe their presence to a number of artists, but one in particular. He occasionally takes it out in trade, and none of the girls here object, as he’s quite a charming devil and not at all objectionable.”

  “Bartering is a fine English tradition,” Chase humored. “Now…Duchess…this might sound…untoward…”

  “We pride ourselves on the untoward, Captain.”

  “But may I bring my friend up to look at the painting?”

  “To…‘look’ at the painting?” The Duchess was all arched brows and insinuating incredulity. And Rosalind’s face heated about ten degrees.

  “Yes. Is the room occupied at the moment?”

  “Not at the moment, but from the look of things between Amanda and Mr. Lavay, you might want to be quick about…looking at the painting.”

  So up the stairs they went.

  The very first thing Rosalind noticed, of course, was the bed. A pink velvet counterpane was stretched over a plump mattress, and a heap of fat pillows were mounded at the head of it.

  The sight of it made her swallow.

  “It’s there,” Chase said softly.

  She didn’t need to follow the casual gesture he made. She found it—the painting—over the bed.

  She was riveted.

  A gentleman—presumably he was a gentleman, to have the money to pay for such a thing—was sprawling on a settee, knees up, great hairy white legs spread wide-open, arms flung behind him, his eyes rolled back in all appearance of bliss. He possessed Byronic curls.

  Kneeling between his legs was the angel, quite nude apart from some superfluous gossamer scraps clinging to her, not covering any parts typically covered by clothing, and she was leaning over him attentively.

  His enormous cock was in her mouth.

  Rosalind suspected she stopped breathing.

  She stopped being aware of the functioning of her lungs anyhow. But she could suddenly feel every inch of her skin, feverish, alert as though every cell had its own lively consciousness.

  “Rosalind.”

  She gave a start. But she didn’t turn. Low, soft. God. That voice. He might as well have just licked the back of her neck.

  “I—” she croaked.

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t stop staring. She did manage to tear her eyes away for a moment to inspect for a signature: there was none. But her eyes went back to the interesting portion of the painting immediately.

  “Rosalind.”

  Since she couldn’t seem to turn around, because the sight of him would likely further overwhelm her senses and she might very well swoon, which had never done in her life. She closed her eyes.

  “Are you shocked?” he asked softly. He sounded concerned.

  She was fairly certain she’d find his eyes devilishly glinting when she mustered the nerve to look into them.

  ‘Of…of course not.” Her voice was still very weak, but she managed a semblance of indignation. “I’ve of course seen that sort of thing before.”

  Dear God. Why on earth had she said that?

&nbs
p; She instantly wished again for her invisibility shawl. He had warned her about the painting.

  He was struggling to keep his voice solemn. The bloody man. “Oh. Have you, then?”

  She swallowed. She still couldn’t bring herself to turn around. “Does it really…” She faltered.

  “Does it really…what?”

  She turned, as if the rush of words spun her around. “Does it really feel as good as the painting makes it seem?”

  And now he was speechless. He stared at her a moment, drop-jawed.

  He closed his jaw. And then his words emerged in stumbling disbelief. “The colonel never asked you to…that is…you didn’t…”

  How would she ever survive the conflagration that was her cheeks at the moment? She said nothing.

  “He didn’t?” Chase was well and truly shocked.

  Which seemed a funny thing to be shocked about.

  She knew her continued silence was answering all manner of questions for him.

  “Yes,” he said finally, quite evenly, in clear bemusement. “It feels every bit as extraordinary as the painting would have you believe.”

  A beat of silence.

  “Oh.” She tried to say it casually; the word emerged a cracked squeak. It was difficult to be casual when he was looking at her like that, and he possessed those eyes, those hands, that body, that mouth, that mouth, that mouth…

  Curiosity and helpless arousal were overriding good sense and embarrassment: “But do married men and women—”

  “Oh, dear God. Without a doubt, Rosalind,” he said instantly. “It is not an activity confined to brothels.” He didn’t add, It’s quite commonplace, you poor sheltered ninny, but she thought she detected the flavor of that sentiment between the words.

  She absorbed this enormity for a moment.

  “Shall I describe the pleasure to you, Rosalind?” His voice felt like it was coming from inside her. She felt it on her skin, as surely as hands.