No Regrets Read online

  "Milud, you gotta come an' see it."

  Freeing his coattails from the bony fingers, Lucas stared into the excited, thin face of a blond youth jumping up and down under his nose.

  "Steady on, lad."

  Jake had filled out these past few weeks. He'd lost some of the pinched look of starvation and fear. Lucas put his hands on his hips and frowned.

  Jake stilled, his face dropping. "Wot?"

  Shaking his head, Lucas held out his hand.

  "I never took nuffin'." Jake drooped. "Well, just a wipe." He drew Lucas's pocket-handkerchief from inside his coat and placed it in Lucas's palm.

  "And," Lucas said.

  "Yer ticker."

  Lucas repressed a grin as the nine-year-old ragamuffin fished into the deep pocket of his threadbare dung-colored coat and held Lucas's timepiece dangling from its gold chain.

  "And," Lucas repeated.

  Jake's shoulders slumped, and he handed back the sovereign Lucas always carried in his fob pocket. "Bleedin' hell, yor worship, I gotta keep me hand in, don't I?"

  "No, you do not. Keep that up, and you will end your days with your neck stretched on the nubbing cheat."

  The boy kicked at a stone on the drive. "They ain't never going to 'ang me. They gotta catch me first."

  But they would. And what a dreadful waste of marvelous talent. The long fingers, which picked pockets with ease, worked magic when they played the violin. "I caught you."

  "You're different. I lets you catch me." Jake drew his sleeve across his nose, leaving a slimy trail on the rough fabric.

  With an inward shudder, Lucas held out the handkerchief. "Here, use this."

  "Cor. Can I keep it?"

  Lucas nodded. "It is a gift."

  Jake hopped on his toes. "But you gotta come and see the pianny. It came yesterday. It's huge." Once more, his mouth turned down in sulky lines. "Fred won't let us nippers anywhere near it. He's says we'll knock it or somethin'."

  Ah, Fred. Lucas's greatest treasure and biggest worry.

  "Lead on, McDuff."

  "I ain't McDuff. I'm Jake. We ain't got a McDuff."

  Lucas laughed. The sooner this child was educated, the better it would be for all of them.

  The boy sped off, his trousers skimming his sparrow's ankles and his cuffs flapping below his hands. He looked like a miniature scarecrow. With any luck, the new clothes Lucas had ordered would arrive this week.

  He ambled after the skinny legs pumping Jake toward the side door in the moderately habitable west wing. He sauntered down the narrow passage to the conservatory where the boys had temporary lodgings.

  Filled with bright light from its domed skylights and the bank of windows along the southfacing wall, the conservatory had once been Wooten Hall's crowning glory. Added in the old king's reign, it epitomized Palladian architecture and provided a perfect studio for his music school for orphaned street musicians.

  Doric columns supported the arching roof, elegant niches housed classic statuary, and pale gray marble graced the floors. The room should have trumpeted wealth and privilege. Only now, wooden boards filled in for panes of glass, and cots with rumpled blankets and discarded items of clothing turned one corner into a rat's nest. Boxes and trunks crowded the wall nearest the door. At the far end, fiddles and flutes lay discarded near an ancient pianoforte.

  Pristine in a clear space in the center, a mahogany Broadwood grand piano basked in majestic isolation against a backdrop of fine English countryside. Three feet separated it from Jake, who, with his hands in his pockets, grinned at a lanky dark-haired lout wearing a multicolored waistcoat and the pugnacious expression of an English bulldog.

  Fred.

  He turned as Lucas's booted steps echoed off marble and bounced against the bare walls. The aggressive stance and balled fists disappeared. He nodded at Lucas and swaggered to lean against the nearest pillar.

  Jake dashed at the piano and patted the mirrorpolished surface. "See," he crowed.

  "You'll scratch it," Fred said, with a growl. "An' next, you'll be carving your initials in it."

  Pulling the key from his waistcoat pocket, Lucas strolled to the keyboard and unlocked the lid. Jake pushed in front of him and ran his hands over the blazing white ivory.

  "There," Fred said, drawing close and peering over his tousled head. "Look at them mitts. They're filthy."

  Shoving his hands back in his pockets, Jake backed up. His hatred of soap and water was a standing joke among the boys.

  "What do you think?" Lucas asked Fred. At sixteen, the lad's ego was as sensitive as a girl's and his temper incendiary.

  His eyes hungry and his mouth sullen, Fred stared at the instrument. "It's all right I suppose . . . milud."

  Fred hated to use Lucas's title. Mr. Davis, the housemaster Lucas employed to look after the boys, would have chastised the studied insolence. Lucas let it slide. He sat down on the polished bench stool and ran his fingers over the keys. He picked out the notes of a Beethoven sonata, pleased he still remembered.

  "Strike me," Jake whispered. "You're good."

  "I was better at your age."

  "Why ain't you a musician, then?"

  The answer tasted of ashes. But to win their trust, he'd always been honest with these boys. "My father had other plans."

  "I wish mine had," Fred muttered.

  Lucas had found him in a public house bashing out tunes on an old piano for beer, having fled his home, wherever that was. He was no ordinary urchin. As much as he tried to hide his origins, somewhere along the line, he'd received an education, including music lessons. If he heard a tune once, he played it perfectly. Seeing Fred in that tavern had given Lucas the idea for the music school.

  "Try it," Lucas encouraged, getting up.

  Tossing him a lowering glance from beneath beetled brows, Fred pulled back the stool and slouched down. He hit middle C.

  For all his cynical sneer, reverence shone in the lad's eyes as the note rang out clear and true to the vaulted ceiling. He caressed a chord and listened to its sweetness die away. Then, his fingers as light and delicate as a butterfly, he drew out a few notes.

  Settling himself more comfortably, he banged out a rousing ditty popular in the stews of London with words to make a sailor blush.

  Jake, his voice as pure as an angel's, picked up the refrain, and the story of Mother O'Reilly and what her old man did with her duck filled the room. The three other boys—Red, named after his hair; Aggie, a gangly piccolo player; and Pete, blond and blue-eyed and the finest flautist Lucas had ever heard—tumbled into the room and joined the chorus.

  Fred challenged Lucas with a sly glance.

  With a grin, Lucas added his tenor to the boys' heavenly trebles and slid onto the bench. He picked up the harmony, occasionally passing across Fred's hands and his fourp'ny rabbit chest.

  "Oh, my word." Mrs. Green the cook, her mouth open, paused in the doorway with a tray of lemonade and biscuits.

  Distracted, Fred hit a sour note, and the music died away, leaving Jake, his eyes closed and head thrown back in oblivion, to finish the fornication of the poor fowl.

  "Well, really." Mrs. Green slammed the tray on the box set up to serve as a table and marched off, her nose held high.

  The boys collapsed in mirth—all except Fred, who kept a wary eye on Lucas as if he expected a beating.

  Although Lucas wasn't sure he would ever earn the tortured youth's acceptance, he remained determined to try.

  "Bravo," he said. "But we should keep an eye out for Mrs. Green next time." He winked.

  Chuckling, the boys crowded around the tray. They crammed their mouths with warm shortbread and guzzled the lemonade.

  Lucas recalled his own boyhood; he was always ravenous at mealtimes as his body outgrew his clothes in a week. And he had never gone without. "Now about this piano—"

  "You said I'd 'ave me own room?" Fred interrupted, the gleam in his eye militant.

  "You will, when the work on the house is complete."
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  Fred curled a sullen lip. "I 'ad me own room at Ma Jessop's. You said it'd be better here." He sent a disparaging glance at the cots in the corner. "All I got is a bunch of snivelin' young'uns crying for their mamas." His glance swiveled to Jake.

  Jake sniffed.

  Forcing a patience into his voice he didn't feel, Lucas replied, "What you had at Jessop's was a rat-infested corner in a leaky attic."

  "Ma" Jessup, a man who wore a silk dressing gown most of the time and hence the sobriquet, ran the street gang to which the boy had belonged. Under Jessup's tender care, Fred had graduated from pickpocket to ken cracker after perfecting the technique for entering wealthy homes and making off with the silver.

  "It was me own room. Private. Better than here."

  As private as a backyard privy. "I'll find you something while we wait for the bedrooms to be finished. Give me a couple of days."

  The shabby coat shifted as Fred shrugged.

  Lucas made a mental note to ask Mr. Davis to keep an eye on the lad. He feared Fred might be too old to give up the lure of easy money. Anger choked him at the thought of the waste of a God-given talent—his own as well as Fred's. He stamped hard on his regrets. These boys were the important ones now.

  "Back to the piano," he said. "The most important part is not the outside, but the guts." He nodded at Fred. "Open the lid."

  His swagger in full evidence, Fred sauntered to the instrument and propped up the curved top. The boys and Lucas peered into the exposed workings and inhaled the scent of new pine.

  "Watch," Lucas said.

  The younger boys jostled around him. "Play a scale, please, Fred. Slowly, if you don't mind."

  The hammers struck the strings and they vibrated with sound.

  "This instrument could be covered in firewood or mahogany," Lucas said. "Dented or scratched, it would make no difference to the sounds it makes."

  The boys nodded wisely. Fred snorted.

  Bending beneath the lid, Lucas reached inside and slipped his calling card between a hammer and its string. "Give me a high C, Fred."

  The hammer thumped dismally against the paper. "This is the part you need to care about. The case enhances, makes better, the sound, but it's just a container. This is the heart of the music."

  Fred stuck his head in the gap. A lank lock of black hair fell forward. "It's kind of like people," he muttered. "It don't matter what they look like; it's what's inside them wot counts."

  This lad reeked of sadness, but every time Lucas tried to get to the bottom of what troubled him, the boy retreated into his devil-may-care shell. It felt so damn familiar it hurt.

  "Yes, Fred. Exactly like people."

  Lucas stepped back and took in their eager faces. "Now, here's the thing. I want you all to learn to play the piano. We've got the old piano for everyone to use for lessons and whenever they feel like it. And we have this one. If you practice your scales for an hour every day, you can have another fifteen minutes on the Broadwood to try your hand at some tunes."

  "'Ooray!" shouted Jake. "Me first."

  Jostling and shoving, they pushed each other off the bench with bony elbows, observed by a disdainful Fred.

  "Stop," Lucas shouted above the din. "To make it fair for all, Fred will organize the schedule and make sure you abide by it." He glanced at the older boy, who seemed to stand a little taller. "Is that all right with you, Fred?"

  "I suppose . . . milud."

  "Good. You will start tomorrow. Behave yourselves, now. I have to talk to Mr. Davis."

  He headed for the door and then stopped and swung around. Four pairs of mischievous eyes and one sullen pair returned his gaze. "By the way, I think I have found you a music teacher. He's an old school friend from Eton. He arrives in London on Wednesday, and I will bring him down that evening. I think you will like him. I know I do."

  "Has to be better than Davis," Fred muttered. "He don't know an A from a bleedin' bull's foot."

  Whooping with laughter, the younger boys sparred and slapped each other on the back. Fred sneered.

  Lucas departed, shaking his head at the impossible task he'd set himself. It seemed to be the story of his life. He'd look like some pretty kind of a fool if this project of his cost him a fortune and failed.

  Damn it, he answered to no one.

  He pulled out his watch. Hell. He'd be late for Tisha Audley's bloody tea if he didn't get a move on.

  Six

  Where on earth was Lucas? Caro glanced at the tall case clock beside the front door, again. Almost half past three. If he didn't arrive soon, she would have to leave without him.

  Perhaps he'd met with an accident on the road. Caro's breath caught as if her corset had shrunk and her lungs were being squashed.

  Beckwith hurried to open the door at the sound of a carriage outside.

  Not injured then. Just late. She should have known better than to worry.

  He crossed the threshold and tossed his hat to the butler. His hair tousled, his jaw dark with stubble, and his coat covered in road dust, he looked more like a gypsy than a viscount.

  Her stomach gave a happy little lurch of welcome. She couldn't think why, when he looked so disreputable.

  "Where have you been?" she asked "You promised to be here at quarter past three to take me to Lady Audley's." It sounded shrewish, but with her nerves stretched to breaking, she couldn't keep silent.

  A haughty expression transformed his face from cheerful to frigid in the blink of an eye. "My business took longer than expected."

  The pressure on her chest increased as an image of the dazzling Lady Caradin took shape. He certainly wouldn't have rushed from that woman's side to escort Caro to tea. She failed an attempt at a smile. "I didn't want to be late and create a bad impression."

  "Then we will leave immediately."

  "You can't go dressed like that." The words came out impulsively with the thought.

  One hand on the knob, he turned to face her and raised a brow. "Tisha won't care, I assure you."

  A hot buzz of anger released the band of iron compressing her chest. "I care! No gentleman would arrive in a lady's drawing room in all his dirt."

  His expression darkened. "Are you implying I'm not a gentleman?"

  Oh heavens. She'd insulted him. Hot and cold chills followed each other in quick succession. "Of course not. But it's improper to make a call dressed like a . . ."

  "Like a what?" His voice held danger.

  Dash it—he was in the wrong, not her. She met his challenging gaze. "Like a groom." Or rather a pirate from a Minerva novel.

  One shoulder against the doorframe, his lean body emanated the challenge of a cocked pistol ready to trip at a touch. An arrogant smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. "Do you want to leave now, before it's too late, or do you want me to change?"

  It was an impossible choice, and he knew it.

  "I want you to behave in a gentlemanly fashion." Startled by her own bravery, she eyed him askance.

  He pushed upright, brushing his coat back, hands on narrow hips. "It wasn't included in our bargain, I'm afraid. You got me exactly the way I am." He swept a glance from her head to her toes. His voice lowered. "Just the way I got you."

  The words delivered in deep, husky male tones sounded sensual, but their meaning was clear. Anger drained away, leaving her feeling shriveled and parched inside. For all her new clothes, she hadn't changed any more than he had. She wasn't even a proper wife. She bit her lip.

  "Nor," he continued, his face set in hard lines, "did I agree to squire you about like a leashed dog. Had I known you would turn into a prosy bore, I would have left you in Norwich with your sisters. In fact, I've a good mind to send you back."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You can't. My coming to London is part of our agreement." She pasted a smile on her lips and waved an airy hand. "You should have told me you didn't want to go. I am quite content to go alone, and I prefer not to be late."

  Something like regret flickered across his face. He heaved a
sigh. "I'll change and meet you there."

  She kept her tone light. "Please don't trouble yourself."

  "Dash it, Caro. I really meant to be back earlier." Genuine concern rang in his voice.

  Sure that he would see right through to her heart-pounding fear at the thought of entering the fashionable Lady Audley's home alone, she kept her smile fixed in place. "It is a simple afternoon call. And it wouldn't do for people to think you are under the cat's paw."