The Heiress's Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  “Even worse,” Helena chided, and he winced, realizing too late he’d stepped neatly into her trap. “If you require help, ask for it, Calum.” She steepled her fingers under her chin and looked over the interlocked digits. “I expected as much from Ryker, not you.” Yes, because Ryker had been the one of their loyal lot to shut everyone out from what he was thinking and worries he did or did not carry. Though he’d been a changed man since he’d married, Ryker was still proud as the London night sky was black.

  And with his own loyalty, he’d not point out that Ryker had also missed the important details caught by Eve Swindell. “Regardless,” he said uncomfortably. “I’ve since hired a competent”—if suspicious—“bookkeeper, and she is putting the records to rights.”

  “And you’ve checked her work?”

  As much as he despised those books, he had. Countless times when the lady slept at night. “I have.” He grinned. “I might even say she’s more skilled than you,” he teased.

  His sister swatted his hand. “I’m not so arrogant and proud as a man who’d rather think he’s the best, and not truly hire the best.” No, she hadn’t been. She’d been coolly logical and levelheaded. A perfect businessperson whose freedom had been deliberately sheltered away from the world by her blood brother, Ryker, which Calum, as well as Adair and Niall, had also agreed to, in what they’d felt was her best interest.

  And then there was a woman such as Eve Swindell, on her own and making her way without the benefit of anyone to look after her, who’d proved herself wholly capable. Not for the first time, questions stirred about the woman who found herself inside his club.

  “You never did explain how you came to find your Mrs. Swindell,” Helena observed, then immediately grimaced. “A horrid name—”

  “For someone inside a gaming hell,” he interrupted. “Yes. I pointed that out to her.”

  His sister dusted a hand over her scarred cheek. “You told the young woman that.”

  He shifted in his seat. Calum had spent but five years in a respectable family and the majority of his life among men and women who spoke freely, without fear of offending. He wasn’t one of those fancy gentlemen capable of pretty words and pleasantries. “For what it is worth, she was unfamiliar with the word as it pertains to gambling.”

  Surprise lit Helena’s eyes. “So, she is respectable.”

  He opened his mouth to counter that supposition. And then closed it. Calum tried again, but no words were forthcoming. For—he frowned—given the opinion drawn, he was forced to acknowledge that by Eve’s cultured tones and aversion to the gaming hell floors, she’d likely been of a respectable family. Having by her admission been employed by those powerful peers stood as proof of that. Yet, that was vastly different from being a member of the peerage. “She worked . . .” For some bounder. And whatever threat the man had posed had surely been a great one for Eve to seek out a post inside a gaming hell.

  Helena quirked an eyebrow. “She worked . . . ?”

  “On the record keeping of a nobleman prior to coming to the Hell and Sin,” he settled for. There was something . . . wrong in sharing those pieces Eve had shared with another—even if it was his sister. It was illogical to let a handful of days knowing one woman in his employ supersede the lifetime he shared with the sister across from him.

  “You trust her?” Helena put to him, the meaning clear in her words and in her eyes. If Calum vouched for the woman, then Helena trusted her as well.

  His mouth went dry, and he tried to force the words out. Over the years, he’d prided himself on his cautiousness. That sense of wariness was one that had only truly come to him after the Duke of Bedford had seen him thrown into Newgate. Such a misstep was enough to make a man question every decision he made thereafter. However, then, his mistake in trusting a small girl of the peerage would have only cost Calum his life. Mistakes that would have repercussions and consequences on the men and women he called kin were far more perilous.

  “Should I take that as a no?” Helena asked drily, and yet that question contained a hard edge that reflected her life on the streets and not her existence in these new exalted walls.

  Calum cracked his knuckles. “You should take that to mean I’ve known the woman but a handful of days,” he sidestepped. “And I’d hardly give anyone my full trust after such a brief time.”

  A knock sounded at the door, and they looked as one. The old, weathered butler appeared in the doorway with a silver tray and a note. He came forward with his burden extended. Helena reached out, but the servant held the tray under Calum’s nose.

  He frowned and accepted the page. Skimming his gaze over Adair’s familiar scrawl, he slid his finger under the red wax seal and unfolded the note.

  As he read the brief contents, his frown deepened.

  You asked to be made aware of whether the young woman sneezed wrong. MacTavish discovered her taking a hired hack and followed her to—

  Lambeth Street? What in blazes was Eve Swindell doing there now?

  “What is it?” Helena asked, bringing his head snapping up.

  Schooling his features, Calum carefully folded the page and tucked it inside his jacket. “There is a matter of business that calls me away,” he said, climbing quickly to his feet.

  Helena instantly jumped up, revealing a belly rounded with child. “I want to meet her.”

  There could be no doubt as to the her in question. Her, as in Eve Swindell, who even now by Adair’s note was hiring hacks and sneaking about Lambeth Street.

  “You will,” he promised, and turned on his heel. That vow was far less certain, given the suspicions roused this day by the young woman. Calum rushed through Helena’s impressive Grosvenor Square residence and found his way quickly outside. One of the liveried servants stood in wait, with Calum’s horse, Tau, already saddled.

  With a word of thanks, he climbed astride and urged the black mount down the alley and out into the fashionable end of London. Cursing the crowds of bustling passersby, lords, and ladies, he carefully navigated the thoroughfare. As he rode, Calum focused on the steady clip of Tau’s hooves striking the cobbles to keep control of the unease roiling around his chest.

  Of course, he’d allowed Eve her Sundays. There was nothing untoward in her going out, and taking a hack no less. Except as he rode, and the fashionable ends of London gave way to the unsavory, seedy streets Eve sought out, something more than suspicion gripped him—it was fear.

  Battling back the sea of panic, he urged Tau onward, faster through the streets, until the familiar ones of Lambeth pulled into focus. Calum frantically searched the less-crowded end, where MacTavish had followed the lady to. He did a search and instantly found the tall, burly guard. Cap down, head trained on the building in front of him, Calum swiftly dismounted. Reins in hand, he marched over.

  “What is it?” he asked, as soon as he reached the other man’s side.

  “You asked if the woman gave me any reason to be suspicious,” MacTavish said in low, gravelly tones. “Seemed suspicious, Mr. Dabney. Looking around. Jumpy. Found her sneaking down the alley. Went there.” MacTavish lifted his chin toward the building across the street.

  Calum followed his stare and frowned. A foundling hospital? He faltered. What business did Eve have inside that establishment? It did not present as an ideal locale for a nefarious meeting. A recent request she’d put to him echoed around his mind: I would ask that you permit me to donate the uneaten foods. Wordlessly, he turned over the reins of his mount to his guard.

  “Went down to the side entrance,” MacTavish murmured, gesturing to that portion of the building.

  Eyes trained forward, Calum marched with purposeful strides to the white structure. He reached the side door of the building and, stealing a glance about, pressed the handle and slipped inside.

  Drawing the door silently shut, Calum trained his ears on the sounds around him. The bustling activity in the kitchens, broken by an occasional order from the cook and intermittent laughter from the servants
, showed that the staff remained focused on their tasks. Using the same skills of silence he’d mastered as a boy in the Dials, Calum crept along the hall leading away from the kitchen. He paused as he passed each closed door, listening for the muffled whisper of voices. Continuing on, he reached a stairwell.

  Stealing another furtive glance about to verify there was no one lurking in the shadows, he started a slow climb. When he arrived on the main floors of the hospital, an eerie quiet rang within the sterile building.

  He furrowed his brow. Mayhap MacTavish had been wrong. Mayhap he’d not seen the building she’d sneaked off to. After all, what business could Eve have here?

  Distant voices reached his ears, followed by the sharp wail of a babe. Drawn to those sounds, Calum crept down the hall. He pressed his ear against each door he passed until Eve’s soft, lilting tones—better suited to a lady of the peerage—met his ears. Her words were periodically followed or interrupted by the quiet, somber ones of an unfamiliar woman.

  “. . . you should not be here . . .”

  “. . . I needed to be here . . .” Eve’s muffled replies moved in and out of focus.

  The voices engaged in a frantic discourse that dissolved to a barely discernible whisper that he strained to hear.

  “. . . I cannot come back as much as I once . . .” Eve was saying. “. . . but Mr. Dabney granted permission to make donations of food, and I need to work through the details . . .”

  “. . . You cannot come back at all . . .”

  “You need to hear this, Nurse Mattison,” Eve spoke in strident tones. “The children are to be protected at all costs. All costs. Do you understand what I’m saying? If their safety is at risk . . . you must think of them before anyone and everyone else . . .”

  Calum damned the heavy oak panel that swallowed the remainder of Eve’s cryptic request. What promises did she make, and what obligations did she have here?

  “Are ya spying?”

  That loud, indignant voice piped across the quiet, echoing damningly off the halls. Calum swung about, and bloody hell in this humiliating moment of discovery did it feel a good deal similar to the day a child’s carelessness had seen him hurled into Newgate.

  A tiny child stared back, with a street-aged wariness better suited to a grown man than a boy of four or five. The shuffle of footsteps sounded on the other side of that door, and for a frantic moment built on embarrassment, Calum contemplated escape.

  The door opened, and he looked past the tall nurse in white skirts to the young woman with ink-black hair, sitting, a babe on her lap and horror in her eyes. It was not, however, the fear and shock that held him riveted. Rather, it was the sight of the plump baby bouncing up and down on her lap. The child with thick gold curls and impossibly round eyes had the look of a cherub, and there was something . . . so very beautiful in the protective hold Eve had upon him. Hers was a tender embrace, fierce and gentle all at the same time. A thousand questions sprang, with all the answers only coming back to one obvious conclusion. It is her child . . . Was this boy the product of that scoundrel she’d only briefly alluded to?

  The tiny boy’s cooing, incoherent babbling—at odds with the thick tension blanketing the room—brought Calum reeling back.

  “M-may I help you?” the nurse stammered, and in a remarkable show of bravery placed herself directly between Calum and Eve.

  “A moment alone with Mrs. Swindell.”

  “Mrs. . . . ?”

  He glanced to the older woman in time to detect the brief flash of confusion and then slow understanding.

  Calum narrowed his eyes. She’d no idea who Mrs. Swindell was.

  He held Eve’s gaze. “Mrs. Swindell,” he said by way of greeting, strolling uninvited past the befuddled nursemaid and deeper inside the room.

  Chapter 10

  Oh, God. He is here. Why is he here?

  “Mr. Dabney,” she greeted. How was her voice so steady when inside her panic mounted? He was a wall of immovable granite, unyielding, revealing not a hint of thought, emotion, or that he’d so much as even heard Eve. At the protracted silence, her heart threatened to beat a path right outside her chest.

  “A moment alone, Mrs. Swindell.”

  The baby in Eve’s arms squealed and yanked hard on her hair. Lightening her hold, she made soothing words meant to assure both of them.

  Nurse Mattison wrung her wrinkled hands together. “That would not be appropriate. I . . .”

  He quelled the woman with the flinty stare that had terrified Eve as a girl. Until she’d come upon him whispering to her horse, Night, one day and seen past the gruff facade to the gentle, kind young man underneath. Oh, how she adored that life had not left him that often-unsmiling, snarling boy.

  “It is fine, Nurse Mattison,” she said calmly. In her accounting of where she’d been, and why she’d not be able to return with her usual frequency, she’d also taken great pains to ignore mention of the Hell and Sin and the head proprietor who, with a mere look, could reduce her to a bevy of wild fluttering.

  The nurse hesitated and gave her a meaningful look. One that asked questions and promised safety all at the same time. It spoke volumes of the woman who’d stand in opposition to one as fierce-looking as Calum Dabney. “Very well,” she said tightly, and then she came forward, gathering Jamie.

  The little boy immediately kicked and howled, reaching for Eve. Her arms felt empty with the loss of his familiar weight. Nurse Mattison lingered in the doorway a moment more, then pulled the door closed behind her, leaving Eve and Calum—alone.

  As soon as the faint click echoed around the room, she stood and planted her hands on her hips. “You followed me,” she charged, leveling that accusation at him. Dealing with her unpredictable brother over the years had demonstrated the advantages of taking the offensive. It unsettled and unnerved one’s opponent.

  Then, Calum Dabney was cut of an entirely different fabric than her wastrel brother. The powerfully built proprietor folded his arms at his chest and scrutinized her through those impossibly thick, long chestnut lashes. “I don’t trust you,” he said with such bluntness she flinched.

  Hearing him voice that admission aloud ripped at her, and even as she wanted to rail at him for the unfair opinion he’d drawn, he was right to doubt her. It was hard to say whom she hated more: him for having judged her, or herself for the lie she lived in the name of her own security.

  “Nothing to say to that?” he challenged.

  “What would you have me say?” She set her chin. “I cannot demand your trust. I can only seek to earn it.”

  “Which you’ll not do by sneaking off and—”

  “Is this not the day you gave me?” she cried, hating that guilt lent a high-pitched timbre to her retort. “Do you make it a habit of following the other members of your staff about? Or am I the only one whom you chase around London?”

  “I did not chase you,” he said tightly, a dull flush staining his cheeks. “Furthermore, I’ve known you but a handful of days.”

  Eleven months, Eve thought. You knew me for eleven months.

  He stalked over, and she quickly backed away. “And that is only after you failed to appear for your interview, then stole my books and commandeered rooms for yourself.”

  Her back bumped against the wall, forcing a halt to her retreat. That abrupt movement knocked loose a limp strand of still vile-smelling hair. She blew the bothersome tendril back. “I did not steal your books,” she mumbled. Did she imagine the ghost of a smile hovering at the edges of his hard lips? Then a somber mask fell, driving back all hint of lightness.

  “Is he your son?” he asked quietly.

  As she was just an inch over five feet, most men, women, and some children towered over Eve. For the whole of her life, she had despaired over and despised her small frame. Until now. Now she gave silent thanks for the great disparity that brought her eyes into focus on his chest and spared her the intense scrutiny of his probing eyes.

  Is he my son . . . ? Her mind tumbled
to a slow stop as she fought to sort through that question. She widened her eyes. He believed Jamie was, in fact, her son.

  “That is why you’re desperate for employment, and why you needed the funds,” he murmured, his voice a low, quiet rumble.

  How neatly he’d assembled that puzzle. Only those were not the pieces of her life. She troubled the inside of her cheek. He’d crafted a neat story that explained away everything, from her seeking a post in the Hell and Sin to why she would periodically visit the Salvation Founding Hospital. Yet . . . I cannot give him this lie. There were already enough she’d perpetuated between them, all in the name of her security.

  “He is not my son,” she finally said, glancing down at her hands.

  She looked up and found his focus trained on her. He didn’t demand answers, or order an explanation from her lips, as her brother had been wont to do. Instead, Calum allowed her to disclose the truth of her own volition.

  Needing some distance to order her thoughts, Eve stepped around him and made her way to the chipped and scarred desk. “Jamie is not my child,” she repeated. “I’ve come here . . .” Since her father had died and she’d come to London. A pang struck. “For a number of months,” she quietly settled for. “I visit with the children, and”—she gestured to the stack of ledgers—“help with their bookkeeping.”

  His eyes fell to the leather folders and folios. Joining her at the desk, Calum picked one up, as easily in command of this room as he was his own club. He flipped through the pages, working his gaze quickly over the columns and numbers. “The two hundred pounds wasn’t for you?” He paused in his perusal and glanced up to meet her stare.

  “No.” She shook her head. “They . . . the hospital is in dire straits, and—” He snapped the book closed and set it aside. “And they needed the funds.”

  “So, you gave your own . . .”

  Unnerved by the intensity of his gaze, she focused on stacking her books. How to explain why a woman in need of funds and employment had given up an entire month’s wages? And yet, even if she did not have a fortune awaiting her in three months’ time, she would still have offered over those monies to Nurse Mattison. Calum brushed his knuckles over her jaw, forcing her chin up. She gasped and abandoned her task.