The Likelihood of Lucy

by Jenny Holiday

  “Mrs. Burnham runs a charity school,” Emily explained, as if Lucy hadn’t already heard all about the scandalous Viscountess of Vice and her reforming husband. She had allegedly been working as a high-priced lady of the evening before her interests turned to education, though Lucy knew enough not to believe the gossip that trickled down from the grand houses in which she had worked.

  “I can sympathize,” said Lucy. “I was until very recently a governess.”

  “Were you? I suddenly find myself in need of a Latin teacher. I don’t suppose you read Latin? Can I lure you away from the Jade with a promise to double your salary?” Mrs. Burnham laughed again, signaling that she was jesting. How curious to meet someone so outwardly and overtly happy.

  Lucy couldn’t help but smile. “I do speak Latin. And French, and a few other assorted languages I’ve picked up over the years. Languages are a particular interest of mine.”

  “Very impressive,” said Mrs. Burnham. “Well, if you ever change your mind, I can come up with any number of orphans who could benefit from instruction in assorted languages.” Lucy hadn’t formed a reply before the woman went on, apparently not feeling the need for a segue of any sort. “I can’t help noticing that you’re wearing a jade ring on a chain around your neck. A display of loyalty to your place of employment?”

  Lucy fingered the stone. She’d worn it for so long that it felt like part of her—she hardly noticed it. And it was almost always hidden beneath modest attire suitable for a governess—or the manager of a hotel—so it was rarely remarked upon. “No, merely a coincidence.”

  “Really,” said Catharine in a tone that suggested skepticism. “Can you swim?”

  “No,” said Lucy, grasping the post tighter and taking a moment to adjust to the abrupt change of subject. “I never had the chance to learn.”

  “Miss Greenleaf grew up with Trevor,” Emily said as if this explained everything. Lucy couldn’t help but notice how these women and Trevor all called each other by their Christian names. And though they didn’t extend the same convention to Lord Blackstone, they did drop the “Lord.” What would it be like to be part of such a group of friends? Mary Wollstonecraft had enjoyed close friendships and seemed to take comfort in them. Lucy had never quite managed to form such strong attachments. It was easier to do so, she supposed, when one’s work situated one in an intellectual community of writers and thinkers. Perhaps working at a school like Mrs. Burnham’s would approximate that.

  “Did she?” said Mrs. Burnham, looking at Lucy as if she were a specimen under a magnifying glass. Then, without trying to disguise her interest, she dropped her eyes to the jade.

  “I can teach you to swim if you like,” Emily said.

  Catharine relaxed her scrutiny. “Yes! In addition to working tirelessly to rehabilitate my reputation in polite society, the countess has taught me to swim! I’m not very accomplished, but I can paddle along well enough.” She demonstrated a lopsided stroke, and both ladies laughed in delight. Righting herself, she extended her arms and said, “Emily, take my hands, and we’ll hold her up while she floats.”

  “Thank you, no,” said Lucy, suddenly uncomfortable. What was she doing, loitering about in a lake with these two fine ladies? “I’ve a terrible lot of work to do.”

  “Work?” echoed Mrs. Burnham, looking at Emily. “What can she mean? Isn’t this meant to be a little holiday before the big opening?”

  “Ah!” said Emily. “But the big opening won’t plan itself, will it? In fact, I’m guilty of having an ulterior motive for asking you to join us. We’re going to have a grand opening party.”

  “How exciting!” said Mrs. Burnham. “What are we doing gadding about in the water when there’s a gala to plan?” Without any regard for propriety, she levered herself out of the lake, raining down water from her drenched chemise onto Emily and Lucy. “Being a pioneering reformer is all fine and good, but it does leave one terribly in want of a good party!”

  …

  “There has been another murder,” Blackstone said as the men settled into the library with glasses of brandy. “Well, not a new one, but I’ve uncovered another unsolved case in which an officer was brutally killed.”

  “It could be a coincidence,” Trevor said. Before the war ended, his missions with Blackstone generally involved tracking French spies. He was unaccustomed to turning his attention to mysteries at home.

  “I might agree, except that they died the same day, but a year apart. Both murders were committed on the third of September—one in 1812, the other, 1813.”

  “All right then.” As usual, Blackstone’s intuition that there was more to the first murder than met the eye had been correct. “Who is this fellow?”

  “Lieutenant Harry Hill.”

  “Was he in the same regiment as Gelling?”

  “No,” Blackstone said. “I had hoped as much. Then we might have been able to turn up a common enemy, and that would be that. The next step is to discover if there are any connections between the two men.”

  “That will take some time if we continue approaching men who knew them one by one.” They needed a cover every time an agent spoke to a person of interest—just like Trevor had pretended to be a friend of Gelling’s when visiting his former superior officer. Even with an intelligence ring at Blackstone’s fingertips, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  “That is correct, unless there were a way to invite all the members of their two regiments that we can find to a seemingly innocent event. A party, say.”

  Trevor, who had been looking at the fire, whipped his gaze to the spymaster, embarrassed at the sharp pang of betrayal his friend’s words brought forth.

  When he didn’t answer right away, Blackstone went on. “If we merely invited all the men we can find in London who were officers in both regiments in recent years, it wouldn’t be that many. To hear the ladies tell it, it’s going to be a crush, so a few more guests would hardly be noticed. You and Catharine and I can divide them up and make a point of speaking to them all.”

  It was the perfect plan. It would save them weeks of work. And why had he been so naive to have thought that just because he told his friend there would be no spying in the hotel that his wish would be respected? Blackstone was spymaster first and foremost.

  “It’s my hotel, too,” Blackstone said quietly.

  “Are you threatening me?” Trevor asked, incredulity suddenly inspiring him to find his voice. “I wasn’t going to say no, you know.” How could he? His starry-eyed desire to keep the hotel pristine was nothing compared to the murder of servicemen.

  “I am not threatening you,” Blackstone said, calm in the face of Trevor’s rising ire. “I merely meant that I have a financial stake in the place. I don’t want it overrun with espionage any more than you do.”

  “Fine,” Trevor said, ashamed at having the earl see him so overcome with emotion. They’d faced many a battle together, literal and metaphorical, and this had him tied up in knots? Desperate for a new topic of conversation—he couldn’t bear to discuss the details of how the mission would unfold at the Jade’s opening party just now—he cast his mind for something else to talk about.

  Blackstone must have sensed his need because he cleared his throat and said, “You read my report on Miss Greenleaf? I trust everything was satisfactory?”

  “No, everything was not satisfactory,” Trevor said, seizing on the opening and pulling the letter in question from his pocket. “This is all you could find out?”

  “You wound me!” the earl jested, sipping his brandy. “I thought that was rather a lot given the time frame.”

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but I knew she was a governess.” He looked for what felt like the hundredth time at the parchment his friend had delivered yesterday. “First post 1806, the home of Mr. Giles Middleton, gentleman. Father to two daughters. Second post 1807-8, Baron St. Andrew—she breaks into the aristocracy, if the minor sort. Et cetera, et cetera. I need to know the name of her
last employer. Why isn’t it on this list?”

  “Since she’s just come from it, I assumed you would already know, so I didn’t bother extending my enquiry to the present day. You spoke about her recent dismissal as if you were familiar with the details surrounding it.”

  Trevor wanted to shout his frustration but checked himself. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption on Blackstone’s part. “Well, I’m not.”

  “The name of her last employer will be easy enough to glean. I’ll look into it when we return to town. Though I have to say, I don’t know why you don’t just ask her.”

  “I have.” He left off saying the rest. She evades the question. Something happened to her that I don’t want to know about. Something happened to her that I must know about. “And anyway, you’re the expert—you’re the spy.”

  “So are you.”

  “No, I’m a pawn. I do what you tell me to do. You’re the master.”

  “In the case of Miss Greenleaf, I must insist it’s you who is the expert. You rigged it so she was taken away to another life.”

  “Ha!” He could not contain the bark of shocked laughter. Apparently his friend had done more digging than Trevor had realized. “See—you know everything.”

  “Only because she told me. It was no great triumph of espionage.”

  Blackstone might as well have struck him, so surely had the declaration knocked the wind of out him. She would tell her secrets to a man she’d only just met, but not to him? “Well, maybe finding out more won’t be hard, after all. Perhaps she’ll just tell you.” He couldn’t contain the bitterness—it seeped out in his words.

  Blackstone ignored the barb. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” he asked, trying to tamp down the anger that both today’s conversations with Blackstone had sparking in his chest.

  “Send Miss Greenleaf away. Arrange things so she was chosen.”

  “Because her mother was about to sell her to the highest bidder.” He spoke quietly, but he felt as if his head was going to explode. Still, it wasn’t Blackstone’s fault. None of it was. The spymaster was just doing his job. Trevor forced himself to temper his tone. “She was eleven,” he said quietly.

  Blackstone topped up Trevor’s drink. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you. You know that.”

  It was true. He had no greater ally. Or, to put a finer point in it, he had no other ally. He had the investors, to be sure, but they cared only about their return. And as Emily was so frequently pointing out, he had to tread carefully with them. Blackstone was ruthless, but he wasn’t heartless.

  “I just think you should ask yourself why this woman has you so tied up in knots,” his friend said after a moment of silence.

  “If that’s how you’re reading the situation, then you’re mistaken. Sorely mistaken.”

  Blackstone just nodded. As if he understood.

  As if anyone could understand.

  Even though he had not managed to escape to the estate without Lucy, Trevor had succeeded in avoiding her company as much as possible while they were in residence. It was childish, he would admit, but he still felt that after their recent carnal encounters, some distance between them was for the best. And even if they hadn’t those awkward encounters hanging between them, she was leaving the hotel in six months. So it was best not to get too cozy—start as you mean to go on and all that.

  Avoiding Lucy had proven surprisingly easy, though. So much so that Trevor was beginning to wonder if Lucy was avoiding him. The women spent all their time planning the Jade’s opening gala. It didn’t matter if they were inside taking tea or outside hiking the estate, all they talked about was the party. Would they allow the waltz, that scandalous new dance from Austria? (Yes, of course—they wanted everyone talking about them, didn’t they?) Would they serve ham at the dinner buffet like everyone else did, or could they think of something that would amaze people? (They would serve ham and squab and fish. An embarrassment of riches to compel people.) Would they invite Mr. Brummel? (Yes!) Trevor might have felt like his hotel was being taken over by an invading army, except he had to grudgingly admit they were right. They did need to open with a grand gesture. And despite the uncertainty between Lucy and him, he had confidence that with her in charge, they couldn’t fail.

  So he’d gotten the distance between them he’d been so ardently in search of. By the time their holiday was coming to an end, he was confident they would be able to let their ill-advised interludes slip into the past unremarked upon.

  Which was why it was exceedingly inconvenient to run into her at six o’clock in the morning two miles from the house on their last day at Clareford.

  The estate was blanketed in fog, and the normally salty sea air felt so thick he might have cut it with his pocketknife. So he hadn’t seen her until there she was, ten yards ahead of him on the beach, sitting on the sand staring at what would have been the ocean had the air not turned into white pea soup.

  He could have turned back. She hadn’t heard him approach, and she would never have known the difference. But to retreat seemed cowardly. To avoid was one thing, to flee, something else entirely.

  She didn’t startle as he sank into the sand next to her. She didn’t even look away from the sea as she said, “You’re up early.”

  “Some habits are impossible to break.”

  She turned then, and looked at him searchingly, as if she remembered his face and was trying to match it to a name. “I’m always up before everyone else.”

  “Yes,” he said. And though he knew she understood simply from the “yes,” he added, “When you’re sleeping on the street, you awaken early.”

  She nodded. “But it’s not a bad habit to have retained. Getting up early buys you some time to yourself.”

  “Away from your pupils, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  It tugged at Trevor to think of Lucy struggling to carve out time for herself, spending the majority of her days in service to the goals of others. “How many children did you have in your charge?” he asked.

  “Three. A four-year-old girl who was just starting with me a few hours a day, and a pair of twins a few years from their debut. They were—” She stopped herself and turned to him. “Never mind.”

  Dash it, he’d been about to get her to talk. “Lucy, why won’t you tell me about your last situation? The name of your employer?”

  “Because it would come to no good.” She shook her head slightly as she spoke. “It would only make you…”

  He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. Was she never going to finish a sentence about this topic? “What? Call out your former employer?”

  “You don’t go in for all that tonnish rubbish, if I recall.” She laughed, but there was no warmth in the sound. “I was thinking more that you might murder him in cold blood.”

  His blood did turn cold then, as he imagined offenses dire enough that she thought they might incite him to murder.

  She put her head in her hands, just for a moment, as if reproaching herself for speaking too freely. “You always did feel responsible for me for some reason. And I never thanked you.” She paused. It was probably his turn to talk, but damned if he knew what to say. She went on. “For getting me out that day, I mean, and for taking care of me in the days leading up to it.”

  “I’m not sure bringing you scraps and a dirty blanket while you hid under a bridge really qualifies as taking care of you,” he said, feeling a fraction of the panic he had that day she’d appeared under their willow tree, fleeing her mother’s planned auction. Ten pounds for two hours with a virgin. As he’d installed her under the bridge, he’d stared at a vine studded with tiny pink flowers that climbed up the bridge’s post. That vine had been an unlikely shot of beauty in such an ugly environment. Just like Lucy.

  Ten pounds was an inconceivable sum. Enough to keep Lucy and her mother in comfort for a year. So when she’d fled, she’d given up any right to go back. Her mother would never welcome her home.

&
nbsp; “I regretted that I was never able to thank you,” said Lucy, her voice thick with emotion. “Everything happened so fast. You came to get me, and we were running…”

  He closed his eyes. That day was closer to him than many more recent ones. His time on campaign on the continent seemed like a lifetime ago, but the day he orchestrated Lucy’s escape from Seven Dials could have been yesterday.

  She cleared her throat, pulling him back from his memories. She was still speaking. “And then, once I knew I was going, I couldn’t…I couldn’t…”

  “You couldn’t look back,” Trevor finished. “That’s as it should be. That’s what I wanted.”

  She bit her lip and looked as if she might cry. “I know. You wanted me to go. I merely want to say the thank-you I never got to say back then.”

  “You’re welcome,” he rasped. He was going to say more about how it hadn’t been an act of charity so much as a selfish move on his part. He’d known he couldn’t live with the alternative.

  But she wasn’t finished, so he swallowed the sentiment. Smiling at him through watery eyes, she said, “I release you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You saved me. You don’t have to keep doing it. There’s no need to feel a duty to me.”

  I don’t feel a duty to you, he wanted to protest. But his mouth wouldn’t form the lie. Because what she said was true, in a way so elemental it was pointless to protest. He was responsible for her. He always had been. It’s just the way it was.

  She smiled a little, seemingly having shaken off the heavy emotion that had been plaguing her a moment ago. “My point is, please no murder. In cold blood, or hot, or any other kind. My former employer and I had a difference of opinion, but it’s nothing you need concern yourself with.”