Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  It was time for a subtle interrogation.

  Lord and Lady Deverell were here, and Cavender and Gerry, and a smattering of other people they picked almost at random from among Richmond’s household guests.

  George was to do the talking. Cass would watch the unwitting guests’ reactions, keeping as silent as possible with the hope of preserving her identity as a family cousin.

  “I’ve asked you all here,” George said somberly, “because you were closest to my father.”

  Lady Deverell had been fanning herself. Abruptly, she stopped, her head lifting. “Were? Something has happened to His Grace?”

  Cass willed herself to notice every little detail. The furrows of brows. Hair untidy in pins, cravats rumpled. How much of it was guilt? Haste? Worry? Fatigue?

  Lady Deverell grasped the situation quickly. Suspiciously quickly? So it would seem, but she and her husband were also aware of—had survived—a similar attack.

  “Something has happened,” George confirmed. “In his sleep, my father was attacked by an unknown person. He has lost a great deal of blood and might not survive. I should like to get him back to London as soon as possible.”

  The bit about the duke’s survival was an exaggeration. Everyone who had spoken to him that morning, from George to Cass to the physician who’d been called, had received the sharp side of his tongue and was in no doubt of his hold upon life.

  “Surely he should not be moved.” Gerry’s hands twisted his cane. “My own medical man travels with me and could—but this is such a shock. Ardmore! I cannot credit it! Yes, do have Sullivan examine him. Perhaps it is not so dire.”

  “Perhaps.” Polite agreement, though the doubt in George’s voice was heavy.

  Lord Deverell and Cavender looked curious. Rapt. Not worried. Cavender’s hand drifted to his fobs. “A thief, I’d wager. Was anything taken from his rooms?”

  “I hadn’t thought to check,” George said drily.

  “A thief.” Cavender nodded, satisfied with himself. “Thought I heard someone moving around outside.”

  Cass calculated the need for a diversionary statement here. “That could have been travelers, since this is a coaching inn.”

  “Travelers come and go on the ground,” replied Cavender. “This person was moving about outside the windows. My room’s what, two away from Ardmore? Why, I must have heard the blackguard who attacked him!”

  He sounded pleased.

  “A pity you didn’t rouse yourself,” George said. “Perhaps you could have frightened the assailant away and protected my father’s life.”

  Cavender looked confused. “How could I? I thought it was travelers.”

  Cass sat back in her chair, stifling a sound of disgust.

  Only Lord Deverell had remained silent thus far. Now he spoke, asking George, “Was anything left behind that oughtn’t to have been there? Any belongings of the attacker? Or . . . a note? A paper, I mean. Anything dropped?”

  “No note,” George said. “Nothing was dropped.”

  This was true. There had been no note, no counting down of the number of men left in the tontine. Perhaps the attacker had lost faith in his skill. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to leave an additional clue.

  Lord Deverell looked troubled. “How strange.”

  “Why should that be strange?” asked Gerry. “The thief was horrified to have awoken his quarry, and he fled.”

  “If it was a thief,” said George.

  “What else could it have been? Race meetings are full of thieves,” said Cavender.

  “Private race meetings? Hosted by dukes?” scoffed one of the other guests, a woman Cass didn’t know. “More likely Ardmore was attacked for some personal reason.”

  “Are you sure there was no note?” asked Lord Deverell again.

  The reason for his questioning was clear, at least to his wife and Cass and George. And damnation, but these hidden bits of knowledge were like those old excavations soldiers used to make under fortresses. The more Cass found out, the more likely it was for the ground to open beneath her feet and swallow her. How could she sort the Deverells’ knowledge about the attack on the earl from their worry about Ardmore? Was their surprise because the attack had happened at all, or because it had failed?

  By the time the impromptu interview was over a quarter of an hour later, they were left with more questions. As many questions as when they’d begun, and almost as many as the Duke of Richmond’s honored and slightly less honored guests had posed to George.

  All this time, Ardmore had remained in his room, silent. For all these people knew, near death.

  He was pale and weak, but when Cass had spoken with him, he’d been well enough. And he had agreed to this gathering led by George on two conditions.

  First, he would allow Cass until the end of the week—four days’ time—to close the tontine case. After that, he would either consult Bow Street or would damn the whole matter to perdition, depending on what had transpired.

  And second, they would return to London at once, and tell no one else the truth of what had passed in Chichester.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Charles looked forward to Janey’s visits, though they came only every other day. By now, a few weeks into his recuperation, he had noticed a pattern.

  When she arrived, she stepped into the parlor and then merely stood looking around. Not as if she were evaluating it for items to be stolen and sold—of which there were few, and not very desirable at that. She appeared instead to be settling herself. Here I am, then; this is a nice place to be.

  After that, she sat on a tufted footstool, wiggling her feet. Her fingertips, poking always from heavy knitted fingerless gloves, stroked the brick and wooden chimney piece as if it were marble.

  And Charles struggled from his bedchamber to a chair near her, joining her for the conversation about Bow Street cases. It was never long enough for his taste, and not because of his devotion to his work.

  Today he made his way to the usual chair with less thumping and gracelessness than before. His broken leg was still encased in a fragile and bulky brace, but he’d better learned how to compensate for it. In fact, he had washed and shaved and dressed in an almost normal manner—save for the slit-in-half trousers he had to wear.

  “I’m getting pretty good at hopping, don’t you think?” he said by way of greeting. “Hullo, Janey.”

  She snapped him a gesture that he supposed was a greeting of her own. “Feelin’ better today, eh? You’ll be running in the Derby soon.”

  Charles laughed. “So I might. Why not aim high?”

  Janey grinned. “And how’s Miss Benton?” She always asked after Cass. Always with the formality of a last name, too. Charles wondered if she thought of him as Mr. Benton, or if she’d come to regard him as Charles, as he encouraged.

  “She’s run off to Chichester with the nobs for a few days,” he answered. “Part of a case she’s working.”

  “Coo! She’ll tell us some good tales when she’s back.” Janey snapped her fingers. “’Fore I forget, I brought you a gift today.”

  “News?”

  “Aye, that. But also . . .” She stood and unwound a length of cloth from about her waist. He’d thought it was a drab-colored pelisse, but when she shook it out, what he’d taken for sleeves were revealed to be legs. Trouser legs.

  Handing it over, she explained, “You’ll be on your feet soon and need something you haven’t cut to bits.”

  He was strangely touched. “You brought me trousers.” He rubbed the cloth between his fingers. It was good quality.

  “Should be just your size.” She winked. “I’m ever so good at sizing up a fellow.”

  His face heated. “Did you—how much do I—”

  “I didn’t steal them,” she sniffed, plumping onto the footstool again. “And you don’t need to pay for them.”

  “I can’t take a gift. You’ve helped me so much.”

  She tipped her head. “Helpin’ you’s got me out of paying a fin
e. So, this is my fine. Spent it on you instead of Fox.”

  No one ever gave him gifts except Cass, and he was all too aware that anything one of the Bentons spent came out of the pocket of the other. Not that this had ever stopped him from dipping into hers. He cast a guilty look at the washstand, where some few coins remained from the wages Cass had given him. He wished he could remember what he’d done with his own wage for that week of work with Northbrook.

  “I . . .” He set the trousers aside. “Thank you. That’s very—I—thank you.”

  Janey gave him a short little nod, her cheeks pink. “Welcome.”

  And then she passed along her news, beginning with the Watch off Hart Street. She had a friend who worked the streets nearby, but never Hart. “Felix wouldn’t know her to look at her,” Janey explained. “So she acted like she’s a country girl and asked him for help.”

  Entrapment. It gladdened Charles’s heart. “Did you have to pay her?”

  Janey pursed her lips. “Bartered, like. She was doing something she oughtn’t, and it got her in a scrape, and I got her out.”

  “You did her a favor, and she did one back.”

  “Ex-actly,” Janey said with relish.

  “But she didn’t do a favor for you,” Charles pointed out. “She did one for Bow Street.”

  Janey set a hand to her hip, though the effect was dampened by the thick swaddles of clothing she wore. “And ain’t I Bow Street while you’re in that bed? Or chair.”

  This was true, and a truth of a sort that made Charles’s mind reel. “You’re right,” he said, and she gratified him with her lovely crooked smile.

  So it was that this Mags, whom Charles had never met, caught Felix in a net. And one of the other Runners—“that nice Irish man, Mr. Lilac”—wrapped everything up.

  “Admirable,” Charles said. “That’s really well done. Lovely work.” But then he realized: “Does that hurt your business, having that case closed? The bawdy houses hereabouts can’t be happy with you for ending their supply of girls.”

  Janey set her narrow jaw. “There’s always a supply of girls. I just want them to be girls who wants the work.”

  He had to ask. “And what about you? Do you . . . want the work?” It had never bothered him that she sold her body, but it certainly had occupied his thoughts.

  She tilted her head, thinking, then said, “I liked this better. Easier to rile a man than please him. ’Sides, I’ve never been in one of the houses. I work for myself.” She winked.

  He coughed.

  “Need a handkerchief?” She pulled one of her endless supply of embroidered silks from a pocket in her skirt. Her outermost skirt, judging from the swaddled breadth of her.

  “Not one of those,” he admitted. “I’d feel like an arse coughing into something worth more than my dinner.”

  “And you would be,” Janey confirmed. “Bits of lace, squares of silk—pooh.” Her expression indicated she’d restrained herself from using stronger language. “What good are they? Can’t eat ’em. They don’t keep you warm.”

  “I can’t say,” Charles replied. “But everyone wants them. You do a good trade.”

  “Aye, they’re easy to pinch. That is . . . I imagine as they would be. I only sell bits I finds on the ground.”

  Charles laughed. “Janey, please. Give me credit for more intelligence than that.”

  She looked merry. “I give you credit for doing your job, and so I won’t admit nothing. Doin’ what I oughtn’t is what led me here.”

  “Are you sorry?” Charles thought better of the question almost at once; some things a man didn’t want answered. “I’ve an idea. Ring for the landlady, will you?”

  Mrs. Jellicoe appeared, gray-haired and stern, looking suspiciously at Janey. “You remember my associate from Bow Street,” Charles said grandiosely, and the lady relaxed.

  “We should like a pot of chocolate,” Charles told her. “Do you know where one can be bought?”

  Mrs. Jellicoe brightened. “Coffee shop the next street over sells chocolate. I could have you a pot in a trice.”

  “You are very good. Ah . . . Janey, look away, would you?”

  He fished in his purse for one of Cass’s coins. They’d hung around longer than they usually did, as he was trapped in bed and unable to spend.

  Just as well. He’d no idea where his money went, usually. Wherever it went, he didn’t miss the spending of it.

  Mrs. Jellicoe took the coin with a nod and a curious glance at Janey, who was studying the ceiling as if erotic drawings were pasted across it.

  “As if I don’t know where your purse is,” she scoffed, still looking at the ceiling even after the landlady had departed. “I’d ’ve had it off you the second I got here if I wanted to.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She tipped her head down, setting one of the scarves about her head to swinging. “I’m a Runner now, or close as a mort can be. I would unt steal from you.”

  Charles thought about this. “Thanks,” he said.

  Mrs. Jellicoe returned a few minutes later with a pot of chocolate and two cups he recognized as her best. “I’ll be fetching the pot back later,” she said. “You enjoy, now.”

  She settled the dishes on a small table that was not quite within reach of Charles’s chair. Once she left again, he had to rise, drag the chair and his broken leg, and then thump everything down together.

  Janey watched this whole process, mystified.

  Charles poured out two cups of the rich, dark liquid. “To your good health.” He extended a cup to her.

  She crept from her footstool, took the cup in both hands, and stared solemnly into its depths. “Why? What’s this?”

  “Chocolate.” Charles breathed in the scent, rich and bitter and sweet at once. “It’s better than a silk handkerchief. You can drink it. It’ll keep you warm.”

  Satisfied, she returned to her seat and took a sip. After a moment, she looked up from the cup at him with something like wonder. And then she smiled, and it was worth every penny and more to place that cup in her hands. “Thanks,” she said simply, an echo of his own wondering word from before.

  “So. What’s the surgeon say about that leg?” She waggled her brows.

  Flirt when you have a broken right leg, be impotent forever. Cass had said that. She was joking—he’d known that, though a little corner of him wondered.

  “He’ll return to check it tomorrow. If it’s healing well, perhaps I’ll get a cane soon instead of this brace.” He loved the idea of a cane. He’d be able to shuffle downstairs more easily; he’d be able to return to work. He couldn’t pound the streets, but there was much to do in the magistrate’s court itself.

  God, he missed the work.

  But he wouldn’t see Janey anymore, at least not like this. Sitting on the footstool as if they were a family, with chocolate on her lip and the devil in her eyes. And God, he would miss that, too.

  “You’ll be back at work soon,” she said. “Surgeon’ll know what’s what.”

  “The thing is, Janey,” Charles began delicately. “When I’m back at Bow Street, I’ll have to—that is, you won’t be able to be with me like . . .”

  “Sure we can be together, whenever you like. You take it out, I slip it in. Simple.”

  Oh, the devil was in her eye now. She was laughing at him as he spluttered for words. “I wasn’t talking about that. God. Tempting woman. But then—wait, are you offering to . . .”

  “Don’t you want me to?”

  He shook his head, knowing that he meant yes. “What if we—no, Janey. We can’t. A Runner and an informant? No one would ever confide in you again. And it’s not as if I could marry you, is it?”

  “Marry me!” she hooted.

  Charles was silent.

  Her jaw went slack. “Marry . . . me? You were thinking of it?”

  He’d been thinking of her for months. Ages. He hadn’t considered marriage before, but—why not? “I’ve been thinking of it, yes.”


  “I’m not the sort that marries.”

  “I didn’t think I was either.”

  She still looked dumbstruck, pulling at her fingerless gloves as if she were chilled. “I work every day for my bread. I can’t afford extras.” She eyed Charles narrowly. “I can’t afford you.”

  “Think it over,” he said.

  She snapped to. “Think over what? All I heard you say was that you couldn’t marry me, not that I ever hinted at wanting such a thing.” Her posture was tight, her voice hard. “I have to go.” In a whirl of skirts, she was standing; she was already at the door.

  He cursed his broken leg; he could hardly rise in time to stop her. “When will you be back?”

  “When time allows. I’m a busy mort, Charles Benton. I’m a whore and cutpurse and informant and clothes seller and—”

  “You’re marvelous,” Charles blurted. “That’s you in a word.”

  Her mouth made an O. “I have to go,” she said again. Then she darted across the room to him, took his shoulders, and tipped up her face to press a quick kiss to his lips. She was all faded flowers and mint, chocolate and fresh tobacco and yesterday’s bread, the story of everywhere she’d been that day. He wanted nothing more than to accompany her wherever the day took her next.

  “I really do have to go,” she blurted, then rushed for the door. She paused on the threshold but did not turn and look back, and then she truly was gone.

  Charles fell into his chair, heart thundering, cursing the broken leg that prevented him from following her. The broken leg that came from nothing but his own foolishness.

  Yet he still tasted Janey’s kiss on his lips. And he had the feeling that for the first time in a great while, he’d said and done something wise.

  Chapter Fourteen

  One day of the four had been lost due to travel back to London.

  Another day had been tossed away at the theater, while Cass tried to chase down clues related to a Bow Street case. Not that George had minded accompanying her, because he didn’t mind accompanying her anywhere. And they’d progressed on the tontine case too, sending and receiving more messages with Callum Jenks and Angelus than George had ever dashed off in one day.