“Ah, you are practical as well as attractive.”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “You honor me, madam.”
“I simply repeat your own ideas.”
“You assume they are correct, though. You’ve only my say to support my practicality or my effect on the female sex.” He grinned, a sliver of sunshine.
Ha. She had more than his word for the latter; she had her own response. She had a weakness for strong men, for men who grinned at her as though she were delightful. A sunrise smile always made her want to open like a flower—a response that had led more than once to her plucking.
Benedict Frost cut a figure of rough elegance: hair dark as soot, and as curling as Charlotte’s was stubbornly straight. A strong jaw, a sun-browned complexion. Broad shoulders and ungloved hands. A cane that demanded a person look at him; a voice low enough to allow him to listen.
“Though I have naught but your word,” she replied, “the fact that you admit it is in your favor. In a coaching inn, no one knows anyone else. We all must go on faith that we are what we seem.”
Not that he should have a bit of faith in her, as she added, “I am called . . . Smith.” She could not give him the name familiar to the locals. And too many in London knew the assumed name of Charlotte Pearl; a sailor who hadn’t been in the navy for some years might well be one of them.
He took a long drink of his ale. “Well, Mrs. Smith, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. But I haven’t the leisure for going on faith.”
“I don’t think the situation is so dire as to require that,” she said lightly. “These crowds are not here because of faith, Lieutenant Frost. They are here because of evidence.”
“The evidence of the serving girl,” he agreed. “And please, mister will do.”
This mention of the serving girl was timed excellently, for Nance had been persuaded by a table of soft-bellied cits with Bloomsbury accents to relate her encounter with the cloaked figure. Again. “Eyes like a cat, he had!” the young woman exclaimed. “They glowed in the dark.”
Never mind the fact that her previous retellings had mentioned the afternoon sun picking out the coarseness of the mysterious customer’s cloak. He had left the gold coin at an hour much like the present one, divided in time by seven days. If only Charlotte had been here to see the truth for herself.
“The coin was real enough,” said Frost. “Yes, we have that evidence.” He spoke quietly, held his hands deliberately: first tracing the arc of the table before him, then sliding them to find the tankard. They were careful hands, a careful voice. As of one trying to hear rather than be heard.
He could not see—or not well. She was quite sure of that now, and relief drew from her a tension that left her shoulders aching.
“She thought it a guinea at first,” Charlotte said. “Nance, the barmaid. She hasn’t mentioned that in her tale lately, but she swore to it when the Bow Street Runner questioned her yesterday morning.”
The London officer had grown more and more impatient as Nance’s tale failed to yield identifying clues. Perhaps this was why each retelling now popped with a surplus of detail.
“Hasn’t mentioned it for a day, hmm,” mused Frost. “So she’s ashamed. Maybe that she did not know the difference between one gold coin and another.”
“Or,” Charlotte continued, “maybe she’s ashamed of the fact that she did know the difference, took a coin she knew to be stolen, and then lied to a Bow Street Runner. One or the other must be the case.”
“There is not much one won’t hide to escape trouble. Or for the promise of reward.” He took another long pull from his tankard.
Charlotte had been unable to do more than sip at her ale; she had let herself grow fastidious during her London years.
All part of the job.
“Your name isn’t really Smith, is it?” he asked.
Charlotte pressed a hand to the anchoring wall at her side, the rough mortar and brick cold through her glove. “Why . . . should you think such a thing, Mr. Frost?”
“Because you don’t ask the question everyone asks when they meet me. And that makes me think you don’t want to answer questions yourself.”
He seemed so large, and they were quite alone near the corner of the room. Everyone else was watching Nance. Charlotte had created her cocoon well.
“You need not answer questions either,” she rushed. Why, she had not even asked his name; he had volunteered that on his own. She would not ask, for to seek an answer was to look behind a person’s veil. And she could not return the favor.
“It’s all right. You are wondering.” He rested his fingers around the tankard. “The answer is no, Mrs. Smith. I cannot see at all.”
As she fumbled for a gracious reply, he turned his smile upon her. “Now that’s been addressed, how is the stew here? I’ll need a good meal before I seek my fortune.”
Chapter Two
“The stew is as good as the ale. Make of that what you will.” The intriguing Mrs. Smith’s tone was warm as she replied to Benedict, with a bubble of laughter in it. “And I must add, since you tell me you are blind and therefore might be unaware of this detail, that you are quite right about the effect of your uniform on certain females. Mrs. Potter, who owns the Pig and Blanket with her husband, has granted you the only smile I have ever seen cross her sour features. If you wish to return it, she is across the room and to your right.”
And that was that. She noted and accepted his blindness, and that was all she had to say about it.
Huh.
“It is most gratifying to know I can turn a woman up sweet. Or at least that my coat can. Thank you,” Benedict replied, grateful to his veiled companion for far more than her appraisal of the cookery at the Pig and Blanket.
Feeling his way through the world was a skill that had taken years to hone. As was the ability to smile when one felt not at all like smiling, and to ask for help when one would rather curse the darkness.
He had not felt much like smiling since his dreadful interview with George Pitman. But just now, it was not so difficult. He even pointed a bit of the smile to his right, in the direction of the unknown Mrs. Potter.
“Not at all.” Just when he thought she had no more to say, she added, “You are correct that my name is not Mrs. Smith. But if you would continue to call me that, I should be grateful.”
“Very wise of you to keep your counsel. One will not find a stolen treasure by trusting every random encounter with valuable secrets.”
“My identity is not a valuable secret, Mr. Frost. Nothing of the sort.” The bubble of laughter had popped.
“I meant to imply nothing of the sort. I am certain your identity is a matter of complete dullness. Only the plainest people with the most tedious of lives go about veiled under a false name.” Before she could ask how he knew of her veil, he waved a hand. “You—there’s something in front of your face. It gets in the way of your voice.”
“It gets in the way of a damned sight more than that,” she muttered, just low enough that he could pretend he hadn’t heard a lady curse.
The word carried a little shock, almost like coming upon a lady undressed. And there was no question that she was a lady, though she was alone and passing under a false name. Her voice was well-bred, well-educated. Accent was everything in England; the way a person spoke or dropped their aitches was enough to open or shut the doors of society.
God. This country was such a cursed prison. Cursed streets, cursed thieves, cursed coaches that didn’t run precisely on time to the schedule one had memorized.
Most of all, cursed George Pitman, because of whom Benedict was still in England and not scudding across a springtime sea.
Oh, the publisher had enjoyed Benedict’s accounts of his travels. Found them everything he’d been promised through their earlier correspondence. Was perfectly happy to publish the piece on commission.
As a novel.
There’s no way a blind man could have done these things, Pitman said. The chair
behind his desk creaked as he leaned back; the scent of cheap tobacco arose from his clothing, assaulting Benedict’s nostrils. You’ve got a wonderful imagination, Frost, but this is a fiction, not a memoir. Anyone could see that. And then he laughed. A blind man could see that.
The precious manuscript pages, marked out with the guiding lines of Benedict’s noctograph, had not been left with Pitman. Nor with any other printing house; they had laughed him out almost as soon as they met him.
There would be no fortune of his own making. Not if it were up to the publishers of London.
Had he thought he wanted stew? His throat closed, choking him.
With a deep breath, Benedict summoned calm. Not-Mrs. Smith was speaking to him. “I have heard it said that one’s other senses become more acute when sight is lost. Have you found it so, or is that rubbish?”
I’ve found that to be utter shite. But the question was posed with courtesy, and so he answered it in kind. “I have been told that, usually by sighted people intending to offer unwanted comfort. But the effort I’ve invested in making my way about a sighted world has convinced me otherwise. Rather, I have trained myself to notice things others need not.”
“Such as a veiled woman.”
“I doubt I am the only one who noticed you, madam.” Surely anyone who caught sight of a veiled woman would be curious.
Benedict had never dropped the habit of wondering what people looked like, even after four years of living by his ears and wits. Mrs. Smith possessed the voice of a beautiful woman. But beautiful in what way? Was she buxom and dark? Slim and golden? Buxom and golden? Slim and dark?
There were so many ways a woman might be beautiful, and he missed seeing them all. If he had met her at another time, in another place—at an ambassador’s party, maybe, or even among the long shelves in the bookshop that had once been his parents’—he might have been flirt enough to read her features with his fingertips.
“I hope you are,” she replied, and for a moment he thought she was granting him permission to do just that.
“I . . . beg your pardon?”
“I hope you are the only one who noticed me, I mean. I am here to listen, not to draw attention.”
Ah. Yes. That made more sense than a mysterious, cultured woman craving the attentions of a rough stranger. “Would that I could achieve the same,” he said lightly. “But when one enters a room by smacking a cane on the floor, one must expect to be looked at.”
“It is certainly an effective way to announce one’s presence. There are—I imagine—men and women aplenty in the ton who would adopt the same method at a ball, if they only thought of it.”
“My sister is twenty and covets a Season of her own. Perhaps I will recommend the use of a cane to her as a method of becoming notable.”
His metal-tipped cane, solid and dependable as a third hand, didn’t clear a path through the world so much as it revealed its shape. Different floors had their own unique feel; the movement of air about a room told Benedict something of its size. This common room, for example: its air was humid and close on his face and ungloved hands. A great crowd surely sat within, then, each pair of lungs a bellows and each heart a tiny hearth. People could be felt, just as floors could.
Stillness could be felt too, when a crowd became silent bit by bit. How could he learn their secrets if his mere presence brought them to silence? How could he gain the royal reward amidst useless clamor and gossipy whispers?
He ought to have begun by using his friend Hugo Starling’s letter of introduction to the local vicar, instead of taking his chances with a public house. What clue could he hope to gather on his own that a longtime vicar would not be able to tell him more quickly? Hugo’s friends, the Reverend John Perry and Mrs. Perry, were expecting him sometime today.
He might as well leave at once; there was no purpose to sitting here longer. No reward would come his way from sitting with a woman, no matter how presumably lovely she was.
He shoved back his chair, flipping his cane to its spot at his side as he stood. “I must be leaving, madam. I wish you good luck on your search.”
“So soon, Mr. Frost? But you have taken no food.” She paused. “Of which you are aware, of course. Excuse my obvious remark; I’m only surprised. You seemed determined to fortify yourself before joining the horde of treasure seekers.”
“But you did tell me the stew was as good as the ale—and I’ve had better to drink on board a ship three weeks at sea.” A roguish grin. “I’ll find something else. There’s nothing more to be found here.”
He had to be careful, so careful, to smile and put people at ease. Otherwise he would become a caricature, like the growling hero of La Belle et La Bête. His sister, Georgette, had loved those old contes de fées as a child, even reading them in the original French. An advantage of having parents who owned a bookshop.
An advantage of being able to read words on a page. Those who took such a thing for granted were fools.
“I hope,” said the satin-rich voice of not-Mrs. Smith, “that there is more to be found here after all. I intend to brave the stew and wait a few more hours.”
“You are going on faith now? Better you than me.”
“Right.” She said this more quietly. “Right. Well. One does what one must.”
“Thank you for the opportunity to make your acquaintance.” He bowed a farewell.
The path back to the door was easy to follow; he reversed the steps in his mind and wound his way to the foyer, then the door of the inn. There was no need to thump his cane on the floor this time, listening for echoes. He might leave without making a spectacle of himself.
And he had to leave—to find Hugo’s friends, to learn what they had to share. Then go somewhere, do something to find those damned gold sovereigns. And once he did, once he had collected the reward, he would make the life he and Georgette deserved.
The world might think a blind man couldn’t write a book about travel. But even the most doubting ought to realize: there was no one better at finding a path others had overlooked than a man who couldn’t see.
* * *
As soon as Frost departed, another man—stinking of ale and tobacco—took his place at Charlotte’s table. “Allow me a bi’ o’ yer company. A pretty lady shouldn’t be left alone. No’ in a place like this.”
He was a young, bulky man in a farmer’s homespun garments, with enough stubble that one might generously call it a beard rather than simple untidiness. His Derbyshire accent was thick, but she didn’t recognize him as a local. Not that she knew the inhabitants of Strawfield by sight anymore; a decade’s worth of faces had come and gone since Charlotte last lived here.
She sighed. “How do you know I’m pretty? Or alone, for that matter?”
“Because the fellow who were with yer just left.”
“He wasn’t with me.”
“So ye are alone.” He shrugged. “I’ll keep an eye on yer.”
“Not necessary.”
“C’mon, miss. Is that friendly?”
“Is it friendly to impose one’s presence on a woman to whom one has not been introduced?”
He blinked, then slurred a reply. “Ain’t ye a treat. If yer wan’ to be introduced, le’s call someone over to do the pretty.”
“No. Don’t.” When he stretched and turned as though preparing to call across the great room, she sprang to her feet.
He must have caught the movement from the corner of his eye, for he turned back to her, lolling and laughing. “Don’ be shy. Nance in’t shy.” With one beefy hand, he caught Charlotte’s left wrist. “Maybe she can join us. Nance!”
God save her from the half drunk. Men could be reasoned with when they were sober, and when they were completely inebriated, one could push them about. This scoundrel was at the dangerous point in between, the point where men forgot their manners and lost their tempers. His fingers were crushing the bones of her wrist.
She had been fine as long as no man took notice of her. Now it was as thou
gh Benedict Frost had laid a claim on her, then rejected her. Now instead of being her own property, she was open for claiming. Or so this . . . creature . . . thought.
She didn’t blame Frost. He’d needed a place to sit. No, she blamed this ale-soaked would-be rogue.
“Let me go,” Charlotte said through clenched teeth. “Or you won’t like what happens next.”
“Oh, ye’ll like it.” The fool must have misheard her. Already Nance, summoned by the call of a customer, was pushing through the crowd toward Charlotte’s table. Curious customers were following the barmaid with their gaze.
Charlotte had to get out of here before anyone realized the insignificant unknown figure was— hereabouts—nothing of the sort. She looked for the Bow Street Runner, a scrubby bearded man made conspicuous by his brogue. At the moment she neither heard nor saw him.
Very well. She was on her own.
With her free hand, she pulled the penknife from her left sleeve and pressed it to the heel of the man’s hand. “Do you like your thumb?” she said sweetly. “One of us is going to keep it. If you want it to be you, you’d best move your hand away at once.”
He tightened his grip, and a thread of blood appeared across his knuckle. “You bitch!” He gaped, releasing her to suck at his wound. “You bitch! You cut me!”
“You cut yourself when you tightened your grasp.” She looked at the knife in some disgust, then wiped the drop from its blade onto her sleeve and stowed it again. Thank goodness she’d worn her dark blue serge. “It’s a poor excuse for a man who blames a woman for his own faults.”
“Bitch whore,” he spat.
“Bitch courtesan,” she muttered. “It’s a completely different occupation.”
When he started to rise to his feet, reaching within his coat—for a blade of his own?—she declined to educate him further in the niceties of kept-woman vocabulary. Tossing a few coins on the table, she turned on her heel and left.
Not fled.
Just left.
For she had wanted to leave. Truly. She had been ready. Somehow she needed to find the person who had given Nance the coin, and she would not do that by listening to the young woman spin a useless hodgepodge of demons and cats and cloaks and premonitions. All Charlotte had really learned in two wasted days was that the girl was eager for coin and praise.
Fortune Favors the Wicked Page 2
