She pulled Emma close and nearly cried out when Emma’s arms went around her, then clenched her eyes shut as the girl’s face betrayed nothing more. She pulled Emma’s head to her breast and stroked her hair, murmuring.
“I love you, Emma. You’re safe — come back to me, my girl, my love.”
Cat’s fingers traced Emma’s cheek and she sought the words, the language strange on her tongue.
“I oleuo'i chwaer ddaearen
Ar hyd y nos.
Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd
Ond i harddu dyn a'i hwyrddydd
Rhown ein golau gwan i'n gilydd, fy nghariad,
Ar hyd y nos.”
We’ll put our weak light together, my love, all through the night.
Chapter 44
Clanton’s back was scarcely out of sight before Cat was at the townhouse door. He’d be at the pub for hours, unless Roffe told him to return, so she had time.
The lock there on the door was an old friend, familiar to her picks from long practice, and she had it open in almost the time as if she’d used a key.
Cat wasted no time looking about, but went immediately to the kitchen and seated herself at the table, her back to the pantry where she could see both the stairs from the first floor and the steps up to the delivery door. She’d wait for Roffe there.
It was a struggle not to worry, to think about what might happen if Roffe didn’t come alone as she requested. What would she do if he came with Clanton or some others of his bullyboys?
She forced that thought aside and smoothed her skirts, resting her kid-gloved hands on her knees for a moment and taking a deep breath to calm herself.
She’d done all she could, thought all she could, and she saw no other choice.
That was fitting, as she had nothing else at all, so why not be out of choices, as well?
Emma was in their rented rooms — rooms she owed on for the last three nights, as she’d sought to conserve what little coin was left. The only thing keeping the girl from being thrown out on the streets this moment was Osraed’s bulk and cold stare cowing the landlord for a time, but that wouldn’t last.
He was with her now, following, if he could be trusted, Cat’s last instructions.
“Keep Emma safe today,” she’d said as she readied herself. She handed Osraed a purse with all their remaining coin. “If I don’t return by morning, get Emma to Lower Feltstone and give this to Sarah Brimhall, the innkeeper’s wife there.”
Cat could only hope that the Brimhalls would continue to be as kind as they had been already and give Emma some kind of place to live out her days if things went wrong here with Roffe.
Well, if things go the worst here with Roffe, for there’s nothing but wrong about it now.
Her note to Roffe had said to come alone. She had to rely on the man’s arrogance that he would.
On an impulse she rose and retrieved a bottle of wine from the cellar and two cups from the cabinet. She set those on the table and resumed her seat.
The waiting was interminable, almost unbearable.
Finally, she heard footsteps outside and the grating of a key in the lock. More footsteps on the floor above her, then the creaking of the stairs.
She waited. From the sound, Roffe, or whoever entered, had gone up first.
Soon enough the footsteps returned and grew closer.
Roffe came down the stairs into the kitchen and paused as he caught sight of her.
“I’d thought to find you in my rooms, mooning over your mother’s image,” he said. “Or at least in the Mechanicals Room.” He gestured about. “The kitchen? Really? Why?”
Cat shrugged.
Roffe came closer, his eyes narrow and taking in everything about her, the room, the table.
“Will you sit, father?”
Roffe smiled. “Of course.”
He paused at the chair opposite her as though thinking, his eyes darted from the chair to her, then he sat.
“Where is it?” he asked.
Cat frowned.
“‘It?’”
“The trap you think so clever,” Roffe said. “The one you think will get you free of me.”
Cat shook her head.
“I’ve set no trap here, father.”
Roffe studied her for a moment.
“Wine, father?” Cat asked.
Roffe raised an eyebrow.
Cat sighed and reached forward. She took up the bottle and poured into both cups, then drank from each of them and the bottle. Roffe took one of the cups and pushed the other toward her — she drank from it again and set it aside.
“‘Come alone,’” Roffe quoted from her note to him. “How dramatic.”
“I wished a private talk, father.”
“And you have it.”
Cat swallowed, her lips thinning. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I’ll not come back to you,” she said.
Roffe stared at her waiting.
“Is that it?” he asked finally.
Cat nodded.
“You brought me out from my club for that?” He chuckled. “We’ll see, then. How is your little friend, by the way? Did she respond well to her treatments?”
Cat’s jaw clenched and her hands made fists, straining the thin leather of her gloves.
“You can kill me if you wish, father, but I won’t return.”
“I’ll do more than that,” Roffe said. “Do you think Bedlam’s the worst of what can happen to your precious Emma?”
“Then I’ll kill myself — you can’t stop that.”
Roffe laughed. “Your mother threatened that, as well, until I told her what I’d do to you. Will you take your girl with you to keep her safe?” He paused. “I thought not.”
He leaned forward, arms on the table.
Cat unclenched her fists and slid her hand through the slit in her skirts.
“Give it up, Catherine, and come home. Take your playmate back out to the manor — the fresh air and sun will do her good. It’s nothing to me if you wish to spend your nights there tipping the velvet, and none will say a word about it. You have no other choi —”
She took the chance. Now, when he was just the slightest bit off balance, his weight on those arms.
Her hand closed about the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh — cold through the thin glove.
She lunged for him.
Roffe stood as she came, chair skidding back, its wood legs clattering against the cobbles of the kitchen floor.
The knife blade reached for him, then Cat’s arm went numb as he struck her. Her wrist was pinned to the table by his and his elbow cracked against the side of her head.
The knife fell to the table with a heavy thunk.
Roffe grasped her other wrist, pulled them together, then shoved her away.
Cat staggered back until she struck the cabinets heavily.
By that time, her knife was in Roffe’s hand and he was shaking his head at her in disappointment.
He gestured at her chair with the knife blade.
“Sit down, Catherine.”
Chapter 45
Stupid, clumsy girl,” Roffe said.
He picked up his chair from where it had toppled over and returned to sit at the table. He pointed the knife at her, blade bobbing up and down.
“I should speak to Clanton about your training,” he said. “I might as well have received a note informing me of your attack. Slow, girl, it will never do. Sit, I said!”
Cat did so. Her arm was numb where he’d struck her, but she fancied the palm felt cold and wet through the glove. She clenched her right hand into a fist and cradled it with her left, setting her teeth as well to give Roffe no sign that she was worried. If her trap took her down too, then so be it.
Roffe sighed. He set the knife on the table, blade pointing at Cat, and drank some wine.
“Catherine, Catherine, Catherine,” he muttered. “Whatever will I do with you? Running is one thing, but attacking me? Had you been faster,
I might have hurt you with my reaction — we cannot have that.”
“I will not return to you,” Cat said, her voice soft and shaking a bit.
Roffe slammed his fist on the table, half rising.
“You are mine!”
“Is that what you told my mother?” Cat asked. “Before you threw her off that ship?”
Cat knew as she spoke that she had the right of it. Roffe’s face stilled, the anger melting away.
“In bloody pieces,” he said.
Cat clenched her eyes shut against sudden tears. She’d thought, but not been certain, that Roffe would not set a hireling to that task.
Soft lips against her forehead, the scent of safety — “I love you, Kathleen, never forget.”
“Why?” Her voice was raw.
Roffe stared at her for a moment, looking bewildered.
“Because she took what was mine,” Roffe said, “and had to be punished. Why is this so difficult for you to understand, Catherine? This, all of this, has always been about that. She was mine — you were mine. She left and took you, so she must suffer — and suffer still, as you will even if you take your own life, for I shall mete out your punishment on that girl for as long as I allow her to live!”
“So this —” Cat swallowed to keep her voice in check. “All of this? Finding me, bringing me to your home — it’s all some way of punishing my dead mother?”
Roffe smiled and scratched at his palm. “Of course, Catherine. What better? She hated what I did, when she found out — it drove her to run. What better punishment than to turn the precious daughter she tried to protect … into me?”
“I will never be you.”
“You already are, Catherine.” He rubbed his palms against his thighs as though to dry them, then took up his cup and drank. “That boy in this very house? Good Lord, girl, the bodies you left behind at Bedlam! Tell me there were no others while you sought to escape me?”
Cat couldn’t deny it entirely. There had been the merchant and his two bullyboys on their way to Leeds, and she couldn’t be so certain that some of those she’d robbed might not have found the experience more final than she intended. She felt nothing for them — every one of them had deserved it, she was certain, but that didn’t make her like Roffe, did it?
Roffe put his elbows on the table and tented his fingers, scratching idly at his palm before stilling.
“Will you honestly say you felt one moment’s remorse for a single one of them?”
Cat opened her mouth to speak, but it was too honest a moment for her to lie. She hadn’t — not after those hours in the cellar with Brandt, at least. Once the boy was dead, her mind had eased quickly enough. And why should she feel remorse, in any case?
Brandt was a bully and worse. The men in Leeds had tried to rob her. The men she’d killed in Bethlem Hospital had been selling and buying the helpless into the worst kinds of abuse.
They’d deserved no better, not any of them.
She closed her mouth, thinking and watching Roffe. The man sat back and rubbed his palms against his thighs again.
“I am not you,” Cat said firmly.
Roffe smiled.
“I’m not! You forced Brandt on me! I didn’t kill those other men for money, I did it to protect myself! To save Emma from where you put her!”
“You will, though,” Roffe said, “now you’ve a taste for it.”
Cat shook her head.
Roffe’s smile widened. He rubbed at his chest.
“Oh, you’ll rationalize it for a time as I did. How they deserved it and how your own lack of regret merely means you were in the right. But then it will come one night — the urge to feel your blade open a man’s flesh. It’ll come and you’ll respond, Catherine, but —” He cleared his throat and worked his mouth, frowning. “The money I take for the job is merely a happy coincidence when we get right down to it. As it will be for you. What is money for, but to save —” He cleared his throat again and frowned. “To save yourself.”
He made to take another drink, then his frown deepened and he lowered the cup. His eyes darted about the table, from his cup to the bottle to her cup, and finally came to rest on her face, though his head was beginning to bow as though too heavy for him to keep up.
“What have you done, Catherine?” he asked. “You drank too.” He coughed. “Pray, tell me you’ve not … gone noble on me.”
Cat took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. She relaxed her hands, carefully flexing her fingers within the kid-skin gloves.
“It wasn’t the wine, father.”
Roffe’s eyes narrowed. He started to rise, but his legs refused to obey. He braced his hands on the table’s edge and let his head fall back so that he could look at her.
“Then, how —” He rubbed his palms against the table’s edge.
Carefully and gingerly, Cat peeled the glove off her right hand. Her hand was covered in grease and the grease then wrapped in parchment. She set the glove on the table, well away from her. The palm was dark where liquid had soaked it.
Roffe stared at it for a moment, then looked to the knife on the table before him.
“Slow and clumsy,” he whispered.
Cat stripped her other glove off and set it with the first.
“I could never best you in a fight, father. I know that.”
Roffe took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as though testing his ability to do so. He closed his eyes and chuckled. When he opened them again, the lids remained half-hooded.
“Such a wonderful girl,” he murmured. “Your mother … would be … horrified.”
Chapter 46
Cat rose once Roffe was still, his eyes vacant and unseeing.
She took a cloth from the cabinet and scrubbed at her hands, removing all of the grease and parchment, careful not to let any of the outermost touch her skin.
She could fancy her right palm was growing cold, but a quick pinch once the grease was gone made her sigh with relief.
Then she shucked out of her skirts, holding them carefully by the waist and pooling them next to the gloves.
The knife sheath along her thigh was next, and even her drawers, under it, until nothing the knife hilt had or might have touched remained on her person.
She sat again, nearly naked from the waist down, and filled her cup — keeping well away from Roffe, the knife, and pile of clothing. Her shoulders slumped as she sipped her wine.
Some time later, there came the sound of a key in the kitchen door, but Cat somehow couldn’t summon the urgency to move. She wasn’t certain what she’d tell Clanton, when he found her here in the kitchen with her father’s body. Roffe. Not her father. She’d never name him that again.
The door swung open and Clanton entered the kitchen with a keg balanced on one shoulder and a bag in his free hand.
He stopped at the foot of the steps, staring at Cat. His eyebrows rose, possibly the most expressive bit of surprise she’d ever seen in the man.
Clanton took two steps more into the kitchen, which brought Roffe’s body into view. The valet’s eyebrows rose higher.
He slowly bent to lower the keg to the floor then straightened. He glanced from Roffe’s body to Cat again.
“That how it is, then?”
Cat nodded.
Clanton grunted and pulled a chair from the table to sit between Cat and where Roffe sat slumped back, head bowed.
He took a deep breath and shook his head, then reached for the wine bottle, his hand stopping just short. Clanton pointed to the bottle, then to Roffe’s body.
“This have anything to do with that?”
Cat shook her head. “No, it’s safe.”
Clanton grunted and raised the bottle to drink. “Never hurts to ask in this house, it don’t.”
Cat almost smiled.
Clanton tilted his head to one side, examining the body.
“No blood, eh? Will it hurt the pigs? He’s not one should turn up on a riverbank, I think.”
Cat’s should
ers slumped with relief and she almost cried out.
If Clanton was willing to help dispose of the body, then he might be willing to help with other things as well. She’d been despairing of where she’d go from here, with no funds and no home. She might have succeeded in killing Roffe, but she was no closer to helping Emma. Nor herself, come to that.
“I wouldn’t risk it,” she said. She nodded at the knife. “I’d wrap the hands, both of them, and knife and burn them —” She paused, running through the things Roffe had touched. “No, wrap the whole body before its moved. The chair, table — everything on it. All wrapped in heavy oilskin, then burned … careful of what’s downwind.”
“Good to know.”
They sat in silence for a time, sipping at the wine.
“If he’s disappeared,” Cat said tentatively, “Some papers would be helpful, perhaps.”
Clanton glanced at her, face impassive.
“Some bit of a note … that my … my uncle has felt a sudden need to return to the Orient?”
Clanton nodded and pursed his lips. “Monthly allowance to you, for the household, until your majority? Amounts to draw on for special things?”
Cat’s chest was tight as she nodded. She very much wanted to throw her arms around Clanton and kiss the man.
“Perhaps some letters over time. Describing his travels?”
Clanton nodded again.
“I’ll see to it,” he said. “Then word of some … accident, when you’ve reached your majority?”
Relief washed over her in waves. With Clanton’s help and those documents, she’d be able to keep the townhouse and manor, keep them paid for from Roffe’s accounts, and provide for Emma. That Clanton would retain his place and pay would not be far from the man’s mind, she was sure.
How long would that money last, though? How full were Roffe’s accounts and how much might be owed to others?
The tale of Roffe visiting the Orient would be only a stopgap — she’d almost certainly have to find some source of funds.
Of Dubious Intent Page 27
