Unraveled

by Courtney Milan

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “What are you still doing here?” he growled. “I thought you’d finally decided to let me be.”

  “I’m no good at this, Robbie. If I were your mother, I’d know what to say. I’d make you laugh and feel better, and you’d never have need to complain.”

  “Sure,” he agreed bitterly.

  “But I’m not. I don’t know how to be a mother. What role do you want me to play instead?”

  Another shrug of his scrawny shoulders. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  His shoulders stiffened. But he didn’t look at her. After a few moments, he shrugged again. “I suppose,” he said.

  Oh, that hurt. To have all her care, all her work, tossed aside in one insouciant shrug of his shoulders. Years of looking after him had culminated in this bored rejection.

  “Best to get on with it,” Robbie said. But his voice broke on the last word, and his shoulders quivered. And that was when Miranda realized that he was crying—quietly, but crying nonetheless.

  She stared at him, absolutely flummoxed. Surly, sullen, and…sad? What was she supposed to do?

  She stood and walked down the steps to the window. “Hey, now,” she whispered. “It’s not so bad as that.”

  He wiped furiously at his eyes. “Sure. Wait ’til you hear.”

  “Hear what?”

  “I was arrested today.”

  “What? Oh, no. But…but you didn’t… Oh.” A knot in her belly tightened. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” He hunched. “Maybe I just tried. I did it wrong, in any event.”

  “And they brought you in.”

  “Made me talk to some fellow, who was supposed to determine if…um, something. It wasn’t a trial. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  Wasn’t really paying attention Miranda translated as too scared to ask questions.

  “Was he a constable?” Miranda asked.

  “I guess,” Robbie said. “He let me go. But he yelled at me afterward.”

  “Yelled?” Miranda said. “What afterward?” Thank God the man he’d talked to had some compassion. It was a rare enough quality in the constables.

  “He said, because I didn’t actually manage to steal the watch, he couldn’t prove what I meant to do, and he could treat it as…as something. I don’t remember.”

  “What do you remember?” Miranda tried to ask the question as gently as she could.

  “He said he could get me an apprenticeship at a shipwright.”

  Miranda held her breath, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing. It was more than she could have given him—a good start at life, a chance for solid work doing something Robbie enjoyed. It also cost more than she could imagine. That kind of favor, held over her head by some unknown person... “And what did you say? Did you accept?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose. I didn’t really have much choice. After this, you won’t want anything to do with me, anyway.”

  His shoulders hunched even more, and Miranda stared at his back in puzzlement.

  “Why wouldn’t I want anything to do with you?”

  “You always told me that if I ever risked hanging, you would never speak to me again. I know you never wanted me. You tried to get rid of me.” His matter-of-fact tone broke her heart—as if he were recounting unalterable truths.

  Maybe that’s the way it had seemed to him. After his mother had disappeared, Miranda had tried to get someone—anyone—to take the boy. Of course she had. She’d been a child herself.

  She hadn’t wanted the responsibility. To Robbie, no doubt it had seemed that she hadn’t wanted him.

  “Oh,” she breathed. She’d told a boy who’d been abandoned by his mother that she was going to leave him, too, unless he listened to her. He’d thought she’d meant it.

  Slowly she set her hand on his shoulder.

  He leaned away an inch and only gave one solitary half-hearted grunt in protest. It was practically encouragement. So she made a fist and rubbed his hair until it stood up on end.

  “Stop that,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull away.

  “Do you want to be a shipwright?”

  Another shrug. “I guess.”

  “It’s a good profession. And you’re good at arithmetic. You were always good working with the carpenter when you were little.” More practically, shipwrights could speak in two-word sentences and still get paid.

  He slouched further. “You want me to go.”

  “I’d still get to see you sometimes, wouldn’t I? On Sabbaths and holidays. I’d miss you the rest of the time, but I suppose I’d manage.”

  “You’d miss me?”

  Miranda sighed, and dropped her voice into a gravelly imitation of his. “I guess,” she intoned.

  It took him a moment to realize she was mocking him, but he let out an exasperated sigh and punched her, lightly, on the arm. And then, leaving the rest unspoken, he pulled his legs in, slid off the sill, and started up the stairs.

  Halfway to their garret, Robbie stopped. “Oh, I had a message for you. From the fellow who talked to me.”

  “A message? For me?”

  “He said to meet him…um…somewhere. By a castle. Or a church. Something like that. Tomorrow at six in the morning.”

  “Why does a constable want to meet me at six in the morning? He doesn’t even know who I am.”

  But as soon as she said the words, she knew the answer. Robbie turned to her, his eyes wide and innocent. “Didn’t I say? It was that man—the one I hit over the head.”

  Chapter Ten

  SMITE WAS NOT USED to indecision, but when the next morning dawned, he still had not determined whether he actually wanted to see Miss Darling again. He’d asked Robbie to convey the invitation on impulse—if one could call the product of long nights spent wanting an impulse. He crossed over to the green surrounding the old churchyard with Ghost tugging at the lead.

  There was no question what he should do. He shouldn’t want her at all. It had been foolish to ask, and even more foolish to pursue the…could he call what he’d planned an acquaintance?

  He came to the stone walls of St. Philip’s Church and slowly turned about. He was alone. She hadn’t come.

  Damn. The mist twined about the walls, turning the dawn to grayness. Regret was bitter.

  Smite didn’t believe in regret. He didn’t need her. He’d only wanted her.

  He stared into the slowly dissipating fog and willed it to show her form. But there was nobody about.

  Apparently, he was lacking in all good sense. He slipped the lead from around Ghost’s neck and gave him a pat. The animal darted off through the fog, in search of pigeons to chase.

  The city was just coming to life. The brewery across the harbor had begun to belch smoke into the sky. Ghost came barreling back through the mist, a stick in his mouth. He tossed it on the ground before Smite and danced back, eagerly waiting.

  “Very well, you wretched animal,” Smite said. He picked it up and hurled it as far as it would go.

  He was watching his dog run in great bounding leaps, when he heard a delighted laugh beside him.

  “He led me to you, you know.”

  He turned.

  Miranda Darling was standing behind him, one hand on the ruined stone wall. She was smiling at him.

  “By Robbie’s message, I thought you meant us to meet more by the bridge. Whatever you intended to say came somewhat garbled from the messenger.” She gestured. “I was quite put out at having got up so early, only to be snubbed.”

  It was too early for sun, but her hair under her bonnet was as brilliant as a summer sunrise. She probably wasn’t pretty, at least not in the classical sense of pristine English beauty. Her mouth was too wide; her nose too snub. And there was that profusion of freckles that covered her nose.

  Classical English beauty could go hang, for all Smite cared. His mouth dried.

  “And then I saw your dog bounding up out of the mist,” she continued.r />
  A ways off, Ghost pounced on the stick and shook it vigorously. “Good dog,” Smite said approvingly.

  “Robbie told me what you did for him. Thank—”

  He cut her off with a decisive chop of his hand. “Don’t thank me.”

  “But I must. It may have meant very little to you, but to me, to Robbie, it means everything.” Her gown was tied with a simple fabric sash. She rubbed the ends between her fingers, not meeting his eyes.

  “That was not a selfish attempt to coerce you into singing my praises. I shouldn’t have done it. It was wrong for me to act in my capacity as magistrate when I knew my decision could be biased by personal inclination. I will not do it again.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Then…I’m sorry?”

  He leaned down, retrieved Ghost’s stick, and threw it once more. “Don’t apologize, either. I don’t make a habit of fostering regrets.”

  She appeared to be only mildly taken aback, which seemed quite promising. His heart was laboring. His pulse beat heavily. There was no right way to proceed, and it seemed suddenly insupportable that this conversation would end any other way than what he’d envisioned last night.

  “I surmised, based on our prior conversation, that Robbie might profit from an apprenticeship to a shipwright.”

  “I know. But the expense…”

  “Is nothing. I’ve taken care of it.”

  She didn’t burst into raptures, thank God. Instead, she stared at him suspiciously. “Why would you do that?” she asked. “I’m a little wary of accepting such a favor when I don’t know how it can ever be repaid.”

  “This isn’t commerce. I don’t require payment, and I certainly don’t expect it of you.”

  But she simply tapped her foot and glowered. “If you didn’t expect anything of me, you’d have done it anonymously. You’d not have asked me to meet you. You expect something. What is it?”

  He was a magistrate, and what’s more, he had all the money. No wonder she was nervous.

  He met her eyes once more. “If you insist on repaying me, I ask only that you hear my next proposition in its entirety before you slap my face.”

  She drew in a breath. “Am I going to want to slap your face?”

  He rather hoped not. There had to be some way to put her at ease, but he didn’t know it. Instead he shrugged.

  “It’s like this: I can’t put you out of my mind.”

  She’d not been expecting that. Her eyes widened. To tell the truth, he hadn’t expected to start that way, either.

  “I think of you in my free moments,” he said. The words came faster. “I think of you in moments that ought to be taken up by work. It’s affecting my judgment—witness what happened with Robbie yesterday. I keep thinking of what I could do for you. No—I must be perfectly frank—what I want to do to you.”

  She hadn’t moved. But at that, she wet her lips with her tongue. “To be clear,” she said, “when you talk about what you want to do, you are talking about kissing me. You are not talking about throwing me in gaol.”

  “To be clear,” Smite countered, “I am talking about having you as my mistress. About having you in every way possible.”

  She didn’t slap his face or shriek in horror. Instead, she shook her head. “Then the answer is no. I’ve already said so. There’s too much risk for me.”

  Ghost brought back the stick and dropped it once more. Smite ignored the dog. “I’m not proposing a one-time liaison. You’ll have a house. Servants. New clothing.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Lord Justice, you do know how to woo a woman. Tell me more.”

  “Precisely,” he agreed. “I’m not given to effusive sentiment. I’m not good at it, and you mustn’t expect it. It’s best we start as we mean to go on. I don’t need false protestations of love. I ask only for fidelity for the term of the arrangement and basic honesty.”

  “And what is the term of the arrangement you’re proposing?”

  “One month.” His pulse was beating more erratically than it ought. This was business—simple business. Not something to care about. No reason to watch her so carefully, to wonder what that flicker of her eyelashes might mean. No reason at all. He bent and retrieved Ghost’s stick, to avoid looking in her eyes, and hurled it as far as he could. “In addition to what I mentioned before,” he added, “I’ll pay you a thousand pounds.”

  That got him an incredulous look. “One thousand pounds. Are you joking? Or are you mad?”

  He’d decided on a few hundred last night. He wasn’t sure where the new, vastly inflated number had come from. Perhaps because he feared that she might refuse two hundred.

  “Neither,” he said repressively.

  “You drive a worse bargain than my friend Jeremy.” She put her hand to her head. “I beg your pardon for not immediately snapping up the offer. My financial understanding stretches to shillings and pence in the quantities of ones and tens. I have never heard the word ‘thousand’ anywhere near the word ‘pounds.’ I am having difficulty comprehending what you mean. You had seemed a sensible man, but you cannot be one. That’s an absurd amount for just that one thing.”

  “Yes,” he snapped. “This entire endeavor is absurd. I don’t know why I asked you to come, or why I could scarcely breathe this morning until I saw you. The only thing I know for certain is that I want more than one thing from you. I want forty or fifty. Most of all, I want this: when we are through, I want to be certain that I will not leave you in danger. This way, I’ll know that you’ll never find your way into my courtroom again—neither you nor Robbie—and I’ll never have to compromise my judgment. I want you to be safe. I can’t purchase that for a few pounds and a minute against a wall.”

  She was watching him. The bright green of her eyes bored into his. She raised one eyebrow at that, and he almost thought she might be laughing at him. But instead, she said, “That’s four things you want. What are the other forty-something?”

  He reached out and took her hand. She was wearing knit gloves; they thinned at the fingertips. He rolled the fabric off her hand, slowly, and then pressed his hand into hers. She stared down at their entwined fingers, and then looked up at him.

  “There’s really only the one other thing,” he heard himself say. “But I imagine I’ll want it more than once.”

  Her hand twitched in his.

  “Also,” he said, “to be quite truthful—I chose a thousand pounds because I don’t want to risk the possibility of your saying no.”

  She gave him a little smile—as if she’d realized what he’d just said. He had the money, the power. And he’d practically admitted that she had him in the palm of her hand. She could have asked for two thousand pounds, and he’d have agreed. Ten.

  But instead, she pulled back from him. Her nails trailed along the skin of his hand. “I have my own conditions,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “You can have my body. You can have my fidelity. You can even have my honesty—” this, with a little wayward smile “—but there is one thing you cannot ever buy from me, not with any coin you have.”

  “Oh?”

  “You can’t buy my affection.”

  It was not disappointment he felt. It would make matters easier. He should have been overjoyed.

  “That hardly signifies.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Affection is not one of the forty-four other things I want to have from you.” He wouldn’t know what to do with it, in any event. “I told you I have no desire for effusive sentiment.”

  She gave him a brisk nod. “There’s something else you need to know.”

  “Oh?”

  She cast her eyes down and then looked up at him through her lashes. “You’re adorable when you’re uncertain.”

  “Uncertain?” He drew himself up. “What makes you think I’m uncertain? I’m certain. I’m quite certain. I’m—”

  He lost his words, the entire rest of his sputtering speech, when she stepped close to him, popped up onto her toes, and kissed him. The
feel of her was a cool, clean shock, as bracing as fresh morning air after a tortured night.

  Smite remembered everything. He remembered every prisoner he’d thrown in gaol, and the ones he had let go. He remembered reports of crimes and the details of bloody history.

  But when she kissed him, he forgot. He forgot everything in the world except the heady feel of her hands, resting against his lapels. For just that moment, he was nothing but an ordinary fellow out with his sweetheart. When she kissed him, she made him feel like a man—just a man, not a burdened magistrate responsible for the fate of half of Bristol.

  And so he deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue between her lips. He set his hands on her hips and pulled her close, and she didn’t resist. She nestled against him, sighing deep in her throat. He kissed her until the rumble of a cart intruded on the quiet fog shielding their tryst.

  She drew back. He felt almost unsteady on his feet. He was drunk on the taste of her. He’d been knocked off balance, and he wouldn’t be able to walk a straight line for years.

  No, he definitely wasn’t going to miss his thousand pounds. He’d got the better end of that bargain. Even if she never gave him one scrap of affection.

  But what he said instead was, “So that’s a yes, then.”

  “It’s a yes.”

  The sun wasn’t coming up yet, but it ought to have done. It felt like dawn, warm and red, arriving on the heels of a very dark night.

  “About your other concern,” he heard himself say. “Do you know how to avoid pregnancy?”

  She hadn’t stopped smiling at him. “I was raised by actors,” she said archly. “And if those measures prove ineffective… Well, there is that thousand pounds.”

  If they proved ineffective, there’d be more than a thousand pounds, but he saw no need to spell that out. All he said was, “Good. Then I’ll be in contact to arrange further particulars.” He cast her one last look. “Don’t expect to wait long.”

  “JEREMY,” MIRANDA WHISPERED, “NOW I know I’ve done something foolish. Tell me I mustn’t go through with it.”