Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  “I am leaving now,” she said.

  “If you leave, I won’t pursue you.”

  She paused at the doorway. She wanted to look back over her shoulder, to see if he would entreat her.

  But she wouldn’t. Her valise was here, and her life was out there. Away. She had to leave before she forgot that, before she began to think it was all right to fail. Before she let him lean on her, and she leaned back. Before she began to need him so much that she couldn’t stand on her own anymore.

  “I know,” she said, and then she left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cass walked all the way from Cavendish Square to Langley Street, a thundercloud over her head and her battered old valise bumping her knees with every step. London was a city of worlds, and she hardly noticed how many of them she passed through. From the edge of Mayfair to the outskirts of Seven Dials, they were all gray and crowded and shoving.

  Every step away from George was a necessity. She’d already waited too long to take them. Still, she wasn’t prepared for the familiar sight of her lodging house when her feet finished carrying her there. She wasn’t ready to go upstairs to the set of rooms she shared with Charles.

  And she definitely wasn’t expecting, when she swung the door open, to be greeted by the sight of her brother kissing a dark-haired young woman she did not at once recognize.

  Whatever surprised sound popped from her lips, it was enough to alert the couple. Charles lifted his head. “Oh, hullo, Cass,” he said smoothly, as if she’d just stepped out of their lodgings for a few minutes to fetch a newspaper.

  “Hullo, yourself.” She entered the room fully, booting the door closed behind her. “Don’t let me spoil your fun.”

  The woman, clad in a dark blue gown, turned in Charles’s arms, revealing a light brown skin of great loveliness. “Miss Benton. I didn’t know as you were gettin’ back today.” She flashed a cheeky grin of charmingly crooked teeth.

  The grin clicked like a gear into memory. “Janey! I didn’t know you at first.”

  “Aye, I’m dressed different.” This was true. Janey was wearing enough clothes for only one person. She was in a pretty dress of blue serge, with her hair pulled back in a simple twist.

  “That, and . . . I didn’t see your face when I walked in.”

  “That, too.” Janey blushed. “This is my work dress. I’m working now.”

  “For Charles?” Cass tossed her valise into her bedchamber, then leaned on the frame of the doorway and regarded the other two with confusion.

  “No! For Fox. Had a problem with cutpurses at the theater, he did.” Janey looked pious. “Said I’d put a stop to it.”

  “I tried to work on that matter a few days ago.” Cass felt a step behind. True, she hadn’t caught anyone picking pockets, but she hadn’t expected Janey to step into the breach.

  “Be going there tonight,” Janey said. “Been a couple other nights, too. No problems while I’m keepin’ a eye on things. Fox is right happy. He’s going to give me your brother’s pay for the week. We’re partners, like.” This, for some reason, brought another dusky blush to Janey’s cheeks.

  “Ah. So you’re making sure Charles keeps his job.”

  Finally, Charles spoke, looking a little abashed. “Look here, Cass. You might as well know—I’ve asked Janey to marry me.”

  He couldn’t have surprised Cass more if he’d cut a hole in the floor for her to drop through. “And . . .” she fumbled. “And she said yes?”

  “‘Aye,’” replied Janey, “is what I said, really.”

  “Took her long enough.” Charles wrapped his arms around the young woman’s slim figure from behind, resting his chin atop her head. “Had to ask her, what? Three times?”

  “I wanted you to be sure,” answered Janey.

  “I—huh.” The whole encounter felt unreal. Cass’s gaze roved the room. Same furniture; same walls. Same crack in the ceiling plaster right by the parlor fireplace. She couldn’t have been gone that long, yet everything was different.

  “Miss Benton? You all right?” Janey asked.

  Cass shook herself. Manners, manners. “I’m fine.” She managed a smile. “Very happy for you both. And please, you must call me Cass. When do you post the banns?”

  “Soon as ever we can. This Sunday we start.” Janey looked from Cass to Charles, her expression uncertain. “For now I’d best leave.”

  “Don’t go yet. There’s plenty of time. It’s hardly evening.” Charles extended a hand. Only now did Cass realize that he was standing, which meant something had altered about his leg. It was wrapped in a contraption of hard plaster, with a cut-out space for the knee. Below the foot was a wooden block like a small patten built into the dressing.

  “Look at you, up and about.” She managed another smile. She was doing well with those. “Why, you can stand and walk.”

  “I’m getting around fine now that I’ve developed a new sort of brace.”

  “You did it yourself?”

  “The surgeon did the plastering. But I came up with this bit of wood so I can step.” He folded his arms. “You needn’t be so surprised. I am a resourceful fellow.”

  “Yes, I know it. Well, I’m moving back in, so you needn’t be too resourceful if you don’t wish.”

  “Oh. All right.” He didn’t sound relieved. He sounded surprised, as if this were a possibility that had never occurred to him, and he wasn’t pleased about it.

  Janey must have seen something strange on Cass’s face. “Really got to go. I want to be gettin’ to the theater when Jemmy does.”

  “Jemmy?” Cass was surprised. “That boy from Billingsgate?”

  “Aye, taken ’im under my wing, I have. He needed practice keepin’ a eye out for thieves. Whether he wants to be one or not.”

  “Maybe he’ll work for Bow Street one day,” Cass mused.

  Janey tugged at Charles’s arm, pulling his head down to hers, and whispered in his ear.

  “It’s fiiiiine,” replied Charles, not at all quietly. “She won’t mind.”

  Janey whispered something else, and Charles nodded. “All right, then—I’ll see you after the theaters close?” When she agreed, he kissed his betrothed upon the lips.

  “I’ll be seeing you later, then,” Janey said. “Welcome home, Miss . . . Cass.” She ducked her head and sidled out the door. Mystified, Cass waggled her fingers by way of farewell.

  When the door closed, she rounded on Charles. “What’s all this? I saw you only a few days ago, and now you’re engaged? And you can walk?”

  “And I’m going back to work.” He beamed. “I’ll be back at Bow Street on Monday, doing what I can in the courtroom.”

  Cass ground her teeth together. Somehow, she had to anchor herself.

  “I thought you’d be happy for me, Cassie. I never thought you were small-minded.”

  “No. Don’t do that. Don’t toss blame at me. Go sit in that chair and tell me what’s been happening, and don’t call me small-minded when what I am really feeling . . .” She trailed off. Was what? Was that all her hopes had dwindled away, but she’d known she could at least resume her old life? Only, that too was gone? Charles walking and Janey helping him, and the two of them to marry?

  “. . . when what I’m feeling is happy for you,” she finished. Because it was easier than saying all the rest. “Though Janey’s far too good for you.”

  “Always has been,” Charles confirmed. “Always will be. And I won’t forget it.”

  He sat not in the parlor’s best chair, but on the little footstool. His plaster-bound leg stretched out at a stern angle, taking up seemingly half the room. “Do you know, I was sitting in that chair—that very chair right there—and I asked her to marry me? Only I bungled it badly. Didn’t say what was on my mind, only some stupid words that didn’t come near the point. And there I was, injured, and she left me.”

  “What a monster,” Cass said faintly. “To walk out on an injured man.”

  “Well, she did kiss me first.”
Charles’s ears went red at the tips. “So I thought—you know, that it might turn out all right. And it did!”

  Cass said nothing. She slipped from the doorway of her own little room to put Grandmama’s miniature back on the mantel.

  This was what Grandmama had always wanted for them: a home, and the ability to rely on each other. Wasn’t it?

  “Janey’ll have an easier life than if she’s an informant, and if she still wants to sell clothes and cut purses, I don’t mind.” Charles paused, thinking. “Guess I’d rather she didn’t, ah . . . sell herself anymore. Hope she won’t if she likes being married to me.”

  “Start sentences with pronouns,” Cass snapped.

  Charles blinked at her mildly. “You’re in a bad mood.”

  “There’s that magical twin connection of ours.” She stomped across to the chair Charles had been regarding with such fond memories—the Proposal Chair, she’d now think of it—and fell into it with a huff. “So, you’re getting married. And you’re going to keep working for Bow Street.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Fox is like family.”

  “I know,” Cass groaned. She felt as if a candle inside her had been snuffed, and she couldn’t bear to think of the work awaiting them at Bow Street. Now she understood why Fox always looked so tired: a city was a heavy weight to carry.

  She’d never realized how lonely it was to carry a city, or a job. She’d thought herself independent. But was she arrogant to think so? Had George been right?

  “And that means,” Charles was saying, “that she knows me well enough to know I can’t do it on my own—or not yet. So Janey can work with me whenever she likes.”

  Cass’s mouth dropped open.

  Charles, of course, misunderstood. “There’s no shame in taking help, as long as I give it in return when I can.”

  There it was. The difference between accepting grace and living in selfishness. But where was Cass in all these plans? Discarded? Forgotten?

  “What about me?” she asked. “What am I to do?”

  Charles blinked. “Why, whatever you like.”

  He said it so simply, as if there was no question about it. Of course she must do what she liked. And for the second time that day, she had no idea what that might be.

  George had asked first. He had ruined her for a life without dreams, just by asking the question: What do you dream of, Cass?

  She’d dreamed of things going back to the way they were before she met him. When everything was fine. But nothing was the same now—not here, and not at Bow Street, and certainly not within her. And now she realized that fine wasn’t enough, and never had been. And surviving wasn’t enough; existing wasn’t enough. Being safe and warm and not going hungry—none of that was enough.

  Not even being needed or feeling that she’d helped make London safer was enough. Just because she took pride in her work didn’t mean it was the work she wanted to do. It was hard work—not in the doing, but in the imprint it left on her soul.

  Why had she thought she could return to that?

  But what else could she have done?

  “Fox really does need a woman at Bow Street,” she said slowly. “There are some cases a woman sees to the heart of in an instant. Like that business with the stolen china cups.”

  Cass had known at once that the actress’s sister was the one with the light fingers, even though the actress’s maid came in for all the blame. But you’d only to listen to the older sister’s yowlings and palpitations to know she was covering for herself. She wasn’t half the performer her sibling was, though Charles had been taken in by the long-lashed eyes and heaving bosom.

  “I’ve asked you never to mention those china cups again,” Charles said with a long-suffering expression. “And Janey wants to work with Bow Street. She’s come to like it there while she’s been helping Fox, and certainly no one knows it better from the other side of the bench.”

  Cass had to laugh at this. “It was only supposed to be her atonement for one minor offense. Now she’s taking you on for life, and Bow Street, too?”

  Charles bristled. “I’m not all that bad a catch, Cass. I’ve nice rooms and a good income. And I look all right enough. I wash, and I shave, and all that.”

  I, I, I. Perhaps he’d made a good case to Janey. But Cass’s concerns remained.

  He didn’t say Cass couldn’t live there anymore. But he was making a home and she wasn’t at the heart of it anymore. They’d always been a pair, the Benton twins, and now he would cleave to someone else.

  She was happy for him. She just hadn’t expected how alone she’d feel. Was this what most people felt like—the ones who didn’t have twins? She’d been counting on Charles, at least, to need her around. Not that she particularly enjoyed it, but the annoyance was familiar. If one of them was going to change, it ought to be her. If one of them was to move on, it should be the one who put out more effort.

  “What won’t I mind?” Cass remembered suddenly. “Janey said something in your ear, and you said it would be fine.”

  “Oh, that.” He waved a hand. “If she lives here once she and I are married.”

  “She asked if I’d mind you living with her? Your wife?” Cass had to laugh. “I think she was telling you that she’d mind you living with your spinster sister.”

  “Not at all. She loves you. Or she will, once she gets to know you like I do.” His brows knit. “Strike that. Maybe she’d better not get to know you any better.”

  “If I had anything in my pockets, I’d throw it at you. Tell me exactly what she said.”

  Charles adopted an expression of great patience. “She said she didn’t know if these lodgings would work once she and I were married, and I said it’d be fi—oh, I see what you mean. She wasn’t asking about moving in. She wondered if there’d be space enough.”

  “The two bedchambers share a wall,” Cass pointed out.

  At the same time, she and Charles shuddered. “That’s not going to work,” he said.

  Finally, he seemed to take in fully the fact of her return. “Why are you here? Did you solve that tontine case?”

  “It’s over,” she replied crisply.

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “I . . . left.”

  Charles’s mouth dropped open. “You left? Without solving a case? With wages owing you?”

  “It sounds bad when you put it like that,” she mumbled, lacing her fingers together. “But it really wasn’t. I hadn’t solved it, and I wasn’t going to solve it, and the Duke of Ardmore was going to put a halt to the case tomorrow anyway, and then Lord Northbrook was shot with an arrow, and—”

  “Wait. What?” Charles was gaping. “You accuse me of holding back information, and here you’ve got a marquess injured and a duke in a temper with you?”

  “Not with me,” she huffed. “With everything. But yes, that’s it. In essence.”

  As briefly as she could, while leaving out the passionate bits, she described the events of the past few days. Charles whistled when she concluded.

  “So there’s a case, for sure, and the duke doesn’t want it pursued? You didn’t think he might change his mind when his heir turned up with an arrow in his back?”

  “I . . . no, I didn’t think of that.” She should have thought of that. But she hadn’t been able to think about anything except George, wounded, and about getting the devil away from there before her heart was hurt just as badly.

  “But,” she excused, “we did come up with a plan. George—Lord Northbrook and I. And Angelus. And Callum and Isabel Jenks. And we can put it into practice this weekend.”

  Charles had stuck on the first part of what she’d said. “Calling him George, are you?”

  “Don’t leer. That’s disgusting.”

  “So you only respect him professionally, and you called him by his Christian name because . . . ?”

  “Stop it,” she said. “Just stop, Charles. He was shot with an arrow today, and it seems like it was half a lifetime ago,
yet I know I’ll never be able to forget it.”

  Charles’s eyes, mirrors of her own, went soft. “Cassie.” He leaned over, patted the floor. “Come sit by me.”

  “I’m not a puppy,” she grumbled, yet she went. She folded herself up on the floor, leaning against the footstool, her head against his side. Perhaps they’d leaned on each other like this before birth.

  Perhaps leaning on someone, just a bit, wasn’t so bad.

  Charles patted her on the head, almost idly. “So you got fond of him, and he got hurt, and you left. Does that make sense?”

  “No. But it’s what happened.” She squeezed shut her eyes. She’d cried over George once, for his sweet closeness and the passion that touched her heart. She wouldn’t cry again now that those things were gone. “I didn’t quit the case. I just quit him.”

  “You wanted to have him, then?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I wanted. He told me no one had ever loved him, and he was fine with that.”

  “Seems a strange thing not to be bothered by,” Charles mused.

  “And anyway, he never asked me. For anything. And he told me if I left, he wouldn’t follow.”

  “So he’s a proud fellow. Can’t say I’m surprised. But you didn’t answer me. You didn’t say whether you wanted him.”

  She waved an impatient hand. “It doesn’t matter. He said he didn’t need me. And I’m proud, too.”

  Charles’s hand paused in its idle stroking of her hair. “Ah. Right. Sorry. Men are simple creatures, and if he was sure he wanted you, he’d have said so.”

  “He did say he wanted me,” she whispered.

  Charles smacked her on the head.

  “Ow!” Crablike, she scuttled back from him on her hands and feet. “What was that about?”

  A grin spread over Charles’s face. “Cass, I never thought to say this. But you have been remarkably stupid.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if he said he doesn’t need you, but he does want you, then there’s no reason for him to be with you but . . . you. He won’t make you do favors for him, and he won’t pinch your wages, and he won’t fall off a trellis unless it’s your window he’s climbing to.”