The Curious Case of the Whimsical Widow

Chapter 5 - Urchins

"What are ye talkin' about, Dove?" Toby frowns, lifting himself from Lily to sit beside her, rubbing his calloused hands through his hair.

He suddenly feels exhausted and defeated. He has been away for almost five months, and after those five months of fighting storms, loneliness and the occasional pirate, he arrived home only to be told that he should leave again.

He watches with guarded eyes as Lily sits up, too, buttoning her bodice, and his throat constricts with dread. Lily is the toughest little dove he knows. She only looses control over her emotions like this if something really terrible has happened.

His eyes greedily take in the soft blond curls falling from the stiff bun she'd had her hair in when she'd arrived, the cheeky slope of her upturned nose, and the graceful curve of her neck. He'd missed this woman to the point of going mad, and now she's sending him away.

"Didn't ye miss me?"

Startled, Lily looks up from the task of fixing her clothing, striving to feel less vulnerable and exposed by returning her bodice to its respectable state. She's angry with herself for crumbling at the sight of Toby and losing some of the time she needs to get him safely out of reach of that horrible detective.

Seeing the look of hurt and bewilderment on his face tugs at her heart and makes her realise that she should explain the situation a lot better. She can only imagine the myriad of thoughts running through his mind for him to come to that ridiculous conclusion.

Toby is a man of few words. When she'd just met him, Lily thought he was a bit slow mentally, but she soon learned that he didn't mean to speak in short sentences, often made up of unrelated words. His brain is just such a busy place that words seldom make it out of his mouth in proper sentences. Thoughts flit about, clashing and converging up there, and by the time he's ready to use his voice, he's already had the entire conversation in his head.

Toby is one of the most intelligent people Lily knows.

"Of course I missed you!" she sobs, flinging herself at him, forcing him onto his back to rain kisses and tears all over his face. She rubs her wet cheek against his and buries her face in his hair, enjoying his fragrance, mingling with the clean smell of the soap he'd used to scrub his journey from his hair and skin. "I've missed you every minute of every day with every breath I breathed."

Though it is absolutely true that Lily desperately missed Toby, there were some moments when she didn't miss him quite as much.

Toby generally doesn't want to hear how she addresses her loneliness in the months of his absence. He knows that he has about as much right to Lily as any other man who loves her. Just because the housekeeper and the landlord that he rents the suite of rooms from believe them to be married doesn't make Lily his wife.

Toby spends most of his days at sea or in foreign ports, only able to be in Lily's arms for a few weeks each year. He has asked her many times to leave with him and be his wife, but he knows that Lily has responsibilities, obligations and missions that she could not fulfil if she were truly Mrs. Booth and not a Dowager Marchioness.

He doesn't like it, but he understands it. He has the sea in his blood, and Lily has London in hers. She could no sooner leave the grimy, miserable city with its fog and despair than he could leave the ocean permanently.

Their arrangement works... or at least it used to work. Now, cupping Lily's angelic face in his hands so he can look into her eyes, Toby is not so sure about anything anymore.

Lily was seven years old when she met Toby Booth.

Her earliest memories are of living with her sickly, widowed mother in her uncle's home. Though he was a pleasant enough man, his wife was a tough and humourless washerwoman who would hand out slaps with more gusto than she would fill a bowl with tasteless gruel.