Fortune Favors the Wicked (13 page)

“Then you can take care of Captain while we're gone!” cried Maggie.

“Your aunt,” said Benedict gravely, “has already asked me to do so.” A lie, but Charlotte was pleased by it when Maggie beamed at her.

“Did I—I think I did not ask Barrett to get the baskets ready for this afternoon,” said the vicar. “I need to pay some calls to—”

“Reverend, this is meant to be a day of rest.” Charlotte's mother had set aside her spoon. “The calls can wait until tomorrow.”

“They cannot.” Twist, twist went his hands. “I meant to take these items about yesterday, but—”

“You spent the time in the inquest instead.” She sighed. “There's always something, Perry.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Perry.” The following silence was not a taut one, but rather exhausted. “No peace for the wicked, or from them. And I have grown so tired that I do not know in which company I belong.”

* * *

While Charlotte and her father made the rounds of the village that afternoon, Benedict remained at the vicarage.

No one had expected anything of him since he'd carried Captain downstairs this morning, which was both freeing and distressing. Maggie had her dog; Charlotte was playing the good vicar's daughter—and helping to muscle the armful of baskets packed by Barrett, he could tell by her breathless good-bye.

What was he to do, then? He had already written to Georgette. He had nothing in particular about which he needed to write Lord Hugo, and his other correspondents were far too casual on which to use costly paper without cause.

He wandered into the kitchen and passed a pleasant, idle hour with the cook and the maid Colleen, who helped in the kitchen and occasionally about the house. They refused to allow him to peel vegetables—“not on account of you bein' blind, Mr. Frost, but because you're a gentleman and the reverend's guest”—so he simply soaked in the scents of roasting fowl and sweet stewed fruit and listened to the comfortable arguments between the pair of women.

Cook had the wheeze and stomp of a woman of great bulk, and she was exacting in her instructions to the slight young Colleen. When their conversation turned from a pleasurable discussion of who might have gutted Nance Goff to a far more contentious row over the proper color for a gravy made from drippings, he excused himself.

Passing through the dining room and into the ground floor's corridor, he encountered his hostess. “Hello, Mrs. Perry. Taking a break from the Trojans?”

“Tut, Mr. Frost. The Trojans are the enemy. I am expert in ancient Greek.”

“What are you translating now?”

She didn't reply for a long moment; Benedict began to wonder if he had offended her with the question. “No one ever asks me that.”

“Surely Lord Hugo does.”

“Not my correspondents. I mean, the people with whom I live.” Another pause. “Would you like to explore my study? You can smack your cane about on the floor as long as you do not disturb the papers.”

He recognized this as a generous offer and fetched his hickory cane from its spot next to the front door. A few blows, their echoes, the vibrations that assembled his world into sense, told him that the space was small and deadened around the edges by shelves of books and papers. There were—he felt about—a desk and two chairs. “Sit, sit,” offered Mrs. Perry, and he did so.

“You asked what I'm working on,” she said. “It's
The Odyssey
. Just a bit of fun, really. It's been done before, time and time again. I made a translation of it myself when I was just learning Greek in the early days of my marriage.”

“Oh, I thought you had known it much longer.” He knew little about this friend of Lord Hugo's besides her fondness for the language, despite living under her roof for several days.

“No, I took it up when Perry got the Strawfield living. It's my calling, I suppose you'd say. A vicar's wife must have something to do while her husband is gone at all hours, caring for his flock of sheep.” With a sigh, she shuffled a stack of papers. “I like the idea of
The Odyssey
. A family split apart that comes back together in the end.”

“The story takes years, doesn't it?”

“It does, at that. I believe I've been waiting longer than Penelope.”

The silence drew out long and soft, a woolen yarn of quiet. “I shan't keep you from the work that gives you comfort,” Benedict said.

But he wasn't sure now if it did.

* * *

After a few minutes in the first household she and her father visited, Charlotte remembered why she had given up
virtuous work.

Mrs. Fancot, the laundress who had so infuriated Barrett, lived behind a shop in a rented set of rooms. The scents of her trade, astringent soaps and lyes, stung the nose as soon as one walked in. A stringy widow with several grown children, she began wailing as soon as the vicar crossed the threshold.

“Oh, Reverend! If someone would only find them gold coins.” She dabbed at faded eyes. “My little grandson Jack has the scrofula, and him no more'n three years old. Gold rubbed on the sores will take them right away!”

No, it won't
. The only way gold would help a child with scrofula was by lining his physician's pocket.

“There, there.” The vicar bent his gray head to rummage through a basket. “I came to pray with you, and I have brought you a length of felt.”

“What good is felt to a little boy with scrofula?” Mrs. Fancot blew her nose on her sleeve.

The vicar looked nonplussed. “None, I—well, that is—last time I visited you mentioned needing cloth for—”

“Oh, vicar! I need
gold!
” A fresh wail succeeded, and the widow buried her face in her apron.

“You are not the only one,” muttered Charlotte. More loudly, she added, “God bless you and all that. I'm sure you're grateful for the fabric. Well, good-bye.” She took her father by the elbow and hurried him out.

“Why, Charlotte . . .” He shook his head, blinking dimly into the afternoon sunlight. A ghost of a smile hovered on his thin features. “I have never finished an errand at Mrs. Fancot's house so quickly.”

“You're welcome,” she said. “Where next?”

The next several calls were less tearful and slightly more pleasant, as Charlotte bore the curious stares of families who had never met the vicar's sole surviving child, or who had not seen the virtuous—
ha
—Miss Perry for some years. As her father dispensed prayers, comfort, a few more bolts of cloth, and a jar of calves'-foot jelly, she allowed herself to be looked at and even tried soothing a fussy baby.

The baby bit her.

“Why don't the Selwyns see to the needs of these people?” she asked as her father led them to the final visit. “They are the squires hereabouts, and they ought to—”

“They see to their tenants.” And that was all he said.

But that was all he needed to say. Charlotte understood: Lady Helena, the earl's daughter who had married Edward eight years before, was as ungenerous as she was rich. The people of Strawfield who did not live on her land were of no concern to her.

“I'm glad you gave away that calves'-foot jelly,” Charlotte said.
I'm glad you give your time like this.

“No one in the vicarage likes it,” he replied. And she wondered if he, too, meant more than what he said. By this point in the afternoon, the sun was hot on the crown of Charlotte's bonnet—
not
the one with the veil—and her father's shoulders drooped.

“Let me carry the basket, Papa. You are tired.” She took it from him and knocked at the final door, in a lodging-house at the far end of the village's main street.

This was the residence of Miss Day, an invalid who had once served as governess to the Selwyn children. Miss Day's maid-of-all-work let Charlotte and the reverend into a single room with bedstead, table, and a hearth full of ashes. Everything was poor but clean, yet the room stank of the smoke and grease from the other chambers in the house.

“Oh, what a comfort to see you.” Miss Day tried to push herself upright. “You have brought my medicine?”

Charlotte looked questioningly at her father.

“Yes, Miss Day. Exactly what your doctor ordered. One spoonful three times daily.”

Rummaging through the odds and ends left in the basket, Charlotte found the stoppered bottle. She handed it to the maid, who curtsied her thanks and began to prepare a dose.

“And how much do I owe the doctor? I am afraid it must be very dear.” Miss Day's thin hands picked at the stitches on her quilt—which, Charlotte noticed, was much better pieced than her own work on the quilts at the vicarage.

“Not so much as a farthing,” said Charlotte's father. “He did not want you to go to any worry, but just to recover your health.”

If this was the same doctor who had seen to Charlotte when she was a child, he was not the sort to bother himself about a patient's feelings. She thought she knew who, instead, had paid for the treatment.

“How kind,” said the invalid, and she swallowed a dutiful dose of the medicine. “Will you convey him my thanks?”

“I will.”

She coughed feebly. “Lady Helena—at the great house, you know—she had promised to send some arrowroot and beef tea. So kind and generous ever since I had to leave her service. Although I suppose she forgot to send it over. The distraction of her husband's return home.”
Cough cough.

Cold raced over Charlotte's scalp. “Lady Helena's husband is returned?”

“Oh, yes. Last night, maybe, or today. He traveled in a crested carriage. It was before the house this morning, and you know how quickly word travels through the village.” Another feeble cough. “Reverend, you mustn't be angry at him if he traveled on a Sunday. Who could resist returning to those little dear lambs sooner?”

By this, Charlotte assumed, Miss Day referred to her former charges. Edward's children. Edward's
other
children.

She wondered if they looked anything like Maggie. She supposed she'd rather not know.

Dimly, she stood by and tried to look proper and dull as her father said a few prayers with the bed-bound Miss Day and then bade her farewell.

And then came the walk back to the vicarage, long and thirsty, the basket heavy in the crook of her arm. Footsteps made ridges in the mud at the edges of the road. Here there was no pavement such as in London.

Her father was the first to break the silence. “Thank you for coming along today, Charlotte. It—it was good to have your help.”

This seemed not to be quite how he'd meant to finish, but he fell silent again.

“I should have helped more,” she said. “Not today, but for the past years. Papa. I had no idea all that you—” Her throat caught, and for a moment she was trapped between silence and sound.

“I should have helped more,” she said again.

Her father looked down at her with eyes that were green like her own, and somehow sad. “I should have allowed you to,” he said.

The next morning, the weather was fine, and Charlotte wanted to feel pretty—a woman's best armor, even if she were a spinster vicar's daughter, against social trespass.

Which she and Benedict were going to commit.

They had agreed upon this at breakfast, which they ate at a lazy hour of the morning. She told him of her plan. “We cannot hunt the gold. We've got to hunt the person who knows where it's hidden.”

“I notice a lot of ‘we' about this business. Not a foe anymore, am I?”

“You were never that.” She swallowed tea, black and overbrewed, and choked a little. Ever since she had taken her pleasure of him—or since he had given her pleasure?—she had developed a strange softness about the heart where he was concerned. “Yes, we. I know you want to find the sovereigns, too, and I've come to think we need each other to do so.”

“Tell me more.” He clunked one elbow onto the table, rested his chin on it, and raised one brow.

“Well . . . someone always knows something. A driver took trunks into his carriage. A servant loaded coins into trunks. A person at the mint looked aside while an unfamiliar driver took a shipment into his carriage.”

He lifted his head, frowning. “Where are these people? Dead or paid for their silence, if they're in London.”

“But they aren't all in London—or they weren't the night before last.” The night Edward Selwyn had returned to his grand house. Maybe. She really needed to find out when he'd arrived.

“I understand,” said Benedict. “The person who attacked me is one of those people who knows something.”

“I think so.”

“And you think the person who stabbed Nance was—”

“The same person who paid her the coin. I do not know whether he meant to, or why. But she must have noticed something—or heard him say something—he never intended to.”

“Now I must have, too.” Benedict's mouth was a stern slash. “Or so he thinks.”

“This is why I want to keep you about,” said Charlotte. “You might be a target.”

“Or bait.” He sounded cheerful about the prospect. “You still carry your knife, don't you?”

“I'll find a way to do so,” she had promised, then went upstairs to finish dressing for their outing.

Rather than the long-sleeved blue serge, she wore a lighter day dress of pale blue printed all over with black flowers and vines. A week after removing to Seven Dials, she had purchased this gown ready-made from a hopeful dressmaker. The fit was nothing like the bespoke silks Charlotte had sold off in secret, but the cloth was pretty, and she had become starved for prettiness almost as soon as she'd left Mayfair.

One problem: the gown had short sleeves. Where was she to stow her knife? Remembering Benedict's trick, she wiggled a small folding blade into her boot. It was not easy to reach, but it was better than being defenseless.

At her throat, she fastened an old family cameo, then she pinned a lace cap over her coiled hair and covered it with a plain bonnet. Last of all, she plucked up the dagger Benedict had retrieved from his attacker and slipped it into her reticule. The little piecework bag bulged oddly, true, but who would assume the bulge was due to a knife? “You're a spinster vicar's daughter,” she told herself in the glass. “You spend your time in virtuous works.”

Her cheeks were pink as she danced down the stairs.

“You are ready to conquer the world today,” commented Benedict. “I can tell by the bounce in your step. I shan't be elegant enough to accompany you, but I plan to take your arm all the same.”

To replace his ruined lieutenant's coat, he was wearing an ill-fitting coat that had belonged to Margaret's husband. Ezrah Catlett had been shorter, though just as broad, and the sleeves hit Benedict several inches above his wrists. The blue of the coat was faded with age, the buttons tarnished.

Her heart gave a squeeze. “You are as handsome as any fashion plate I ever saw,” she said, and meant it.

He arched one of those wicked brows. “I like this mood of yours. I shall have to do my best to sustain it.”

Before exiting the vicarage, he took up his hickory cane. He had not used it around the house since his arrival, and she had forgotten what a stern air it lent him. He seemed again the large stranger from the inn, one who had caught a roomful of people in a mystified web.

Until he grinned at her and offered his free arm. And just as she had when he smiled at her for the first time across a table, when she could hardly see his features for her veil, she melted.

Only this time she was far more melty than before.

As they walked, they talked of everything and nothing, a lightness that belied their errand. Charlotte wondered if Benedict's brain hummed as hers did beneath the light chatter. When they turned into Strawfield proper, she studied every face. The familiar ones—the miller's wife and eldest daughter, now married and with a baby; the stationer; the poulterer, reeking of blood—they greeted her as Miss Perry and she provoked them into conversation.

Each time, when they passed on, Benedict said, “Not the voice of the attacker.”

“I hardly thought Mrs. Burton's one-year-old had slashed you with a knife,” she said. “But I'm glad you remember the voice clearly enough to absolve the little fellow of wrongdoing.”

“Stop. Just here.” He planted his feet and looked about. Or rather listened about, or took deeply of the air; Charlotte made herself as still and silent as she could.

After a few breaths, he nodded. “This. This is nearly where it happened.”

“This is the place where you were attacked?” At his affirmation, she asked, “How do you know? I do not doubt; I am simply curious.”

“The emptiness of the village green compared to the shops that wall one in at other points on the street. The distant smell of the bakery. And here the road gets soft and dips downward, probably because puddles form every time there is rain. What do you see hereabouts? Anything unusual? Anything that might give us a clue?”

As she skimmed over the scrubby grass, the gravel, the mud, and hard-packed dirt, she wished for some modicum of his focus, his ability to hone in on what was helpful. “I see trampled mud. There are prints of boots.”

“What are their sizes? Or the direction? Are there prints going off like . . .” He made some complicated motion.

“I am sorry. I cannot tell one set from another. So many feet have walked here since that the prints overlay one another.”

“Any bloodstains?”

“Good God, do you think you bled that much?” She strained her eyes for anything, anything that would make her useful. “If there were any, they have been trod into the mud. But let me look about for your stiletto.”

He described how he had tossed it aside, desperate to hold fast to his cane as a barrier, and she toed aside every clump of grass in the way. To keep an innocent appearance for curious passersby, she maintained a steady stream of chatter about Strawfield, as though Frost were a tourist.

At last her search came to an end. “I did not turn up your stiletto. But I found a penny, some hazelnut shells, and a horseshoe nail.”

“Clearly the remnants of some diabolical scheme.”

“Maybe you and your assailant traded blades. Or maybe it was picked up by someone walking along the road.”

“Or eaten by a goat.”

“Doubtful, though possible. I am sorry. I wish I could have found it for you.”

“It's all right. My boot is more comfortable without a knife in it.”

She chuckled. “You're trying to make me feel better.”

“No, I'm trying to make myself feel better.”

“Is it working?”

He stepped closer and drew her hand onto his arm again. “Yes.”

Before they had proceeded more than a dozen yards, Charlotte caught sight of the Bow Street Runner who had been hanging about in Strawfield ever since Nance received the gold sovereign. “I am going to hail Mr. Lilac,” she told Benedict. “I think we ought to give him your attacker's dagger.”

“Taking sensitive information to the proper authorities? Tosh, Miss Perry. One would think you'd never read a gothic novel. You ought to hold on to it and play at detection yourself.”

“Thus putting myself into unnecessary danger? I think not. I
am
playing detective, but only for money. I will not play about with your life, Benedict.”

“It was only a cut about the arm,” he murmured, but he smiled nonetheless as she called out to the Bow Street Runner.

A slight man with plain clothing and a neatly trimmed beard, Lilac threaded his way between a bonneted woman carrying a basket of eggs and a portly man attempting to light a pipe, then greeted the pair.

Charlotte realized too late that she had met Lilac only as the veiled stranger, not as herself. Benedict must have realized the same, for he thanked Miss Perry for summoning Lilac. “I was fortunate enough to meet the Bow Street Runner at Miss Goff's inquest.”

“Officer of the Police, if it pleases you,” replied Lilac in a lilting brogue at odds with the shrewdness of his hazel eyes. “And how can I help you this late morning?”

“Mr. Lilac.” Charlotte hesitated. “Are you seeking Nancy Goff's killer or the stolen gold sovereigns?”

“Well, now that's a good question. I wonder why you're asking it.”

“Typical,” murmured Benedict. “An answer that gives no information at all. Lilac, I don't know how you do it.”

“Practice, Frost, practice. 'Tis my line of work, the way learning new swear words over the waves is yours.”

“That is
not
all that sailors do. Although the point is well taken. And the reason for the question is that we might be able to help you with one investigation, but probably not the other.”

“Ah, now.” Lilac laid a finger aside of his nose. “I wouldn't be too certain of that. What is it that you'd like to tell me?”

“It's something to show you, rather,” said Charlotte. “But—not in the street. Here, let us go to the bakery.”

A few little tables had been squeezed in front of the bakery counter when Charlotte was about fifteen years of age, transforming the small, warm building into Strawfield's first tea-shop.

As soon as she stepped through the doorway and breathed the sweet, bready smell, she recalled how badly her younger self had wanted to sit at one of those tables. Had wanted to be asked to share a plate of cakes with a friend.

“I'm not meant to pop in for cakes while I'm in the midst of an investigation, Miss Perry,” mumbled Lilac.

“Then we won't order cakes,” she decided. She was past that stage of wanting, surely. “Have you tried the tart, Mr. Lilac? One can always think better when one is full of cake and jam.”

“If that's so, the Officers will have to change their diet.”

The three of them each ordered a slice of tart, and Charlotte arranged a pot of tea for the trio and directed Benedict to a small table. They squeezed into the tiny chairs around it, the only customers in the shop for the moment. After the baker's daughter brought by their confections on little white plates, she then disappeared into the rear of the bakery, leaving the three entirely alone.

“Tart before business,” said Benedict.

“That's not the way I've usually conducted my affairs,” Charlotte murmured in his ear. It was always so gratifying to make someone choke on unexpected laughter. More loudly, she added, “This is a local specialty, Mr. Lilac. The tart shell is filled with jam and almond sponge-cake.”

“Jam?” Lilac sounded dubious, but he cut free a slab with the side of his fork and shoveled it into his mouth. “Mawwaghhha.” An incoherent sound of delight issued from his lips; his eyes bugged open wide.

“Fwuhhhhuhhh,” agreed Benedict.

Charlotte bit into her own slice. “Mmmmmm.”
Perfection.
The almonds crunching, the cake soft and heavy, the jam a pop of plum-tartness. When Charlotte was a child, she'd received it as a rare treat—on her birthday each year, and once when she had correctly held fifty Bible verses in memory for as long as it took to recite them for her father.

She had tried to guide her cook in London through the recipe, but it was nothing but guesswork on both sides. “You asked me what I liked about this part of the world, Mr. Frost,” she mumbled around a mouthful of tart. “This. I should have said this.”

Heedless of her poor manners, the men were already scraping up the final crumbs of their sweet.

“All right,” said Lilac with a satisfied sigh. “You've fed me, Miss Perry, and I do thank you. That was a real treat. Now, shall we get to the heart of why you've asked me to meet with you?”

Charlotte slung her reticule onto the table with a metallic
clunk
.

“That's no common lady's gewgaw inside, I'm guessing,” noted the Runner. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Please do, but carefully.”

Lilac teased open the drawstring of the piecework bag, peered inside—and whistled. “That's a pretty little toy you've got there, Miss Perry.”

“It's not hers,” said Benedict. “Though it's not mine either.” Briefly, he told the officer about the attack upon his person after the inquest, the way he'd fought off the attacker and accidentally switched blades.

“And have you any evidence of this attack other than your own word?” Lilac asked.

“I saw him arrive at the vicarage in a panic, and I saw the bleeding wound,” said Charlotte. The Runner studied her closely, and she lifted her chin and tried to remember what it was like to look innocent.