Then the women had slipped away before there was any chance Paynter could spot Mrs. Flowers. Probably for the best, because—“He’s a canny man,” Joss replied. “I think the conversation proceeded exactly as he wanted it to.”
Which had not been to Joss’s advantage, or to the benefit of his task for Sutcliffe.
In this warm, comfortable room, it was difficult to remember the price of honor—or the cost of it. Cost and price were of no concern to women whose rented drawing room had a marble chimneypiece and a coffered ceiling. Who provided a half-dozen types of biscuits to a lone afternoon caller. Who tossed more coal into a single fire than Joss permitted himself in a week.
Though it was much larger than his rented room, the bright walls of this drawing room pressed in upon him.
On impulse, Joss stood. “I can think better in the open air. Will you walk out with me so we might continue our conversation? If, that is, Mrs. Flowers is allowed to leave the house.”
She rose to her feet at once. “Indeed she is. Mrs. Flowers is a widow, so she is prone to doing things even if she ought not. And her bonnet will shield her face well enough. Is it still raining?”
“It wasn’t when I walked from Trim Street.” Which was fortunate, as he didn’t own an umbrella.
A few minutes was sufficient for Augusta to dash upstairs to inform the resting Lady Tallant of their outing, then to gather a bonnet, gloves, and pelisse. Once Joss retrieved his own gloves, hat, and cloak from a footman, they were off. Down the steps of the Queen Square house, where they paused.
“We have arrived outdoors, as you wished,” said Augusta from behind the wall of a lace-trimmed poke bonnet. “Do tell me about the startling and profound thoughts that occur to you with this change of scenery.”
Joss snorted, for the change of scenery was little to the city’s advantage. Bath lay in a bowl of land footed by the River Avon, and every rain turned the city’s sloping streets into slides of pale, chalky mud. After a morning of drizzle, the air hung cold and humid, each breath heavy.
Which suited Joss fine. He and Augusta would be equally uncomfortable, a welcome change from this morning’s verbal trouncing by Paynter.
“Let us walk in the garden across the square,” Joss suggested, “and I shall astonish you with my thoughts.”
The brim of the bonnet wiggled back and forth. “I am not easy to astonish, but I should like to see you try.” She took his arm, and they hurried through an interval of muck to the Queen Square garden. Surrounded by a low stone balustrade topped with elegant iron pickets, nothing so vulgar as mud or damp was welcome in its manicured confines. Neat, graveled pathways and symmetrical plantings provided clean places on which the feet might stride, peaceful shapes on which the eye could rest.
“Your old friend Paynter,” Joss began as their feet crunched on still-damp gravel, “reminded me of an aged highwayman. That grizzled hair in a widow’s peak, and that scar through one brow.”
Augusta chuckled. “He apprenticed in a forge as a young man; I think the scar happened at that time. But he’s very kind. Married, seven children, all that. I used to play with his youngest daughter.”
“‘All that’ includes a talent for silence. You might have warned me that he hoards words as well as land.”
They were passing beneath the stretching branches of a winter-bare tree, and Augusta stopped walking in its shadow. “Oh, dear. He got you talking, I expect. What did you say?”
“The usual pleasantries.” Joss flicked at a spindly twig, sending a drop of dew flying. “But chat about the weather won nothing but a stern look. An allusion to my acquaintance with Miss Meredith, whom I hastened to mention I had not seen in some months, earned nothing but a grunt. It wasn’t until I mentioned the nature of my business in Bath that he came to life.”
Augusta tipped her face up, an expression of utter exasperation crossing her fine features. “Never tell me you mentioned that someone was being blackmailed.”
The frustration in her tone was no more than Joss felt himself, yet her words stung a bit. “You give me too little credit. No, I only mentioned that I hoped to sell some land.”
Tugging at his arm, Augusta began walking again. “You might as well have told a dog that you had a pocket full of meat, but that it wasn’t for him. Now he’ll try to sniff it out, and he’ll snap it up if he can.”
“A well-turned metaphor.” Joss covered her fingers with his. Despite the thick leather of his gloves, his fingertips were being nipped; hers must be colder within their thin kid. “Believe me, I could tell at once I had blundered. As soon as I mentioned land for sale, Paynter drawled something about how low land prices have fallen at the present, even though I hadn’t offered to sell to him.”
“That doesn’t matter. If he knows you need to sell land, he will never offer you a good price.”
She made a fair point. Prices were always bad for those who needed to sell land, because no one sold land except out of desperation. And Sutcliffe was desperate indeed.
“What ought I to have done differently, though?” Joss asked. “I merely tried to converse with him as one does a fellow human being.”
“Of the beau monde, yes. But those methods won’t work on Paynter. Nor on Duffy.” For a few steps, there was only the sound of tiny stones being scattered by their boots, the distant bark of a dog, the terrified chitter of a bird fleeing a bush by which they walked. “I assumed a man of business would have frequent dealings with, well, men of business. But I suppose that’s not necessarily true.”
“Your veiled insults are enchanting.” Would it be impolite to shake a branch over her head and soak her with cold raindrops? Probably.
“It is not an insult, but a statement of fact. You work for a baron, and you deal with men like him—or with simple tradesmen, whom you could likely intimidate with a lift of one brow. Yes, exactly like that.”
With his free hand, Joss rubbed at his forehead until his brows relaxed.
“I would love to be a part of these negotiations,” Augusta added. “It would be a pleasure to pit my wits against those of my father’s old friends. But Paynter cannot meet with Mrs. Flowers or Mrs. Flowers will cease to exist.”
The regret in her tone mollified Joss, and he stopped looking down the neat row of trees for branches against which he could accidentally brush. “What would you do differently from me?”
“You request my advice? What happened to the damnable pride you could not say enough about yesterday?”
Joss gave a dry laugh. “I can’t afford so much of it as I could then. Sutcliffe is growing more worried by the hour. I owe him a success.”
“Hmm.”
“I can still afford honor,” he added, “so don’t you go making me another of your indecent propositions.”
She sniffed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
A pity, for he would. Had. Did. Last night, he had dreamed of her awaiting him in a large bed, her bright hair long and unbound, her wicked mouth speaking delicious lewdness into his ear. They had stroked one another, taking pleasure, and it was all right because she wanted him just as he was, and there had never been any question of him wanting her, with her needle-sharp mind and siren’s body. Kisses and embraces and words of passion, until his dream body had been wound hard and tight with passion. When he finally covered her, ready to thrust—
His body had jerked, snapping him awake. To the sight of the sloping ceiling of his rented room. To solitude, and a superfluous erection, and an awkward awareness that he had never had such a passionate dream about any of his few and cursory past lovers.
“You relieve my mind,” he said, only because that sounded better than, Are you sure? Not even one more proposition? Not even a little indecency?
Better for them both to keep the gloves on, to remain at a safe distance.
If there was such a thing as safe distance when one person sought
a blackmailer and the other a lover.
“I can’t exactly tell you how to proceed with Paynter and Duffy,” Augusta explained, heedless, “because you cannot do what I would do, using a breathy voice and batted eyelashes.”
With an effort, Joss dismissed his heated dream and returned to the present. “Two weapons outside my armory, that is true. How are they best employed?”
“When interfering in my father’s business affairs without seeming to do so. If I wore trousers and had my hair cropped short, I might be credited with knowledge. But since I am burdened with gowns and a dockyard”—Joss choked—“then Meredith Beauty’s affairs are overseen by trustees.”
“Men, I assume, who wear none of the company’s lotions or cosmetics or perfumes.”
“Not in public, no. They do not. Their private affairs might be quite different.” Augusta paused at a turning in the path. “Which way ought we to go?”
“To the left,” Joss said at random, and onward they walked. When he ventured a look back through the lacework of tree branches, he could just see the northern side of Queen Square. It appeared to be one giant mansion of pale stone, yet it was cleverly chopped into a series of houses behind the long pedimented facade. Nothing was quite what it seemed among the wealthy. “How do you persuade the trustees around to your way of thinking?”
“I give them a bit of cooing on minor matters related to the company’s products. The labeling that catches the eyes of flighty females. The pricing suited to a lady’s pin money.”
“Labeling and pricing? You advise them on important aspects of the business, then.”
She tipped her face up to his, and a devious smile crossed her lips. “I don’t know what you mean, sir. Those are only small affairs, far beneath the dignity of men. As my breathy voice and batted eyelashes make entirely clear.”
With a low laugh, Joss said, “I see you were not exaggerating your persuasive abilities. Indeed, you persuaded me to take a list of four names, when I thought myself too proud to take anything at all.”
“About that list, yes.” Her voice returned from a coo to its usual timbre. “There’s probably no purpose to speaking to Paynter again, since he won’t give you a good price for your cousin’s land. If you choose to meet with Whittingham or Duffy, take care not to…oh, I don’t know what to call it. ‘Man flirt,’ maybe.”
Joss stumbled. In righting himself, he shook her hand from his forearm. “Man flirt? Man flirt?”
“You know what I mean. All those sly smiles and jokes that may or may not be bawdy and chatter about sporting events.”
“I know what you mean, and I would not call it ‘man flirting.’ It is conversation.”
She shrugged. “Call it that if you like. Whatever the name, that approach works for puffed-up dandies of the beau monde. To a man of high society, money is the means to buy things to impress others. Like curricles and…I don’t know. I’m not a man with deep pockets.”
“I am not either,” Joss replied. “But I see your point. And to men of business, I suppose, money is not the means, but the end in itself.”
“Precisely.” Augusta’s look of gratified surprise was rather lowering, as though she had not expected him to follow her reasoning. “When dealing with self-made men, one must persuade differently.”
What was the means, or the end, for a man such as Joss? For years, he had been bound to Sutcliffe’s employment by family ties and poverty. Long enough, it seemed, that he had lost the knack for doing business with anyone who responded with subtlety and sense. In Bath, he had won himself a little distance. He had traveled a step closer toward independence. But it was only a single step, and then—what next?
He would figure that out when the time came. Surely.
Impatience seized him. “I shouldn’t have brought you out here. It’s too cold for walking.” He took up Augusta’s hands, rubbing her gloved fingers between his. He had thought of his own escape, but not of her comfort.
“That doesn’t matter,” Augusta said. “I’m always cold.” She caught his eye for a moment, then looked away. Not quickly enough to hide the truth: though she attempted a smile, her eyes looked lost. Deep and worried and afraid and still. Oh, so still. Hoping if she were just still enough, no one would notice.
Or maybe he only saw his own reflection.
They had made a circuit of the garden by now, and the northern face of the square was visible again. Once they stepped outside the bounds of the garden’s fence, she would become Mrs. Flowers again, and he—no one of significance. Best to remember that. “I should get you inside so you can warm up. Bath doesn’t need another invalid to add to its ranks.”
“I told you, I’m always cold. Even indoors. Yet I’m healthy enough.” Pulling her fingers free, she walked forward. “It looks like a new lodger has taken the house next to Emily’s. See the carriage? It must have just arrived.”
When Joss reached her side, he shaded his eyes below the brim of his hat until he could pick out the lines of the carriage’s crest. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered. “Not four days, and he’s followed me.”
“What? Do you know whose carriage that is?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I do. Lord Sutcliffe has decided to grace Bath with his presence.”
Six
After seeing Augusta back to her doorstep with more speed than grace, Joss marched next door and rapped on it with a fist. He wished he had something larger to knock with—a cudgel, maybe, or a mace.
An unfamiliar manservant opened the door, all high-bridged nose and supercilious smirk.
Joss ignored both. “I need to see Lord Sutcliffe. Please tell him his man of business is here.”
The cursed man began to swing the door closed in Joss’s face, but thundering footsteps sounded on the staircase. Joss craned his neck to see over the shoulder of the servant. As he expected, within a few seconds Sutcliffe skidded across the marble-tiled entryway.
“Let him in! Let him in! Let Everett in!” Panting, Sutcliffe tugged at the door. The servant still seemed disinclined to grant Joss entry, but after a pause that was slightly too long, he bowed and stepped back.
“Everett,” Sutcliffe said. “Thank God. I thought I’d have to search high and low for you. Where have you been? We arrived ten minutes ago at least.”
Everything about the baron was quick, impulsive, scattered. In his mid-thirties, he was blond and gray-eyed to Joss’s dark coloring. Though too thin for handsomeness, his free-spending ways and boundless energy were enough to keep him at the center of any crowd.
“A red coat, my lord? How elegant you appear during your travel,” Joss observed as he crossed the threshold, removing his hat. “It’s new, is it not? And the boots too. Hoby, I assume?” The baron had overspent his budget for this quarter before the last quarter had even begun; now he must be running through the funds intended for the summer.
Sutcliffe extended a foot, his boot as glossy and black as the marble tile on which he stood. “Nothing else for me. They’re the best. Your boots have lost their shine, Everett; you ought to see to them. But not now—no, not now.” He caught Joss’s arm, as though he thought Joss might head off in search of a cleaning cloth that instant. “Thank God you’re here, Everett. I’ve written you so many letters and you didn’t answer any of them.”
Joss laid his hat on a stack of trunks against one wall, then snatched it up again as a pair of footmen entered with another trunk to heft atop the tower. “I did, in fact. My replies will probably reach the hall later today. Perhaps tomorrow.”
His voice had fallen into a soothing timbre. Sometimes this worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
“I couldn’t wait for that. I got”—Sutcliffe lowered his voice to a carrying whisper—“another of those notes.”
Ah. This explained the fit of nervous energy, excessive even for Sutcliffe.
A wave of fatigue crashed over Joss
. It seemed five hours ago rather than a few minutes that he had walked with Augusta in the bracing chill of the garden.
“I am sorry to hear it,” he told his cousin—not that either of them, ever, referred to one another as such. “Did you bring it with you this time?”
“Yes. It’s in my pocket.” The baron patted at the breast of his red wool coat, then his pale eyes opened wide. “My pouch! Where’s my pouch?” Frantic fingers scrabbled inside his coat; then with a sigh of relief that made his whole body sag, the baron pulled forth a small leather bag no bigger than a man’s palm. Hundreds of times, Joss had seen this panicky reaction and the successive relief.
“Is there a room here where we might look at the letter?” Joss said as though nothing had interrupted them.
A twitch of Sutcliffe’s head. “Not here; too many servants. Let’s go to your house.”
Joss shifted his feet. “We can, if you like. But it’s only a room.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, it really is only a room,” Joss said mildly. “Though now you’ve arrived, perhaps I can give it up and lodge with you. Did you take this whole house?”
“Ah. I—” The baron cut himself off, striding to the doorway and calling some instructions to the footmen. When he returned to Joss, his eyes sought out the chandelier in the center of the entry ceiling. “So many servants about! The place is crawling. No, you know I’d like nothing better than to have you stay with here. But I’m not sure how long I’ll need to remain in Bath. I’m taking the house a week at a time, so it’s easier for you if you stay where you are. Eh?”
“Of course. That seems perfectly logical.” Joss hadn’t expected a different answer, yet Sutcliffe’s expression of relief still made his throat stick with dull disappointment.
“Let’s be off, then,” said the older man. “How far is your lodging from here? We can take my carriage.”
Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress Page 6
