Her Every Wish, Page 3

  He stepped close to the door and detected the muted sounds of spirited voices.

  His aunt had guests over. She often did; her husband was the first mate on a trading vessel, and in the months when he was away, she entertained.

  He knocked and waited. The door opened, and a brilliant dazzle of light from every oil lamp met him. For a moment, his aunt was nothing but a dark silhouette lit from behind. Then she moved back a pace and the palette of her skin shifted from midnight to umber.

  She tried, oh, she tried, to frown at him disapprovingly. Alas. His aunt was terrible at disapproval, particularly where he was involved.

  He embraced her. “Aunt Ree.”

  She gave him a grudging pat on the back in return.

  The other two women seated at the card table smiled at him over Ree’s shoulder, as if the evening’s entertainment had just arrived. Three white-haired women looking at him with that particular expression might have put another man off, but Crash knew them better.

  Harriet Cathing had been his aunt’s friend since before he was born. She’d been a laundress then, before she married a ship’s lieutenant. Now she was… Well, technically, she was a laundress married to a ship’s lieutenant.

  May Walsh hadn’t married anyone—at least not in a legally binding ceremony. She swore by the strategy to any of the young girls who would listen to her. She had a strong jaw and dark freckles spattering brown skin.

  Once, Martha Claving had been the fourth whist player in their little quartet, and May’s long-time partner and companion. A little pencil sketch in a black crepe-draped frame marked the place she would have taken.

  His aunt was shaking her head at him. “Crash,” she said, “Crash, Crash, Crash. You know Saturday night is whist night, and still you chose to invade. Ladies, you all know my scapegrace nephew. Crash, do try to be respectable.”

  It was a bit of a joke between them, that word.

  Crash gave the gathering a sweeping bow. “I am always respectable. If anyone chooses not to respect me, however…” He gave his aunt a low grin. “There’s very little I can do about that, is there?”

  “Pish tosh,” Miss Walsh said. “I so hate when men are respectable. It usually involves rather too much posturing.”

  “Nonsense. You remember old Barnabas Tucker? Well, he…”

  And they were off, as they so often were, on the sort of conversation that would have offended the more proper households three-quarters of a mile to the north.

  “Speaking of Barnabas and his unfortunate predilections,” Miss Walsh said. “Have you all heard what happened at Redding Copy House?”

  The other two women shook their heads and made little tsking noises.

  “Badly run,” Harriet said. “Staff constantly embezzling. No discretion in the clientele. I was certainly not surprised when it closed.”

  “I am so glad to not have to labor in my advanced age,” Miss Walsh was saying. “It leaves me free to pursue leisure activities in my final years. Like—”

  “Cheating us all at cards,” Ree put in.

  Yes. That was their favorite pastime of a winter evening: playing whist and cheating wildly. Cheating was the unspoken rule of the game. Cheating, in fact, was the only real rule of the game, and the competition was cutthroat.

  Much of England would have summed up these three women with one word: whores. They’d won that epithet by virtue of the poverty they’d labored through, the men they’d associated with, and the color of their skin.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d ever sold sexual services on the streets. They’d been poor. Aunt Ree and May Walsh were too dark to be considered anything other than unacceptably foreign; Harriet Cathing’s mother had also been what the uptight middle class would call a whore.

  They had never been seen as respectable by England’s rules. The rules had written them out of the game centuries ago.

  Crash set his bag down. “I’ve brought rum, milk, bread, spices, potatoes, and eggs. It’s cold and you’re almost out of everything.”

  Harriet beamed at him. “How utterly darling. He brings rum. Ree, I must get myself a nephew like him. How ever does one obtain one?”

  Ree rolled her eyes. “Don’t let the rum fool you. It’s scant penance for all the woe he’s brought into my life. Fortunately for us all, Crash is one of a kind.”

  Crash waggled his eyebrows at his aunt. “You know you love me.”

  She glowered at him. “Unfortunately.”

  “I’ve always meant to ask. What sort of a name is Crash? Is it a first or a family name?” Miss Walsh frowned at him. “That can’t be your real name, can it?”

  “His Christian name is Nigel,” Ree put in, “but we started calling him Crash at a very young age, and it stuck so well that we’ve just decided to forget there was ever anything else. As for family names, we don’t deal in those. It’s a bit of a tradition. But if you feel better calling him Nigel—”

  “Refer to me as Nigel again,” Crash said with a raised finger, “and I’ll start calling you Catriona.”

  His aunt made a face. “You don’t want him,” she explained earnestly to her friend. “He talks back. And he only brings enough rum for a little glass here and there. He’s hardly worth all the bother.”

  But she gave him a proud smile.

  And oh, he had been a bother. Never sitting still, always moving. Once, when he’d been a child scarcely old enough to learn his letters, he’d lived up to his assumed name. He’d dashed around a corner in a store and ran headlong into a display of canned goods. They’d toppled to the ground with a resounding crash.

  The shopkeeper had grabbed him up, shaking him viciously, calling him a good-for-nothing hell-bent bastard who would end his days in a noose.

  “Just like your father,” he’d said. “But then, you don’t even know who that is, do you, you worthless little mongrel?”

  His aunt had taken Crash’s hand and conducted him out of the shop.

  “Don’t you listen to him,” she had said, her voice shaking. “He can’t see you, not as you are. So don’t you listen to what he says. You’re good for anything you want to do. You’ll have to try harder, and you’ll have to do it a little differently—but don’t you ever listen to him.”

  Twenty-six years of don’t you listen to him.

  Every time someone crossed the street at the sight of him. Every time someone spat in his direction. When the vicar announced at Sunday service that unnatural attractions to men were a sign of moral turpitude. The morning when a well-meaning woman had sought him out in a crowd and earnestly explained that foreign heathens like him needed to learn of Christ and seek divine forgiveness.

  For twenty-six years, his aunt had told him not to listen to any of them. After all she’d done for him, a little rum was the least he could offer.

  “You know,” Miss Walsh put in, “if we could get this fine young man to play Martha’s hand for us, nobody could use her to cheat.”

  Three faces considered this contemplatively. Crash was fairly certain that all three women were considering the many ways he might choose to play Martha’s hand.

  “Speak for yourself,” Ree said piously. “I never cheat. I win by skill.”

  This was met with the raucous laughter it deserved.

  Ha. She’d give up cheating the day she… No, he didn’t want to think such morbid thoughts. His aunt was fifty-four; she had decades left in her, god willing. She’d taught him everything he knew about cheating. Cheating was the only way to win, and so she did it assiduously.

  He sat and dealt.

  “He won’t do for a fourth,” Harriet said. “But you know, May…”

  May frowned. “I know. It’s been a year. We should…consider a replacement now.”

  “I am not available on a permanent basis,” Crash said smoothly. “My innocent young ears would burn off if I had to listen to more than an evening of your conversation.”

  They all laughed good-naturedly.

  “Young man,” s
aid Miss Walsh, “you do realize that we know you?”

  “Who?” he asked. “Me? You must be thinking of Nigel.”

  Ree had taught him to cheat, too, with everything he had in him. When the rules were stacked against you, cheating was a moral necessity.

  A moment earlier in the day flashed in front of him—Daisy looking up at him in disapproval.

  Stop flirting with me, she had said.

  As if he wanted to flirt with her. Every time he saw her, every time she threw her so-perfect fiancé in his face, he became more and more certain that he’d had the luckiest of escapes. All those months spent worrying while he was in Paris…they’d been for nothing. He’d hoped for a letter. A telegram. A single word.

  Not a damned thing had come. He’d not thought her the sort of person who would treat him like a shameful secret, one to be hidden as soon as possible. He was done flirting with Daisy.

  She could have her emporium and her sweetheart. He’d learned long ago not to waste tears on anyone who pushed him away. Not shopkeepers. Not stablehands. Not even sweethearts he’d once intended to marry.

  He smiled and poured little jiggers of rum for the women who had raised him. They had told him not to listen when the country shouted that he was nothing. They had taught him to walk with his head held high, to act as if he meant something even though nobody else would agree.

  He wouldn’t spare a thought for the woman who’d decided he meant nothing. He didn’t want her back. He didn’t care how she felt about him.

  All he wanted was for Daisy Whitlaw to realize how wrong she’d been and to regret her stupidity. He wanted her to marry her stupid sub-lieutenant and have equally stupid children and look out her stupid window and think occasionally: I suppose Crash was right after all. I made a mistake.

  Aside from that? He didn’t care one bit. He wouldn’t let himself do it.

  Chapter Three

  Daisy was always going to feel like an interloper on her Sunday visits to her best friend. She’d resigned herself to that fact.

  It didn’t matter that Judith ushered her into a front salon as if she were regular company. The walls of the luxurious room were covered in a white-and-gold damask silk. The table Daisy sat at was laden with goodies: biscuits, sandwiches, scones.

  Once, Judith had lived just across the street from Daisy. At first Daisy had felt she was the luckier of the two. Her father might have failed as a grocer, but he’d had a bit of an annuity, and her mother had been frugal enough, and genteel enough, to teach Daisy everything she had needed to know. Then Daisy’s life had jagged down. Her father had died; his annuity had disappeared. Her mother had become ill. Alongside that, Judith’s luck had jagged up, and then up again. She’d married a wealthy, powerful man she had known from her childhood. Now, instead of exchanging bread recipes and household tips, the two women sat at a table where three years of Daisy’s labor would not pay for all the china.

  “Here,” Judith said with a smile. “Would you care for a roast beef sandwich?”

  “Of course I would,” Daisy said with a smile.

  Once, Daisy and Judith had gone shopping together and joked of purchasing kid gloves with diamonds. They’d talked about adding gold leaf to their meager meals. It had been silly, ridiculous—and utterly necessary for Daisy’s peace of mind. Their little game had provided perspective on her wants. Your wishes are silly. Be happy you have soup bones, Daisy. You could have less.

  “How goes the flower shop?” Judith asked.

  “It prospers.” Daisy gave her friend as confident a smile as she could muster. “In fact, I’ve been awarded additional compensation for my valiant efforts. We’re positively flush.”

  Not a lie. Five pence more a week—it had gone a long way. She and her mother were actually saving money in winter now, not bleeding it slowly away in coal bills.

  Judith smiled, as Daisy had known she would.

  The sad thing was, their friendship was already over. Judith just didn’t know it yet. There was the literal distance between them—four miles, difficult for Daisy to manage on her own unless Judith sent a carriage, as she’d done today.

  There was the way the maid’s eyes cut toward Daisy as she placed the tea on the table, as if Daisy were a bit of refuse that she longed to sweep from the room. There was the fact that Daisy suspected Judith’s servants earned more in a week than the owner of the flower shop bestowed on Daisy. Daisy would have been lucky to scrub floors for her friend.

  “Tell me all the gossip,” Judith said. “I don’t want to miss a single story.”

  Daisy went through all their former mutual acquaintances: Fred Lotting and his wife, Mr. Padge, Daisy’s mother… She talked of everyone but herself.

  Daisy was lying, she realized as they spoke and laughed. They were still friends. They still had those years of poverty binding them together. Judith had been her support, the shoulder she cried on when everything went wrong. In turn, she’d held her friend through every reversal.

  They were friends still, fragile though that friendship was. Their hours together felt like spider silk—ready to dissipate with one good sweep of a servant’s broom. One day it would break. One day. Still, it held. Spider webs tended to remain in place if you held your breath when you were close.

  Daisy was trying not to breathe.

  “Is there anything else?” Judith asked.

  Daisy almost told Judith what she’d done about the charity bequest. She almost told her of entering the competition, of the grocer mocking her because she wasn’t a man.

  She didn’t, though.

  Daisy’s Emporium was a dream that was as unattainable and unrealistic as gold leaf on radishes. Deep down, Daisy knew it would never come to pass. Dreaming was one thing. Entering a competition she couldn’t win? That was a little worse.

  Telling her friend about it? That would make this serious. Real. Judith would want to hear the details. She might even offer to help. And if she did…

  Daisy would end up another one of Judith’s servants, running a storefront for her. And if the store failed the way her father’s store had…?

  She did her best not to breathe on the attenuating cobwebs of their friendship.

  “No,” Daisy said instead. “That’s all there is. All this about me, and we’ve scarcely spoken of you. How are you? How are the terrors?”

  The terrors were Judith’s younger brother and sister.

  Judith laughed. “I’m well, as you can see.” She gestured around the room. “Theresa’s being fitted for dresses at this very moment. Imagine her in silks, if you will.”

  Daisy couldn’t imagine that sort of transformation. Judith’s younger sister was a hellion at the best of times. She’d rip a silk gown in a minute flat. She’d smear grease on the skirts.

  But of course, the cost of repair would no longer matter to her friend. And who knew how a deportment teacher might have changed the girl she’d known just a few months ago?

  “We’re well,” Judith said. “Very well, and I’m glad to see you. I miss you. A few stolen hours here and there are hardly enough.”

  “I miss you, too.” A few hours was all Daisy had. “But I need to go back to my mother.”

  “I know, dear.” Judith patted her hand. “Is there anything you need?”

  Daisy could have laughed. Everything. She needed everything.

  “Gold leaf,” she said instead. “Gold leaf and diamonds at my hem, and with that, I should be splendid.”

  Judith smiled at her.

  It wouldn’t be much longer until their friendship diminished to nothing. Until that moment, though, Daisy would let the servants frown at her. She wouldn’t flinch when they kept too-careful an eye on her as they conducted her to the door, hoping to catch her in the act of stealing the silver.

  Daisy took her leave, her smile plastered firmly on her face. She kept it there for three whole minutes before the reality of her life set in again.

  She’d entered a competition she couldn’t win. She’d
agreed to let a man she didn’t like assist her in her preparations.

  Of course she hadn’t told Judith. Judith knew she was poor; she didn’t need to know that she’d gone witless.

  Crash was already late. Five minutes ago, the clock had chimed three. Daisy still found herself waiting in front of the general store. She was exhausted from her day at the flower shop, the wind was cold, and her patience was running thin.

  Late was perhaps a little unfair. She knew he was around somewhere because his velocipede was leaning against the side of a building. But he was not present, and she’d not so much free time that she could afford to waste a moment of it.

  Especially not if he had arrived on his velocipede. Just looking at the thing made her palms itch. She had done her best not to learn about the contraption when he’d first started riding it a few months back. She had been certain that he was going to live up to his name and crash into something.

  That was because Crash on a velocipede belonged in a circus act, one that should have been paired alongside lions and flaming hoops. If she’d had any idea what a velocipede was when he first mentioned the thing, she would have protested. He’d called it a vehicle. Some vehicle it was; it couldn’t even stand upright on its own. It was nothing but two wheels, one in front of the other. Nothing to stabilize it. No sticks to keep him upright.

  Worse, Crash turned those wheels not by propelling himself with his feet on the ground. The wheels turned by means of little pedals attached to the front axle. A seat three or four feet above the ground might not seem so high, but he went flying past as fast as a horse could gallop.

  She had to hide her face every time she saw him. She kept imagining him overbalancing. Or underbalancing. Or hitting a wall. She imagined him smashing into hard bricks at that speed…

  She didn’t care about Crash, not one bit. But just because he’d broken her heart didn’t mean she wanted him to crack his skull.

  Daisy was not the only one who had noted the velocipede’s presence; three other women had observed it, and were standing—lollygagging, really—outside the store. Now, she could see him inside through the dirt-smeared windows. A cap covered his hair; he’d unwound his scarf so it was loosely looped around his neck, long enough to dangle enticingly just past his hips. He was gesturing, describing something to the store owner.