The Likelihood of Lucy (Regency Reformers Book 2)

by Jenny Holiday

  Having finished with the fire, he stood, and from her vantage point perched on the low settee, towered over her. “I can talk about ideas.” He sounded a little like a petulant child.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t.” And with her high, piqued tone, so did she. How lowering.

  “But ideas are not why I’m here, are they?” He took a step closer, which only magnified the appearance of him as a giant. He let his coat fall off his arms, and took another step, entirely filling her field of vision. Then the waistcoat came off, and was followed by another step.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, sitting up straighter against the back of the settee.

  “Your wish is my command, my lady,” he said, as he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. Then he reached for its hem, pulled it over his head, and tossed it aside, leaving her face level with his chest.

  She gasped, the scar forgotten as she tried to make sense of what she saw. There was no mistaking the image. There were the seven familiar streets snaking over the left side of his chest, converging over his heart. The streets that had given their childhood home its name. He had marked them on his body in ink.

  It might as well have been a flame and she a moth. She couldn’t help standing and touching, and he hissed as she let her fingers trail gently over the markings. His skin was warm, and his pulse thrummed under her touch.

  “You recognize it?” he asked, voice raspy.

  “Of course. When did you do this?” She wanted to ask why. But that seemed too intimate a question somehow, so she settled for when.

  “After I got my apprenticeship. After I got out.” He cleared his throat. “Of course I wanted to forget, but…” He closed his eyes. “It is difficult to explain.”

  “You wanted to forget, but you wanted to remember, too.” She understood perfectly, having been frustrated herself with the inadequacy of language to capture the coexistence of conflicting emotions that assailed her when she thought about their childhood. She reached into her high-necked bodice and pulled out the jade. It wasn’t ink lodged in skin, but it was the same thing.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, exactly. These marks of the past, they remind us to be brave.”

  Lucy didn’t feel particularly brave. In fact, her pulse was racing, and she was a little shaky. But that tattoo…it had some kind of power over her.

  “Come by the fire so I can see better.” Made golden by the firelight, his skin appeared to glow. Despite the fact that he seemed to spend most of his days in his library working, he was sleek and muscular, as if his labors were more of the physical variety—just as she had suspected given what it had felt like to be clasped to that chest. A light dusting of hair on his chest stopped when it hit his sculpted stomach muscles and then picked up again, a thin line that she traced with her eyes to where it disappeared beneath the waistband of his breeches. She stared at the bulge she saw there, not caring that her behavior was unseemly. Finally, with a sigh, she raked her gaze back up.

  There was more than just the image of Seven Dials. He stood silent under her scrutiny as she took inventory. He had three tattoos altogether, two on his torso and one on an arm. She’d always assumed that the only people who inked their bodies in that fashion were lowlifes. But in fact, Trevor’s tattoos made him look exotic, like a pirate. Dangerous, like a criminal. Powerful, like a warrior. She could not look away.

  “Was that the first one?” she asked, nodding at the map image.

  “Yes.”

  “How soon after you left did you have it done?”

  “The very day.”

  She nodded. It was like him to want to mark the passage. She understood.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes.” Every question she asked he answered immediately, straightforwardly, speaking in a low, controlled voice while he watched her intently.

  “And what about this one?” She let her fingers trail over his right bicep, decorated with an owl that looked rather incongruent in that it was whimsical, almost childlike. The arm beneath the image was steel, unyielding, coiled power held within.

  “When I was in the army, there was a boy named Jasper in my company. He’d lied about his age to enlist, but he was only thirteen. He was a chimney sweep from Southwark. A gutter rat.”

  “Like us,” Lucy breathed, understanding without him saying that Trevor had seen something of himself in the boy.

  “Like me,” he corrected. “We all tried to protect him as much as we could. He was like a little brother—or a son. He had this tame owl that followed him everywhere. No one knew where it came from, and he would never say. It was the damnedest thing. But the bird went everywhere with him. He would give that bird his last ration, his only drop of water before he’d take anything for himself.”

  It was only a slight catch in Trevor’s voice, but it was enough to tell her what happened. “He died, didn’t he?” she said softly, stroking the image.

  Trevor nodded. “Yes, but not until after we’d all quit soldiering. He, Blackstone, and I survived Badajoz—we were lucky. Jasper lost his leg, but he was determined to make something of himself anyway. It was the same battle—though not the same day—that saw Blackstone lose his hand.”

  Lucy had read about the horrific siege of Badajoz. Thank God she hadn’t known then that Trevor had joined the army, or she would have been held prisoner by the daily death listings.

  “After Badajoz, Blackstone and Jasper were out on account of their injuries. I followed. Jasper did some…work on a venture Blackstone and I were pursuing, but he died not a month later.”

  “What happened?”

  “He found himself on the losing end of a knife fight.” Trevor cleared his throat. “The owl flew off, and we never saw it again.”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say and, suspecting that Trevor would not appreciate clichéd platitudes, she merely moved on, pressing her fingers to the next image, which was on the side of his abdomen, diagonal from the Seven Dials image. A rose.

  He didn’t wait for her to ask. “My mother, of course,” he said, for she knew his mother’s name had been Rose.

  Lucy was a little surprised. Trevor had never seemed to give his mother much thought back in their childhood. They’d both tended to consider their mothers only as sources of shelter—and poor ones at that, since they always had to tiptoe in late and stay out of the way when their mothers were entertaining. But then again, it seemed he had marked himself with the people—and the place—that had most marked him. There was a certain kind of logic there. “Do you know what happened to her?” she asked, leaving unspoken the question she really wanted to ask.

  “No, nor do I know what happened to your mother,” he said, answering both spoken and unspoken queries. “I went back once, a few years ago, after I’d left the army, and tried to find them.”

  Of course he had. Trevor was, at heart, a protector.

  “Not only did I not find them, I could hardly raise anyone we knew. There were only a few of the old suspects still about—remember Mr. White?”

  She nodded, thinking of the gruff greengrocer who sometimes gave them rotten vegetables he couldn’t sell. The memories that she had ruthlessly shoved aside for so many years came flooding in.

  “But of course he had no idea where either of our mothers had gone. It is very likely they are both dead, if not from disease, then a disgruntled client. It wasn’t an easy life.”

  “They had no other choice.” Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “The older I get, the more I see that. They did what they had to do.”

  “Yes. We all did.”

  Lucy opened her eyes as wide as they would go, fearing that to blink would cause the moisture that had gathered in them to spill over, and she had always hated crying in front of anyone, especially Trevor. “Do you have any more tattoos?” she asked, merely as a way of distracting herself from the wave of sadness that was threatening to overtake her.

  “Yes. One more.”

  “Oh! Where?” She leaned to one side,
aiming to angle herself so she could see his back.

  He twisted in place, displaying his back, corded with muscle but unmarked by ink. There was the scar she remembered, the mark that had prompted this whole encounter, which paled in comparison to the dramatic tattoos he wore. She leaned closer. It was faded but evident, and it was joined by another, bigger scar on the edge of the same shoulder, one that hadn’t been there before. About a quarter inch in diameter, it was raised and red.

  “What is this?”

  “I got shot in Portugal.”

  “Good heavens, Trevor!”

  “It looks worse than it was. It was just a nick—superficial. The rock was worse, actually.”

  She shook her head as she resumed her search for the final tattoo. Only someone who grew up as they had would characterize a gunshot wound as superficial. When she’d satisfied herself that there was nothing to see, she sat back, intensely curious. The last tattoo must be on a leg.

  Before she could question him further, he leaned forward and inserted the fingers of one hand up beneath her chignon, gently loosening it. “Take down your hair.” She opened her mouth to protest but stopped short. He’d shown her his tattoos. “Please,” he added. “I’ve missed seeing your hair down.”

  “All right.” It took a minute to work loose all the pins, and when she did, he bit his lip.

  “You used to wear it down all the time.”

  “Yes, because I didn’t know any better,” she said, her voice wavering when he boldly reached out and unfastened the top button of her high-necked dress. As if he had a right to undress her. Just like he had a right to command her to take her hair down. She swallowed, praying his fingers would not brush her neck and learn that her heart was hammering out of control.

  Another button. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to bring up her latest project. Maybe she would be lucky enough that it would just happen.

  He brushed his index finger across her collarbone. But as soon as the intense sensation of his warm skin against hers rocked through her, his touch was gone. He stuck his pinky finger through the ring hanging from the slim chain around her neck.

  The realization that he’d only meant to examine the gem—for he was looking at it now, not her—was accompanied by the sting of disappointment.

  “Where did you get it?” She’d always wanted to know, but it had seemed impolite to ask. Now, though, since so many years had passed, and since it appeared they were talking openly about the past, she felt emboldened.

  “Where do you think?”

  “I think you stole it from that pawn shop on Great Earl Street.”

  “Correct.” He ran his thumb back and forth over the stone. “I wanted to buy it legitimately. I thought you deserved something real, something untainted by the graft all around us.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “But then I realized that any money I could scrape together to buy it would itself be ill-gotten. I wanted to rise above my base ways, just the once, but of course it was impossible.”

  “I don’t care. I loved it. I still do.”

  “You don’t wear it on your finger anymore.”

  It was true. When they were children, she’d worn it with the stone facing in—she was brave but not stupid. A length of string wrapped around the too-large band ensured it stayed on her finger. “They would have taken it from me at school. I had to hide it. And then, after school, it just seemed…” She shrugged, not sure how to tell him that a governess had to play a certain role within a household. A wise governess endeared herself to the mother of her charges, and a stunning jade ring did not help in that effort. His eyes shifted to look at the fire. When several beats went by without him speaking, she returned to her unanswered question. “You haven’t said what the fourth tattoo is.”

  He looked her in the eye, his expression difficult to decode. His face was serious, but there was a hint of a sneer on it. Self-mockery, perhaps? Or was it directed at her? It was impossible to tell. Before she could formulate a reply, he leaned down and kissed the stone. The chain was short enough that his hot breath tickled her neck.

  Then he rocked back on his heels and said, “My last tattoo is somewhere only my lovers get to see.” The scandalous statement, and the fact that he stood so quickly after making it, disoriented her. “Good night. Sweet dreams of Mr. Lloyd.”

  “Who?” Her mind was still muddled, and it took her a moment to work out to whom he was referring—and that he was leaving.

  And that she very much didn’t want him to. The perfect opportunity had been within her grasp—he had already been half undressed, for heaven’s sake—and she hadn’t had her wits about her enough to seize it.

  “Exactly.” Chuckling, he shut the door softly behind him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Nothing,” said Blackstone, scowling at Trevor and letting his fist fall to the table in his breakfast room. “In answer to your question, what I have turned up is a great deal of nothing. Everyone we spoke to at the party who knew Gelling or Hill had nothing but seemingly genuine affection for their late comrades. And nothing at all that would seem to connect the men in civilian life, though I still have men working on that.”

  Trevor, unable to face Lucy the morning after that strange, charged interlude in her rooms, had invited himself to breakfast at Blackstone’s town house by showing up at the uncivilized hour of seven o’clock and was trying to distract himself by asking about Blackstone’s progress on the murders.

  “I hope, my, ah…distraction that evening didn’t make for more work for you and Catharine,” Trevor said, knowing full well it had. He had simply laid down his duty and gone outside to assault Lucy.

  When Blackstone made no answer other than to narrow his eyes and purse his lips, Trevor continued. “So it wasn’t a fellow soldier who murdered them. But the murders must be connected, mustn’t they, given that the second occurred on the anniversary of the first? Perhaps Hill and Gelling had a common enemy. Or maybe it wasn’t about them. Perhaps the man we seek wasn’t after them personally so much as—”

  “What they stood for.”

  Trevor shrugged. One side effect of having been a spy through the war was that one tended to see treason everywhere. It wasn’t likely in this case, but it wasn’t without the realm of possibility. “If the two men don’t have anything in common, do their regiments? Could there be a commanding officer in common who is actually being targeted?”

  Blackstone shrugged, though Trevor knew better than to assume the gesture signified indifference.

  A rap at the door interrupted the men, and the butler entered and announced Catharine.

  “Good Lord, Stanway,” Blackstone said, “Why are you letting the riffraff in at this ungodly hour?”

  The servant merely smiled and backed out of the room. Stanway was the only member of the household—other than the countess—who knew of the master’s secret career, so he knew to admit both Trevor and Catharine at any hour of the day or night.

  “My dears, we have a problem.” Catharine collapsed theatrically into one of the chairs around the small breakfast table.

  “Emily is still abed,” Blackstone said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Catharine said. “It’s about the Jade, so I haven’t come for Emily.”

  “In that case,” said Blackstone, “should we not have this conversation at the hotel, where Miss Greenleaf can join us?”

  I’d rather speak to the two of you alone first,” Catharine said, which suited Trevor. He didn’t need to see Lucy—he’d come here specifically to avoid seeing her, in fact. To look at her with her hair done up all primly but then to remember the feeling of her running her hands over his tattoos…the contrast between the demure Lucy and the bold one was too much to bear. He needed to wait for time to do its work, to dull the almost painful sensation of being around her. No, if he had to see Lucy right now, he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t tear her hair down himself this time, rather than asking politely as he had last night.

  “I was at a musicale last night,
” Catharine said, “and overheard some ladies talking. It sounded as if they had planned to take tea at the hotel this week.”

  “Yes,” Trevor said. “Apparently in the week since opening, we’ve been doing a brisk business in afternoon tea.” He certainly never would have predicted it. “Lucy has seized on the trend, in fact. She says it’s because women don’t have clubs like men do.”

  “Ah!” Blackstone said. “And they can’t frequent pubs or coffeehouses alone. It’s a stroke of genius, really, to cater to groups of ladies like that.”

  “Yes, she’s been working with the cook to refine the offerings,” Trevor said. He agreed with the earl. Lucy had been very smart to notice and encourage this trend. Of course, she had also been declaiming about how it was a moral crime that groups of women had no place to safely gather to talk among themselves, but he left that part out.

  “But if I may draw your attention back to the matter at hand?” Catharine pitched her voice as if she were talking to a pair of unruly boys. “These ladies were discussing their plans not to take tea at the Jade as they had originally intended.”

  Trevor shrugged. “Well, I’m told that the chef is planning to marry the art of French pastry with the tradition of English tea sandwiches in a way that will astound us.” Blackstone smiled. Catharine did not. “So I suspect it is their loss.”

  “They canceled their plan because they said the Jade isn’t respectable.”

  Both men turned to her with their full attention.

  “We were going for an air of mystery,” Blackstone said. “We don’t want to become Almack’s. But perhaps we’ve gone too far?”