His Wicked Smile Page 6

  How could she refuse? Once inside, it wouldn’t take long to figure out how Noel’s father might be connected to the place, and meanwhile, she could use the money. Doctors and midwives had nearly wiped out what she’d thought was quite sensible funding from selling ten percent of The Old Hart to Harry. She had never paid rent before, since her husband had taken care of those things, and in any case they lived at the inn. The prices in London were beyond her wildest fears.

  She had a two-week trial at Redcake’s. Hopefully she could find Gawain by then, and go back to Leeds with no hard feelings from Alfred Melville.

  February 8, 1889

  Gawain admired the Redcake’s window display as he passed through the front courtyard. Winter still held London in its mighty grip, so he didn’t linger in front of the charming display of Redcake’s Plantation Tea tins, topped by platters of scones decorated in Valentine’s Day themes. He tapped his cane forward, checking for ice, but the area was dry. A nasty fall in Edinburgh on the first of the month had made him cautious.

  He had stopped in Leeds on the way back and spent another night at The Old Hart. Harry Haldene had been an effusive host, grateful for the Indian herbs and spices that Redcake’s Indian Imports had sent, but Harry had still had no word from Ann. Gawain had been blunt, telling him this seemed hard to believe when the lady still owned most of the inn. Harry had shrugged this off, saying he was sure to hear from her in April, when she was due to be paid her share of the first quarter profits.

  Gawain didn’t want to wait until then. The baby must have been born by now if it was really his. But the infant, Ann and Fern were all beyond reach, beyond any ability to find even by the London-based private inquiry agent Gawain had hired.

  Gawain pushed open the front door, reflecting that he ought to have hired an Indian detective, rather than a white one. Ann might be living in an immigrant community. He hadn’t thought of the possibility at first, since she had Fern with her, but now he wondered. Why hadn’t she left word for him here? Had some calamity befallen them? His dreams exhausted him with lurid possibilities. First Lady Elizabeth vanished, now Ann and Fern.

  The lobby welcomed him with its lush decorations of fern and dangling, pink cupid cutouts. He barely glanced at them as he turned in to the bakery. One of the cakies, as Redcake’s waitresses were called, recognized him and let him through into the back, looking a bit startled when she saw his cane. He hadn’t needed one back when he’d worked here two years ago.

  “Were you in an accident, Mr. Redcake?” she asked.

  He thought her name was Meredith. “Too much traveling.”

  “I’m covered with bruises each time I go to see my mum,” she agreed. “Beastly things, trains.”

  “No name badge there, eh, Meredith?”

  She smiled hugely. He’d remembered correctly. “There has been a bit of bother with followers. Lord Judah decided it was best if we were more anonymous-like.”

  He frowned. “I see. Anyone hurt?”

  “Just scared, I think.”

  “I’ll have to ask him about that.” He tipped his hat. “On my way upstairs.”

  “Lovely to see you again, Mr. Redcake,” she said with a blush.

  He could feel her gaze following him as he moved past the trays containing extra baked goods. If she hadn’t been watching he might have cadged a gateau but he remained strong against the temptation. Then he was in the back hallway where the stairs were. Unfortunately, the lift only made the trip from the ground floor to the basement. He made his slow way up two flights of steps, grimacing with pain. Why hadn’t he told Lord Judah to meet him in the tearoom? He took his hand off the bannister to check his pocket for pills, knowing he would need them soon.

  Ewan Hales, Lord Judah’s secretary, wasn’t in his customary place at his desk in the anteroom. The ambitious employee had left a stack of ledgers on his desk, so he couldn’t be far. Gawain heard voices coming from the slightly open door of the inner office and recognized Hales’s pomaded hair just inside.

  “Congratulations on passing your probation,” Lord Judah was saying as Gawain peered in. “That’s astounding. Not a single burned cake in your first two weeks.”

  “The ovens here are much less primitive than I’m used to,” said a sultry voice.

  Something in Gawain’s chest tightened at the sound of that low-pitched female speech. He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Hales turned, frowning, then his expression flattened into neutrality when he saw Gawain.

  “We are happy to clear your probationary status,” Lord Judah said. “Betsy Popham has pronounced herself satisfied with your cakes.”

  “As am I,” Alfred Melville, the baking room manager, interjected.

  The female baker turned her head to acknowledge Melville. When Gawain saw her profile, his vision blackened for an instant. He blinked, and then focused on her as if she were the only person in the room.

  Black hair, frizzy from the heat. Full lips, caramel skin. Strong nose and chin. No wonder the voice had sounded familiar.

  “Ann?” he croaked, the sound of his voice barely audible over Melville’s laudatory boom. Was he dreaming?

  Lord Judah’s head appeared over Ann’s uniformed shoulder. “Gawain?”

  His brain couldn’t take it all in. The Ayurvedic healer and inn owner, the lover who had stuck in his brain and ruined him for other woman, the mother of his putative child, was working at Redcake’s Tea Shop and Emporium as a baker?

  He limped to one of the armchairs by the fire and collapsed into it. He’d wanted to find her, of course, and she’d been under his family’s very nose all along. The thought was unbelievable. What was she doing at Redcake’s?

  Ann turned when Melville finished speaking. He saw her figure was fuller than he remembered. At first she looked confused, staring at the space on the carpet where he’d stood and spoke. Then she saw him in the armchair and gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. Her eyes were wide and he could see a burn on the side of her hand.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he rasped. “Ann Haldene of The Old Hart in Leeds.”

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she repeated, the words muffled behind her hand. He thought she’d gone a bit pink. “I thought you didn’t work here. I asked everyone.”

  “I stopped working here in eighty-seven,” he explained, gripping the silver handle of his cane. “My father sold the place and I went to work in Bristol. But someone should have given you my direction.”

  She removed her hand from her mouth, and folded her hands under her chin. “I was afraid to ask too many questions. There has been much talk of inappropriate followers here, and I didn’t want to seem a dangerous woman.” Her eyebrows lifted comically.

  He laughed. It gave him a moment to consider her. Was she calm or a bundle of nerves? While she didn’t look as slim as she had when they had met, she was not with child either. Her newly rounded body could belong to a woman who’d given birth a month before, but where was the child? He pressed his lips together, not willing to ask questions in front of Melville.

  Lord Judah cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, I believe we have a reunion pending. Ann, when does your shift end?”

  “At four, m’ lord.”

  “Gawain can collect you at the back and you can have your chat then.”

  Melville took Ann’s arm. “Thank you, m’ lord,” said Melville. “Mr. Redcake, Mr. Hales.” With that, he towed her out of the room.

  Hales closed the door behind him. Gawain continued to stare in the direction of the exit.

  “You couldn’t take your eyes off her,” Lord Judah commented.

  “She’s the one. My Indian doctor from Leeds.”

  Lord Judah grinned. “You don’t say. What a funny coincidence.”

  “It isn’t a coincidence,” he snapped. “She was looking for me. You have no idea . . .” he paused, not wanting to reveal his deep secret.

  “I instituted a policy of performing the probationary review myself, so that I
would get to know each of the staff. But she’s an unlikely employee, I’ll give you that.”

  “She must have come here to look for me. But she owns property. I can’t imagine why she’d need to work as a baker.”

  “It’s good money,” Judah said. “Baking the specialty cakes. Maybe she wanted a change from serving meals to inn customers. She’s no stranger to hard work.”

  “No. But she wouldn’t have left her patients for the sake of an adventure. No, she wanted something from me.” The truth was, he wanted something from her, too. If that child was his, she would get what she wanted, presumably marriage. Certainly money. She’d never have to work a day in her life as the mother of Gawain Redcake’s child. But she would marry him. He was no seducer of innocents, no Theodore Bliven.

  “You have a strange, determined look in your eye,” Lord Judah observed.

  “I often have a determined look in my eye,” Gawain snapped. “It isn’t strange.”

  Lord Judah grinned. “You were much more subservient back in our army days.”

  “Gor blimey,” Gawain swore. “Our army days were years ago. I’m a different man now, my own man.”

  “I never said you weren’t,” Lord Judah said. “Are you sure you want to go down this path? It doesn’t fit what I know of you.”

  “What path is that?”

  “Ann Haldene,” he said. “I saw the determination in your face, but she isn’t the sort of lady you want.”

  “Why not?” asked Gawain, wanting to hear the words.

  “You need a title, someone like my sister, to go where you want in life. Someone with connections, who knows how to be a hostess at the highest level. Not that we know where my sister is. What is so special about this woman?”

  This was his closest friend asking. He decided to tell the truth. “I believe she bore me a child.”

  Lord Judah stepped forward until they were nearly nose-to-nose. “So?”

  “I won’t knowingly make a bastard,” Gawain said, gritting his teeth.

  Lord Judah’s forehead creased. “But a common soldier’s widow?”

  “I was a common soldier. And her mother was a maharini. Her grandfather was a maharajah.”

  His friend’s eyes widened. “I wonder how much that would matter to society. I shall have to ask my wife.”

  “Who wasn’t considered good enough for you in the marquess’s eyes,” Gawain pointed out.

  “Because of her family’s reputation, not because of her birth. She’s the niece of an earl, you know.”

  “The niece of an earl,” Gawain mocked. “Good God, man, you sound like everything you used to loathe.”

  Lord Judah crossed his arms over his broad chest and widened his stance. “As long as you are still my dearest friend, we shall be certain that my standards are low.”

  “I should punch you in the nose,” Gawain threatened without malice.

  Lord Judah winked. “What do you want for luncheon? I usually eat the soup. We have oyster soup today.”

  “I want to go after Ann.”

  “Did she really have your baby?”

  Gawain kicked his cane. “I will find out at four. Please order some soup.”

  Chapter Five

  Gawain stood next to the loading dock at four PM, concerned that he wouldn’t see Ann because of the heavy yellow fog. February was not the best month for outdoor assignations. A procession of cakies, dressed in their black dresses, and bakers, in inexpensive trousers and jackets, streamed out the back and into the cobbled alley. He tapped his cane impatiently, craning his neck forward to get a better view.

  The tap on his shoulder came from above. Startled, he dropped his cane as he swung around and stared up. Ann Haldene stood above him on the loading dock, little more than a shadow in the gloom.

  She crouched down. “I didn’t know if I could see you through the fog so I came out up here.”

  He held out his hand. She took it, her black gloves hiding her skin, and jumped to the stones. A stray pebble cost her balance, and his attempt to keep her upright wrenched his hip. He swore as a hot flash of pain ripped through his tortured flesh.

  She pulled her hand away and bent down, picking up his cane. “Hip is still a problem, I see.”

  He took his cane. “I went to Leeds to see you in December. I was at my wit’s end with the pain. But you were gone.”

  “Did you talk to Harry?” she asked, matter-of-factly.

  “I did. We’re now doing business, in fact. I wonder where you purchased your herbs and spices, since he seems to have no idea. He’s stocking my brand now.” He laughed, the sound round and harsh in the fog.

  “He never cared about any of that before.”

  “You must have become the center of the local Indian community without realizing it, as many have asked for you since you left.”

  She made a dismissive noise. “That is all you wanted of me? To know my supplier?”

  “No, Ann.” He swallowed hard, his throat gritty with the nasty London air. “You know what they told me there. About a baby coming.”

  “I see.” She half turned away, giving him a hazy view of her profile.

  “Why aren’t you home with your infant? Home in Leeds, that is. What about Fern? I barely met the girl, but she’s what, twelve?”

  “Thirteen now. And Noel was born on Christmas Day.”

  Gawain thought hard. His chest seemed to take on the properties of ice, cold and unyielding. Was all his worry, his desperation for nothing? “Then he isn’t mine?” Had she said Noel or Noelle? Noel, he thought. A boy. Some man’s son.

  He heard her chuckle echo through the fog. “Oh, he’s yours. You’ll see.”

  “Christmas is too soon,” he said.

  “He came early. I was ill and I think my body knew I needed to birth the child to recover.”

  That he had a son was confirmed that simply, perhaps. His stomach churned uneasily at her words. “Is he well?”

  “Yes, perfectly fine. Ten little fingers and ten little toes.”

  “I want to see him,” Gawain said, the fire inside him beginning to kindle again. “Right away.”

  “What if I don’t want that?”

  He took her arm. “No games, Ann. You came all the way to London for this. Here I am. Take me to the child.”

  “You did not seem so hard before. The pain is changing you, I think.”

  “Then fix me,” he said. “Until I found out about the baby, that was all I wanted from you.”

  “That is not how you felt in the spring.”

  “I was drunk. I am sorry I treated you that way. I had no idea who you were, what you were.”

  Her voice had not been warm, but he could sense a new level of chill. “What is that?”

  “A respectable widow? An Ayurvedic healer? A woman of property? A Hindoo princess?”

  He heard her sharp inhale, the cough when the yellow fog hit the back of her throat.

  “You have made some discoveries.”

  “You are better known than I might have imagined. I wonder why I never heard the stories before.”

  “My father was an officer. You were an enlisted man, correct? It might have been a tale only officers told.”

  He felt the subtle insult as if it were a physical blow. “Your husband was enlisted.”

  “Who told you that? No, he was an officer. Just a lieutenant and he only served here, not far away. No honors, no glory and an early death.”

  “I was misinformed,” he said, dragging his bearing into an erect position. He thrust his cane in between the cobblestones. “Now, would you take me to this child before we suffocate?”

  “And I thought the air in Leeds was bad,” she sighed, but she took the arm he offered.

  “It should get better next month.” He lifted his head, trying to see through the fog. “For now, one step at a time. Where are we going?”

  “Catherine Street, near Covent Garden Market. I can walk to Redcake’s from there, though you should rest that leg.”
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  “I’m an old soldier, ma’am. We can push through.”

  He felt the movement of her body as her head shook. “That is not the perspective that a doctor would take.”

  “You will fix me up soon enough. I have faith.”

  “It will take a long time, if it is even possible. But there is much we can do. Have you been ignoring it all this time?”

  He followed the stragglers from the Redcake’s shift change out of the alley, with Ann at his side, then headed east on Oxford Street. “I was hurt in a battle in India. After treatment there I was sent home, months on a ship. Then I immediately went to work in the Accounting Department at Redcake’s. I hated it so I began to consider what I might do for myself.”

  “How was your hip during that time?”

  “Less of a concern than my eye, which made it hard to stare at figures for many hours. It is only all the cursed traveling that I’ve been doing that has made it so bad now.”

  “Why all the traveling?”

  “We’ve a runaway in the family. An eighteen-, no, now nineteen-year-old girl. Between searching for her and business I’m on the road a great deal.” He followed her lead as she crossed a street and headed south.

  “Perhaps you aren’t the best choice for this search.”

  “I had thought to marry the girl.”

  “You were engaged?”

  “No, but at the time I met you I had gained the family’s agreement to marry her if she was free. To salvage her reputation.”