Page 14 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

He patted Anjali’s hand. She’d been quiet thus far, her strange attire the only thing speaking for her as she let the rest of the family engage in their long-awaited reunion. When she finally smiled, though, Warren noticed it was nearly as roguish around the edges as her husband’s.

“That’s right,” she said in a full, slightly rasped voice, stretching a bit and causing a lock to fall from her braid and into her face. She swept it back with an air of ease. “That sort of thing will fall to me.”

There was another of those awkward silences at her pronouncement, which Anjali ignored and Harry seemed not to notice.

“She’s looking forward to the change,” said Harry with an amused sort of pride. “Raised on the sea, she was.”

“It’s a hard life,” Anjali said. “I could use the ease of women’s work for once, I think.”

The ease of women’s work? Horrified, Warren tried to meet Mother’s eye, but she was too busy staring open-mouthed at Anjali’s assertion that there was anything easy about keeping a house to spare him a glance.

And he couldn’t blame her. His sister-in-law was in for a bit of a shock, if this was her attitude.

But that wasn’t his problem, and his problem was big enough that he couldn’t ignore it.

Warren forced a laugh into the awkwardness, hoping it didn’t come across as anxious as it felt. “What am I supposed to do, then?” He turned to Harry. “I assume you don’t want me to become idle.”

“Of course not! You can marry.”

The neighbor jumped right on that. “Oh, my granddaughter—”

“I don’t want to marry,” Warren said as politely as possible.

Harry looked bewildered. “Why not?”

There were a hundred reasons why not, and Warren heard another of them at least once a week.

The bloke whose family was brought to shame when he became one of the first arrested under the new act.

The one whose baby was born blind when he brought the pox from an alley to his wife.

Charlie Price, the accountant, who’d nearly drowned himself in gin on the eve of his own engagement even as he told himself he was having fun.

Warren was careful enough for his own sake, but as his ill-fated tryst with Matty Shaw had shown, he was not careful enough to bring that risk to a household.

“Bachelorhood suits me,” he said simply.

Harry looked like he wanted to delve deeper, but Mother waved a hand to indicate it was a lost cause.

“Well, we’ll figure something out, I’m sure,” Harry said. “For now, though, let’s focus on getting all of us settled in, shall we?”

* * *

A suitable house was found not too far from where they were living.

Harry made sure they all knew it was well beneath what he could afford, but it was charming and clean and everyone liked it, even Warren, though he would miss the widows they’d been living with (the widows, at least, would not miss his share of the rent, that entire sum now being paid from Harry’s coffers indefinitely).

The most important rooms were on the lower level, which was good for Mother, and while it was close enough to the familiar neighbors and markets they’d grown to love, on the other side were some more fashionable new neighbors and tidier shops like the ones Warren had originally grown up with.

“It’s a bit on the smaller side compared to what I was hoping for,” Harry admitted as he pointed to where the deliverers should put the old couch, the only bit of furniture that was not newly acquired. “But I think that might be for the best.”

He glanced over his shoulder. It was just him and Warren overseeing the furniture delivery, but the empty walls and floors magnified every scrape of a chair leg or moving-man’s throat clearing. Harry lowered his voice against the effect as he went on.

“Anjali…as excited as she is to try something new, she’s genuinely never kept a house.” He grimaced. “I’d like to bring in some help, of course. That’s the normal thing to do, and I certainly will to some extent, but Mother…”

Warren nodded, understanding immediately. “Already calling her a spoiled princess, is she?”

“ Useless pirate is actually the phrase she opted for, if you want to get specific. Her father sailed with me, as he’s been sailing all his life. Most of hers as well. And it shows.”

“Were they pirates?” Warren asked. He was joking, of course, but Harry paused just long enough that he wondered whether he ought to have asked more genuinely.

“Harry.” He couldn’t seem to keep a straight face; after the wedding fiasco, nothing could surprise him.

“You weren’t sailing with pirates again, were you, mate? Once is an accident. Twice is a habit.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but still looked a little uncomfortable. “I acquired this fortune legally, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s actually not quite what I’m asking—”

Harry cleared his throat quite loudly. “ Anyway ,” he said. “Keeping house is going to be a massive adjustment for Anjali, and I worry they won’t get on if she proves…untalented. You and Mother have been industrious in my absence.”

“You could say that again,” said Warren. “And without looting a single ship or asking for a single ransom.”

Harry glared, and Warren came very close to not grinning.

“You’ve made your living entirely aboveboard, then?” Harry said with an accusing edge. “Over at Brooks’s…or, goodness, was it White’s? Dear me, it can be so hard to remember, sometimes, where one actually works—”

Warren gave his brother a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Point taken.”

“I just hope Anjali can settle in and play lady of the house at least long enough to show Mother she’s capable,” Harry went on. “I think it would smooth things over quite a bit.”

“She could stand to put a skirt on, too,” Warren suggested. “Might help.”

Harry didn’t seem to appreciate that. “She is what she is, and I’d think you of all people would understand that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But Harry’s attention was gone as one of the movers waved him over for his opinion on the placement of a curio cabinet.

* * *

It was a less than smooth operation, settling in together as a proper family after all this time apart.

Warren didn’t know what he was supposed to do with himself, what with a new housekeeper and Anjali suddenly taking over the tasks that had kept him busy for years on end.

One or the other of them seemed to always be in his way when he made tea.

Or they’d have taken the shopping baskets from under his nose when he’d planned to go to the market himself.

Anjali was there to bring Mother her medicine before Warren had even realized she’d had a faint in this bloody big house Harry kept complaining was too small.

Meanwhile, the worried-about wariness of Mother in regard to her new daughter-in-law proved entirely justified.

She seemed to think Anjali—who’d been caught swearing twice and continued dressing in snug trousers and sometimes even unbound hair—was good for very little.

The stronger that implication became, the harder Anjali worked at proving she could function in a normal house, taking on a calm, wifeish attitude that did not suit her one bit.

The more she tried to prove herself, the more annoyingly everywhere she was, stoking fires that smoked, tucking the wrong sheets on the wrong beds, making enemies of vendors Warren had charmed for years, and burning the bloody rice night after night until one day, Warren snapped when he smelled the unmistakable smoke, and went into the kitchen himself to fix it.

He found her in there with an apron on and her hair put up very inexpertly, so the fluffy black strands fell all over her sweaty face again anyway.

She was mixing up something inscrutable and likely inedible in a helpless crock of once-innocent yogurt, humming as the stove behind her smoked and crackled.

“Your rice is burning,” Warren snapped. He could have been kinder, but he was frankly sick of her incompetence when he could have been doing all this work happily enough himself (sick of eating burnt rice, too, if he was being honest).

“Oh bugger!” she said, housewifely dignity slipping instantly. She rushed toward him just as he was trying to rescue the damned pot from the stove before she did further harm to the cookware itself, and when he turned, it was to find her an inch from a painful collision.

Split-second maneuvering spared her the clash with hot metal, but only because he darted back, bent against the stove, pot of rice clattering between them upside down.

They stood silently for a moment, shocked. Then bent down at so exactly the same moment that they banged heads.

A few more sailor-like curses escaped both of them as Warren got a little distance from the stove at last, rubbing his aching forehead, while Anjali flopped fully back to sit on the floor by the wreckage and nurse her own lump.

“Would you please just get out of my way?” she said.

“Me? In your way?” Warren scoffed. “Look, I smelled burning, yeah? I was just trying to help.”

“No, you weren’t,” Anjali snapped. “Not just anyway.”

Alright, so maybe she had a point there. “I wanted to make sure it was done right.”

“How will I ever do anything right if you never let me try?” Her glare was harsh. “You’re always there.”

Hearing the same accusation leveled at him that he wanted to throw at her was highly disorienting. “Forgive me,” he said when he’d gathered his wits back up, “but unlike you, I’ve been there for ten bloody years. Tough habit to break.”

“You’re the boy who grew up in the kitchen.

I understand that.” She’d lifted her knees in a posture that would have been obscene in a skirt, resting her arms on them and sulking as she tried to blow a bit of damp hair out of her eyes.

“But I’m the girl who grew up in the shipyard.

These were necessary aberrations, but they won’t serve us well forever. ”

Her candidness was shocking. Well. If she could speak her mind, he would too.