A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (27 page)

She was.

Very, very shyly, in case someone
should see - should know - he smiled back at her, and her whole face lit with a
secret joy, as if there were not the best part of a quarter-mile of table
between them and the better part of thirty inimical gossips.

"Mainly, Major Russell, I
take an interest in you for her sake," Wilmot said wearily. "Because
she is a nice little thing, and honest, which is about as rare as gryphon-shit
in these parts, and because she was kind to me. She is a little less kind, now,
since she knows my reputation. A nice child.
Two
nice children,
major."

That was supposed to be a
surprise. "I know," he said, and Wilmot smirked. (The Earl was not
always so perfectly beautiful, then, and that was comforting. That smug look
sat ill on his lovely features.)

"You are not
entirely
made of wood, sir."

He was not. He felt, actually, as
if he were melting like butter, basking in her confidential smile. She had not
tired of him. Other people marked it - it was not the wishful thinking of a
foolish, ageing man -

"Well, then. What do you
propose to do about it?"

He turned his head and looked at
Wilmot and said, dreamily, "Love her. And the child. Always."

And was rewarded by an expression
of grave amusement on those perfect features. "Of course. And presumably
the whispers will go away by themselves?
Amor vincit omnia
, and all
that? Dear me, you are a romantic. Who'd ever have thought it?"

He didn't care.

"Major Russell, I believe
you are
flirting
with your wife," John Wilmot said, sounding quite
shocked, and Russell applied himself to his plate again with the oddest warm
feeling about his heart. Then he looked up. "I believe she is flirting
back, too, my lord." He did not say it was marvellous. But he thought it.

"I can barely believe
I
am saying this to
you,
of all people, but - may I remind you that you
are not a murderer?"

"Nor am I a source of common
gossip, sir. And of the two things - would I rather tend to my wife, who is
pleasant company, and civil, and -"

"You're blushing,
major."

He'd been baited once tonight
already and he would not bite again. "- Or would I rather give credence to
baseless rumours by paying them heed. Well. You work it out."

"That, of course, why your
wife has got Master Fairmantle's nose to the scent, and his little busy hound's
tail is wagging merrily?"

Touché.

"If I find the source of the
rumours, my lord, I will kill him," Russell said, and meant it.

"And you not a
murderer," the Earl said mournfully. And he was beginning to rather like
John Wilmot, who was a reprobate and shockingly without either conscience or
moral compass, but who was -
amusing
.  Cheerful, funny, and wholly
untroubled by anything that resembled a scruple. "D'you know, then, I
think you may be rather fun after all, major. Do let me know when you plan to
carry out the deed of darkness, won't you? I think I might like to hold your
coat."

He stood up, and all the tongues
started wagging again: another table they would not be welcome at, then, in the
future.

Thomazine put her hands on the
table, as if she meant to come with him, and he grinned at that. Whither thou
goest, tibber –

And thought, the hell with it,
they were all looking at him anyway, and he put his hand out to her and the
rest of the party could go to hell and pump at thunder, as they said back home
at Four Ashes.

"You ready, then, my
girl?" he said, and she linked her fingers in with his.

"
Shameless
,"
Lady Talbot said, very loudly. “The hot-tailed little strumpet.”

Thomazine curtseyed. "My
thanks for the loan of the jacket, madam. Mistress Behn, should you choose to
call on us for supper -"

"The Widow will have an
apoplexy?" Russell suggested, and his wife snorted. "You will be most
welcome, Mistress Behn."

47

They
did not call a carriage. Which was all right, because no one asked them if they
required it.

"Not a long walk, and a fair
night," she said comfortably.

"As long as you're
comfortable with it." And then he stopped, and turned her gently to face
him. "
Both
of you?"

She said nothing for a moment.
"I wondered if you'd noticed."

"I had noticed," he said
gravely. "A fair night, then. For the three of us to walk home."

48

She
was drowsing, midway between sleep and wakefulness, when she heard the tinkle
of breaking glass and a brief commotion, of shouting and banging in the street
-

Of one high, piercing scream from
downstairs, and the sudden angry roar of the Bartholomew-baby woken untimely
from his dreams.

The Widow Bartholomew’s voice
raised in outrage, topping the shouts outside, and then she felt the bed lurch
as Russell was out of it and across the room in one lithe movement, jerking
open the stiff casement.

“You will
disperse
!” he
roared out of the window, evidently forgetting in his agitation that he had
been a civilian this twelve months and more and had no more authority over a
mob than the kitchen cat.

He had no more clothes on than
that cat, either, which possibly did not help his authority, but provided
Thomazine with a satisfying view, particularly when he leaned forth to brandish
a thing menacingly from the window.

It turned out to have been the
chamber pot, the contents of which were a remarkably efficient means of
breaking up a party.

The widow looked furious.

This was a quiet, respectable
working neighbourhood. People did not throw rocks through the windows of decent
folks’ houses without something being done about it.

Russell turned the rock over in
his hand, and returned her martial stare with a perfectly cool one of his own.
Thomazine unscrewed the paper that the missile had been wrapped in. “Death to
the
duck lovers
?” she said blankly, and her husband snorted with more
honest amusement than she’d seen in him for the better part of a month.

“Something like, my tibber.”

He folded the paper and tucked it
into the breast of his shirt, and gave the widow a quick, reassuring, and entirely
absent-minded smile. (He was up to something, Thomazine thought suspiciously.
That man did not do sweet and reassuring unless he was up to the neck in it.)

“The wrong house,” he said
blandly. “Feeling against the Dutch runs higher than I thought.”

“Especially in this good English
part of London,” she said, and dropped her eyes modestly.

That good English part of London
populated by French and Flemish Huguenot weavers, by second-generation
immigrant families fleeing the wars in Europe, by the Jewish families winked at
by the late Lord Protector for their gold - black seamen, hulking blonde seamen
from the Baltic ships, Portuguese sailors.  "You recognise the
handwriting?" she said warily, and he stopped with one arm in the sleeve
of his coat and gave her a grin of sheer, wild joy.

"No, my tibber, don't be
daft. What d'you think I'm like to do, go round to his house and run him
through? This piece of villainy is going straight to the local Justice, Zee,
and nothing will satisfy me but to have the bugger what set this in motion
strung up by the cods from the nearest chimney -" He stopped, cocked his
head, considered. "Transported as an indentured servant.
That'll
learn the sod."

It wasn't funny and she ought not
to laugh, but it always tickled her a little when he got cross and his careful,
precise voice went slightly-country.

"Nobody," he said.
"
Nobody
is permitted to hurt and distress the people I have a care
for, tibber. There will be no more. It stops. It stops here."

And he still sounded like a
backcountry boy from Hughenden, and he still looked sixteen years old, with his
hair all in wisps about his dear, elegantly bony face, and a sudden chill went
down her back. For there was a certain turned-inward look he had - had always
had when he was on his mettle, the look of a marksman sighting down a gun
barrel, and it boded ill for someone. He was not, yet, sighted on his enemy.
But he would be, because he was not made for forgiving, and then -

It would go hard with someone.
"Thankful," she said, and put her hand on his arm, feeling the muscle
of his sword arm tense under her fingers. (Long and lean as a hunting-dog, with
a swordsman's lithe muscle. It was not only good to look on. He was, still,
dangerous.) He looked down at her, and the unmarred corner of his mouth
twitched.

"Thomazine." Not a
question, but an affirmation. She was here and she was with him. He tipped his
head till his forehead rested against hers - this close, he had beautiful eyes:
slate-grey and shot through with sparkles of silver and black, and gold tips to
his dark lashes. He blinked like an owl, very solemnly. "Love you,
tibber," he said, and blinked again.

"Be careful," she said.

No, he could not bear to be the
focus of every eye, and the subject of every gossip. Not for himself. He had
never had much of a care for himself.

That scared her a little bit.
"Be careful," she said again, and shook his arm gently.

"Have you ever known me
else?"

And there was no answer to that,
because she had not known him else.

But then - a man who helped
desperate Scottish prisoners of war to escape, and then employed them in a
public capacity, and counted them as friends. A man who engaged in peace
negotiations with Dutch merchants, whilst his country was at war with the Dutch
government.

A man counted by half the world
as cold and unemotional, who had wept for joy on his wedding day, and at the
birth of his friend's first daughter.

No, there were any number of
things she did not know he might be, and after a bare six months of marriage
she was learning that he was not, quite, the rebel angel she had thought he
was.

Didn't love him a mite the less
for it, mind. It was quite exciting, that she did not know from morning to
morning what she might wake up next to.

"I have never known you
careless
,"
she said. And meant it.

49

He
was as good as his word. The note was presented to the local Justice, who
promised to make investigation.

Russell found a glazier - he
found a glazier himself, and then lurked over the man's shoulder asking
intelligent questions all morning till Thomazine imagined the poor soul was
glad to finish his task and escape. He probably thought he was being quizzed by
a suspicious householder, poor thing, and in fact Thomazine had a dark
suspicion that her husband was filing away the information for a future point
when they returned to Four Ashes, when she was going to find Thankful somewhere
unlikely with an empty window-frame, surrounded by splinters of glass and
strips of lead, whistling sibilantly and having a marvellous time.

There, it was something else she
had not known till she married him – till that morning at Four Ashes when he
had been so determined to cook her breakfast - that he liked to know how to do
things. A competent soul, under that elegant exterior, and a man who was not
shy of rolling up his sleeves and setting-to, and who was unreasonably - and
rather endearingly - proud of his competence. While he was minded towards
matters of construction, he put in a row of nails - by eye, mind, and all
straight, which puffed him up with pride all afternoon - into the warm wall in
their lodgings, to hang their outdoor clothing to dry against the chimney
breast.

"D'you remember,
tibber?" he said proudly, and held up his left hand, with the long white
scar across the meat of his palm where he'd managed to gouge a hole in himself
helping put a roof on the ruin at Four Ashes before they married.

He'd showed her that, when he
asked her to marry him. It had still been a great clotted scab, then. She
remembered him being quite indignant on what kind of man would not set himself
to ensuring a sound roof over his beloved's head, if labour was scant.

Well, she supposed if he never
regained his post with the Admiralty, he could take up work as a labourer - and
she smiled to herself at that, for she didn't think he would mind. And she was
suddenly submerged in a wave of tenderness for him, for all his dignity was for
his person, not his position, and he was as prim and funny in a ragged shirt
and a pair of breeches out at the knee as he was in his lutestring silk suit.
She took his hands in hers and kissed his dear, capable fingers, exclaiming
over the lack of splinters and black fingernails.

Which he had liked, and which had
rather shocked the Widow, when she came upstairs and found her most respectable
lodger nuzzling his wife's ear with definite intent.