Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 03]

by The Charmer

  She took his hand in hers and squeezed. “Yes, you are to keep it. You may have to start over with your recovery, but he says you ought not to be any worse off in the end.”

  Breathing deeply again, Collis nodded. He never thought he’d be grateful to have one good arm and one numb arm, but he was. He sat up carefully but experienced nothing more than the soreness he expected in the rest of his body. Then the events on the ship came back to him fully. “What is Dalton going to do about Lord Liverpool?”

  Clara pursed her lips. “Thanks to Rose’s protest, he isn’t entirely convinced of Liverpool’s guilt yet. He and Simon have set up a dinner tonight with Louis, Liverpool, and the Prince Regent. Only George knows the situation fully. Dalton’s hoping to stir something up that will expose the truth.”

  A dinner with the five cagiest men Collis had ever encountered? “That sounds positively explosive. I’m very glad I won’t be there.”

  “I, too.” Clara sat back, watching him, her fingertips disappearing into the cat’s thick orange fur. The off-key purr increased in volume.

  Collis glanced around his bedchamber. “Where is Rose?”

  Clara raised a brow and tilted her head at him. “Rose is gone. She disappeared from the ship about the time you collapsed. Dalton didn’t even notice she wasn’t with the Liars until he had you halfway home.”

  “Disappeared?” In instinctive response to a call to action, he reached for the covers to leap from the bed. “Was she kidnapped?”

  Clara stayed his hand. “According to Kurt, she walked off under her own power.”

  He slowly leaned back on the pillow. “She left me?”

  “She left us all,” Dalton declared from the doorway, where he now stood with folded arms and one shoulder leaning on the door jamb. He shook his head. “I can’t believe we were all so thoroughly duped by an illiterate gold-digger.”

  Despite his confusion, Collis glared at Dalton. “She is no such thing!”

  Dalton blinked. “But she virtually admitted it. First Louis Wadsworth, then you. You sent her off packing, don’t you remember?”

  Icy horror twined through him. “I did not!”

  Clara tilted her head. “According to everyone who was there, you pronounced her ‘disgusting’ with deepest revulsion.”

  Oh, God. Oh, Rose. Collis brought a shaking hand to plunge into his hair. “No—no, I meant that Louis—that molesting one of his own servants was disgusting.” His stomach turned. Oh, God, what she must think!

  Clara blinked. “Oh, drat.”

  Obviously unconvinced, Dalton raised his chin. “There remains the fact that she tried to attach herself to you.”

  Collis let out a bitter laugh and eased himself to the edge of the bed. “No, she didn’t. I tried to attach myself to her.” He slid one foot to the floor. “And I fully intend to try again.”

  “What are you doing?” Dalton moved forward as if he were going to bodily force him back into bed. Clara stopped her husband with one small hand to his arm.

  “Let him be,” she ordered.

  “But he’s—”

  “Dalton, I love you to bits, but you can be such an ass sometimes.” She shook her head. “Can’t you see that he is in love with her?”

  “He can’t be. I won’t allow it!”

  Collis stood, his bare feet cold on the floor. He shot a glance at his aunt. “Do you see what I have had to put up with all these years?”

  She folded her arms. “Liverpool shadows you still.”

  “Ah!” Dalton protested. “I am nothing like Liverpool! I only mean that he can’t—”

  “And I only mean that he can. You must let him go, Dalton.” She put both hands on her hips. “Both you and Liverpool.”

  Collis flicked his gaze back to his uncle, who was in true sweat, caught between his love and his allegiance. Poor slob. Collis knew which one he would choose.

  He’d choose Rose.

  “I’m going, so any discussion you want to have about letting me go will have to wait for me not to be gone any longer.” Collis shrugged into his shirt and glanced apologetically at his aunt. “Clara, would you mind?”

  Clara tugged at Dalton. “You can spin in circles just as well out in the hall, darling.” She pushed him through the door and tossed a gamine smile back at Collis. “Go get our Rose,” she ordered.

  “Yes, milady,” Collis promised with a salute. “I could use another hand,” he added. “Would you mind sending Denny up?”

  “I’ll have to call the Sergeant,” Clara said. “Denny is gone. His things are missing from his chamber and he told the Sergeant he’d had the offer of a better position.”

  “Better?” Collis froze. “But if he—”

  With a rueful expression, Clara nodded shortly. “Precisely. Dalton has already ordered that he be…” She hesitated. “Ordered him found. There is a great deal we would like to know about Denny’s activities lately. Especially regarding the letter you sent about being at Mrs. Blythe’s. We now suspect that Denny was the leak to the Voice of Society all along.” She smiled sadly. “Actually, it was something overheard from a confrontation between Denny and Rose that made Dalton realize it.”

  Collis paused to regard her seriously. “There is no need to pursue Rose like we must pursue Denny. You know that Rose would never carry tales about the club.”

  She nodded. “You and I may know that, but Dalton must consider the larger issue.”

  “Damn Dalton. He’d kill a dog to rid it of fleas.” He grabbed up an acceptable suit of clothing. “Then I must get to her first.”

  Clara smiled and he realized that had been her goal all along. “Well, then. If you’re determined to go.” She turned to leave him in privacy, then stopped at the door. “Collis,” she began casually. “I happen to know that Louis hadn’t lived in his father’s house for the past ten years.” She cast him a meaningful glance over her shoulder as she left. “You might want to think about that.”

  Ten years? Collis froze with his shirt in his hands. Ten years ago, Rose had been a mere fourteen. A slender and defenseless girl. Oh, dear God, that sick bastard! What had Louis done to her?

  Disgusting. Hot horror welled up within him as he remembered his own words to her.

  “Oh, Rose,” he said aloud to the empty room. “What have I done to you?”

  Chapter Thirty

  Morning was just breaking over the soot-stained rooftops of London when the kind carter who had given Rose a ride into the city proper handed her down like a lady from her barouche. Then he tipped his shabby cap to her and drove off, his ancient draft horse moving at the same plodding pace that had taken the entire evening and most of the night to reach their destination.

  The Liars had made much better time than she. This she knew because she had seen them race past in the Etheridge carriages. Something had put them into a tearing hurry. Rose had reminded herself that whatever it was, it was no longer her concern. She had hidden behind the lumpy bags of onions in the back of the cart as the carter had pulled to one side and waved the fine carriages onward.

  By now, Collis would have been home for hours. She could see him, sleeping in that great wide bed in that lovely green and cream bedchamber. Was he thinking of her at all?

  She snorted with disbelief at her own reckless longing and turned her feet toward the one man who might aid her. Someone unconcerned with Liar business—someone unconcerned with anything but his own pursuits. Nonetheless, he’d helped before. She was hoping she could convince him to help again.

  Some parts of the city never slept, so she was careful in her passage through. Keeping to the shadows, slipping around spots of trouble, she made her way to certain areas from memory as the dawn lightened the gray smoky sky to silver.

  She was cut off from the Liars. She was cut off from Collis. There was nowhere else to go.

  Except one place.

  Ethan Damont poured himself another brandy. His decanter was full of smoky liquid goodness. In addition, his cellar was full of co
al, his kitchen was full of delicious smells due to the efforts of his hurriedly rehired cook, and his house would be full of furnishings by the end of the week.

  Apparently that uncle of Collis’s had a very generous, very grateful streak. The most excellent fellow had sent him a sizable cheque yesterday evening, with a note signed only “The Codger.”

  “Nice old Codge,” Ethan mused as he swirled the brandy in his glass and waited for his lovely breakfast. Drinking before breakfast didn’t count if one hadn’t been to bed the night before.

  Then his lovely morning was interrupted by an urgent pounding on the door. “Ah, that’s right,” Ethan recalled aloud. “I must remember to hire myself a Jeeves.” In the meantime, there was no one to answer it but him. Padding to the door in his stocking feet, he swung it open upon a desperate-looking Collis Tremayne.

  “Oh, balls, it’s you.” Ethan began to shut the door. “You ass.”

  Collis shoved the door open with one hand and pushed past Ethan. He looked bloody awful. Ethan found himself much pleased by that.

  “Is Rose here?” Collis’s voice was rough with urgency.

  Ethan smiled nastily. “Absolutely. She came right over after she finished rogering the regiment.” Ethan poked Collis hard in the chest. “You really are a bastard, you know that, Tremayne? How could you do that to her?”

  In an instant, Ethan found himself pressed against the wall of his own front hall with Collis’s fist tangled in his shirtfront. Blast it, he really was going to seed. Taken apart by a man with one hand tied to his chest. “I must take up pugilism,” Ethan gasped.

  “Is…Rose…here?” There was a truly threatening note in Collis’s voice. Dangerous and desperate.

  Ethan began peeling Collis’s fingers off, one by one. “No, you supreme and utter ass—yes, ass will do until I think of a better word—she is not. The last time I saw her she was marching back down the Thames barge road to London with her chin high and her spine like a poker. I looked for her all the way back yesterday evening, but I never saw her.”

  “You saw her leave and you didn’t stop her?”

  “Why should I have? You humiliated her before the entire ship! My God, I think even the gulls were laughing at her.”

  Collis shut his eyes and let Ethan drop. Ethan tossed back the last swallow of brandy. Heavens, he’d almost spilled it. He waved the empty glass at Collis. “If you’d like to drown the memory of your vast and endless stupidity, I’ve an entire cellar full of this vintage. Although I doubt it will be enough.”

  Collis grunted, his expression veering toward hopeless. “I thought she might have come to you for help. She did before.”

  Ethan tilted his head to regard his old friend with no sympathy whatsoever. “If she did, and I actually told you—which she didn’t and I wouldn’t anyway—what could you possibly have to say to her?”

  “She must return with me. I—we need her.”

  Ethan pondered this. “No, not convincing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As far as I have gathered, you took her to your bed without bothering to marry her first. Then, once she was utterly and entirely in love with you, you called her disgusting and rejected her in front of…” He paused to count on his fingers. “In front of no less than fifty witnesses.”

  “Do you truly think she’s in—” Collis flushed. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Ethan folded his arms and waited.

  Collis rubbed the back of his neck with his unbound hand. “All right, it did seem like that. But I didn’t mean it that way!”

  “So, now you’re going to chase her down—even though she was quite right to leave your sorry arse on the dim horizon—and do what precisely?”

  “The most important thing is to find her,” Collis insisted. “I can’t explain why, but—oh, hell, Ethan, she’s in danger!”

  Ethan straightened. “She is? From whom?”

  “From Louis, who is still loose—and from others.”

  Ethan forgot about his rather envious tormenting of his friend. “She didn’t come to me—what other friends does she have in London?”

  Collis looked haunted. “I’m not sure there is anyone else she can trust.”

  “What about the Codger? He seemed to like her well enough.”

  Collis blinked, then shook his head. “No. I doubt she could even get in to see His—the Codger. He’s well guar—he’s quite reclusive.”

  “Well, then who? She must have gained someone’s friendship in her life, other than you lot.” Ethan scowled. “Who are you lot, anyway?”

  Collis waved a hand absently. “Just a sort of boys’ club—” Abruptly his eyes went bright. “Ah.” He turned to go so swiftly he was halfway to the street before Ethan realized it.

  “Where are you going?”

  Without so much as slowing his stride, Collis turned back to grin fiercely and wave. “To the Tower!”

  As before, the Tower drainage tunnel allowed Rose to approach Forsythe’s workshop in the White Tower undetected. Oddly enough, being underground did not upset her in the slightest this time.

  She gave the workshop door a brisk rap with her knuckles. Then a solid blow with her fist. Then she took off her shoe and pounded the door for several minutes, not stopping until Forsythe answered from the other side, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Rose, Mr. Forsythe. I’ve come for—”

  The heavy old door swung open. “You’ve come for more matches,” said Forsythe with a wrinkled grin.

  “No, sir.” She would not be charmed. “I’ve come for the pistol you offered me before.”

  His smile fell. “The pistol? But I thought you didn’t like firearms.”

  “I like them better than I like a traitor.”

  He peered at her carefully. “It’s that Wadsworth sod, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell Jenkins what I told you?”

  “Lord Liverpool is not being kept abreast of the entire matter,” Rose said stiffly. Then her shell cracked a bit. “Louis has them all convinced—” She forced herself to stop. Mr. Forsythe had his own place within George’s domain, but she had no idea how secure that place was. She would not endanger Forsythe by including him in her plan.

  “Please, trust me, Mr. Forsythe. I know what I am doing.”

  “Hmm.” He seemed doubtful, but he let her in all the same. The pistol was right where she had left it, a mite dustier but still gleaming in the dim recesses of Forsythe’s cave of wonders.

  Rose hefted it in her hand. “Do you have the balls and powder?”

  Forsythe patted his pockets absently. “I put them somewhere….”

  Rose narrowed her eyes at him. “Mr. Forsythe, if you are trying to stall me for some reason, I wouldn’t recommend it. Besides, wouldn’t you rather I use one of your fine pistols than some cheap thing I might obtain in the city?”

  He shuddered. “You’ll blow your lovely hand right off with that rubbish.” He sighed, giving in. “Oh, very well.” He handed her a doeskin pouch that held everything she needed.

  She thanked him and turned back to the door. He followed her nervously. “Are you sure you know how to use it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Forsythe, I’ve been trained by the best.”

  “It’s pretty, but it’s still a very deadly thing.”

  Rose wrapped her fingers around the carved butt. It settled into her palm, nestling there like a part of her hand. A perfect fit. “Not as deadly as I am,” she murmured.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  As Rose left Forsythe’s workshop, she turned to close the door carefully behind her. She paused to rub her tired eyes for a moment. Her spectacles had been lost in the flood. Even though she’d managed without them for most of her life, she missed them dreadfully now. Perhaps when all this was over, she could obtain new ones—

  Of course, there was a very real chance that when all this was over, she’d be quite beyond the need of spectacles ever again.

  So be it. Louis Wadsworth must be stopped. If the Liars weren’t up
to the task, then someone must clean up the mess. Who better than a housemaid?

  When she dropped her hands and turned, she saw Collis leaning insouciantly against the far wall, watching her.

  He had his left arm tied beneath his shirt and open coat and his right hand on his hip, looking for all the world like a beau tolerantly waiting for his lady to finish her shopping.

  He smiled at her wryly, but with hesitation in his gaze. “Hello, Rose.”

  Disgusting. The word lashed through her memory like a whip. Collis thought she was disgusting, nothing more than a whore.

  She covered her surprise with a slowly indrawn breath and the act of folding her arms over her breasts. “Nice work, Collis. Did it take you all night to figure this out?”

  He straightened, raking her with a shadowed gaze. “What were you doing at Forsythe’s, Rose?”

  She laughed bitterly. “Something dangerous and illegal, of course.” She raised her chin. “You needn’t bother to try and stop me, Collis. You know I’ll only toss you.”

  To her astonishment, he grinned, a fierce flash of white in the dim passage. “If you are talking about eliminating Louis Wadsworth once and for all, I have no intention of stopping you.” He stepped forward until she could see the approving light in his gray eyes. “In fact, I am here to help.”

  The ice that she’d wrapped her heart in threatened to melt. No. She could not allow herself to believe in him. She stepped back slightly. There was still room to maneuver, if she didn’t allow him to get too close.

  Never, never would she be close to him again. If she weren’t made of ice, she’d be finding it very difficult to breathe at this moment. “Why would you do that? Why would you risk your precious place with the Liars to help me?”

  “Because I—” He stopped. He seemed oddly cautious. Rose tried to read his face in the shadows. She wished she had her spectacles.

  Collis could scarcely bear the suspicion etched into the delicate planes of her face. Yet a mere apology seemed so worthless. “We are partners, you and I, remember?” he said in a low voice. “Because I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life.” He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness, but he was fairly positive she wouldn’t believe a word he said. Words. His gift—but words had always failed with Rose. More substantial proof was required.