The Proposition (6 page)

Besides a lot of hat, she was a lot of skirts. Her legs were buried under folds and folds of that thin sort of stuff a man could almost see through, except there was enough of it he couldn't see through nothing. Edwina Bollash was like that herself. Lots of her, none of it coming to much. Hard to see through.

Being a long, thin thing lost in a pile of skirts didn't keep her from complaining though—as hardy as the Queen with her toes on fire—when Magic jumped into the carriage.

"May as well let him ride," Mick said. "He be the damnedest dog. He'll only run alongside till he drops, then find us a day later from the smell of the wheels or something."

She didn't like
damnedest
any more than she liked the dog in the coach, but she settled back and let both ride. Magic, Mick could tell, was grateful. It'd been a hell of a day.

As the coach pulled away, he realized it was finer than fine. All leather and soft cushions and springs in the ride. Funny thing, it wasn't near as strange as he might've thought to trot off in such a handsome bit of conveyance. Felt good. Felt right. All-bloody-right. Well, Mick thought, who would've predicted? A nice coach. Him sitting in it across from a long piece of fluff who was willing to squawk over a man getting his head bashed in. He liked Edwina Bollash. Good girl, this one.

The two blokes he did not like at all. He didn't know their game, but he knew their kind a mile off. Not that he could say—a ratcatcher didn't call gentlemen hum-bugs. Especially, Mick smiled to himself, if the hum-bugs were going to pay for him having gentleman lessons from a sweet little teacher in a fancy dress that made sliding
jsh-jsh
sounds just sitting there fidgeting.

He made her nervous. He should've tried to put her at ease, said something, but he sort of liked that she was nervous.

He decided to mention, "They be puppies, you know."

"Puppies?"

"Confidence men," he explained.

"Who?"

"Them two Mr. Lamonts."

"Don't be ridiculous. They're rich gentlemen."

He shook his head. "They be setting us up for something."

She clicked her tongue in a sort of high-minded way. "Granted, they aren't too nice to each other, but they were perfectly nice to us. Besides, they have money. They don't need to set up anyone."

He shrugged. It was all one to him, nothing he had to prove. It would prove itself.

After a while, though, in a very quiet voice, she asked, "Why don't you like them?"

He shrugged again. "They be arseholes." While you, me darling, be a lovely long bit. He really liked the look of her. Though he wished for goodness sake she'd take off the blooming hat.

At
arseholes,
the only part of her face that he could see under the hat squinched up like she had a drawstring in her lips, a drawstring she pulled tight. Ha, he could've predicted. She made another one of those little clicks, teeth and tongue, that he was sort of coming to like. Then said,
"Are."

She was correcting him.

It made him blink, frown. Well, hell. He knew fixing how he talked was what they were both going to do, but here it was, and he didn't like it. "Right. They
are
arseholes," he said.

The hat tilted. Her mouth pinched tighter.

He laughed and leaned back, stretching his arms out along the top of a leather seat, stretching his legs in front of him across fancy wood floorboards. Yes indeed, a fine day. A pretty ride.

* * *

When Miss Bollash's front door swung open, a fellow was standing behind it like he been waiting on the other side of it the whole time she was gone: ready to open it the moment he spied her come up the walk. He held it wide so Mick and her could enter, then closed it silent-like behind them—it made Mick turn around there in the entry hall just to see what happened.

Her house wasn't what Mick expected. Not like her clothes. It was plain. Better than anything he could claim, but not as big or fancy as he would've guessed.

She owned lots of books.
Hoo,
if the woman read all the books she had, she never did nothing but read. He'd been in lots of fancy houses for his job. Some had flowers for decoration. Some had carpets and fancy drapes or pictures all over the wall. Miss Bollash's house had books. Lines of them. Rows of them. Stacks of them. All neat. No mess or nothing. Just everywhere. They lined walls and filled tables.

"Thank you, Milton," said the lady as she pulled at the fingers of her glove. "Is Mrs. Reed still here? I'd like her to make up the east bed-sitter. This is Mr. Tremore. He's going to be our houseguest for a few weeks."

A few weeks. Mick frowned to hear the length of time. It seemed long all at once. He had regulars. He hadn't thought about that till now. Some might wait, but some for sure would take their problem to someone else when they couldn't find him.

As he walked down a hallway—with small marble statues in the niches of walls covered in faded green silk—a crawly feeling tickled up his spine. The way it did sometimes when he started to smell more under the planks of a job than he'd counted on.

Milton, the bloke who opened the door and looked old as Eden, was saying to Miss Bollash, "Mrs. Reed just left, your ladyship, but I can make up the rooms. And Lady Katherine is in the solarium. She's arrived early for her lesson."

"Thank you. I'll get to her in a few minutes." Miss Bollash slid her glove off as she said to Mick, "Milton will take your, um … tablecloth. Then, if you'll follow me, I'll show you upstairs."

Rooms. She meant it. Two of 'em. In Cornwall, Mick'd shared one room, smaller than the bedroom here, with his five brothers. His bed in London was in a cellar. In this house though, if he understood right, he got a big room with a four-poster in it to himself—he asked if he shared it with Milton, but the answer was
no—
and
a room connected to the bedroom that had a desk, paper, pens, ink, lots of stuff. And of course more books.

It made him stop and think. Looking at an actual bed, rooms, thinking of the clothes, all so different than what he knew … well, the crazy, fool bet, what it really meant, all at once seemed to matter in a different way. No one else had the same investment as him. A bit of money. Some pride. And Miss Bollash was keen for bookish reasons, too. But him … why, they were all talking about changing how he was.

What kind of man, he wondered, slept on a bed that had curtains on it and a skirt around its legs?

A man, he figured, who better get by to feed the other dogs and ferrets, then see if Rezzo would watch over them till … till whatever it was he was doing here came to whatever end it did. A man with a case of nerves, he guessed, and a few arrangements to make.

Sometimes Mick dreamed of a fancy life. (Money and legs. He would have been embarrassed to tell anyone how common-minded his ambitions were.) He always felt guilty doing it. Disloyal or something. He was a workingman. A good, solid man of the working class. He didn't think fancy fellows were happier than him. Didn't think they were nicer to their families or that God gave them an easier time of it. They still got sick or lame or died, just like everyone else. So why was he here?

Aside from a hundred and twenty pounds, twenty of which he already had in his pocket—the total being more than he made in a year?

He laughed at himself. That was why. Hell, he sure didn't have dreams that turning himself into a gentleman for a few weeks was going to make him a better man somehow. No, sir, it wouldn't.

But the life nobs led seemed easier, he admitted. It smelled better maybe. They had time to think about things. Is that what he wanted? Was that the reason he dreamed of a rich life some nights? Time to think?

Meanwhile, all he seemed to have here was time to be surprised. Another door, one that he thought opened into the hall, opened into a loo, and not just a hole in the floor neither. There was a flush-toilet with a chain to pull on. And bloody hell, there was another pull overhead that made light come on. Electricity. He'd seen that once in a building he ratted over near Parliament. Miss Bollash's whole house had it, not a candle or gas lamp anywhere to be found.

She showed him all this in the time it took for her to pull off her other glove as she walked her quick walk and pointed at rooms. Then, in his new sitting room, she said, "Do you need anything I haven't thought of? Will it do then?" She was in the doorway, about to leave him here.

He tried to sound chipper. "Not a thing, love. Cozy as a mouse in a churn." But he wasn't chipper.

"Love," she said.

He smiled, looking at a tall, thin woman in a big hat. Right friendly of her. About time.

But then she ruined it. She explained, "You said
loov.
It's
love."

He frowned, feeling addled by a lot of correcting without much understanding doled out.

She stood there. She wasn't being nasty, he didn't think. Hard to tell. More like she was sizing him up. It was a nervy feeling, being sized up by a hat that looked right at him, being spoke to by a mouth with no eyes. What was wrong with her? he wondered. Were her eyes crossed? Was she bug-eyed?

She was ugly, he decided. Had to be a fright to wear her hat all the time.

"We'll work on it, though," she said. "We'll start in the morning. I have students this evening." Then she turned again and called over her shoulder, "Milton? Mr. Tremore will have a bath now. Will you please draw it. And see to a shave for him. Take off the mustache."

Mick blinked, then snorted. He went as far as the doorway, looking at the back of her. She was at the stairs in a second, on her way down. Hell, what was this? Even he knew gents wore mustaches. And he wasn't having no bath. He might've said, but she was going at her fast clip, a woman with the devil on her tail, not looking back. Her hat disappeared into the stairwell. Hell. All right then, he'd settle with old Milton.

As it turned out, though, the fellow was as stubborn as Magic.

"If Miss Bollash says you're to take a bath," old Milton said with a poke, poke—Mick took hold of his finger to stop it—"then you'll have a bath, sir." With a big, stirred-up show of disgust, he added, "Just look at yourself!"

Now, Mick wouldn't mind cleaning up. He'd sort of had that in mind. It'd been a hard day. But he wasn't doing his private toilette the way Milton wanted him to, and not how Miss Fancy-Skirts wanted neither, for that matter. Too personal. Being a reasonable fellow, though, and just to be nice, he let Milton pull him into the room to show him the tub—the bloke was so bloody proud of it. A big, white, claw-foot thing that was just for bathing a body. The damnedest waste. Mick could've washed a month's laundry in it.

"Right nice," he told Milton with real wonder in his voice.

Things degenerated from here, though.
No, sir
didn't slow the old fellow down.
Not on your life, Cap'n
didn't give him the hint.
Not me. Not Mick.
And still that Milton ran a lot of hot water in the tub, talking like Mick was going to hop in any moment. When he started pulling on Mick's clothes, though, well—Mick was not the sort to let another bloke undress him for any reason. It pretty much sent him over the top.

"Since you like bathing so much," he said, "you try it." He picked the fellow up—he was light enough Mick could've done it by a fistful of coat, but he gathered the old bloke up real polite—and dumped him into the water. Clothes and all, a big swooshing
ka-plosh.

Mick was gentle with him. Didn't want to hurt him, just sort of showed him he wasn't getting in any tub of hot water, which was fine for carrots but not the likes of Mick Tremore.

No sooner did the water slop to a standstill than he heard Miss Bollash, feet pounding up the staircase, all those skirts churning. When she burst through the doorway, though, he was struck dumb, nothing to say for himself.

Well, well, well. His new teacher certainly wasn't ugly. No, sir. She wasn't pretty neither exactly, but with her hat off, God bless her, she was something to look at.

Her hair was red-gold, thick and shining. It lit her face—the way light coming through a window could make an ordinary room glow like a church. Her skin, white as milk, was dusted with pale freckles, like she been powdered with gold dust. Freckles so close and so many of 'em, he couldn't see between some. She had big, round eyes—or, no, maybe they were just startled. They blinked behind eyeglasses. But the best thing about her face was her nose. It was long and thin and curved like a blade, a strong nose—and a good-sized one, too, for such a thin woman. If she'd held her head up a bit and showed it off, he'd've said it give her real character.

Though, given the caution in the eyes behind Miss Bollash's eyeglasses, he was bound to say she didn't cherish her looks.

Still, with her hat off she was a sight. Bright-colored, funny-looking in a pretty way: like coming upon a fairy in the woods.

A tetchy fairy. She said, "Oh— Oh— Milton! Are you all right? What have you done, Mr. Tremore! I could hear your swearing downstairs!"

Milton and Mick talked at once.

"All I done was protect meself from his slimy fingers—"

"Yes, I'm wet, but fine—"

"I ain't swimming in no bloody tub. No one mentioned no tub of water today—"

"If I may say so, your ladyship, the man belongs in a zoo, not a bathtub—"