A Kiss Away From Scandal. Christine Merrill
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Instead, she sailed imperiously past him to stand expectantly at the door, waiting for him to open it.
It was only common courtesy that he do so, but for some reason, it rankled. All the same, he opened and she passed through. And at last he was rewarded with the response he’d expected, the utter confusion of a gently bred lady who had never before shopped for someone else’s cast-offs.
She paused in the entryway as if afraid to go further. He could tell by the subtle shifting of her bonnet that her eyes were darting around the room, stunned to immobility by the cases of brass buttons and mismatched earbobs, and racks upon racks of shabby coats and fashionless gowns.
He shut the door and stepped past her. A quick scan of the room proved that none of the finer items would be found here, but he had no intention of leaving without making an enquiry, lest Miss Strickland realise he’d only come here to torture her. He rang the bell on the counter to summon the proprietor.
The man who stepped out from behind the curtained back room was every bit as fearsome as he’d hoped, a gaunt scarecrow of a fellow with one eye that did not seem to want to follow the other. It gave the impression that he could watch both his customers at the same time. At the sight of him, the girl who had been so quick to treat Gregory as her lackey now faded one step behind him, trying to disappear into his shadow.
It made him smile more broadly than he might have as he greeted the pawnbroker. ‘Good morning, my fine fellow. I am seeking candlesticks. Not just any candlesticks, mind you. I want the sort the posh types pawn when they can’t pay their gambling debts.’
The man answered with a nod and a toothless grin, then pointed wordlessly into the corner at a small display of plate.
Gregory glanced at it for only a moment, before choosing the gaudiest pair and walking back towards the counter. He felt a sharp tug on his sleeve and looked back at Miss Strickland.
‘Those are not ours,’ she whispered.
‘I thought you could not describe what we were looking for,’ he countered.
‘I cannot. But I am sure that I have never seen those in my life.’
‘Neither has Miles Strickland. He has never seen England, much less these candlesticks.’
‘That does not make them right,’ she countered. ‘Ignorance is no substitute for truth.’
Perhaps not. But in Gregory’s opinion, it made for a pretty fine excuse and had worked well in the past. ‘It is not as if we will be lying to him. He will expect to find candlesticks and we are leaving him some. He will never know the difference.’
‘But I will,’ she said.
Hadn’t Leggett said something about the sisters being the daughters of a vicar? If so, their ingrained morality was proving deeply inconvenient. ‘Your sister’s husband is not paying me enough to turn the town upside down for things that are likely lost for ever.’
‘If all that was needed was to grab the first things that came to hand, I could have done it myself.’ Noting the wary way she had watched the proprietor, he doubted that was the case. But she had no trouble standing up to Gregory, for he saw a faint flash of irritation in the brown eyes glittering behind her veil. ‘I do not know what he is paying you, but I am sure Mr Leggett did not hire you to do the job halfway. If the funds were insufficient, you should have negotiated for more when he hired you.’
For a sheltered young lady she was surprisingly perceptive. She was annoying as well. But his fee had been tripled to account for that.
He gave her a subservient smile. ‘Very well, then. I shall try harder.’
He turned back to the shopkeeper. ‘You have a very small collection for an item that is one of the first to be sold, when the gentry’s pockets are to let. Are there any others in the shop?’
The man favoured them with his wall-eyed gaze for a moment and Gregory set a coin on the counter. ‘For the inconvenience of opening your stockroom to us, good sir.’
The man pocketed the coin and stepped back, pulling the curtain to the side to let them pass.
The little room at the back of the shop was cluttered, as he expected it to be, but not without organisation. The shelves were full of more dented bird cages, tarnished teakettles and chipped vases than could be sold in a lifetime. Beneath them were an equally large number of chests, full of silver flatware and... Lo and behold, candlesticks.
He threw back the lid and lit a nearby candle to supplement the meagre light streaming from a grimy window on the back wall. Then he gestured Miss Strickland closer. ‘Here you are. If the items are to be found in this shop, you are the only one who might tell. Look for yourself.’
He had expected a shudder of distaste and the demand that he sort through the chest and display the contents to her. Instead, all her reservations fell away. She pushed back the veil and dropped to her knees on the floor beside it, digging without hesitation through the pile of dented flambeaus and sconces.
Suddenly, she sighed in surprise and turned to him with a dented pewter stick clutched in her hands. She offered it to him and reached up to push back her bonnet. Then she smoothed her hair out of the way, leaving a streak of tarnish on her soft, white brow. ‘Does it match?’
He frowned in confusion and leaned forward to look closer. The decoration she held was designed to imitate a Corinthian column, the top a square of ornate tracery. On her forehead was a small V-shaped scar with a break that matched a gap in the decoration.
‘Someone hit you with this?’ He hefted the weight of it in his hands and felt the anger rise in his gorge at the brutality of the late Earl, her grandfather.
She nodded. Then, oddly, she smiled. ‘My sister, Charity.’ Her hand dived back into the chest and pulled out the mate, which was bent at the base. ‘In response, I threw this one at her. But I missed and it hit the dining-room wall. There is still a crack in the plaster where it landed.’
He felt momentarily weak as the rage left him again. ‘That is good to know. I would hate to think that either of you had a skull thick enough to cause such damage to it.’ But if they had, it ought not to have surprised him. Hope Strickland was proving to be the most hard-headed woman he’d ever met. He doubted her sister was any different.
She was still smiling. ‘Then, Faith came and pulled both our plaits until we cried. I had forgotten all about that.’ She was looking fondly at the candlesticks, as if meeting old friends. She frowned. ‘And now, we will have to give them to a complete stranger, just because he shares our name.’
Her dark mood disappeared as quickly as it had come. She looked back up at him, so fresh and unguarded that he felt a lump rising in his throat. ‘But I remember this. It is why just any candlestick would not do. Perhaps the new Earl would not know the difference, but it would not be the same to me.’
‘I understand.’ He stared at the smudge on her forehead in fascination. He wanted to wipe it away, smoothing a finger over that small, white vee in wonder. A flaw should make her uglier, not more fascinating. Was it raised, he wondered, or smooth? A single touch, under the guise of cleaning away the grime, would tell him.
He cleared his mind, cleared his throat and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, offering it to her. ‘You have...’ he touched his own forehead ‘...here.’
She gave him a misty smile and a shrug of embarrassment before wiping away the dirt and returning his linen to him.
He was no less intrigued once it was gone. Perhaps it was her reaction to the injury that drew him to her. He’d been in such childhood scraps himself, but did not remember any of them as fondly as she did hers.
Of course, he’d had no brother to strike him. He did not often think of that, either. But suddenly there was a strange emptiness in him, as if he was hungry, but could not decide for what.
It was probably tea. The single slice of toast he’d had for breakfast had burned away hours ago. He needed sustenance to fill