A Talent for Trickery

by Alissa Johnson

  * * *

  The storm arrived in under a quarter hour, dashing Lottie’s hopes that the travelers might beat the weather home.

  “They’ll not make it back tonight,” she murmured, watching from the windows as the trees outside swayed under the onslaught of rushing wind and pounding rain.

  Next to her, Owen craned his neck a little to study the swirling black sky. “It’s moving quickly. Should be cleared before dark.”

  “There’s too much rain. The road to the village routinely floods. A horse and rider could get through, but it takes a half day of sun or more for it to dry out to a degree that a carriage might be managed. If there’s more rain to come…”

  “They’ll be fine, Lottie.”

  “Better, were they here.” She tried to shake off the worry. “You can still secure a wagon, once the storm has passed. You’ll not be able to bring it back, but…”

  “Tomorrow is soon enough. We should take advantage of Peter’s extended absence.”

  She flinched at a bright flash of lightning and the answering boom of thunder. “We should.”

  “Come away from the windows.” He nudged her back gently. “Why don’t you work on the letters for a bit?”

  The suggestion surprised her into turning from the storm. “You need my help with the journals.”

  He took hold of the drapes and pulled them shut. “I’ll ask for it when needed.”

  She couldn’t work like that. “I’ll not be able to concentrate properly with distractions.”

  “Distraction is exactly what you need at present. But I’ll keep mine to a minimum,” he promised, urging her toward the desk. “I’ll keep track of what I am unable to decipher, and we can come back to it later.”

  He insisted she work in his room, and Lottie put little effort into arguing otherwise. It made more sense to work in her own room, at her own desk, but she didn’t feel like being sensible. She didn’t feel like being alone.

  And so they sat in companionable, if not entirely comfortable, silence as the storm raged over Willowbend. Like a child’s fit of temper, it bellowed and blustered and passed in the course of a half hour, leaving behind a weak leak of rain and hiccups of wind.

  Owen began his distractions after that. He was subtle about it, offering a comment or question here and there designed, she knew, to take her mind off Esther and Peter.

  It was several hours more, however, until Lottie was able to fully relax. When the clock on the mantel chimed six, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. By now, sufficient time had passed for the storm to move over the travelers, and if mishap or injury had occurred, someone would have brought the news to Willowbend by horse.

  She set her pen atop the paper she had used to take down notes. It was mostly blank. “I’ve accomplished very little, I’m afraid.”

  “You can make up for it here.” Owen tapped his finger against a small stack of journals in the seat next to him. “I’ve marked a number of pages requiring your attention.”

  She rose, bent a little to stretch a sore back, then crossed to Owen on stiff legs. She picked up one of the journals, opened it, and paused with her hand hovering over the pages.

  “You’ve folded them. You’ve folded down the corners.”

  She wasn’t upset. She wasn’t even mildly irritated. Her father hadn’t been particularly careful with his journals when he’d used them. As a result, most were already worn, stained, and even torn in some places. But it surprised her that Owen had been careless as well, and she wasn’t quite sure why.

  He looked slightly affronted. “I didn’t damage them.”

  “You’ve creased them. Do you do this with your own books?” Her mouth fell open when he kept his silence. “You do,” she accused, and the surprise grew. “It is a terrible habit.”

  And therein lay the surprise, she realized. Owen wasn’t a man of bad habits. Faults, certainly. Everyone had faults. He had many. But folding the pages of a book was a trivial bit of foolishness, and to discover it in a man who was neither trivial nor foolish was both unexpected and rather charming.

  Though she didn’t approve of the habit itself, she quite liked the idea of Owen possessing the funny little quirk. More, she liked the idea that there might be others—unexpected foibles that made him…more human, she supposed. And less wolf.

  Owen closed the journal in his hands. “I’d offer an apology, but it would appear one is not required. Why are you smiling?”

  Sometimes, she thought, honesty could set a person off balance more efficiently than a lie. “I find myself intrigued by the idiosyncrasy.”

  He said nothing as she bent to scoop up the journals stacked on the seat. Curious about his sudden stillness, she lifted her head and discovered his face near her own.

  His own smile was slow, sure, and decidedly wolfish. “Intrigued, is it?”

  Her heart tripped, her blood warmed, and her mind raced. If she leaned in, just a hair more, she could put her mouth over his. They could continue what they’d started before the storm. It would be so easy. And because it would be, she pulled back.

  In less than twelve hours, they had dragged out an eight-year-old argument, apologized, and kissed. That was sufficient reconciliation for one day. Anything more crossed the line straight into recklessness.

  “I’ll just take these to my room, shall I? Note anything of significance.”

  “Hmm.”

  There was no telling what he meant by that, and she thought it best not to inquire. She sidled over to the desk to gather the letters and her notes, piling them haphazardly atop the journals, and she was off.

  Eight

  Lottie worked late into the night. She pored over the journal pages Owen had marked first, jotting down information he might find useful or interesting. Then she turned to the letters again to search for the pattern hidden in the encryption.

  It was a slow, methodical process, further complicated and delayed by random thoughts of Owen that continuously popped into her head.

  She had not given in to the embarrassing urge to peek down the hall at his door, but she knew he was still awake. He would be up for hours more, reading the journals, turning down the corners of pages.

  It was easy to envision him just as she’d left him, sprawled out in the chair.

  Or maybe not quite as she’d left him. Surely he had made himself more comfortable by now. She imagined he had taken off his coat and necktie and probably his waistcoat. He’d likely rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt to expose a bit of muscled chest and the tawny patch of skin she had made such a poor effort not to look at the night before.

  Perhaps, in her absence, he had made himself even more comfortable.

  Settling back in her chair, she pictured him with his shirt further unbuttoned. Then further. Then she had him take the thing off altogether. Because if a woman was going to indulge in a scandalous fantasy, it ought to be worth the embarrassment she was sure to feel later when she had to face the object of that fantasy. So she fantasized, in leisurely fashion, what he might look like without his clothes—long arms, broad chest, golden skin, rippling muscle—and felt an answering spread of warmth through her veins.

  Desire. She knew what it was and where it could lead.

  She wasn’t a worldly woman, exactly, but there had been worldly women in her life and a father who had paid one of those women to educate his eldest daughter on one of the very few topics he was unwilling to discuss himself.

  Said woman had done so with an enthusiasm and thoroughness that had left a girl of ten absolutely stupefied. And terrified. For years.

  But she was grateful for the knowledge now. She was aware of what went on between a man and a woman behind closed doors, aware that Owen was interested in developing a physical relationship with her, and she could admit without reservation that she was interested in return.

  There w
as little to stop her from pursuing that interest. She had no moral or philosophical objections to bedding a man outside of wedlock. She’d not been raised with them, and, more to the point, she was unwilling to relinquish all hope of ever experiencing what the worldly woman had promised could be an act of affection and unparalleled pleasure when performed with the right man.

  Marriage was not an option for someone like her. It pained her sometimes to know that she could never have a husband and children of her own, but she tried not to dwell on the matter. She preferred to remember that affection and pleasure remained within her grasp.

  There were, however, several practical considerations that could not be ignored. In a small, isolated village like Wayton, gossip was always a risk. Which is why she’d not fully pursued the handsome butcher in the village who had taken her eye and offered his attentions several years ago.

  There was also the matter of trust. She had kissed the handsome butcher. Under an ancient oak in the heat of late summer, Mr. Whitlock had taken her in his arms and put his lips over hers. It had been a perfectly lovely experience. Until his increasingly eager mouth had traveled to her ear and whispered, “Oh, Miss Bales.”

  At which point the pleasant little fire he had sparked under her skin had been snuffed out.

  She was not Miss Bales. And she could not reconcile giving herself, even if it was a small part of herself, to a man who had no idea who she was and who could not be trusted with the truth.

  Restless now, she pushed away from her desk and worked out the stiffness in her limbs with a slow pace between the bed and the fireplace.

  The townspeople of Wayton were all like the butcher. They did not know her, and they never would. She was not the well-bred daughter of a respected tradesman. She’d not had a governess named Mrs. Thew, nor had she spent her summers on a small country estate in the south of Scotland. She’d not been taught to waltz by a French dancing master nor learned embroidery at her mother’s knee.

  These were all lies in a great, long list of lies that, when combined, created the fictional character of Miss Charlotte Bales.

  Any relationships she built were based on that fiction. She wanted a friend, possibly a lover, of her own. Someone who knew she was Lottie Walker, eldest daughter of William Walker, the notorious criminal. She had spent her summers learning how to lie and cheat and steal in London or Bath and had been taught how to dance by the madam of a whorehouse. It had been her father who had taught her to read and write and how to mimic the accent of her betters, because they made more lucrative marks.

  Owen didn’t know all of these things. But he knew some of them. Enough that he could be a friend. He could be more.

  She would have to think it through carefully, weigh all the possibilities, all the dangers. The more time she spent with him, the greater the risk he would discover the truth about the Tulip. But if there was even a chance they could…

  When the floor trembled softly beneath her stocking feet, all thoughts of Owen, Wayton, handsome butchers, and passionate love affairs disappeared in a heartbeat. Her hand froze in mid-reach for a bedpost, and her mind went blank, utterly blank, except for the baffling realization that the vibration had come from a door being quietly opened and closed downstairs.

  Someone was in her house.

  It took only a second more for the shock to clear and fear and determination to fill the void. Her mind raced through her options and through a quick count of where everyone was in the house. In an instant, she considered and dismissed the idea that someone might have returned early from the ruins. There was no possible reason to risk the poor roads at night just to carefully sneak inside. Her eyes darted to her door, and she valiantly suppressed a yelp when she found Owen standing there in his shirtsleeves, a gun gripped in his hand.

  Her palms grew sweaty at the sight of the weapon. Her mouth was dry as dust, and she saw red. Blood red, specifically. Heavy streams of it flowing from her father’s nose and mouth. A thin film of it slicked over broken teeth exposed in a grimace.

  Where’s the money? Tell me where the money’s gone!

  Not in front of my girl, Fensley. Have a heart.

  Mr. Fensley had been in possession of a heart. He’d taken her into another room, given her three pounds, and told her to get her father out of Bath within the fortnight. Then he’d left the house, shooting her father in the leg on his way out.

  She hated guns.

  She shook her head at Owen, for all the good it did her. He ignored her order completely. Instead, he looked at her, expression cool and unyielding, and mouthed the word, Stay.

  Which was both insulting (she wasn’t a hound to be ordered about) and unnecessary. Of course she was going to stay. Where was the sense in going downstairs? Mrs. Lewis and the rest of the staff where all safely ensconced in their beds a floor above. Certainly, if the intruder meant to come upstairs, she would pick up a weapon and protect those who depended upon her. But if all their intruder wanted was a few items to pawn, then let him have them.

  They were just things. She was attached to some of those things, and the idea of a stranger pawing through them made her skin crawl. But not so much as to wish him dead for the offense and certainly not so much as to risk Owen’s life.

  They were just things.

  She pointed at the weapon in his hand and shook her head more emphatically.

  No.

  He blinked once, then shook his head in return, slowly, as if to say, What the devil is wrong with you?

  Unable to answer any other way, she fell back on shaking her head. Again.

  His face went from implacable to annoyed and he crossed the room, moving with preternatural stealth. She heard no footsteps nor a single creek of floorboard.

  “I am not going down there without a gun,” he whispered harshly.

  Did he think that was what she was after? No wonder he was looking at her as if she might be daft. Of course she didn’t expect him to confront an intruder unarmed. She didn’t want him to confront the intruder at all. “Stay here.”

  Now he was looking as if he simply didn’t have time for whatever the devil was wrong with her. “I am not staying here.”

  “Then neither am I.”

  That was a lie, one she prayed he would believe. Owen operated under a strict code of conduct. She couldn’t claim to know everything about him, but she knew him well enough to be certain there were some things he simply would not do. Allowing a woman to confront a burglar seemed like it might be one of those things.

  “I will stay,” she promised, “if you stay.”

  His response was to reach under his coat, pull out a set of manacles he must have grabbed for the intruder, and dangle them before her on the end of a finger.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed.

  Only he might dare. If that code was very strict, he just might.

  He brought the manacles up one inch. “Stay. Here.”

  She considered them, then Owen, then the gun. Someone was going to end up shot. That someone could be Owen. She could see it, see him as she had seen her father, writhing on the parlor floor, screaming while the life seemed to pour out of him in a thick red stream.

  Desperate, she chose a path she knew she would come to regret only slightly less than the alternatives.

  She lifted a foot and stomped her heel against the floor as hard as she could. “I say, Renderwell!” she all but bellowed. “Do you hear a ruckus downstairs?!”

  Owen slapped one end of the manacles over her wrist, latched the other end to the bedpost, and was out the door in the blink of an eye.

  She could have told him not to bother. The intruder would bolt from the house and be into the woods before Owen could make it downstairs, but mentioning it seemed perilously close to a taunt. So she kept her mouth shut, took a seat on the bed, and waited for the inevitable retribution to come.

  The w
ait was short, though short was a relative space of time when one was manacled to a bedpost. No more than ten minutes passed before Owen was back again, standing in her doorway with gun in hand.

  “What the devil is wrong with you?”

  She almost laughed. There was a bubbling nervousness at the back of her throat that begged to be set free. It was oddly comforting to know she could read his thoughts so well. And it was an immense relief to see him standing uninjured before her.

  She held back the mirth on a choking little hiccup of breath.

  Owen took two steps forward, clearly alarmed. “Are… You’re not…?” He took one step back. “Are you going to cry?”

  “What? No.” Though his reaction to the possibility of tears had her swallowing another bout of laughter. “Are you going to…?” She held up her manacled arm.

  He considered her carefully as he crossed the room. “No.”

  The urge to laugh was thoroughly squashed. “No?”

  “Why did you help him?”

  “No?” She rattled her restraints. “Unlock these at once.”

  “Why did you help him, Lottie?”

  “I didn’t help him,” she snapped. “I helped you.”

  “Helped me?” He swore, vividly. “I wanted him caught, not gone. I needed to question him, find out why he was in your house.”

  “Find out why?” What sort of question was that for a man called the Gentleman Thief Taker? “Good Lord, however did you capture anyone? Ever?”

  “Lottie.” Her name came out on a growl.

  “He was in my house to steal, obviously.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Oh, most assuredly.” She couldn’t believe she had to explain this to him. Wasn’t the man supposed to be legendary? “It is no secret Willowbend has a viscount in residence. Either he was here to see if we left the good silver out after dinner, or he heard the residents of Willowbend were waiting out the storm at an inn, and he was here to steal from what he imagined to be a mostly unoccupied house. Whichever the reason, there was no need to kill him.”