The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  “Baxter helped you with this, Fanchette?” Redmond’s voice, remarkably, was still steady.

  “Well, as I hadn’t an allowance, Isaiah, I hadn’t the funds to pay for Colin Eversea’s rescue. I went to plead with Baxter to release funds to me. The man was rude.” Mrs. Redmond flushed even now at the memory. “He refused to release one farthing to me. But one of my secrets, Isaiah, is that I’m more intelligent than you think I am. So I told him that I knew about his affair with the new maid, Miss Daisy Poe, and that I would have him fired if he didn’t do as I asked. In short, I made him pay for his contempt. And because we couldn’t use any more of the Redmond money without your noticing, Isaiah, I told him to try to finance the rescue of Colin Eversea with secrets, in the way that I’d coerced him into doing my bidding. Thus he became my servant. He worked for both of us, Isaiah. Isn’t that funny?”

  Her tone was peculiar. She sounded bitter, and half delighted. “He certainly did his job, anyhow, Baxter did, because Colin Eversea was rescued, and not one farthing of your precious money was spent on the rescue in the process, Isaiah.”

  Good God. Colin thought: the past week of his life took place in large part because Fanchette Redmond was denied an allowance.

  His mind rifled through the sequence of events: Daisy Poe, Mary Poe’s sister, had told Baxter about Critchley the Resurrectionist, who told Baxter about Dr. August purchasing the bodies. Baxter had blackmailed Dr. August into telling him about the countess and Harry, and with that information Baxter had blackmailed Harry into becoming the unwilling, anonymous messenger carrying funds and messages to the Tiger’s Nest. And in exchange for hiding Horace Peele away in Mutton Cottage, Critchley was given use of the Mercury Club carriage for swift transportation of bodies to sell to Edinburgh, and Robert Bell had been the driver. And Baxter had arranged to pay Madeleine and Horace from the raise in wages he’d been given—or had given himself. He must have been desperate at that point.

  And then, no doubt, he’d tried to kill Madeleine when he couldn’t come up with the final 150 pounds.

  But Robert Bell had been hired to do the driving of the Mercury Club carriage, and Mr. Baxter had recorded his own rise in pay, and his own meticulous record keeping had been his downfall. Marcus had seen it, and so had Redmond.

  Colin supposed he would never know for certain whether Isaiah Redmond hired the man, or whether the man did it of his own volition.

  “So secrets are the currency with which I managed to pay for Colin’s life,” Fanchette Redmond concluded. “And now one of your secrets is standing alive in front of you, Isaiah.”

  “He is not my father.” Colin repeated the words with a quiet menace.

  “Well, I can show you the letter from your mother, dear,” Fanchette continued mildly. “I honestly wouldn’t have exerted myself to the extent that I did if I hadn’t received it. Perhaps it was just a ploy to enlist my help in the matter of freeing you. Then again, most women don’t put that sort of thing about lightly, particularly to someone they no doubt consider an enemy. If you ask your mother about it, she might deny it. It’s certainly what I would do, particularly now that you’re alive. And though, Mr. Eversea, I cannot truthfully say that I believed in your innocence, I do know what it’s like to lose a son. And I am not inhumane.”

  Isaiah Redmond remained silent. The color hadn’t returned to his face, but his back remained straight, and he was staring at his wife as though he’d never seen her before in his life.

  It was a look, truthfully, that contained more than a little fascination.

  In the heavy silence of that room, Colin wanted to reach out to touch Madeleine, whose eyes had never once left him. She’d wanted him to feel her as an ally, he knew.

  At last Isaiah Redmond turned his head slowly and glanced down at Colin’s pistol.

  Colin sighed, locked his weapon and lowered it, then tucked it away in his coat. He hoped it was the last time he ever aimed a pistol at anyone.

  He glanced at Madeleine. She locked and lowered her own pistol.

  “Fanchette.” Redmond said his wife’s name. If Colin didn’t know better, he would have thought that nearly toneless word contained a hint of a plea.

  “You shouldn’t have taken away my allowance, Isaiah,” Mrs. Redmond said simply.

  The two Redmonds locked eyes for a good long time. Colin thought he’d never been in a more quiet room. Still, he had the peculiar sense that their marriage had just been immeasurably improved.

  And then Colin thought: to hell with justice. Perhaps there was no such thing as justice. Just fate. He was alive. He’d found Horace Peele. He was tired of Redmonds and icy silences. He wanted to go home, breathe in sea air, roll down a green Sussex hill, drink a pint of dark at the Pig & Thistle, not look at a Redmond for a good long time…and of course, there was a little matter of a wedding. Alas, the Redmonds were of course invited to the wedding.

  “You say you’ve found Horace Peele, Mr. Eversea?” Redmond’s voice was calm as he turned at last to speak to Colin.

  “I’ve found Horace Peele,” Colin said tautly. “He’s safe. He’s in your drawing room with a big dog who drools.”

  He knew a childish delight when a twitch of dismay jumped in Redmond’s cheek over the big dog in the drawing room.

  “Then take him to the Home Secretary,” Redmond said, “and have him make a statement about your innocence. I’m sure you’ll be freed quickly enough.”

  “But Baxter tried to kill Mad—”

  “Colin.” Madeleine’s lovely low voice stopped him.

  He stopped, abashed. He’d simply wanted justice for her. Baxter had shot at this extraordinary woman; she might have been dead. But Colin didn’t want to betray Madeleine as the mastermind behind the British government’s humiliation—his abduction straight from the gallows—and clearly, Mrs. Redmond didn’t know precisely who had orchestrated it. Baxter had been the messenger for everything.

  “Were you going to introduce us to your friend, Mr. Eversea?” Redmond was sounding ironic again. And studying Madeleine, appreciation flared in his green gaze. That male instinct was difficult to combat, after all.

  “No,” Colin said flatly. “We’re leaving.” Somehow keeping Madeleine’s name to himself seemed a way to protect her from all of this, at least for now. She was probably feeling nostalgic for redcoats and pointed pistols. Good, straightforward, honest trouble.

  “If you came by hackney, take the Mercury Club carriage,” Isaiah Redmond suggested suddenly. “Mr. Bell will drive. You’ll get to Pennyroyal Green more quickly.”

  Colin stared at Isaiah Redmond. But what would it mean if it were true? To either him or Redmond? The undercurrent of that question shimmered in the air.

  Colin gave a curt nod. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll see you at the wedding, then, in Pennyroyal Green?” Fanchette said sweetly as Colin and Madeleine walked past them.

  For heaven’s sake. But then again, everyone in Pennyroyal Green was invited.

  “You’ll see me at the wedding,” he vowed.

  The next few hours passed in a nearly conversation-free, breakneck blur.

  The driver was roused from the carriage house, the carriage harnessed, and their first quick stop was Madeleine’s lodgings in a decent but unremarkable part of London. Madeleine had been surprised, but Colin insisted.

  And Colin and Madeleine crept up the stairs with pistols drawn, force of habit, really, which turned out to be unnecessary, as no one was lying in wait to kill her.

  And whereas a day earlier Colin might have happily watched her dress and undress, he instead waited outside the door with Snap and Horace and hissed “Hurry!” several times while Madeleine changed into clean linens and a fresh dress and one of her own bonnets, and emerged a new woman.

  “How would you like to go to a wedding, Horace?” Colin asked. He would deal with Horace and his own innocence in a day or so by paying a visit to the Home Secretary. He needed to get to Sussex now.

  “Oh, I lo
ve weddin’s!” Horace proclaimed.

  And so the Mercury Club carriage did indeed nearly become a fiery winged chariot as it took them at an astonishing, reckless speed to Pennyroyal Green.

  And on the way there, Horace and Madeleine filled the carriage with polite chatter for a time, but all conversation eventually foundered under the weight of Colin’s silence. He was peering avidly out the window as though the passing countryside were an oracle, as if there he could find the answers to all the questions and conundrums that quadrilled in his head. He stared at it as though he hadn’t seen it a million times before, in every condition, in every mood, from horseback and every type of carriage. He stared at it, rifling, as he’d done on the way to the gallows, through images and impressions and memories. It all looked entirely new, because he was an entirely different man now.

  He was on the brink of the biggest decision of his entire life.

  And then a streak of red heralded the appearance of Pennyroyal Green. For as was usual during summer in Pennyroyal Green, Sussex, nature had seen fit to lay a brilliant carpet of poppies all the way up the hill to Miss Endicott’s Academy for Young Ladies (or the School for Recalcitrant Girls, as everyone not so secretly called it), just in case the town’s curious boys needed help finding it. And as usual, the ancient stone church and the Pig & Thistle sat across from each other, as they had for centuries, in benign acknowledgment that each was critical to the spiritual welfare of the town. And as usual, the latest Eversea house, only a few centuries old, sat in red-brick grandeur surrounded by rolling land, grand trees, swan-dotted lakes, all of it visible from the far edge of town.

  Home.

  Dear God, he had thought he would never see it again. And the answers to everything were here.

  His heart began to pound with the knowledge, the enormity, of what he was about to do.

  “My window is the one with the enormous tree up against it. Perfect for climbing in and out.”

  As it was the first thing he’d said in nearly two hours, and Horace and Madeleine obligingly craned their heads for a look as Colin pointed.

  One villager—Mrs. Notterley, Colin noticed—dressed in her best pink dress, was not quite running up the stone path to the church, her hand clamped on the top of her bonnet lest a rogue breeze take it off, as their carriage halted in front of it. She vanished through the church doors.

  The streets of the town were empty. Everyone else was no doubt already lined up on the pews waiting to see their own Miss Louisa Porter marry their own Mr. Marcus Eversea.

  And Colin and Horace and Madeleine all disembarked from the carriage.

  There ought to have been a blue sky for a wedding, Colin thought distantly, looking up. Instead, it was mottled, like a fading bruise. Rain hid in the darkest parts, and would come shattering down in a moment, and the road she traveled on would be mud.

  At last. They needed the rain.

  The church bell rang on. And Colin stood staring at Madeleine, and Madeleine and Horace stood staring at Colin, and Colin was astounded the pounding of his heart couldn’t be heard over the sound of that bell.

  Then Horace cleared his throat. “D’yer mind, guv? I love a good weddin’.”

  Colin gave a start, but didn’t even glance at Horace. “Of course, Horace. Go on in.”

  Horace raced up the path with Snap, and he, too, disappeared into the church.

  Colin reached up and lifted off his big hat, purchased from a drunk for a penny, so as not to obstruct the glorious view of Madeleine. She was wearing purple, he realized for the first time. She looked wonderful in it.

  She must have seen something in his face, in his eyes, because all at once an uncharacteristic torrent of words poured from her.

  “Colin, you’d best go in to the church now I’ve decided I really don’t need the money from your father as I’ve the money from Mr. Hunt and I’ll buy ship passage with that and—”

  “Madeleine,” he said gently.

  She stopped babbling abruptly. Her face was ashen. She looked…terrified.

  His palms holding his big hat were clammy, and his stomach was a cyclone. Colin breathed in, breathed out, and said the words.

  “I love you.”

  He’d never said that to a woman before in his entire life.

  Madeleine hesitated. “I know. What of it?”

  Well. A spear through the chest might have hurt more, though this was debatable.

  Colin opened his mouth, only to discover that his voice had evaporated.

  What a long silence followed. Apart, that was, from the clanging of the church bell.

  “I don’t want to love you,” he continued irritably, finally. “But I do.”

  At this she smiled a little. But said nothing.

  “Well?” he demanded. He felt exposed, at sea, and increasingly surly.

  Madeleine’s lips parted once; she closed them again, and gave her head a rough little shake. “So you love me, Colin. And then…what?” She turned her empty palms up, as if showing him precisely “what.”

  “And then…we make a life together.” His voice sounded rusty. He was improvising. In truth, “And then what?” was a very good question. He had lived according to one dream, according to one plan, his entire life, and somewhere during their breakneck carriage ride home he’d at last cut the dream free. It had been ballast, he realized, steadying him in some ways, but preventing him from soaring. He no longer needed it. He was a man now, and he knew, at long last, his own heart and soul, and what he was made of. Because Madeleine had shown him.

  He honestly didn’t know what to do from here. But he’d probably known from the first time he’d seen Madeleine that this was love. All his reckless, whimsical, sensual testing of the world throughout the years had been a search for what he knew with her. Passion and peace. Laughter and combat and friendship. God, but he loved her. It was an immensely humbling, enormous, radiant thing.

  It terrified him, really.

  And this didn’t seem to be going well at all.

  “We had…an interlude, Colin,” Madeleine began carefully.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I do believe this is permanent. The loving you.”

  “A shared goal, then,” she amended a little too quickly. “And shared pleasure made our difficult goal more bearable. And that pleasure was heightened, perhaps, because of the danger. It was undeniably good, our time together, but now we shall shake hands, wish each other well, part as friends, and go on and live our lives. Go stop that wedding, Colin. It’s the life meant for you, and you know it. I’ll go live the life meant for me.”

  He frowned. What bloody nonsense. He didn’t think she believed it for an instant.

  Colin drew in a long breath through his nose, released it slowly. “So you’re content to never see me again, Madeleine.”

  He waited. She gazed back at him, her features immobile. He saw it though: the terror flaring swiftly in those dark eyes, then inscrutability again.

  The church bells rang on. The first pin-sized drop of rain landed on Colin’s cheek, and he brushed at it impatiently.

  “And you’re content to never touch me again.”

  He saw her take in a deep breath. Ah, that one struck home.

  So he drove toward her armor’s chink, marching words out grimly, as surely as though they were prisoners he was leading to the gallows. He wanted her to feel every one of them, to see, to feel, what they would mean to her.

  “You’re content to never make love to me again. To never hear my voice again. To never hear me laugh again.”

  His reward was watching the blood slowly leave her face and the pinched look about her eyes as she took the blows. Good, and good.

  And in the church tower, some enthusiastic boy continued ringing the bell.

  “You’re content to never wake up next to me again. For the rest of your life.”

  And when he thought of that…the idea of never seeing her again…well, the sensation was familiar: as though he’d just been resentenced
to death.

  Colin fell silent. He was done. What more could be said, really? And he wasn’t about to beg.

  “You’ll…you’ll go on, Colin,” she said softly. “You’ll be happy. You’ve a gift for happiness.”

  Damn her to hell.

  “Say it, Madeleine,” he said, his voice low and furious.

  She knew what he meant. “What difference would it make?” she said simply.

  And then she angled her shoulders toward the carriage, to turn from him. He touched his hand to her arm, stopping her.

  She turned slowly back to face him.

  “Say it. Say it to my face. And then walk away from me.”

  She regarded him, unflinching. Oh, those eyes. Like midnight, like stars, like forever, like heaven, like everything, those eyes. And he saw it in them before she said it, she allowed him to see it, and he knew it was true, as true for her as it was for him. And he knew it still didn’t matter.

  “I love you, Colin.”

  The feeling in her voice shook him. He dropped his arm from hers. He understood then.

  “You’re so very brave, Mad.” He said it gently. “The bravest person I’ve ever known.”

  It was his way of telling her it was all right to be afraid of something, just this once. And love was, of course, the most terrifying thing of all, as well she knew, having lost it before. Colin couldn’t find it in himself to mock her for wanting to run from it, or to punish her with words, or badger with her or reason with her.

  So it was killing him. She had saved his life. And because he loved her, he said nothing more.

  And Colin found he had too much pride to beg. A declaration of love rather stripped a man down to the bone, after all. He had done all that he intended to do. He would allow her to walk away; he would allow her, just this once, to be afraid.

  His last gift to her.

  Madeleine did look a bit uncertain for a moment. Her chin twitched upward almost defiantly. Her hand rose distractedly to push a stray hair away from where it was fluttering about her nose, having escaped from the knot at her neck. And then she turned the gesture into one of farewell, raising her hand to him, half in salute, and gave a crooked smile.