Tall, Dark, and Wicked (Wicked Trilogy)

by Madeline Hunter

  She pasted on a smile, but her gaze carried unmistakable hatred. Ives could not blame her for her reaction. Two years ago her common-law husband, Harry Trenholm, had been transported after a trial in which Ives prosecuted. The charges had been arson and sedition, for burning down a factory near Liverpool, one owned by an industrialist who had contributed plenty of fuel to the confrontation that ended in those flames. As for the sedition—Trenholm had cloaked his act in political rhetoric to justify himself.

  The fool hired to defend failed to make sufficient use of that factory owner’s provocations, or of the fact no one had been injured. Ives artfully did instead, thus keeping this woman’s husband from the gallows. She could be excused if she did not appreciate the effort. Her man disappeared anyway, and was dead to her for all intents and purposes.

  He paused on the building’s stoop. “Mrs. Trenholm. It is always nice to see a familiar face when on a strange street.”

  “The pleasure is all yours, I am sure.”

  “How do you fare these days?”

  She gritted her teeth behind her smile. That made her already prominent chin cut forward more. “Life goes on. What brings you here? Not the sort of street that sees many of your sort, or carriages like that one down there.”

  “I am seeking the home of Mr. Belvoir.”

  “You, too, eh. Well, up one set of stairs and there you are. What’s he done to make you interested in him? He must be in gaol. That explains why it is so silent up there these past weeks, doesn’t it?”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “He’s a strange one and keeps to himself. I figured he mighta died up there. I’ve been waiting for the smell to tell me so. I’ve no time for crazy men like him. I work in a flower shop now, and I’ve a new gentleman in my life, so I am not here most days.”

  “I am glad to see that life indeed goes on for you. Tell me, what did you mean when you said, You too? Has someone else visited Mr. Belvoir’s rooms?”

  Her eyes looked upward. “A woman. She’s up there now. She has been for over an hour.”

  “An attractive woman with very dark hair?” And porcelain skin and star-filled eyes with lashes thick and dark?

  “Attractive? Hardly. She is freakishly tall. That is all one notices about her, how she is as tall as some men.”

  What a ridiculous description of Miss Belvoir. Anyone with a discerning eye could see that her height gave her elegance, distinction, and presence. She pulled it off so well because she did not try to do anything in the false hope it would make her appear smaller to stupid women like Mrs. Trenholm, whose flamboyant hair and painted face marked her as without taste.

  He let himself in, and walked up the stairs. No sounds came from above. No steps on the floorboards. Perhaps Mrs. Trenholm was wrong, and Padua Belvoir no longer remained in her father’s chambers. A note of disappointment played in his head, surprising him.

  The door to the chambers stood open. He looked in. Padua had not left yet. She sat on a wooden chair. Beside her, on a small table, lay an open glove box.

  She read something. Whatever it was had transfixed her, and affected her entire being. Her face appeared very soft and young and vulnerable. The chamber’s dusty light bathed her and made her skin luminous. Not merely attractive. Beautiful.

  It seemed a cruel intrusion to interrupt whatever thoughts her mind contained. So he remained across the threshold, waiting for her to return to herself.

  CHAPTER 6

  Padua read the letters one by one. Not just normal letters. Love letters. Beautiful, passionate love letters. She almost put the first one away when she realized that. Her mother’s voice moved her, however. In her mind she heard the words spoken as she read. She continued so that she might preserve that vivid memory for a while.

  In doing so she learned her father’s appeal to her mother. In a world that laughed at her ambitions, he loved her for them and encouraged her ever higher. Together they were poised to join the pantheon of Europe’s most celebrated minds. Fame waited, and royal patronage and a future free to devote to investigations of the natural order of the universe.

  Then disaster struck. While her father enjoyed a special appointment at Oxford and her mother held dazzling salons, a child had been conceived. In the last few letters, written while her father sought a living anywhere, practicalities replaced dreams and passion. There were no letters after she was born, or at least none that found their way into this box.

  Padua folded them all and replaced them in the box. She did not regret reading them, even if the last ones left her sad.

  No wonder her father did not love her. She had ruined his future and forced the most ordinary of concerns into his life. As for her mother, who had sacrificed much more . . .

  A floorboard squeaked. She looked in the direction of the sound. There, outside the doorway, stood Ives. He kept turning up like a bad penny, except—his green eyes held dark depths right now, and his expression showed subtle sympathy, as if he read her thoughts.

  “You mentioned the street,” she said. “It was not hard finding these rooms once I knew that.”

  He entered the sitting room. “Have you found anything of use?”

  She shook her head. “Only some letters from long ago. I had hoped to discover some documents he should have, or anything that might explain why that money was found here.”

  He glanced around at the disorganized papers and books. “It is a wonder anyone could find anything at all.”

  “Including counterfeit money. Unfortunately I think I know where it was.” She rose and walked into the bedchamber. She pointed at the void in the floor. “I think a large trunk used to be there.”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Is it not careless to store a large amount of counterfeit money in one’s own home? I would expect the criminals to have a less incriminating place to put it.”

  “If your father was no more than a tool, he was the less incriminating place.”

  “My father is so distracted when solving mathematical mysteries that he could have served as a tool and been unaware of it. Look at this place. Someone could have put that trunk here, covered it with books and papers, and he might have never noticed.”

  “You should share that theory with Mr. Notley.”

  “I think I will tell him to ask you about it at trial. You yourself said it was a wonder anyone could find anything here. I think it would be beneficial if you were asked to repeat that in court.”

  “It was a very large trunk, Miss Belvoir. One that could not be overlooked by your father. However, if asked I will answer truthfully.” His fingers flipped the edges of a sheaf of papers on the bed. “You are very sure you found nothing of interest to his case here? Something you have squirreled away in that reticule you are carrying?”

  “Very sure.” She left the chamber and returned to the table with the glove box. She began choosing a few books for her father. “You said the gaoler would deliver items I bring. I will keep it small, so I do not appear to be taking advantage of anyone’s generosity.”

  She plucked a few books off the shelves and made a little stack. She wished she could check more of her schoolbooks, but that would be stupid with him here. She tucked the banknotes deeper into her bodice, lest they fall out. Behind her back she could hear Ives moving around, shuffling papers and opening drawers.

  “Don’t you believe me?” she demanded, turning on him.

  He bent to pull a drawer set low in a cabinet. “I think you are inexperienced, and would not recognize useful evidence if you found it.”

  “The magistrates would, however. Are you determined to find more nails for his coffin than they already claim to have?”

  “My only goal when I prosecute is for justice to be served. I would be delighted to find something that supports your father’s innocence. I am not so coldhearted that I am eager to see him convicted. Now that I know you, rather the opposite.”

  An arch response popped into her head, but her voice would not
work. That was due to the way Ives looked at her. Not angrily. Not kindly either. His eyes carried no disapproval or pique. Rather he looked at her with a man’s calculation. The hardness emerged, but not due to displeasure. The considerations she had suspected that first evening in his office now showed more explicitly.

  He appeared devilishly handsome with that look in his eyes. Wickedly dangerous. It should incite the urge to flee. Instead she could not move at all. She could only look, while a brief gaze alone sent tremors down her spine.

  He broke the spell, and looked out the window. She thought she saw confident satisfaction flash before he masked himself.

  “It is getting late,” he observed.

  Reality banished the thrills. The light outside the window had dimmed considerably. She would be unlikely to return to school before night fell.

  “I must hurry.” She looked at the glove box. “Would it be acceptable for me to take this with me too? As I said it is only old letters. I would not want them lost or destroyed if—if he does not return.”

  “It would be yours anyway. Take it for safekeeping now if you want.”

  She lifted the books and box and clutched them all to her body. Ives strolled over.

  “You are very sure that you found nothing important?” he asked.

  “I said as much. Why do you ask yet again?”

  He looked down at her. “Because you are crinkling.”

  “Crinkling?”

  He picked up a piece of paper and crushed it in his fist. It made a distinctive sound. “Crinkling.”

  All kinds of paper made that sound. Like banknotes stuffed in one’s bodice. She resisted looking down at herself.

  He did not. His gaze settled right at the level of her breasts. If she were not holding the books, he would be peering at her body most inappropriately.

  “I am thinking I should make very sure that you are not secreting documents or evidence out of this chamber,” he mused.

  She wanted to clutch her stack even tighter, only she feared she would crinkle again. “You have my word that I am removing no documents or evidence, sir.”

  “Can I trust the word of someone who has declared me an adversary?”

  “As a gentleman, you have no choice. Unless you think to search my person, which I do not believe you are bold enough to do.”

  “Not your entire person. Only the area where women are known to hide things.”

  To her horror, his hands reached toward her. But he was only lifting the books and box out of her arms. She dared not breathe, lest she begin crinkling again.

  “Let us go,” he said, holding out his arm toward the door.

  He did not hand the books over, but carried them out as he walked behind her. She kept her back very straight so the banknotes might not move at all.

  He handed her down the stairs, and escorted her from the building. He remained by her side as she strode down the street.

  “My carriage is here. I will bring you back to Mrs. Ludlow’s, so you are not walking London’s streets alone at night.” He gestured to the fine carriage up ahead.

  His offer would help a lot, but a little caution sounded in her instincts. “Mrs. Ludlow will probably ignore my escape if you are my escort,” she said. “She is the sort to assume your sort should have their privileges, and our trust.”

  “She is? How convenient.” Charming creases framed his smile.

  “All the same, it would be better if I found my own transportation.”

  “I will not hear of it.”

  He opened the carriage door and handed her into the carriage. He set the glove box beside her after he settled himself across from her, and the books next to himself. Seeing the box took her mind back to the letters inside. She set the box on her lap and tipped the cover up on its hinges.

  A few trinkets had been left inside with the letters. She poked down and pulled a small handkerchief out. It was her mother’s. She lifted it to her nose, and a familiar scent filled her head. Memories popped up, all from her childhood, when she was still of an age that a mother holds and embraces one for no reason other than love.

  She had not expected a handkerchief to move her so deeply. Did her father sometimes of a night hold this so he could smell her again? Her eyes blurred and stung.

  She stretched toward the books on Ives’s bench, reaching. He moved to aid her at the same moment, and his hand came to rest on top of hers. He did not lift it, but kept her hand under his fingers.

  He angled much as she did, toward her, until their faces were mere inches apart.

  “You are weeping.” The thumb of his free hand brushed at a tear. “Why?”

  She opened her other hand to reveal the handkerchief. “It was my mother’s. I recognize it. It still . . .” Her voice caught. “I thought I would slip it inside one of the books, for him to discover. I thought it might give him comfort.”

  Without releasing her hand, he pulled out the top book, and opened it. He offered it to her. She placed the handkerchief inside. He closed it and set it aside.

  “Your loyalty to him is impressive, especially considering that he all but abandoned you, from what you have said.”

  “I have been angry at him for that. I read things in these letters that explain some of it, however. I had forgotten that he was not always the strange man that you see now. When I was young, he still showed the remnants of ambition and potential. Had the drudgery of life not been forced on him—on both of them—who knows what might have been.”

  “I think that you consider yourself part of that drudgery. I hope not.”

  She could not reply. Tears choked her too much.

  His hand took hers more completely. With the other he crooked a finger under her chin and tilted up her head. “What a loss if you have not been born, Padua. To the world, but mostly to them. He would have had no one fighting for him now. Your mother would have had no one to charge with his care, and would have passed less peacefully. And I would have never met the rarity that is Padua Belvoir.”

  His gaze mesmerized her. His words moved her deeply. She could barely breathe. She waited, and knew a shocking anticipation. A reckless hope.

  The slightest movement, as if he pulled away an inch. That disappointed the magical excitement in her heart and head. And so it still surprised her when he leaned just far enough to kiss her. A sound kiss, not some brief connection of pity or kindness. A kiss of unmistakable passion. The excitement in her body began a pagan dance.

  She should not allow it, but she did. There could be no logic to this man wanting to kiss her, yet it felt inevitable that he did. That kiss gave expression to an intimacy that had arched between them from the first, and right now, with her emotions raw from those letters, she needed to feel close to someone.

  It did not last too long, even if it seemed it went on a good while. Long enough for him to cup her face in both his hands. Long enough for the kiss to turn into more than a gentle press. She did nothing to encourage him, but nothing to stop him either. She accepted and allowed the riot of emotions he evoked to have their way.

  She realized the coach had stopped. The kiss did too. He continued holding her, his firm hands angling her face up toward him. He gazed deeply into her eyes, then released her, opened the carriage door, and hopped out.

  She stepped down. They were a block away from the school. He reached in and retrieved the glove box and books and handed them to her.

  “You are in time, I hope,” he said.

  She walked toward the school, in a daze, noting with unseemly specificity the various ways in which that kiss had aroused her. He escorted her, not speaking either. When they parted in front of the house, he gave her the lightest kiss on the cheek. She felt it on her skin the whole time she walked around the building and into the garden.

  * * *

  “Wait here,” Ives told the coachman upon walking back. “I am going to take a turn.”

  He headed down the street in the direction opposite the school. The last light of even
ing still streaked the western sky with blood orange hues, but night had fallen on the streets. He worried that Mrs. Ludlow would catch Padua returning, and wondered what would transpire if she did.

  Try as he might to occupy his mind with such concerns, the effort proved futile. Rather his thoughts veered to the impulse that led him to kiss Miss Belvoir, and the other impulses that he had, just barely, suppressed while he did so.

  It had been mad. Stupid. Unworthy of him. He did not impose on young women. He did not steal kisses. He arranged that part of his life with discretion and measured care. Not for him the seductions of virtuous females. His women were experienced and willing, and all had been mistresses to other men before him. He did not lead them into the life, and as far as he knew none of them wanted a different one.

  And yet this evening—he should be calculating how to make amends, and forming words of apology. He sure as hell should not have this spring in his step. The smile he could not get off his face would be damning if anyone saw it.

  It would never do. She would never do. He would never do for her. Even if this business with her father would not make a muddle of anything further—and there could be nothing further, would not be, of course, definitely, he swore—she was not the woman for him.

  Yet he had enjoyed that kiss far more than he had enjoyed a first kiss in many years, and now allowed himself some prolonged delight in its fresh, clear pleasure while he circled several blocks, castigating himself to little avail.

  * * *

  Padua noted with dismay the lights coming from the upper windows. When she pushed open the garden door to the house, she paused and listened for sounds that might indicate some of the girls had already finished their meal.

  “I thought this might be how you would return.”

  The statement made Padua stiffen. She clutched the box and books to her chest. Mrs. Ludlow stepped into the chamber, carrying a candle. The light made her face look like that of a sad, plump ghost.