The Likelihood of Lucy

by Jenny Holiday

  Trevor shrugged. “Well, I’m told that the chef is planning to marry the art of French pastry with the tradition of English tea sandwiches in a way that will astound us.” Blackstone smiled. Catharine did not. “So I suspect it is their loss.”

  “They canceled their plan because they said the Jade isn’t respectable.”

  Both men turned to her with their full attention.

  “We were going for an air of mystery,” Blackstone said. “We don’t want to become Almack’s.”

  “What else did they say?” Trevor asked.

  “They said they had heard the place was managed by a female of loose morals.”

  Trevor stood, the same rage he’d felt when Galsmith set upon Lucy at the opening forcing him up out of his chair.

  “Which is ridiculous, of course,” Catharine went on, her tone artificially gay. “Utter nonsense.”

  “The question is, where did they hear it?” asked Blackstone. “Certainly the loss of one tea party isn’t going to make any difference, but if the rumor is pernicious and really takes hold, we could indeed have a problem.”

  “I tried to find out, but when I inserted myself into the conversation, they grew quiet.” She grinned. “Perhaps because I am known for my loose morals.”

  Trevor appreciated that she was trying to lighten the mood, but he could not join in her laughter. “I’m not planning to do anything about it.”

  “Of course not! What would you do? Sack Lucy? Ha! I’d ruin the place myself if you did.”

  Her smile had faded, and Trevor wasn’t sure if she were still jesting. But it was gratifying, somehow, to see how quickly Lucy had inspired loyalty in his friends.

  “No,” said Blackstone. “Not yet anyway.”

  He looked sharply at the earl. Perhaps he needed to revise that thought. “Not ever.”

  “All I’m saying is that we should keep our ears open, manage the situation. The investors won’t let you ruin the place.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Blackstone held his palm up in a caricature of surrender. “Good Lord, man! No, that is not a threat. I just want to make sure you protect what you’ve worked so hard to build.”

  “Of course,” he said, embarrassed at having reacted so zealously. This was the second time in recent days he had rashly accused his friend of threatening him. And Blackstone was right. The Jade was the culmination of years of struggle, of willing himself out of one life and into another. “You’re correct. We’ll watch the situation.”

  “You must tell Lucy, though,” said Catharine. “I admit I wanted to speak to you alone first, and perhaps we needn’t tell her all the details. But she deserves to know.”

  She deserves to know she’s a threat to the place she helped build? No, that was not happening. But Trevor just smiled blandly. “Of course. I’ll tell her when the time is opportune.”

  …

  “Mrs. Greenleaf?”

  It still sounded odd to hear herself addressed with the honorific of a married woman, but Lucy knew how to play her role. “Yes, what is it?”

  The maid, apparently, still did not know how to play hers. There had better be a good reason the girl had made the journey upstairs in her flour-dusted apron. Lucy raised her eyebrows. The girl caught on and sank into an exaggerated curtsy. Lucy had worked herself to the bone trying to train the servants to strike just the right note in their interactions with the guests. But perhaps she shouldn’t hold the girl to the same standards as she would the parlor maids. Normally, she wouldn’t be interacting with guests at all.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but room 203 is ringing, and we haven’t any footmen to answer.”

  Lucy had to refrain from pounding her head on the desk in frustration. “And where have the footmen gone?”

  “You told them to go with her ladyship when she went out to the shops.”

  Lucy had been delighted when the dowager Marchioness of Ossington, a quirky matriarch who made no secret of her distaste for her son’s new wife, had arrived in town for a month, declaring she simply could not bear to stay under the same roof as the current marchioness, who had apparently imposed all sorts of blasphemous modernizations on the family’s town home. If they could attract the aristocracy—even if only the elderly, cranky sort—it would be very good for business.

  “You told them to do whatever she wanted. But you also said the maids should only go into the rooms to clean and that footmen should always answer summons. So we didn’t know what to do.”

  “And the marchioness needed all of the footmen to attend her shopping trip?”

  The maid shrugged but at least had the sense to look embarrassed.

  Lucy shut her accounts book. “Very well, I will answer their call myself.”

  The girl’s mouth widened in surprise.

  It was Lucy’s turn to shrug. “If there isn’t a footman to be found, what choice do we have? We could send a parlor maid, but it might as well be me.” She didn’t tell the girl that she had a passing thought that perhaps she should summon Trevor. But she just as quickly dismissed it. Trevor had taken her on as manager to solve problems at the hotel—not to turn to him every time something got complicated. And a dearth of footmen was hardly worthy of his attention.

  If the guests in room 203 were surprised that a woman answered their call, they didn’t show it. They also didn’t seem to register that she was dressed in a regular day dress and not one of the uniforms the Jade’s female staff wore. They merely asked her to tidy up and proceeded to ignore her as they spoke—in Danish.

  Lucy was so startled when she realized that they were speaking one of the foreign languages she knew that she almost dropped the stack of dishes she was gathering and greeted them in their mother tongue. She checked herself just in time. Servants didn’t converse with guests. They answered when spoken to, but they certainly didn’t initiate conversations solely because they wanted to practice their Danish. A pity, though. It wasn’t as if a London governess ever got a chance to exercise her rusty Danish.

  Still, what a pleasure to move quietly around the room and listen to the sounds rolling off their tongues, words that began as only vaguely familiar gradually taking shape into specific meanings as the language she hadn’t used in years came back to her.

  The older of the two men tinkered with a clock and, as he worked, he spoke of a woman named Margit. The way he talked about her, with such sadness and in the past tense, made Lucy suspect she was dead.

  “We do this for Margit,” the other man said. “The last one, for your baby girl.”

  “I will do it myself,” said the older man. “Don’t forget. I will do it, and then we will go home.”

  The younger shook his head. “The best option is gift.”

  Strange that he would lapse into English there. But before she could puzzle out why, the older man objected. “No. Too slow. I want to watch him die. I want to look into his eyes as he takes his last breath and see him repent for what he did to Margit. What he did to Denmark.”

  Lucy only partially succeeded in stifling a gasp. Turning away, she prayed they hadn’t interpreted the strangled cough she had manufactured to cover it as a sign she’d understood them. Mind churning, she busied herself making up the bed. She must have misunderstood. She was generally very good with foreign languages—understanding and retention came easy to her—but in this case she must be mistaken about what she thought she heard.

  “You should have let me kill one of them at the party,” said the younger man.

  Dear God. Lucy’s heart beat so hard she was afraid the men would see it, and she struggled not to drop a teacup she had been moving to a tray.

  “No.” The older man spoke sharply. “He wasn’t at the party. Even if he had been, I have told you. The timing is essential. Why would you think I would deviate from the timing this last time? I have told you, there is poetic justice in the timing.”

  “But since there’s no audience to appreciate your poetry, what does it matter?”

>   “It matters.” The older man’s tone was dismissive, almost as if he was disgusted by his colleague.

  Lucy tried to prolong her stay in the room by taking as long as possible to put the bed to right—which wasn’t hard, as fear had made her clumsy—but the men didn’t say anything else. She finished and turned toward the door, trying to contain a growing panic when the older man startled her with a simple, “Miss?”

  “Yes, sir?” Turning to face him, she dropped a curtsy and gazed at the floor. It was absurd, but for some reason she didn’t want him to see her face.

  “Please may we order some lunch? It doesn’t matter what. Something substantial.”

  She forced herself to smile. “Yes, of course.”

  “With whiskey,” said the younger.

  Lucy didn’t miss the older man scowling his disapproval at the younger, but when he didn’t voice any objection, she nodded and said, “I’ll send someone right up, sirs. Will there be anything else?” She willed them not to have another task for her. She had to get out of here. Then she had to figure out how to get these men out of her hotel.

  “No. Just lunch.”

  It was all she could do not to turn and run.

  …

  Trevor was hiding.

  It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, and he was cloistered in his apartment.

  He was completely caught up on his business correspondence.

  He had created a proposal for Blackstone’s perusal, should his friend care to invest in the Cornwall mines along with him.

  He had made a list of every possible source of the rumor that Catharine had reported, cross-checking her account of the musicale’s guests with a copy of Debrett’s.

  He had stared into space for a very long time trying to puzzle out who would want to murder Lieutenant Harry Hill and Captain William Gelling—and why.

  His accounts on all his ventures were in order.

  Hell, his rooms had never been tidier. He’d stopped short of making the bed, but that was only on principle—the rest of the place sparkled.

  He’d even read another volume of Wollstonecraft—the bloody letters from Scandinavia.

  Yes, it was time to face facts. He was hiding.

  Hiding from Lucy, to be more precise.

  Because he didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.

  Everything was a deuced mess—and he wasn’t even talking about the mysterious rumor Catharine had reported. He kept trying to passively review the facts, as he did when considering a potential investment or when working through a mission with Blackstone. Fact number one: something had happened to him at the Jade’s opening party, something that had nothing to do with Galsmith. He’d seen Lucy sweeping across the ballroom, a jade come to life in her green silk, and the sight of her had made him wonder, for the first time in his life, if perhaps he could be happy. Not merely satisfied, in the way his amassing of assets made him. Not triumphant, as he felt having achieved success in the eyes of the very society that had stepped over him, unseeing, as he’d wallowed in the gutter as a child.

  Actually happy. At ease. Able to breathe.

  As if he deserved her.

  But then, of course, a minor hell had broken loose. Which led him to fact number two: instead of behaving like a man who might deserve a woman like Lucy, he’d gone halfway toward ruining her that night against a fence in the kitchen garden. He’d left her with twigs in her hair, for God’s sake. No matter how high he climbed in the world, no matter how much money he amassed, he was never going to be good enough for Lucy. She knew where he’d come from, who he really was. She deserved better—which was fact number three, the one that trumped everything.

  He’d known, after the initial euphoria of their interlude had worn off, that remorse would find him. And it had. But the English language fell short, for remorse, regret, those words were too mild. Other, more potent—more accurate—words swirled around his head, tormenting him with their veracity. Debaucher. Reprobate.

  It had been one thing when they’d kissed that first time in the garden, or in the kitchen when they were sampling menus. Those encounters seemed almost innocent compared to what had happened at the party. Then, unlike the other times, he’d known exactly what he was doing. It hadn’t been a question of getting carried away in the heat of the moment. No, he’d wanted to mark her as his. What the hell was wrong with him? Lucy had spent her life trying to escape men who meant her ill. Her mother’s customers, prepared to buy the innocence of a child. Viscount Galsmith, preying on his employee, the woman charged with educating his daughters. And now, him, taking advantage of the woman who made the hotel run. His oldest friend. The one he had pledged to help.

  He’d spent much of his life trying to protect Lucy. From starvation, from death. From men who would do her harm. The bitter truth was that he was no better than the men he sought to protect her from.

  The person Lucy needed protection from most was him. The overgrown gutter rat turned spy. The man who had exchanged slinking around the gutters for…slinking around the gutters.

  When he closed his eyes, he could still see her in his mind’s eye as she had been last night. Beautiful Lucy, breathtaking, exhilarated from her political salon. From her time spent with people utterly unlike him. Intellectual men whose minds crackled with ideas. He could just imagine her going toe to toe with them, her amber eyes flashing as someone dared to suggest that Rousseau’s ideas about the education of women contained even a single crumb of merit.

  He’d been consumed, when he’d entered her rooms after her salon, with showing her that there was more to life than ideas.

  And apparently he had succeeded, because when he’d told her—nay, taunted her—that his fourth tattoo was somewhere only his lovers got to see, something had changed in her eyes. It had been one thing for him to tease her. Ungentlemanly? Yes. Irresponsible, reproachable? Yes, all these things and more. But it had been safe, in a way, because Lucy was never going to marry anyone. Her devotion to Mary, and to the idea of independence, made sure of it.

  But, to his astonishment, her eyes had clouded over as she bit down on her lip. Her gaze fell, roaming his legs. Desire might have darkened her eyes, but it didn’t slow her keen mind. He could practically hear the wheels turning in there as she tried to work out where the mystery tattoo might lie. Then—God help him—those gorgeous amber eyes had come to rest on his cock. And stopped there for long enough that it couldn’t have been an accident. When she lifted her gaze and met his eyes again, she’d been unashamed. No hint of the blush that had painted her cheeks so many times these recent days.

  The game had changed last night. Lucy had taken control of the play.

  And his mature, noble response? To run and hide.

  But hiding didn’t quite do justice to what was happening inside his apartment, inside his heart. Torture might be the more apt word. Because, in addition to seeing her, he could close his eyes and still feel her gentle, inquisitive hand stroking his chest. Gentleness giving way then to brazenness as her eyes raked over him, searching for the last tattoo.

  He had no idea how to fix things. How to go on. He’d been acting irrationally, hoping that if he just avoided her long enough, he could forget the image of her writhing beneath his fingers, pleasure and shock together painted across her gorgeous face as she surrendered to her release. That his mind would let go of the image of her pink mouth, falling open in astonishment as she took in the sight of his tattoos. But no. The images had not faded. If anything, he’d driven himself mad remembering, revisiting them again and again, sometimes allowing his base mind to revel in a version where he’d taken his pleasure, too, where, somehow, in some impossible fantasy version of events, she’d wrapped her legs around him and he’d sunk into her with a groan of pleasure.

  He moved to the open window and breathed in the heavy warm summer air. Unlike Lucy, he’d never had any particular fondness for the outdoors, but he felt the pull now of escape—from the opulence of the hotel and from the exquisite
tyranny of Lucy’s presence in it.

  “Damn.” He pounded his fist on the windowsill. He was smarter than this. Avoidance was not going to work indefinitely. It was the strategy of an immature coward. He needed to talk to her, to apologize. It was the only way to put the past behind them and move forward. He was acting like a petulant child, one who believes if he doesn’t see a problem, it doesn’t exist.

  A tentative knock at the door interrupted his self-recrimination. “Trevor?”

  Well, handily, it seemed his problem was knocking at his door.

  He cursed again but under his breath this time. All right. Time to face her. He strode across the room and yanked open the door—probably a little too vehemently, judging by her surprised expression.

  God, she was beautiful. The handful of times he’d been forced to leave the hotel in the past three days, he’d done so through the kitchen, knowing he would be safe among the crowd there. She’d been there twice, working at her small desk in the corner. But he’d taken care not to spare her more than a cursory glance. He hadn’t wanted to look at her. To really see her.

  This was why. The mass of contradictions that was Lucy was almost too much to bear. Strong but vulnerable. Confident but uncertain. The woman who blushed but then looked at his cock as though nothing could cow her. Though he couldn’t have articulated it then, this was why he’d arranged her escape from Seven Dials. He couldn’t live with the contradictions. He’d wanted her to be strong and confident. Happy. Even if she had somehow managed to escape her mother’s fate, she was never going to be those things—not entirely, not unreservedly—in Seven Dials, where life was all about survival, leaving no room for happiness.

  She caught her lower lip with her top teeth. There was one more contradiction—innocent and wanton. Even as his breath quickened, his renegade mind imagining those were his teeth scraping along the rosy pink flesh of her lip, the better part of him recognized that it was time to face up to the consequences of his actions. To apologize and figure out a way to move ahead. For the sake of the Jade, if not for his own sanity.