Wicked:. Noelle Mack

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ farmers. Dray horses stood shivering in their traces, stamping their massive hooves with dull clops, their heavy muscles exhausted with the effort of pulling wagonloads of winter vegetables over the rutted roads to the city. Semyon glanced without interest at turnips and mangel-wurzels piled higher than his head, the earth still clinging to their lumpy sides. Another cart held immense cabbages and small sprouts still on thick stems, green kale tucked in frilly bunches beside them.

      Sturdy farm women, swaddled in wool shawls and skirts, clomped about in wooden shoes. They had come to sell pies and jellies and other dainties, upturning the baskets they’d carried everything in and arranging their wares on the flat bottoms.

      An enterprising one of their number had a charcoal fire going in an odd contraption that only a tinker could have made and was doing a brisk business in tea and coffee, sold in mugs that the customers drank from and handed back.

      He decided against having any. Her clientele had a raffish air, for the most part. The bristling mustaches and stained beards of the men and the cracked lips of the women seemed unhygienic, although they were enjoying the steaming brews.

      He walked on, lifting his head. Ah yes. Swinging sides of beef rolled by on a wheeled rack pushed by a butcher’s lad. There was mutton too, unless he missed his guess, marbled with fat. But no lamb, not in winter. He could not help wanting to snag a hunk of raw meat. It was the wolf in him and he would not apologize for it.

      If he did take a bit of meat…then what? He could not eat it raw. No, he would have to thrust a stick through it and roast it over a fire with the tramps and beggars that prowled the outer edge of the market.

      They might accept him as one of their own, a highwayman in stolen clothes, he thought. Or they might knock him over the head and turn his pockets inside out.

      Semyon chuckled and bought a meat pie to eat instead and devoured it in seconds, licking his fingertips inelegantly but with considerable pleasure.

      Then he walked away from the market, tossing a shilling into a grimy palm that stretched out to him from a shadowy doorway, and nodding to a young kitchen maid and fat cook who bustled by with empty baskets over their arms, heading in.

      After a time, he became aware that he was heading in the direction of the Congreve house. In another several minutes, he was there.

      Wonder of wonders, the windows were still lit up. The last of the revelers were being helped into their sedan chairs and carriages, while Congreve himself and his much younger wife called their good-byes from the top of the imposing outside stairs.

      When the final door was shut, he distinctly heard Penelope say, “Good riddance!”

      Semyon smiled. His hand went to his throat to fix his cravat into a decent-looking knot, and he realized he had forgotten to wear one. He looked down. His shirt was half-in and half-out, and his unbuttoned coat flapped in the chilly wind off the Thames. At least his breeches were fastened properly.

      Congreve murmured something placating to his wife that Semyon did not hear. But he looked up when she called to him suddenly.

      “Mr. Taruskin! Whatever are you doing there? I thought you had gone long ago.”

      “I had, Mrs. Congreve.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair in a futile attempt at grooming. “But I could not sleep and decided, ah, to take a constitutional. I happened to walk down your street.”

      “A constitutional? At this hour? Have you gone mad? Come in and have a glass of sherry and whatever is left of the aspics and meats, and we will send you home at daybreak,” she said.

      Her husband chimed in. “Yes, do. We shan’t sleep until the sun comes up. And you will catch your death of cold if you stand there upon the cobblestones.”

      Semyon hesitated. He had hoped to catch an early-rising scullery maid of theirs out and about, and quiz her discreetly about Angelica, not speak to the Congreves. But since the invitation had been issued, he would be a fool not to take advantage of it.

      He bounded up the stairs, noting with dismay that there was a look of blatant lust in Penelope Congreve’s beady eyes.

      “You do look as if you just tumbled out of bed, Mr. Taruskin,” she said admiringly, “with your tousled hair and that flush in your cheeks. And your clothes—dear me. Such romantic disarray. Have you left a lady sighing happily into her pillow, then?”

      “No, Mrs. Congreve.”

      “You can tell me if you have. Who is she?” She swanned through the door, followed by her harrumphing husband, who seemed bored with her chatter.

      Semyon hoped she would not flirt with him anymore. It was difficult as it was for him to ask the least little question about the pretty maid who had seen to the cloaks and coats. Penelope was too shrewd not to guess why.

      “Come along, come along,” Congreve said affably, turning to urge him inside when Semyon hesitated.

      He nodded and joined the couple in their foyer where a maid barely able to stand on her feet stifled a yawn before they turned to her.

      “Squiggs, take Mr. Taruskin’s coat,” Penelope said sharply to her, “and be quick about it.”

      “Oh—no. I would rather keep it on,” Semyon said, “I won’t stay long.”

      Squiggs, a stolid young woman, stepped back into position against the wall, her face a blank mask.

      “Has the other girl gone, then?” he asked Mrs. Congreve.

      “What other girl?” Penelope replied.

      “The one named Angelica. I went down the wrong hall during the thick of things and met her by chance.”

      Penelope Congreve shrugged. “Do we have a servant by that name?” she asked her husband in an arch voice. He did not reply. “Congreve, I am talking to you.”

      He only grunted, too old and wise to take her bait.

      The true nature of a marriage was fully revealed in the weary hours after a party, Semyon thought. Mr. Congreve might be guilty of indiscretions too numerous to name, but Semyon suspected that his cold-eyed wife strayed too. He hardly cared and it was too late to take back his inquiry. But he hated to think of old Congreve even trying to touch Angelica.

      He would take her away from here, he decided suddenly. It would not be difficult to persuade her as soon as he could find her and talk to her.

      If she wished to go, he reminded himself dutifully.

      Bah. He had a feeling she would fling herself into his arms and beg to be rescued.

      Once she was safely by his side, he would figure out what to do with her. Semyon had never been one for thinking further ahead than a day or two, a privilege of being the last-born of his brothers. They did his thinking for him and he ignored their good advice. He was as wild as he wanted to be.

      “Her last name was Harrow, I believe. Or something like that.” Semyon strove to keep his tone conversational, as if he didn’t care in the least what had happened to a mere maid.

      “Oh, her.” Penelope shot a look of disgust at her husband, who appeared not to notice it. “Of course. Angelica. How could I forget her first name? СКАЧАТЬ