Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  Why was he saying these things? He shouldn’t be, just as his fingertips shouldn’t linger over the lacing at the back of her corset. Teasing it wider and wider open, when it was already quite wide enough for her to slip it free.

  He was hard and growing harder by the second.

  “Who has trained you? Merry widows and expensive whores?” She used the same tone of courteous interest with which she’d earlier collected information about the members of the tontine.

  “The former; not the latter. I don’t pay for sex.”

  “Certainly not; I should have guessed. You are far too attractive. Women swoon at the sight of you. They trip and fall into your arms, and sometimes onto your—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence.”

  She shrugged. The movement of her shoulders caused the blue silk to slip down farther. “Very well. I’m glad you’re not a virgin. No one thinks about sex more than virgins. This way, we’ll be able to think more about the case.”

  His fingers fumbled the corset laces. “I take it you’re not a virgin either.”

  “What would be the point of that? There’s no value to virginity if one’s not going to be sold off in a good marriage. And even if one is, once the ceremony’s done, it can’t be undone. Even if the bride’s been plucked. And the groom always has been.”

  “Who have you . . . been with?” He dropped his hands from her clothing, clenching his fingers tight. “Sorry. None of my affair.”

  She felt the edge of the gown and corset again, then thanked him as if he’d handed her a cup of tea. Taking up a dressing gown, she and her unfastened clothes disappeared behind the privacy screen.

  “It’s none of your affair, true,” came her voice. “But I don’t mind telling you. They were men of the moment, and they served their purpose.”

  This was intriguing. “What purpose?”

  The blue gown was flung over the top of the screen. He almost groaned. “One was for pleasure,” Cass said, “because I liked the look of him. One was for protection, to get away from a threat. And one was for comfort, because I didn’t want to be alone.”

  She said this so matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing shameful in being lonely, or in doing anything—even taking another person into her body—to seize upon companionship.

  George had become trapped, perhaps, by the mindset of the beau monde. The fashionable folk of London could admit a need for a new hat, or for a pair of fine grays, or a trustworthy servant. Never could one admit a need for something real, though, that could not be bought. Something like companionship. Safety. Purpose.

  The pleasure of encountering a like-minded soul.

  Of the two of them, he was the noble, yet he’d never taken a lover for any reason so noble as those.

  “So. What were we talking about?” Cass asked. “Oh, yes—the tontine. What I learned at the ball.”

  And as if she hadn’t just told him too much and not enough at all about her sexual past, she launched into a description of the conversations she’d taken part in and overheard. Garments came and went from the top of the dressing screen as she spoke, so that George was as transfixed by these as by her recall of the evening.

  “Might I emerge in a dressing gown?” she said during a pause. “Or will you be scandalized again?”

  “Don’t let that stop you,” George said.

  He cast about for somewhere to sit. Before the vanity table was a fragile little affair of cushion and wicker-work; he ignored that in favor of a more solid-looking armchair beside the fireplace. Across the room from the vanity table and the dressing screen. A safe distance, or as safe as one could get while remaining in the same room with a woman flinging her clothes everywhere.

  Cass emerged from behind the screen, wrapped from collarbone to ankle in a tawny silk that made her look like a flame. She seated herself at the inadequate chair before the vanity and began pulling the remaining hairpins from her locks.

  “Lady Deverell was there tonight, too,” she noted. “Which you noticed, since you danced with her twice.”

  “Hunting for information,” George said lightly. “As you were.”

  “That’s what Charles said about his relationship with Lady Deverell. Of course, he hunted for information inside her gown.”

  George eyed Cass pointedly, meeting her gaze in the vanity mirror.

  “You were not looking for information inside my gown just now,” she sniffed. “My gown was incidental to the conversation.”

  “Yes, I remember that from a few moments ago when we were discussing our romantic histories.”

  “I don’t recall using the word romance.” Hairpins pattered through her fingertips to the surface of the table. “But let us move along. Cavender, I noticed, was dressed more fashionably than most men there. More fobs, a higher cravat, a narrower waist to his coat.”

  George stretched out his legs. “He looked like an old man playacting as a young one. It was strange. I don’t remember him aping modern fashion so slavishly in the past.”

  “But his wife died some years ago, did she not? Perhaps he’s looking to wed again, and the clothing is his courtship plumage.” She rubbed her fingers over the heavy silk knot that closed her dressing gown. “It was all cheap and showy, though. Almost like a theatrical costume. It looked all right across a ballroom, but up close, the fobs were base metal and the man’s coat was shiny. Not wool, but some other cloth.”

  “So he wants to look richer than he is? That’s hardly damning. Most people want that.”

  “True. I’m not sure if it means anything.” Cass took up a brush, then began to draw it through the long length of her unpinned hair. “Lionel Braithwaite was a little shabby, the reverse of our theatrical Mr. Cavender. He was dressed in clothing of good quality, but it was old. The rare man who lives within his means, perhaps? He was charming, too. A delightful conversationalist.”

  “That’s not relevant,” said George.

  “It is. If people enjoy talking, they often tell me things. But in this instance, he didn’t say anything of note. He was cheerful and didn’t seem at all worried about a threat. Which was, itself, of note.”

  George’s cravat was beginning to feel scratchy again. He picked at the elaborate knot that fastened it. “How is not saying anything important something important to notice?”

  Cass set the silver-backed brush down with a heavy click, then divided her hair into three sections. “Braithwaite’s calm means that the threatening note and the earl’s stabbing are not publicly known. Which means the remaining men in the tontine don’t know they’re a target.”

  “That seems a great deal to gather from a normal conversation. But it makes sense.”

  “Of course it makes sense,” she said. “People follow patterns. If Braithwaite acted unworried, most likely he is unworried. Which tells us that our shadowy attacker is holding back, for now. But we don’t know why, and therefore we don’t know for how long.”

  They both fell silent. He was transfixed by the rapid movement of her fingers, plaiting her hair into a long rope of copper. When she bound the end, she turned on the seat, facing George from across the room.

  “I think,” she said, “we ought to involve Angelus in this investigation. Your friend Lady Isabel has met him. Your father knows him as well.”

  George recoiled at the name of the lord of London’s underworld. Few had met Angelus, but everyone knew his name, and almost everyone in the beau monde had borrowed from his bottomless purse at some point. “Why on earth would we want to involve a man from whom my father is attempting to extricate himself financially?”

  “Because Angelus knows so many people’s financial problems. He might have an inkling who would be most likely to need the tontine’s saved-up funds now, after nearly forty years of peaceful waiting.”

  George had to grant this. “I can consult with my father tomorrow. We’ll find the time for this.”

  Cass looked amused. “Find the time? What do you do with your days, that you must go s
eeking for a free moment?”

  Why was his cravat so tight? “A fair question, if an impolite one. I do whatever I want to. I’ve a title and no responsibilities.”

  It wouldn’t always be that way. Overseeing a dukedom was an all-consuming role involving Parliament, rents, tenants, staff, estates, agriculture, livestock, and investments.

  That is, it could be. The Duke of Ardmore didn’t sit in the House of Lords. He hired stewards—good and competent men, as far as George knew—to run his estates as best they could. And all the while he gambled, debts mounting, living high and indulging his sickness at the faro-table.

  Ardmore did whatever he wanted to, and he wasn’t much of an example to follow.

  “I do whatever I choose to,” George corrected.

  It was not much different from his previous statement, but it seemed better. More active, less dissipated. More controlled, less indulgent.

  Cass didn’t look impressed. “And what is that? Tonight, for example. This moment. What are you choosing to do?”

  She sounded skeptical, but this he disregarded. An opportunity presented itself, and if there was one thing the son of the Duke of Ardmore understood, it was how and when to take a chance.

  “Whatever you wish,” he told her. This was more accurate, because if he’d done what he wanted, his fingertips would be rolling her nipples to tight peaks at this very moment.

  If she wished that, he’d do it in a moment. The heavy silk of the robe draped over her breasts like a stroking hand.

  His words were spoken lightly, but she seemed to weigh them as if they were a proclamation.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That is a comforting offer.”

  This, he hadn’t expected. “Is it? I confess, I didn’t know what feeling my statement might inspire.”

  “Oh, it is. I’m not often told things can be as I wish. Remember that I have shared my life with Charles since before birth.”

  Ah. Should he say he was sorry for that? Grateful to be able to offer something different? It sounded nice, having a brother and never being lonely—yet he knew this was not the impression she’d intended to give.

  He had waited too long to speak, for she replied now. “May I take you up another time on that offer of doing whatever I wish? Right now I wish to sleep, and there’s no way you can help me with that.”

  He ceased tugging at his cravat. “I could. I could read a very boring book to you.”

  “No need for that. Thank you.” She smiled; it was sweet, and a little sad. “We’d both best be left alone with our thoughts now.”

  That was the last thing he wanted, especially now that his thoughts were sure to be about her. Her bodice unlaced, her hair down, and—most seductive of all—her knowing eyes upon his.

  “Good night, then,” he said. “Let it be as you wish.”

  Her smile was everything he himself could have wished for.

  Chapter Seven

  “This is a call among friends, not purely a case,” said Lady Isabel Jenks to Cass. “Of course we wanted to welcome you and Lord Northbrook to our home.”

  Leaning closer to Cass’s ear, George murmured, “And this way it’s more unofficial than if we met at their offices, and we don’t have to follow the law strictly.”

  Cass laughed. But Callum Jenks, her old friend, had the ears of a bat and had overheard George, for he said, “We always follow the law.”

  “If it’s best,” Lady Isabel said cheerfully, dark eyes dancing.

  “Which it is,” Jenks said in his gruff way.

  Not even romance, riches, and relocation—more of those troublesome R words—had smoothed his blunt edges. Cass was glad of it. Over the years, she and Charles had visited Jenks many times in the rented lodgings he’d used to inhabit. Much like the Bentons’ own rooms, they were a relic of better days, inexpensive and clinging to respectability only due to the tireless efforts of a determined landlady.

  But the previous year, Jenks had become tonnish. After he’d saved Lady Selina’s then-betrothed from an attack, London’s elite had realized his connection with the glamorous and violent Royal Rewards case. The theft of a fortune in gold sovereigns from the Royal Mint had fascinated all England, and Jenks had been one of the Bow Street Runners who’d located much of the stolen gold.

  Now Jenks was married to a marquess’s daughter, a pretty woman with dark hair and eyes and a sphinxlike face that lit with kindness every time she smiled. When Jenks left Bow Street to establish his own consulting practice with Lady Isabel, the beau monde had flocked to present him with cases.

  For a grocer’s son, it was all rather strange and—Cass suspected—sometimes exasperating. There was no denying the financial rewards of becoming fashionable, though. Jenks had exchanged his rented rooms for the couple’s tidy gray-brick house in Bedford Square fronted by a green space with well-grown trees. It had full servants’ quarters and both a drawing room and a morning room; luxury indeed.

  Though it was early afternoon, the latter space was where Lady Isabel and Jenks had settled their callers. In the past week, Cass had entered more fine homes than she had in the year before, but this was her favorite of them all. The morning room was a neat, sunny space papered in a pleasant yellow print, furnished with new but comfortable pieces and smelling of sweet pastries from the trays of dainties set before the callers.

  Cass had declined to take any of these. Her stomach was unsettled, either from the late night of polite revelry or the recollection that George had seen her in her dressing gown and knew how many lovers she’d had.

  Not that he, cheerful and heedless as always, seemed affected by either of these facts.

  “Good sunlight, even at this hour,” George observed as he joined Cass on a settee covered in ivory silk as soft as a dove’s breast. “This is east-facing, yes? Maybe the north-facing windows of my experiment room aren’t ideal. With more intense sunlight . . .” He trailed off, looking all about with interest.

  Had she really asked him to unfasten her gown the night before? It seemed so far away, the silks and buttons and talk of sex. All so innocent on the surface, not a single touch of bare skin to skin; all fraught longing below.

  This was better. Daytime was better, and being in the company of others, and digging into the seamier side of George’s suspicions about the tontine. No more balls and champagne for a while; if Cass wasn’t careful, she’d get her head turned not only by his lordship but by the role of Mrs. Benedetti.

  “Mr. Gabriel has arrived,” announced the butler, a thin gray man named Selby.

  “Show him in, of course,” said Lady Isabel, just as George said, “Who is Mr. Gabriel?”

  “An affectation,” said a voice from the doorway. “You will forgive it, I hope, understanding my desire for privacy to be equal to your own.”

  And the final member of their gathering stepped into the morning room.

  Over her years with Bow Street, Cass had met criminals both petty and powerful, but to her knowledge, she’d never encountered Angelus in person. He proved to be a hale man of about fifty years, with silver-shot black hair worn dramatically to his shoulders. He was dressed all in black save for white linens, the silver embroidery on his waistcoat, and the heavy silver head of his ebony cane.

  She recognized him at once.

  “I’ve seen you,” she blurted as the older man seated himself. “Recently. With Lord Deverell. You called upon him one night and discussed the tontine with him.”

  At her side, George tensed. “You know him?” he whispered. “Angelus?”

  “Felicitations, Miss Benton, on recognizing me.” The king of London’s underworld accepted a steaming cup of black tea from Lady Isabel. “I should chastise you for spying and for listening at doors, but it is your job, isn’t it?”

  So he knew her name. “It is my job, yes. And I suspect if you minded, you’d have let me know long before this moment.”

  He eyed Cass over the rim of his teacup. She tried to keep very still as she took his measure
in return, like a rabbit hiding in plain sight from a predator. In Angelus’s eyes, there was something of the panther. Hooded, observant, ready to pounce. One should be very careful around such a man, who could destroy with a figurative swipe of his paw: a mere sentence, an order, a rumor. All more damaging than a physical blow.

  Yet his voice was pleasant, and as carefully schooled as Cass’s own when he replied, “I have been managing the funds of this bedamned tontine for years. Lord Deverell wanted a loan from me based upon his contribution. Wanted out of the tontine entirely, rather, but without having to go to the trouble of dying.”

  Lady Isabel handed him a plate piled with almond biscuits. “Your favorites, I think? And one can’t blame a man for not wanting to die to collect money.”

  “One can’t,” agreed Angelus, “but I didn’t turn over a share of the money to him either. It would be unfair to the other investors.”

  “I suppose all the survivors see the tontine as an investment,” replied Lady Isabel.

  As the others also took up sweets and teacups, George shook his head. “An investment they’re entitled to claim in full? All five of them? They cannot think so.”

  Angelus selected a biscuit from his plate. “It would not be the first time a bunch of blue-blooded, middle-aged Englishmen thought themselves entitled to something that oughtn’t to be theirs. As much of the world can attest.”

  After launching this cannon-shot, he then turned to Lady Isabel to congratulate her and Jenks on the forthcoming arrival of their child.

  “How did you know? We’ve hardly told anyone.” Lady Isabel’s hand fluttered to her midsection. “There are months to go, yet.”

  “I have ways of listening at doors, too.” Was that a wink? Did he wink at Cass?

  “That’s just disturbing,” said George.

  “I never claimed it wasn’t,” said Angelus, crunching through an almond biscuit. “Though in this matter, it was simple to determine. One had only to note that you no longer accept cases that take you afield. And far from looking ill, you appear healthy and blooming.”