A Midsummer Night's Sin (20 page)

“
When,
Mr. Blackthorn?” Lady Claire smiled wanly. “I want to have hope, but I fear that hope is waning. More and more, I find myself wanting to believe my husband’s brother-in-law and that Miranda is halfway to Gretna with some unsuitable young man she believes holds her heart. And…and I know that something terrible—monstrous—is happening here in London, and I commend you for your efforts, I really do. But I do not think my niece should be involved in anything more. She is caught between determination and fear, and not a little guilt, I’m afraid. I cannot be a good aunt and condone her further involvement. Not…not even for my daughter.”

Puck closed his hand around the key until it bit into the flesh of his palm. “I cannot begin to tell you how much I regret the events of earlier today, ma’am. But your niece is a headstrong young lady. And braver than you could know.”

Lady Claire looked up at Puck for a long moment before nodding her head and looking away. “Regina is convinced her father is somehow involved. Could that be possible?”

He didn’t answer at once. Lady Claire was desperate. Her only daughter had gone missing. Her niece had told her about the drowned women, about Reginald Hackett’s possible involvement. What sort of maggot could
enter the head of a woman who believed the way to her daughter might lie through the man? What would she dare in the name of that daughter?

“Perhaps it is time you and Lady Leticia actually did visit Mentmore, ma’am?” he ventured at last. “I don’t know that anyone could convince Regina to do the same, but the comfort of family is always preferable to your current situation here, in my decidedly bachelor household. If you were to suggest it, perhaps Regina would agree?”

She returned her gaze to his face. She wore the haunted look of a person standing over a bottomless pit. “You think I will go to him, don’t you? Confront him. I am not that brave, Mr. Blackthorn. Would that I were, would that my husband could find it in himself to face the man down. I want only your opinion. Please.”

“Then yes, my lady. I do think he might be involved. But I must add the caveat that in a world filled with suspects, it may be mostly wishful thinking that we are even now heading in the correct direction. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, we might never find Miranda,” Lady Claire ended for him, getting to her feet. “My heart aches for my daughter. My mind worries for my niece. And I am selfish enough to risk her, I suppose, if she can be of assistance to you. But please, protect her, keep her safe. Even if you can’t do the same for Miranda. You’re a good man.”

Puck held out his arm to her ladyship and walked her to the door of the study, where he bent to place a
kiss on her cool cheek. “I thank you, my lady, and let us both pray your confidence in me is not misplaced.”

He then escorted her down the hallway to the base of the stairs, watching as she slowly mounted them, heading back to the solitude of her assigned bedchamber, before he turned once more for his study.

He needed a drink. Perhaps several drinks. Maybe they’d wash away the thought that he was attempting to play God with other people’s lives, with their hopes, their fears. Because, damn it, he was only a man, one man, and far from perfect. If he failed, Miranda and many others would be lost. If he failed, Lady Claire would be destroyed. If he failed, Regina would never again be able to look at him and not remember that failure, or at least he would not be able to forget it.

If he lost, or if he won, Regina would still be lost to him. She had turned to him for help, for comfort, and he had given her passion, a reason to forget, if only temporarily, the ugliness of what was happening in this city, what was happening to her cousin.

Once the cousin was found, dead or alive, he would have no further excuse to salve his conscience. It would be time to walk away.

Puck reentered the study and went straight to the drinks table to pour a glass of wine. If Reginald Hackett was their man, Puck knew he couldn’t walk away. But even if he wasn’t, the man was still a despicable excuse for a human being. How could he ever walk away, knowing that? How far would he have to go to forget her?

He sensed his brother’s presence in the room even before Jack spoke.

“You handled that well. She’s really caught between that proverbial rock and a hard place, isn’t she? Fear for her daughter, concern for her niece. Praying you’ll find the one, all but certain you’ve deflowered the other. Balancing one against the other and choosing the daughter, as would be reasonable, tacitly condoning the deflowering, if it keeps you interested enough to continue the search for the daughter. She knows she can’t trust Hackett, is aware her own husband is a total loss. So she’s made her choice, put in with you, dear brother, and has let you know she will turn her head to anything else. Of the two sexes, I’ve always said the female is shrewder, the more practical.”

Puck’s hand hesitated as he held the open decanter of his glass for only a single heartbeat before he poured a measure and turned to look at his brother, who was sitting at his ease in one of the armchairs flanking the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. “I so look forward to your words of wisdom. Please, your opinion on Regina’s mother, while you’re in the mood to wax profound.”

“The so-fragile Lady Leticia?” Jack shrugged his elegantly clad shoulders. “I should think you’ll have a devil of a time rousting her from this snug bolt-hole you’ve offered her. She, too, has looked at what is happening, assessed her options and is content with trading her daughter’s innocence for her own temporary respite from what is, I’m quite sure, an untenable situation. If
Regina told her what we suspect, the woman is probably even now on her knees in her chambers, praying the man is guilty and that he hangs for his crimes, freeing her from her prison—and damn the inevitable scandal. Whether Hackett is our culprit or not, you might want to consider ridding the world of him. He’s not a very nice man.”

“Albeit a mysterious one. Even his own man of business doesn’t seem to know much about him.”

“You obviously didn’t grease the right palms. But no matter, you’ve got the lady to woo, as well—and an army to raise, my congratulations on that head—with not as much time to devote to the problem as I do. Used to be a slaver, our Mr. Hackett, you know, back before the Crown outlawed it, made it a hanging offense. Hackett, for a few years, but mostly his father before him. Their fortune? That’s pretty much built on the helpless souls they transported. That may be information you’ll want to keep from Regina. The trade may have been legal, but that doesn’t make it smell any better, does it?”

“It must have been an eye-popping amount of money he paid the Earl of Mentmore, for the man to hand his daughter over to the son of a slaver. Or perhaps the money was the only consideration, and Lady Leticia didn’t figure in the decision as anything more than a bargaining chip.”

“It’s sometimes difficult to love one’s fellow man, isn’t it, Puck? You know, with the war and all, the various embargos, a man could need to consider another
stream of revenue than what he could derive through legal means. Smuggling, for one. And then there’s that notion that dogs always return to their vomit.”

Puck nodded. “He’d go where he could be assured the highest profit. Interesting irons on those women today, I thought. Not the sort one would see every day—able to bind several people together on a string, rather like a line of pack animals. I saw such irons somewhere, years ago. How do they do it, Jack? How does anyone take hold of a woman, defenseless, terrified, unable to even beg for her life, look her in the eyes—and then toss her over the side to drown?
How?
”

“When we find those men, we’ll ask them,” Jack said, his eyes going dark. “After that, if you see some need for a court of law and the King’s justice, you will kindly oblige me by walking away. Understood?”

“I’ll never question your methods again or the reasons behind them,” Puck said, once more remembering the previous year and his thoughts on the eventual ending of the man he’d help put in Jack’s custody. “So—our friend Dickie isn’t the buffoon I took him for?”

“I helped you there by agreeing with you. I’d say he’s the bravest of all of us, willing to show his face in order to lead attention away from Henry and myself. And you must admit, he plays his part very well.”

“We all play parts, don’t we?” Puck asked as he sank into the facing chair, feeling maudlin. “Except maybe Beau. He found what he was looking for, even as he didn’t know he’d been looking.”

“And you,” Jack asked silkily. “Have you found what you’ve been looking for in that girl upstairs? You certainly worked a miracle to get her there.”

“The miracle would be to keep her, and I don’t see any way to manage that.” He looked at his brother. “Do you?”

“How to keep her? You’ve applied to entirely the wrong man for advice on that head, little brother. Entirely the wrong man.” Jack looked at his wineglass and then drank the remainder of its contents in one long gulp.

Getting Jack to open up was difficult in the best of times, but in this worst of times, Puck felt he may have just found a crack he might be able to wedge wider. “Have I just stepped into territory you’d rather left unexplored?”

“What did you learn once you’d managed to get yourself inside the Hackett warehouse?”

“Question answered,” Puck said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Very well, brother Sphinx. I didn’t know what I’d learn, frankly. My objective was merely to get inside and then see what I could see. Oh, and to hopefully come out with something like this.” He held up the key. “Would you care to return to London Docks with me later tonight for some good-natured skulking?”

Jack didn’t smile. Jack rarely smiled. “It would have to be tonight, yes. By tomorrow, the locks will have been changed unless the man is more idiot than we think, and we don’t think he’s an idiot, do we?”

“We think he’s a monster,” Regina said from the doorway, her voice low and intense.

Both Puck and Jack got to their feet, Puck looking to his brother and mouthing the words
she does not go with us.

Puck walked toward her, his arms out, and took her hands in his. “I thought we’d agreed you were going to remain in bed for the remainder of the day. You’ve had a considerable shock.”

“I’ve had my eyes opened, that’s what I’ve had done today. Do you know that I’ve dared to feel sorry for myself all these years? I’ve thought of myself being sold to the highest bidder—when I had no notion of what that really means. I’m ashamed of myself. Because I’ve never been cold, or hungry or really afraid. Because I do have the power to say no and mean it, and take my chances in the world, if I dare. My shackles were never real, Puck, not in the way of the shackles those women wore, both before they were captured and afterward. I told you I wanted to be there when you find Miranda, and I meant it. Now I want to be there—need to be there—when those other poor, terrified women are found. I’ve sat and wrung my hands long enough. I need to
help.
”

“Oh,
brava,
” Jack said, clapping his hands softly. “You put me in mind of someone I once knew, Regina. Puck, let me answer your earlier question, at least in part. She is clearly determined. If you want to lose her, refuse her. Women such as Regina are not the frail creatures we men often find the need to make them. And
now I’m off. Midnight seems like a fine time for us to meet where we met this morning. Do dress appropriately.”

Jack bowed over Regina’s hand before taking his leave, although she seemed to have offered that hand out of habit only, for her attention was all on Puck, her expression determined. Puck would have said
mulish,
except that if he wasn’t the most brilliant man in creation, he at least had a healthy sense of self-preservation.

Which, alas, didn’t keep him from saying what was on his mind.

“What in the devil makes you think you wouldn’t be in the way?”

She looked at him in some shock. “In the way? Oh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You will persist in thinking I’ll just be one more thing for you to worry about, don’t you? Did I
get in the way
earlier today?”

“You threw up all over the horses.”
Shut up, Puck. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

“Was it really necessary for you to remind me of that?” she asked, and this time her expression was definitely mulish. Beautiful. But mulish.

“Regina, be reasonable.”
Wrong word. Of all the words in Samuel Johnson’s Lexicon, that was exactly the wrong word. Never, never ever ask a woman to be reasonable. Females always think they’re reasonable.

“It’s you that isn’t being reasonable, Puck. Miranda is
my
cousin. The building you plan to break into belongs to
my
father. I am
not
going to stay here and
tend to my knitting while
you
risk your life to save
my
cousin, investigate
my
father. I have a responsibility. I…I can stand watch. I can…I can rifle through drawers, read journals as we search for clues. There has to be something I can do!”

Puck mentally tried to put himself in Regina’s shoes, and he could readily understand where they pinched her. She’d seen the bodies. If her father had been involved in those deaths, she had to be torn between wanting to unmask him and proving him innocent. Hate him, despise him, she was still blood of his blood.

And what had Jack told him?
If you want to lose her, refuse her.
Puck couldn’t know what had happened in his brother’s past, but clearly, whatever it was had cost him the woman he loved.

“All right,” he said at last, nearly shouted the words. “All right! But damn you, woman, if you so much as ask me
why
when I give you an order before you react, I’ll break your neck myself. Understood?”

She smiled. “Yes, Puck,” she said meekly. “Thank you.”

A goose didn’t exactly run over his grave as he saw her answering smile, but he knew he recognized that smile as being the same sort he’d seen on Chelsea’s face last year when she’d gotten Beau to agree to one of her outlandish plans.