The Emperor's Conspiracy

by Michelle Diener

  He looked at her again and wondered if this feeling that thrummed inside him at just the thought of her was enough to give him an equal footing. “If your Luke thinks I will be easy pickings,” he said at last, “he is very much mistaken.”

  11

  With sinking dread Charlotte watched Lord Durnham ride away. Out on the street, an urchin leaped up from the gutter and threw a half brick at his horses’ legs, narrowly missing the left one’s fine fetlocks.

  She moved fast, and with his attention still on the retreating phaeton, managed to grab the little bastard by the neck and arm. “Who are you?”

  He gave her a disgusted look, taking in the fine-patterned green-and-white lawn of her dress, her expertly dressed hair, and tried to eel his way out of her grasp. But she knew all the tricks. Had used them countless times herself.

  “I said, who are you?”

  He looked like he was going to spit in her face, and she raised an eyebrow.

  “No one.” It was a feral snarl.

  Her heart hurt, looking at him. What was Luke about? This wasn’t how this child should be. He’d promised her. Promised! Every child who worked for him would have a better life.

  “Luke sending balmy brats to do his dirty work? I am disappointed.” She kept her voice cool. Emotion would be just another weapon to use as far as this boy was concerned.

  “Wha-?” He was still a child, beneath the grime and the hard-edged layer of fury. He couldn’t help show his confusion.

  “That horse ever do you harm?” She tightened her grip.

  The lad shook his head, his eyes narrow.

  “Funny, looked like you was trying to cripple it, ’n’ all. Do it down and have it sent to the knackers.” She gave her tongue full rein and felt a twinge of regret she couldn’t speak like this more often. She forgot she could, sometimes. “Luke’s policy’s always been hurt those what needs hurtin’ an’ not a poor sod more.”

  She leaned back a little, took the measure of him. “An’ if you were here as a nose, to watch the house, the jig’s up cos o’ that stunt.”

  He said nothing and turned his head away, looking down the street, to where Edward had already turned the corner, oblivious to the near miss of his prize horseflesh. “Sometimes I can’t ’elp it.” His words were calm. Way too mature and measured for his age. “I look up at a carriage like that, nags like those, and wouldn’t the sale of all of tha’ set me up for life, an’ all? Just want to break it all, I do. Just smash it. Cos no matter what, I can’t ’ave it, can I? Why should anyone else?”

  “Look at me.” She held him even tighter, until he winced, and she loosened her hold a little, waited for him to turn to her again. “If you’re working for Luke, you should know there’s a chance. And a better than average one, if you’re with him.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know who you’re talking about, Miss ’igh an’ Mighty.”

  “Luke didn’t send you?” She blinked, and loosened her hold just a fraction too much.

  He was out of her grasp and running before she could so much as shout.

  “Who did send you, then?” She called after him, and he stopped, far enough away he knew she wouldn’t catch him, even if she tried. He cocked his head, rubbed finger and thumb together.

  Charlotte dug into the reticule hanging from her wrist and withdrew a shilling. Far too much, but it was all she had. She threw it, and watched the way his eyes tracked it as it bounced and rolled toward him, veering left as it hit a cobblestone, and spinning until it stopped, halfway between them.

  He darted forward, grabbed it up, and backed away.

  She waited. He was either considering legging it, or he was teasing her that he would, but he eventually stopped at his old spot. “Rum ol’ gaffer sent me. Gave me a farthing to watch for that carriage.”

  “And if you saw it? Where were you to go?”

  He looked at her. Considering.

  “That was all the money in my reticule,” she said shortly.

  “Tol’ me ta go round back o’ his club, report to ’is coachman.” He danced a little farther back.

  “What club? How would you know his coach? What is his crest?” Charlotte tried to keep the desperation from her voice. He was going to run without talking. She forced herself to accept it.

  “Same crest as the one I was ’sposed to watch for.”

  His words were nearly drowned out by the clatter of a carriage passing nearby, but she heard them. Frowned.

  “Nothing like family spying on family, eh?” And with that he ran. He shouted one last thing, most likely the name of the club, but she didn’t hear him over the traffic this time.

  Charlotte stared after him, standing in the street, until Kit came out from the yard and shifted from side to side, unsure what to do.

  “Does Luke pay you extra, Kit? For watching me?” She turned to him, and he flinched from her cool expression.

  “No, I … no.” He looked away.

  “Well then stop doing it. I pay your wages; I took you and Betsy in, not him. Remember that when you run off with your stories. Or, if you can’t stop tattling, at least squeeze a bit more ready out of him.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked back inside.

  The world was crashing around her, and she still hadn’t dealt with Frethers.

  Emma knew something had happened between her brother and her hostesses even before Charlotte came into the room with a sharp rap to her step.

  Catherine had been sitting by the window, looking out, and when Emma’d inquired about Edward and Charlotte, her hostess had struggled to keep a calm face. “Your brother has left. I saw him riding past in his phaeton not a minute ago.” There was something cold in her voice.

  “What has he done?” She heard the weariness in her voice, the same weariness she’d felt too long with Geoffrey. She tried to cover it up with a smile, but when Catherine turned her gaze toward her, she could see she had not been quick enough.

  “I’m sorry. None of this is your doing.” Catherine rose and came to sit next to her, taking her hand. “Your brother has learned Charlotte’s secrets, and he was rude to her, in the shock of his discovery.”

  “Oh, what a blithering idiot he is.” Despair rose up in her, threatened to make her weep. These were her friends. She had never had friends like them before. Geoffrey had made sure of it. She’d only known the superficial niceties of the ton. And now Edward had ruined it, damn him.

  “Shhhh. Shhhh.” Catherine pulled her close, and before she knew it, Emma’s head was on her shoulder and she truly was weeping. “You are not your brother, and we will not give you the cut for his actions. Never.”

  They both heard Charlotte coming down the hall toward them, and Emma sat straight in her chair, brushing away her tears as she heard the fury in every tread.

  “I think your husband is having the house watched,” Charlotte said as she closed the door behind her, and her announcement was so unexpected, Emma simply stared at her, her heart thundering.

  “I just caught a pickaninny—” Charlotte brought herself up short as she said the street word. She drew in a deep breath, pinched the bridge of her nose, and exhaled. “A boy—spying on us. He said a man paid him a farthing to watch the house and tell him if Lord Durnham came to call.”

  Emma watched, fascinated, as Charlotte brought herself under control, forced whatever emotions were surging in her beneath a calm, serene surface.

  “This isn’t your Luke’s doing?” She felt stupid, the moment she spoke. Charlotte would not make the accusation it was Geoffrey lightly.

  Charlotte read her face correctly, because she waved her hand, as if to let Emma off the hook. “I thought it was, myself, at first. But no. The boy was instructed to watch the house by a gentleman, and to report to the man’s club if he saw the same crest visiting us as was on the carriage of the man who hired him.”

  Emma got to her feet and forced herself not to bite her fingernails. “Geoffrey’s crest isn’t the same as Edward’s,�

� she said. “But my stepfather’s is. He uses Edward’s rather than buy his own. Geoffrey’s gone to the old man for help.”

  “Is your stepfather friendly with Geoffrey?” Charlotte couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice, and Emma winced.

  Nodded.

  “He never gives Geoffrey any money—I don’t think he has much of his own—but he’s steered Geoffrey toward some investments that at least offered a return, from time to time. Given him entry into places he might have struggled to gain access to.” She shook her head. “He was the only one who didn’t stand against me when I wanted to marry Geoffrey.”

  “Will this boy tell Geoffrey or Emma’s stepfather that we know they are watching?” Catherine asked, and Emma saw she was pouring them all a cup of tea.

  “He might.” Charlotte shrugged. “If it looks like they’ll pay him for the information. But he knows I’ll pay, too. And better than Geoffrey. So he may be back with something we can use.”

  “Playing both sides?” Emma frowned. “Then we can’t trust him.”

  Charlotte gave her a strange look. “Except for Lady Howe, you can’t trust anybody.”

  12

  “You don’t want to be here.” Gary left the reins to Smithy, the driver, and swung into the coach beside Charlotte, closing the door behind him. “I don’t want to be here.”

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows. Fortunately, they weren’t anywhere fashionable—in fact, that was Gary’s complaint—so no one in her social circle was likely to have witnessed her coachman climbing into her coach with her and shutting out the world.

  There would be only one conclusion drawn, if that were the case.

  “I agree. Neither of us wants to be here.” She peered out into the night, into a street illuminated only by the weak candlelight leaking from the windows of the tight-packed tenements. “Kit says this is where his friend will meet us.”

  Gary sneered. “I don’t know that Peter is a friend of Kit’s, rightly. I’d have thought more an enemy.”

  She cocked her head at that. She waited for Gary to elaborate, but he was looking out the window again.

  Someone howled from close by, as if to the moon, and a prickle of fear skittered down her back. She raised her gaze to Gary’s and he met it, grim.

  A hand rattled the door, and Gary opened cautiously, and for the first time, Charlotte noticed a knife in his hand.

  “Peter.” He said the word neutrally, and moved back, allowing the man into the coach with them.

  He brought with him a strange mixture of smells. The earthy, salty smell of sex, the sweet, cloying scent of rum, and on top of that, the burnt-edged smell of tobacco.

  He sat next to Gary, and in the weak light, she could see he was handsome, must once have been angelic. Blond hair, fine features, his eyes a pale blue. But there was a hardness to the set of his mouth, a seediness to the bags under his eyes.

  He said nothing, had said nothing since he’d arrived, and Charlotte wondered if it had been him earlier, howling.

  Trying to set them ill at ease.

  The silence stretched out, and Peter fidgeted, an unconscious twitch, adjusting his too-tight trousers, and pulling at the overlarge jacket he was wearing.

  “Thank you for coming.” Charlotte leaned forward. “Kit said you may have some information for me.” She spoke like a lady, when she’d thought she would talk to him like the street urchin she’d once been. It had been a while since she’d surprised herself so much.

  “Depends.” Peter relaxed back against the cushions, folded his arms across his chest.

  “Depends on what?” Gary asked, his voice quiet, and Peter shifted, just slightly, away from him.

  “Depends on what you’ll give me for the information.” He spoke with a drawl, trying too hard.

  She saw herself, suddenly, as she could have been, without Catherine. Hopefully without the same capacity for cruelty she sensed in Peter, but hard and brittle as this. Smelling just the same, of sex and drink and hopelessness. Wearing the same ill-fitting castoffs. She cleared her throat. “I will pay a fair price for useful information on Lord Frethers.”

  “Kit mentioned the name, but I don’t know it.”

  Gary made a sound beside him, and Peter slid him a look. “They none of ’em use their real names. They take all manner of poncy monikers.”

  Charlotte gripped her hands tight together. “Frethers is portly, hair thinning on top, florid cheeks from too much brandy.” She thought back to when she’d seen him at the Hollidays’ house party, amazed to think it had only been five days ago. “Wears a gold pocket watch and carries a cane with a silver tip shaped like a ram’s head.”

  Peter closed his eyes for a moment, tipped his head back against the seat, as if in thought, but she saw his hands were tight-clenched fists. “That would be Cherub.”

  Cherub. She would laugh at the name Frethers took when catting about in the rookery whorehouses, but the tight, vicious look on Peter’s face turned the impulse to ash. “You know where he goes? Which places, how often?”

  Peter cocked his head. “What are the chances of him finding out who peached him?”

  “He will certainly never hear it from me.” She slid her gaze to her coachman. “Or Gary. As long as you don’t say anything, there is no chance.”

  He watched her for a moment, then turned that same, piercing gaze on Gary. Eventually nodded. “And what are you offering?”

  She had thought to offer money, and the bag of coins was beneath her cloak, but she could not look at Peter without thinking of all the years, two or three at least, that she’d had it within her power to do something about Frethers, and had not. Had allowed other things to take precedence. The look Peter had had on his face while he pretended to think who she could be describing had cut her deep, and she should bleed. She deserved it.

  “I am going to give you a choice. I have money for you, and you could take it and never see me again.” She sensed Gary tense, as if he knew what she was about to say, sensed him willing her not to say it, but she ignored him. “Or, I will give you the option of a different kind of payment. The kind where I work out a place for you in my household, either the country or here in town, and give you a permanent livelihood.”

  He laughed, a choked, shocked sound. He slid his gaze from her to Gary, and she saw him register Gary’s fury at her offer. He laughed again, this time with an edge. “I’m tempted to accept.” He smirked as Gary hissed out a breath. Waited a beat. “But I’ll take the money, love. If it’s all the same to you.” He held out his hand.

  She nodded. “First, I need to hear something useful.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up in an annoying way. “Cherub. Likes the Moon-faced Pixie. Lots of babies to be had there. Mainly girls, but enough boys to keep him coming back. And the Red Rose Inn. The boys are a bit older there, but there’s a more steady supply.” He fiddled with the buttons on the velvet jacket that seemed to billow about him like a dark sail. “Usually Mondays and Thursdays. If he’s well taken with a lad …” He cleared his throat, and Charlotte thought she might cry out. He looked across at her, and then hastily, angrily away, speaking the next words in a cool, disinterested tone. “If he’s keen, he’ll come back Friday, maybe even Saturday, for more.”

  “You ever hear of him trying his luck outside the rookeries, with the children of acquaintances?” She was thinking about the Hollidays, whether they were the first, because surely Frethers would not risk exposure without some collusion, as there had been between himself and the boys’ father.

  Peter hunched his shoulder. “May have heard ’im braggin’.”

  “Did you hear names?” She wondered if this line of questioning was even useful. No one would admit to any abuse of this sort, for any reason. Frethers knew it. He must have no self-control if he was not only fishing in the pond of the socially connected, but bragging about it, as well.

  But Peter shook his head. “No names. He’s not a complete bufflehead.”

  She felt around for her money bag and held it out to him, and he took it with a practiced hand. He dipped his fingers in and brought out a coin, tilted it to the window, to see it in the weak light. Gave a nod. “Nice doing business with ya.” His eyes flicked around the interior of the coach. “I know how you must ’ave got this, and ’tis people like you give the rest of us hope.” His words did not relay disrespect or even insinuation. He thought he was speaking one professional to another.

  “It could have happened that way,” she said. “But I did not come by my current situation by anything I had to do on my back.” She did not look at Gary but could sense his disapproval at her openness. “I was saved from the street by kindness and have had to do nothing to keep it but be myself.”

  He looked at her, as if trying to detect some joke or a lie. And when he looked away, she had the feeling he was angry with her. “Then I take it back. You’re a hope-killer. ’Cause at least if you’d done it on your back, that’s something we c’n understand. Something we c’n do ourselves. But kindness? Luck like that—it’s a million-to-one chance, and you already took the one chance going.”

  She did not dispute it. She agreed.

  Gary opened the door and hopped out, and Charlotte saw him look to the right and gawp, his eyes wide.

  She held out a hand to stop Peter clambering after him and he froze as she touched his shoulder.

  A figure stepped into the doorway, crowding Gary, who had not moved away, but hadn’t said a word, either.

  It was Luke.

  “Peter, me lad.” He looked between them, and Charlotte felt Peter tense.

  “What are you doing here?” She hadn’t realized how angry she was until she spoke. Her hand trembled as she pulled it back. This was too many betrayals. Kit must have told him where they’d be, Smithy had let him come up on them without warning, and Gary … So far, Gary had been nothing but loyal, but the way Luke approached, it was clear he had no fear Gary would stop him.

  Luke must have heard the deep hurt, because he stepped back. As he did, Peter leaped out, eel-quick, but just as fast Luke clamped a hand on his arm, jerked him close, so his mouth was right beside Peter’s ear.

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