Fortune Favors the Wicked (15 page)

Only a week ago, he had not known her. Now he could not imagine not knowing her.

Did she like him because he was here, and she was lonely? Or because he was himself, and she was falling for him?

As he was for her. As he never had allowed himself to fall before.

There was no room for a lasting romance in the future of a Naval Knight, who lived within the narrow strictures required for his pension. No romance at all for a pretended spinster aunt raising her niece.

One day, probably soon, they would have to part ways. He knew this.

He also knew that parting would hurt like the devil.

“The feeling is mutual,” he said. “Entirely, completely.”

He felt a little shy, adding these last words. He was accustomed to quick affairs of pleasure, then to moving along.

These conversations were different.
Wanting
to have them was different.

Not knowing when he'd leave—that was different, too.

She was taking her hair down; the long strands tickled his face, touching him with the faint scent of wintergreen. It was soft, whipping about and tickling his skin. He unfolded his arms and caught a few strands like a silk-spun spiderweb between his fingers.

He liked touching it, and being permitted to touch it.

The roughness of the air about gentle slopes reminded him of the land surrounding Edinburgh. Those rolling lowlands of Scotland, friendlier than the moors that stretched nearby.

“Tell me about this stone on which we've made ourselves comfortable,” he said. “Is it part of the ground, or did it fall?”

Charlotte lay down, tucking herself against his side just as she had, so briefly, in his borrowed bed in the vicarage. “I think it must have fallen as the Downfall wore it away. Great stones lie about here like a dropped tray of pastries.”

“I must get my similes from someone who has led a less luxurious life for the past decade.”

She laughed against the curve of his neck. “Very well, they are like fallen ice. They break in great cubes, and they shatter into shards.”

“You know ice well.”

“I
have
performed virtuous works in an icehouse.”

“A chilling thought—ouch! No hitting,” he protested. “That was a wonderful joke.”

“No joking,” she said, and climbed atop him. “Not now.”

He had been half-hard since lying down on this stone; now he was surely harder than it. “Not now,” he agreed, hips rolling up to meet hers.

He caught her about the waist, keeping her steady as she did . . . things. Wonderful things. First she undid the fall of his breeches and palmed him. Rolling his stones gently. Working his length with her hand until a hot drop leaked, eager, and trickled down the head of his cock.

“Back in a moment.” She lifted his hands from her waist and slid down—and she licked that hot little drop off of him and took him into her mouth.

Shite.
Every muscle in his body clenched: toes curling, calves bunching, thighs tight. Even his scalp prickled. And she kept right on, her tongue a hot delicious sin, a sweet promise fulfilled. She pressed at a little spot below the base of his stones, and his hips jerked up with the shock of it.

“Sorry,” he groaned. He must have just jabbed her in the throat with his cock. “I can't hold on—I—Charlotte,
please
. It's too much. Let me love you.”

She stopped moving, though that marvelous mouth covered him. Taut. Tight. The moment vibrated; his breath came hard and ragged.

When she lifted her head, she blew cool air over the head of his cock, sending him into a shudder. “You want to . . . love me.”

He realized how it sounded—this dance that people did about the word
sex
. It was confusing when one's feelings became involved, too.

And he realized what he wanted to say.

“Yes.”

With a soft sigh that left him wishing he could see every flicker of expression across her face, she slid up his body in a sweet abrasion. Rustlings told him she was bundling her skirts; then her knees were on either side of his hips, and she was guiding him within her slickness. It was a prayer and a blasphemy at once—
God, God
—to feel welcomed and wanted like that.

He struggled for words. “Do you need me to withdraw when I—”

“It's all right,” she said. “I know what to do.” She ground her hips on him, linking them as tightly as two could be.

Again, he cradled her waist, pushing up into her hard and fast, sinking together. She rocked on his length, working herself into a wet fervor. Hard and fast, they clashed and loved and, yes,
fucked,
and he bore on relentlessly until her breath turned to moans and the moans shattered and she cried out her release atop him.

He came into her with a groan of pleasure, pumping slowly now as the final shudders rocked them and ebbed. Then he eased her down to lie on his chest, still joined below.

He was lying on a rock with a waterfall flinging chill mist on his face, and he cared nothing for any of that. “Good Lord,” he groaned after a long and luscious silence. “This is my favorite place in Derbyshire, too.”

He could feel the curve of her smile against his neck. How sweetly her head fit there, against his shoulder. How easy it was to hold her.

Too soon it was time for them to draw apart, to right their clothing and clamber down from the rock that had become Benedict's anchor. He found his coat and hat and cane—but left them where they lay. He wasn't ready to leave this precious space yet.

So he found his way to the edge of the stream created by the small falls—a step too close in his fuddled state, as he splashed one boot before drawing back. Crouching, he trailed his fingers in the shifting coolness. Some of the pebbles at the edge were sharp and new; some smooth and sleek with age.

His fingertips encountered one that was pleasantly solid, a tiny version of the slab on which he and Charlotte had lain. He held it up. “Charlotte, is this pretty?”

She had been struggling with her bonnet; he heard her toss it aside and tread toward him across grass and stone. “It's pretty if it is nice to hold.”

As a matter of fact, it
was
nice to hold. Hefty and smooth despite its irregular sides. “Come now, have I found you a diamond? If I have, we can stop hunting for stolen gold sovereigns and live like kings. Or a king and a queen, to be more accurate.”

“I'm not sure I'd recognize a diamond uncut.” She crouched beside him, hair trailing long over his hand and kissing his wind-smacked cheek. “Ah, no. There goes our fortune. There cannot be diamonds of such size in England. Besides which, this is brown, though it's got some lovely green streaks in it. Like a beryl.”

“What is a beryl?”

“A . . . sort of streaky stone. A cat eye, it's sometimes called.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“Ouch!” The stone had fallen from her fingers onto the tender space between his knuckles. “A—wait. What? It's called a—oh, holy—”

“Shite,” she finished. “Exactly. Cat eye.”

“It's a stone?” Benedict palmed the rock, clenching its contours as though this would help him understand. “A cat eye is a stone? ‘Cat eye'—what Nance said . . . I never thought of it being a
thing
.”

“You think Nance meant that the person who stabbed her had a beryl?”

“Would she know one when she saw it?”

Charlotte's hand covered his clenched fist. “By the name ‘cat eye,' maybe. She didn't even know a guinea from a gold sovereign.”

He understood. “She'd be describing what she thought something looked like, not what it was truly called.”

“Like the dagger,” she said. “The one we gave to Lilac. Its handle held an emerald split down the middle.” Charlotte released his hand, then stood.

“It doesn't make sense.” Benedict shoved himself upright in the slipping gravel at the chill water's edge. “Why wouldn't she have said the name of the person who stabbed her, if she knew it? If it was her lover?”

“The person was cloaked,” said Charlotte. “All she saw was the cat eye and the cloak.”

Benedict rubbed at his sightless eyes, then extended the stone in his palm to Charlotte.

“I don't want it,” she said.

“I don't either.” With a sideways whip of his wrist, he tossed it back into the stream. “If only everyone listened to voices as well as I do. We'd have all the problems of this village sorted out and a fortune at our fingertips.”

“If only everyone did many things as well as you do,” said Charlotte. She stepped closer, laying her hand on his chest. “But right now, you're the only one I'm thinking of.”

“Am I, now?” His heart thumped heavily. “Have you a problem you'd like me to sort out for you?”

“I was hoping you would. Twice, even.” And she brought his hand to her breast.

Charlotte and Benedict returned hand in hand to the vicarage, a laughing triumph of sore limbs and pleasure-soaked senses. Soon, she knew, she would need to treat herself with vinegar and brew some pennyroyal tea—a daily requirement for women in her profession.

But for now, she let herself
feel.
To feel what it was like to hold the hand of Benedict Frost, even knowing that holding him could not keep him with her.

Such a feeling hurt, like the skin that grew fragile beneath a scab. She felt thin and new and raw.

But it was not unwelcome after feeling so long calloused. So surfeited and lonely at once that nothing could give pleasure. Now as she walked, everything rubbed at her senses: the drift of her long skirts about her legs; her boots, heavy, the knife never yet slipped from its spot beside her ankle. Her breasts, her sex, touched as though they were wondrous. As though she were of infinite value.

Let me love you,
he had said, and she had been startled into wishing he meant it literally.

Maybe Maggie didn't have to be cared for, someday, by her spinster aunt. Maybe she could have an aunt and an uncle.

Maybe. Maybe.
As she walked, Charlotte's hair flicked long and unbound, dark and straight. Just as it had when she was a girl, and she lived on dreams of
maybe
and the vivid corners of the world that she wanted to see.

But she was not a girl now, and she knew better than to live on dreams. Silks and satins, jewels and mansions—dreams never turned out quite the way one expected. There was always a catch, even if one didn't perceive it right away.

Sometimes it didn't make itself known for years. And then, one day, when one dared to let heart-pattering emotion guide one's steps, the catch would make itself known. And one would be caught.

That day was today, when Charlotte and Benedict returned to the vicarage and the first sight that greeted her, held in her father's shaking hand, was a sealed letter addressed not to Miss Charlotte Perry, but to Charlotte Pearl.

* * *

In hindsight, Charlotte thought her father could have handled the matter with a great deal more subtlety.

“This—this—I did not know what to—well. Charlotte, you must take it!”

Charlotte's mother and Maggie poked their heads out of Mrs. Perry's study. “What has happened?” asked Maggie. “Did Captain come back into the house?”

Mrs. Perry snapped the letter from her husband's quivering hand, skimmed the address, then tossed it aside. “No such person here. Send it right back where it came from.”

Twist, twist, went the vicar's hands. “This cannot be. I knew if we allowed—but there, it is done. But it should never have been done!”

“What's done?” Maggie picked up the fallen letter. “Who is Charlotte Pearl? Did they spell Aunt Charlotte's name incorrectly?”

“I am sure it's an accident,” Charlotte said in a careful voice. “The names are not so dissimilar. Someone must have written my name ill, that is all.”

But she knew this was not the case. No one knew Charlotte Perry was also Charlotte Pearl except for her parents and Edward Selwyn. And Edward was pompous, but he did not have a bad heart. He was not cruel enough to expose her secret.

“Who brought this letter into the house?” she asked.

“Barrett fetched the post,” quaked the reverend. “As usual. It was . . . there. As though it belonged.”

“It doesn't belong,” Charlotte murmured. She had more questions:
Was it handled in the village? Did anyone there know of the London courtesan, gone missing a month ago?
But the more she asked, the more attention she would draw. Maggie studied it still, brow creased, hair unruly about her face.

I never yet plaited it with silk ribbons
, Charlotte realized.

She felt distant, unreal, as though she were watching a theatrical performance.
The Secretive Courtesan's Most Secret of Family Secrets
. With an epilogue of more secrets.

She pressed a hand over her mouth, forcing back a wild giggle.

Benedict leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Some letter, I gather. Is it bad? Ought I to do something, or just stand here like a statue?”

“A statue . . . please. Please don't leave.” She couldn't hold his hand now, but she liked having him near.

“Let me see it, dearest,” she said, and Maggie handed it over readily enough. Charlotte turned it over to check the seal. The origin from which it had been posted.

“It's franked,” she realized. The letter had required no postage, meaning it was sent by a member of Parliament or a peer.

And then she knew who it was from.

The Marquess of Randolph, whose heart was as shriveled as a walnut.

“I'm sure it's nothing,” she said again, though this time she knew it was a lie. “Excuse me, Papa. I'm sorry that your lessons were interrupted, Mama. Maggie.”

“
Lypámai.
” Maggie looked pleased with herself. “That's the way people apologize in Greek.”

“That might be how
some
people get out of a difficult situation,” Benedict said. “But not the people who hang about the ports.”

“You must teach me some of their vocabulary,” said Mrs. Perry. The vicar closed his eyes.

Charlotte began to sidle past them all, making her way through the corridor. She hardly knew where. The first empty room she encountered. She would open the letter and see what it said. She did not want to open the letter. She had to open the letter.

With a light touch on her shoulder, Benedict caught up to her. “Would you like me to bear you company while you read your post?”

There was so little he did not know about her now. “Yes. Yes, I would. It is addressed to my”—she lowered her voice—“London name.”

He cursed. “All right. The dining room. Anyone in there?”

No, the small chamber was empty. She leaned against the wall in the far corner, wishing she could disappear into the paper. A heavy maze of vines and acanthus that looked like nothing anywhere in England.

Benedict stood next to her, seeming relaxed, but with a coiled awareness that made his body hum in harmony with hers. “I would read it for you if I could.”

“I know. I thank you.” With a deep breath, she added, “Best done at once.”

She cracked the seal—and almost laughed at the brevity of the message.

“A man of few words, in or out of the bedchamber,” she muttered, refolding the letter and stuffing it into a pocket of her dress.

She told Benedict what it said. “He is mistaken, though. All will not be forgiven.”

“By him, maybe, but it takes two to forgive. And who is Randolph?”

How best to sum up the man? Handsome at first glance. Dark and cutting. Wealthy, of course, and so she had agreed to take him as a protector.

She had not known then that he was a slave to his desire to triumph at any cost. Or that he was cruel, liking to cause pain—but only if it was not wanted or welcomed.

“Randolph is a marquess. And the reason I fled London.”

Benedict stretched out a hand, finding the wall beside Charlotte. He made of himself a cradle about her, arm and body like the sweep of a shell. “And he wrote to you here. Damn.”

“You felt the scar on my face,” she said. “It is—not an old wound. Randolph cut me. When I told him I no longer wanted him as a protector, he slashed my face. He said he'd never let me go, and that he'd make me unfit for anyone else.”

“Well, he failed spectacularly. But this is the reason you carry a knife? Good God. I am sorry.”

“Do not pity me. I got away from him, at least for a while. Besides which, you carry a knife, too. Or did.”

“Yes, well. I'm a big strong man who also happens to be blind. I have to protect myself in case anyone decides I'd be a good person to fight with.” Somehow he always knew the right thing to say. The right place to touch—right there, on the line of her scar, before his hand dropped again. “Where did the letter come from? London?”

She checked the post stamp. “Cheshire. One of his estates.”

His mouth screwed up in calculation. “Three, four dozen miles? He is less than a day away, then.”

“He might be here.” Had not Miss Day mentioned Edward arriving in a crested carriage? Such as was owned by a nobleman?
Oh, Edward, you fool
.

Benedict reached back, found the corner of the table, and boosted himself up onto its top as a seat. “Let's solve this, then. Who knows you are Charlotte Pearl and Charlotte Perry?”

“My parents. You. Me. Edward Selwyn.”

“Edward Selwyn.” He swung his feet, knocking them into the leg of the table. “I keep hearing that name.”

“One does, in Strawfield.”

The silence lingered, the only sound the hollow
conk
of Benedict's boot heel against the dining room table's leg.

He didn't ask for more information, which was why she could tell him. Always, he left it up to her. “He is Maggie's father. He painted me, and . . . well, things happened.”

“I should have been a painter.” Benedict sighed. “I suppose it's too late now.”

She choked. “You do well enough without a paintbrush in your hands.”

He gave a modest shrug, then asked, “Does Selwyn know the truth about Maggie's parentage?”

“Yes. But he has said nothing of it publicly, and I hope he never will. Maggie's life now is as a legitimate child. If it were to become known that she was a bastard . . .”

Not unless one were fathered by a royal duke could one hope for a place in society. Other illegitimate children could look forward only to the most blighted of futures.

“This damned country,” he said. “Right. I know. So after things happened—including Maggie—you went to London and he kept right on painting you.”

“That's the shape of it, yes. Save for the moment when I told him I was with child and he declined to marry me. He had higher aspirations than a vicar's daughter.”

Benedict's curse was both calm and eloquent.

“Well put. That marked the end of our affair, too.”

“I imagine it has a chilling effect on the passions, being told one is not good enough to wed.”

“Indeed.” She ran a forefinger along the wallpaper, tracing the winding lines of a curling vine. As a girl, she had always thought this paper oppressive and old-fashioned. “Though as it turned out, he was correct that he could do better for himself. His fame as a painter won him the eye of an earl's daughter.”

“
You
won him the eye of an earl's daughter.” Benedict slid from his seat atop the table. “The world is a strange place sometimes, Charlotte Perry Pearl. I have only this to say: he might have won the hand of a richer woman than you, but it would not be possible for her to be a better one.”

All she could say, in a small voice, was
oh.

“If Edward Selwyn knew your two names, it seems he's been telling tales. And he's due an interview. Wouldn't you say?”

His confidence was contagious. She lifted her chin. “
Interview
sounds so polite compared to what I would like to do to him.”

“True. But you are elegant and refined, despite the fact that you are a knife-wielding terror, and so you shall call tomorrow during proper hours. Er . . . whatever those are.”

“I could visit just after luncheon.” The hours before then seemed endless, yet too short.

“Good. There is your plan.” He placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Now. I always find that when I receive an unexpected and vaguely threatening note from a rejected former lover, I need some comfort. Are you the same way?”

“I . . .” She shook her head, a smile beginning to tug at her lips.

“I thought so. Let us visit the kitchen.”

“I don't go to the kitchen,” she said, bewildered.

“Why not?”

“Because it isn't done by daughters of the house.”

“Ah. And you never do anything but what's precisely proper.” His hand slid from her shoulder. “How silly of me. I should have recalled that about you, since it is a defining characteristic of your personality.”

She caught his fingers, tightening hers around them—and then she laughed and let his hand go. “You are right. Take me to the kitchen, Benedict Frost, and show me some comfort.”

* * *

If Benedict had not gotten into the habit of escaping from his parents' bookshop to the kitchen, he would certainly have developed a love for it after losing his sight. A kitchen was far more sound and smell than a place of wondrous things to see.

This one bubbled with savory, spicy, meaty smells. Then the clang of the iron oven door against brick, and out wafted the hot scent of fresh bread. Even if he had just eaten a full meal, the smell would be enough to make Benedict's stomach growl.

Colleen, the kitchen maid, greeted him cheerily, then gasped. “Oh. Cook! Is the butter supposed to look like that?”

Cook began a scold, the housemaid Barrett stepped through with quick strides and a set of instructions for dinner, and during the whisk of voices, Benedict eased Charlotte into a chair next to the worktable.

“Nice and calm,” he said. “Breathe it in.
Ah.
Food. Warm things.”