“Truly, how old are you, Netta? I can’t involve a child in my games.”
“Three and twenty.” For once, honesty served her well. “And you still ‘aven’t told me the game. Or me payment.”
“The details aren’t important.” One edge of his full lips curled up. “Namely because I don’t know them as yet. As to your fee, what would you say to four thousand pounds?” He threw out the number like it was an invitation to tea. Casually. As though such a sum were nothing.
Netta blinked. And blinked again. It was an incredible amount of money. More than she could hope to see in twenty years, even had she intended to include petty theft to her acting wages on a permanent basis.
He stood. “You’re a clever little thing, but are you trainable? You will only earn your fee if you work hard and do as I say.”
“‘Ard at wot?” She wrapped her arms around her shins. She wanted that money. Needed it. Such a sum would solveeverything. No more delays. No more nights tossing and turning worrying about her sister.
But even after all these years, after all the disappointments and degradations she’d faced, even she had her limits. There were some things she wouldn’t do for money, not even for an obscene amount of it.
Leaning forwards, he picked up the end of one of her ash-blonde curls, pulling it out straight.
She slapped his hand away and the ringlet bounced back to her shoulder.
He grinned. “Miss Netta Pickle, in order to earn your fee, you will have to become the embodiment of feminine virtue. The pinnacle of everything that is lovely and charming.”
He hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocked back on his heels. “In short, my dear, I am going to turn you into a lady.”
Chapter Six
John closed his eyes. “Not that one,” he said for the fourth time. Truly, he was beginning to worry about the mental faculties of little Netta Pickle. For someone who had seemed clever enough to employ a stratagem at the coffeehouse, her lack of understanding of the basic functions of the dinner fork was concerning. “It’s the third fork from the right that you use for the main course, not the first. You persist in using the same utensil for each plate.”
Netta clanged the fork in question against the china, and John snapped his eyes open. The set had been a gift from the Princess of Prussia. Perhaps until he had Netta better trained he should use the servants’ dishes.
“I don’t see why it matters.” She flicked her hand over the row of silverware, knocking several to the carpet. She huffed and bent over. “As long as the food gets in me mouth, any fork should do.”
She was dexterous. John had to give her that. The spoon she’d slipped into her bodice before she straightened and replaced two forks on the table made barely a whisper as it slid past the satin of her borrowed gown.
He sighed. One would think with the promise of four thousand pounds that a woman would constrain her felonious impulses. But not Netta Pickle. Really, he didn’t know what he was going to do with her.
Wilberforce was, if not happy, content that the ragamuffin they’d saved was safe and secure in John’s home. Robert was less sulky now that John had agreed to help him out of yet another jumble. And Netta looked as excited as a pig in a puddle of mud as she scoped out all of John’s finery that she could steal.
It was only John who remained gloomy. He sighed again, more deeply. The things he suffered for his family and friends.
He slouched back in his chair, a niggle of shame sliding through him. Except it wasn’t just John who suffered. Robert had done his share, too, and at John’s hand. It had been foolish to believe that he could leave his brother to fend for himself. John owed him more than he could ever repay.
And Robert takes advantage of my guilt every chance he can.
John pushed the uncharitable thought from his mind. Perhaps if Robert was returned the responsibility of managing one of the family smelts. Or the gunpowder mill. Perhaps this time the work would turn him into someone useful and productive.
He cleared his throat, and the butter knife that had been inching its way towards Netta’s sleeve popped back into its place.
“Do we ever get to actually eat with these forks, or am I to starve while staying at your house?” she asked. “I’m ‘ungry.”
“Hungry. Say it with theH. You can do it.” Please let her be able to do it. He should have chosen one of the women he knew from The Black Rose. They were always eager for coin, and had the quality to pull off pretending to be a lady. But it had seemed such a tidy solution. He needed a pretty, young woman with easy morals. One had dropped into his lap. And besides, Netta had needed the blunt. Wilberforce would stop giving him that look, the one that implored him to make every situation right. A tidy solution all around.
If only she was teachable.
“‘Ungry.”
“Hungry. It truly isn’t difficult.” The girl was being intentionally willful. She had to be. “You aren’t getting dinner until you use the eighth letter in our alphabet. And I believe it’s a lovely roast duck tonight.”
She bounced angrily in her seat, and his gaze flicked to the flesh jiggling above the low neckline of her gown. And to think he’d once believed her to be a young boy. After a good scrubbing and a change of clothes, she’d turned out to be a pretty little thing. Lush even. With the kind of curves a man liked to bury himself in. With clear skin, surprising for one living on the streets, winsome curls that sprung from her head a lustrous chestnut brown but tapered into a pale blond by the ends, and entrancing eyes that made his breath stall every time he became trapped in their gaze, Netta Pickle had the potential to distract every man in the room.
John crossed his leg over his cock, which was becoming a mite too interested in the woman across the table. She would make a tempting prize to a man such as Sudworth. John would be wise to keep this endeavor purely platonic if he didn’t want her to distract him, as well.
