Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane

Chapter 7

Henry never made it to bed. Loud voices from the Stevens Hotel tavern arrested his tired footsteps and turned them in a new direction. In the corner of a crowded room, near a fireplace, his assistants engaged in their usual pastime—argumentation. Henry studied them. Miss Smith looked the proper British miss with her honey-colored hair and blue eyes, and Jackson was a strapping example of an English lad with the golden Cavendish looks. They looked more like Henry than his own children did. Ada, Nora, and Pansy looked like their mother, all three.

Henry’s heart pinged, and he shook his daughters away.

Miss Smith sat like a fireplace poker on a chair, arms folded over her chest. She scowled up at Jackson, who leaned with lazy grace against the mantel.

Miss Smith saw Henry first and popped to her feet. “Lord Eaden! I’m so glad you’ve returned. Jackson is being a complete buffoon. Again.”

Jackson slipped behind Miss Smith and plopped in her abandoned chair with an air of exhaustion. “It’s buffoonery to be homesick, then?”

Miss Smith cut Jackson a razor-sharp glance. “Only children are homesick.”

Jackson emitted a half-laugh, half-sigh sound. “What say you, Uncle? Where do you stand on the subject of homesickness?”

Henry suppressed his own sigh. Miss Smith ran headlong, as usual, into a bad argument. And Jack, as usual, baited her. He wouldn’t take a side, never did. Besides, Henry was afraid the hero worship the young girl carried for him would dissolve if she knew what he did. Grown men could be homesick, too. Often.

The intriguing Sarah’s lapis lazuli eyes flashed in his memory, and a wash of homesickness almost drowned him.

“Lord Eaden!” Miss Smith stood near him and pulled him toward the warm corner of the tavern she and Jackson had claimed as their own. “Is everything all right? Did you secure your objective?”

Why did the girl speak like that, as if all life was objectives, goals, and schedules? At least she made his life easier. “I’m fine, but, no. No Gulliver’s.”

Her mouth dropped open. “But how? Success was guaranteed!”

Jackson stood and poured a glass of brandy from a bottle nearby, handing it to Henry. “Nothing is guaranteed.”

“Thank you, my boy. And I’m glad you’ve been listening.”

Jackson shot Miss Smith a triumphant look. She scowled and opened her mouth to argue.

Henry’s lids dropped heavy over his eyes. When had he last slept? “Enough, the both of you. Your bickering is too much for my old bones.”

His young assistants huffed simultaneously.

Jackson hit him on the back. “You’re as fit as a fiddle, Uncle.”

Miss Smith nodded, her lips pursed in a serious line. “Men younger than you are not as well-kept, my lord.”

If they could agree on nothing else, it seemed, his two assistants could agree to esteem him, only God knew why.

“What happened to Gulliver’s?” Jackson asked, sipping his own tumbler of amber liquid. The light from the fire caught Jackson’s glass, warming it, setting it aflame.

Henry’s own tumbler was flat. It didn’t dance with firelight. But as he lifted the glass and took a sip, he conjured a pair of dancing lapis lazuli eyes. “A formidable opponent, nephew.”

His assistants huffed again.

“All is not lost, though. I may have discovered the key to my second reason for returning to England.”

Miss Smith turned from him, but not before she could hide her frown.

Jackson’s eyebrows raised in disbelief. “So soon?”

Henry nodded.

“A new aunt,” Jackson breathed. “Such a woman is more myth than reality.”

Miss Smith whipped around, her face blank. “You’ve known her, then, Lord Eaden? She’s a former acquaintance.”

“No. I just met her today. At Hopkins Bookshop.”

“How can you trust her after such a brief acquaintance?”

How could he trust her? Why had he proposed marriage? His arguments remained solid reasons for a match between them. Unless …

Unless she had hidden sins, hidden proclivities that made her unsuitable to mother a gaggle of unruly girls.

But the way she had held Gulliver’s. The note in her voice when she’d talked about her late husband’s betrayal. The way she’d coldly considered his proposition. He’d learned through the years to read people, to learn those who told the truth from those who fed him falsehoods. “I can trust her.”

Miss Smith’s words were a pitch or two away from a wail. “But how do you know?”

Jackson stepped nearer to her, patted her shoulder. “Gwen has a point, Uncle.”

“What time is it?” It felt like the bloody middle of the night.

Jackson pulled out a pocket watch, battered and faded. “Just after three. Why?”

Henry pulled his hands down his face. Travel dug holes in his bones and emptied his veins until he was a husk, easily blown away by even the most tepid wind. And then, of course, it had rained at least twelve of the forty-eight hours they’d been in London.

Despite the sun’s position in the sky, he needed sleep. No more conversation. He stood and faced the surprisingly united front his assistants presented. “Miss Smith, do you suddenly question my ability to discern a woman’s good character after one meeting?”

“I—”

“Where would you be now if I had not decided in a moment you were good and worthy of help?”

“Here, now, Uncle,” Jackson said. “It’s different.”

“Is it?”

“You weren’t going to marry Gwen. You hired her as a secretary.”

“And she’s a fine one, is she not?”

Miss Smith’s eyes lost some of their petulance.

“Wait.” Jackson’s mouth quirked at the corner. “This woman, she’s a damsel, isn’t she?”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s in distress. She needs rescuing. You are rescuing her by offering marriage.”

Miss Smith’s eyes grew large as saucers. “You’re right, Jack!”

Henry slouched into the chair that had lately hosted both Miss Smith and Jack and stretched his legs out before the fire. “Since when do you two agree on anything?”

“The only time you resemble an old man, Uncle, is when you grumble like that.”

“Oh! It’s true, isn’t it?” Miss Smith clapped her hands, laughing.

“Enough,” Henry said, his words low but firm. “Go organize something. We’ll be leaving London soon enough. Do we have travel arrangements yet?”

“Yes,” Jackson replied. “But we can’t leave until we speak with Harrigan about his last publication.”

Henry scoffed.

“Oh, that man!” Miss Smith growled. “He thinks he can out … out … out-scholar you without taking a step beyond his comfortable townhouse!”

Harrigan was a nuisance most of the time, but he had a keen mind and his powers of observation had revealed a few buried secrets Henry had missed before. “Yes, schedule a time to meet with Harrigan, and the members of the Society of Scholars. I want to see what they’re working on.”

“And the publisher, Uncle.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Jackson pushed.

“Of course. I’ve done enough damage with my books. A plague of pompous British explorers trailed us this last year, leaving abuse and damage everywhere they went.”

“You left quite a few of them bloody nosed and gave most of them the slip,” Jackson said. “I assume Lord Croft never found those temples. That fake map you gave him was quite excellent.”

“All Hassan and Fatma’s work. Artists, they are.” Henry shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. That one book did too much damage. For every British nincompoop explorer we confuse, ten more will come. You know that.”

Jackson bit his thumbnail as he always did when puzzling through a problem. “But we know so much more than Harrigan and the like.”

“And it’s only because those we learn from trust us. I’ll not betray that trust as I did last time. If I never see another Egyptian-themed wallpaper it will be too soon.”

Gwen snickered. “You threw that silly bust of Anubis out Lady Hawkinson’s window. Her face—” She snickered again.

Henry snorted. “It was holding up her calling cards.” He shook his head. “Egyptomania. A travesty. And I’m partly to blame.”

Jacks and Miss Smith let him seethe in silence for some moments.

“Will you—” Miss Smith paused, rolled her lips between her teeth. “Will we all be going to Cavendish Manor this time?”

“I think not. There’s too much for the two of you to accomplish in town if you want to be off soon.”

“I do!” Miss Smith gasped.

“Well, then, you and Jackson will have to take care of matters in London while I take care of matters at Cavendish Manor.”

“And that means bringing home a new wife?” Jackson’s eyes danced merrily in the firelight.

“Exactly.”

“Will you tell us no more of this mysterious woman, this damsel in distress, then?”

“No. The matter is far from settled.” She had, after all, rejected his proposal. “Nothing is guaranteed.”

Henry’s nephew smiled, nodded to his uncle, took Miss Smith’s arm, and hauled her from the room. “Come, Gweny.” He wove them through servants and hotel guests. “We have much to do, and the old man needs a midday nap.”

Damn the insolent pup for mocking him … but a nap wasn’t out of the question. Henry hunkered lower and closed his eyes.

“Lord Eaden?”

Henry sighed and opened them back up.

Miss Smith stood before him, breathless. Behind her, leaning against the tavern door, Jackson waited.

“Yes, Miss Smith?” Henry asked.

“Lord Eaden.”

He’d never asked her to call him Henry, though he’d trained and protected her these six months. She reminded him too much of his daughters. And he never called her Gwen or Gweny the way Jackson did. Formality created a necessary distance between people. “Yes?”

“After you marry, if you do marry, it … it won’t change anything, will it? We’ll all three be leaving for Cairo in a few months still, yes?”

“You dislike London so much?”

“I—” She swallowed. Her eyes darted around the room. “Yes, my lord. I do dislike it.”

Her wariness worried him. It had been a nettle in his side since he’d discovered her on his ship—a stowaway—ten miles out to sea. Too far to turn back. Besides, she’d begged for him to let her stay, and he could never resist a woman desperate enough to beg.

He reached out and took her hand, gave it a squeeze. “Of course, Miss Smith. We’ll be back where the sun shines as soon as we planned. Remember, I’m acquiring a mother for the children, not a wife for myself. I have no desire to become a homebody.”

Her body relaxed. Relief shaped her mouth into a grin, and she nodded. “Just so, Lord Eaden.” Then, she returned to Jackson and they disappeared.

Henry swirled the brandy in his glass. Now it was his glass’s turn to catch fire, reminding him of the sun glinting on the desert sand, hot and burning, and not at all like home. Nothing like merry old England.

Cold and wet England.

Haunted England.

But somehow, Sarah Pennington embodied all that was good and right with the country in her neat little body and inquisitive blue eyes. She was no ghost. Too bright and warm to be a chilly specter.

Where he’d left her was not. The place had been derelict, gray, cold. He shivered. He should not have left her there, the future mother of his daughters.

Nothing is guaranteed.

No, but he felt Sarah Pennington in his bones.

She’d rejected him. He closed his eyes, crossed his legs, and let the hum and bustle of patrons swirling around him lull him into sleep.

When Henry jolted out of sleep who knew how much later, the fire smoldered and the room hummed with quiet. His heart raced, and he couldn’t shake the dream from his mind. He’d had it often enough since his wife’s passing. In it, he traveled everywhere with a long, shallow box. It came with him on boats, carriages, coaches. Camels pulled it behind them with ropes. It stayed with him, always unopened in every room he slept in, his companion when he slept outside under the stars. He didn’t have to look to know what was in it—his wife, hot with fever, but cold in death.

The dream had been different this time. Alone under a huge, heavy moon, he’d pried the box open. He’d looked inside. He’d seen not his wife, but Sarah Pennington, hot with fever, cold in death. Then the body of Sarah Pennington had sneezed.

Awake, he realized how absurd the dream, the nightmare, was.

But he had left her cold, alone, and probably sick in a derelict building, after she’d walked miles sopping wet.

Great Zeus, she’d sneezed, after all! A sneeze was tiny, inconsequential, unless it foreboded some greater illness.

The memory of Mrs. Pennington’s sneeze ricocheted around the dark room, and Henry shot to his feet. What time was it? It was dark, too dark to read his pocket watch, even in the light of the fire’s embers. She’d be sleeping.

Unless she was burning with fever.

Henry’s feet swept into action, taking him toward Hopkins Bookshop and Mrs. Pennington’s abode until he found and hailed a hackney.

The hackney stank, redolent with the smells of carousing—ale, smoke, and sick. What was he doing? Running to her rescue? He barely knew her. Would he really—what?—barge in and carry her to safety?

Absurd.

He wouldn’t go in her actual apartment. He’d just creep to her door, place an ear to it, make sure there was nothing but the silence of sleep behind it. But if he heard the tossing and turning, the moaning of a fevered soul, he’d be there to help.

When the hackney rolled to a stop, Henry threw the drive a coin. “Wait.” Henry bounded up the steps inside the building. Damn. Which door was hers? He checked each one, ears open to the sounds of suffering and sickness. He heard only snoring.

He was a veritable fool! He tiptoed down the stairs, out of the building, and began to climb back into the hackney, but something stopped him. He looked up at Mrs. Pennington’s building. Great Zeus, what if it tumbled down around her sleeping head? It certainly looked that precarious.

He sidled up to the driver. “Good sir.”

“Eh?”

“Leave your hackney with me for the night. Right here. I won’t drive it anywhere.”

“Wot?! You may be a toff, but I ain’t—”

Henry’s fist of notes silenced the man. It was more money than the man could make in a week’s worth of midnight work. “I won’t drive it. It will stay right on this street and I with it. You can retrieve it again in the morning.”

The driver’s eyes lit up. He nodded, lumbering down from his perch.

“Good.”

Henry climbed into the hackney and gagged on the stench. “This may have been a mistake.”

But no. She was all alone. And cold. And sneezing. If Henry didn’t watch over her, who would?