The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,47

And you . . .”

He tilted his head forward, his eyes questioning.

“You smell good,” she said. “And you sound—you sound so good. Your voice. Your tread. So confident and yet peaceful, as though all the world is well.”

“My tread?”

A wobbly smile broke over her lips and Tony’s chest constricted like a vise was tightening around his ribs. That she could smile now made him want to scoop her up in his arms and never let her go.

“You will understand, inside,” she said. “Would you?”

He nodded.

When they entered the flat, he knew that as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of it. It was small, smaller than his quarters aboard the Victory, the furniture of modest quality and old, and the upholstery and drapes threadbare. Poverty blanketed the place like channel fog, but a quiet dignity fought against it in details throughout. On the minuscule table in the galley were carefully arranged a pressed linen laid neatly with plate, chipped porcelain cup and spoon, and the pieces of type they had taken from his uncle’s house. Above the sofa hung an embroidered sampler of the sort he’d never been able to read as a child. And painted on the walls around a closed door, roses bloomed in spectacular profusion from vines that scrolled up the doorposts and over the lintel.

Dignity and beauty, despite all. Like her.

He wanted to return to Brittle & Sons and wring her employer’s neck for paying her so little, to demand that the world give this woman what she deserved. He didn’t have the right, of course, and she would hate him for it. More than she already did.

Rapping softly on the closed door, she slipped inside. After a moment, she opened it wide for him.

“Captain . . . welcome.” Nearly swallowed in a rocking chair beneath thick blankets, the woman was gray-haired, her flesh spare, her eyes glimmering—and unseeing. Tony had known eyes like this woman’s, and he knew immediately that Elle’s grandmother was blind.

Nevertheless, he bowed.

“Madam,” he said, “I am honored to make your acquaintance.”

Elle’s gaze turned to him full of gratitude. He did not deserve it. He deserved to be strapped to a mizzenmast and flogged.

They remained in the bedchamber for several minutes. Elle was affectionate with her grandmother, and solicitous, but not noxiously so. When her grandmother’s lids drooped, he bade her good day and went into the other room.

Coming out shortly and closing the door, Elle offered him a quick smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

“The printing type,” he said. “You wanted her to feel it.”

“At the governor’s printing shop in Virginia, my grandfather worked as a pressman and my grandmother proof-corrected pages. Twenty years ago, she suffered a fever and was very ill. She lost her eyesight and with it her position at the shop. Then one day my grandfather borrowed five composing sticks filled with type, without telling his employer.” Her eyes were alight.

“Presumably he was not bowled over by a scoundrel while carrying them home?”

“He taught Gram how to read the type with her fingertips. It was some time before she did it with perfect accuracy. But eventually they proved her skill to the chief printer and he hired her anew. I wanted to give her that pleasure, just once, before—” Her voice caught and she turned her face away.

“Did you paint the roses?”

She looked at the twining trellis. “My grandfather did. Roses were always her favorite scent, especially after she lost her sight. When he fell ill with the black cough and we moved to London from the countryside so that I could take the position at Brittle and Sons, she missed the roses in our little garden dreadfully. My wages were never sufficient to purchase real roses, and my grandfather was obliged to stop working. But before he died he painted them so that . . .”

“So that you would never forget.”

Her eyes were clear. “Please drive me back to the shop now, Captain.”

She did not speak to him on the short drive, but when he dismounted and came to her side of the curricle, she took his hand and allowed him to assist her down. Her fingers trembled against his palm.

“It is far past lunchtime,” she said, pulling her hand away and tucking it in her skirt. “I am a bit shaky from that.”

She was lying now, and he had caused this too. “I will see you inside.”

“No, I—”

“I will see you inside.”

Charles Brittle sat behind a desk in the front room.

“Are you well,