A Gentleman’s Game (22 page)

Carys agreed to fetch Aunt Annie to the front parlor, which Alec promised to keep clear of customers. “Though of course I’m going to listen in to whatever you’re talking about.”

“I hope you will,” said Rosalind. “I hope everyone will.”

Since their conversation the previous day, Aunt Annie had skirted Rosalind again. Only once the widow tried to keep her distance did Rosalind realize how frequently she was there. Anne Jones had the run of the Eight Bells. They had all adopted the habit of thinking she was to be trusted, simply because she had been present for so long.

Sir William hefted himself up the steps while Alec brought in his wheelchair. From the vestibule, the baronet wheeled neatly into the front parlor, the more formal room across from the public room favored by diners and drunkards alike.

“I didn’t expect to see you again, Miss Agate. I trust you’ve been well?” The baronet’s courtesy was unexpected. Gracious.

She stood behind a chair, too agitated to sit. “Yes, Sir William. Quite well, thank you. I see that you are too. Travel agrees with you.”

He looked at her narrowly from beneath his steely brows, which then lifted. “I believe it does. So, you want me to have some speech with Anne Jones?”

She laced her fingers together. “Yes, sir. But before she arrives, I must tell you—I never worked for you.”

The baronet’s brows yanked back down. “I was under a different impression.”

Rosalind could feel Nathaniel’s gaze on her. He stood near his father and had startled when Rosalind spoke, but she did not dare look at him directly. These words were difficult enough to speak without watching all warmth ebb from his expression. “Yes, you were meant to. I have been a thief for years. I steal and copy papers from the people in whose houses I work. For my true employer.” Her heart thudded. “Anne Jones.”

Nathaniel gave a short bark of laughter. “I’ve always known you were more than a secretary.”

“I have always known I was less.” She was ashamed to admit this before them both, before Alec and any of her other brothers who were listening. They had been so proud. The Chandlers had thought her so capable. “She paid for the medical treatments that saved my life, and I have been hers ever since. For ten years.”

Even as a girl of thirteen, she had known the things she did were wrong. But she had hoped that in the end everything would be put right.

The silence was so long and heavy that Rosalind felt her wall of secrets had tumbled down on her.

“And what information did you steal from me?” Sir William asked in a measured tone.

“Nothing.” Her mouth twisted. “I was sent to Epsom before I found what Aunt Annie sought.”

“Which was?”

“Anything related to Spain, 1805.” She was done keeping secrets that were not her own.

“And you found nothing.” Sir William steepled his hands before his chin. “Miss Agate, you’re a terrible thief.”

“I believe I was a better secretary than thief, yes. But my heart was in the former role, never in the latter.” She ventured a glance at Nathaniel. He looked…bemused.

She shook out her trembling hands, then clamped them onto the back of the chair in front of her. Bemused was all right. Bemusement was better than disappointment.

Not that she had a right to hope for either. She had told him she couldn’t see him again, and here he was, an undeserved gift.

“I don’t want to lie any longer,” she said. “I finally have a chance to decide what sort of life I’ll have.”

Already she felt lighter. As though she had shoved free of some of that fallen stone wall of secrets.

Before either of the Chandlers could reply, Aunt Annie entered bearing a teacup. “My Cyfrinach, what is this all about? Carys said I had a caller, and I—
oh
.” The two Chandlers faced her. One seated, one standing; one golden, one gray.

The widow paled. With the jetty fabric of her gown, she looked as fragile as the china cup she held. When she turned on her heel, Nathaniel stepped to one side and blocked the doorway.

Sir William, by contrast, looked almost pleased. “Anne Jones! Look at you, all dressed up like a widow. I wouldn’t have thought it would suit you.”

She recovered a little of her fragile smile. “But it does?”

“No, I didn’t say that.” He folded his arms, considering.

Rosalind spoke up. “Sir William, I just want to make certain of the matter. This is the same Anne Jones you knew in Spain. You know this woman?”

“Yes, I once did. So did many other men.”

Aunt Annie set the teacup down with a clatter.

“She was a courtesan,” the baronet explained. “Though perhaps that is not the right word. A courtesan has but one protector.”

“You promised me marriage,” Aunt Annie blurted out at once. But not soon enough, not loudly enough, to stop the words from echoing about the room.

They were loud in Rosalind’s ears, playing again and again.
A courtesan
. The proper widow she had trusted with a decade of her life was really nothing of the sort.

“Huh,” she said as she eased around the back of the chair and collapsed into it. “Huh.”

But no one was listening to her. Sir William, completely unfazed, was answering, “We were shifting around the edge of a war. We all said things we didn’t mean. I don’t suppose you loved me, did you? Yet you said that often enough to the officers you served. You told my friend Smithy you loved him too. And Chatteris and Jordan.”

“You and I have a particular tie.” Anne’s cheeks had flushed. “I have a letter of yours with private messages. You would not wish me to reveal it, I am sure.”

The baronet looked at his lap where his hands were folded. When he looked up, his features were resigned. “If it’s the sort of letter I think, Annie, you may do what you like with it. People forget that a man in a wheelchair is still a man. It would not be so terrible if they were reminded.”

Rosalind cleared her throat. “Sir William, is there a chance your affair had lasting consequences?”

“She did not give me a disease, if that is what you refer to.”

Anne gasped. She still stood in the middle of the room as though repelled in all directions.

“No, not a disease. You had better tell it all,
Aunt Annie
.” Rosalind could not help but give the nickname a mocking edge. “Tell all your secrets. I am a grown woman, not a hurt child, and I want to pay my debts. I owed the Chandlers the truth. I owe you money, but since you’ve taken most of my salary for the past ten years, I think I have paid that debt as well.”

“You can never pay your debt.” Anne drew herself up straight. “You owe me your life.”

“This argument again.” Ten years’ worth of strain heaped upon Rosalind. “Take it, then, if it’s yours. If it’s not my life, I don’t want any part of it.”

“You make me sound like an ogre! I would never, never hurt you, my Cyfrinach
.
”

“My name is Rosalind,” she corrected. “All right, then have Tranc kill me. He likes that sort of thing, doesn’t he?”

“Who is Tranc?” Sir William fumbled with the unfamiliar word. “Why must anyone be killed?”

Anne turned to her former lover. “He is a Welsh criminal who will stop at nothing to collect money and power.”

“Is he the one who poisoned my horses?”

“Yes!” Anne’s tone throbbed with relief. “His men are everywhere. He sent one to feed the horses sanded sugar.”

“Sand colic,” Nathaniel mused. “Peters was right. He’ll be so pleased. And Lombard will spit.”

The conversation was turning awry—and then in an instant, it tipped upside down. “But you told me that
you
had sent someone to sicken the horses.” Rosalind’s fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. “You did that, by your own admission. I’ve the letter.”

Just because someone told her something didn’t mean it was true.

But what if it was? What if Tranc had given the order to Aunt Annie? What if they worked together?

No, it could go further than that.

Unsteady, she pushed to her feet. “For years, you’ve told me to fear and obey Tranc lest he take my sister. But I’ve never seen him. I’ve never met him. I only know what you’ve told me. Maybe everything you say he requires is really what you want.”

Anne took a step toward Rosalind. “No, Rosie. My Cyfrinach. I tried to protect you—”

“You never protected me. You used me. And I let you use me.” Her hand lifted to cover her mouth. “My God. My God. There’s no Tranc, is there? It’s you. He’s you.”

Anne only shook her head. She knew the power of silence.

A Welsh criminal who will stop at nothing to collect money and power
. If she had to, she would even stoop so far as to save a life. She, known as Tranc.

Rosalind backed up a step, finding the support of the chair against her legs. “My God. It was you, all these years.” Her voice grew ragged, rising. “How many secret helpers do you have? Your foundling homes—are they for the harvest of more like me? How many others work for you?”

“Just you, my—Rosie. Just you. It has always been you and me.”

Not everything people tell you is true
. “It has always been you,” Rosalind said. “Only you. Not me. It has been long since I helped you for any reason other than guilt and fear and shame. What else have you lied about? Is there even a child?”

“A child?” Sir William broke in.

Anne turned toward him, then took a step in his direction. “We have a daughter, Gwilym. She was born in December 1805. For her protection, she does not know she is illegitimate. That the people who are raising her aren’t her real parents. I would never do anything to hurt her or her prospects.”

“We had a child?” Sir William frowned, counting months on his fingers.

“Please say it could not be possible,” Nathaniel said.

“In the biological sense, it would be possible.” The baronet leveled a stern gaze at Anne. “How can you be sure the child is mine? You were with many men.”

Another righteous gasp. “If you saw her, you would know in an instant she was yours.”

“Then I want to see her.”

“But if you introduce yourself, then she will know she is a bastard!”

“I’ll be inconspicuous.”

As a group, they looked doubtfully at the massive man in the ornate wheelchair.

In that moment of distraction, Anne pulled a tiny pistol from her pocket and leveled it at Rosalind.

From the doorway followed a tiny metallic
click
. “You ought not to point a gun at Miss Agate.”

Nathaniel, speaking with perfect calm, had pulled forth his own gun. The one he had hoped never to use while traveling, but always brought just in case. “Especially not in here. This is a nice parlor. If you want to fire that thing, Mrs. Jones, go into the taproom opposite.”

“Let me leave.” Anne was breathing hard, her outstretched hand trembling. Rosalind watched it, wary, ready to dodge. Knowing she could not dodge quickly enough. “Let me leave this place. I will go to one of my other homes, and I’ll never see you again.”

One of her other homes, she said. To how many people was she
Aunt
? Was she a proper widow to them too?

Keeping her eyes fixed on the gun, Rosalind shifted to one side. “There are more people like me, aren’t there? Others who think they’re protecting you by finding secrets that instead line your pockets?”

Anne took a deep breath and steadied her aim.

“So, yes, then.” Rosalind eyed the tiny barrel of the gun. Being shot could not hurt more than the agony of burns, but she didn’t wish to experience it. “Will you promise not to—to indenture another child?”

A hollow laugh. “My dear, if I ever I see a burned little girl whose parents cannot afford medicine, I will let her die.”

“Or you could write to me,” interjected Sir William. “I will pay the debt rather than turn it over to you.”

“Put the gun down. Please.” Rosalind begged the other woman with voice and eyes. So often as a child, she had looked into the eyes of Aunt Annie, the neighborhood’s saint on earth, and found them beautiful. Had they ever been what they seemed? Had she been Tranc even during the years of her marriage, or had she turned to secrets and lies only when her soldier-husband left her a widow in Spain?

The answer didn’t matter now, in the face of a gun.

For years, Rosalind had been a lamb for slaughter. But that was not the fault of the lamb, who knew no better than to follow those who shepherded it.

She knew better now. At last.

“Aunt Annie,” she tried again. “Please. Put the gun away, and leave us all.”

For a long, trembling moment, the black-clad arm held its gun. And then with a nod, the widow lowered it and whirled away, shoving past Nathaniel through the doorway.

And Annwyl Jones was gone, leaving behind a silence as sharp and sudden as a falling icicle.

This once, she had chosen to draw back rather than hurt someone.
Thank God.

Nathaniel let out a deep breath and released the hammer on his pistol. “It wasn’t loaded. Sorry. Foolish of me.” He pocketed it.

“It’s all right.” Rosalind hardly knew what she was saying. “It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

Sir William was looking toward the doorway with troubled eyes. “But the child. If there
is
a child. How will I find her?”

“I can help you,” said Rosalind. “I am a thief and a spy. Sir William, this is my specialty.”

Nathaniel’s mouth dropped open.

She coughed. “Or you could hire a professional sort of person.”

“That might be better, yes,” said Nathaniel. “Here I thought you were going to make an honest woman of yourself.”

“I will. I want to. I’ve always wanted to.” Still shaky, she crossed the room and took his hands. “You must have so many questions, Nathaniel. Whatever you want to ask, I’ll answer.”

The smile that shone down at her was a little sad. “There’s one question in particular I want to ask you. But not yet. I don’t have a home, and I’m not sure about the state of my position either.”

Were his father not here, worried and shocked, she would have embraced him. Yes, she ached all over from tiredness, from strain. But she ached from within, too, from having missed Nathaniel like a piece of her own self. “When you ask, I’ll answer.”