“Ha ha!” His mother laughed indulgently.
His father simply smiled generally. Very likely wasn’t listening at all.
Three hours later Jonathan, instead of meeting Argosy at White’s, found himself in front of the Half Moon Theater in Covent Garden.
For if he was a condemned man, quite truthfully, what had he to lose?
Chapter 8
AND YET HE STOOD alone on the street except for a few surly drunks and the occasional rat strolling purposefully by, as if they were laborers off to work. The Half Moon Theater was dark; it had been boarded and shuttered, it appeared, some time ago. Across from him, a noisy pub disgorged and admitted staggering revelers at regular intervals; a listless prostitute asked him if he wanted a go at her. He politely declined.
The moon grew brighter, the night watch called out “Midnight,” and still there was no sign of Thomasina de Ballesteros.
“This way.”
Christ!
One moment she wasn’t there, the next she was.
And she’d seen him flinch, because now she was laughing quietly at him.
“Count yourself fortunate I didn’t shoot you.”
“You’ll need to be more alert, Mr. Redmond, if you’re to be of use to me.”
She was draped all over in a dark cloak again, but the husk of her voice was unmistakable. She seemed to have eyes like a cat, too, for Tommy immediately proceeded to swiftly lead him on a mazelike journey through alleys, narrow lanes, once through a park, up a staircase, across the top of one building to another, down a staircase, and he could have sworn they doubled back once to do it all again.
“Is this an elaborate ruse to disorient me in order to divest me of my purse? Because Argosy wasn’t jesting when he said I’d been deprived of my allowance. And, really, is two pounds worth killing over? Because that’s all I have on my person.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. You’d just shoot me with your pistol.”
“Oh, yes. That.”
She turned left down a narrow street.
“You’re awfully small to be traipsing about London by yourself at this time of night, Miss de Ballesteros.”
“Are you about to get protective?”
“No.”
“Possessive?” A warning edge in her voice.
“God, no. Merely making an observation.”
“I have friends all over London who emerge to do business at . . . varying times of day. They’ll recognize my screams and come to my rescue should I require it.”
They trod along in silence for a few paces.
“You’re trying to decide whether I’m jesting, aren’t you, Mr. Redmond?”
“I unfortunately am quite certain that at least part of your statement was true.”
“Clever as well as pretty!” she said dryly. “This way!”
She made a sharp right turn and then an almost immediate left. Who knew the great arterial streets of London were fed by so very many squalid little tributary alleys and side streets? She did, apparently, because on one street a drunk leaning against the wall called out, “Greetings, Tommy.”
“Greetings, Jasper!”
This exchange was hardly reassuring.
“Is this really necessary?” he groused. “This circuitous route to your lair?”
“Patience. My mystique is everything, Mr. Redmond. And what makes you think it’s circuitous? It may very well simply be the shortest route to my . . . lair.” She liked the word, he could tell.
And she brought them to a stop in front of an unexceptional door in the side of a tall, narrow nondescript building, though most buildings could be described as nondescript in the dark. He suspected a shop occupied the bottom of it, but the windows were shuttered for the night. God only knew where they were, though he was fairly certain she’d strategically led him on an elaborate figure eight of sorts around Covent Garden for the last ten minutes, and they were likely probably only a few feet from where they began.
He listened hard; a drunken chorus swelled up and was abruptly cut off, as if a door had thrown wide on a pub and swung shut again. The song sounded like “The Ballad of Colin Eversea.”
She produced a key, the door creaked open, she beckoned him through, and it slammed what sounded irrevocably shut behind them.
“Is this where I need my pistol?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said absently. A lit lamp was hung on a hook immediately inside the door, obviously awaiting their arrival. She seized the lamp and scampered down a flight of narrow wooden stairs like a squirrel, and he followed, his hands on the walls for balance. Through a short, dark, narrow corridor.
Into a very small, beautifully appointed room, lit by a crackling fire.
He hovered in the doorway, amazed.
The room had glow and warmth, and contained the elegance of a snifter of cognac. A coral velvet tufted settee arched like a stroked cat against one wall; the rug was cream and brown and apricot and floral; the curtains, great heavy columns of coral velvet, were drawn shut. Furniture had obviously been selected with care—he recognized Chippendale and a French screen—and was tastefully and strategically gilded here and polished there. The fire set everything aglow. The back wall, somewhat unusually, was papered in black and white.
Jonathan’s heart gave a lurch. The bloody wall had just . . . moved.
He’d begun to entertain the possibility that Philippa had truly done some damage to his brain with her blow when, to his relief and subsequent alarm, he realized it wasn’t a wall.
It was a man. The sort of man one might easily mistake for a wall.
His head, which was just shy of the ceiling, was bald and glossy as porcelain, and embedded with four lines across the forehead, like a musical staff. His shoulders were nearly as broad as the settee, his girth suggested he might have eaten a settee, and he sported a shining gold piratical hoop in one ear.
He was dressed spotlessly in black and white, the uniform of a butler.
“Good evening, Rutherford.”
“May I help you with your cloak, Miss Tommy? And your coat, sir?”
He bowed deeply to Jonathan. His voice must be what Poseidon’s voice sounds like, Jonathan thought. It was fathoms deep, as if it had needed to travel miles through him in order to reach the surface. He was lost in admiration at what a creature this man was. He slowly turned around to allow Rutherford to delicately help him from his coat. And continued to peer over his shoulder at him.
Rutherford neatly laid both the cloak and the wrap over the back of the settee.
“Rutherford, if you would bring our guest . . .” She turned to Jonathan.
“Ale, if you have it.”
“Two ales, please.”
“Is Rutherford his real name?” Jonathan whispered when he’d departed for the next room. Jonathan was positively alive with curiosity over what might be in that room.
“No, but it amuses us to call him that. It was either that or Necksnapper, after what he allegedly does best. Though I confess I’ve never actually seen him do it.”
Charming. “Why, because you covered your eyes when he did?”
“I’m sure it’s just a myth,” she soothed. “He’s as mild as a blancmange.”
“Yes. I’m certain his real name is Perceval.”
She laughed.
“Is he in your employ?”
“No. He’s a friend who lives . . . nearby . . . who doesn’t mind helping me on occasion. He was a special friend of my mother.”
“Your mother, the exiled Spanish princess.”
The Spanish would explain her coloring, however.
“Yes,” she said without a trace of irony. “Why don’t you have a seat here?” She gestured at a plush damask chair pushed up against a tasteful, gleaming little card table.
“Is this where you live?” He craned his head, attempting to get a look down the hallway where Rutherford had disappeared. Did she bring men here often?
Did she take lovers? No one seemed to know for certa
in. That much had been true.
“Why don’t you have a seat here?” she repeated pointedly, gesturing to the chair, enunciating each word very clearly.
“Perhaps I’ll have a seat here,” he suggested, which made her smile.
But first he pulled out her chair and motioned her into it. She slid into it as gracefully as a rose sliding into a bud vase.
Rutherford returned with two pints of ale on a tray and served them with alacrity.
“I’ll just be in the next room, Miss Tommy,” he said meaningfully as he bowed his way out.
“Cheers,” Jonathan said, and hoisted his glass to her.
She did likewise to him.
They sipped.
And there was a moment of silence when they looked across at each other. It occurred to him that she was the jewel and the room was her setting, and that she had likely planned it that way. Her dress was a pale champagne color trimmed in satin, the sleeves long and fitted, and her smooth, pale gold shoulders and throat rose up out of it, giving the ever-so-slightest impression of nudity, and the effect was most definitely not without impact. Her stays pushed a pair of lovely small breasts up to the very border of her deep neckline, creating a tempting little crevasse a man could slip a digit into. She was dressed to persuade.
“Hold out your hand, Mr. Redmond.” She said it with a little smile.
And so he did.
She produced a little velvet bag and tipped it over his palm.
Out poured an extraordinary rope of pearls.
A mile of them, it seemed; they went on and on, and ended by pooling, gleaming in his palm.
He stared at them, bemused.
He looked back up at her.
She was clearly awaiting his response.
“They’re unarguably spectacular,” he began, “but I prefer to be wooed more subtly. Perhaps we should begin with a ride in The Row?”
She gave a crooked smile.
He knew, however, why she’d poured them into his hand. They had that lovely near-fleshlike warmth of real pearls; they nestled in. Once you held them you were reluctant to relinquish them. They were . . .
Well, they were magnificent.
“These have . . . recently come into my possession,” she began.
“They’re real.” He knew his jewels, thanks to his sister and one discriminating almost-mistress.
“Hence the flourish with which I presented them to you.”
“Were they a gift?”
“Yes. ‘Jewel thief’ is not among my skills.”
“Yet,” they both added simultaneously, to their mutual amusement.
She paused.
He gestured with his handful of pearls. “. . . and?” he said, mimicking her conversation at the salon earlier in the day.
“And I should like to sell them. I need rather a lot of money quickly. But if I can double the proceeds from the money I earn from the pearls, or even triple it . . .”
Ah. He began to understand.
Jonathan slowly, slowly levered himself backward in his chair, a deceptively casual posture, and drummed his fingers deliberately on the table, measured as a death march, and perused her unblinkingly for a long silent moment. He didn’t know it, but he had his father’s stare when he was having a good hard think; there was a squirm-inducing, almost accusatory quality to it that would have innocent people confessing to crimes they hadn’t committed, just to get a little relief from its intensity. Jonathan normally aimed it at the dartboard in the Pig & Thistle in Pennyroyal Green, which was why no one in Pennyroyal Green had yet bested him.
Tommy was clearly made of stern stuff.
Still, her bum eventually shifted in the chair beneath his gaze.
“Why do you need a lot of money right away? Are you trying to finance a revolution? Do you need to bribe an official? Do you need to ransom a lover? Are you in gambling debt up to your eyeballs, which admittedly are not very high up, given that you are small?”
“I appreciate the rich variety of your guesses, but ‘no’ to all of them. And I don’t need it for illegal purposes.”
He waited.
“Well, my purposes are not strictly illegal,” she allowed somewhat weakly.
He sighed dolefully. As if this was only precisely what he’d expected.
“And these pearls . . . what did you do to earn them?”
Every man he knew wanted to be the chosen lover of Thomasina de Ballesteros. It was sport, it was de rigueur among the bloods of the ton, who were always looking for something novel to do, and were all too willing to behave like sheep to jockey for the position at those salons. And naturally White’s Betting Books reflected all of this. It was just that no one seemed to know whether she already had a lover, or indeed, had ever had one. Speculation swirled, of course, and hopeful exaggeration about her skills abounded.
Jonathan would wager all of his future earnings that she wasn’t an innocent. No woman could be this preternaturally confident if she was. And there was something in her eyes—a depth, a detachment, a knowing—that only came with experience.
What kind of lover was she? His thoughts floated in that direction briefly. Would she be submissive for the right price? Was she fiery, like her hair? Cool and arrogant, requiring a very specific kind of seduction? Was she the sort to throw things? Did she have rules?
She wasn’t the sort he wanted, if this much guessing was required.
“I fail to see how that matters,” she said finally. Diplomatically enough.
“Very well. If I were to attempt to sell them at Rundell and Bridge, for instance, would the proprietor immediately recognize them and know the original buyer?”
“Don’t try to sell them at Rundell and Bridge,” she said hurriedly.
In other words, the answer was “yes.”
“Would there be consequences for you?”
“The consequences would be my affair, would they not? And I assure you, I can handle any consequence.” She said this coolly.
He didn’t doubt it. He fell silent, mulling.
“Answer one question for me, Mr. Redmond,” she said hurriedly. “Regardless of the circumstances involved here, no matter what they may be . . . do you really believe you can double my money for me?”
He hesitated for only a heartbeat.
“I can triple your money,” he said quietly. A trifle arrogantly, but then he was a Redmond, and arrogance was fuel for determination, which was fuel for accomplishment. “Legally. And quickly. Within a matter of weeks.”
She gave a short nod. “Enough to buy the pearls again, should I wish it?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. I should like in particular to invest in your friend’s printing press.”
Before he could bask in her approval, she added, “However, I have a provision before we enter into business together.”
“As do I.”
“In exchange for my investment, I may require your assistance with . . . a matter related to why I need the money. I shall need it tonight. And perhaps on other occasions.”
Of course. Here it was. Trouble. He could hear it coming, like a herd of stampeding horses far, far off.
Chapter 9
“WHAT WOULD THIS ASSISTANCE entail?” he said, very, very dryly.
She pondered this. “Excellent reflexes. The ability to see in the dark. A pistol.”
Tension gathered in his jaw. He powerfully disliked games.
“Don’t overestimate my patience, Miss de Ballesteros.”
“I’m not being evasive for the sheer pleasure of it,” she protested. “It’s best that you know as little as possible, for your own sake, Mr. Redmond. I know from experience that you see well in the dark. And possess a very fine pistol. And you are less conspicuous than Rutherford, and you also possess certain other qualities that he does not, which will likely prove very useful. In truth, what I need to do tonight shouldn’t take very long or be very difficult at all,” she concluded brightly.
He supposed she meant that
to be encouraging.
He waited.
“Unlike last time,’ she said, a little less confidently.
He waited some more.
“I might have been a bit . . . injured last time,” she concurred weakly.
“Are you appealing to my sense of chivalry now? You must be desperate.”
“I’m small. So very small and delicate. The world is a dangerous place for the likes of me.”
He rolled his eyes. The eye roll took his gaze down to his palm again. The pearls lay draped there like a sated lover. Gleaming and warm and pulsating with . . . potential profit. He didn’t know another soul who would be willing to hand over this kind of money to him so easily right now. It was everything he needed, precisely when he needed it.
“Before we discuss this any further, Tommy, allow me to tell you my provision. It’s this: I shall require a broker’s fee for the investment of your money.”
She slowly straightened her spine. She was suddenly all haughty incredulity. “I’m giving you these very fine pearls to invest.”
“I’m a businessman. Not a bloody clergyman. Or a sap. And I see what you’re trying here now, now that you’ve made your eyes so very wide and limpid and imploring, but it won’t work, so stop it before you sprain one. You would have brought these pearls, or the profits from their sale, to a professional broker if you didn’t have a certain investment, shall we say, in keeping this transaction entirely sub rosa, away from anyone who might question your objectives or your income.”
Her brows met in a perfect V of indignation at the bridge of her nose. And for a time she glared icily at him.
Jonathan drummed his fingers. Then he studied his fingernails. He made a show of looking at the clock (ormolu, French). He yawned.
Until suddenly the tension eased from her posture as surely as if she was melting, and her stare evolved into something cool and speculative.
And then at last a smile spread from one corner of her mouth to the other, slowly, a wholly pleased-with-him smile. She sat back much like he did.
“Very well, Mr. Redmond. A small percentage.”
“Why do you trust me?” he said instantly.
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