Tall, Dark, and Wicked (Wicked Trilogy)

by Madeline Hunter

  “I see what you mean about not good news now.”

  “Indeed. However, at least he is honest. We will depend on that.”

  She hoped the repeated we meant he was going to help her. Mr. Notley appeared to still be thinking it over.

  “If your father will not aid me in his defense, my hands will be considerably tied, Miss Belvoir. I will feel like a thief taking fees from you.”

  “I cannot allow him to be tried without someone speaking for him, however.”

  “That is understandable.” He made a tent with his long fingers and pondered the point they made. “If it comes down to providing a defense based on his character, I will do the speaking. Normally solicitors do not appear in front of judges, but matters are less formal in the criminal courts. However, if information develops that brings his guilt into question, we will need to obtain the services of a lawyer skilled in the theatrics of the courtroom, one who will match Lord Ywain in ability and prestige. That will be expensive.”

  “Tell me how much when the time comes, and I will tell you if I have it. For now, please let me know what I will owe you.”

  “Normally my clerk attends to that.” He looked at that clerk. The two exchanged knowing looks that said, Such is our lot to serve such as this.

  “Two pounds for the preliminaries,” the clerk said. Mr. Notley managed to appear like he had not heard.

  Padua had that much on her, and more. The valise under her bed grew emptier by the day. “If I give you ten shillings more, will you look into something else for me? It does relate to my father.”

  Those dark eyes sharpened with interest.

  “My mother passed away when I was fifteen. Soon after, my father came into a legacy from a distant relative. He used it to send me away to school in Birmingham. I rarely saw him after that. I would like you to see about that legacy if you can. I think it was a property, and if so, perhaps I can obtain some money out of it to help pay the fees of his defense.”

  Mr. Notley jotted down some notes. “You are asking for a service that is more familiar to me than criminal work, Miss Belvoir, and more welcomed. I will see what I can discover.”

  * * *

  The note came to Ives at nine in the morning, before he had risen from bed. It was the kind of note to get him on his feet at once. Cursing all the while, he dressed fast and haphazardly and skipped a shave so he could gallop through town to Mayfair as soon as possible. Arriving at the family house, he took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door to his brother’s apartment.

  He found Lance enjoying the shave that he himself had forgone.

  “What the hell has happened?” he demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” Lance asked. “I did not expect you until afternoon.”

  “Come immediately. I need you to serve as my second for a duel. That is what your note said.”

  “Well, yes, but I did not think you would read it until noon, so then you would arrive around one.”

  “Some of us rise earlier. Now tell me why you need a second and, by Zeus, your story had better show you the victim of some fool in his cups, and not the instigator of a challenge.”

  The valet scraped the last of Lance’s beard, then laid a warm, damp towel over his face so only Lance’s dark hair showed. “I had no choice,” came Lance’s muffled reply.

  “So you did issue the challenge.”

  “Had to.”

  “Damnation.”

  The towel was lifted. Lance removed another one from around his neck. “You would have done the same. There was nothing else for it.”

  Ives paced the chamber. “I would not have done the same thing, because I would not be in London. I would have listened to my brother, whose advice on such matters is sought by the highest of the high, and kept my ass in the country.”

  The valet began tidying up the dressing room. Lance led the way to his sitting room.

  “Why did you call for me to be your second?” Ives demanded. “Why not one of your friends in crime?”

  “I thought your eloquence might be useful. I had to issue the challenge, but it would be better if we did not fight. I don’t want to kill another duke.” He caught himself, and laughed. “By another, I mean one other than myself, of course. Not one other than Percy.”

  The explanation made Ives pause. “You did not have to explain the distinction to me, Lance. Surely you know that.”

  Lance said nothing. Weariness marked his dark eyes. Being suspected of his own brother’s murder was taking its toll, despite his claims otherwise.

  “Just which other duke is it?”

  “Middleburrow. It was about Percy, of course. He was drunk, and lost a small fortune to me and could not resist thrusting a few daggers at my reputation out of spite. I could not let it stand.”

  No, he could not. But a duel, let alone with Middleburrow, would do nothing to keep the hounds at bay. “I will find a way out of it.”

  “He will have to apologize. Nothing less will do. I set the meeting for two o’clock, in the hopes of giving him a chance to sober up.”

  Ives began planning how to affect this miracle. “If I succeed, you must promise me to go down to Merrywood again. I’ll not be fixing disasters for you over and over.”

  Lance’s deep scowl reflected what he thought of that condition.

  “Give me your word, Lance, or you can find someone else for the meeting.”

  “Fine, damn it. You have my word. I will rusticate until I am gray and feeble and until a silken noose appears a mercy, if you want.”

  Ives would have liked to reassure him that soon the current burden would be lifted, but in truth he saw no end in sight. When he left, Lance had begun cleaning his dueling pistols, should eloquence not avert the duel after all.

  Ives had planned to go riding this morning, but by the time he left his brother, there was not enough time to go out of town and return in time for the meeting. He instead returned home to complete the grooming barely begun, then rode back to Mayfair in the afternoon.

  The Duke of Middleburrow’s second appeared relieved when Ives explained that Lance felt an indiscretion blurted while drunk should not lead to a man’s death. They spent an hour negotiating the language of the apology that Middleburrow would make. Knowing Lance’s mind, Ives insisted it not be so qualified as to edge into ambiguity.

  Lest Middleburrow balk, they also made arrangements for a duel should that be needed. Ives trusted those details would encourage Middleburrow to swallow his pride, claim incapacity due to spirits, and back out with grace.

  The entire endeavor took most of the day. The intrusion on his time left Ives irritated. He returned home, determined to spend the morrow out of doors, on horseback, free of all obligations.

  As he sat down with his book that evening, the paper with his list of mistress qualifications caught his attention again. He read it, too aware that abstinence was becoming a nuisance. With each item on the list, a face took clearer form in his mind. Dark hair. Sparkling eyes. Determined expression. Uncompromising loyalty.

  Hell.

  He tucked the paper away again.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ives entered the Home Office in Whitehall, too aware that this was the third day of his precious respite that he would spend on what he had come to call Miss Belvoir’s Dilemma. Pride prevented him from including yesterday, too, even though while finally enjoying a good country gallop, he found himself mulling over Hadrian Belvoir’s case. One thought had led to another, and soon he was imagining Miss Belvoir’s dark eyes alight with pleasure and her tall, lithe body naked and bending to his erotic lessons.

  The fantasy had been so engaging that he had not relinquished it easily, and suffered last night from its insistent presence.

  He had been involved in enough dealings with the Home Office that almost everyone he passed greeted him. More than once in his career he had undertaken tasks for the Crown that might best be described as extralegal. A friendship with the prince regent had first brough
t one of these little investigations his way, as a favor. Success at that turned him into the man the royal family called on when an awkward problem arose that needed someone to ferret out a few facts discreetly, and perhaps bend a few ears. Or arms.

  That he might on occasion do such favors did not mean that he approved of an entire government apparatus doing the same thing. That was what the Home Office had become under Viscount Sidmouth, the secretary of state for the Home Department.

  As the political situation grew more tense in the country, this branch of the government had resorted to domestic spying and even agents to infiltrate and disrupt what its leaders considered potentially treasonous activity. The French excesses of thirty years earlier were never far from the minds of some of Ives’s social equals, and the calls for reform and other radical notions sounded far too dangerous to them.

  And so while he walked the halls of the Home Office as a friend, there were those within who knew he fully expected to one day serve as prosecutor when they themselves stood trial.

  That was not the case with Ivan Strickland, whose office door he opened. Strickland remained a sane voice that argued against the more serious invasions of old-fashioned British liberty. Ives believed he could trust Strickland if he could trust anyone at the Home Office. They sometimes did favors for each other, so they shared a history of mutual debt.

  Strickland was a hearty, fair-haired fellow who possessed the kind of strength that could turn soft if not kept in check with regular exercise. He greeted Ives enthusiastically, and they enjoyed catching up. Strickland of course wanted to know whatever Ives would share about the untimely death of Ives’s eldest brother Percival the prior spring, and the suspicions still surrounding his other brother Lance, who had now inherited.

  It was not until a good half hour into the visit that Ives broached his reason for coming.

  “I received a letter from the prince regent a month ago,” he said. “You were not in town then, I think.”

  “Up north,” Strickland said. “That business in Manchester. What a hellish mess. Try as we might, we will not be able to make it what we want. History will damn us.”

  He referred to the deaths at a large demonstration of workers in Manchester, a disaster now popularly called Peterloo.

  “In that letter he made reference to a case I would be asked to prosecute. A man named Hadrian Belvoir.”

  “Belvoir?” Strickland’s brow furrowed in thought. “Ah, now I remember. Coining, it is. Have you found it interesting?”

  “It never went beyond that letter. He has not been brought to trial yet. Nor does it appear he will be soon.”

  “I know how you feel about men not getting speedy trials. Don’t lecture me on it. I seem to remember the magistrate said they intended to use this fellow as fish bait to catch a whale.”

  “The gaoler at the prison said counterfeit money was found in his home. Anything else?”

  “Printing press and such? No. Just bad money.”

  “Who laid down information on him?”

  “Some thief who with an eye to burglary broke in and saw enough to bargain for his lover’s reprieve from the gallows, as I remember it.”

  It all made sense, yet Ives’s instincts kept waving at his mind.

  “You know a lot of particulars about Belvoir, Strickland.”

  Strickland beamed a smile. “Well, that magistrate was the loquacious sort.”

  “I don’t suppose he explained just how big a whale he hopes to catch with his bait.”

  “Let me think about that.” Strickland pondered. “More a giant octopus, actually. All those arms going this way and that, if you understand me.”

  Ives understood well enough. Someone thought Belvoir could lead them to a criminal involved in much more than this incident of counterfeiting. If Strickland knew so much, the Home Office was either involved, or monitoring the situation closely. And if the Home Office showed this much interest, they probably thought this octopus was dangerous, and had an arm or two tied to political radicals seen as threats to the realm.

  “I trust the magistrates, or whoever is investigating, are being thorough. I have seen the man, and he is an unlikely culprit. I would not want another case like Waverley’s.”

  Strickland’s face fell. His gaze shifted. “That was unfortunate.”

  “It was not unfortunate. It was a tragic miscarriage of justice.”

  “You really need to forget about him. Mistakes happen.”

  “I sent an innocent man to the gallows. That is not something one forgets.”

  “You did not send him. The process sent him.”

  “Carelessness sent him. Settling for the easy solution did, and indifference to finding the truth did.” He heard his voice rising. Let it go? He would forever regret that day in the Old Bailey. “If I learn Belvoir is being sacrificed to the Home Office’s notions of expediency, there will be hell to pay.”

  “This is not like that,” Strickland said. “There’s no politics here. As I’ve heard, it is counterfeiting, and other normal sorts of crimes.”

  “If you have only heard, you do not really know. If others in this building are crossing legal lines, they would not inform you.” Ives conquered the anger that had gripped him. It had been unfair to throw that burden at Strickland, who had not even been involved in Waverly’s case. “They cannot hold Belvoir forever without trying him,” he said. “He is a citizen and does have his rights.”

  “I expect you will be meeting him in the Old Bailey within the month. According to that magistrate, of course. Although if you are so suspicious, maybe you should not prosecute. You can still beg off.”

  He grinned when he said it, because of course Ives could not beg off. When the Crown indicated it wanted one to serve as its prosecutor, one did it.

  They turned the conversation to other things, but all the while Ives calculated the ramifications of Strickland’s confidences. Padua Belvoir had better find that lawyer she sought, and quickly. And if she were not careful, she might end up needing legal counsel for herself.

  * * *

  Padua strolled between the tables, looking over the girls’ shoulders while they worked on their geometry lesson. The few who showed the worst mistakes were not the ones who lacked the ability to learn mathematics. Rather they were the ones worldly enough to know that no matter how well they mastered the subject, no one would celebrate their achievement.

  Padua’s efforts to encourage learning for one’s own satisfaction made little headway with some of the girls once they became distracted by thoughts of parties and suitors.

  Before the hour ended, Jennie, whose lessons on comportment and etiquette the girls never treated as useless, came to the classroom’s door.

  “You have a caller,” she said, after drawing Padua aside. “I will take over here, so you can go down.”

  “I am amazed that Mrs. Ludlow allowed me to be pulled away from my duty to receive this person.”

  “I’m not. Go and see why.”

  Stepping into the reception hall solved the mystery. Mrs. Ludlow herself already sat with the caller, in a little chamber off the hall decorated with frail gilt furniture and a nauseating combination of pink and rose fabrics. “Ah, here is Miss Belvoir now,” she chirped when Padua entered the room. Mrs. Ludlow’s high color blotched her cheeks, and she all but giggled when she gestured at Padua with a silly flourish.

  Her caller was none other than Ives. Padua suspected his calling card would sit in the salver in the reception hall until it turned yellow from age.

  Mrs. Ludlow appeared at cross minds regarding leaving the chamber. Padua smiled at her reassuringly. The chamber had no doors, for heaven’s sake, and its interior was in full view of the hall. Nor, at twenty-five, did she require a chaperone, especially with this man.

  After Mrs. Ludlow left, Padua turned expectantly to Ives. “How did you find me?”

  “You left your address with my man that first day. Remember?”

  She did now. She sat on
a little silk-covered bench. He took the only decent-sized chair.

  “I apologize if my arrival will create difficulties with your employer,” he said.

  “I do not expect any problems. She is probably eavesdropping right now, so I will even be spared her curiosity.”

  From out in the hall, very close to the entrance to the sitting room, a sharp intake of breath could be heard. Then very light footsteps, receding in sound.

  “Expect her to tell parents that you visit frequently, have relatives here, and patronize the school with donations,” she said. “She is a sweet woman, and essentially honest, but this is her livelihood, and there is much competition.”

  He smiled. He appeared quite kind. But then the light was soft here, due to northern-facing windows and the early hour.

  “Did you come to patronize the school?” she asked, when he did not explain why he had called.

  Was that a slight flush she saw? Goodness, perhaps he had forgotten himself, quite literally.

  “I have come to give you some names of lawyers who would serve your father’s interests well.” He reached into his coat and extracted a small sheet of paper.

  “Thank you, but I have already engaged one.”

  “May I ask which one?”

  She considered not telling him. It was none of his business, at least not until the trial.

  “Mr. Notley.”

  “That is not a bad choice. Notley is diligent, sober, and honest.”

  “I thought so.”

  “However, he has little courtroom experience, being a solicitor. He can serve in that capacity in the criminal court, but he would be wiser to engage a barrister.”

  “So he explained. We will do so, if it is necessary. He also said that if you were asked to prosecute, it meant very important people had an interest in the case. Is that so?”

  His gaze locked on her. “Often.”

  “Your brother the duke?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. What possible interest would he have? I can think of no one else who might make a claim on you, however.”