Richard looked at her, compassion in his eyes. Maturity was a painful process, and the school in which Polly must grow was harder than many. Somehow she had managed to scramble unsullied through a life that should have destroyed all illusions. Then she had met Nicholas Kincaid-a man who, loving her, would foster her illusions rather than destroy them. Now she must face a harsh reality where even love failed as shield, where love asked more of her than she could easily give.
"You need your bed," he said after a while. "It has been an evening to try the strength of Atlas. Get you gone, now. I will remain until Nick returns."
She smiled wearily, rising to her feet. " 'Tis kind in you, Richard, but I'll not trespass further on your time. I am not uncomfortable with my own company."
"Maybe not, but I'll stay nevertheless." He spoke now with familiar briskness. "You've had no supper. I'll ask Goodwife Benson to prepare ye a caudle. Get you to bed."
"I do not need a nursemaid, Richard," she protested. He merely smiled and pulled the bell rope. With a defeated
shrug, Polly went into the bedchamber to struggle alone with the ribbons, buttons, and laces of her complicated attire. The days of smock, petticoat, and kirtle were long gone, and she swore with Dog tavern vigor as she wrestled with the recalcitrant knots of her corset.
"I told you you have need of a lady's maid."
Polly whirled, pink-cheeked with her exertions, to the suddenly opened door of the bedchamber. "Nick! I did not hear you come in."
"You were cursing like a Billingsgate fishwife," he observed, shrugging out of his coat, crossing the room in his shirt sleeves toward her. "You could not possibly have heard anything but the sounds of your own voice." Setting his hands upon her shoulders, he spun her around and tackled the laces with experienced fingers.
"Ahh! My thanks." Polly breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing the life back into the constricted flesh beneath her smock. "I do not know why I ever consented to wear that instrument of torture!" She kicked the offending garment across the room.
"I think you do know why," he said with quiet gravity. "Do you also know exactly why you have consented to this other matter-one considerably more distasteful than the wearing of a corset? I would have you certain sure of your own mind."
"What did Richard tell you?" She walked over to the window and stood gazing out into the evening gloom, for the moment unwilling to look at him.
"Only that you had consented to participate in our plan; that you were fatigued and he had sent you to bed; and that since you had had no supper, he had bidden the goodwife prepare you a peppermint caudle."
Polly could not help smiling at what she knew had to be a faithful rendition of Richard's farewell speech to Nicholas. She could almost hear his voice delivering it.
There was a knock at the door. The goodwife bustled in with the bowl of spiced gruel mixed with wine. "This'll put the heart in you," she announced cheerfully, setting the
bowl on the tiring table. She examined Polly shrewdly. "Ye look as if ye need it, too, m'dear. They're workin' ye too hard, I'll be bound." An accusatory glance at Kincaid accompanied this statement. "Every afternoon on that stage. It's not right, m'lord. Indeed, 'tis not. Barely a child, she is."
Nicholas scratched his head, murmuring something vaguely conciliatory that seemed to satisfy the landlady, who gathered up Polly's discarded clothes, taking them away with her. "If you had a maid, the goodwife would not be obliged to care for your wardrobe," Nicholas observed, turning back the cover on the bed. "Get between the sheets, now. I do not think I can face further accusations of neglect and exploitation."
"You do not neglect me, love. Or exploit me," she said softly, clambering into bed. "I do only what I choose to do."
"Is that truly so?" He handed her the peppermint caudle, then sat upon the bed beside her.
"Yes. But I could wish you had asked me yourself to engage in this spying." Polly kept her eyes on the gently steaming mixture on her knees, stirring it thoughtfully with a pewter spoon. "It was cowardly to ask Richard to do it."
Nick winced. "It was not through cowardice, moppet. I did not wish you to feel pressured. Perhaps it was conceit on my part, but I had thought you might find it harder to refuse me than Richard."
"But you wish me to do this thing?" She looked at him directly for the first time.
Nicholas shook his head. "No, I do not. But on occasion there are greater purposes that have to be served, and one must make sacrifices. This is one of those occasions."
It is possible we may be of service to each other. Where had those words come from? They had been spoken when she had been sitting in another bed in another chamber in the company of Nicholas, Lord Kincaid. Did this go back to that time, then?
"I am only a Newgate-born, tavern-bred whore, after all," Polly heard herself say, casually taking a mouthful of
gruel. "It is hardly a great matter to sacrifice such a one to another's bed." Why must she test him? Did she want to know the answer? There was a sudden, devastating silence.
Nick was for an instant bewildered by the words. She could not possibly believe he saw the matter in that light. But once upon a time he had done so. He had seen in a hard-schooled, ambitious wench the possibility of mutual benefit. He would put the means of achieving her ambition in her hands; she would be encouraged to do no more than accept an offer that any woman in search of material benefit would seize eagerly.
But it had been a long time since he had thought in those terms. Polly was not in search of benefit of any kind. She had all she wanted now that she had proved herself capable of fulfilling the talent she had harbored with such dedication. And she loved, and was loved in return.
The thought that she might doubt him brought a surge of wrath, fueled by a guilty knowledge that her implicit accusation had its roots in a sad past truth, one that he would now deny to his last breath.
Polly looked up at him, and the spoon in her hand clattered into the bowl. Such stark anger stood out on his features, ignited the emerald eyes so that they flamed in his whitened face.
"Give me the bowl!" His voice was a lash as he snatched the porringer from her. "Now, get out of bed!"
Polly's knees began to tremble. She had had no idea that the humorous, easygoing Nicholas could look like this, could evince such a towering height of black fury.
"I said, stand up!"
With a little moan of fear, she stumbled to obey, although a small voice told her that she would be safer in bed. But resistance at this moment was unimaginable.
His hands gripped her shoulders through the thin cotton of her shift. "Do you dare repeat that?"
Polly shook her head, struggling to persuade her vocal chords into working order again, since a verbal response was
clearly demanded. "N-no… please," she stuttered. "1 did not really mean it… 'Twas just… just-"
"Just what?" he rasped as her voice faded. "Answer me!"
"I wanted to see what you would say," Polly whimpered miserably, hearing how lame the half-truth sounded, yet quite unable, under the piercing glare of those livid eyes, to attack by making explicit that moment of lost trust. She had needed reassurance, and she was getting it; but she had never imagined it coming in this shape.
"Now you are going to hear what I would say," he said, bringing his face very close to hers, his hands on her shoulders jerking her against him. "If you ever so much as think such a thing again, let alone articulate it, I promise that you will wish your parents had never met! Do you hear me?" Polly nodded dumbly. "You had better," he said with no diminution in ferocity, still holding her close. "Because I mean it. You will look back on Josh and his belt with nostalgia! I swear it!"