Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane

Chapter 10

Henry watched Sarah walk away for the second time and called himself a fool. A fool for still feeling her in his bones and a fool for watching her walk away. The sway of her posterior in the loose gown was more arousing than it should be. So much so, that when she entered the shop, he continued watching her through the window.

In some of the places he’d visited, he’d have been shot for staring so long, so lustily, at a woman not his own. And rightly so!

But she could very well be his, and soon. He’d propose again, one more time, and if—

Sarah rushed across the room, embracing a young lad. He had Sarah’s black hair and lean frame but towered above her. He wore an expression of maternal devotion mixed with determined independence.

Sarah’s steel-lined back melted, softening as she wrapped the young man in her arms, then fluttered with avian movements as she plucked his ear, tugged on his sleeves, smoothed his brow. Her son. No doubt about that. But what was he doing in London? Wasn’t he supposed to be at Harrow?

Sarah opened her reticule, snuck her tiny hand in, and though Henry couldn’t see, he knew what she held in her palm, outstretched to the dark-haired boy. Probably the last bloody coins she owned.

The boy’s face crimsoned in a grateful, sheepish sort of look. He hugged Sarah, then sped to the door, turning only briefly to wave a farewell before darting out into the streets.

Definitely her son. Henry watched the boy slip down the street in the opposite direction of his mother’s accommodations. Where did he go with possibly all or most of his mother’s money? And why was he not in school? And, more curious still, why was the boy so filthy?

Questions abounded. The easiest way to achieve answers was to ask Sarah. However, Henry had found through years of investigation into other peoples and cultures that directly asking for answers did not always result in truth. People lied, modifying the truth to best suit themselves. Not that Sarah would. She was a good egg. But still, sometimes passive observation got one closer to the truth than a direct assault.

Henry slipped down the street after the dark-haired boy. He seemed headed in the direction of Cork Street, but then he stopped and hailed a hackney.

“What in Zeus’s name?” Henry muttered under his breath. Surely Sarah didn’t have enough extra money for the boy to spend it this way. She hadn’t even paid for a hackney yesterday, instead of walking through the rain to Hellwater’s.

The boy handed the hackney driver some coins. “Cork Street,” he announced, slipping into the conveyance.

“So close!” Henry hissed. What was wrong with the boy? He stopped the hackney driver before he could depart. “Take on another passenger, and I’ll pay triple your usual fare for that distance.”

The driver’s eyes grew large and greedy. “As you wish, sir.”

Henry lumbered up into the cab before the driver finished responding.

The boy scooted to the other edge of the cab, avoiding Henry’s gaze.

Henry leaned back on the bench. So much for his plan of observation. He’d jumped headfirst into a direct attack when he’d leapt into the hackney. But all was not lost. The boy didn’t know Henry’s identity, nor that he wished to marry his mother. Henry cleared his throat. “Cork Street, eh?”

The boy nodded, darting a glance at him.

“I suppose you require a tailor.”

Another nod, another glance. This time the boy looked longer, his eyes narrowing. “I know you.”

Zeus. He’d forgotten. If this was Sarah’s son, he’d probably seen Henry’s picture. But surely the famous explorer was just shaggy and dirty enough after a night sleeping in a hackney that no one would recognize him from the formal sketch portrait that appeared in his books and articles.

“You’re Lord Eaden. The adventurer.” The boy’s eyes shone with excitement.

Damnit. Henry nodded his assent. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. …”

“Pennington. James Pennington.”

No surprise there.

“I loved your last book.” He scowled. “But it’s been years and years since you’ve published a new one. Why?”

“Tell me, Mr. Pennington, would you appreciate it if your religious iconography became a design for someone’s wallpaper?”

“I … no, I don’t suppose I would.”

“And would you like to be considered primitive because your customs differed from someone else’s?”

“No, but—”

“Well, neither do my Egyptian friends.” Henry ran a hand through his hair. “I did not realize the harm I was doing until too late. They are people, not science experiments.”

“Why do you still travel, then?”

“They are my friends. And I am still a curious man above all. I want to learn from them. I have learned from them. I just refuse to make their lives public spectacle.”

The boy looked flummoxed. He wasn’t the only one. Henry’s publisher ranted every chance he got about missed remunerative opportunities. Zeus, but he had no desire to think of those lectures now. He eyed Mrs. Pennington’s son. “I’ve illuminated something for you, Mr. Pennington, now it is your turn to tell me something.”

“Anything!”

“What mudhole did you tumble into before we crossed paths? And another question. I’m naturally curious, you see, so I must know. Why has such a young, strapping man hired a hackney for such a short distance?”

Nose wrinkling, James picked at his clothes. “I fell into a stream at Harrow. I walked back to London last night.”

So the boy was stupid, too? “Rather dangerous. Have you no parents to teach you better?”

“My mother wasn’t best pleased with me. For walking last night or for my clothes.”

“No father?”

James shook his head.

“Your mother, she’s a woman of means, then?”

James’s face grew red as the Egyptian sun. “I, well, not particularly.”

Silence reigned as Henry watched James squirm on the seat. Sometimes silence, not talk, was the best way to get answers. Henry counted slowly to himself, waiting.

He didn’t have to wait long. He’d gotten to precisely thirty-two when James spoke.

“I’m going to a hell I heard Lord St. Vincent talk about at school. It’s on a side street near Schweitzer and Davidson’s. I’m going to take a few shillings and turn them into pounds!”

“Ah, you’re a fairy, then? Or a fool. Which is it?”

“What? No. No. See, I want to help her. And I can do it. I win when I bet with the lads at school.”

The boy trod the road to ruination. He had his mother’s heart and courage, but not her sense or practicality. And Sarah likely had no idea she’d given her final few coins away to be lost on a gamble. Henry groaned, seeing his path clearly before him. Sarah would think him high-handed, interfering. But so be it. “You know, I lived with a group of people in the last year who believe all coins have a lucky or unlucky aura?” It was a Canterbury Tale if there ever was one, but James didn’t seem to realize it. He leaned nearer, listening greedily for more. “They can tell just by looking at a coin if it will grow in their coffers or disappear.”

“Fascinating. Where do they live?”

Zeus. They didn’t live anywhere, being entirely fictitious. “The Continent.” There. That was vague enough to work.

James nodded sagely.

“Let me see your coins. Perhaps I can—”

James pulled Sarah’s money from his pocket before Henry could finish his sentence, and just as quickly, Henry scooped the precious coins into his own hand.

“Hey!” James lunged at Henry, grasping for the money, but Henry held him back. “Hey! Let me go! Give it back!”

“No. I’m not going to let you lose your mother’s hard-earned shillings.”

“What’s it to you!”

“Driver!” Henry pounded on the roof of the hackney.

“Eh?”

“Back to Piccadilly and Bond Street—Hopkins Bookshop, please.” Henry turned to James. “I’ve recently become acquainted with your mother. I’m rather fond of her and would hate to see her lose her last coins and find out her son is a fool in a single day.”

James turned red again, then blanched. “It’s … it’s not her last. She’s very good at saving. I … I just don’t want her to dip into her savings to buy new clothes for me. Not when I can help.”

Henry studied James’s clothes beneath the mud. They were well made, very fine indeed. Sarah had, no doubt, drained her meager savings to purchase the now ruined suit.

“And the hackney?”

“I was tired.”

“It was an unnecessary expense that failed to consider your mother’s situation.”

James chortled. “What do you care about my mother’s situation? What do you even know about my mother’s situation!”

“More than you, it appears.”

James slumped in the seat. “You’re going to tell her.”

Yes, that bloody well was Henry’s intention. But James’s face—tight, pinched—intrigued him. “You don’t care that you’ve been caught.”

James spoke without looking up from his hands resting in his lap. “What do you mean?”

“I mean some boys feel despondent about getting caught when they do wrong. They don’t actually care they’ve done anything wrong. But that’s not you. What upsets you, boy? That you’ve been tricked by an old man?”

“Tricked by you? That’s something to brag about.” He looked out the window, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as his mother did when thinking. “I don’t want to upset my mother.”

Henry relaxed into the hard seat. The boy wasn’t bad. Young and foolish, definitely, but a good boy. “Right.” He banged on the roof again.

“Eh?” the driver called.

“Back to Cork Street.”

James swung his head to look at Henry. “What? Why? Do you know any tricks that will help me win?”

“Great Zeus, no! Listen carefully, James Pennington, I am going to help you, but you have to make me a promise.”

“Anything.”

Young and foolish. “You will not place bets unless it’s with your own money. Betting with another’s funds is not only foolish but mean.”

James squinted into the distance then turned to Henry with clear eyes and nodded vigorously. “Right. No betting. Unless it’s with my own blunt.”

“Precisely. Now, let’s see if Schweitzer and Davidson can make some room for us this morning. I’m in need of a new suit myself.”

“Schweitzer and Davidson!”

Henry grumbled his assent. “But don’t even think about any side-street hells.”

“No, my lord!” James turned to the sights in the street, the crowds and shopfronts. “Lord Eaden,” he said, turning back around, “why are you helping me?”

“I’m helping you, yes.” How much should he tell the boy? Oh hell, why not all of it. No use prevaricating. “I’m thinking more of your mother. And perhaps a bit of myself. I’ve proposed to the woman twice, and she’s turned me down both times. I must admit I’m using you as part of a strategic courtship.”

“You … you want to marry my mother? My mother?!”

“I’m not at all sure why you seem so surprised. She’s a superior woman. And right now, I smell of shit. No wonder she won’t have me.”

James shook his head. Then, his wide, shocked eyes narrowed. “Why did she reject your proposals?”

Henry shrugged. “Something about her heart. Feminine nonsense.”

James nodded. “You haven’t hurt her, have you?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t hurt her, would you?”

“No. I’ll choose not to be insulted by the questions on such short acquaintance.” In fact, Henry felt oddly proud of the boy. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely a beef-wit. He had promise. He would make a good protector for Sarah and the girls with Henry and Jack away all the time.

“You think buying clothes for me will help your suit?”

“No.”

James waited for further clarification, but he wouldn’t get it. As the hackney rolled to a stop and James bounded out into the street, Henry paid the driver.

Money and clothes, they weren’t the right arguments to convince Sarah to marry him. James, though … a young boy who needed the guidance of a strong father figure, that might just work.