The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  Louisa watched Marcus until his horse vanished over the rise.

  Then her eyes turned toward the road to London.

  It was upon his routine monthly review of the Mercury Club books that Isaiah noticed the notations. He went motionless, eyes riveted to the page.

  And then he sighed, and knew a brief heaviness of heart followed by a profound and lasting irritation.

  He’d rewarded the man for his diligence and unquestioning loyalty, delighted to have an employee whose intelligence—so he thought—nearly equaled his own. But Baxter’s diligence clearly outweighed his intelligence, and it was this diligence that would sink both of them.

  Unless, Isaiah thought, he acted first.

  Oh, Baxter.

  The bloody man had actually noted the date Mr. Robert Bell took out the Mercury Club carriage, and that Bell was paid to drive it. And Baxter had increased his own wages. It was there for anyone to see, and the very clever Marcus Eversea, Isaiah knew, had already seen it. He needed to act quickly.

  Isaiah dashed off a note, rang for a footman, and told him to take it discreetly to the Home Secretary, who was a friend—as it suited him—both to the Redmonds and the Everseas.

  And in respect for Baxter’s diligence and loyalty, Isaiah went home.

  He would wait until the soldiers came for Baxter.

  Chapter 22

  Nobody, not even Isaiah Redmond’s formidable butler, argued with a pair of pistols pointed by a very tall, determined-looking Eversea with a Newgate pallor and a lovely if grim and rumpled woman. And it required only a word or two of persuasion to get the butler to tell them precisely where Isaiah could be found at that moment: his sitting room, upstairs.

  Madeleine and Colin and Horace had come straight from Marble Mile to London in a hackney, unmolested by soldiers and untroubled by broken axles or thrown horseshoes or any other sort of accident that could have befallen them. Straight to the Redmond town house on St. James Square.

  Leaving Horace and Snap in the Redmonds’ downstairs parlor beneath the butler’s nervous eye for now, Colin lead Madeleine up the stairs to confront Isaiah Redmond.

  Colin paused in the doorway for a moment, placing a hand against the door frame for balance. A weariness had suddenly struck him. Madeleine paused near enough to touch him, near enough for him to smell her. But she didn’t touch him.

  It was a soothing room. Deep browns and golds and creams harmonized in the thick carpets, in the heavy, tasseled curtains pulled back now to let in light, in the plush brushed velvet and shining leather of chairs and settees.

  Isaiah Redmond was standing near the window, staring out, it seemed, at nothing in particular. There was something almost melancholy about his stance.

  They’d caught him in an unguarded moment, indeed.

  Good.

  Colin cleared his throat, and Isaiah Redmond turned.

  His face registered Colin and Madeleine and the two drawn pistols; his complexion, so youthful for its age, went the color of parchment. But his expression never once changed, nor did his posture. And Colin nearly admired him for it.

  Still, Redmond said nothing at all. Colin would have been even more impressed if he’d at least mustered an ironic greeting.

  Then again, Colin hadn’t precisely planned what he’d intended to say, either. He saw, shining atop a spindly-legged table, the brandy decanter and two spotless glasses, and strolled to it.

  “Brandy, Mr. Redmond?”

  Oh, quite the glib opening. Bloody habit of politeness. He saw the faint incredulousness in Madeleine’s expression. Doubtless she was growing used to it. But brandy wasn’t an entirely absurd suggestion, as Colin didn’t want Redmond to drop dead of shock before he had the satisfaction of hearing the man’s confession. Also, brandy had life-giving properties, and Colin hadn’t tasted a drop in ages.

  “Mr. Eversea…” Redmond began. He sounded almost condescending. Though his eyes never did leave the pistols.

  “I think I’ll have a brandy,” Colin mused. He poured a glass with the hand not holding the pistol, astonished that his hand didn’t shake. He sipped it. It was all bravado, however, as he couldn’t taste it, which seemed a damned pity, because doubtless Redmond had splendid brandy.

  “We’ve found Horace Peele, Mr. Redmond.” Colin said this almost idly. “You should know by now that Everseas always prevail.”

  It felt strange to say it, for it was family legend and had always felt like melodrama. For the first time Colin knew it, felt it, to be true.

  Redmond’s brows flew up. He had the nerve to look faintly contemptuous.

  “Oh, Everseas certainly prevail.” His voice was elegant, modulated. One would have thought he’d prepared a speech in anticipation of Colin’s arrival. “Throughout history you’ve prevailed at horse theft, piracy, smuggling, and other things that shall remain unmentioned, things you likely don’t even know about, young man, but are bound to discover and perpetuate. For that’s your legacy. But Mr. Eversea, there’s something you should know.”

  “I’m all ears, Mr. Redmond,” Colin said softly.

  “I didn’t do it.” Redmond smiled a little at that. As if at some private joke.

  Colin shook his head ruefully. “Oh, they’ll love that story in Newgate, Mr. Redmond. It’s the song everyone sings there. They might in fact invent a song for you when you go to the gallows. More difficult to find words that rhyme with Redmond, but we’ve some talented bards here in London.”

  He once again felt Madeleine’s dark eyes on him. She would probably never cease marveling at the way he turned glib in extraordinary circumstances.

  “No, Mr. Eversea. You see, I didn’t do it.” Redmond had begun to sound mildly entertained. As though waiting to hear what Colin would do next.

  And suddenly it was all Colin could do to not throw the glass of brandy into his smug, elegant face.

  He drew in a steadying breath. “You sent your man Baxter to pay Horace Peele to disappear, Redmond, and used threats to keep him from returning, and sent me to prison and to the gallows. All in the name of a feud.” He said that last word incredulously, though it was as important to the Everseas as it was to the Redmonds.

  “I did nothing of the sort.” Redmond was still calm. His eyes flicked down to the pistol, over at Madeleine. Green eyes, his were. Reflected light like gems when they moved quickly.

  Colin strived to sound bored. He managed a bit of a sigh, though his muscles were taut with fury. “All right, Mr. Redmond, this is what we’ll do. I’ll have the satisfaction of your confession first. And then my friend and I will take you to the Home Secretary so he can hear it. But I won’t leave your home without it, and I won’t leave without you.”

  It was Redmond’s turn to sigh. “Mr. Eversea. I’m terribly sorry to steal your thunder.” He managed a tone of amused regret. “But it’s over. My man of affairs, Mr. Baxter, has been arrested for embezzling funds from the Mercury Club. Through a sense of misguided loyalty to me, he decided to pay Horace Peele to disappear, thinking it would please me immensely, given the history of the Redmonds and Everseas, and given the issue of…Lyon.” And this word, the name of his missing son, clearly did not fall easily from his tongue. “Baxter paid himself a higher salary in order to accomplish all of this—paying Peele to disappear. This is what the Home Secretary thinks, anyhow, Mr. Eversea. Mr. Baxter will be transported in due course. There will be no scandal, my name will not be mentioned in the papers, which is something your family has never been able to avoid, thanks in large part to you, and there’s absolutely no proof otherwise. Should Mr. Baxter intimate otherwise…well, he’ll be on his way to Botany Bay shortly, so it will hardly matter. Nothing you do or say will change this, Mr. Eversea, and I doubt you wish to subject your family to prolonged pain and scandal. Though you’re an Eversea, after all.” Faint, dry scorn in the last sentence.

  Colin took everything he said in with an increasing sense of desperation. It was brilliant. It was also likely a skillful, elegant, airtight
lie, and he could see nothing, nothing at all, he could do about it if that were indeed the case. Weariness suddenly swamped him. He struggled to keep it from his voice.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you will,” Redmond continued easily. “You cannot prove a thing now, anyhow, and that’s what’s most important. And I imagine your godforsaken family somehow managed to ensure you didn’t hang, in the process causing chaos in London. Astonishing what families will do to protect their own, isn’t it, Mr. Eversea?”

  Colin’s temper began to blacken around the edges, and he heard it in his voice. It gave him strength. “My family had nothing at all to do with rescuing me from the gallows, Mr. Redmond. What I do know is that I am innocent, and my family and people I love suffered greatly on my behalf. And everything, all of this, leads back to you. For the enormous suffering we’ve all endured, for the time I’ve lost…I want you to pay.”

  Redmond had been nodding along, frowning a little, as if this was all very interesting. “How, precisely, did you want me to…‘pay’?” He sounded mildly curious. Did you or your…‘lady’ friend…intend to murder me today?”

  Colin’s voice was a taut thing. “I’m not a murderer, Mr. Redmond. Your godforsaken relative fell on his own knife, because he was a drunken, violent sod. I came here because I want you to know the pleasure of walking the steps out of Debtor’s Door, and looking upon a crowd calling out your name. I warrant, however, you’ll be a less popular criminal than I was.”

  He’d at last succeeded in striking flint from Redmond’s green eyes.

  “Mr. Eversea.” Two clipped, cold words. “My former man of affairs Mr. Baxter has been involved in some nefarious business, and I will deny everything else he might say, and I will also pay well to keep the information out of the papers and out of circles of gossip, and the authorities know this. My family will not suffer. But perhaps you’ll be more careful the next time you’re in a pub with a Redmond, as you now know what the consequence may be, and the lengths we’ll go to protect our own. Know…when…you’re…bested, Mr. Eversea.”

  These last words were low and ferocious.

  Colin at least knew the satisfaction of finally rousing this man to revealing his anger. They locked eyes. Isaiah Redmond could stare as well as Colin could; they were precisely the same height.

  They all swiveled when they heard the click of expensive slippers coming directly toward them from the marbled hall, Colin and Madeleine somewhat abashed to be discovered pointing pistols while the immaculately groomed Fanchette Redmond paused in the doorway.

  Mrs. Redmond glanced in almost curiously. She noticed Madeleine and frowned in confusion, as if disapproving of her gown, which no doubt she did. And then she saw Colin.

  “Oh, there you are, Mr. Eversea.”

  And of all the astounding things that had happened to Colin in the past few weeks—a gallows rescue, life altering lovemaking with Madeleine Greenway in a barn, a night spent in a room with a seven-foot-tall skeleton—nothing astounded him more than hearing Fanchette Redmond address an allegedly notorious escaped criminal as though he’d been late to a tea party.

  As though she was relieved to see him.

  And then he stared at her, because he was genuinely curious. The Eversea and Redmond families didn’t typically entertain each other in each other’s homes unless a grand ball was being held, so Colin normally only saw her in church or at ballrooms or in the midst of large parties. He looked at her now, a handsome blond woman to whom he’d been scrupulously polite his entire life but instinctively, irrationally disliked simply because she’d tied her fortunes to a Redmond and bred a whole brood of other Redmonds.

  She was a little thicker now with years, but still quite fair. She was wearing dark gold muslin banded with gold embroidered flowers. Genevieve and Olivia would have known the cost of that dress.

  Isaiah turned to his wife dismissively. “Fanchette, perhaps you should leave us to—”

  Fanchette Redmond turned slowly to her husband, and the look she gave him was shocking. So utterly contemptuous that he fell silent.

  “You’ve done enough, Isaiah.”

  A thing of steel, Isaiah Redmond’s composure. He didn’t even blink. “Fanchette, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve done…nothing at all.”

  She ignored her husband and turned to look again at Colin. “You were supposed to be rescued from the gallows, Mr. Eversea, and then stay put for a short time so I could fetch you. I’d arranged to have put you on a ship, quite discreetly, under an entirely different name,” she said, sounding elegantly apologetic. “When I went to collect you from where I was told you’d be—that dreadful little part of town—you were gone.”

  “Fanchette.” Isaiah Redmond said this coldly. “What in God’s name—”

  “Extraordinary, wasn’t it?” she continued, bemused, ignoring her husband. “I wondered, I truly did, if it was even possible to achieve such a thing—an eleventh hour gallows rescue. But do you know it’s possible to get nearly anything you want in London? I didn’t know, but you can hire someone to do that sort of thing. I arranged to hire someone, and it worked, for here you are, Mr. Eversea.”

  Colin sought out Madeleine’s dark eyes again. She looked stunned.

  As for him, oddly, he felt in sympathy with Isaiah Redmond at the moment—in that he’d never been more at a loss. “Mrs. Redmond…are you trying to tell me that you arranged the rescue from the gallows? But…why in God’s name…?”

  “Ask your father, dear.” The words were clipped and ironic.

  Colin drew in a sharp breath. “Mrs. Redmond, as I explained to your husband, my father and my family had nothing to do with any of—”

  Fanchette had turned in the direction of Isaiah Redmond. Her hand out, palm up…presenting him.

  “Ask your father,” she repeated quietly.

  And Colin felt Isaiah Redmond’s utter silence like a blow to the head. Disorientation. Cold nausea. For an instant Colin couldn’t think or breathe.

  The man should have at least scoffed, and quickly.

  But clearly Fanchette had surprised his composure from him, and that moment of hesitation was permanently incriminating.

  The two men looked at each other. Each nearly physically recoiled.

  And then, of course, couldn’t resist staring back at each other again. And…their eyes met. Because, as Colin noticed before, they were precisely the same height.

  The blood fled Colin’s extremities, leaving his hands, his face, cold. The problem was…the problem was this: it seemed possible. Colin’s eyes. His height—he was taller than all of his brothers and his father. And then there was the bemused distance at which his father, Jacob Eversea, had always held him.

  He glanced at Madeleine, and he saw, crossing her face, the same sort of assessment, the same curious wonder. She was drawing the same conclusions, and if Madeleine thought it could be possible…

  Deny it, he wanted to scream to Redmond. Instead, he stared at the man, unseeing, and his palms began to sweat as he remembered Olivia and Lyon and the legendary fatal flaw of the Eversea and Redmond feud.

  An Eversea and a Redmond were destined to break each other’s hearts once per generation.

  Oh, God.

  “The thing with secrets, Isaiah,” Fanchette continued, addressing her husband now in a gently reproving, silkily contemptuous voice, “is that mothers cannot be trusted to keep them when the lives of their children are at stake. I received a letter from Mrs. Eversea a few weeks ago begging for my help. She knows I loathe all things Eversea, but she was convinced, you see, that you had something to do with the conviction of her son. After all, every one of the petitions for Colin’s freedom was quietly thwarted. And she begged my forgiveness very succinctly—really more of a formality, the forgiveness begging, I think—but confessed that she strongly believes that Colin is your son. You can imagine my shock.” She shifted her gaze to Colin. “I didn’t believe in your innocence for an inst
ant, Mr. Eversea, but no mother can believe her son can do murder, and Mrs. Jacob Eversea is no exception. And Isaiah…” She turned back to her husband. “I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t allow you to kill your own son.”

  Isaiah’s hand came up to his face then, shading his brow. The hand was trembling a little. Colin saw his shoulders move with the deep breath, and with that breath came a return of his composure, and the hand came down.

  And Colin couldn’t help but think of grace in untenable circumstances. Did he get it from Redmond?

  “Fanchette…” Redmond’s voice was so quiet it was nearly tentative. “Did you really believe I would do such a thing to Colin Eversea?”

  Not “Colin.” Not “Mr. Eversea.” But Colin Eversea.

  “I believe that you hate the Everseas, Isaiah,” Mrs. Redmond said quietly. “For many, many reasons.”

  Redmond was silent again. His emotions were contained entirely in his eyes and his voice and the gray shade of his face.

  Colin suddenly very much wanted to sit down, and felt an ass for wanting it. Madeleine was watching him now, those dark eyes holding him up with kindness. And the kindness irrationally irritated Colin at that moment, because he needed it.

  “Mrs. Eversea thought I might hold some influence with you,” Mrs. Redmond continued, addressing her husband. “But I couldn’t risk coming to you, Isaiah, because I believed you were the one who’d arranged for Mr. Peele to disappear. So I took matters into my own hands. Rather well, too, as it turned out.” She sounded faintly pleased.

  “So it was you who blackmailed all of these people, Mrs. Redmond?” Colin’s mind was boggling. “How did you manage to—”

  “Oh, no,” Fanchette sounded bemused again. “Blackmail, you say? Were people blackmailed? Tsk. Well, if anyone was blackmailed, it’s all because Isaiah took away my allowance. Isaiah, you made me beg Baxter for money. And I’m a Redmond, and a Tarbell by birth. I should not beg for anything.” Coldly instructional now, her voice. “And so I turned the tables on Baxter.”