“But I would have at least wanted to wish them well.” She stiffened visibly. “I’d grown fond of them. Did you think I wouldn’t care what happened to them?”
“It was important to give the appearance, even to the other participants in the ruse, that one of those couples was given the actual baby. You played that role for us.”
“So Fletcher, Bobby, Jennie, they all knew the plan.”
“Yes.”
“But it never occurred to you that I might wish to know, might have been able to play the part. Did you even realize that you were treating me differently from everyone else, even though I’ve been beside you this whole time?”
He looked surprised, then dismayed.
She backed away from him, pulling her dressing gown over her shoulders, until she stood at the bedside. “No, I was just a pawn in a bigger game. I lied for you, shot men for you, risked my life for you, and confided my deepest regrets to you, and not one of those things earned even a bit of your trust.”
“That’s not fair, Lucy.” Colin held his hand out in supplication. “My obligation was to the Crown.”
“And as we know, you take those obligations very seriously.” And, not having a brick at hand, she flung the pillow in his face.
* * *
An hour later, Colin was saddling a horse when Lucy came to meet him in the yard. She held a shawl tightly around her shoulders, as if it could protect her from her heart breaking. She watched silently, hoping he could not tell that she had been crying.
“I thought I would retrieve the carriage Walgrave and Edmund left in a deserted barn about five miles away. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Then I can take you to London as I promised.”
She said nothing, simply stood staring at him. She didn’t trust her words not to betray her. How could she still want to be with him, still crave his touch, when he gave more consideration to a twelve-year-old postboy and a sixteen-year-old wet nurse. Like him, she had lived through the wars, but it seemed to make no difference in whom he trusted. No, she was thankful she hadn’t told him her woes.
He adjusted the saddle, then spoke again. “Lucy, I’m not used to having to think of another person before I make decisions, and yes, I have treated you as a chess piece. But it was a mistake. I know you aren’t Octavia, that you aren’t going to betray me, but I still treated you as if you were. Can you forgive me?”
He stood, his arms slightly out from his sides, waiting. “Let me take you to London, show you the sights. You don’t even have to tell me what you need to do, but I will take you anywhere you need to go.”
“Is there another horse?” She looked past him into the stables.
“Of course. We would need a pair to drive the carriage to London.”
“Then I think I’d like to ride.”
By the time Lucy had changed into the riding habit Em had loaned her, Colin had saddled the other bay. He helped her mount. She hadn’t ridden astride since before she returned to England, and it took her a few minutes to remember her seat. But after that, she found the wind on her face a comfort.
They rode in silence, Lucy trying to sort out her own mind.
Everything she knew about Colin said that he was an honorable man—one who always kept his word—but what if his neglect of her opinion wasn’t simply an oversight? What if, without realizing it, he felt constrained by his repeated promise to stay with her as long as she wanted him?
She didn’t want to let him go, but she didn’t want him to be trapped by his words if he had reconsidered them. Aidan’s warning rung in her memory. She had to find a way to release him if he wished to be free. Without that, she would never know if he had chosen her or if circumstances had made the decision for him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Colin looked up at the red stone boardinghouse on the very edge of Mayfair in Marylebone. “I don’t understand why you won’t stay at the ducal mansion, or at Sophia’s.”
“Because we haven’t decided what we will do.” She held her reticule before her and her small valise.
“You have decided. I am accepting your decision.” He raked his hand through his hair. “But not to meet again for a fortnight seems unreasonable.”
“Nothing about this affair has been reasonable, Colin. That’s why I want the two weeks, enough time for our heads to balance our hearts. For you—for us—to weigh our duties against our desires.”
“All I’ve ever known is duty, Lucy. Perhaps it’s time for me to choose desire.”
“And if you still feel the same in two weeks, then you will know . . . as will I.”
“If you are worried about how we will live, I have some land, a house. It’s nothing like the ducal mansion, but it could be a home, if you were there.”
“I promise: I have not thought once about how we would live. I have only thought about whether you—we—can be happy together. Even in the camps, my parents delighted in each other. If—on reflection—we both determine we still wish to be together, then we will meet at noon at the British Museum. But if one of us arrives and the other is not there, then we agree to let the other go. No pursuit, no recrimination. Only a grateful acceptance of the time we had together.”
He pulled her against him and kissed her as if for the last time. “I will be there, Lucy. Nothing could keep me away. I was broken before I found you, but with you, I can be whole. I love you, Lucy. I always will. And if you don’t love me, I can love you enough for the both of us.”
She met him in a kiss that held her soul. But she could not say the words yet, not when she didn’t know whether he would truly return to her. She pressed her fingers to his lips and smiled.
Colin watched her walk away, the warmth of her fingers still a ghost on his lips.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
From the safety of a milliner’s shop, Lucy watched the street in front of her solicitor’s office. She’d paid the woman a tuppence for the privilege. She’d hoped the milliner—a wan woman with gnarled fingers—would be talkative, but she learned little besides the difficulty of acquiring good ostrich feathers. She didn’t know if her cousin knew of the codicil she carried to her aunt’s will, or even if he knew that their aunt had changed solicitors. But it seemed wise to be cautious.
Once she delivered Aurelia’s papers, she could think of her own life and how Colin might—if he wished—figure in it. Unfortunately, as yet, Lucy had been unable to deliver Aurelia’s letter to Sir Cecil Grandison. The barrister had been out of town when Lucy had first arrived in London; then, for the last two days, he had missed her visit, having been called unexpectedly to Whitehall. Even though Grandison’s wife, Calista, was gracious, Lucy had been reticent to leave the letter. Aurelia had insisted that Lucy deliver the letter into Grandison’s hand. But Calista had promised that Grandison would be present the next afternoon, and Lucy had made an appointment to meet him then. Soon, she thought with relief, her obligation would be met.
Watching through the milliner’s window, Lucy noted each person who walked by. In the better part of an hour, none looked like any of the men she’d seen with Oaf in Nell’s stable yards. Nor did anyone else appear to be watching the solicitor’s. She couldn’t wait forever, so she slipped from the milliner’s shop and crossed the street.
The door rang a bell as she entered. But the outer office was empty. Several standing desks with stools lined the room, but no clerks worked at them. The hair rose on the back of her neck, and she turned to slip out again, wishing—not for the first time that week—that she’d told Colin her troubles and her plans, and brought him with her. But she would meet him again in only two days. The thought warmed the inside of her chest.
Before she could leave, a portly man with red hair and an ill-buttoned waistcoat emerged from the back of the offices. “Ah, madam, we are here.” He waved his thick hands as he approached. “Big case in Chancery today, and the clerks have gone to record the proceedings. But we are here.”
Lucy could not avoid thinking that he was quite larg
e enough to be a we.
“Are you our client already? Or do you need our services?”
“I am already a client—or at least I’m a client of sorts.”
“Then, come, come.” He held open the low gate that led through the clerk’s room to a sitting area. “Our new partner, Mr. Rose, will assist you.”
The man’s warm smile eased her trepidations somewhat, but the ghostly emptiness of the main office still made her wary. But, she told herself, she’d been anxious for months—ever since the barn cat had drunk from her milk and then sickened and died.
“This way.”
* * *
The new partner, a bony man of indeterminate age, stood to greet her. Save for a disconcerting crop of white hair at one temple, Mr. Rose could have been thirty or fifty or half a dozen ages in-between. His skin was drawn taut across the bones of his face, making him appear formidable, though his smile seemed genuine.
At her introduction, Mr. Rose briefly looked uncomfortable. “I am glad you came on a day when the office is not busy. We have had several inquiries as to your location.”
She unconsciously looked over her shoulder.
“There now, it’s safe here. And we will provide you with an escort to your lodgings. I might not appear considerable, but I assure you I can be deadly with an umbrella.” He chuckled to himself, as he retrieved a copy of her aunt’s will.
When he had it in hand, she produced her copy of the codicil her aunt had drafted.
“Ah, yes, this is very helpful indeed. It clarifies some ambiguity that might have caused trouble in Chancery. But of course that would only have mattered if someone were to dispute her will. With this, however, your aunt’s will is quite clear: you inherit her settlement. Quite a tidy sum of two thousand pounds per annum, the bulk of which . . .”
“I’m aware of the bequest. Your partner Godfrey read us the will shortly after my aunt’s death.”
“Godfrey?” Mr. Rose’s skin pursed at the edges of his eyes. “I have only recently purchased a share in this firm, so I am perhaps unaware of all the former partners.” He shook off the question. “But in any event, the funds are payable quarterly. I show that you have already received the last two disbursements.”
“I have not.”
Mr. Rose grew confused. “But I have the receipts here.” He unfolded two slips of paper and smoothed them out for her inspection.
“Neither of those receipts bears my signature. But I have suspicions of where the money has gone. From this point on, you are not to disburse any more funds to the estate. I wish for all monies to be made available here.” She handed him a slip of paper with the bank address.
“Then there is the situation with your aunt’s estate itself.”
“Those should be addressed to my cousin.”
Mr. Rose tilted his head to look at her through one eye. “Certainly, many young women of your station allow male relatives to manage their concerns. But do you not wish at least to know what expectations you may have from the income of the estate?”
Suddenly suspicious, Lucy sat back in her chair, “Yes, of course you are right. Please do go over the details with me.”
An hour later, Lucy understood more fully why her cousin wanted her dead. And she understood why she would need powerful allies to stay out of danger. But until she knew Colin’s decision, until she knew in what capacity to make the request, she would have to wait to approach them.
She signed the papers as Mr. Rose handed them to her. All of them precautions to ensure her aunt’s final wishes would be fulfilled, whether she lived to see them or not.
* * *
At the end, Mr. Rose picked up his umbrella and walked her to the street. “Are you certain I cannot escort you to your lodgings?”
“No, thank you. It is too far. But I will return tomorrow to sign the other papers.”
“I will have them ready.” He raised his umbrella to call for a hackney, and a carriage driver waved to them from the other side of the street. “Ah, there. That’s convenient.”
“Until tomorrow.” She shook his hand; then, after waiting for a free space between the carriages, she crossed the street. At the carriage, she asked for Hanover Square. From there, she would walk to Bond Street to catch another hackney or simply walk back to her rooms.
“Safer to enter from this side, miss.” The carriage driver motioned her to the sidewalk side and held open the door.
Curtains drawn, the interior was dark, too dark to see. She didn’t see the second occupant of the carriage until the coachman had already handed her in. She started to back out. But the carriage driver pushed her forward. Before she could call for help, a hand pulled her to the seat and covered her mouth. The carriage driver climbed beside her—not a carriage driver then—and between the men, they tried to force her mouth open, but she held her teeth and lips clenched.
“I knows a solution to this.” And he pinched her nostrils tight. “Now we wait.”
She held her breath as long as she could. But when she tried to breathe through her teeth, jaw still clenched, they poured laudanum onto her gums. She felt the numbness travel across her mouth and down her throat. More laudanum, and more, until she felt nothing.
* * *
“My dear, lift your head. Yes, there.” An older man with a lisp gave her a drink of water, cool on her throat. “You’ll feel nauseous for a bit, but this should help.”
“Why are you helping me?” She tried to focus her eyes, but found that it just made her head reel.
“Your cousin thinks he can outwit us, even though we had an agreement. He wants you dead. Therefore, we want you alive . . . for now, at least.”
“Who is we?”
“Ah, today we are your friends, tomorrow . . .” He lifted his hands to the ceiling. “Tomorrow, we might be your executioners. It all depends on fate and whether she smiles on you.”
“I can pay you. My great-aunt left me money. I have friends, if you could take me to them.”
“Ah, my pretty miss. Do not lie to me. Your cousin has already told us: you have no money, no friends, no one who will miss you after your death.”
“He is wrong.”
“Then who, pretty miss, will notice you are dead? To whom could we take you?”
“Lord Colin Somerville,” she offered more confidently than she felt. “Or Lady Wilmot. Or Lady Emmeline Hartley. Any of them would take me in. Any would miss me if I were dead.”
The old man went still. “Ah, then, my pretty miss, we have more than one reason to keep you alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’ll have a whiskey, my good man.” The drunk weaved and stumbled.
“A whiskey?” Flute polished a glass with a damp rag.
“For my liver. Keeps it strong.” The drunk leaned up against the man to his right, a sailor who had been boasting of his share in the cargo of a ship recently come to port. The sailor pushed him aside, and the drunk almost fell to the floor.
Flute glared. “Go away now, old man. Whiskey isn’t free.”
The old man cursed him, but stumbled to the door and into the night.
* * *
Hours later, Flute closed the bar.
Though Flute enjoyed the bustle, the customers, the news they carried him from the wharfs and the surrounding neighborhoods, he felt the deep quiet of the empty bar as a comforting calm. He’d already sent Bertie to bed an hour ago, after the boy had wiped the tables, swept the floors, and checked all the corners for drunks and stragglers. Flute had adopted the ginger-haired ten-year-old when he’d returned to England, taking him from an orphanage in Manchester. It was an act of kindness to Bertie’s father, an officer who’d pushed Flute out of the way of a falling mast, only to die himself below it, leaving his wife and son destitute. Flute enjoyed telling Bertie stories of his father, of the vagaries of the sea, but he paid every month for Bertie to be a private scholar at Mr. Neal’s Mathematical School in Dorset Street, learning trigonometry and surveying. The Crown migh
t have no concern for the orphaned children of the men who’d served her, but Flute at least didn’t forget his obligations. He’d even given the boy a room of his own, a closet at the back of the kitchen. Warm in winter, it was more than Bertie had at the orphanage.
Heading to the back of the bar, Flute turned down all the lights in the wall sconces as he passed, leaving a path of growing darkness behind him. At the back of the linen closet, a door opened onto a long stairwell. As Flute ascended the stairs, he could hear the muted rumble of voices in the gambling hell above his tavern, then the stairway grew silent again as he entered the attics. He and Charters owned the whole block, and the attic was their private passageway from one building to the next, from one enterprise to another.
At the middle building, Flute descended the stairs and entered the series of rooms they used as their offices.
“What did you gain last night when you stole from my customers?” he growled when he found Charters.
“What do you mean?” Charters looked up from the map he was sticking pins in.
Flute didn’t argue. “The drunk. I know it was you.”
“How?” Charters sounded genuinely surprised.
“I know the ways you stand when you take on a different voice, the way you bunch your clothes to make your body appear misshapen. No one else would notice. You take too much care to appear unremarkable, but I know. If you steal from our customers again, I’ll beat you silly.”
“Ah, but the man had been such a braggart.” Charters lifted his hands in half apology. “I thought he deserved a comeuppance.”
“The Blue Heron needs to be above reproach. You know that. No thieving in the bar—just in the hell above. A safe place to make them foolhardy. Give me back your haul, and I’ll tell him he dropped it on the floor.”
Charters laughed. “Not many men would threaten me.”
“Not many men like you,” Flute rejoined.
“True.” Charters nodded his acceptance. “It’s on the table. Just banknotes—and not even as many as he bragged of having. By the way, there’s a woman in my room.”
Chasing the Heiress Page 23
