The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead (8 page)

“You and Lady—”

“So why is it so terrible?” interrupted Melissa. “A few friends gathered to play a few hands of cards. What of it?” She shrugged one shoulder and turned her head away.

“A few…innocent…hands of cards.”

“Is that so very bad?”

“It is when you lose as much as you are said to have lost.”

He knows
.
How could he know that
? Melissa swallowed and saw that his lordship noticed—at least she assumed that explained the gloating look coming into his features. “So?”

“So the debt must be paid, must it not?”

“And?” Melissa wanted no one to know how she fretted about that little problem. She hadn’t a notion how she was to pay it.

“
I
will pay it. For a price.”

Melissa thought of her bed upstairs and shuddered slightly.

“I will pay it if you pack your trunks and go north. Immediately…” he said, either missing the shudder or not understanding it.

She cast him a quick glance and, relieved, felt herself relax. “It is not a small sum, you know.” She named an amount twice what she’d actually lost. “If I agree to go, I’ll take a draft on your bank.”

“You’ll do no such thing. If you agree to go, I will visit the lady and will give her coin of the realm, saying I am your messenger in this.” He grinned a tight grin. “I’ll not be choused, my dear. Do not think it.”

“But that debt is not all. I will need money for the journey. And I really cannot go into the country without proper clothing,” she added. “I must visit my modiste and I doubt very much if she’ll do the work unless I pay something, at least, on what I owe her.”

“Poor dear. Life is treating you shabbily, is it not?” said his lordship, pretending to console her.

“You don’t mean it but it
is
.” Melissa pouted. “Nothing has gone right since your cousin went north.”

“Then the answer is obvious. To make things right, you too must go north. I will send you in my small carriage with my second coachman. Since I can only spare a pair and do not care to spend money for fresh teams, it will take longer.” He frowned. “Which means the cost of beds along the way, while the horses are rested, and food. Ah, the cost of it all! Do let me think just who I know with whom you can stay the nights.”

“Perhaps I could pay my own shot at inns.” Melissa spoke quickly, making the offer before he could call up the names of people she had no desire to visit—especially since she hoped no one need know where she’d gone—just in case Jacob continued to be stubborn and, again, refused to wed her.

Mud smiled that tight smile she hated. “Ah, then you are not quite up the River Tick? In that case perhaps you’d care to spring for horses along the way as well? And travel more quickly?”

“No. I’m not in the basket, as the saying is,” she added quickly.
The old miser
.
He
’
ll not give me a penny more than he need
.
And I need every penny he
’
ll give me
.
Drat that cheating woman
. “But,” she continued after only a moment, “I am not well forward at the moment either. Come quarter day—”

“Which,” he interrupted, “is still some weeks in the future.”

“Six,” she said without thinking.

“Ah. You are counting,” he retorted.

She looked up. “My father was interested only in the settlements. He cared not a jot about negotiating a decent widow’s portion, made no effort to see that it was adequate.”

“I hear he has another gentleman lined up who will make further settlements?”

“He and his gentleman may go to the devil,” said Melissa, her voice hard. “I am of age now. He cannot force me to his wishes. Not this time.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

“And why should I not?”

“My dear, you have had little care for your reputation and you cannot possibly live on your widow’s portion, as I suspect you’ve already discovered. If you cannot seduce my cousin into marriage and away from that property, then what will you do?”

“Go abroad?” she asked in a flippant tone. “I understand one may live quite well on a pittance.”

His features relaxed into a completely blank expression, except for eyes that burned hot. If his eyes were hot, his voice was chill. “I doubt you would like that at all.”

“I agree that I would prefer to stay in England but you have not sweetened the pot sufficiently to convince me I wish to travel north. Something
you
feel strongly I should do…”

He had thought she’d run from scandal. From debt. She could see it in every expression, almost see him shake with the tension of the anger filling him. Silence reigned for a long moment and she refused to allow herself to be intimidated into breaking it.

Barking the words, Everston asked, “Your modiste… How much do you owe her?”

Melissa told him. The true figure was in her mind because she’d received still another dunning note only that morning and she merely added enough for two or three more gowns before stating it.

He cringed and then sighed. “Very well. Your gaming debt, your modiste and my carriage and coachman for the journey north. You will pay for accommodation, your room and board at the inns at which you stop for a night.”

“You, my lord, are a miser.”

“You, my dear, are a whore and not worth so much as I’ve agreed to pay.”

Melissa expressed her outrage at the insult even as she wondered if she could get anything else out of him. She decided she’d pushed him as far as he was likely to go and turned her mind to practical matters. “I can be ready to leave… Oh, I think a week from Thursday.”

“You’ll leave tomorrow.”

“I have things to arrange before I go and I will leave a week Thursday—or we may forget the whole thing.” She reached for the candy box and sorted through it, pretending not to care about his decision.

He eyed her. Something in the set of her mouth, the firmness of her chin, convinced him. “Very well. Give me your account at your modiste and I will forward the whole.”

“I was so angry when I received it, I burned it. I will get another.”

“You would cheat me.”

“I assure you, it will be no more than I have said.”

He looked frustrated but, after gnashing his teeth twice, he nodded. “One week. Thursday my coach and driver will be outside your door at nine in the morning.”

“
Nine
.” She started up and then relaxed. “You are insane to suggest anything so uncivilized. Not a moment before eleven.”

“In this you will not change my mind. Nine.” He rose to his feet, bowed and stalked toward the door. His hand on the handle, he turned. “Remember. He must leave the estate and he must stay away from it for more than a week. And it must be known he has done so. Do not fail me.”

“Why? You, it seems, have failed me. You have failed to pay me what you owe me for such labor.”

“If you are smart and very good then you’ll get him to wed you and that will be more of a reward than you deserve.” He left, shutting the door with a snap.

Melissa ground her teeth. How she hated the man. Something a trifle cold settled around her heart as she sensed that perhaps the reason she didn’t like him was that he was too much like herself.

But that means I don
’
t like myself and that must be nonsense
…

Chapter Six

Somewhere in London, in a hidden suite of rooms fitted out in a sybaritic manner quite at odds with any English style of decor, an overly thin man lolled against a pile of soft pillows. Beside him stood a water pipe, the scent of which had the second man in the room, a slave, wrinkling his nose—but he said nothing. He dared not. Criticism was not well received by the emaciated creature who was his master and if his master desired the slow death of the opium addict, well, that was the way of the world, was it not? The slave cast his mind back to his master’s last question. “I have thought and I have told you all the letter said. She escaped them.”

“Imbeciles. Idiots. Find them. Kill them.”

“They will have disappeared.” The second man spoke in a soft, even tone. “Either they are lost in the stews of some city or they have taken ship and gone heaven only knows where. They are unimportant. It is the woman we must find.”

After a moment the emaciated man looked up. “You have the lists.”

The slave nodded. “I have dispatched men to check at each friend’s estate for her presence.”

“Unnecessary. She will have gone to her father. It is what a woman does.”

“You’ve forgotten that her father died. She cannot be with him, so why would she visit the estate of a dead man?”

The lounger frowned. “Still…”

“I will put it on the
second
list. The one listing less likely destinations.”

The thin man jerked to a sitting position. “She’ll not have left the country? She cannot sail without our knowing?”

“We’ve agents everywhere. If she shows her face in any port in the whole of the island we will be informed. And we will learn the name of the ship and the captain and his ports of call. But I do not think she will leave England. She feels safe here.”

“Why did she even leave her home?”

The second man shrugged. “Boredom?”

The first frowned. “This boredom. It is something I do not understand… I do not like it when I do not understand.”

The English word had come into their conversation in the past. That time too, it roused the master’s interest—and his anger when a satisfying definition was not forthcoming.

“It is, I think,” said the second man who also had difficulty with the concept, “much like a child fretting for something to do, a game or perhaps merely the attention of an attendant.”

The slave had put a great deal of time into forming that response. He didn’t want to rouse even the least emotion in his master. Especially not his anger. One never knew what orders a user of opium would give when angry. The slave held his breath during the following silence but relaxed when his master nodded, accepting the notion.

“I have,” the slave began more than a trifle hesitantly, “never understood why we do not merely kill her. Be done with it. Go home where we belong.” He missed the climate, the food he knew, particularly the fruit and, most of all—although no one knew of their existence and he could visit them only very occasionally and only briefly—he missed his little family… “Would you not like to go home?”

The thin man ignored that last question, answering only the first. “Our king has given orders. You needn’t understand. You merely obey.”

The cold voice sent a shudder up the slave’s spine and he bowed his head. “Many apologies spill from this inadequate mouth,” he said in their native tongue.

“So they should. Bring an ember from the fire. Put it on the water pipe. I would smoke…”

The slave shuddered again, this time at the thought of what the opium did to one who abused it as his master did—but he nevertheless obeyed with alacrity. Any other reaction would have led to a beating, or worse.

But worst of all, his whole dependence was on his master.
What
, he wondered,
will I do if he dies
? He thought about that and, with more than a touch of despair, changed the phrasing.
When he dies
?
What will become of me
?

* * * * *

Jacob stepped over the low sill of the salon’s tall window and onto the terrace. Beyond it, in the rose garden, Verity cut long stems and laid them into a shallow basket. He joined her. “I’ll hold the basket for you if you’ll allow it,” he said softly.

Softly, yes, but unexpectedly, and she straightened, swinging around, the shears held at a dangerous angle.

His brows climbed up his forehead, his astonishment at her reaction unhidden.

Verity blushed and turned away. “Where I grew up an unexpected male voice could mean… Oh, the devil. Never mind.”

“Your parents must have been very lax to have allowed you to be in any situation in which you’d have been accosted in the manner to which you did not
quite
refer.” He removed the basket from her hand.

“My parents…” Verity straightened, the shears in one hand and the rose she’d just cut in the other.

She stared off over the top of the bush into some memory Jacob wished he could coax her to reveal. “What is it, love?” he asked gently.

“Yes. Love,” she said, misinterpreting his endearment for a question. “My parents were so deeply,
wondrously
, in love, even after all those years, they’d little time for anyone else. Not even their children. We reared ourselves, I suppose you’d say, making our own rules.”

“No governess? No servants to watch over you?”

She shrugged. “A governess, yes. And we learned from her.” She laid the rose in the basket and bent to cut another. “When she was sober,” she added softly.

“Poor dear,” he murmured.

“Do
not
think it,” she said, a tinge of frost in her voice. She continued in a more reminiscent tone. “Our governess wasn’t so…bad when we were young. We learned. A lot. It was only as we got older she…”

“She became more lax about seeing to you when she felt the need for a nip or two?”

Verity hid a grin. “That is one way to put it. But by then we were old enough to explore. The place in which we lived, a large village on the shores of Lake Como, you know, was safe enough, but strangers often passed through on their way to villas to the north or south to Milano. Everyone who lived there knew us, protected us and most of them indulged us.” She smiled at a happy memory. “Ah, the food I’ve eaten!”

“Peasant food?”

“The very best in all the world,” she said, nodding. “Plain, yes, but fresh and prepared with love and herbs.” She shrugged and moved on to another bush, inspected one or two blossoms and moved to still another.

He followed. “Did you by chance learn from these wonderful cooks?”

She grinned. “I could prepare you a truly excellent meal if only I could find the ingredients.”

“Would that be so difficult?”

She nodded. “Everything is…different here.”

“So you ran wild?”

“I suppose high sticklers would say so.” She smiled a secret smile.

“What are you thinking?”

“Of the time I managed to stow away in the carter’s cart to Milano. I stayed a full week before going home again.”

“Good heavens. How old were you?”

“Hm? Oh, thirteen, I think. Fourteen? Perhaps.”

He straightened. “And how did you, a young girl, live for a week in Milan at the age of thirteen?”

“Quite easily, actually. My governess had talked of her brother the priest. Often. I went to him, explained I felt it necessary to tell him of his sister’s bad health and could he find a place for me to stay until the carter returned to our village in a week’s time. He was appalled by the whole, his sister, me, the carter—but he put me in the care of an indulgent nun who took me all over Milano to see the sights, including a night at the opera which I’ll never forget, and then she saw me into the care of the carter for the return home.”

“Intrepid of you. What if the priest had been another sort? What if he’d not cared a jot for his sister and had left you to your own devices?”

“It didn’t happen.”

“That is all you can say? Can you not see how foolish you were?”

“I’d hoped something could be done for Miletta,” she said, her mouth set in a stubborn line.

“And was it?”

She paused in her work and again looked off into her memories.

“Was something done?” he repeated.

“No,” she said softly. “Except the brother promised to say prayers for her.” Verity sighed. “Not exactly what I’d hoped but then I hadn’t realized a priest had less freedom than I did, really. And less money. I suppose I was a trifle naïve.”

“Naïve to the point of idiocy, I’d say. Do you realize that there are brothels that specialize in young girls? Do you realize there are women,
madams
they are called, on the lookout for such girls? Do you have the least notion what could have happened to you?”

Verity turned and stared at him. “You are angry. Why?”

He growled. “You would drive a saint to anger.”

“Why? I am nothing to you, so why?”

He opened his mouth to retort…and closed it. “I don’t know,” he said with a frown. “I don’t know why I’m angry. Obviously nothing happened to you. You are here and were not harmed by your adventure…” His look sharpened. “Were you?”

“Not at all. It went so smoothly it led to more.” Her lids lowered over her eyes and she silently challenged him to object or scold or even to ask questions. “That nun and I got to know each other very well.” For another long moment they eyed each other. She waited but still he said nothing and, shrugging, she took the basket from him. “I’ve vases to fill. These roses are the last flowers I’ll need. Good day, Mr. Moorhead.” She brushed by him and headed for the back of the house and a door that, going down a few steps, led into a workroom where flowers were arranged for the house.

She glanced around when the sun, spilling in the open door, dimmed. She frowned. “Oh, go away. I do ever-so much better if not distracted.” She hunched a shoulder at him and reached for the first vase. A moment later it was taken from her hand, set down and she was swung around. She glared at him.

“If I ever hear of you pulling another such stunt I will lock you in a room at the top of the house, feed you on bread and water and not let you go until you promise you’ll never ever again frighten your aunt, as you would do, by going off on some dangerous adventure.”

She tipped her head. “I think you mean that.”

“Try me.”

One of Verity’s brows arched. “I will never knowingly do anything to frighten my aunt. Surely that is obvious.”

“But you didn’t mind frightening your parents?”

The other brow arched as well. “My
parents
. But I have told you. They paid us no attention. I doubt they ever knew I was gone.”

“Your sister? Your governess? No one
told
them?”

“Well, you see,” she said gently, “we all knew they’d not hear anything they didn’t wish to hear, so why bother?”

“They’d not care their daughter was off doing heaven only knew what or where?”

“No.”

“Were they so totally irresponsible?”

“No, of course not. We were fed, housed, clothed and, in our odd fashion, educated.”

He swallowed and his gaze softened. “I pit—”

Her hand covered his mouth. “
Do not dare to pity me
. I enjoyed my life a great deal…until their deaths. Excepting our few visits here, of course.” Her mouth distorted, briefly, into a moue.

He frowned. “I loved my granduncle.”

“I did not.”

“Why?”

She gave him a look that said it should be obvious. When he continued to wait for her response she sighed. “Because,” she said, “he never accepted my mother.”

“A mother who didn’t behave much as a mother should?”

“A mother who loved a father to the point the rest of the world didn’t exist,” said Verity softly. “A love so remarkably unselfish she could give up all she knew for him, follow him to the ends of the earth. And he felt the same for her.”

After a moment, Jacob sighed. “You wish for the same sort of love.”

“I do. I’ll not wed without it.”

“You’d become a spinster in
this
society? You haven’t a notion of what you’d suffer.”

She grinned a lopsided grin. “Oh, not
here
. There are many families in Italy in need of an English governess. Wealthy Milanese, for instance, where I know the city, know the life, know who would pay exceedingly well for such as I to come to them and teach their daughters English and the ways of an English maiden.”

“And could you?” There was a bite to that.

“Teach them English propriety, you mean? Of course.” Her voice turned dry. “And enough logic, to say nothing of a dollop of cynicism, so the young ladies would not grow up seeing the world through rosy-colored spectacles. I would make them competent to weed the false from the true.”

“Cynic.”

“I am, of course. Are not you?”

He grinned a quickly suppressed grin. “A bit of one, I suppose. It is proper to the male of the species but
not
, of course, to the female.”