The Likelihood of Lucy (Regency Reformers Book 2)

by Jenny Holiday

  He cocked his head, silently urging her to make her choice.

  She pointed at his left hand. Opening it, he turned it over—empty.

  His grin widened. Goodness, he was self-impressed today. More so than usual. Perhaps today’s biscuit was harder won than most.

  Unable to prevent an answering smile from blooming on her lips, she pointed to the remaining fist.

  He turned it more slowly this time, rotating it so his fingers faced up but still not opening them to reveal her prize.

  Laughing, she tapped them impatiently.

  He opened, and her laughter died on her lips, replaced by a gasp. “Trevor!” she cried, abandoning their game of not speaking. “What is that?”

  “It’s a ring. I hadn’t thought you so daft you can’t recognize a ring.”

  He tried to hand it to her, but she recoiled. Where could he possibly have gotten it?

  “It’s a jade.” He moved it closer to her.

  She couldn’t resist running her finger over the smooth, glassy gem. Of course she knew what a ring was, but they didn’t see jewelry in Seven Dials. What good were jewels when your belly was empty?

  It was beautiful, though. The small, flat, green stone secured with gold prongs and set in a slim band made for a simple, understated bauble. “How much do you think you can get for it?” she asked.

  “No.” He shook his head, shoving it right up under her nose. “It’s for you.”

  “I beg your pardon!” It was a phrase her mother used, and she summoned it by rote to express her confusion, but she knew it wasn’t the kind of thing people said in Seven Dials.

  He laughed. “Exactly. A proper ring for a proper lady.”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. “I’m no lady, Trevor.”

  “You are, though. And this reminded me of you. Wear it, and it will remind you, too.”

  She still hadn’t taken the ring. He jiggled it. “I believe this is the part where a proper lady would say thank you.”

  She opened her mouth to protest again. He could feed himself for weeks—months—with what that ring would fetch. But his expression had changed. Gone was the easy, jesting countenance, replaced by a furrowed brow and eyes that burned with an intensity she couldn’t quite characterize.

  “Take it,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Her breath hitched then. What would she do without Trevor, her loyal companion, her protector? Surely God was good, for how else to explain a friend like him?

  So she held out her hand and let him slip the too-large ring on her middle finger.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for everything.”

  The sample room proved to be, in the light of day, a complete mess.

  The name was accurate. There must have been two dozen different varieties of towels alone strewn about the room. And the samples weren’t limited to those that would ultimately grace the bedrooms. There were dining serviettes and even a row of teacups and a pile of silver on the dressing table.

  Lucy had awakened before the sun, still not quite able to absorb the fact that she was safe. Her mind was unsettled thanks to the fitful dream she’d kept rousing from and falling back into, so she began tidying, folding everything into neat piles. The layer of dust that had settled on the furniture she tackled with one of the vetoed towels. “God forgive me!” she exclaimed as she used the thick, plush cotton—finer than any towel she’d ever used on her body, even in the great homes she’d served in—to wipe the flat surfaces in the room.

  Cleaning soothed her. Bringing order to chaos in a way that was impossible in the wider world was a respite from the uncertainty that had dogged her most of the night, making sleep impossible. What on earth was she going to do with herself? Could Trevor really find her a new situation as easily as he’d suggested?

  She didn’t stop in her efforts, even when he rapped on the door and she called permission to enter. As she’d always told her charges, busy hands keep the mind still. Aiming an artificial smile at him, she pulled the counterpane up on the bed, the final step in making it. The scowl he summoned in response made her shiver. Like the sample room, in the light of day, the hotel’s proprietor appeared a little more…disorderly. The post-storm sunlight streaming in through the window was not enough to make her retract last night’s impression, but it did prompt her to revise it. He was still devilishly handsome, with his wide, superfine-encased shoulders and his green eyes. But there was an edge to him. She had sensed it last night, and today she could see its physical manifestation. His ginger-blond hair was flecked with a hint of premature white at the temples, and the years had begun to etch lines around his eyes.

  “Stop cleaning.”

  “And a good morning to you, too.” Another precept she’d always tried to instill in her pupils—a false show of confidence could sometimes lead to the real thing. Not that she was preaching affectation. Never that. Mrs. Wollstonecraft, her guiding light in all things, would not approve.

  He did not stop scowling. “You are a guest here. Guests don’t clean.”

  “Well, somebody has to. Beds don’t make themselves.”

  “Why make them at all?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t make mine. Why bother? You’re just going to get into it again later.”

  She would have laughed, but he seemed perfectly in earnest. And she had to admit there was some logic to his position. Still, she felt compelled to defend herself. “A servant worth his or her salt would not be able to look at an unmade bed and not remedy it. You have no servants at all?”

  “I’ll have an army of them when the hotel opens—a hiring spree is my next major task, in fact, and not one I’m looking forward to. For now, I have a woman who comes in for half days and cooks. But no one enters my private apartments. Ever.”

  “I did.”

  “Yes.” He moved to the bed and threw the counterpane back, undoing her work. “And you’re not a servant.”

  She had to cover her shock at his deliberate mussing of the bed. “That’s debatable. The fate of the governess is to be forever lodged in the limbo between the household and its staff. She is not quite a servant, not quite a member of the family. Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote, ‘A teacher at a school is only a kind of upper servant, who has more work than the menial ones. A governess to young ladies is equally disagreeable.’”

  Clamping her mouth shut, she checked herself. There was no need to start up with Mary. That was exactly what had landed her in this mess to begin with. It’s just that Mary’s words were always so close to Lucy’s heart. It was difficult to censor herself sometimes. But that’s exactly what she had to learn to do if she was lucky enough to secure another position.

  “Be that as it may, at the Jade, you are a guest.” He set a package on the unmade bed. “Put this on, and then we’re going out. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  He was gone before she could answer.

  The dress wasn’t too bad, Trevor thought when Lucy appeared in the kitchen ten minutes later. A little large, but her cloak, which had dried overnight, would cover it. It hardly mattered because anyone who looked at Lucy Green on this fine, sunny morning wouldn’t be looking at her dress. They’d be trying to imagine what was underneath it. As he was now. Which was absolutely uncalled for, so he forced his eyes to her face.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, skepticism etched onto her features as she ran her hands down the pale green muslin. He wasn’t accustomed to having those suspicious eyes aimed at him. Back in Seven Dials, they would have been co-conspirators.

  Once again, he examined her eyes, familiar yet not. Light brown, almost amber pools, they tracked his every move. Just like last night, he couldn’t stop staring at them, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fiery, mischievous Lucy he remembered. He didn’t want another false smile like she’d aimed at him upstairs earlier, or jokes she delivered by rote. “I think we covered this last night. I have powerful friends. And money. Money can buy a great many things.�
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  “Money can buy a dress before eight o’clock in the morning?”

  He tried not to smile at that. He was rather proud of himself. “It can. It can also buy a modiste who is calling tomorrow afternoon.” He set a cup of tea in front of her and held a finger aloft to silence the protest he knew was coming. “If we’re going to find you a new situation, you need to look the part.” She did not look placated, so he turned to evasive tactics, setting a plate of cheese and bread in front of her. “I’m sorry it’s not much. We’ll buy provisions when we’re out.”

  Lucy watched him as she ate. He tried not to squirm. Being the object of grown-up Lucy’s attention made him jumpy. Part of him wanted to implore her to tell him everything. But it was better to let her come to it on her own—he knew that. Lucy was a rational, logical sort and didn’t respond to emotional entreaties. Like last night—he’d been measured in his approach and eventually rewarded with a torrent of words pouring forth from her.

  After eating in silence for a few moments, she pushed her plate away. Eating too fast—it was a habit he hadn’t been able to shake, either.

  He stood. “It’s been raining for days, and I’ve been cooped up in this place for far too long.” He offered her his arm. “Miss Green, shall we?

  She hesitated for a moment but took his arm. They made their way outside and to the end of the block before she corrected him.

  “Actually, it’s Miss Greenleaf now.”

  He broke stride for a moment before recovering. She must have sensed his confusion, for she added, “I changed it.” She pressed her lips together. “When they took me away, it was to a school. You imagined as much, I think?”

  He nodded, glancing at her sideways as they walked on. It was what he had hoped, what he’d counted on.

  “When Lady Waring—that was her name, my benefactress—drove away with me, it was to a place called Miss Grisham’s School for Wayward Girls.”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “Wayward. Well, you fit the bill perfectly, didn’t you?”

  She ignored him, just as she’d always done when he teased her. “When I arrived, the headmistress—who was not named Miss Grisham, by the way—asked me what my name was. I said Lucy Greenleaf. They wrote it down somewhere, and it became real.”

  “Just like that.”

  “I was surprised, too. I kept waiting for someone to correct me. But it was like we didn’t exist in Seven Dials. Everything was erased.”

  “But isn’t that what you wanted? What you intended by making up a new name?”

  Her grip on his arm intensified. “I had to leave it behind, Trevor. I had to leave everything behind. If I had to go, I decided to really go.”

  “I know.” And he did. It was what he’d wanted. What he’d arranged. So why was there a lump in his throat when he thought of eleven-year-old Lucy Green, alone in a strange new world, casting off her past and rechristening herself?

  He cleared his throat. “Why Greenleaf? Why not, say, Clutterbottom? Lucy Clutterbottom has a real ring to it, don’t you think?”

  The smile reached her eyes, and he wanted to raise a fist to the sky in victory as triumph surged through him. She was still in there. He decided right then and there that for the brief time they would be together, before he set her back up in the life she was meant to have, he would make it his mission to fan the flames of that spark, to make her set down her cares periodically, even if only for a moment.

  “Who knows? I wasn’t aiming for wholesale or dramatic change. It was symbolic more than anything. I think the youthful me thought adding ‘leaf’ made the name sound…new.”

  “Crisp, fresh. Like a bud in spring.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Lucy Greenleaf. It sounds like the name of a reformer.”

  She coughed a little, drawing his attention again.

  “Are you a reformer?” Dear God, that would complicate things, wouldn’t it? He thought of Blackstone’s wife, Emily, a crusader against slavery. The world did not take kindly to women who agitated for radical causes.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. She was avoiding the question.

  Remembering his scheme not to press her, he bit his tongue. There was more there, but he would find out later. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t seem like the sort of person who goes anywhere without a destination—not anymore.”

  “Yes, we did do more than our share of aimless wandering back then, didn’t we?”

  “It wasn’t exactly aimless. We might not have known where we were going, but we knew what we were looking for.”

  “If by ‘what we were looking for,’ you mean ‘trouble,’” he said, “then I am in complete agreement.”

  She laughed, and it did his heart good to hear it.

  “Indeed.” She stopped in front of a store window, eyeing a display of bonnets and ribbons. “We’d be plotting some way to fleece these fine merchants.” Leaning closer to examine a small bauble, she added, “Actually, we wouldn’t have been out hunting trouble in this neighborhood.”

  “Yes, our prey was usually less bonnets, more bread.”

  “Do you ever miss it?”

  A complicated question. “Do you?”

  “I would have said no. And, really, no. I’ve spent my whole life running from Seven Dials. But sometimes I miss…I don’t know, the feeling of not being beholden to anyone.”

  “Yes,” he said, unsettled by how well she’d articulated a sentiment he hadn’t realized he shared. “Life was brutish, and I’m sure neither of us would go back, given the choice, but it came with a certain kind of liberty, didn’t it?”

  “There are lots of different kinds of freedom,” she said quietly, intently examining a straw bonnet trimmed with yellow gingham ribbons. “And lots of different kinds of chains.”

  The bold statement hit him hard. Lucy had always been smart. Her mother, in moments of lucidity, had instructed Lucy as best she could. It hadn’t held her in good stead in their neighborhood—had marked her for mockery, in fact, as the others shunned her for acting above her station. But it seemed that in addition to intelligence, Lucy had also gained a deeper wisdom. He knew what she meant about freedom and chains. On the surface of things, he had more freedom than ever. His growing wealth ensured that. But the society he moved in now, with its absurd rules and arbitrary conventions, came with hundreds of tiny, invisible chains.

  Still, now was not the time to talk philosophy. Now was the time to stage a meandering, destinationless walk, in order to get Lucy talking.

  “Let’s see,” he said, tugging her away from the window. “A certain kind of freedom. You wouldn’t be referring to the Great Cake Heist of 1795, would you?”

  She snorted. A very ladylike snort, and one she covered quickly, but there it was. He lifted an eyebrow at her, pretending impatience. “Enough bonnet ogling. We have marketing to do. Unless you prefer to starve, for it’s my woman’s day off.”

  An hour later, on their way home, his patience was rewarded when Lucy finally began talking—really talking.

  They were just finishing up with the fishmonger, she having bargained the man down from what she called the “unconscionable price” he was asking for a trout. Her cheeks were pink, and her hair had begun to escape the confines of her bonnet.

  “That was exceedingly satisfying!” she exclaimed. “Though I confess I’m surprised you do your own marketing.”

  “I don’t usually. But not because I consider it beneath me. I’m usually too busy.” He popped a chestnut into his mouth. “But it’s important to remember how to do actual things.”

  She stopped in her tracks, and it took him a moment to realize she’d fallen out of step with him. “I am a reformer, is the thing,” she said, when he’d turned back to see what was keeping her. “If you’re going to help me, you should know that.”

  He had to swallow a victorious laugh. He knew it.

  “It’s why I was dismissed from my last posit
ion. And the one before that—although that time I wasn’t dismissed so…emphatically.”

  He nodded, trying to maintain a neutral countenance. His campaign of patient waiting was about to pay off. If he knew Lucy Green—Lucy Greenleaf, rather—she was about to pour forth the truth in a torrent of words.

  “I am a devotee of Mary Wollstonecraft, you see.”

  “The writer?” He searched his mind. Of course, he knew Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous work arguing for the rights of women and was vaguely aware that she had written about the French Revolution. But she had been discredited after her death by the publication of a book by her husband. “It seems the only time one ever hears of Mary Wollstonecraft these days is when her disgrace is being referenced.”

  “Mrs. Wollstonecraft has been unfairly disgraced,” Lucy snapped. “Unjustly and grievously pilloried, in fact. I am determined to rehabilitate her reputation.”

  Trevor blinked, caught off guard by the vehemence of her rebuttal. “But what about all the revelations in her husband’s book? My God, Lucy, the illegitimate child? The suicide attempts? From all accounts, her life sounded like a dreadful novel.”

  “She was a brave woman, trying to live her ideals in an unforgiving society.” Lucy quickened her steps. “And her private affairs would have remained private had her husband, clearly overestimating the ability of society to embrace an uncensored account of a brilliant and unconventional spirit like Mary’s, not published that dratted memoir. If he had just held his peace, she would have gone to her grave admired instead of spat upon.”

  She stopped walking then, just as he had adjusted to her new, rapid pace, and gazed at the sky. “Yet it is hard to fault him, for I believe he loved her and meant to honor her, wanting the world to know that the spirit of genius had walked among them.”

  “And you were dismissed because you made a defense of her?” He wasn’t quite seeing the connection. It wasn’t as if governesses generally talked politics with the members of the households they served. In fact, the job of a governess was more about schooling young ladies in diplomacy—in other words, how to avoid talking about politics.