The Gentleman and the Rogue (21 page)

He watched and wondered if he could find physical signs of Schivvers's work on her, because surely such a hold would leave marks. Just as surely, those small signs of disciplinary action would be considered within the rights of a guardian. The surgeon was clever enough to do no more—especially now that he knew Alan was interested. That had to be enough for the moment, Alan thought. Schivvers now knew the girl had friends. If he were truly a monster… Well, at least he'd be less likely to consign the girl to an unmarked grave when he grew tired of her. Could the surgeon have had such a plan? Alan prayed that he was guilty of an overactive imagination.

Without releasing his grip, Schivvers said, “You may go back to your room and your needlework. I shall check on your progress shortly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Just then, Jem appeared in the study doorway. He glanced at Annie, then at Schivvers, before giving a flawless bow. “Time to go, sir?” he asked Alan, who had also risen from his chair.

Annie's face paled when she saw Jem, and her lips parted. Alan prayed Schivvers didn't notice, although he expected the man missed nothing. The girl continued to walk toward the door, but before she passed Jem—and so quickly her hand was nearly a blur—she made the military sign for
enemy at hand.

Jem didn't appear to notice. That wasn't one of the signals Alan had taught him, and the girl's action was so hurried, it might have been a series of twitches.

Had Schivvers seen? He studied Jem and probably didn't catch the movement of his ward's hand before she left the room. Schivvers turned and smiled at Alan, a knowing smirk of a man who'd got away with something delicious. Alan's mouth was dry and his heart racing. Instinct told him to leap out of his chair, punch Schivvers's smug face, seize the girl, and run like hell out of this place. His civilized nature told him that was impossible. The constable would come for her, scandal would follow, and when the girl was returned to Schivvers, she'd be in worse danger from him than before.

“You may go too,” Alan told Jem. “You can wait for me in the carriage. We'll be leaving soon.”

He hoped Jem might get a chance to slip off and talk to the girl. But Schivvers stopped him with a word. “Wait.” He walked over to Jem. He didn't touch him but was far too close, towering over him. Alan clenched his fists, wanting to shout at the man to back away and leave Jem alone.

Schivvers's eyes narrowed. “I thought as much. It was you spying on my house just yesterday. Burton noticed you lurking and pointed you out to me.”

“Spying, sir? Naw. Wanted to make sure we'd got the right address afore Sir Alan wasted his time.” He slid backward a few inches, putting some space between them.

Alan spoke up. “Schivvers, my servant's actions are of no consequence to you.”

Neither of them so much as glanced in his direction. Jem smiled vacuously, and Schivvers studied him for a long minute. “You could have knocked on the door and made inquiries like any decent Christian.”

Jem's guileless eyes went big. “Oh, so I coulda, sir. But 'twas a pleasant day, and—”

“You saw us, yet when we'd returned from our outing, you were still there.” Schivvers's voice trembled. He moved close to Jem again, and his usual calm seemed to slip further, giving Alan a glimpse of the naked aggression beneath that polished, genteel surface. “You were spying, and furthermore, I know you have interrogated my servants.”

Alan stood, ready to hurt the man should he lay a hand on Jem. The air was so thick with unspoken hostility, Alan longed to end it with a shout. He'd tell Schivvers of his suspicions and finish this charade of polite behavior.

But then Jem, whose body was relaxed as if he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, gave a small laugh and spoke.“Begging pardon, sir”—Jem still wore a simpleton's ingratiating smile—“but yer Melvin came to talk to me. A good man. I was bored, an' he was company. We talked about London.”

Schivvers was silent for several seconds. “This doesn't explain why you spent the better part of yesterday staring at my house.”

“Schivvers,” Alan spoke stiffly, still wishing he could stop the pretense but willing to go with Jem's lead. “I think you might be imagining threats where there are none.”

“Exactly, sir.” Jem gave Alan a small bow and turned his attention back to the surgeon. “Begging your pardon, but weren't your house I was interested in, sir. You know on the green, the little cottage a fair ways off at the edge? Well, there're twins what live there.” Jem managed a blush. What an actor! Alan wanted to applaud. “Two red-haired lasses. Know 'em?” Jem's smirk was comical, although he spoke less nimbly than usual. He played the role of none-too-bright servant well. “I couldn't sit right outside their door, now could I, sir? Begging your pardon.”

Schivvers's aggression abated. He wore a look of disgust now. “Your master pays you to sit outside and ogle girls?”

“'Twas my day off, sir. Got no friends or kin in the area. What was I to do with myself? Those girls are spanking beauties.” He grinned but then seemed to recall where he was and to whom he was speaking. The smile vanished, and he stood up straighter.

Schivvers studied him for another long moment. Jem remained still, the perfect servant, with no thought on his mind other than the boots he had to polish. When had he learned how to wear that wooden, bored face?

“Very well. Sir Alan, it appears you employ idiots. And so do I. Melvin is a fool.” All affability, he rang for the butler, who had to have stationed himself just outside the door. “Show Sir Alan's servant to the stable yard.”

He watched them go before turning back to Alan. “I hope you're satisfied with your inspection of my little Ann?”

“I see your charge is in excellent condition.”

“She's a very quiet, obedient little thing. So alone in the world without her parents, and so attached to me.” Schivvers seemed to glow with pleasure at the thought. An outsider might think he was merely a proud and devoted guardian to his protégée. Alan knew differently.

Time for him to use a gentleman's solution to a problem—throw money at it. “I appreciate all you've done for the Cutler family, but I wonder if I might, on behalf of my servant Badgeman, offer to take on the financial responsibility for Ann. There is an excellent boarding school in London where I would send her.”

The surgeon's eyes narrowed. “I believe the girl just told you I'm hiring a governess to see to her education. Your help is not needed.”

Alan wanted to growl with frustration. There was no subtle way to state his proposition. “Mr. Schivvers, you may know that I'm a bachelor, and there are no heirs to my estate. I would like to reward you very generously for your care of Ann Cutler up to this point and relieve you of the necessity of further outlay. In short, I would like to adopt the child as my own.”

Schivvers moved closer, and even though Alan outweighed him and had the fighting skills of a soldier, the man was menacing. “I would like you to leave now, sir. Our interview is at an end.”

“I can pay you very handsomely, Mr. Schivvers. It would be worth your while to consider—”

“What you are suggesting is unseemly, Sir Alan, and I shudder to think why you're so obsessed with obtaining custody of an innocent young child like Ann. A man of your wealth and position may have become accustomed to indulging his perverse tastes and pleasures with no one the wiser or no one who would dare to tell of your peculiarities. Well, you will not take an innocent lamb like Ann Cutler and twist her to your will. No matter your money or your lawyers, the girl has been legally bound to me in her mother's last will and testament, signed before witnesses. You will never take the girl from me.”

His righteous indignation almost made Alan feel guilty…almost, except for the fact that he knew the description Schivvers gave actually applied to himself. Twisting and molding an innocent girl sounded exactly like what the cold-blooded man would do.

“Good day, sir,” Schivvers added for emphasis.

The butler had arrived like a shadow to escort Alan from the room, and there was nothing to do but accompany him out the door.

The phaeton waited in front, and Jem jogged up next to him. “What else did he say?”

“We shan't discuss it here,” Alan snapped. “Get in.”

Only after the carriage had rolled away from the house did the expletives he'd been holding back burst from his mouth.

Jem stared. “I think you blistered me ears. Didn't know you had such vocabulary in you.”

Alan gritted his teeth. “It was as you say, Jem; the girl's face was haunted. I have no idea what this man is doing to her, but she looked nearly as if she'd given up.”

“What was that thing she did with her fingers? Was I just imagining it?”

“No, it wasn't your imagination. I think she gave the sign for an
enemy sighted
, so I believe there's still some fight left in her. She wants to be rescued. We must find a way to get her away from Schivvers.”

Jem remained uncharacteristically silent as the phaeton clattered over cobblestone then splashed through puddles on the muddy, unpaved road back to the inn in Sheffield.

“I can see the lass means a lot to you, sir,” he said at last. “I understand a bit about loyalty. Badge made a deathbed promise to help a man's family, so you want to help him keep that promise. Me and my mates had our own code like that—never rat out your mates.”

Alan glanced at the younger man. Rainwater had darkened his hair and plastered it to his head. Droplets rolled down his face and bejeweled his eyelashes. Jem blinked them away before he continued.

“That gent is a fearsome, angry man. I understand your concern for Annie. Honest, I do. But where I come from, a poor homeless girl could do a lot worse for herself than take up with a man like that, who houses and feeds her. I know plenty of girls who'd be happy to bed one man rather than turn tricks for half o' London.”

Alan glared at him. “Ann is an innocent young girl, not some street doxy.”

“All doxies was innocent lasses once, wasn't they?”

“But I can save her from both Schivvers and the streets. I can take her home, give her a good life, make certain she's never harmed again.”

Jem's brow furrowed, and a trickle of rainwater slid down the side of his cheek before he brushed it away. “Of course you should do what you can for her. I ain't saying you shouldn't. What I'm askin' is why it's so very important to you? You seem almost desperate to save her, like maybe you're thinking of something else when you see this girl. I wonder what that something might be.”

Alan stared straight ahead at the road and pushed his hair back from his face to keep the dripping rain from his eyes. They should've put up the top before they'd started back, but it was too late to bother now.

He looked over at Jem, who still waited for his answer. Alan knew the lad was right. There was more going on inside him than the normal desire to help a child in need. Annie Cutler represented all the innocents he hadn't been able to save at Badajoz. Maybe Jem had earned an explanation at last.

Exhaling a deep breath, he searched for the words to tell the story quickly, succinctly, and with as little emotion as possible. “Perhaps you're right. When I see Annie, I feel like I could finally do some good to outweigh all the evil I've witnessed…and participated in.”

“Badajoz again?” Jem asked softly.

Alan nodded. “It was a disaster from start to finish, although technically we won. The losses were outrageous, and the atrocities after the victory obscene. After weeks in the trenches in rain like this, we stormed the city wall. The dead piled up in the breaches, but we clambered over them and kept on going.

“Badgeman fell, and I dragged him to safety and hid him next to a wall. Then I tried to rally what was left of my men. House-to-house combat is nothing like two armies charging at each other on some open plain. It was chaos. But at last the enemy was driven to retreat. They left the city defenseless, and that's when the horror began.”

It was Jem's turn to nod, as if he well guessed what had happened.

“These were my men. The few in my company who remained after the bloody battle killed most of them off. Men I thought I knew well, whose sense of honor I thought was unshakable. Men like Rodney Braithwaite, Ned Sanders. Good men. It was as if they were possessed by devils, like hell had come to earth. Outright thievery would have been bad enough, but they were torturing civilians, raping women and even young girls right there on the streets.

“They acted like savages, and I had no control over them. I couldn't stop them. I tried.” The thickness in his throat choked his voice, and he swallowed hard lest it break. “I yelled orders, fired off my gun, and was ignored. I pulled a soldier—not one of mine—off a girl, and then a musket ball slammed into my leg and brought me down.”

“I thought you said the enemy had run off?”

Alan shrugged. “So they had, but these things are never as clear as civilians believe. There may have been a few enemy soldiers left behind, or it could've been one of our own. Men were shooting off their muskets in celebration. A stray ball could've come from anywhere. At any rate, it laid me flat. When I came to, Schivvers was looming over me, examining my leg and reaching for his saw.

“I heard someone suggest cutting off my leg wasn't necessary. At the time I thought it was his assistant speaking up, but thinking back, I suppose it was my imagination, since the assistant surgeon had learned not to contradict him. I was ready to scramble off that table at once. I told him to leave my leg or I'd have him dismissed from his position.

“Schivvers didn't like being ordered to do anything, of course. 'You don't want my help? I won't give it.' He rolled me onto the ground with the dead and the less-injured, and left me to bleed out or recover. Badgeman found me later. God, he was an utter mess himself, head swathed in bloody bandages. I can't remember how we did it, but we moved to a medical tent and tended to each other until fever took me, and I couldn't lift a finger.”

He fell silent, and for once Jem didn't offer a quip or remark. They rode in silence broken only by the sound of rain and the horses sloshing through a puddle.