Fortune Favors the Wicked (10 page)

This last part was the best of all.

And it would be for the unknown Georgette, too, Charlotte thought. “What if you claim the reward, but she doesn't wish to marry? Will you turn the money over to her and allow her to live as an independent spinster?”

“Would she like that?” He tipped his head, considering.

“I cannot imagine she would mind having the choice, but you know her better than I. Maybe there's already some young man she's decided to wed, and her lack of a dowry is the only thing preventing their marriage.”

“If there is such a man, she's never revealed his existence in her letters.” He felt along the side of his boot, reassuring himself, probably, of the presence of the blade within. How elder brotherly.

“Where does she live now?”

“Where she always has.” He sighed, as if this were a dreadful thing. “My parents owned a bookshop, with living quarters above. I was raised there until the age of twelve, when my wish to go to sea was granted. As their eldest, the bookshop came to me upon their deaths three years ago.”

“You own a bookshop.” Charlotte considered. “How intriguing. I was not aware you were a man of property.”

“Ah, are you going to start flirting with me now? I'd be delighted by it, but I mustn't let you throw yourself at me under false pretenses. I have sold the bookshop to cousins with the understanding that they were to house Georgette until she turned twenty-one.”

“I understand. A man can hardly run a bookshop when he is sliding down one of the Alps, or whatever it is you plan to do next.”

“Right,” he said drily. “Sliding down a mountain does have appeal, but there is also the fact that blind men are poor readers.”

This she had to grant. “This is none of my affair, of course, but you
could
give your sister the money you received from selling the shop.”

“And I may yet do that.” A humorless laugh. “It was meant to finance publication of my book—which would, of course, become the latest fashion and would sell in the thousands. I intended that the proceeds from the sales would go to Georgette while I continued to travel.”

Charlotte mulled this over. Publishers either bought the copyright of a book outright, ending the author's chance to profit from it, or the author paid publication costs and granted the publisher a commission on each copy sold. Frost had evidently preferred the latter method, though it might never earn the author a shilling. “It was not a bad plan, though trading your inheritance for publication of a book would be a gamble.”

“It proved a gamble I couldn't win on my own terms, so I chose not to make the bet.” He shrugged. “Perhaps one day I'll write a novel based on my travels. Perhaps not. At present, though, Georgette is almost twenty-one.” He shook his head. “How odd that is to realize. I suppose she might have a beau after all.”

“I did when I was twenty-one.”

“I have no doubt of it. I imagine you had all of London at your feet.”

“Not precisely
all
of London.” She coughed. “I was cultivating a . . . close acquaintance with one of the royal dukes.”

To her surprise, Benedict laughed. “Was it Clarence, that old salt?”

“It was not. The Duke of Clarence was devoted to Mrs. Jordan and their children.” An actress who had never been any sort of
Mrs.
as far as Charlotte knew. Kept women required their fictions.

“Not to sound like an overprotective older brother, but I do hope Georgette doesn't come in the way of any of the royal dukes.”

“I heartily wish her the same,” said Charlotte. “Does she like living with your cousins at the bookshop?”

“She has never told me she does not. But she
has
told me she cannot stay beyond her birthday. I shall send her the inheritance if I must, and she can use it to pay room and board, but . . .”

“The arrangement could only be temporary,” Charlotte replied. “Until she sorts out what comes next.”

Yes. That was how she felt about her stay here.
Family
did not equate to
home,
or even to
welcome
. Her parents never chastised her for the choices she had made; they simply ignored them. When she returned to their house, she was Miss Perry. Maggie's aunt.

The door across the corridor opened, spilling forth a final
“Méchri á
v
rio”
from Mrs. Perry.

“
Entáxei,
” said Maggie, followed by “Captain! You waited for me! Good girl.”

Mrs. Perry called for the capable Barrett, ordered a light luncheon, then poked her head into the parlor. “Lessons done at last. That girl of ours hasn't my head for Greek, but she's not entirely without talent. She'll make a fair translator one day.”

Of hers and the reverend's, of course. “Mama, what if she does not want to be a translator of ancient Greek?”

“Then she can translate modern Greek instead.” Mrs. Perry frowned. “Why the sudden questions, Charlotte?”

A good question. She couldn't put the feeling into words; she only knew that she felt some duty to Maggie—and even to the unknown Georgette Frost—to claim freedoms for them.

“They wanted asking,” she replied simply.

Her mother, sturdy and ruddy-faced and pragmatic a creature as had ever been made, shrugged and moved on. “Mr. Frost, do you intend to go to the inquest? The vicar should be able to walk over with you after luncheon. I expect him home anytime.”

“I think I will, yes. It might give him comfort not to go alone.”

“You can keep him from being worn to a thread. Always finding someone else to talk to or someone else's house to go visit.”

“Well, he
is
the vicar,” said Charlotte. “People look to him for comfort. It's not as though he's playing cards at all hours.”

“And who's to comfort his family if he's never here?”

Who was to comfort him if his family was always in London or ancient Greece? “That wants asking, too,” Charlotte said.

“Asking.
Eureka.
We ought to work on interrogatives next.” Mrs. Perry disappeared from the doorway, saying something else in Greek to Maggie, then mounted the creaking stairs.

Maggie was next to peek in. “Why are you sitting like that on the arms of the sofa?” Before either Charlotte or Frost could answer, she added, “I am going to take Captain outside. She missed the fresh air during my morning of lessons.”

“Captain missed the fresh air, did she? What about her mistress?” Charlotte slid to the seat of the sofa, mindful of the noctograph at her side.

“I did, too. This is the only time of year when I can be outdoors without wearing an itchy cloak or getting itchy with sweat.”

With her light brown curls and green eyes, Maggie really was the image of the late, lovely Margaret. Charlotte could almost wish the family's lies were true, and that her sister had birthed this child. Her life would be easier, she knew, if Maggie had no claim on her heart.

But then there would be no reason for it to keep beating at all. “Give dear Captain a pat for me, Maggie, and mind you stay off the Selwyn lands.”

“
Entáxei
.” Maggie smiled, her nose wrinkling. “That means ‘all right.' Grandmama says my accent is terrible.”

“It's much better than mine,” said Frost.

Maggie laughed, and she was off.

Frost slid to the sofa seat as well, then cleared his throat. “Look, Miss Perry, I think we ought to speak about—”

She pressed his hand, quick, hard.
Silence.
She had got in the habit of caution, of speaking her mind only behind a closed door.

This morning, at the top of the stairs, had been a rare exception—but then, she had been provoked.

“About the inquest,” she said smoothly. “Yes, I agree that we should speak of it. And how kind of you to wonder if I wish to go with you. I think not, though. Not many other women will be there. It doesn't seem quite the thing to do.”

As though she gave a damn about that.

No. Rather than that, she did not wish to hear Nance spoken of in the past tense when she had so recently been present to so many. The jury would look at her, laid out, and look at where she had died, then where she had lived. Her plain chamber in the attic of the Pig and Blanket, with the scraps of her dreams around her. Maybe a silk ribbon from an admirer, or a book or two, or a family miniature. An inquest was just another way of leering, with no justice to be had at the end of it.

Charlotte had been the subject of inquests, time after time. Her naked body on canvas, draped only in jewels, stilled in paint by Edward before the stares of many men. The courtesan and the artist; they made one another famous. And Edward knew every inch of her.

On the outside.

“If you could go,” she said through a tight throat, “and listen to everything quite well with your marvelous noticing ears, there might be clues as to what Nance knew. And that might have something to do with where the coins are, and—”

“Why, Miss Perry, are you suggesting I share information with you?” Somehow his hand had found hers again; they rested together atop the ruled surface of the noctograph. “That sounds suspiciously like cooperation.”

When one of his fingers began to stroke the back of her hand, her heart began to beat faster. “You swore you should not be my foe.”

“Nor shall I. I shall be the ears where you cannot go, and you can spend the time in . . . virtuous works.”

She choked back a laugh that trembled a bit.

“And in return,” he stated, rising to his feet and pulling her up to face him, “will you be the eyes for us both?”

“That sounds as though we would be one flesh.” Still, he held her hand, and her fingers could not seem to release his much thicker ones.

“Perhaps later,” he murmured. “In the meantime, I rather think we shall be unconquerable. Don't you?”

Without waiting for her reply, he eased his hand free, then took up his noctograph and the cane he'd laid next to the doorway.
“Méchri á
v
rio,”
he said. “‘Until tomorrow.' Just as your mother told Maggie.”

“You speak Greek, too?” She raised her eyes to heaven. “I am outnumbered.”

“Only a few words of it. I picked up bits when sailing about the Peloponnesus.” He winked, the gesture looking oddly shy over his unfocused gaze. “Marvelous noticing ears, you know.”

He sketched a small bow, then left her with a smile that was reflected on her own features.

Unconquerable,
he said they would be. Though she suspected, as she gave a little shiver of longing, that she was already beginning to surrender.

“Last call, Frost. Another pint for you before we close for the night?” Mrs. Potter, the innkeeper's wife, spoke to Benedict in a tone of considerably more cheer than the one with which she had begun the evening.

After the inquest, the atmosphere in the Pig and Blanket had turned convivial, desperately so. As the odors of tobacco smoke and ale thickened, toast after toast ensued. A young woman had died, the living had heard the verdict issued—
murder by person or persons unknown
—and now they wanted to drink away the knowledge.

So followed hours of raucous, determined cheer, as strange voices overlapped and thickened with drink. Toasts to Nance, toasts to success in the hunt for the stolen sovereigns. Toasts to Mr. and Mrs. Potter; to the Bow Street Runner, Stephen Lilac, sent by the Royal Mint; to the coroner; to the vicar's blind guest, even.

No amount of liquor could have made Benedict raise a glass to this last toast. “The vicar's guest is a writer,” he protested. “A lieutenant. A physician.”

But he wasn't really any of those things; all were half-tried or abandoned. And so he had to accept the claps on the back, the slurred
welcome
s and
I don't know how you manage it
s. It had been rather horrible, smiling and laughing through such an evening. But it had been necessary for him to seem as though he belonged.

He stored such thoughts away for later, though. At the moment, he only took up his hickory cane and replied to Mrs. Potter, “Nothing more for me, good lady. A fellow such as I can't afford to get too fuddled during his walk home.”

He felt fuddled already, head aching with the strain of trying to tease one strange voice from another, to recall everything said about him. The inquest had been much easier, with one person speaking at a time, each identified. In a public room? He was half-drowned in sound.

He rummaged in his pockets for coins, feeling each one carefully, then added a shilling above his shot. An exorbitant gratuity that would make Mrs. Potter think him either generous or drunk. Maybe both. He gave an intentional sway as he bade the publican's wife a good night; then he left, leaning heavily on his stick.

No self-respecting sailor, with his daily ration of a half pint of rum or a gallon of beer, would become tipsy in a village pub. But it wouldn't hurt for Mrs. Potter and the last few souls lingering in the common room to think so. He didn't want anyone to suspect how closely he'd been listening all afternoon, all evening, and into the night.

As soon as he passed through the outer door of the Pig and Blanket, his strides straightened out. He pulled in a deep breath, the air of late May pleasant and fresh in his lungs. It smelled like nothing at all, and the streets held all the quiet of a village gone to sleep. The respite was welcome, the ache in his head lifting almost at once.

And now back to the vicarage. It was true enough that he couldn't afford to become fuddled. Though it mattered little to him whether he walked under a new moon or a noon sun, he could not drift idly, lost in thought and counting on rote memory to bring him to his destination. He had to count steps, carefully, to remember his turning.

Here was the scent of the baker's shop, bready and sweet even during these sleepy hours. Next came three other shops to his left, the village green to the right.
To the west,
he would tell Charlotte, just to imagine her expression of disgruntled amusement. Maybe to make her laugh. What was the shape of her smile? He knew only what her lips felt like when being kissed, but what would they feel like when . . .

Damnation
. He was getting fuddled, and no mistake.

He halted, and his final footfall echoed in a crunch of gravel. To straighten out his thoughts, he pulled forth the watch from his waistcoat pocket and felt the raised numbers on its face. Near midnight.

He snapped the case shut again—and froze.

There had been no echo for that sound. Which meant that had been no echo to his footfall either. Someone was following him.

To be certain, he took another step, and another, then stopped.

There came the same echo that wasn't truly an echo: a footstep planted a bare instant after his.

All right. He was being followed. So? He'd been followed before. Not only by cutpurses, but by jealous husbands and lovers. The streets about ports weren't known for the virtue of those practicing, well, virtuous works.

Of course, those encounters had been when he was still possessed of his sight. But no matter. He had a metal-tipped walking stick in one hand and a hidden blade in his boot.

Stowing his watch again, he bent and drew forth the stiletto from its sheath. He turned, holding the hilt between thumb and the breadth of his hand, tilting it slightly so any moonlight would wink from the blade. “Greetings, person following in my steps. Would you like to chat, or have you some other purpose in mind?”

A slight indrawn breath. Benedict estimated it at perhaps twenty feet away.

“Truly,” he added in a bland tone. “Let us chat if you've a mind to. I'm quite ready. I've beautiful manners. What do you want to talk of? My money? You may try to take it, though I doubt you'll succeed.”

Two footsteps, another breath. This one sounded closer on the night-silent street. There seemed no one else about, no one else awake in the world.

“You must be shy.” Benedict flexed his fingers on the bone hilt of the stiletto. “Fortunately for you, I am not. Maybe you want to talk about the inquest, but you can't quite summon the courage to broach the subject. Were you there today?” In his other hand, he held the head of his cane lightly, ready to swing it. “Did you play a part in it? Or in the death of Nancy Goff?”

“What do you want?” The voice was closer still; male, hoarse, and rasping. Obviously disguised.

“I might ask you the same, shadow.”

But the figure following Benedict said nothing.

After a moment, he took a step back. And another. The figure did not follow.

And then in a rush, it came at him, a flurry of footsteps for which he was ready but somehow still unprepared. Dropping his knife, he laid both hands on his cane, top and midpoint, making of it a bar before him.

The man rattled into him at full speed, jarring his bones and making his teeth clack together. A grunt and wheeze told Benedict that the cane had caught the assailant across the midsection, but he wasn't slowed for long.
Snick
came a clean sound, and then a pressure and a rip of cloth. Cool air touched Benedict's arm before a hot liquid flowed down it.

His arm had been slashed, he realized dimly.

“You,” growled Benedict, “just ruined the undress uniform coat of a lieutenant of the Royal Navy. Bad decision.” He swung the cane, its tip connecting with the long resistance of a limb bone.

The knife came again, but off target; it hacked into the cane. Benedict cursed, and in the moment the assailant took to pry the blade free of the precious hickory staff, he freed one hand and drove a fist into whatever he could reach. Midsection again, but the fellow must have guts of iron. He absorbed the blow and gave the same back, making Benedict gag. He sucked in air, eyes watering, not allowing his body to bend and shield itself. If he bent, if he fell, he was certain he would never rise again.

Staggering a little as he planted his feet, he held the cane lightly at his side. The crunch of gravel sounded from his right—now from right before him, and without thought, he drove the solid metal tip forward, hard as he could.

He hit something.

There came a whimper and a curse, and the knife-wielding shadow fell to his knees with a gritty thump. He'd caught the man in the belly, then, or the groin.

Had the attacker dropped the knife? Could Benedict find his own stiletto? Heart in a thunder, he allowed himself three seconds to feel about on the ground for whatever he could grasp.

One.
Nothing but mud and something sticky—his own blood? It made his fingers slippery.

Two
. Grass, another clump of grass, pebbles, pebbles, pebbles.

Three
. Nothing . . . nothing . . . a tip of something that he knocked away with his clumsy fumbling.

Three and a half,
then. He patted for it with a flat palm, then closed his hand gently about a thin blade. He slipped it into the customary spot in his boot, then straightened, tucking his cane solidly under his arm.

And he sprinted for the vicarage as if he were being chased by the devil himself.

* * *

Breathing hard, he shut the door behind him. “Charlotte,” he whispered. “Charlotte. I need you.”

“I am here,” came the answer after a second, from the direction of the parlor. “Papa returned hours ago, but I waited up for—my God, you are bleeding.”

“I'm all right. Lock the door.” He tucked his hickory cane in the corner, within easy reach of the doorway. “And then let us put something heavy against it, and against any other way in or out of the house you can think of. I may not be the only person in Strawfield who knows his way through a locked door.”

“I—yes, all right.” Then followed the sounds of scraping metal, of a key turning and a bolt being thrown. “One moment. Your cut—it looks very bad.” A cloth was wrapped about the cut on his arm, then tied off snug. At once, a burning pain was eased that he had not realized he felt.

After helping him muscle a chest from the parlor and stand it on end before the door—“where it will make a god-awful crash if anyone tries to break through,” she noted—she walked Benedict to the rear of the vicarage so he could do the same before the servants' entrance. While he shoved furniture, she checked window latches, then crept down to the servants' quarters, presumably to secure those windows or alert the servants.

When she met him again in the corridor outside the dining room, both agreed that no one would be getting into the house without being heard at once.

“By you or me, that is,” Charlotte said. “My father was ill at ease after the inquest, so my mother gave him a sedative. His sleep looked so peaceful that she and Maggie took one as well. They have both taken upon themselves some of his worry.”

“He has worry enough for several people,” Benedict agreed.
But it still might not be enough.
He flexed the fingers of his left hand; they tingled, a little numb from the pressure of the cloth about his biceps.

“Let me get a lamp and a few items for treating your wound”—Charlotte's footsteps receded, then returned after a minute or two—“and now to your bedchamber.”

“Well, well. You certainly know how to comfort a man.” His wry tone fell flat; it was too shaky for humor. God, his arm was beginning to hurt again, and the blow to his belly made him ache straight through.

“I certainly do.” She preceded him up the eighteen narrow stairs. “In this case, I'll clean your arm and give you a fresh shirt while you tell me what happened.”

He made his way to the bed and sat on its edge, letting her close them into the bedchamber and bustle about as he briefly described the attack. The timing; the surprise of it. “It was as though someone was waiting for me. I think it must have something to do with the inquest.”

“Perhaps, though there could be another reason. The fact that you are a guest at the vicarage? A friend to Lord Hugo Starling? The owner of a noctograph? Simply a man walking alone whose purse might be taken?”

He shook his head. “I do not think I was targeted because of who I am, but because of something I know. Which, unfortunately, I do not know I know—
damn it
. Er, sorry about that. I didn't know you were about to untie the cloth about my arm.” His numb fingers were easier to move now, but the cut began to ooze again.

“He curses,” she murmured. “What a surprise for a sailor. I thought they were meant to be so elegant.” She plucked at the torn edges of his coat sleeve. “You will have to take off your coat and shirt. Would you like my aid?”

“I'd be a fool to say no.” Though he tried to sound roguish, in truth, he wasn't sure he could shrug free from his garments without opening the wound wide again.

He planted his boots on the floor, set his teeth, and gave Charlotte a nod. She stepped into the cradle of his legs, a figure lightly scented of wintergreen, bracing and calm. “Shrug your good shoulder so we can slip this off of you—”

“They are
both
good shoulders.”

“Right. That's what I meant to say. Shrug your brawny and handsome right shoulder, and we'll get your coat free on that side—there. Now I can ease this sleeve over the arm that was hurt. Quickly, lift up your arm—and press at the wound with this cloth while you hold your arm in the air.” She stepped back, taking away the faint prickle of heat her nearness imparted. The coat fell to the floor before the bed, heavy as a sack of potatoes.

“Careful with that, please.” He began to lower his upraised arm until Charlotte exclaimed. “It is the mark of my rank. I earned that coat through years of effort.”

“Doubtless you did, but I am sorry to say that it was the work of a moment to ruin it. The rend in the sleeve could be sewed, but the white piping will never be the same.”

Briefly, he considered stitching up the slashed fabric. Wearing the bloodstained coat as a sign of pride and achievement, as other men did after serving in battle.

He discarded the idea at once. It would be just another way to make a spectacle of himself. The uniform coat had become a way to dress without thought or expense, but maybe it was time to leave it behind. To take his chances with fashion, to wear the clothes of the everyday man he had become.