THE PROPOSITION Read online

  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

  Epilogue

  My luve is like a red, red rose…

  Robert Burns, Stanza 1 of "A Red, Red Rose"

  Johnson's Musical Museum, 1796

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  Chapter 1

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  The most highborn lady Mick had ever been with—the wife of a sitting member of the House of Lords, as it turned out—told him that the French had a name for what she felt for him, a name that put words to her wanting his "lionhearted virility"—he liked the phrase and remembered it.

  "'A yearning for the mud,'" she told him. "That's what the French call it."

  Mud. He hadn't much liked the comparison. Still, from the moment he heard it, he hadn't doubted the phrase's clear sight or wisdom. Posh ladies who took a fancy to him had to make some sort of excuse to themselves, and this was as good as any. He was a novelty at best. At worst, a bit of mud to play in for ladies whose lives'd been scrubbed clean of good, earthy fun.

  He lay now on the floor, dirtier than usual, truth be told, his palms and belly flat to the floorboards of a dress shop in Kensington. Three silky ladies stood over him—they stood very far over him, one on a chair seat, one on a countertop, and one on the last inch or so left of a shelf taken up mostly by bolts of fabric. These three watched him, breathless, while Mick, his ear turned to the floor, listened.

  He was a big man—he took up a long length of floor. He had wide shoulders, a hard, muscular chest, long, weighty limbs. Handsomely made, he didn't doubt it. Vigorous. Five minutes ago, he'd been out back, using this very fact to flirt with the seamstress's assistant. He'd made her laugh, his first triumph, and had just stepped a little closer, when the seamstress and her customer inside the shop had begun screaming, "Mouse! Mouse!" The only man nearby, he'd been pressed into service.

  Now, when scared, mice had a nasty habit. They'd run up anything, including a person's leg. The nightmare for a lady was that a mouse'd scamper into the understructure of her dress—her petticoats, dress-improvers, and half-hoops—where it could run around indefinitely in a maze of horsehair and steel wires.

  Hoping to avoid a mouse circus inside their dresses, the seamstress, a patron, and now her assistant had climbed as high as they could in the room, pressing their dresses to themselves, frightened out of their wits. Mick could've told them it wouldn't do them no good. Mice could get onto tables and chairs easy. But he didn't mention it. He didn't want to frighten them more.

  He lay quiet, scanning the floorboards, palms flat, elbows up, toes curled to support some of his weight, ready to spring up if a mouse came into sight. Then he spied it, and it was sort of a letdown. A little thing, it was more scared than the ladies, shaking over in a corner at the base of a sewing machine in the shadow of a press-iron. Barely more than a baby. He could catch it in his hand. There were no others, no noise under the floor, no activity.

  "Is there a nest?" whispered the seamstress, her voice hushed with worry. "Are there more?"

  Now, right here, Mick should've said no and stood up. But he didn't. He got distracted.

  He turned his head to use the other ear, to listen again and make sure. And there, through a doorway into a back room, under a painted screen, in a mirror he saw a pair of legs, a second customer. There were four women, not three. This one'd been trying on dresses, he guessed, when the commotion broke out. She was trapped in the dressing room. In the mirror he could see she'd leaped on top of something, maybe a trunk. Anyway, with his position, her having moved up and out of the protection of the screen, and what with the angle of the mirror, he was looking right at a pair of devilish long legs. Bloody gorgeous, they were.

  He lay there, caught in his own admiration. She was on her toes, dancing a little, nervous, the long muscles of her legs flexing beneath pink stockings with a hole at the knee. Long. Hell, long wasn't the word for these legs. They went for yards and yards—she had to be a tall one, this one. And shapely—her legs were poetry. Balance, muscle, motion. They gave new meaning to fine.

  Now, normally, Mick was a polite man. He would've protected a woman caught off guard by turning his head. Or at least he thought maybe he would've. But these were the damnedest legs. "Sh-h-h," he said in answer to the seamstress's fears.

  In unison, the ladies above him drew in their breaths, trying to calm themselves, to allow him to hear any skittering or chewing or other nasty mouse sounds. One of them murmured, "This is so heroic of you, Mr.—" She was asking for a name.

  "Tremore. Sh-h-h."

  Oh, yes, heroic. The hero lay on his belly, getting his eyes as low as he could so as to stare across the floor into a mirror at the prettiest legs he'd yet seen in thirty years of living. If he'd been standing up, he'd've seen to maybe just above the ankles—the screen in front of her came within a foot of the ground. That alone would've been an eyeful, since her ankles were narrow, her foot pretty with a high arch and instep, the anklebone showing against the soft leather of her shoe.

  But when he got his head just right, he could see in the mirror: from the toes of high-buttoned shoes up long, neat shins, plenty of curvy calf, past the knee ribbons of silk knickers to halfway up willowy thighs that went forever. Dream legs.

  In his dreams, Mick did see legs like these. He loved long legs on a woman. In his sleep he got to put his mouth on them. It took a dream-eternity to get his tongue from the back of the knee, up the thigh, to the indentation under the buttocks. Strong legs. In his dreams they gripped him with athletic urgency. They could squeeze him till he was nearly unconscious with lust.

  "Mr. Tremore, Mr. Tremore!" one of the ladies behind him called. "Over here! It's here."

  No, it wasn't. The ladies were jumpy, imagining mice everywhere. They began to make noise, thinking the mouse active again. Little shrieks, ladylike huffs, nervous giggles as they shifted around on their perches.

  Mick held up his finger. "Sh-h-h," he said again.

  He hated to get up and take care of a mouse, when there were legs like these to look at. Legs and knickers, a blessed sight if ever there was one. Above him on the counter, though, the seamstress was gulping air so hard that, if he didn't do something, she was going to lose her tea biscuits.

  Softly, Mick said, "Wait. I see him. Don't move."

  Mouse time. He shoved against the floor, pushing up, getting a knee and toe under him, and sprang, quick and quiet. He went after the mouse from the side of the pressing iron, so when he scooted the iron a fraction, the mouse fled forward. With a sideways lunge, Mick snapped him up by the tail, then, straightening, dangled a mouse in front of him, out for inspection.

  The seamstress shrieked. He thought she was going to faint. "Easy," he said.

  The customer, nearest him, climbed down bravely from her chair. "O-o-oh," she breathed.

  As they all clambered down, he stood a head or more taller than any of them. He looked down on three women who tittered and made a fuss now that the danger was past. Mick was "so brave." He was "so agile." "Lionhearted," one of them said, and he laughed. Then: "With such a deep, rich laugh."

  He turned. Now, even when covered in floor grit, Mick was fairly used to sending a stir through the ladies. The younger ones were generally at a loss, but the older ones he had to watch out for.

  The customer who liked his laugh came right up to him, looking at the mouse. She was decked out in a lot of velvet and beads, her thin face sort of lost under a big hat decorated with a large feather and a stuffed bird.

  She stretched her arm out toward him, her gloved hand dropped at the wrist. "Lady Whitting," she said. "The Baroness of Whitting."

  He stared at her hand. She expected him to kiss it, he guessed, but he didn't do tha
t sort of thing, even when he wasn't holding a mouse. "Nice to meet you." He turned around. "Nell?" He looked for the seamstress's assistant. "You got something to put this fellow into?"

  The baroness walked around him to put herself in his way again. Lowering her hand, folding it into her other, she eyed him then smiled. "That was quite a feat, sir. The way you leaped and captured that mouse. Quite impressive."

  Mick glanced at her, knowing she wasn't impressed with mice or heroism or anything very noble.

  She said, "You should have a prize. A hero's prize."

  He stopped. He was a workingman with a lot of family back home who counted on him, so a prize interested him, especially a monetary one.

  The way her smile sort of softened when she got his attention, though, told him they weren't talking about money.

  "I don't need nothing, duck," he said. "My pleasure to help you."

  The other ladies were watching, keeping their distance. Mick turned away from the baroness, remembering his coat on the floor. As he bent to get it, he happened to glance into the back room. He caught a glimpse of a dress floating into the air. Purple. The most beautiful shade of purple. The dark color of lavender in August. Behind the screen, narrow sleeves raised overhead, long fingers wiggling their way out, up and into the open. The dress shushed loud enough that he heard its rustle as it dropped down, ending all hope of ever seeing again the finest legs he could imagine.

  He straightened up, gently dusting his coat, then pushed back his hair—his hand came away with soot. He frowned down at his dirty palm. Oh, lovely, he thought, just lovely. This must have happened when he looked up the flue for the mouse.

  The baroness continued, "So what is the payment due a hero?"

  "A jar for the mouse would be nice." He looked past her to the seamstress.

  As if she wasn't listening, as if it had been her plan all along, the seamstress quickly reached under the counter and handed him a button tin, empty. He unscrewed the lid.

  "How about these?" the baroness said. Beside him, she tapped her gloved finger on top of a glass case. A soft, dull click.

  Mick dropped the mouse into the tin as he glanced over at what she pointed to. The case held a lot of intimate feminine things. Knickers and stockings and garters. He paused, staring at what was inside the case more from curiosity than anything else. There were some pretty things on the glass shelves. Amazing things. Lacy, thin, feminine. Not a speck of it practical.

  The baroness didn't ask so much as she commanded, "Miss?" She spoke to the seamstress, a woman at least ten years older than her. "Can we please see these?"

  The seamstress brought out a pair of dark pink garters ruffled with lace, heaped with bows, and weighted down with a lot of pearls the size of tomato pips. "These would make a nice prize for a hero," said the baroness, turning to dangle one off her finger.

  The garter was one of gaudiest things he'd ever set eyes on. She thought they'd appeal to him though, which said what she thought of his taste.

  When he didn't immediately light up at the sight, she explained, "They're expensive."

  So maybe it was her taste that was on the flashy side, he thought. He shrugged. He pointed to garters still in the case that sat next to where the others had been. "These be nicer." It was more a matter of trying to straighten her out than anything else. He pointed to white ones, the color of cream. Narrower. Satin, with one creamy-pink flower on each, two tiny leaves the color of moss. Nothing more. Simple. Elegant.

  She raised one eyebrow. At first he thought it was his taste that struck her. But no, it was his accent. She said, "What an amusing way you have of pronouncing things."

  His sound came from a country dialect. He could actually speak a little Cornish, a lost language.

  The baroness smiled at the tall, handsome mud she was keen to welter in. "These then," she said. She indicated the garters he'd chosen. The seamstress handed them to her.

  On the end of her crooked, gloved finger, the baroness offered Mick a prettier garter. "Here," she said. "You take this one. I'll take the other. Then we'll meet somewhere"—her eyes lit—"and unite them."

  He laughed. The rich got up to the damnedest games.

  Games he'd played more than once. He thought about this new offer. The baroness here was on the pretty side. Making a rich lady happy had its moments. He couldn't complain that it'd ever been terrible.

  Mick stroked his mustache a moment. It was soft and sleek, his mustache. Thick, dark, his pride. His "lionhearted virility" on display. His thumb to his cheekbone, arms across his chest, he dragged his finger down the mustache till the inside of his knuckle rested in the indentation of lips. There, he thought. The gesture did something to his head. It made his mind clear.

  Against his finger, he murmured, "A yearning for mud."

  "What?" The baroness in the bird hat got a puzzled look.

  He took his finger away, straightening. "It be from French," he said.

  Now he'd really confused her. A country man like him wasn't supposed to know beggar-all about French. He shrugged, trying to make little of it. "What it means is, I guess not, love."

  He stepped away, slipping his arms into his coat, thinking that was the end of it. He smoothed his hand down the front of him and absently weighed his pocket, checking its contents. Good, still there.

  "Ah," the baroness said. She added in a cynical tone, "How unusual. A faithful man."

  Faithful to himself.

  She continued, "So there's a lucky lady elsewhere?"

  He let her think so.

  She lightly hit his shoulder, a rap with her folded fan, then laughed. "Add them to my bill, will you, miss? A pair of garters for our hero here to give to his lady fair."

  He looked over his shoulder, thinking to tell her not to bother, but she was out the door, just like that, with him the proud owner of a pair of fine lady's garters—and way too many lady-fairs to start trying to pick which one.

  Well, hell. What was he going to do with those? he wondered. But then he thought, Well, of course. He went into the back.

  The only person there was Nell, the seamstress's assistant. She sat with her blonde head bent close to the sewing machine. She was trying to thread its needle, but stopped when he entered, smiling up at him.

  "Where be the lady who was trying on clothes back here?" he asked.

  "She left." Nell tipped her head in the direction of a back door. When he dropped the garters onto her sewing table, her smile got bigger. "Coo, these are plush, aren't they?" She laughed, picking them up. "And about ten times nicer than those horrid things Lady Whitting wanted."

  "The other lady," he said. "The tall one what was trying on dresses. She buy anything?"

  "We altered some dresses for her."

  "She take 'em?"

  "We're sending them."

  "Then put those in her package, will you?"

  She held up the garters looped round her hand. They were fine. Not scratchy like the lace ones. Soft. Simple. Right diabolical in their appeal. Like the long legs he imagined wearing them.

  Nell said, "I don't think she'd accept garters from you, Mr. Tremore. She's a proper lady, Miss—"

  He bent, putting his finger against the girl's lips, leaning his weight, his palm down, on her sewing table. He didn't want to know a name. He didn't want to know nothing about the lady behind the screen. He already knew enough. "Tell her they're from you then."

  "From me?"

  "From the shop. For being a good customer, you see. No need for her to know where they come from."

  There now. Perfect. Tomorrow, somewhere in London a long-legged lady would be waking around in a sweet pair of garters that were just right for her pretty legs. The idea was a little on the indecent side, but Mick felt heroic anyway for making it happen.

  Then Nell blindsided him. She stood up from her chair, her face coming right up to his, and whispered, "No one would know if, well—" She murmured in a rush, "My father's asleep upstairs. He works the night shift. So do
es my brother. My uncle and cousins are out, and Aunt Milly is busy in front. No one would know if, say—" She paused, like she wasn't sure where to go from here. "If, say, I fixed your shirt for you."

  "My shirt?" Mick looked down. "What's wrong with my shirt?"

  She reached out, casually resting her hand on his chest. "It has a hole."

  "No, it—"

  Yes, it did: He looked down and watched her put her fingernail through a smooth place where the linen was worn. His shirt had a fingernail-sized hole before he had the presence of mind to grab her hand and hold it.

  She let out a soft sound, more satisfaction than distress. He watched her lower her eyelids as a little smile spread on her face.

  Oh, fine. He laughed, a single burst. Well. Nellie girl here was surely unexpected. He'd been wooing her all week with little success—till he'd caught a mouse then been propositioned by a baroness.

  And at least she knew the difference between pretty garters and gewgawed ones that were only costly. But … what was wrong? She was … too short, he decided. He wanted longer legs all of a sudden.

  He was shaking his head no, pushing her back, when Nell got hold of his trouser button. She was going to pull the damn thing off, if he wasn't careful. He took hold of her hands again. She resisted, and damn if she didn't like resisting. She wanted to fight him, but in that way women sometimes wanted to. She wanted to lose.

  So how did he win without winning? This wasn't going well.

  Then it complicated. "Nellie?" Her aunt wasn't nearly as busy as Nell had thought. "Nell? What are you doing—"

  Old Nellie here was making fast work of what buttons were left on his shirt, was what she was doing—she'd popped two off, the clumsy girl.

  And, from here, the whole situation went to bloody effing hell.

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  Chapter 2

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  Edwina Henrietta Bollash was sitting in Abernathy and Freigh's main tearoom, quietly eating the best scones and cream in London, when a very undignified racket rose up outside in the street—like the caterwauling of a dozen cats and dogs fighting over butcher scrap. Inside the room, a little chorus of teacups clinked on saucers. Heads lifted, faces turning, as the noise grew louder, closer. Then quite suddenly—chairs scraping back in alarm—the ruckus burst though the tearoom doors.