Bombshell

by Sarah MacLean

  “Technically, she’s a Gorgon,” the duchess said, “and to be fair, you’re the one who brought mythology into it. But do tell—who else is comparing you to goddesses?”

  “Sesily is a goddess now?” The music had paused and Adelaide arrived, out of breath and ready for a break. She collapsed onto the steps at Sesily’s feet. “I mean, of course you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But who is calling you one?”

  “It’s not important.”

  Adelaide and the duchess looked to each other. “The American,” they said in unison.

  “He didn’t. Well, he did, but I don’t think he meant it to be a compliment.”

  Two sets of brows rose.

  “He called me Athena.”

  “Ah. Slayer of Medusa,” the duchess said.

  “Perseus slayed Medusa,” Adelaide retorted.

  “Perseus was the muscle; Athena was the brains.”

  “Would the two of you stop!” Sesily said.

  They did, thankfully, two sets of enormous eyes wide on her.

  Unfortunately, Imogen had arrived. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s unclear,” Adelaide replied. “But it seems the American has likened Sesily to Athena, and she doesn’t care for it.”

  “Athena was a virgin, you know,” Imogen reported, happily.

  And like that, Sesily reached the end of her tether. “I did not know that, as a matter of fact, Imogen, but thank you so much for underscoring all the ways the American is wrong about me, as he fully confirmed my lack of virginity yesterday.”

  Two sets of enormous eyes became three.

  And then, Imogen said, “I told you he wanted to . . .”

  “We all knew that. Impossible not to, really, after the events in Coleford’s cupboard,” the duchess added, as though they’d all been privy to that particular thirty minutes. Which they clearly had.

  Sesily narrowed her gaze. “I really don’t know what I would do without you all to play town crier throughout Mayfair.”

  “Oh, please. It’s not the town. It’s us.” Ordinarily, Sesily would agree. But tonight she wasn’t exactly feeling magnanimous. She was feeling embarrassed.

  She loathed feeling embarrassed.

  “Sesily,” Adelaide said, softly. “I don’t understand. Isn’t this what you’ve wanted for two years?”

  Yes. Yes. Of course.

  The response caught in her throat, tight and uncomfortable. And worse—horrifyingly—it came with the hot sting of tears. Dear God. Was she going to cry?

  “Oh no,” Imogen said.

  “Oh dear,” Adelaide chimed in.

  “More wine,” the duchess instructed a passing footman. “Quickly.” She turned back to Sesily and said, “You cannot cry. You shall run your kohl, and then think of what everyone will say.”

  Sesily gave a little laugh. “Terrifying.”

  “Precisely. Now. You’d best tell us everything before Imogen decides to poison your American.”

  The tightness returned to her throat. “He’s not my American.”

  “Was it terrible?” Adelaide asked. “If it was terrible, Imogen doesn’t have to poison him. We’ll simply tell a half dozen of the women in attendance tonight. And Maggie. And like that.” She snapped her fingers. “In a month, it will be in all the papers in Boston.”

  “Good plan,” Imogen said with admiration in her tone. “Lord knows Maggie will make sure no one ever goes near him again.”

  Sesily shook her head. “It wasn’t terrible.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No,” she said, softly. “It was really . . . good.”

  A pause. Then, Imogen said, “Good.”

  It was a ridiculous descriptor, that. Good. Like the way someone might describe a pasty purchased from a cart in Covent Garden Market, or praise a child’s drawing, or report on a debutante’s accomplishments at the pianoforte.

  It was not the way anyone should describe the experience of having Caleb Calhoun make love to them. She winced at the thought. At the words make love. Sesily Talbot was thirty years old and was more than capable of separating pleasure from emotion when necessary, and in all those years she’d never once fooled herself into believing that she’d been made love to.

  Until yesterday.

  When it had felt really . . . really . . .

  Don’t say good.

  Special.

  Oh no. That was worse.

  “I love him.”

  Her friends exchanged alarmed and confused looks, and Sesily couldn’t blame them. There was much to be alarmed and confused by, if she were being honest.

  “But that’s . . . good, right?” Adelaide ventured.

  Sesily looked down at her lap, studying the steel blue of her skirts, not wanting to tell them the whole story and wanting to tell them absolutely everything. Knowing that Caleb might have deserted her in that little house in the middle of nowhere, but these three women . . . they would never do the same.

  So she did, on that dais on one end of the Duchess of Trevescan’s ballroom, as a raucous party swirled around them. Sesily poured out the whole story—the rouge and the kohl and the walk and the way he seemed to understand the joy and purpose she received from her work with them, even as he was concerned about her being in danger.

  And then she told them about the kiss and the rain and the way he kicked in the door, and built a fire and found them warm blankets and made her laugh . . . and made her believe that she might finally, finally have a chance to feel some kind of way about this man who’d made her feel some kind of way for years.

  And when she was done, she said, “But . . . the long story turned very short, it was all perfect and exactly as I had dreamed, and I thought it was the beginning of something new. Except, when I woke, the rain was finished, night had fallen, the fire had burned to nothing, and he was gone.”

  Sesily knocked back her wine, and the duchess handed her another, which she accepted without hesitation.

  “He left.” Imogen, this time.

  She nodded. “His carriage was gone when I got back to the house. I couldn’t bear to look at Sera, so I left a note with the nearest footman and came home.”

  Home. She hesitated over the word, disliking how it felt to call that enormous house on Park Lane where she had happily rattled about in the last few months home, when a day earlier, she’d had a glimpse of what home could be.

  She pressed her lips together, hating the silence that settled between them as the music swirled through the room, the women in attendance dancing wilder, drinking deeper, laughing louder.

  But the quartet on the dais remained quiet, the duchess reaching out to take Sesily’s hand, and squeeze it tight. Adelaide set her own hand on the toe of Sesily’s slipper, the weight there welcome in a strange way.

  And Imogen, dark eyes blazing with indignation. “Poisoning is too good for him.”

  Tears threatened again. “You three are excellent friends.”

  It was the truth. How many times had she worked beside these women, fought beside them, trusted them with her secrets and been trusted with theirs? They’d given Sesily a road to travel when her journey had been solitary. And now, even as she nursed the worst of wounds from the day prior, she was grateful for their comfort.

  Even Imogen was a comfort, despite the unsettling gleam in her eye, as though all Sesily had to do was ask nicely, and she would toss Caleb into the Thames without a second thought.

  Except, Sesily would have second thoughts.

  She sighed. “Do you know what is the worst part?”

  Her friends shared a look before the duchess said, “You still want him.”

  “More than before!” she replied, turning her face to the pretty gilded ceiling, glittering with massive candelabras. “How is that possible?! He left me on the floor of my sister’s groundskeeper’s cottage, the absolute rogue! To walk back to my sister’s home through a sopping wet field!” She didn’t know why the field was the most offensive bi
t at this point, but it was too late to rethink it.

  “Monstrous.”

  “Absolutely abhorrent.”

  “Poisoning is back on the table!”

  Sesily couldn’t help a little huff of laughter at the immediate response in triplicate.

  “And if he turned up here? Right now?” the duchess asked, all casual. “What then?”

  Sesily scowled. “A facer would not be out of the question.”

  “A good start,” Adelaide pointed out. “And then we let Imogen poison him.”

  Sesily did laugh then, the light in Imogen’s gaze impossible not to enjoy.

  “Well, while I cannot deliver the facer . . .” The duchess reached for the notebook she kept close at hand—the one with the silver bell embossed on the cover. “I can offer you something else.”

  Sesily’s gaze fell to the book—filled with pages and pages of names and notations and business and information—and her heart began to pound. “What is it?”

  The other woman held the book in a tight grip. “Tell me the truth. What do you want?”

  The truth. She hadn’t even let herself consider the truth. She wanted Caleb. And that meant . . . “I want . . . to know.”

  Her friend nodded. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She wanted to know, so that she could move forward. Without him.

  Lie.

  “He’s hiding something,” the duchess said.

  “He’s hiding everything,” Sesily replied, irritated.

  “Yes, but I’m speaking literally. He’s hiding something, and whatever it is, it has to do with Coleford.”

  Sesily went hot.

  “Now I want to know, too,” Adelaide said, icy anger in her throat. “I want that man’s head on a pike.”

  The duchess raised a brow in her direction. “Coleford’s? Or Clayborn’s?”

  “I am able to hold two thoughts at the same time,” Adelaide pointed out. “I want Coleford destroyed, and I require personal vengeance on the Duke of Clayborn, that cold bastard.”

  Later, Sesily would have to tell Adelaide about the conversation she overheard at Coleford House. But now . . .

  Coleford. He’s not a decent man.

  Caleb’s whisper in the dark.

  “He knows him,” she said, softly. She looked up at the duchess. “He knows him. And not in passing. He knows more of him than most.”

  Duchess’s gaze narrowed. “So the other evening, he was not there for you?”

  He’d found her in Coleford’s study. He’d known where to look for her. Where to hide. “I don’t know why he was there. But he knows Coleford and he warned me about him.”

  The duchess opened her book, flipping through copious notes as the rest of them looked on. Sesily knew what was coming. Wanted it, even as irritation flared. “You went looking for this. The relationship.”

  The duchess did not look up. “Of course I did.”

  “I told you I’d get his secrets.”

  “Yes, but we couldn’t be sure you’d be willing to look at them, not once you had him in reach.”

  We. Sesily looked to Imogen and Adelaide, who both had the grace to at least pretend sheepishness, even as Imogen shrugged her shoulders. “We weren’t wrong. You knew he was connected to Coleford, and you didn’t tell us. It became personal.”

  “Adelaide is about to bring down a duke for being rude to her!” Sesily argued. “Is that not personal?”

  Her friends were silent in the wake of her replay. And then, finally, Adelaide said, “It’s different, Sesily.”

  Of course it was. It was, and the duchess had something that Sesily didn’t. She wanted it. “Give it to me.”

  The duchess closed the notebook for a moment. “He’s bought passage back to America.”

  “I know. He’s only here until Sera has the babe.” Still, the reminder that he intended to leave stung.

  “No, Sesily. He leaves on Friday morning.”

  She blinked. “What? Which Friday?”

  “This Friday.”

  He was leaving the country. He’d left her, and now he was leaving the country.

  And still, she asked, hating the question and how much she wanted the answer, “When did he make the booking?”

  “This morning.”

  She’d known it, but it struck like a blow to the chest nonetheless, sending her back against the divan. She swallowed around the disappointment.

  He was leaving the country. He’d knocked down a door and made love to her in a dusty cottage and left her alone and cold to walk back through a wet pasture and he was so thoroughly opposed to facing her again that he had to leave the country.

  Again.

  She looked from one friend to the next—no words of comfort from Adelaide. No threat to sink his boat from Imogen. But that was fine. Sesily did not need either. Because her disappointment and disbelief had dissipated nearly as quickly as it had come. Seared away by the heat of something much more powerful.

  Anger.

  “That coward,” she said, sending three sets of brows rising into hairlines before she leveled the duchess with a stern look. “Tell me the rest.”

  The duchess tilted her head, and Sesily found she was not interested in game playing. “His leaving has nothing to do with Coleford, and you’re a brilliant mind, so you didn’t require your book to recall the information. So that’s not all, is it?”

  Her friend’s lips curved in admiration. “No. It’s not. I needed the book to give you this.” She tore a page from it, passing it to Sesily. “The ledger pages from Coleford’s revealed several interesting pieces of data.”

  Sesily took the paper and considered the address scrawled across it as the duchess continued. “The funds the viscount is skimming off the Foundling Hospital are not simply going to aid The Bully Boys. They’re also going to pay The Bully Boys. For services rendered.”

  “What kind of services?”

  “To keep watch over that.” The duchess’s finger, wrapped in aubergine silk, pointed to the paper.

  Sesily looked, surprise and satisfaction coursing through her. They grew closer to understanding the scope of Coleford’s theft. She had no doubt that whatever was at the address in Brixton was the key to ensuring justice was served to the viscount. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” the duchess said. “But I know it’s not just Coleford who is interested in it.”

  The pieces fell into place. “Caleb.”

  The duchess nodded. “Calhoun is sending money to the same address.”

  “Why?”

  “Again, I don’t know. But your American—”

  “Not mine.”

  “Well, whatever his secret,” the duchess said, “it is there.”

  Anger and frustration and curiosity and something else she didn’t care to name flooded through Sesily as she considered the paper.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Imogen said. “Not if The Bully Boys are watching it. I shall go with you.”

  “No.” Even now, even furious with Caleb, Sesily knew that wherever this trail led, she didn’t wish to betray his secrets. Even if he’d rather leave the country than share them with her.

  “You at least shouldn’t go unarmed,” Adelaide said. “Half those boys will recognize you. You knocked Johnny Crouch in the head with a table leg last week.”

  Caleb had been there, too, at The Place. By her side. Fighting.

  He’d pulled her out of there. Protected her.

  Who would protect him?

  “Sesily?” Adelaide prompted, pulling her back to the present.

  “I am always armed.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Though Sesily delivered on her promise to arrive armed at the mysterious address an hour’s drive south, over the river, in Brixton, it became clear that the knife strapped to her thigh and accessible via secret pocket of her skirts was not necessary for this particular outing.

  During the sleepless night and the hour carriage ride, Sesily had had a fair amount of
time to consider what might be housed at number three Bermond Lane. Considering the fact that it was being watched by absolute thugs, on payment of an absolute monster, and had something to do with an American tavern owner who would rather leave the country than face her, Sesily had imagined all manner of things—a well-guarded warehouse, a tavern, a brothel, any number of dodgy shows in dodgy parts of town.

  It had never occurred to her that it would be a home.

  The carriage stopped at the end of the pretty lane lined with holly bushes not five minutes from the Brixton town center, where streets and shops bustled. The last stop on the post road before London, this little town afforded many travelers a final opportunity to prepare for a city debut.

  It wasn’t the kind of place one expected to find in the ledger book of Lord Coleford. Nor was it the kind of place one expected to be known to The Bully Boys.

  And as for whatever Caleb was involved with out here . . . well, Brixton simply didn’t seem like the kind of place that made for secrets in dire need of keeping.

  She stepped down, confusion furrowing her brow as she looked to her driver, Abraham, who’d been with her for two years and knew the South Bank like his own face. “You’re sure this is right?”

  The young man’s look indicated that he was affronted by the mere suggestion that he might have delivered her to the wrong location. She gave a little laugh. “Fair enough,” she said. “I don’t think this will take long, but why don’t you head down the road and find a bit of cake?”

  Abraham’s sweet tooth did not require additional encouragement. Parting ways with her driver, Sesily headed up the narrow path toward a charming, well-tended collection of modest, thatched roofed houses, four in a small half circle, each with a gate and well-tended garden that Sesily imagined bloomed beautifully in the spring and summer.

  Stopping in the little cul-de-sac, she considered the slip of paper she’d committed to memory the night before, knowing that she was looking for number three—the quaint house with the blue door almost directly in front of her.

  Now what?

  “You’re here for the dressmaker?”

  Sesily turned, meeting the curious gaze of a middle-aged Black man, crossing a small, tidy garden toward her. “Pardon?”

  He smiled in full then, his expression matching his kind eyes. “The only time we get ladies we don’t know down here, it’s to see the dressmaker. Mrs. Berry.” He indicated the house with the blue door. “Number three.”