Bombshell

by Sarah MacLean

  A ledger, hidden beneath the false bottom of the lower drawer of the desk.

  “Unoriginal as all the others,” she muttered, opening it on the carpet, searching for the proof she needed that the Viscount Coleford, renowned for his work on the board of the Foundling Hospital, was skimming funds from the organization to which he was so publicly devoted. That, alongside being a half dozen terrible things—among them, an abuser, an adulterer, a rich man who refused to pay his debts, and a landowner who taxed his tenants to the teeth.

  The monstrous man was literally taking money from orphans, siphoning donations from the rest of the aristocracy to a private account.

  Sesily’s heart began to pound as she turned the pages of the damning ledger, pages and pages of venerable titles and respected gentry, each paired with two deposits; the amount delivered to the hospital and the amount deposited into Coleford’s private account.

  And interspersed, lines marked paid in full, each with an obscure notation.

  Her brow furrowed as she flipped through the ledger, searching for more information. And then she found it—a list of names and dates.

  Women, Sesily was certain, who had given up their children to the hospital. Dates of surrender. Women who had nothing, and who were being shaken for additional funds.

  “What a fucking monster,” she whispered, rage coursing through her as she ripped the pages from the book. If they could find these women, they could find the men who preyed upon them.

  And if she had the ledger, she could prove Coleford’s part in the sickening scheme.

  She cursed him as she replaced the heavy book in the false bottomed drawer. Cursed all like him—armed to the teeth with money, power, and title, and still cruel beyond words.

  A score of them upstairs, standing silent as he mistreated his wife and Adelaide in front of them. For sport.

  Her work complete, Sesily folded the papers into a rectangle small enough to tuck into the inside pocket of her topcoat, collected the scrap on the floor that had been trapping falling candle wax, and stood.

  A scrape sounded from the hallway beyond.

  There was someone outside the door.

  Grabbing the candle from its place on the large desk, she extinguished it, ignoring the sting of the hot wax on her fingertips as she crouched in the darkness, tucking herself into the well of the desk, cursing skirts and tight fastenings as she collected yards of silk and prayed for dim light when whoever it was entered.

  Best case? A servant, come to light a fire.

  Worst? The viscount, who was supposed to be upstairs, delighted by the duchess’s company.

  She froze as the door opened and closed, winced as a key turned in the lock.

  Gritted her teeth as footsteps approached, soft and steady on the carpet.

  She considered her options. Though most of London would not blink at the idea of Sesily Talbot meeting a man in the dark, assignations did not typically occur in the homeowner’s private offices. Moreover, they very rarely occurred under his desk.

  And they would never, ever occur with a man as loathsome as Coleford.

  She was not beyond braining whomever it was, but her only available weapon was the heeled shoe she wore, which would not carry nearly enough weight to fell a grown man.

  She reached into her pocket, distaste running deep. She might have considered it earlier, but knifing a viscount wasn’t the ideal activity that evening; even Duchess wouldn’t be able to keep attention from skirts bloodied by a throat cutting. That, and Sesily had never cut a throat. She preferred not to begin tonight.

  And still, as the footsteps neared, it occurred to her that she might not have a choice.

  The footsteps stopped somewhere near the desk. Damn the darkness, which made it impossible to know exactly where the intruder was.

  A flint sounded.

  A soft golden glow lit the room.

  A man stood directly in front of her. But it wasn’t the viscount. The viscount had been wearing white breeches and hose. A waistcoat and topcoat that harkened back to a time when he was perhaps considered less odious.

  This man wore dark trousers.

  It was difficult to miss them as he crouched, his massive thighs coming into view—thighs that absolutely did not belong to the Viscount Coleford—followed by a wide torso covered with a black patterned waistcoat. Though his head remained above the desk, she was given a close-up view of the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen.

  She knew they were, because she’d seen them before.

  Recognition had her exhaling her panic on a long breath.

  And then Caleb’s head dipped below the edge of the desk, his jaw set in anger, his eyes flashing with fury, and she regretted the breath, because she couldn’t seem to catch a new one.

  “Fucking hell, Sesily.”

  Chapter Ten

  Relief slammed through him when he found her under the desk.

  In his wildest imaginings it had never occurred to Caleb that Sesily might land here, in the private study of the Viscount Coleford. It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d ever end up anywhere near the Viscount Coleford.

  When he’d watched her enter Coleford House, prettily situated on Bruton Street, just off Berkeley Square, he’d nearly gone wild with the revelation that things were about to go absolutely sideways on an evening when she’d emerged from her own house looking to all the world like a woman going to dinner.

  Yes, she’d been wearing a topcoat and cravat—something that had somehow made him both furious for what he knew that cravat hid and riveted to the way the coat at once hid and accentuated her curves—but this was Sesily Talbot, and she did not leave the house looking ordinary. Ever.

  He’d waited in the darkness, watching as she climbed into her carriage, and followed in a hired hack, expecting a dinner of staid aristocratic nonsense, which meant he could return to his life for a few hours before returning to follow her, hopefully, back to her house and see her tucked into bed.

  But there was nothing staid about Coleford House.

  There was nothing safe about Coleford House. For either of them.

  Indeed, the idea of Sesily anywhere near Coleford House made Caleb’s blood run hot with anger . . . and cold with fear.

  But leaving her there was not an option, so, he’d exited the hack, releasing it back to the night, and watched as a half dozen other carriages had deposited additional aristocrats to the evening, the tight knot of panic in his chest easing a bit as he realized she wasn’t there alone.

  A bit.

  Because he didn’t believe for a moment that she was there by coincidence.

  You are keeping truths of your own, she’d said to him outside The Place three nights earlier. And if I have to learn them, I will.

  Goddammit. She had done as she’d promised. The woman was pure chaos.

  So it was that, after he’d finished cursing her sister to hell for asking him to track Sesily around London, he’d spent half an hour skulking through a collection of dark gardens, and over stone walls, before sneaking his way into Coleford House—a place he’d studiously avoided when he was in London.

  A place Sesily had no business being anywhere near—and even less business rifling through papers in the private study belonging to a man who was more dangerous than she could know.

  She was going to get caught, dammit.

  And somehow, instead of getting the hell out of her wake, Caleb had agreed to be her extremely muttonheaded savior.

  She was going to get them both caught.

  He was going back to Boston the second Sera whelped that babe, dammit. And he was never coming back.

  If he didn’t land at the gallows first.

  When he’d entered the dark room, he could smell her, sun and wind and that hint of almond, barely-there over the lingering scent of recently extinguished candle wax. He’d followed it, like a dog on the hunt, to the viscount’s enormous desk, and lit the lamp, knowing without hesitation that she was beneath the desk.

&n
bsp; And when he’d crouched to face her, to find her pressed to the back of it, as though she wouldn’t be found by anyone who entered the room, his worry and anger and panic had flared in a dangerous trio.

  She threw oil on the flame with an easy smile. “Good evening, Caleb.”

  His teeth clenched until he felt physical pain. “What in hell are you doing?”

  “I should think it was obvious,” she said, the rasp in her words only serving to infuriate him more, as he knew how it had come to be there, the memory of her in the clutches of the brute at The Place.

  “If you think I’m in the mood for your jokes, you have sorely misread this situation.”

  She had the sense not to reply, small favor.

  He thought he’d calm down when he found her. He thought he’d be able, then, to imagine what to do. How to remove her from this house. From this situation.

  He thought he’d return to sense.

  But how had she known?

  How had she found this place? How did she know the secrets it kept?

  And how quickly would she discover his own secrets, locked away?

  “Get out of there.”

  She waved a hand at him. “Bit difficult when you’re looming.”

  He growled and stood, backing away as she emerged. “It’s not even a good hiding place. I knew where you were the moment I walked in the room.”

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t expecting to have to hide,” she said, shaking out her skirts. “What are you doing here?”

  He ignored the question, both because he was annoyed and because he wasn’t sure how to answer it. “And if it hadn’t been me? What were you going to do?”

  “I am armed,” she replied smartly. “Contrary to what you think, I am not without sense.”

  “And so, what, a bullet in the arm of the viscount?”

  “A knife wound, as a matter of fact.”

  He looked to the ceiling and released a strangled laugh at the idea of Sesily knifing an aristocrat in his own home. “You’d be strung up faster than the man could bleed out, you madwoman. You’re lucky I turned up.”

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “I’m feeling extremely blessed at your appearance. Whoever would have sent me into hiding under a desk if you hadn’t wandered in?” She pushed past him and rounded the desk to the lamp he’d lit.

  “If I hadn’t wandered in—”

  “If you hadn’t wandered in, nothing would have happened,” she said. “Everyone else in the house is quite distracted.”

  “By what, charades with your friends?”

  “In fact, yes.”

  He snorted his disbelief. “And that’s supposed to keep Coleford distracted while you skulk about in his private study.”

  “You misjudge my friends.”

  “I absolutely do not misjudge them. I think they’re all terrifying.”

  She smiled at that. “They shall be happy to hear it.”

  “Absolute misfits,” he muttered. “It’s time to go. You’re going to get us both caught.”

  “I beg your pardon!” she said, the affront in the words clear. “The only times I have ever been caught have been by you!”

  “I think you mean rescued, darling,” he retorted. “The other night, when you leapt into battle despite being roundly outnumbered—”

  “Oh, please.”

  He ignored the interjection. “—and the time before that, when you vandalized an earl—”

  “Are you suggesting he did not deserve it?”

  “He thoroughly deserved it, you absolute hurricane, but that doesn’t mean it was your job to do it.”

  “No one else was doing it,” she snapped. “I assure you, Caleb, if I thought a single man would stand up and deliver any one of these monsters their due—”

  “Delivering the monsters their due doesn’t eliminate monsters,” he snapped.

  “It reduces their numbers by one!”

  “Goddammit, Sesily!” The protest unlocked him, and he couldn’t help leaning down into her face, getting as close as possible to her, his heart pounding with frustration and a fear he had not felt in years. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know the repercussions of eliminating these men. You don’t see what could come of it. What danger you are in. How they will stop at nothing to destroy you if they think you are a threat to their money or power or title.” He paused. “You don’t see how they will end you.”

  She blinked in the wake of his words, her beautiful blue eyes wide with surprise and confusion. Realization dawned. Whatever she was here for—it was not his secrets.

  “Caleb, what—”

  He shook his head. He certainly wasn’t going to share them with her. “No. We’re leaving. And you’re going to give me your promise that you will never come back here. That you will never face down Coleford.”

  The sound she made was pure exasperation. “Truly, for someone who makes such a fuss about not having a thimbleful of interest in my person, you spend a fair lot of time following me about! Which, I might note, is categorically your own problem. I didn’t invite you here.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, straightening his shoulders and approaching her, stopping only when she had to crane her head to meet his gaze. “Nothing here is your business.”

  “I believe I’m more than capable of divining what is and is not my business, American,” she retorted, blue eyes flashing indignantly. She paused, the silence full of something Caleb didn’t like. “Hang on.”

  She was too smart for her own good. Caleb gritted his teeth. “Time to go, Sesily.”

  “I didn’t invite you here,” she said, softly, as though everything were falling into place. “No one did. You weren’t here. What are you doing—”

  “No. We have to get out of here.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Following you.” He reached for the knob on the lamp, intending to tip the room into darkness. Intending to hide in it.

  “No.” Her hand landed on his with surprising speed, the heat of her touch singeing him through the silk of her glove. “How do you know him?”

  She didn’t know.

  He closed his eyes, relief and frustration warring within. “It’s not important. What’s important is that I know the kind of man he is. And I will lock you up myself if that’s what it takes to keep you from him.”

  She searched his face. “Tell me.”

  Somehow, impossibly, he wanted to. What would it feel like to answer the question? To tell her everything? To unburden himself?

  It would feel glorious.

  And then it would wreck them both.

  “I’m not—”

  Her hand flew to cover his mouth. “Shh.”

  In the silence that stretched between them—which he was certain she would eventually fill—a bell rang. It was soft and distant, in the hallway beyond.

  “Dammit,” she whispered. Her head turned to the door. “I would have thought Duchess could keep him engaged a bit longer. For the record, Caleb, if you hadn’t turned up, I’d be far from this room by now. So if we are caught . . . it shall be your fault.”

  His gaze narrowed on her. “Are we about to be caught?”

  She reached into the folds of her skirts, a flash of metal—a knife?—winking up at him before she turned the knob on the lamp, extinguishing the light. “Quick,” she whispered, claiming his hand and pulling him to the door, which she opened silently, barely. The flash again. Not a weapon. A mirror, slid carefully into the narrow space between door and jamb.

  Clever.

  “Now.” Apparently satisfied that they would not be seen, she opened the door and tugged him into the empty hallway. “Quickly.”

  A man’s voice sounded from a distance. “Coleford.”

  They both stilled, the rage thrumming through Caleb making him tighten his grip on her. “Now, Sesily.”

  “Ah, Clayborn,” came the distant reply, the nasal voice sliding through Caleb, unwelcome. “Thank you for taking care of
that dog-faced upstart. My wife”—Coleford spat the word—“should have known better than to invite her. They never know their place, these commoners.”

  “Your wife”—Clayborn’s words were cool and stern—“deserves better from you.”

  Sesily’s eyes went wide as Coleford began to sputter.

  Not that it impacted the other man at all, who spoke with a calm threat in his voice that Caleb recognized because he’d used it himself on more than one occasion. “I shall be interested to see you turn over a new leaf on that front.” The warning was unspoken, but clear as a bell. “And as for the common upstart, I expect you to steer clear of Miss Frampton. For good.”

  Sesily turned to Caleb and mouthed, “He’s not a bastard?”

  “Well, he’s a duke, so the jury remains out,” he whispered, “but we don’t have time to sort it out. You can’t go back that way.”

  “How lucky you are here, I hadn’t considered that,” she retorted in a tone indicating that she’d absolutely considered that. “Nor had I considered that you can’t go anywhere, as you should not be here at all.”

  Caleb did not reply, instead running his fingers along the wall until he found what he was looking for. He threw a catch and opened a small cupboard, filled with rags and buckets. A servants’ closet.

  “He’s coming,” Sesily said, pushing Caleb into the tiny space and pulling the door shut behind her, throwing them into darkness. He retreated as far as he could without light, which wasn’t far, his back immediately pressed to a row of shelving. His heel came up against a bucket on the floor, just enough to make a soft sound.

  She covered his mouth again. “Shhh.”

  His arm snaked around her waist, keeping them both still, and he nipped her palm. She released him, pinching his arm almost instantly.

  Another place, another time, he would have been amused. Delighted.

  In that moment, however, he was preparing to protect her with all he had.

  They waited, listening as heavy steps approached, and a door in the hallway beyond opened. The viscount’s study.