The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  A footman, Colin thought. Even when they wore dazzling livery, people tended to overlook servants, the way one might overlook a tree with beautiful foliage. They were part of the scenery, which is why a servant would make a fine messenger in this circumstance.

  “What colors were in the ‘costume’?”

  “The coat was blue, wi’ gold down the sides. Pantaloons, not trousers. Shoes wi’ buckles and wee ’eels, not boots. A blue coat with gold braid. Same as ’e always wore.”

  There was utter silence as the last sentence penetrated.

  “I…beg your pardon?” Madeleine’s words were etched in steel.

  “’Twas the same lad what brought the payments for you before, Mrs. Greenway.”

  “The same person who paid me to free Colin Eversea…is the same person who wanted me dead?”

  “’Twould appear that way,” Croker confirmed pragmatically, “though I canna speak for the ‘dead’ bit.”

  “Someone fired upon me, Croker.”

  The innkeeper clucked disapprovingly. “’Tis ’appy I am that ’e missed, then,” he said pragmatically. In his world, people were fired upon all the time, and the results varied. “I dinna ken ’oo went in my stead, unless ’twas the footman shot at you. I can say I was ’and-somely paid not to meet ye today. Twenty-five pounds,” he reiterated, somewhat defensively. “I drew conclusions of me own, ye see, and assumed the worst.”

  “Did he have any other distinguishing characteristics, this man?” Colin asked.

  “’E was a servant, Mr. Eversea, not distinguished like yerself,” Croker ingratiated.

  Madeleine Greenway gave a soft snort.

  Colin tried again. “Do you remember the color of his eyes? Did he have any scars or marks on his face? Was he unusually tall? Broad of shoulder? I’m interested in details of that nature, Mr. Croker.”

  “He had one of those chins what…” One of the innkeeper’s hands went up to squeeze his chin into two little folds. “…a chin what looks like an arse.”

  “A chin dimple? A cleft?”

  “Not cleft so much as dented, Mr. Eversea. And blue eyes. Went nicely with his costume.”

  Dumbstruck silence followed this observation.

  The innkeeper sighed. “It’s me wife. If ye gets yerself a wife one day, Mr. Eversea, ye’ll come ou’ wi’ things like that, too, mark my words, mark my words. ‘This matches wi’ that or with this,’ and so on. They talk like that, women do. She makes me look a’ things and give opinions. She’ll turn me into a girl yet.”

  This seemed unlikely, but all Colin said was, “Blue eyes and an arse chin. Thank you, that’s very helpful, Mr. Croker. How about height? Is he about as tall as I am? Closer to your height?” Footmen were invariably towers, at least in the finer households, which could afford the tallest ones with the finest calves.

  And if this footman belonged to the household Colin believed he did, they could afford matching sets of handsome, towering footmen.

  “Close in height to ye, Mr. Eversea, but I think not quite as tall.”

  Colin had one more question, the most important of all: “Did you get a good look at his stockings?”

  It was Madeleine’s turn now to revolve her head slowly in his direction.

  “Light blue, not white. Like…milk, wi’out the cream. And silk, if I had to guess,” Croker said readily, as he’d already exposed his shameful apparel awareness.

  Well, then. It was indeed a footman from the Earl of Malmsey’s household. Fascinating, given his history with the countess.

  “Thank you, Mr. Croker. We shall see you presently?”

  “Presently, Mr. Eversea.” The big, bald man backed out, and the door clicked shut once more.

  Chapter 6

  There were hooks on the back of the door meant for hanging pots or aprons or anything else that might benefit from being hung up. Colin found a broom and slid it through them, effectively barring the door, and relieved the chair of its door blocking duties by sliding it back beneath the table.

  Madeleine was uneasy about being in a room featuring a single exit, and her gaze swiftly swept it, found the window, mentally measured it in her mind. She strode toward it, testing it; it opened slightly when she pushed, letting in a gust of dock-scented air. She closed it and exhaled. It was clear she could get out of the room quickly enough; she wasn’t certain Colin Eversea could, if it came to that. She reminded herself that her sense of honor was flexible.

  It occurred to her that it had been a few years since she’d entered a room without identifying all of its entrance and exit possibilities. She doubted other women saw rooms in quite this way. She was aware of Colin Eversea’s eyes on her as she did it; his handsome face betrayed little of his thoughts, unless it was bemusement. She refused to contemplate the types of women he was doubtless accustomed to—the no doubt faultless Louisa Porter, the countess, the exquisite members of the demimonde. She doubted he’d ever met a woman quite like her.

  Besides, she doubted there were any other women quite like her.

  Colin was turning about the room, too. He peered down into a bin containing onions, selected three, began to juggle them. His talents seemed to increase by the minute.

  “So…Mrs. Greenway.” Around and around the airborne onions went. “It struck me that you were quite comfortable in St. Giles. Fencing things, and whatnot. Quite familiar with the ways of the underworld. Familiar with the cant, as it were.”

  She paused, assessing his tone: clipped, ironic, detached, amused. He was leading to something.

  “Perhaps I’m comfortable everywhere, Mr. Eversea,” she said calmly.

  The onions made several more circuits through the air. She watched them; it was difficult not to. “And you seem…unusually…comfortable here at the docks.”

  “Oh, ask your bloody question, Mr. Eversea,” she said tautly.

  He gave a tsk of mock disapproval at the “bloody,” but the onions remained in motion. “Very well, then. What is your ‘work’? What manner of criminal are you? A very subtle kind, I’d warrant, if you need a ‘broker.’ No murders in pubs for you.”

  His tone was light, but the words shimmered with peculiar tension. She eyed him cautiously, reminding herself that she didn’t know this man; she couldn’t presume his mood or predict his actions.

  “Strictly speaking, I am not a criminal,” she said evenly. “I am a…planner. And I take on, shall we say, delicate work for those who can afford to pay for it.”

  “I see. So you’re a mercenary.”

  Madeleine didn’t like the word. It was the first time, however, that she realized that it fit. “If you wish,” she said coolly.

  “I should think a mercenary would know more about gunpowder.”

  This dug home. “I assure you I know very well how to use the pistol. The gunpowder was…unfortunate.”

  “You would have been dead today,” he mused.

  “Thank heavens I’d rescued you, then, so that you were able to save me.”

  He grunted, which might have been meant to be a laugh.

  Madeleine found the juggling increasingly irritating, in large part because it was at whimsical odds with the tension in that snug little room. She was tempted to use the pistol to shoot one of them out of the air.

  If only her powder wasn’t bad.

  She decided it was her turn to ask questions. “Why did you ask about stockings?”

  “We need to pay a visit to Grosvenor Square in the morning. I know who belongs to those stockings. Or rather, to whom that footman belongs. The Earl of Malmsey. Does the earl mean anything to you?”

  “No,” she said shortly. “I know of him and the countess, and that is all. Doubtless they mean more to you. Wasn’t there something about a midnight foray some years ago?”

  Colin gave a little enigmatic smile. “A follower of my exploits in the broadsheets, are you, Mrs. Greenway?”

  Madeleine said nothing, though she might have said any number of things, and there was silence for a ti
me, except for the slap-slap-slap of onions striking his palms.

  “So whoever wanted you dead wanted me alive,” he mused.

  “Your family?” she suggested.

  At this he stopped and turned abruptly toward her, catching the onions one at a time in the crook of his elbow.

  And his elegant voice struck like a viper.

  “My family is capable of extraordinary things, but they would never have hired you to rescue me then murdered you in cold blood. My father, in fact, would not have hired a woman at all.”

  Colin wasn’t proud of his tone, but he’d done it deliberately, put enough disdain into the words to ensure that Madeleine Greenway’s eyes went black with anger. Good. Suddenly, irrationally, it felt good to make someone else furious, particularly this preternaturally competent, nearly impenetrable woman. He wanted someone to brush his own fury and frustration up against. He was weary of feeling caged, of moving from one enclosed space to another.

  He also suspected this woman was proud, and her pride would make her talk.

  “I would have you know, Mr. Eversea, that it took considerable time, thought, and skill to rescue you today. And I left no trail back to me.”

  He’d suspected correctly.

  “And so the hangman who tied my arms—” he pressed.

  “Bribed. Through a series of other people, untraceable to me. Everyone in Newgate lives on bribes. It was a simple enough thing…if you know how to do it.”

  She said this almost airily.

  Colin gave a sarcastic nod. “Of course. If you know how to do it. And the hangman asked me to drop to my knees at the fifth soldier. And that was so…”

  “When the smoke rose you’d be hidden from the soldiers and from the crowd, and my other assistants, the ones who carried you—”

  “Also paid, I presume?”

  “—of course—could pull you from the scaffold under cover of smoke and chaos and take you to our arranged meeting place in Seven Dials. They were at the very front of the crowd. And they and the chemist who developed the smoke combinations earned the most, and were never told how their work would be used.”

  Good God. She was Wellington with eyelashes. It was extraordinary that everything had gone as planned today. This slight, prickly, dark-haired woman was responsible for every breath he took.

  What manner of woman was this?

  “And Croker arranged for you to do this?” He managed to say this calmly, even as a sense of unreality began to seep into his mind like a disorienting gas.

  “It’s commonly known among…shall we say, certain circles…that Croker knows everyone who will do anything for money. When Croker received a letter from an anonymous source telling him that a matter of a particularly delicate nature needed doing, he arranged for me to meet privately with the individual in question. Who then asked me to rescue you. The manner of the rescue was left up to me. I negotiated a fee of two hundred fifty pounds, one hundred of them to be paid immediately. The footman apparently brought that money to Croker, who took his percentage. And I spent the balance on arrangements.”

  “So you saw this person who hired you?”

  “Oh, no. It was all very sub rosa. I did speak with him while he stood in the shadows. It’s how it’s normally done, if there’s a meeting.”

  “How it’s normally done,” he repeated flatly. “If there’s a meeting.” Making it very clear that there was nothing “normal” about what she’d done.

  “And before you ask: he spoke like a gentleman, but in a whisper. And there was nothing particularly remarkable about that whisper. I haven’t a clue who he truly was. And I’m not certain I’d know the voice again.”

  Who, besides his family, would want so desperately to rescue him?

  “Could anyone have been hurt today?” he faltered. “The explosions, the—”

  “No,” she said coolly. “Not from the explosions alone, anyhow. They were low explosives, meant for loud noise and smoke only. Very strategically planned noise and smoke, set off by strategically placed boys, paid out of my pocket, again indirectly, and all for your benefit, Mr. Eversea. I don’t suppose we can discount a turned ankle or a fit of apoplexy in the crowd, as Croker said, but other than that…”

  “Or a trampling,” Colin added with dark irony. “Can’t discount a trampling.”

  “Your concern for the thousands of people who came out to cheer as you died horribly is touching, Mr. Eversea.”

  “I don’t think they all came to rejoice in the event.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain,” she said tartly.

  And this, for some perverse reason, made him smile, and blunted the spiked edge of his anger. She wasn’t any happier about being here with him than he was to be here with her—apart from the fact that he was happy to be alive, of course. And she was so very, very ready to volley. And good at it. He’d wanted a conflict; she’d given it to him, and he felt as though he’d spent himself in a good tennis set.

  “You really don’t exert yourself to charm, do you, Mrs. Greenway?” he mused easily. He turned to spill the onions from his hands back into their bin.

  “Charm, Mr. Eversea, will cost your family an additional ten pounds if and when I return you alive and whole.”

  “I should like to see the menu of available services, then, if you please.”

  He turned back to her just in time to see her smile crack like lightning. It was dazzling, genuine, a thing of natural beauty. It was gone too quickly, and it took his breath with it.

  Seconds later it occurred to him both that he was gaping and that he should probably breathe again.

  A soft glow in her eyes and skin was all that remained of that smile now.

  “How much do you charge for a mildly amusing anecdote?” Colin added quickly, because he very much wanted her to do it again. By way of persuasion, he offered one of his own smiles, the sultry variety that usually started blushes up in even the most jaded of females. He supposed a compliment to her eyes wouldn’t go amiss, in a moment.

  Madeleine Greenway’s head tipped a bit, studying him. As though what he’d just said required translating into her own language.

  “Oh.” She sounded as though she’d arrived at a disappointing conclusion. “You’re about to flatter my eyes, aren’t you? Like velvet, are they? Midnight skies? Deep, deep poooolllls?” She gave the l a mocking, aristocratic trill.

  Colin nearly reared back. She was very good.

  He was better.

  “No,” he said, his voice soft, firm, matter-of-fact. “Your eyes in no way resemble midnight skies, Mrs. Greenway. Nor do they in the least call to mind pools. You’ve perfected the art of disguising your emotions, which I think is aided in some way by that great pale forehead of yours—it is, I should tell you, considerable. Though I’ve decided it suits you. And you’ve very severe, if handsomely shaped, eyebrows, and quite a soft, feminine mouth, and your skin reflects light rather like a good pearl, and if you ask any of the mistresses I’ve enjoyed, they will tell you that if there’s anything I know, it’s how to tell the good pearls from the flawed. Your face is all about contradictions, Mrs. Greenway, and for this reason the whole of it helps you appear enigmatic. But you see, your eyes will always ultimately give you away, if you are not very careful. Because your eyes are soft, like the centers of dark flowers, and there are little stars in those depths when you smile. And your eyelashes are adequate.”

  Her eyelashes were like little fans of mink, but he wasn’t about to say it.

  He knew ridiculous pleasure when it became very clear Madeleine Greenway was struck dumb.

  Then again, so was he, for that matter. Some combustible combination of fatigue and fury and pent-up charm had propelled the speech like a geyser out of him. It had been calculated to churn the typical female mind into butter. God only knew what it would do to Mrs. Greenway’s mind, as she was far from the typical female.

  A moment passed during which he savored his triumph, and during which Miss Greenway’s soft bottom
lip dropped just the barest hint.

  He refused to release her from his gaze.

  “Well, Mr. Eversea.” When her voice emerged faint but steady, he knew both reluctant admiration and regret. “What a good deal of effort you put into your speech. You should thank me for inspiring it. Your ability to charm might atrophy from disuse otherwise.”

  “You interpreted all of that as charm? That bodes well.”

  Another flare of surprised humor in those soft dark eyes, another faint smile. He hadn’t invented those little stars; a soft little light did shine in those depths when she smiled. It was a precarious moment, and might be very short-lived, but Madeleine Greenway was disarmed. And in Colin Eversea’s experience, the next step after disarmament was usually conquest. It was something he knew as well as he knew how to load a musket, bluff a hand of cards, dodge his creditors. But for now he simply wanted the upper hand he typically had with any woman, because it would help restore a sense of rightness to his world.

  “Come, tell me who you really are, Mrs. Greenway,” he coaxed softly into that softening breech.

  She blinked, then straightened her spine, subtly, unmistakably, imposing distance.

  “I am whoever I need to be, Mr. Eversea. And you are not the first man to find the very fact of this intriguing, nor will you be the last. Or the most interesting, I might add.”

  It was a goad, and probably meant to either persuade him to become more docile or to challenge him to continue trying to be interesting. He wagered, optimistically, on the latter.

  “Atrophy,” he said after a moment. “Such an impressive word for a mercenary.”

  She paused. “It means flaccid.”

  And, oh, look at that: she could arch a single brow, too.

  The door jiggled a bit then, and they both gave a start.

  Grateful for the excuse to look away from Colin Eversea, grateful for the opportunity to herd her wits back into formation, Madeleine strode over and slid the broom out of its hooks. The door creaked open a few inches and a large hairy hand clutching a tin poked in and waved about. Madeleine plucked the tin out of the hand, the fingers waggled an acknowledgment and vanished again through the crack, and she closed the door and slid the broom back into place.