Courtney Milan (19 page)

He picked a few spoons off the floor as he made his way through the wreckage and set them, neatly in order, atop a metal box. It felt as if he were trying to close a mortal wound with two inches of twine.

The back room was, thank God, not quite so dire. That only meant that the rubbish that ringed the walls had only reached head-height, and that the area around the fireplace was mostly clear. There were a few boxes filled with grimy bits of metal strewn about. But at least there was a basin and soap and a table where a boy like Henry might prepare a simple meal.

Jonas washed his hands before heading up the stairs.

When he’d been young, there had always been rubbish around. Inevitable, really, when your father was a scrap-metal dealer. But it had been carefully sorted then, and had been kept in the sheds out back and the scrap-yards. Most importantly, the piles of scrap had left as swiftly as they had come in. But his father’s health had begun to fail, and he’d gradually stopped selling. He’d stopped selling, but he hadn’t stopped taking things in. By the time Jonas had finished his final year at King’s College, matters had come to this point.

He made his way up the stairs into the top bedroom. The steeped roof was low enough over the staircase that he had to stoop until he came into the center of the room. There was a second fireplace here, and a nice fire of coals burning. Mr. Lucas Grantham sat up in bed and was squinting at the stairwell.

“Well?” he demanded. “What have you got?”

Jonas spread his hands out. “It’s me, Father.”

“Hmmph.” The man folded his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits. “Well, don’t be long,” he groused. “I’m doing business today, I am.”

Jonas looked around the room doubtfully. “I…see.”

A wooden box was set up on one side of the bed, filled with chunks of rusting metal. At the foot, bits of splintered wood and paper were scattered about.

“Got some old barrels just yesterday,” his father said. “Good fastenings in those, if you know what to look for. Made my first fortune in fastenings, looking for those little bits of metal that other men couldn’t be bothered to find.”

Jonas looked around for a chair, but either the one that had been here yesterday had been dismantled for its nails, or it had been swallowed by the rubbish that crowded the north side of the room, spilling onto the floor.

“That’s how I won your mother, it was. Fastenings.” He made a happy noise.

Jonas settled himself gingerly on the edge of the bed. “Father,” he said. “You don’t have to do this any longer.”

Once, Mr. Grantham had owned a regular scrap-metal empire. He’d traded not only in fastenings, but in larger pieces—obsolete machinery from the factories, iron rails from train tracks that had fallen out of use, purchased at cut rates from bankrupted railways. He’d always been scrupulously frugal—one of Jonas’s earliest memories was his father plucking a horseshoe nail from the middle of the street, ignoring the filth it stood in, while Jonas stood three feet away and prayed desperately that none of the other boys would see him. But this…this was different.

“’Course I do,” his father replied. “Always have. Always will. Never too late to save a penny. I’ve got to do it.” He glared at Jonas. “I know what you’re about, boy—want nothing more than to have me dependent on you, dancing to your tune. But this is my livelihood, boy. Nobody’s taking it away.”

“I’d have no objection, if you sold what you took in. But—”

“As soon as I’m feeling well again, I’ll start up once more,” Mr. Grantham replied.

“It’s been over a year. And you’ve enough money in the bank, there’s no need to worry.”

“A year? Faugh,” Mr. Grantham grumbled. “It’s been a few weeks at most, and I’m feeling better already.”

That was one of the things that had begun to go wrong. In the first few days after his father’s heart attack, he’d seemed confused and stricken. But he’d survived, and even if Lucas found himself short of breath most of the time, Jonas had harbored hope. That hope died more everyday. It wasn’t just his father’s body that was failing, but his mind. His sense of time had melted away. He no longer remembered that it had been months since he was able to leave the bed. And he’d focused on bringing in scrap iron, more and more of it. Perhaps some part of him believed that if he could only bring in enough, if he could fill is home with the rubbish that had made up his past, that the future wouldn’t come.

Jonas had tried everything. One time, he’d even hired a pair of men to go in and forcibly clear the house. But his father had shrieked and carried on. He’d called for the police, in fact, and when they had come, they had regretfully informed Jonas that as it was Mr. Grantham’s house, and as he did in fact own the rubbish, it would be theft if Jonas removed it.

That had been a lovely day, his father threatening to have him prosecuted if he continued. Now, he simply tried not to upset the man.

At this point, Jonas could have recited the relevant section in Conolly’s
Indications of Insanity
from memory. “Where the individual has always been eccentric, the eccentricity will probably be increased by age. For one unacquainted with the previous habits of the patient, he may seem to be mad, although, perhaps, merely a humorist, who has in declining life become a little more childish in his humors.” Mr. Grantham was still the same man he’d always been—a little dour, a little suspicious, and extremely frugal. It was just that those qualities had been refined over and over until he could think only of scrap and scrap metal, until his home had become a veritable midden, with himself appointed as King of Rubbish.

All Jonas had to do to stop this was to have his own father declared incompetent.

“You’d be married by now, I wager,” his father said, “and giving me grandchildren already—if only you still saved fastenings.” This was said with a sad air. “Now you’re all alone.”

Jonas might once have pointed out that he was twenty-six years old—that his father had married far later than he, that he might still have his choice of a dozen women. But there was some truth in what his father said.

Oh, not the folderol about fastenings. As for the rest…

He could have been married last year, but for his fascination with Lydia Charingford.

The mornings when he tipped his hat to her on the street were always the brightest. He smiled when he saw her. He saw so little hope in the world, and she saw far too much. There were days he wanted to sit and watch her, to figure out where all that good cheer came from.

He knew he tended toward gloom. It made him consider blood poisoning and heart attacks when someone else might see a touch of indigestion. Those carefully considered worst-case scenarios made him a good doctor, but they also made him feel like a dark little raincloud.

When Lydia Charingford was around, though, he felt like a
smiling
dark little raincloud. He liked the way she saw things, even as she baffled him. He liked the way she saw all the world…except the portion of it that contained him.

He was the one person she didn’t like. He should have given up.

But every once in a while, he’d catch her eye by accident, and the blush on her face when she turned away… That alone had kept him from moving on.

He knew he should have said something—something other than stray, blunt remarks that never turned out well—but it was difficult to talk to a woman who always thought the worst of him. Besides, she’d become engaged to Captain Stevens six months ago, and Jonas wasn’t the sort of man who would encroach where he had no right.

Months had gone by. He’d called himself a fool. In love with another man’s fiancée? Now that had been truly insupportable. But then she’d ended the engagement.

“You’re right about that,” he said to his father. “It’s time I made up my mind on that front. I don’t suppose you’d agree to clean this place out if I married within the year?”

“Clean this out?” his father echoed, looking about him. “I suppose I will, at that.”

Jonas looked up sharply. “You will?”

It was time—past time—to attempt to win her over, notwithstanding all the many defects in his personality. His father’s agreement on this score was all that he had been waiting for. If he succeeded, she’d make him happy. And if he failed…it was long past time for him to choose someone else.

“’Course I will,” his father said. “I told you, the only reason it’s piling up a little now is that I’m not on my feet. Once I’m well again, I’ll take care of it all.”

Jonas sighed, and judged that promise to be as worthless as the junk that spilled out of boxes around him. “Of course you will,” he said, looking upward. He’d been hearing that from his father every day for the last year, and every day, he could mark another sign of his increasing fragility. “Of course you will.”

“W
ELL,
M
ISS
C
HARINGFORD,”
J
ONAS SAID,
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

Miss Charingford traced the edge of her scarf with her finger. It could no longer be called a morning sun, that brilliant light that spilled through the plate glass window in the front parlor of her parents’ home, but it was only just past noon. The light kissed the face of the eleventh prettiest woman in all of Leicester, and Jonas felt jealous.

But she didn’t look at him. She simply shrugged. “Not at all, Doctor Grantham,” she said. “I’m not wondering. Wonder requires thought; thought requires concern.” She looked over at him and raised one eyebrow. “And concern, Doctor Grantham, requires me to care about your motives in the first place.”

Which I do not.
She left that implied, but unspoken.

“I am constantly amazed by you,” he said. “To say that you view the world through rose-colored glasses would be the greatest of understatements. You don’t just see things tinted in pink; you see a world that is pink all the way through.”

She gave him a tight, forced smile.

“When I push you on it, you don’t simper or fluster or make excuses. You defend what you see with a surprising capacity for logic.”

“A s
urprising
capacity,” she said flatly. “My, the compliments you give a woman. Do say on.”

Jonas felt himself flush. He had, in fact, intended it as a compliment. “That came out poorly. I only meant that you see the entire world in glowing terms. The entire world, that is, except for me.”

Miss Charingford didn’t look at him. In fact, Jonas rather thought she was avoiding his eyes altogether. Her fingers flexed. “I don’t see the world in glowing terms, Doctor Grantham. I theorize, and not all my theories are positive.”

“I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Of course
you
don’t,” she said. “But I allow myself to consider both the good possibilities and the bad. I merely choose to focus on the good, when it’s there to be found.”

“Do you?”

“You, on the other hand, are only aware of the bad.” She looked away.

“I hardly think you know me well enough to judge that,” he replied mildly.

“Well enough. Take me, for instance.”

He would like to, actually. He would have liked to take her very much. But he turned to her and gestured attentively.

“You think that because I am optimistic, I am frivolous and foolish—a veritable lily of the field, unable to toil, spin, or read the
London Quarterly
when the opportunity arises.” She leaned in and whispered. “Let me tell you a secret. I’m not stupid.”

“Actually, Miss Charingford,” he said, inclining his head toward her, dropping his voice as low as he could. “I already knew that about you. I have never thought you stupid. Or foolish. Or ignorant.” He set his hand atop hers. “Just different.”

Her breath caught and her eyes widened. She glanced down at his fingers—he could feel her knuckles against the palm of his hand.

“You surprise me because you know precisely the same things that I know, and you come to the exact opposite conclusions,” he said. “Every time you open your mouth, I’m convinced that you must be the most naïve girl on the face of the planet. And yet…” He shook his head. “And yet every time you open your mouth, you demonstrate that you are not.”

He hadn’t moved his hand the entire time. She sat, looking up into his eyes, and he felt positively mesmerized. Her eyes were so dark, her skin so fair. Her hair was put up, with little ringlets escaping from the knot to fall at her cheek.

Miss Charingford always dressed well. There was a sleek attention to detail in her toilette that even his fashion-ignorant brain could identify. But today, dressed in a russet gown that highlighted the pink of her cheeks, she looked particularly adorable. Those light freckles dusting across her nose practically begged to be touched.

She pulled her hand from underneath his, balling it into a fist at her side. “That is because, as I said, I see both the good and the bad in everything that comes my way. That way, I am never unprepared.” She shot him a look, one that had him swallowing. “Around you, I need a great deal of preparation.”

“Ah. So you might not
wonder
about why I have come. But perhaps you’ve theorized about it.”