Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane
Chapter 9
Lord Eaden.
The mere name made Sarah feel like a giddy green girl, one of the young seamstresses she’d worked with before Hopkins Bookshop. They’d tittered over handsome beaux and blushed over grinning rogues.
Lord Eaden.
Sarah silenced a titter. She suppressed a blush.
Ridiculous, considering the man’s behavior thus far. He’d been overbearing in the bookshop, pushy at the earl’s residence, and bewildering in the coach. His mind made rapid twists and turns, and he reacted oddly to female illness. But he loved books. He was a gentleman, intelligent, handsome, magnetic. And she suspected he had a keen sense of humor. She wanted to make him laugh.
Ridiculous, stinky, adorable man. She didn’t need to repeat her reasons not to marry him. The way he made her feel was reason enough. When he left, all the sunshine he built up inside her would go with him.
The sneaky scoundrel knew what he was about, showing her those gifts. She’d gotten to know his daughters, his wards, and him through those little items. The Cavendishes, each one, intrigued her. She wanted to meet them. But the only way to do so was to accept his proposal.
She really couldn’t.
Every part of her knew that except a slice of her heart that cried out to follow him to the alter. She entered Hopkins Bookshop, inhaling the scent of books and tea.
“Halloo, mother!”
Sarah’s head snapped to a corner of the shop where, sitting in a chair tipped onto its back two legs, James grinned sheepishly at her over a book.
“What are you doing here?” Her heart rose to meet him as she sailed across the room. Confused heart. It should be furious. It was worried, pounding, glad, even, but not angry. “How are you here?”
The front legs of the chair fell to the ground with a thud as James rose to his feet. Sarah pulled him into a hug then held him out at arm’s length. She couldn’t help it. His dark hair was tousled. His limbs were still lanky with boyhood as she remembered. But, had he grown since the last time she’d seen him? Impossible!
She hugged him again, held him out at arm’s length again, and tempered her face into a frown. “How and why are you here, James?”
His smile doubled as his mother’s waned. “Set out last night. Walked.”
She checked his face further. Was he flushed? Too pale? “You walked in the rain?”
He cringed. “Wasn’t raining when I set out.”
She couldn’t deny the echo of her own conversation with Lord Eaden, and she tumbled into the memory of the part he’d played last night with relish. “How are you feeling, darling? Are you well? You look remarkably dry!”
“I bought an umbrella off a fellow when it started raining.”
And how much had he paid for that umbrella? Didn’t matter. It was money gone, as always. “Why didn’t you come to my lodgings?” She blushed. Perhaps it was best he hadn’t. What would he have thought to see her with Lord Eaden this morning? No, she knew the answer. The adventures of Lord Eaden had been all James could talk about for years. He’d be elated to meet his hero.
James shrugged her hands off his shoulders. “I just got here, Mother. I thought you’d be here already. You’re late.”
She was, but through no fault of her own, unless it was her fault she’d allowed a high-handed adventurer to escort her to work. Yes, perhaps that had been a bad idea. What with the second proposal and all.
Sarah resettled her mind on James. “But why, darling? Why are you here and not at Harrow?”
His face fell, his eyelids dropped. She hadn’t seen him this sheepish since, as a boy of ten, he’d accidentally set fire to her best gown while making shadow puppets on the wall. “I ruined my good suit.”
She groaned. “James, no. How?” That suit had cost every penny she’d had saved. But he’d needed it. He grew like a weed, ankles and wrists shooting past cuffs before she could finish reading half a book. But also, James hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact he lacked what his peers at school had. Namely money and the fruits of such privilege.
“Just ordinary stuff, Mother. Some foreigners and I, we were chasing a rabbit. Eagerton made a bang-up bow, and Cuttles and I made some arrows, and we were going to cook it. The rabbit, I mean.” He fairly radiated excitement. “We were chasing it through the woods but didn’t see the stream and fell in. Dirty business. Caked all over with mud. I tried to salvage what I could when we got back, but … They have plenty more good suits, Mother. I just have the one.” He shrugged and looked away.
Sarah sat in the chair James had vacated. It would take forever to earn enough to outfit James like the young lords he went to school with. She cut her eyes toward his tall, trim figure. He was wearing his old suit. The pants and jacket sleeves were too short, the shirt threadbare, the cravat not quite white. He still wore his good shoes. Hardly good any longer. They were caked in mud. Ruined. But he had no other options. His other shoes no longer fit him.
She sighed. She had no options, either. She must fix the situation. For James. She rose and pulled her son into an embrace one final time.
He squirmed under her ministrations. “Mother!
“Sorry.” She set him free. “I just didn’t expect to see you. Why didn’t you send word first?”
His face turned crimson. “I didn’t know … I didn’t know if you’d have the blunt to pay for a letter.”
“There’s always enough for a letter, James.”
“Yes, but I’ll need a new suit.”
He was right. She’d need every penny for a new suit. There would no longer be enough for letters. “We’ll just have to figure something out, but you’ll have to go back to school, James. Tomorrow. Rest first. Do you remember the way to my lodgings?”
“Yes!”
“There’s some tea there, but nothing to eat, I’m afraid. Here.” She reached into her reticule and gave him what was there. Not much. Blast and damnation. Barely anything at all.
He accepted the coins with a grin and an open palm. “Thanks, Mama!”
Her heart melted. He never called her that anymore. “I have to work. Go rest.”
He waved as he slipped out the door and into the waking street.
“Great Gutenberg!” Sarah groaned, sinking back into the chair.
“That does not sound like the exclamation of a woman who’s brought me Gulliver’s.”
Sara jumped from the seat and swung around.
Mr. Hopkins stood behind the counter, his head tilted at a curious angle. “Who was that boy, and why did he leave without buying a book?”
“That’s my son, James. Down from Harrow.”
Mr. Hopkins frowned, discarding the information. “And my book? You don’t have it, do you.”
Sarah chose her words carefully. “I was not able to procure it for you, no.”
“Pity.” He sighed, his face falling. “I didn’t have high hopes. No one can outwit Lord Eaden. He’s the kind of man who always gets what he wants.”
Not everything he wanted. Not Gulliver’s. Not her.
But what about James’s muddy boots? His ruined suit? His too-small clothes? The young lordlings he emulated?
If she gave Lord Eaden one of the things currently denied him, namely herself, she wouldn’t have to deny James.
Was she being selfish, refusing to marry Lord Eaden?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hopkins. I’ve failed once more, it seems.”
He patted her on the hand. “Tsk-tsk, Mrs. Pennington. Don’t wallow. It was a doomed task to begin with.”
They swung toward the front of the shop, where the creaky hinges of the opening door alerted them to a customer.
Mr. Hopkins backed toward his office. “Ah. I must be going. I’m interviewing gentlemen today. You’ll have to mind the shop.”
Not a customer, then. A potential employee. “To fill my position?”
He grimaced. “You can’t be overprepared, Mrs. Pennington.”
“I suppose not.”
Mr. Hopkins disappeared, and Sarah swept in to greet the young man, tall and stooped with a serious face, who’d entered the shop.
“I’m here to interview for the position of shopkeep,” he said, his face barely moving as he spoke.
Oh, he’d be excellent at selling books. Customers loved automatons. She pointed to Hopkins’s office door and rolled her eyes as the young man walked away.
She had a month to find a new position, but Hopkins had set about replacing her as quickly as possible. A heavy dread filled her gut, and she found herself walking toward the travel books at the back of the shop. Though Lord Eaden’s works were scholarly and concerned with the social customs of the people in the places he visited, Mr. Hopkins organized them as travel narratives, and most people read them that way. She, too, often skipped over the scholarly bits.
But sliding one of the books—Burial Customs Along the Nile—off the shelf, she tried to understand the argument he made. Something about similarities to British burial customs and a refusal to, as he called it, “pillage and desecrate a people’s most sacred spots.” She remembered this book. Her son had loved it for the gruesome depictions of mummified bodies. She’d never paid it much mind beyond the fact he loved it. She’d questioned, briefly, his morbid fascination with it, but in hindsight, it hadn’t seemed to do him any harm. Now, though, Lord Eaden leaped off the page. She envisioned him moving with feline grace across deserts, startling at the smallest sniffle from any nearby female, agonizing over the perfect item to gift each daughter, and carting the tiny gifts across countries and oceans in pockets deepened for the purpose.
In laying out each supporting point of his argument, she saw the way his mind worked, so logically that if others didn’t follow along at the same rapid mental pace, it felt illogical.
“Point one,” Sarah read from page thirty-two, “consider the crocodiles.” Intriguing. She scanned a few paragraphs, but the language dried out after the first sentence, and her eyes glazed over. She snapped the book closed. What was there to consider about crocodiles, and how did such considerations connect to burial customs or to respecting those customs? She didn’t really care. But she loved that line. Consider the crocodiles. Indeed. Lord Eaden was a crocodile in need of consideration.
Especially because of James and his muddy boots, his ruined suit.
Especially because of the tall automaton interviewing to replace her.
Sarah meandered through the books. Lost in her considerations, she didn’t see the stack of books until she’d knocked it over. She bent down to collect the items, inspecting the spine of the first book she picked up. Lady Hemsworth’s Lady’s Guide to Moral Rectitude. Sarah stood and opened it. It cracked as if shocked at actually being opened. The table of contents declared advice on courtship could be found on page fifty-six. She flipped through the stiff pages, but page fifty-six was uncut, so she settled for page fifty-eight.
She read out loud. “The first thing a lady should ask herself when considering a marriage proposal is what potential dangers lie beneath the handsome, placid face of her suitor.” Not bad advice, all in all. Perhaps the book’s dry title did Lady Hemsworth a disservice. Sarah read on. “It is the worst kind of hell on earth to sew oneself for life to a reprobate, a profligate, in short, a moral crocodile who will eat your heart in a single gulp. Ha!” Sarah’s bark of laughter rang throughout the shop.
Consider the crocodile.
Popular advice, it seemed.
But ultimately worthless. It didn’t help her with James’s ruined suit. It didn’t help her with losing her position at Hopkins Bookshop or with finding a new one.
She could accept Lord Eaden’s proposal and be done with all those worries, but if she did, he might very well eat up her heart.