Linda Needham (12 page)

“A perfect example of the very insecure place you’ve put him.” She started down the stairs in her determined way, trailing her startling accusations behind her.

“He actually told you that he was terrified of me?”

“He didn’t have to; it’s plain to me. It must be as plain to you.”

“If he’s claiming that I’ve struck him—”

“He said nothing of the sort. He hasn’t got a dishonest bone in his body, and you wouldn’t do such a thing, my lord.”

“I damned well wouldn’t.” It pleased him vastly to know that she understood that much about him.

“But much worse than frightening him, my lord, you ignore him. You never say a word to him. Like tonight at supper: you sat like a stone at the other end of the table.”

They’d been a full ten feet away from him. Besides, “What the devil does a grown man have to say to a six-year-old boy?”

“‘Hello’ makes a good beginning.”

“I’ve bloody well said hello. And more than that! I’ve said…well…” He couldn’t really think of anything he’d said directly to the boy. To Chip. But he’d said plenty.

“You’re the parent, my lord. It’s your responsibility to make it right. What did your father talk with you about?”

Charles snorted. “He didn’t.”

That stopped her, softened her voice and her patience. “But if he had, my lord, if he’d been the very best father in the whole world, what would you have talked with him about?”

This was completely beyond his experience. “He wasn’t anything like the very best father.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to make do with your imagination.”

“Meaning?”

“Find out what Chip likes to do and ask him about that.”

“He certainly likes to run away from me.”

She grabbed his sleeve and held onto him. “Then, sir, I’ll give you this hint: he seems fascinated by the deer on the estate.”

Perfect. Damned precocious, in fact, that the lad should be interested in game at his age. “Good, then I’ll take him hunting.”

“Dear God, no, my lord.” She released him, and her shoulders sagged. “He thinks the deer are pets that live in the garden. Please don’t shoot one in front of him; you’ll lose him for sure.”

“There, you see? I’m at a loss.” He couldn’t believe that he was standing in his hallway with this woman in her nightgown once again, asking her advice on the ways of sons.

“Ride with him, then. Show him the stables.”

“I doubt he rides.”

“Then teach him how. A simple smile and a soft word—any word at all—will win his little heart forever. He wants to love you. I adored my father. And there was never a question in my heart that he adored me back. It’s just that simple.”

He watched helplessly as her eyes welled with sudden tears, which glistened for an instant before sliding down her cheeks. Ah, that he could ever be loved so well!

“Come, madam. I have something you’d like to see.”

She wiped at her cheeks with her sleeve. “Where?”

“This way.” He caught her gently, meant only to turn and guide her down the stairs, but like a man not in his right mind, he slipped his arm around the compelling warmth of her waist and held her too closely, stealing the momentary fit of her against him, the scent of her hair and the moonlight beaded there.

His pulse thrummed with the heat of her, with the shape of her, with the very real possibility that he was about to dip his head and pull her close and close his mouth over hers.

Just a taste to satisfy his curiosity.

Hollie thought for an astounding moment that he was going to kiss her; he was close enough and wound tightly enough, his breathing as unsteady as hers, a fire banked in his half-lidded eyes. The heated hardness of him blazed through her nightgown and burned her bare flesh, that stealthy male part of him, his vitality.

And, oh, my, if she wasn’t thoroughly ready to be kissed by him.

But he closed his eyes and measured his breathing as he stepped away from her, raking his fingers through his dark hair.

“Your deepest pardon, madam,” he said wryly. “I’ve a wholly more proper objective than that. Come.”

“W
here, my lord?” Not that Hollie cared a whit where he planned to go. Her imagination was still captivated by the possessive strength of his fingers as he led her down the back stairs, the unexpected gentleness; she was willing to follow him through the dark byways of Everingham Hall and out into the fields and furrows if he had a mind to go there.

They passed into the pale, moon-blue shadows of a room made of glass walls and iron framing.

The conservatory. And in the middle of the midnight emptiness, the hulking upright of her father’s press leaning at a hard angle against its base.

“My Stanhope!” A lamp flared behind her, and
then another moved close as she touched its familiar strength, her chest flushed with pride and hurt and anger. Her eyes went suddenly hot with the stinging grief that still ambushed her at the worst possible moments.

“I thought you’d like to know that it arrived this evening. With all its parts, Summerwell assures me.”

The type cabinet and the inks, the brayers and a few of her father’s precious set of stereotypes too, his dear words founded in iron and so rich in memories.

“I won’t know until I put it all together if everything is here.” She wrapped her hand around the platen handle that was sticking out of a box at a wry angle, cradled her fingers into the grooves worn there by her father’s. Too wide for her own, but dear and familiar. “Thank you.”

“I trust the room will do.”

Hollie caught her threatening smile with her teeth. Another miraculous site, seeming to be purpose-built for her needs. “I confess, my lord, that it’s fashioned right out of my dreams. It’s large, and the floor made of slate. The windows are tall and grand. Doors opening to the fresh spring garden, to clear the air of the ink and linseed. Daylight will doubtless stream in from absolutely everywhere. I hate to admit it to you, my lord, but it’s perfect.”

He smiled at her as he set the lantern on the
press’s fat iron base, and lifted the rounce barrel by the handle. “You learned to operate this contraption from your father?”

“Learned my trade on this very press. From my exceedingly patient father.”

“It looks like a bloody siege machine.”

She laughed, and he smiled at himself, easy and enchanting. Oh, how could the man possibly have become even more handsome than he’d been earlier in the day? He’d come out of the mist like a prayer in his midnight trek to find his little son.

“A daunting beast for a little girl to conquer, my lord, but I wouldn’t change a moment of my life. I suspect that Father taught me the printing business in defense of his own work. I learned to read while watching him.”

He shifted his head, sharpened his focus. “You taught yourself to read?”

“Father helped, of course, but I was determined, because I was a very busy little body and I wanted to know everything he was saying to people in the papers he printed. I gobbled up every word I could get my hands on. I still do.”

“Only now you print them for yourself.”

“The proudest moment of my life was the day I set my first composition for an issue of the
Tuppenny Press
. It was a present for my father’s birthday. I was very proud.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven.”

“Blazes, woman, you were but a babe. Reading and writing and composing for a newspaper?”

“They come naturally to me, words do—if you haven’t already reached that conclusion.” She knelt down and opened a canvas bag, then groaned. “Oh, blast it all.”

“What is it?”

A whole bag of typeface. “Dumped into a jumble, of all things!”

“Is it broken?” He dropped on a knee beside her, an inescapable presence, casually looking over her shoulder as she reached inside the bag and drew out a few letters.

“Not broken. Just a muddled pile of vowels and consonants.”

“These bits of metal are?”

She managed her pulse and her breathing perfectly well when he cupped his hand beneath hers and reached into her palm to pick up a letter—those startlingly big hands of his that could be so gentle.

“It’s the Roman type I was using for the
Song Birds
.” She absorbed the heat and the brush of his fingers, the whispering drape of his sleeve against her wrist. But it was his unguarded curiosity that awakened a restlessness in her, the stillness of him that left her breathless and wanting to shape her hand against his cheek. “They ought to be in their separate boxes in that type case drawer.”

He dropped the letter back into her palm, wrapped his fingers around her hand, and held it. “Fixable, I assume?”

Dear God, the man shouldn’t be so unbalancing or so hard-muscled. He should have kissed her and gotten it over with. Now her heart was setting up such a racket she could barely hear his question.

“Fixable? Uhm, yes, of course. With a few hours of sorting.” She stumbled to her feet with the heavy bag of type and was rescuing its case drawer from where it was leaning against the box of ink and linseed oil when the weight of the bag vanished from her fist.

“Where does this go?” Everingham lifted the bag as though it contained only a few pennies.

“Here.” She patted the scarred and ink-stained worktable and set the case drawer beside the bag, stumbling over the simplest words under his gaze. “Thank you.”

What was she to do with this grievously impossible intimacy growing between them? With the exotic scent of him, which blended so well with the dear and familiar scents of linseed and indigo and varnish. The man who had tilted her world so radically, who tilted it more with every passing moment.

So terrified of his little son. So sure that she would want to know that her Stanhope was safe.

The sudden and reluctant champion of the fallen children on St. Peter’s Fields.

Her jailor, her possibly redeemable earl.

No, no; she shouldn’t be thinking in this direction. He was one of them. Her enemy. And she was here to spy on him, not to make up preposterous excuses for his out-of-character behavior.

She dodged around him and went to her Stanhope, patting its solid shoulder. “I can put the press together myself, but it’s a lot easier with another person. May I borrow Summerwell or Haskett?”

“Borrow them? Good God, madam.” He closed the distance between them in his easy stride, giving the Stanhope an appraising study and then shifting the caressing heat of his gaze to her. “You’ve taken up residence in my gatehouse, you’ve commandeered my conservatory, my coat, and even my socks. Next you’ll be wanting my cook.”

“Only her recipe for Devonshire Cherry Tart. Putting the press together will take the best part of a morning with two people. May I borrow one of them, please? After all, they took it apart.”

“No.”

The ogre once again. Good. She knew exactly how to handle his growling, unreasonable stubbornness. “Well, then, I’ll just assemble it myself. I have done so before.”

“What I mean, madam, is that I can’t spare any of my staff. I’ll help you with it myself.”

Hollie canted her head, certain that she didn’t hear him rightly. “You, my lord?”

“Yes, me.”

The woman looked thoroughly skeptical, as though she believed he was unable to perform the most menial task. Charles blew out a snort and wondered how the devil he’d suddenly gained this reputation for inertia as well as his butler’s assessment that he was a child eater.

“Why?” she asked, in that blazingly stubborn way of hers.

“Because, Miss Finch, I want to clearly understand the innermost workings of this Stanhope device, so that I’ll know when you’re trying to wheedle your way around my edicts.”

“Ha! I don’t wheedle.”

Because wheedling required patience, and the woman lacked that particular trait. Resentment of him she had in abundance; it flared in her eyes before she went back to putting the remains of her life in order.

He’d spent most of the evening with Bavidge, developing the strategy for Captain Spindleshanks’s trial
in absentia
. No matter which way he considered the matter, it still went against his ethics: first using the blackguard’s wife to lure him out of hiding, and then bringing him to trial without charging him to his face.

Not that he could have avoided the situation. The Privy Council had insisted on some move
ment in the case before the arrest warrant had been issued and would want it more firmly now that the arrest had gone wrong, if only to incite the man to show himself.

As though Hollie Finch wasn’t draw enough for any man. Good God, he’d nearly kissed her.

“Which of these parts of the machine is the most important?” he asked, while she straightened and frowned.

“They’re all important, my lord, or they wouldn’t be part of the workings.”

“Yes, but which part can’t you print without, once it’s all assembled?”

She planted a fist against her hip. “That would be the devil’s tail, my lord.”

Minx. He knew that flicker of defiance, her word play. “Which is what, exactly?”

“This.” She lifted a long-handled, dog-legged lever that must have weighed a dozen pounds. “The handle. It works with the coupling rod to press against the toggle lever, which then presses the platen into the paper, which picks up the ink off the type from the bed below.”

“I see.” He didn’t completely, but he soon would. “Just so that you don’t get any ideas, Miss Finch, this devil’s tail will remain in my possession.”

“That goes without saying, my lord.” She handed him the lever, dipped him an insincere curtsey, then went back to the heap.

“What are you doing, woman?” She was try
ing to lift a huge iron frame of some sort, teetering on her feet. He reached out and caught the frame before she tumbled over.

“It’s in the way of the base.”

“It’ll keep until the morning. Come, I’ll walk you back to the gatehouse.”

“I’m perfectly capable of making the trip on my own.”

“Not in the dark.”

She sighed deeply. “If it pleases you, my lord.”

She stalked off to the side entrance, grabbed her cloak, then stalked ahead of him, out into the night in her gravel-crunching silence, but he followed her right into her warm little parlor.

“There’s something else you need to know, madam.” Though he wasn’t looking forward to telling her. “It’s about your husband.”

She turned a quizzical look on him, then harrumphed and went back to raising a fire under the kettle in the hearth. “Have you caught him already?”

“It’s a matter of his trial. Just letting you know a point of law.”

“What now? Have you been ordered to shoot him on sight? Is that what Sidmouth’s letter contained? The one that Bowles brought today?” She watched him with an uncommon amount of interest.

“Not that, madam.” Charles braced himself for her anger. “This particular process was already in motion. Once the warrant was issued for the
arrest of Captain Spindleshanks—whoever he turned out to be—then the law allows that an inquest and a trial could follow any time afterward.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, as though daring him to explain. “But you have to catch him first. Right?”

“Wrong. The law doesn’t require a defendant.”

She stood. “Since when?”

“Among other things, suspending habeas corpus allows a criminal to be tried
in absentia
.”

“Let me understand this, my lord.” She clamped the lid on the kettle and threw off her cloak as though she were preparing for a battle. “The Home Office can bring a man to trial, can find him guilty and sentence him to death, without him being present in the court to defend himself?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re planning to do that to…to my husband? To Captain Spindleshanks?”

“The inquest is scheduled for three weeks from now.”

“Whether you have him in your prison or not?”

“That’s it.”

She paled, balling her nightgown in her fist, fearing for this man she’d married, her hero. “But how do I…he…how does he defend himself?”

Charles waited to answer. “He turns himself in.”

Hollie was sure he must have heard her heart pounding. She drew away from him to the hearth again, breathless at this sudden race for her life. Tried and convicted before she had a chance to defend herself. “This is madness!”

“It is one of the tools of justice, a remedy of law.”

“It’s that very large stick that the Home Office calls a state of Alarm. Another cudgel for controlling the public, inflicted on the populace to keep us in line whenever the Cabinet gets a little edgy. I hardly need to explain it to you.”

“Indulge me, Miss Finch.” The earl lounged back on the settee, gestured for her to continue with those able hands of his. It was like entertaining a very hungry lion in her parlor.

“First of all, when that great pudding, Lord Liverpool, decides to—”

“Great pudding?” He smiled.

“The Prime Minister is a slothful, shapeless bag of curdle and whey.”

He laughed broadly, disarming her entirely. He probably shared her opinion of the man. “I believe I’ll keep your opinion of the Prime Minister secret when next I see him.”

“I don’t need your protection, my lord.”

That only made him smile all the more. “Do tell me more of this monstrous ‘Alarm,’ madam. What does the Great Pudding do then?”

“He announces to the public that the Home Office, by way of your friend Lord Sidmouth—that other great pudding—has learned of a dangerous threat to the peace of the nation.”

“Your husband, for example.”

“And other horrifying tattle and talk of plots against the Cabinet: machine breaking, revolution, anti-parliament meetings, seditious pantomimes.” That drew up the man’s brow. “But of course, Sidmouth purposely withholds the source of this information from the press.”

“So that it can’t be turned into panic through the politics of fear.”

“No. So that it can’t be verified.”

Everingham stilled, his amusement gone. “And then, Miss Finch?”

Hollie plunked herself down on the ottoman in front of him. “Then this heap of unsubstantiated information is sent off to secret committees in the Lords and Commons, like the secret committee that you head, my lord. Which you then are chartered to examine for truth, as you are doing now, from which you will write a report of your findings to the House. Correct?”