Page 75 of Dick Stone, Regency Stud
“You and me,” he said, resolving to make something of this accidental chance to put things to rights, “all that doesn’t matter when you’re friends like us, made of the same stuff. Probably some London clay because we’re thick as shite sometimes.”
“Most of the time,” she said wryly. “I thought you’d be angry.”
“Angry? I’m angry as hell! You scared me half to death falling off Tencendor, and then you bolted without a word? And stayed gone for weeks? All because of what’s in your breeches? Or that you wear breeches when you could wear a dress? I’m of a mind to let Mr. Rymer give you your next haircut.”
“Not that,” she said, smiling at their shared suspicion of the barber. “You weren’t even a little mad that I didn’t tell you after all this time?”
“Fuck, Tabby, how many times have I got to say it!” he exclaimed. He grabbed her hand and placed it on the spot below his rib where he’d been aching since she’d bolted from his room. “I don’t know what you put in those meat pies you bring, but they’ve not sat right since you went away. I must be buying them from the wrong seller — who knows what’s in there because it’s sure as hell not lamb. Sawdust, most likely. Thought I was dying at first. Considered sending for the physician! I can’t live like this much longer. You’ll simply have to come home.”
She let him hold her hand to the spot that had caused him such incredible pain. Her fingers shifted against his waistcoat and shirt, her palm warming and loosening the knot so plaguing him. He dropped his forehead to hers, bending low and exposing his neck to anyone passing by. It was all so inadvisable, and he had no plans of stopping.
“Tabby,” he rasped, “I’m just a used-up, well-drained pair of cods. Fucking come home. I’m dying without you.”
“But I want both of us to be well-drained. Used up. Equals,” she said, pressing her hand into his belly as if she were trying to gesture between them.
“Where are you getting that hare-brained notion?” he asked. “Did you fall in with a nest of radicals while you’ve been away? This is England, you know we can’t be equals!”
“Gesù, Dick Stone, you sure know how to make a girl feel special,” she groused.
“Young woman,” he muttered, not letting her move.
“I need to make my own way. To get a little more equal,” she said.
“You’re the other part of me, so why this sudden need to be equal?” asked Edward, delivering a small kick to Tabby’s boot.
“I want to buy the meat pies sometimes,” said Tabby. “Fix those boots of yours that get soggy each time it rains.”
Damn and blast, he hadn’t realized she knew about the state of his boots.
“I’m a marquess’s heir. The fall didn’t make you forget, did it?”
She gave a nod and looked deuced miserable.
“Someday I’ll have money. Sure, I don’t have any now, devil take my father, but someday. And then we won’t have to eat eel at all!” he continued.
“That’s not all that will happen when you’re the marquess.”
Edward’s scrambled brains struggled to think what she could mean. When he didn’t answer, she continued.
“You’re going to be the marquess with all the meat pies you want, and you’ll have chocolate for breakfast,and servants will bring it to you,and your boots won’t leak, and—”
“What’s the problem with that?” asked Edward, befuddled by her vehemence. “It sounds wonderful. You don’t want that?”
“You’ll have everything!”
“Again! I fail to see the problem!” he cried.
“You won’t need an urchin friend!”
“Says who?” he asked, getting completely fed up with this nonsense and contemplating how loud she’d yell if he simply carried her off.
“It’s how things work.”
“What things?” asked Edward, his cravat beginning to choke him. He tugged at the blasted cloth and wished he could remove it entirely.
“Nobs. Blokes with money. You know.”
“What makes you think that just because I finally retire from breeding and have an income, it’s going to make me different? Haven’t I always shared when I was flush?” He was going to lose his mind. Hadn’t he always looked after her — even before himself — when a fat purse came in?
