This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)

He stared past the books shelved in front of him, their titles blurring with the smooth leather of their bindings. The scene clouded into an indistinct, foggy mass.

Tonight, a solicitor had finally tracked him down. William had been leaving his master’s counting house, having just finished another pitiful day of pitiful work, performed for the pitiful salary of four pounds ten a quarter. As soon as he’d set foot outside, he’d been set upon by an unctuous man.

For one second, when the lawyer had introduced himself, a flush of uncharacteristic optimism had swept through William. Mr. Sherrod had seen fit to remember the promise he’d made. William could come home. He could forget the menial work he did as a clerk. He could abandon the grim day-to-day existence of labor followed by sleep and bone-chilling want.

But no. It turned out Adam Sherrod was not generous. He was dead.

He’d remembered William in his will—to the tune of ten pounds. Ten pounds, when he’d been responsible for the loss of William’s comfort, his childhood and, ultimately, William’s father. Ten pounds, when he had promised most sincerely to take care of William, should it be necessary. It had become necessary ten Christmases ago, and Mr. Sherrod had not lifted a finger to help.

William had no real claim on Mr. Sherrod’s money. He had, in fact, nothing but the memory of a promise that the man had kicked to one side. But still, he’d remembered.

Thus dissipated one of the elaborate dreams he’d fashioned to motivate himself on the hardest days. He would never return to Leicester. He would never be able to rise above his father’s errors; hell, he would never even rise above his fellow clerks. This evening, he’d been damned to live in the hell of poverty for the rest of his life. There would be no salvation.

That last legacy should have been no surprise. After all, it was only in fairy tales that Dick Whittington came to London as an impoverished lad and ended up Lord Mayor. In reality, a man counted himself lucky to earn eighteen pounds a year.

So yes, Christmas was for the young. It was for blue-eyed angels like Miss Lavinia Spencer, who would never be confronted with the true ugliness of life. It was for women who wished customers a merry Christmas without imagining the holiday could be anything other than happy. Christmas was not for men who’d had one of two fantasies shattered in one evening.

It was the second fantasy that had drawn William here.

Miss Spencer was slim and vivacious. She couldn’t help but move her hands when she talked. She smiled far too much. She blushed far too easily. And her hair was forever falling out of its pins into unruly cinnamon waves that clung to her neck. She was one of those souls who remembered countless trivialities—names of customers, names of cats, the health of everyone’s spouse.

If he’d received even a fraction of those ten thousand pounds, as promised…Well, that was a subject for many a cold and lonely night indeed. Because he’d have found a way to get her into his bed, over and over.

William paused, his hand on the spine of a book, and attempted to banish the image that heated thought conjured. Miss Lavinia Spencer, undoing the ties that fastened her cloak. The wool would fall to the floor in a swirl, and those cinnamon waves of hair would slip from their pins. He couldn’t think of that. Not now. Not here. It was not, however, his strength of mind that sent the vision away. It was the sound of speech.

“Vinny, you have to understand.” The recalcitrant whine of her brother was barely audible from where William stood, obscured by the shelves.

Over the past year, the elder Mr. Spencer had come into the shop less frequently. William had noted with some disapproval that it was Miss Spencer who’d taken his place downstairs. She’d greeted customers and accepted deliveries. Her brother, James, had been conspicuously absent from useful employment.

“It was just a temporary loan. He needed the money to pay the guards so he could get at his goods without his creditors finding out.” James ended on a querulous note, as if his bald assertion yearned to become a question.

“Bribe the guards, you mean.” That was Miss Spencer—incorruptible, of course. She was speaking in an almost whisper, but the shop was quiet enough that William could hear every word, echoing amongst the books.

“But Mr. Cross promised me ten percent! And he even drew up a proper partnership agreement. Since you never let me help in here, I thought I could find a way to pay Papa’s bills on my own. I was going to buy you a Christmas present. When’s the last time you had a new dress, Vinny?”

“I’d rather have my two pounds. You are getting to the part where you took the money without asking me?”

“I thought I’d be able to slip it back in before you found out. After all, Mr. Cross’s warehouse was supposed to contain three hundred bricks of tea, and several casks of indigo. Ten percent would have been a fortune.”