Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  “If you won’t, you won’t,” George said. “But I can do what you wish.”

  “I said can’t, not won’t.”

  “And I said that I can. And if you’ll allow it, I will. No need for guilt or resentment. Cass, this is part of the case, and you ought to come. If it helps, I could order you to come or threaten you with the sack.”

  She looked mulish.

  He felt mulish. “Honestly, Cass. It sounds as if the moment you start wanting something, you shy from it. Because wanting something breeds resentment.”

  “It does,” she agreed. “Because there is too much wanting and never enough of anything else.”

  Ah, well. He knew that feeling, too. Though he’d every privilege, he had no one to smile at him in the morning.

  Cass was adding, “You’re a persuasive fellow. I think I shall have to visit Charles again before I agree, though. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Whenever you like,” he replied. “You’re only poking your finger into that syrup now. Have you finished eating?”

  “No!” She picked up the half-eaten pie in one hand, heedless of the sticky syrup. “It’s a sin to leave pie unfinished—or it should be. I’m bringing it with me.”

  He had to smile. “Let’s go, then, pie and all.” He stood, took out Cass’s pistol from his pocket, and handed it back to her—to the hand not currently holding a pie, that was. Then he removed his notecase and selected a banknote.

  “Antoine said not to pay,” Cass reminded him as she too stood.

  “He says that because he’s gracious, and I pay because I’m gracious. Also, he worked and provided us a meal.”

  She waved her hands at him, pistol and pie, then pulled a face. “Don’t. Don’t pay. Just thank him.”

  Bewildered, George wondered, “Why is that better?”

  “He made this meal as a gift to us. Because he’s not only your business partner, he’s your friend.”

  “He is my friend,” George repeated. “Yes. But I don’t want to take advantage of his skill.”

  “Which means you never would.” She looked from one of her hands to the other. Pistol to pie. Work to leisure. “Just as you said to me. You ask and you offer, but you do not pursue.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t want to take advantage of you either—and I mean that in a way entirely different.”

  “You couldn’t.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “Do you know, I believe you. And I’ll abide by that, just as I said.”

  But what would happen, he wondered, when the case was done? Would she set him aside, grateful for one fewer unsolved burden?

  And wouldn’t that be for the best?

  Chapter Ten

  In the end, Cass decided to accompany George to Chichester even before she visited Charles again. Simply wanting to do something was, after all, no reason to go darting in the other direction.

  Well, it could be. But in this instance, the trip was part of the tontine case—or so George had said, and she very nearly believed him.

  And it was true that Angelus and Jenks had both told her to watch over his safety. Really, then, she was just being responsible. Even if George had first posed the journey as a—dare she think it?—pleasure trip.

  So it was that she called upon her own lodging, feeling very much like a visitor while dressed in Selina’s borrowed finery. The main room held an air of neglect; her own bedchamber seemed a cubby belonging to someone else entirely.

  When she poked her head into Charles’s room, odors of liniment and perspiration struck her. He was prone on the bed, from which he greeted her, “I’m bored.”

  She sat on the end of the bed in a rustle of silk, taking care to avoid jostling his injured leg. “I believe it. But what do you intend for me to do? Play cards with you?”

  “I’d thought you might, rather.” So hopeful, he looked. And so rough. Under his eyes were shadows, and his chin bore several days’ stubble.

  “You’ve not been taking care of yourself,” she pointed out. “You know what you need? A mother.”

  Charles grabbed a bolster and stuffed it behind his back. “Spare me your lectures. Either entertain me or leave.”

  “You are spoiled and crochety. I thought seeing Janey every other day would keep you in a fair mood. Where is she, by the bye? Has she visited today?”

  “She’ll be here tomorrow.” His fingers worried the coverlet, even as his expression remained sullen.

  “Is she good company?” Cass pressed.

  “Very.” Faint color stained his cheeks. “Not in any improper way. She’s just . . . sunny.”

  “Don’t take that for granted, Charles. Especially in gray old London, sunniness is hard-won.”

  “I know. She’s quite a help, actually. Keeping an eye on that fellow in the Watch house.”

  That stung, though Cass had known from Janey’s own lips that she was assisting Charles. “I said I would think of a way to handle that.”

  He shrugged, tugging loose a knitted thread. “I thought of one instead.”

  “You mean Janey thought of one.” Yet Cass wasn’t sorry Charles had pursued answers a different way—especially since she herself had thought of nothing. “Are you paying her?”

  “I am,” he said. “She’s working for me. She’s still not caught Felix leading a girl off to a bawdy house, though, so there’s nothing clinging to him but suspicion.”

  “Hmm. So, no results.”

  “None. I’m worried,” he admitted. “Fox might not hold my post.”

  “Of course he will,” Cass said. “You’re the best investigator he has now that Jenks has left Bow Street.”

  The lie tripped easily off her tongue, and usually Charles played right along. Not today. “You are, Cass. Not me.” A ghost of a smile. “I might have been good enough value when he could get both our work for my salary, but I won’t be if you don’t return soon.”

  Just so, he heaped the responsibility for his recovery onto her shoulders. And wasn’t she already trying to do more than one person was capable of?

  She had made the decisions of an adult since childhood, and Charles had made none at all. As Grandmama took care of them both, Charles was ready enough to accept favors and coddling. “Women are better at that,” he excused himself, not allowing their efforts to be any credit to themselves at all.

  It wasn’t just that Charles was spoiled. They had spoiled him, because he was male and it seemed right to them all.

  And now he sounded lost, her big, tall, heedless, careless brother. For a moment, her heart squeezed. There had never been anyone closer to her than Charles from the first moment of her existence.

  But he was a grown man who had caused his own problems, and she couldn’t help him solve them. Not this time. Not today.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I only stopped in to tell you that I’m traveling to Chichester tomorrow, or near enough, for some sort of match race on the Goodwood course. All the men in the tontine will be there.”

  “That tontine case,” he grumbled. “I wish I could be of some use. But every time I go downstairs on these crutches, it takes half an hour. It’s not even worth the bother.”

  “You’d better have Mrs. Jellicoe hire you as a housemaid, if you don’t intend to be leaving our rooms,” she said tartly. “The main room is dusty enough. You could do something about that.”

  He gaped. “Cass! I’m injured.”

  Really, it was a wonder she had never broken Charles’s leg herself.

  “Dusting is not so bad,” she pointed out. “I’ve done the job myself when we were stationed at Deverell House, if you’ll recall. You don’t get much sleep as a housemaid, but then, you weren’t sleeping much at Deverell House anyway.”

  It would have been a good parting line, but he looked so befuddled. She’d always saved the sharp side of her tongue for others before. For people who attacked the unit of Cass and Charles.

  Leaving Charles behind for the tontine case was like shedding
a weight. One that was part of her, keeping her grounded; one she’d been born with and never known life without.

  She was light and free. She was incomplete.

  What a surprise that the first person who understood was a marquess who seemed to carry every privilege about himself. She ought to have known from Bow Street that one could never judge from appearances—yet it saved so much time and trouble. She was counting on just that when she posed as Mrs. Benedetti, the notorious cousin hungry for gossip.

  She stood to leave, but first planted a smacking kiss on Charles’s head. “Bleah. You need a good bath, no matter how long it takes you to arrange it.”

  “And then what?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  He turned his head toward the wall. “I’ll sort it out later. I’ve already done enough for today.”

  Whatever you wish, George had said to her once, and it was intoxicating. She ought to say whatever she wished.

  So she did. “You always say that. Later; you’ll do something later. Well, there’s no later. We live now, and how you spend today is how you’re spending a piece of your life you’ll never get back.”

  Charles snapped upright, roaring. “I’ve a broken leg!”

  “You do, yes. And you still have your brain. You and Janey could work together as a team, a real one. You’ve both got one foot on the right side of the law and one foot wrong. We always made more from the bribes you took than from the Bow Street salary.”

  Ugh, she was doing it again—making suggestions, solving his problems. Yet at the look of hope that returned to his features, she couldn’t be entirely sorry.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see.”

  “After you bathe.”

  “After I bathe.” He swung his feet to the side, wincing as the stiff brace on the broken leg tapped the wall. “Go on then, I can right myself. It’ll just take time and some contortions I’d rather not have anyone witness.”

  She laughed. So easily, her mood aligned with his. Maybe this was part of why she tried to lift him up. “All right. I’ll visit you again when I return from Chichester.”

  “One piece of advice. Do you remember what you told me before you went to stay with Northbrook?”

  “I told you a lot of things. I’m delighted that you not only listened but remembered some.”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Charles looked pleased with himself.

  “I’m not planning to,” she said breezily.

  Since that removed no possibilities whatsoever.

  * * *

  The match race, Cass understood from George, was to take place at Chichester because London was growing so hot. Londoners were eager to escape town but not miss any of the season, so the haut ton dragged the season to the coast.

  She accepted his explanation, just as she accepted the presence of his large camera obscura in the carriage with them, along with other paraphernalia to do with his experiments. If she’d had a pastime she enjoyed as much as he liked mixing up chemicals and slathering them on paper, she’d have brought that along, too.

  “I shall try a new combination of silver salts,” he was saying, still talking nineteen to the dozen after hours in the carriage. “And maybe the sea air will turn them more slowly.”

  Yes, she felt keenly the lack of a purpose of her own. This was her purpose, this helping, but it didn’t feel the same as a concrete goal. Totting up numbers and making them end in the positive. Mixing chemicals and fixing an image to a sheet of paper forever. Establishing a restaurant and giving it the funding it needed. So few of the problems she helped solve were ever concluded so tidily as George’s were, or could be.

  But at last they arrived, and then there was much to occupy her thoughts. They passed first by Goodwood House, the seat of the Duke of Richmond. Though humbly named, it seemed as large as any of the monarchy’s palaces. It was of clean stone, not a bit smudged by coal smoke, and flanked with copper-domed turrets that gave the grand structure a rounded, welcoming feeling.

  Cass and George would not be staying here. As a supposed ducal bastard, Cass was not a worthy houseguest, and for politeness’ sake, George had suggested he and his father remain with her. “For safety’s sake, too,” he had said.

  Instead they would be staying in a coaching inn, also on the duke’s property. Ardmore was vocal in his displeasure: all the best card games would take place at Goodwood House.

  “Go back and forth,” George had said unsympathetically. “Though if you want quantity of wagering, not merely high stakes, the racecourse is where you ought to be.” Goodwood Racecourse, too, was on the Duke of Richmond’s land, which set Cass to wondering how much of England was parceled out for its few dukes.

  Though the match race would not take place until the next day, Richmond had been entertaining guests for the better part of a week, and Ardmore was eager to hare off to the main house for the whirl of gaiety and betting.

  “Go on, then,” George told him as they descended from the carriage. “I’ll see us established at the inn.”

  When Ardmore had departed, all but running in the direction of the main house, George turned back to Cass. His expression was a little of everything that began with A. Amusement, annoyance, anxiety . . . and she had thought R words were troublesome. “I’ll send the carriage for him later,” he said. “We’ll have our things brought in first.”

  “I’ll help carry in the bags,” she suggested.

  “Mrs. Benedetti,” he said with a faint smile, “you forget your place. Look, there are already flocks of servants coming to take everything and stow it away.”

  “Then what am I to do?” She looked around her, wondering. The sun here was bright and the sky pale and clear, and the air had a lightness that made her feel as if she had to cough. Where was the smoke and grit? The yellow fog, and the stink of the Thames? Why was it so quiet?

  It wasn’t unpleasant. It was just . . . strange. And her belongings, which didn’t really belong to her at all, had been spirited off to a room in what all these dukes regarded as lowly lodging, but was likely finer than any place she’d stayed before taking George’s tontine case.

  She separated from George once inside the building. He went off to see to the disposition of his camera obscura, and she allowed herself a few minutes to explore. Who else was staying here rather than at the main house—a guest but not quite a guest?

  She became distracted poking into the different common rooms, finding all appointed beautifully in creamy wooden panels and cloth wall hangings. This was no ordinary coaching inn; there was no touch of the public house to it. No taproom with dark ceilings and spilled ale. No sullen servants with indifferently clean clothes.

  Instead, the building was set within a glorious sweep of gardens, abloom with flowers and flanked by tidy rows of vegetables. Outside every window was something pretty to look at, and within every room was quiet and peace.

  This was true luxury: not a presence, but a lack. A lack of fog, of mess, of the presence of servants. A lack of the noise of the streets.

  It must take an enormous amount of effort to maintain this sense of calm and peace. But when one was a duke, one could have things as one liked.

  In a small sitting room, she came upon some of her fellow guests. Whether George had arranged matters thus or whether it was by chance, they made a little party of the tontine survivors.

  Cavender was there, looking as cheaply fashionable as ever. On a stage, he would have made a marvelous impression. Gerry was a quiet man who seemed to walk only with great pain. He had gout and used a cane and traveled with his own physician. This was not sufficient reason to remove him from suspicion, but Cass mentally shuffled him farther back in her file of likely suspects. An ailment could be feigned, but if so, he’d been feigning this one for years on end.

  Braithwaite was not to be present in Chichester, and she found she missed his friendly face. Which, she had to remind herself, might be the face of a murderer.

  And Lady Dev
erell was there, rattling on and consuming cakes, both at a tremendous rate. “There is to be a velocipede race and an archery competition tomorrow, too,” she said to Gerry, who appeared as little interested as a man might be who would take part in neither. “My husband is at The House”—these words were clearly spoken with capital letters—“to arrange all sorts of wagers, and I shall join him for dinner.”

  “Is everything to be wagered upon?” Cass ventured from her seat beside Cavender.

  “Of course!” he said in a bluff tone. “Otherwise how would anyone know whether they were winning? And then how’d you know if you were enjoying yourself?”

  “Always such a japester,” Gerry said in a little dried-up voice, his hands holding fast to the head of his cane.

  Lady Deverell looked sharply at Cass. The countess’s face, as Charles had noted, was pretty as ever at age forty, with wide blue eyes. She also had a quantity of soft brown hair and an even larger quantity of bosom.

  “You are familiar to me,” said that lady. “Forgive my abominable memory. Have we met?”

  Her smile was friendly, but her eyes were shrewd, and Cass’s breath caught in her chest. Yes, I was your housemaid for a brief while, and now I’m investigating whether one of these two gentlemen with us is a possible murderer.

  “I daresay I’ve been in caricatures,” she managed to toss out carelessly. “This hair of mine is rather a spectacle.”

  “It’s your behavior that is the spectacle, rather, if you end up in a caricature,” said her ladyship. “But it is not for me to judge, but to enjoy.”

  And that lady, who had once had no qualms about kicking over an ash pail and telling Cass to do her work better the next time, offered her tea. And Cass, who mistrusted the shrewd eyes but whose tongue was tied, accepted a cup.

  “I know where you’ve seen her!” Cavender leaned forward, all helpfulness. “She met me at that ball at the Harroughs’, and you were there, too. Must’ve clapped eyes on her then.”