True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (15 page)

He'd seen other things too, before
that.

"What have you done to your hair?" he
asked, as if he didn't already know and hadn't, quite by chance,
spied upon her in the scullery.

"I washed it, sir." She raised a hand
to the oddly tilting mess and made an attempt to hoist it further
upright. "I thought...I was not expecting you back this
evening."

He stared at her for a moment,
picturing how she had looked earlier with all that hair down. If he
was a gentleman he'd feel guilty about spying on her, but since he
was True Deverell he felt fortunate. Very fortunate.

Arriving back at the house he had
meant to enter through the scullery, as he usually did when his
riding boots were full of wet sand. But through the crooked
diamonds of the leaded window he had unexpectedly found his new
secretary, in the dusky light, and aided by one flickering candle
flame, washing her long hair.

Her back was to him, her arms bare,
and he'd quickly realized she must have lowered the bodice of her
gown to save it from the soapy water. Beneath she wore a corset
over a sleeveless linen and lace chemise.

His quickened breath tickled the ivy
that climbed the stone wall. His eyes greedily devoured every
detail. The slender neck and fine slope of her ivory shoulders, the
gently curved arms reaching up like angel's wings, the seemingly
endless lengths of dark hair falling in a slow, luxurious tumble.
The swaying line of her corseted torso, down to the narrow waist.
The dip between her shoulders, just below the nape of her neck,
where a drop of water trickled down, a slivery tear that he wanted
to—

"Sir?" she said.

He snapped back to the present,
remembering why she was there. "You had better come here by the
fire, Mrs. Monday. I can't afford to have my secretary becoming ill
with a cold before we've even started, can I?"

Slowly, cautiously she approached his
roaring fire.

"Sit," he demanded, pointing at the
hearthrug.

Her eyes glistened in the firelight.
"Pardon me, Mr. Deverell, but I am not a dog."

"I meant for you to be close to the
fire." When he moved aside, she looked relieved at the sight of a
small table and writing box set out for her before an old settee.
"May we begin, Mrs. Monday? Haven't you delayed me long
enough?"

Moving swiftly forward now, lips
pursed, she sat where he pointed and cast her eyes over the writing
materials he'd set there. She tidied them with quick hands,
arranging the goose quills in a neat row beside the pot of ink. As
she swept by him, True had caught a fragrant wave of rose water. It
tempted him to touch her damp hair, to coil the loose strand around
his finger. But he resisted, turned his back and strode to the
other side of the fireplace, where he moved a velvet-covered
ottoman close to the fender with one booted foot and lowered
himself to the seat.

Well, he had called her down to his
library at this hour. Better get on with job at hand.

Stop thinking of her shoulders. Of her
neck. Of her bare arms.

All he could see of those angelic
wings now were her hands and slender wrists. Good. He ought to be
able to concentrate if she didn't distract him too much.

He watched her preparing the sheets of
paper and then the nib of a goose quill in the ink. Her movements
were very precise, very neat.

"You must stop me," he muttered. "If I
go to fast."

"I'm sure I'll manage." She had just
hooked a pair of spectacles over her small ears. Now, eyes down,
she waited.

True cleared his throat. "I was born,"
he began, and then stopped.

She looked up.

"I was found," he corrected, "on the
sand near Truro in the midst of a violent storm."

"Found?"

"Yes. I was left there by a
mermaid."

The scratching of her pen
paused.

"You doubt me, Mrs.
Monday?"

A slight frown creased her brow. "I'm
surprised it wasn't the pixies. Are there not many of them in
Cornwall?"

He stared at her lips, but she kept
them firm, no hint of a smirk. "It was a mermaid," he assured her
sternly. "Which explains my fondness for the sea and my affinity
with the creatures in it."

"I see. And what year was
this?"

"How would I know?"

"You do not know when you were
born?"

"You sound incredulous, Mrs. Monday.
But how could I know?"

"Someone, surely, must
know."

"No one who cares to admit
it."

She shuttered her expression behind a
sweep of lashes and looked down at the paper again. "Well...What is
your first memory, sir?"

"Running amid the sheep."

"Running? You must have a memory
before that."

So he told her about the hands that
found him on the sands. They were big, rough fingers with yellowed
nails. The beachcomber must have been hunting for washed-up
treasure on that bleak night of violent wind and rain. He recalled
how she smelled of damp earth and wood smoke, and how she sang to
herself. How dark and stuffy the sack was in which she put him.
What she meant to do with a baby, who knew? The others, when they
found him, forced her to leave him behind, because they didn't need
another mouth to feed.

He told his secretary about the fields
that became his hunting ground after that, of the food and clothing
he stole, and of the farmer he watched warily from a distance — a
man who tried, in vain, to capture him.

"I thought he would try to train me as
he did the other dogs, so I kept my distance for a long time." He
watched as she tapped her goose nib on the inkpot. "The farmer
eventually gave up chasing me off his land and put me to work
instead. He taught me how to wield a hammer and nails when I was
barely big enough to hold them."

"So he took you in?"

"Not exactly. My place on his farm was
like that of a stray cat, kept around to chase mice out of the
barn. As long as I made myself useful I was welcome to the scraps
they threw out, but I wasn't a pet. I wasn't domesticated. I
learned not to get underfoot."

"Did you try to find your family? Your
father?"

He stood and paced to the window,
opening it for some cool air. "I didn't need anyone. I looked after
myself."

"Yes, but he might have—"

"I learned early on that I must take
what I wanted or starve. Rules and laws were for men who knew when
their next meal would come, not for me. I lived with the animals of
the farm. I belonged there, raised among them and by
them."

When he glanced back at her again, she
sat with her head bent over the little table, her hand moving
steadily between inkpot and page, his words forming neat lines
across the paper. A wet strand of hair had fallen loose down the
side of her face, but she did not pause to fix it. The only thing
she adjusted —her spectacles— were swiftly nudged back up to the
bridge of her nose by one knuckle. He noted the bent wire that
didn't quite fit and caused them to keep slipping forward. No one
had bothered to fix them for her, but he, surely, was not the first
person to notice the problem.

"Has my beginning as an unwanted stray
softened your impression of me, Mrs. Monday?"

"I was thinking how little you've
changed. Still a boy who refuses to follow rules."

"I am not the only one with a mutinous
soul, am I?"

"Your meaning, sir?"

"Surely, for you, taking this post is
an act of rebellion against your very proper upbringing. You
decided to break some rules yourself."

She shook her head and another damp
lock drooped against her cheek, reminding him of the candlelit
scene in his scullery. A woman's bared neck and shoulders had never
seemed so naughty, so forbidden to his eyes.

"Or perhaps you came here, simply so
you might put me to rights, tell me how wicked I am, and get your
long overdue apology for once being stepped over."

She stared, eyes wide through the
round lenses of her spectacles.

"Or were you looking for adventure,
Mrs. Monday? Were you bored with the oh-so polite gentlemen of
Chiswick and decided to throw in your lot with an uncivilized
beast, just for the thrill?"

Now her face was tense. "I needed
employment. To be busy and useful. One should go where one is
needed. Find a purpose."

Naturally she would not mention the
money. It wouldn't be proper. Yesterday she was affronted when he
dared suggest her in need of funds. Did she imagine he wouldn't
notice her tired old boots and that dreadfully depressed, out-dated
bonnet? Well, he was considerably more observant than the other men
in her life must have been, for he knew she was hiding something.
More than a very fine set of shoulders.

"Shall we proceed?" she asked calmly,
pen poised over the paper.

Feeling overheated, he removed his
jacket and tossed it over the back of the small settee. Another
thing he shouldn't do in the presence of a lady, but True never
listened to "shouldn't" and he wasn't about to start just for this
strange creature.

He continued, "One day I was caught
poaching on the squire's estate. He wanted me swinging from a
gibbet and out of his sight for good. The very knowledge of my
presence was galling to him."

"Why?"

True paused. "There were
rumors." He took a breath. She was watching him intently, waiting
with patience. "Some suggested that I was not the orphan of a
shipwreck, but that the squire's son had fathered me and abandoned
my young, unwed mother, causing her to leave me on the sands that
night. Of course, the squire could not bear that idea.
Me
— the feral boy who
could barely speak in any recognizable language? He did not want
that shameful blot on the family escutcheon."

"I see."

He lifted one shoulder in a lazy
shrug. "I never believed it any more than he did, but despite his
son's denial, he wanted rid of me and of the rumors. It was said
his son had violently forced himself on one of the very young dairy
maids. None of it could be proven. The girl— if she existed—had run
off, too afraid to come forward and accuse him. That left only my
presence to point a finger. Better, therefore, if I be
dead."

After a pause, she said, "You must
have been afraid to be friendless and all alone in the
world."

"No. Not fearful. Angry. Yes, I
remember fury as a driving force in my youth, spurring me
on."

She nodded. "And it drove you to
success."

"Against the odds." He walked around
her chair, breathing in more of her fragrance. It was subtle, but
pleasing. "Do you think, in common with most, that because I was
base born I should have stayed down in life?"

"Not at all, sir. Some great men in
history were lowborn. Cardinal Wolsey was a butcher's son and
Thomas Cromwell the child of a blacksmith, to name only the first
two that come to mind."

"You flatter me." He laughed, tugging
on one ear. "My achievements are not so great as theirs. I am not a
man of books and no king will ever consult with me."

Her eyes blinked, the pupils expanding
as his shadow fell over her. "You should not undervalue your
success, sir. You have done far more with much less, than many men
in this world who sit back and make no effort."

Disquieted by her solemn, earnest
gaze, he put his hands behind his back and proceeded to walk around
the settee again, reversing his direction. "In any case, I escaped
my fate on the gallows and fled England on a fishing boat. But I
swore vengeance on the family that had wanted me hanged. I would
get it too, in time." He finally lowered his seat to the velvet
ottoman again, boots stretched out before the fire. "The
unfortunate thing about vengeance... it has a habit of turning on
the man who yields it and slapping him hard in the face. But we
shall come to that."

Mrs. Monday set her quill aside to let
the nib dry and picked up another. "So you went to sea. What
then?"

"I took every lowly, menial job I
could find. Anything to make coin. I discovered then my talent for
figures and calculations. I could keep great sums in my head, you
see, even as a boy. When I found it earned me coin I practiced
often, sharpened the skill. I made a study of gamblers and the
risks they took, and I saw how they were drawn in by only the
slenderest chance of a win. I traveled abroad, began to accumulate
winnings at a rate that soon made me unwelcome and kept me moving
from town to town. After five years — and my first bullet wound—I
returned to England with a good-sized fortune." He smiled. "Many
would call it rotten gains, Mrs. Monday."

"Only those who are envious of your
success. There is never a person quite so self-righteous and noble
as one who can't afford to be anything else."

He laughed, more relaxed with her than
he had felt for a long time in anybody's presence. Yes. Underneath
those dull garments she was not all forbidding, sharp
edges.