Dunham (Tales of Dunham by Moriah Jovan

Author:Moriah Jovan [Jovan, Moriah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9827812-8-9
Publisher: Moriah Jovan
Published: 2013-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

57

ELLIOTT COULD NOT HAVE IMAGINED any gift greater than the awe on her face when he told her how he had taken that fleet—unless it was the look he hoped he would garner when he described his next plan.

But there was time for that yet, what with her need to regain her strength. He did not understand the mechanism of this weakness she carried, but everyone had one and most managed somehow. How many sailors had peg legs? How many had hooks for hands? How many had other injuries that kept them from functioning as whole persons, but still did the work of a whole person?

This, he thought, was her pegged leg, and she knew how to manage it.

The coach halted. When he alit and assisted Celia out, they were in an alley. A door opened immediately, spilling light onto the rancid, rotting-food-strewn cobbles. He could not muster any shock when they were led up the servants’ stairs to the fourth floor, shown to a rather spartan room, and an older woman clad in a nearly transparent wrap swept in just behind them and closed the door.

“Jack.”

“Nonny, please do not lecture me. I must eat whilst I have the excuse of a gentleman’s company whom my uncle trusts.”

She gave him the once-over and curled her lip. “I can see why ’e trusts ’im.”

Elliott almost laughed, but Celia growled. “Look at me.”

That was when the madam did, in fact, look at her. She gasped, and put a hand to her mouth. “Begorra, Jack,” she whispered. “Ye’re no bigger’n a spoon!”

“Aye, and as full of life as one, too! Feed me!”

The woman swept back out without a word.

“She knows the details of your circumstance?” Elliott asked as he stepped in front of her and began to untie the ribbons holding her bodice to her stomacher.

“As much as she can whilst I cannot slip out of the house,” Celia grumbled, her head bent to assist him. “I still have not been able to rendezvous with Paulo concerning your return message.”

“Ah, yes, the message bidding me adieu,” he purred, walking around her panniers to pull the gown from her shoulders. “After which,” he grunted as he threw the heavy silk onto the bed, “you proceeded to continue your ruse with no intention of telling me who you were.”

She huffed as she worked at her hoops, and he began to untie her laces. “I was—am—very angry with you and I have so many things storming in my mind, I did not know what to do. Rather, what I wanted to do. And if I did know, which of those things to do first.”

“Ah.”

“But then … ”

“Food.”

“Aye. Additionally, extracting myself from Rathbone House is not without its dangers, and I may have requested your assistance in that as well. But now I have the luxury of time until he’s sent back out to sea.”

“He won’t be assigned a ship,” Elliott said matter-of-factly as he painstakingly pulled at her laces so that he could slip her stays off and re-dress her without having to re-lace them.

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