How Tommy yearned to know what he uttered.
There was to be one race only, an entirely impromptu event organized primarily to persuade the Duke of Greyfolk of the wisdom of buying one of the horses. The track was short, straight, informal; and even though it wasn’t officially racing season, word of a fresh diversion, not to mention the opportunity to place wagers, ensured word of the event traveled swiftly, and a delighted and socially diverse (riffraff and aristocrats were represented in equal proportion) crowd had amassed. A costermonger had even wheeled a cart of apples into their midst, and was doing a brisk business.
Tommy had long ago mastered the art of near invisibility. She was small and quick and could weave through a crowd as unobtrusively as a breeze or a shadow. She’d dressed for the occasion, too, in last season’s funnel-shaped face-hiding straw bonnet, and a respectable and forgettable brown dress and cloak, and she was confident not a soul would look twice at her. She clutched the scrap of red ribbon and medal in her fist, and was just about to sidle closer to the duke when the only person who could drag her eyes away from him appeared.
She smiled slowly. There was a shivery pleasure in simply watching Jonathan Redmond move. His height, his bearing, the sleek fit of his clothing—it was a bit like happening upon a handsome wild animal in its habitat. And it was also amusing to watch him do precisely what she’d just done: take up a station at the racetrack rail not more than ten feet away from the duke.
She suspected he would artfully, strategically maneuver his position until he was within speaking range of the duke, who could not fail to acknowledge him.
And that was a conversation she wanted to hear.
She slipped back through the crowd, and circled around the costermonger’s cart, when suddenly she heard an outraged roar.
The barrel-shaped costermonger had seized a scrawny boy by the forearm and hoisted him, shaking him until the apple he’d stolen dropped from his fist.
And then the bastard went on shaking him. As if he could shake every thieving impulse from his scrawny body.
Tommy lunged toward them. But she stopped abruptly.
For someone else had gotten there first.
“Why don’t you unhand him now?”
Jonathan’s tone was pleasant, almost gentle, very, very controlled. Something about it made the tiny hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She wondered if the costermonger recognized the grave threat in it.
“ ’e’s a wee thief, ’e is!” The costermonger gave another shake. The child squeaked and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Yes, but he’s dropped the apple, so you may as well stop shaking him. Now.” Suddenly Jonathan’s voice was velvety and sinister.
The dangling boy made a hapless gulping noise.
The costermonger thrust out his lower lip mutinously. And gave one more shake.
Before anyone could gasp, Jonathan’s arm shot out, seized the man’s wrist, and twisted it hard.
The man squawked in shock and pain and dropped the boy, who scrambled off through the crowd like a little spider.
Whereupon the outraged costermonger whirled on Jonathan and took a swing.
Tommy gasped as Jonathan leaped back. Not quickly enough; his head whipped back a little with a glancing blow.
He recovered his balance easily. The two men stared at each other, chests heaving.
Then Jonathan bent to retrieve the apple, and handed it to the costermonger silently. Quite speakingly.
Tommy was riveted. Jonathan Redmond had just risked bodily harm to rescue a street rat.
Fascinating, that.
And potentially useful.
Finally, Jonathan turned to walk away.
And stopped short when he realized the horse race had already been run and the duke and his entourage had departed, oblivious of the little drama that had just ensued.
“Bloody. Hell,” he said feelingly.
Tommy casually extended her handkerchief. “You seem to be bleeding a little.” She pointed to the corner of her mouth.
He took the proffered handkerchief, seemingly unsurprised to see her. “When will I learn it doesn’t pay to be a Samaritan?” And then he went still and studied Tommy.
And his face suffused with suppressed hilarity.
“Well, look at you, Miss de Ballesteros. In all that . . .” He studied the bonnet that nearly engulfed her face, and the voluminous brown shawl, his expression growing increasingly amused, and then he decided upon the word, “. . . brown, one would almost believe you didn’t want to anyone you know to recognize you.”
Very dryly said.
She merely pointed meaningfully and insistently at the corner of her own mouth. “Valiant of you to intervene. And you’re still bleeding, by the way.”
He shrugged. “Or foolish. Choose your adjective. That costermonger was triple the boy’s size.” He dabbed the handkerchief at his mouth corner, pulled it away to inspect it.
“Ah, very good. Only a drop or two of blood. Just a tiny cut on the inside of my lip, no doubt.. And thank you for the loan of this, by the way. My sister generally keeps me supplied with embroidered handkerchiefs, but I recently gave mine away.”
She liked the wry way he said “my sister.” Affectionate, proprietary, long suffering. “To someone who was bleeding?”
He gave a short laugh. Too late she realized he was running his thumb absently over the corner of her handkerchief, where initials should have, or would have, been embroidered.
He didn’t precisely freeze. He was far too careful for that.
But he did go appreciably still.
Because instead of Tommy’s initials, his thumb had encountered pinprick holes where someone else’s initials had been picked out.
When he finally lifted his gaze to hers, his face was carefully expressionless. But there was something a bit too speculative dawning in his eyes.
Bloody Hell.
She’d bought the handkerchief from a certain Mrs. Bandycross in St. Giles, years ago, in different times. Mrs. Bandycross did a brisk trade in stolen linen. A penny per handkerchief. Pickpockets brought them in, and Mrs. Bandycross picked out the stitching and resold them.
She was certain Jonathan suspected. And it told him a little more about her financial circumstances than she preferred anyone to know.
“Did you wager anything on the race?” she asked smoothly, quickly. But her heartbeat had quickened. Damn the man for being so bloody observant.
“I wagered I would be able to speak to the duke. And lost.” He sounded a bit abstracted. He was still watching her thoughtfully. “Why were you spying on him?”
“I wasn’t.” She said it reflexively, and too late realized she sounded like a child.
He sighed. “You were. I saw you staring at him rather avidly from beneath that unflattering bonnet. I could feel you staring at him.”
“You couldn’t—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give up, Miss de Ballesteros.” “At least you’re not holding a weapon this time.”
It was impossible not to smile at him. The cheek of the man.“That could be because you didn’t creep up behind me, this time.”
“No, it was rather the other way around this time, wasn’t it? I simply turned, and there you were behind me at the costermonger’s cart. Almost as if you knew exactly where I was. Just as I suspect I saw you because I expected to see you.”
An ambiguous, interesting, charged little silence followed. It thrummed with the tacit understanding that they had each perhaps made an actual effort to find each other in the crowd. Had in fact been quite aware of each other in the throng.
Wordlessly, they took each other’s measure, two confident, beautiful people, neither of them giving anything of their thoughts away to the other.
He wasn’t a blinker, Jonathan Redmond. More’s the pity.
A woman strolled by, glanced at Jonathan, and then swiveled her head so violently to gawk that she stumbled over her feet and nearly fell.
Jonathan d
idn’t appear to notice. It probably happened to him every day. It was probably so commonplace in his world he assumed it happened to everybody.
“He’s wealthy, the duke,” Jonathan said casually into the short ensuing silence, at last looking away from her toward the track. The crowd was rapidly dispersing, straggling past them. “One of the wealthiest men on this continent. I imagine a man like that can afford anything he wants. Spectacular things. Say, the finest box at the opera. The very best horses and carriages. The very best . . . mistresses. Things of that sort.” He slid a sly sideways look at her.
She rolled her eyes at his attempt to fish for information, to his clear amusement. “What do you want the duke to invest in, Mr. Redmond?”
“A business venture.” he said shortly. He turned back to her. “Why? Do you have a great superfluous pile of money you wish to invest, too, Miss de Ballesteros?”
That was pointed. Wicked, wicked man. He was far too astute for his—and her—own good. Her incriminating sorry little bloodied handkerchief remained bunched in his fist. Still, there wasn’t a shred of accusation in what he said.
“I’m interested in the art of making money.” This much was true.
“Isn’t that a coincidence,” he drawled. “Something else we have in common. That, and our hobby of stalking the Duke of Greyfolk.”
She laughed.
His face lit then, as if her laughter was a prize he’d won. But she could feel a restlessness setting in; her native caution was reviving, coiling in her like a spring. She really ought to put a halt to this conversation. It was far too honest and dangerously comfortable.
She tensed to move.
And yet she couldn’t seem to do it while Jonathan’s face was still faintly lit. He suddenly glanced toward her feet. “You just dropped something. Something red?”
Her medal!
She lunged to snatch it up just as he bent to retrieve it.
And now her heart was pounding.
He stared at her again, a faint frown between his eyes.
“Ho! Redmond!” A cheerful masculine voice rose out of the dwindling crowd.
Jonathan pivoted reflexively toward it.
And Tommy, who was astute at seizing the perfect opportunity to appear and disappear, slipped away as swiftly as that street urchin had snatched an apple.
Chapter 6
THE NEXT MORNING JONATHAN tossed a coin to decide whether to first go to Klaus, break the news about his failure to gain capital, watch his sunny hopeful face fall, and withstand a shower of emotional German, or whether he ought to spend the afternoon saving Argosy from himself.
He knew no particular joy when Argosy won the toss.
For Argosy dipped freely into the seemingly endless vats of his father’s wealth and was allegedly given leave to marry whomever he pleased; he wished he’d gone straight to Klaus. Then again, he would likely find little comfort anywhere in London, given the sword of Damocles currently dangling over his head.
And yet when Jonathan and Argosy entered a room together, women tended to flock to the two of them like migrating geese. Argosy was fair, chiseled, handsome in a way that only generations of beautiful people mating with generations of other beautiful people could produce—and was heir to a viscount. He’d perfected the art of ennui, such that women yearned to be the one who finally made him come alive with passion, and would go to considerably risky erotic lengths to do so, which Argosy never discouraged. Given the company you keep, Tommy had said outside the Duke of Greyfolk’s house, and doubtless Argosy was precisely whom she’d meant.
And Tommy was the object of Argosy’s current inappropriate obsession.
A year ago the Countess of Mirabeau had decided she was lonely, and instead of calling upon people or holding dinner parties, which is what most sane aristocrats would have done, she’d begun inviting people who amused her to wait upon her—a poet she’d admired, or a painter who amused her, a renowned thinker or two (although the true thinkers soon tired of milling about in the salon talking to poets), the daughter of a renowned former courtesan (that would be Tommy), and soon enough her events became fashionable. Which meant all the youngbloods investigated.
And when they met Tommy, they returned again and again. And brought better liquor with them, since the countess had a grand title but a modest and dwindling fortune.
And thus was born the weekly salon.
That was the other reason Jonathan wasn’t eager to attend the salon today; Tommy might be intriguing enough, but he knew her for what she was: trouble.
Baritone voices and soft feminine laughter mingled. A poet who aspired to Byronic fame stood in one corner, gesticulating wildly, while another man, a novelist of some sort whose hair was much too long, as if he was far too busy thinking deep thoughts to ever cut it, listened and bobbed his head in agreement. A painter named Wyndham, rumored to have painted a portrait of Tommy, but whom Jonathan knew primarily produced remarkably colorful and prurient works of art for a brothel called The Velvet Glove, stood near them not troubling to look anything other than bored and incredulous, which made Jonathan like him.
And then there was Lord Prescott, a viscount who was reportedly nearly thirty years old. Older than everyone present, too thin for his frame, he leaned against a wall, alone, and still, but for his eyes. His eyes tracked Tommy about the room.
And thus far he was the only person she seemed to be studiously ignoring.
Interesting, that.
Prescott was a viscount. Wealthy. Unmarried. “A rather dry chap,” Argosy had once described him, upon meeting him once socially. An indictment, indeed.
The Countess of Mirabeau was enthroned in another corner near the large marble fireplace, which, to Jonathan, seemed unnecessarily cherub-bedecked. Their fat little cheeks and buttocks bulged from the corners and crawled all the way up the wall, in a great debauched arc. Today the countess was dressed in a toga, a wreath ringing her head, sandals on her feet.
“Greek today, are we, my lady?” he’d asked her.
“Carpe diem, Mr. Redmond. Carpe diem.”
“I shall endeavor to carpe, thank you. It’s good to see you looking so well.”
“Likewise, young man. But aren’t you overdressed? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a toga?”
“No doubt,” he agreed. “Perhaps next time.”
He was contemplating migrating over to chat with the countess now, because her benign madness suited his mood, when Argosy said, “Come to Tattersall’s with me tomorrow, Redmond. I could use your advice about a new mare.”
Argosy was trying to distract him from his brood, which he was just settling into nicely.
“I would, apart from the fact that Tattersall’s is less a pleasure than a torment now that I haven’t a damn sou.”
“Which inconveniences me as much as it does you. Your decision has suddenly deprived me of my most tolerable friend.”
Jonathan snorted. “Your pain is poignant, truly.”
“Why did you sink all of your profits into another shipping venture, Redmond?”
“Because the time was right and I think it’ll yield twice my investment, if not more, and very soon. The cargo of silks was magnificent. And because I fully anticipated having my allowance to draw upon in the interim. It was a miscalculation I shall not make again.”
Argosy frowned faintly through all of this. “Firstly, how on earth do you know this sort of thing? Wouldn’t it be nearly as profitable or predictable to sink your profits into the tables at a gaming hell? Secondly, I’m not certain a man should go about describing silks as magnificent. Thirdly, your father is rich. You don’t need to know how to do anything in particular, apart from perhaps riding and shooting and dancing, all of which you already do uncommonly well.”
“Firstly, I think nearly anything that will make a profit is magnificent. Silks are magnificent. Gaslight is magnificent. Cotton manufacturing is magnificent. The new color printing press I’d like to finance? Magnificent. Secondly, I suspect any so
rt of knack I may possess, such as it is, I inherited from my father, rot his soul. But I’ve a taste for it now, and I’m bloody good at it and I like it. Thirdly, I’m not sure a man should go about complimenting another man’s dancing skills, but it’s kind of you to notice.”
Argosy grinned. “I’ll tell you what’s magnificent. Or rather, who.” He gestured subtly with his very fine chin to Thomasina de Ballesteros, who stood angled away from them, busily captivating a guest.
Jonathan raised his voice a little. “Trouble de Ballesteros? That very ordinary ginger-haired female?”
She didn’t stop talking. But her mouth quirked at the corner, and her shoulder turned every-so-slightly toward them, like a weathervane.
He’d known she was listening.
Argosy swiveled on him. “Are you mad?” he said on an indignant hush. “Just look at her skin. Like amber and cream! And her hair is . . . oh God, don’t say another word she’s coming she’s coming over here she’s coming she’s coming . . .”
She had indeed graciously extricated herself from her conversation and was now gliding toward them.
They bowed to her, and she curtsied with the grace of a silk handkerchief fluttering to the ground. She was in white muslin today, her hair dressed in the Grecian style, and her neckline, as usual, could only be described as adventurous, for which every man in the room was grateful.
A far, far cry from yesterday’s big bonnet and homely shawl.
“Mr. Redmond. If you brood any more darkly I may need to eject you, lest you blot out all the light in the room like an eclipse and people begin speaking of omens. Although some women consider brooding picturesque, and perhaps that is why you do it? Something to do, perhaps, with the maintenance of your mystique? Or is it perhaps related to that little bruise you’re sporting?”
Jonathan listened to this with a faint smile. He let a strategic little silence go by. “Have you seen any dukes lately, Miss de Ballesteros?”
She smiled tolerantly, as if he’d said something whimsical.
Her eyes, however, flashed a warning.
Julie Anne Long - [Pennyroyal Green 08] Page 5
