Diamonds and Dreams (11 page)

“Goldie, I’m afraid I don’t know how to
wheeze,” he told her, feeling very glad that particular habit was
not one of his own.

At the look of defeat in his eyes, Goldie
reached up and caressed his cheek. “Don’t worry about it right now.
I don’t expect you to learn everything in one day, Saber. We’ll
practice wheezin’. Before you know it, you’ll be flarin’ and
wheezin’ right along with the best of ’em.”

* * *

“Great day Miss Agnes!” Goldie exclaimed
when Saber lit several lamps in the room where she would sleep.
She’d already explored the rest of the gorgeous house, each thing
amazing her with its luxury and elegance, but this bedroom
surpassed everything she’d seen so far. It was even nicer than the
one in which she’d just left Big.

Decorated in pristine white, vivid pink, and
apple-green, it was the most beautiful room she’d ever beheld.
Gleaming brass was everywhere, providing a striking complement to
the color scheme. Warm oak furniture served to soften the effect.
Goldie couldn’t suppress another soft squeal at the sight of the
white lace canopy sweeping delicately to the floor. She knew it
would be sheer heaven sleeping in the princess bed.

“Does that little squeal mean you like it or
dislike it?” Saber asked. He ambled over to the glass doors that
opened to the balcony and began to pull the pink silk drapes across
them.

“No, don’t close ’em!” Goldie cried, running
to the doors. Flinging them open, she stepped out onto the balcony.
The moonlit garden met her wide eyes; the fragrance of
night-blooming flowers caressed her senses. A graceful tree branch
swept lightly across one corner of the balcony, creating a pleasant
and soothing sound. Absolute contentment floated through her. “Oh,
Saber,” she whispered, looking below. “I can’t believe I’m stayin’
here. It’s like a—Well, like a dream,” she said shyly. “This house
is like a castle. If I were still a little girl, I’d pretend I was
a princess.”

Saber smiled, suspecting that once he left
her alone in the room, she would pretend to be a princess. She’d
been a mermaid in the pond, hadn’t she? “How old are you,
Goldie?”

“I’ll be nineteen in five months and three
days,” she replied, still hanging over the balcony. “How old are
you?”

“Thirty, and don’t lean over so far.” She
was so little, her feet weren’t even touching the ground as she
balanced herself upon the rail. “You’re going to fall into the
shrubbery below.”

He scowled, remembering the time when
he’d
fallen from that same balcony and into those same
bushes. God, he hadn’t thought of that in years. Quickly, he looked
down at his right hand. There it was. The little scar from the
injury caused by the fall. Lost in the memory, he ran his finger
over the telltale white mark, trying to suppress the bittersweet
nostalgia.

“When will you be thirty-one?” Goldie
asked.

“I only recently celebrated my thirtieth
birthday.”

“Did you have a party?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I—Because I didn’t want one.” Saber’s
thoughts drifted again to a time when he had birthday parties every
year. His mother and father filled the house with presents, and he
was pronounced “King for the Day.” He even got to wear a crown. He
hadn’t been “King for the Day” in twenty years. Potent emotion
seized him once more, making him long for those days.

Those days that had been taken from him when
he’d needed them the most.

“I never knew someone who didn’t want a
party,” Goldie informed him. She got down from the railing, turned
to face him, and lifted her balled hands beneath her chin. “Are you
sure the owner of this Leighwood estate won’t mind me stayin’ in
this room?”

Saber leaned against the door frame and
contemplated her. Her eyes were so wide, so full of gold sparkle.
Her stance, the way she held her hands, and the unmitigated wonder
in her soft, childlike voice... She was like a little girl who’d
just wandered into the land of make-believe. This made him almost
sure that she would be Princess Goldie very shortly. “Why would he
mind?”

Slowly, she relaxed her fists, her fingers
uncurling on her cheeks, their tips disappearing into the unruly
curls framing her face. “I—Well, it’s such a
fine
room,
Saber,” she tried to explain. “Finer even than Imogene Tully’s tea
parlor back in Bug Hill, Kentucky. The town had a lot of crickets,
y’see. I always liked to hear ’em singin’ at night. Ole Imogene
used to have tea parties in her tea parlor every Wednesday at three
o’clock. She near about wore herself into a frazzle puttin’ the
parlor together. She traveled all over the state huntin’ out frilly
things to put in it. I wasn’t ever invited to her parties, but once
she hired me to clean that parlor. It was the first and last time
she ever let me in there.”

“Bug Hill, Kentucky, and Imogene Hilly,”
Saber mused aloud. He watched Goldie’s arms fall to her sides. She
clutched handfuls of her dress. The sight of her pale, slender
fingers wrapped around the coarse brown fabric of her skirt
disturbed him. He thought about how nice they would look lying upon
folds of rich, crimson satin.

He brought his gaze upward. The kiss of
moonlight upon her flaxen hair made those curly locks seem almost
alive. Golden twists of ribbons come to life. “Why was that the
last time you ever saw Imogene’s magnificent tea parlor,
Goldie?”

The tenderness she perceived in his rich,
deep voice made her stomach flutter. “I like the way you say my
name.”

His brow rose; a slight smile touched his
lips. Most women he knew liked the size of his wallet. The vast
acreage of his lands. The centuries-old honor of his title.

Goldie liked the way he said her name.
“Goldie,” he said again for her and for himself, too, because he
wanted to give her something she liked once more.

“Goldie,” she repeated in a whisper,
mesmerized by the intensity of his eyes. “You ever seen seaweed?
Not dried-up seaweed, but wet seaweed? The kind that washes up with
the waves and lays all spread out over the sand? It’s such a purty
green. So fresh. The seawater makes it sparkle, and it looks real
good against the warm, tanned shore. You have seaweed eyes,
Saber.”

Seaweed eyes. Saber pondered the sound of
that. Jillian was fond of telling him his eyes reminded her of
exquisite emeralds. Emeralds and seaweed. There was a drastic
difference between the two, but how much more vivid was the image
of fresh, wet seaweed against a warm, tanned shore. He smiled,
thinking of it.

“It was Uncle Asa,” Goldie said.

Snatched from his pondering, Saber looked at
her blankly. “What was Uncle Asa?”

“Well,” she began, still fingering the
material of her skirt, “he came to Imogene’s lookin’ for me. He’d
been drinkin.’ He—He always drinks,” she squeaked. “I tried to keep
him out, but Uncle Asa...well, he doesn’t listen to anyone when
he’s been drinkin’. Close your eyes, Saber, and imagine a big,
clumsy elephant tryin’ to walk through a patch of buttercups
without crushin’ ’em, and you’ll know what Uncle Asa looked like in
Imogene’s parlor.

“He’d barely set foot in it when a lamp
crashed to the floor. It was the one with Chinese pagodas painted
all over it. A vase broke next, and the water and flowers spilled
all over Imogene’s love seat. She said she had that little sofa
special made by a French sofa-maker, and that she paid a hundred
dollars for it. I never believed her. She didn’t have a hundred
dollars to spend on a sofa. Nobody in Bug Hill had that kind of
money. ‘Cept maybe old Hiram Winkler. He had a hairbrush that was
made of pure gold.”

Saber let out a long, slow whistle designed
to show her how very impressed he was over Hiram’s gold brush.
Inwardly, he smiled.

“Hiram was so proud of that brush, he wore
it around his neck on a chain. He said he did that so he’d always
have his brush handy when his hair got messed up. But Saber, ‘cept
for about three hairs above each of his ears, the man was
bald
. He just wore the brush like that to show it off. I
always wondered what it would be like to brush my hair with a pure
gold brush. You think pure gold brushes work any better’n plain
wooden ones?”

Saber’s inward smile reached his lips. A low
chuckle escaped. Goldie had maddened him several times today, but
he decided she was quite the most entertaining person he’d ever
met. “I really couldn’t say. I’ve never had one.”

He did have a sterling silver brush, he
remembered, wondering if that counted.

“I don’t even have a
wooden
one since
I lost the one I had,” she said wistfully. “Anyway, the harder
Uncle Asa tried to keep from messin’ things up in Imogene’s parlor,
the more he wrecked ’em. Imogene came in and clubbed him over the
head with a statue of a chicken. She hollered that neither one of
us was fit to be in her parlor and that she didn’t know what in the
world had possessed her to hire me to clean it. It really hurt my
feelin’s, Saber, because I hadn’t broken anything before Uncle Asa
came. I’d been as careful as I know how to be.” She squeezed her
eyes tightly so as not to cry.

“And I want you to know right here and now
that I’ll be careful in
this
room too,” she swore, crossing
her heart. “Daddy’s honor, I won’t touch anything. I’ll just sleep
in the bed, and that’s all. So if you or Addison ever talk to the
owner, you can tell him that all I did was sleep here and that I
didn’t mess anything up while I was sleepin’. And I sleep in a
tight little ball, Saber, so I probably won’t even wrinkle the
sheets all that much.”

The promise radiating from her sweet little
face made Saber’s throat constrict. I
probably won’t even
wrinkle the sheets all that much.
Jillian had been here many
times and when she left, it most likely took the servants a month
to clean things up.

Goldie’s promise filled him with something
tender. “This is not Imogene Tully’s tea parlor, Goldie. And the
owner of this estate
does
have a hundred...uh,
dollars
to buy a sofa. To buy anything. Wrinkled sheets are
the last things in the world that would upset him. He’d want you to
feel comfortable and happy here. I’m sure of it.”

“All the same, I’ll be careful.” She swept
past him and back into the bedroom, stopping in front of a
beautiful full-length mirror. With her fingers she began brushing
her hair.

Saber strode to the door. His hand on the
knob, he wished he could make himself invisible and watch her
pretend to be a princess, for he still suspected that was exactly
what she was going to do when he left. “Good night, Goldie.”

Her fingers entangled in her tight curls,
Goldie returned the sentiment and smiled.

As Saber left, he felt an odd desire to buy
her a brush. A
gold
one. Upon further deliberation, he
discovered he wanted to buy her a tiara too. A princess just wasn’t
a princess without one.

Dane Hutchins pressed a scented handkerchief
to his nose, but could still smell the fetid odor of the cold, dark
London alleyway. Sidestepping a pile of rotting offal someone had
dumped from the cracked window above, he noticed an old woman
picking up bones littering the muddy ground. Then he read the name
he’d written on a scrap of paper and stared at the man before him.
“It wasn’t easy finding you, Ferris, and I would appreciate your
undivided attention. I am terribly offended by the stench of this
place and wish to conclude this unpleasant business as soon as
possible.”

Diggory Ferris looked up from the knife he
was sharpening. “If ya got ’alf the brains ya pretends ter got,
ya’d call me
Mister
Ferris. You bleedin’ toffs is all the
same. All wind an’ piss, ya is. Ya needs a job done an’ think ya
can waltz out ’ere where all the
filth
lives an’ order us
around like ya does the blinkin’ servants y’got in yer fancy
‘ouses. Go git buggered, is wot I say. I ain’t no grotty cod’s
’ead, I ain’t, an’ I don’t follows no friggin’ orders from nobody,
’ear? I own the part o’ London-town where ya is, see? Yer on
me
grounds, and ya follows
me
lead. I earned me
nickname, ‘The Butcher,’ an’ I’d be more’n obliged ter show ya why,
guv.” With one swift motion, he threw his knife, impaling a large
rat.

“I’m afraid I really must insist that you
address me as ‘milord.’” Dane pulled a wad of bills from his
pocket.

Diggory’s eyes widened at the sight of the
huge sum of money. “Milord!”

Dane smiled. “I’ll give you three times this
much when the job is done. Now repeat what I’ve told you about
her.”

“She’s little,” Diggory recounted. “Curly
yellow ’air wot touches ’er shoulders. American, an
^’
talks like one. She’s got a bleedin’ blastie with ’er. I’ll finds
’er an’ the midget, milord. If she’s anywhere in this stinkin’
’ell-’ole, I’ll finds ’er. London-town’s big, it is, but I got me
army ter ’elp me cover it. Best band o’ cutthroats wot live, they
are, an’ I trained ’em meself. Nobody comes or goes without us
’earin’ about it. Every street in the friggin’ city ’as eyes an’
ears.” He snatched the money.

Dane nodded, taking a step away from the
ruffian. Being in the midst of such repugnant surroundings was
highly distasteful to him, but after some inquiring, he’d learned
that Diggory Ferris was the most feared assassin in the East End.
Dane had spent several days and a veritable fortune tracking the
criminal down. For future reference, he pocketed the scrap of paper
that had Diggory’s name written on it. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m
able. But you must understand that I have to be careful about
leaving my home. I don’t want to be connected to this.” He slid a
gloved finger across the rim of his hat, then looked to see if any
grime had come off on it.