He turned to face the river so that he could only see her in the periphery of his vision.
She wiped her hands and drew a deep breath. “Ga—” She cut off whatever word she had been intending to say. “Oh drat,” she said instead.
She was English then, by the sound of her speech.
“Well.” She dusted off the front of her gown, then slowly stood. “That’s two ideas that have gone completely wrong, and it’s not yet ten in the morning. Please don’t tell my mother.”
Grayson frowned at the harbor. “Do I look like the sort of person who would tell your mother?”
“Everyone looks like the sort of person who would tell my mother. If you haven’t met her, you wouldn’t understand.” There was a hint of wry humor in her voice.
From the corner of his vision, he could see her turning to look over her shoulder, as if assessing the damage to her behind. “H—” Again, she cut herself off. He heard the rustle of fabric and saw her lift her skirts.
He hastily turned to face entirely away. “How are you?” he asked the river below him.
“I will never recover.” She sounded mournful. More fabric rustled; something clacked. “How am I going to explain this? And Mrs. Flappert is supposed to arrive today. It’s going to be nonstop criticism. ‘I told you so, Amelia. You should be satisfied with what you have, Amelia. Why are you still talking, Amelia?’” Her voice dropped lower on those last sentences, as if she were imitating someone else. “I am doing ill, sir. Very ill.”
Grayson had no idea what any of that meant. “I was asking if you had been physically injured.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Physically. Well. That’s no problem. Are you any good at explaining things? I need a good explanation.”
“Is there a reason ‘I tripped, and it was an accident’ will not work?”
“‘I tripped’ won’t explain this!”
He turned back. It was the first time he had looked at her straight on, and his mind came to a standstill, sticking on three things that seemed utterly irrelevant.
Thing number one: Her eyelashes. They were long and black, framing large, dark eyes that were looking at him. Thing number two: Her nose. It was wide and small. Thing number three: Her skin. She was browner than the average Englishwoman even beneath that bonnet, possibly because she was not the average Englishwoman. She wasn’t any kind of Englishwoman at all.
Her hair was dark and glossy, what he could see of it. Her cheekbones were soft and tilted, the planes of her face smooth. She had a silver locket about her neck. She sounded English. She dressed like she was English. But if he’d encountered her in a Chinese robe, he would have thought her a native.
She was also inexplicably brandishing what looked like a rounded, broken cage of bamboo that contained a tiny bamboo version of the sort of wheel he might have expected to find on a paddle steamer.
“You’re right.” He blinked at her. “‘I tripped’ won’t explain that. What is that?”
“My bustle.” She sounded as if a tragedy had occurred. “Maybe? I had this idea, you see, because my real bustle is made of horsehair and it’s so dreadfully hot.”
“Hot.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her now that he’d looked. That little locket nestled right above her cleavage, drawing his eyes away from her bamboo…bustle? There was something engraved on the silver jewelry. Maybe a dog? He couldn’t tell, and he was hesitant to draw nearer.
“I thought I would make a bamboo cage instead of a big horsehair lump.”
He had no idea how he had come to be talking about a woman’s bustle. “That sounds reasonable.”
“And since it was a cage, I thought, well, what if I put a little paddle inside? That way when I walk, it will spin, and I’ll get a little air to cool me off. It would be like a fan.”
“Ingenious.”
“No, not really.” She sighed. “I was just testing it. It doesn’t work; the paddle only spins if it has airflow, but with skirts over the top, it just sits in place, unmoving. I would have to propel it to make it spin.” Her eyes lit. “I could make a little wheel that ran on the ground! And then attach it so that—” Her fists clenched; she brought her hands up by her side. He could see her thoughts dart excitedly across her face. She bit her lip and looked up as if tracking something in the sky. Then her shoulders slumped. “Because, oh yes,” she said bitterly, “my mother would definitely not ask why I was making a rattling noise like wheels over cobblestones when I walked.”
“I see,” Grayson said.
He didn’t see at all. He didn’t know who her mother was, to have such distinctly English strictures when this woman looked to be so clearly Chinese. He didn’t know her age, but she seemed well into her twenties—too old to be clinging to her mother’s opinions on such frivolous matters. And he didn’t know why this delightful woman who immediately thought of ways to make paddles turn inside bustles had to hide the fact she was putting paddles inside bustles.
Her brow furrowed. “It would also make sitting down rather difficult. Which was admittedly a problem with this prototype as well. But the bamboo cracked when I tripped, and this bit jabbed through my skirt and tore the fabric. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it. She’ll be upset.”
He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t entertain any curiosity at all about her. Grayson looked over at the harbor, reminding himself why he was here. And yet he asked anyway. “Why would she be upset?”
“I’m always trying to make things easier on myself,” she admitted. “It’s a personal failing. You know what they say about when the devil comes courting.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“‘When the devil comes courting,’” she quoted, dropping into that same imitated voice once again, “‘he offers you what you want.’ Primrose path, et cetera and so forth. And look—my skirt has split, so she was right.” She sighed. “Again. Maybe if I sneak in quietly and sew it carefully, she just won’t notice.”
Grayson took his coat from around his arm and handed it to her. “If you tie it about your waist, it should shield you from any prying eyes for the time being.”
“Thank you.” She looked up at him, then smiled. “You’re very kind.”
He wasn’t. Kindness was an instrument, one that often got him what he wanted. She—he suspected—was just very naïve.
Still, he had a ridiculous thought. He had no idea how this woman had come to be on the south side of the river, living among the Westerners, and he frankly didn’t care. But the thought came unbidden—he could offer to take her away. She was pretty and clever and obviously unappreciated. Come with me, he imagined saying. You don’t need them. Come with me on my ship and make all the little paddles you want.
But he didn’t know her, and his ambition forcibly intruded. She was connected with the English people in this area. The mother that she spoke of—the one that Grayson was already writing off in his mind—might very well know the Silver Fox. And she probably didn’t deserve to be seduced away from the home she knew, however unappreciative it might have been, by a man who wouldn’t be interested in her for much longer than a handful of months.