Fortune Favors the Wicked (17 page)

She rubbed at her temples, then fumbled through her papers for a quill and a sheet of foolscap. As she shifted them, a newspaper shouted at her:

Derbyshire
.

She hadn't given much mind to the hunt or the murder case, but the word caught her eye.

Strawfield, Derbyshire, was the location of this case. And it was—she checked the post stamp on his letters—yes, it was where Benedict was, too.

That pirate. He wanted to find the royal reward.

He probably thought he'd find it for her, and then she'd be all squared away and he could go back to pretending he had no sister and his family's bookshop hadn't passed out of their line and Georgette hadn't been evicted.

Damn Benedict. Damn damn damn. He did the most horrid things for noble reasons.

Sort of
noble reasons.

Well
, she thought, as an idea swirled into form.
I could do the same
. Or maybe this was more of a noble thing for a horrid reason.

Either way, it began with a lie.

Poking her head out of her bedchamber, she called, “Cousin Mary! I have been invited to visit my brother and his friend Lord Hugo Starling in the country. Is that not marvelous?”

“How grand for you,” Mary called back. She barely managed to hesitate before asking, “Shall we keep your room, or will you be gone more than three weeks?”

Don't come back once you're twenty-one
was implied.

“You needn't keep it,” decided Georgette. “I think I shall be able to fit all my things into my trunk.”

She was a Frost, was she not? And she was going to pack her life away and prepare for a journey.

As soon as she fetched the laundress to deal with a pile of filthy nappies.

“If they're good to you,” Benedict had promised Charlotte, “I'll behave myself.”

But as they stood before the massive wooden doors of Selwyn House—doors that were, he could tell, more than an ordinary story high—he doubted that he would be required to come up with proper manners. Already they had been kept waiting for ten minutes.

He was glad he had worn his ripped and bloodied lieutenant's coat. “Let's be honest,” he told Charlotte. “It will serve you better to have a companion who appears a violent lunatic than a companion who does not even possess a coat that fits.”

This wrung from her the only laugh of the day. Now, her fingertips were tight on his free arm. The other arm held his cane.

Which he knocked against the door, making a pleasing
thump
.

At last, a servant swung the door open, and Charlotte handed over a card.

“Miss Perry,” came a pursed-up reply like pickled cabbage. “From the vicarage. And . . .”

“Lieutenant Frost. From Windsor Castle.” He shot the unseen servant a dazzling grin.

After a moment's hesitation, the servant—a butler, from the fussy tone of him—allowed them inside. “I shall see if Lady Helena is at home to callers.”

“And her husband,” said Benedict. “I'm here for—you know. Man talk.”

Charlotte's fingers did something quivery on his arm.

“Man . . . talk,” repeated the butler. “I shall . . . yes . . . wait here, please.”

Footsteps clicked away across a floor of hard stone. Marble, no doubt, polished to a sheen like glass. The house was all luxury in sound and even smell; a faint odor of lemon, maybe from furniture polish, and the rotting-sweet scent of a vase of hothouse blooms.

“Man talk,” murmured Charlotte. “What
do
you have in mind?”

“Nothing at all,” he confessed. “But if there's something you need to say to Edward Selwyn, he ought to be in the room, don't you think?”

Lady Helena was the first to descend to the entryway, her feet as delicately placed on each step as a cat's would be. From the height of her voice, she was not a small woman; from the tone of it, not a patient one. “Friends of my husband's from the country. How quaint.”

“I'm not a friend of your husband at all,” Benedict said.

“I see.” She mustered a few manners, enough to invite them to sit in the Blue Parlor. His cane rang pleasingly on the marble floor, echoing off a ceiling high enough to belong to a church—and then it knocked on the carpet of the parlor, and the world closed to a tiny padded cell. Draperies and puffy furniture and carpets, all drinking in the sounds that made a picture in his mind. There was a strong smell of mummified flowers—what was it called? Potpourri.

He shuddered.

Somehow they all found their way to seats. Lady Helena did not ring for tea. “I do not have much leisure at present for callers, though I suppose I can grant you a few minutes. The Marquess of Randolph is visiting, you see.”

He could imagine what was running through Charlotte's mind.
Shite
. But all she said was, “How unexpected.”

“Oh, no.” Lady Helena's voice was all cool pride. “He is a great friend of my husband's. Mr. Selwyn was recently visiting Lord Randolph in Cheshire. One of the marquess's many estates, you know. Or perhaps you did not.”

If her voice had held the slightest question, Benedict would have retained his manners. “I did not. How edifying! Thank you for the information. I've been traveling Europe writing a memoir and am only familiar with the locations of my friend Lord Hugo Starling's estates. The son of the Duke of Willingham, you know.” He paused for a dangerous moment. “Or perhaps you don't.”

“Is your husband home at the moment, Lady Helena?” Charlotte broke in.

“He and the marquess were riding, but they have recently returned. I do not believe they are at home to callers at present.”

“Ah! They're covered in road dirt and manure, I expect.” Benedict gave a knowing smile. “It happens to men who aren't good on horseback. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Charlotte muffled a cough.

The sounds issuing from Lady Helena's throat made him dearly wish to see her expression. He kept his own features placid and composed.

A new set of footsteps entered the parlor just then, the heavy tread of a stocky man wearing boots. “Why, Charlotte! Matterhorn said you'd called. How marvelous to see you. Oh—ah—Miss Perry, I mean.”

Benedict's shoulders tensed. The fellow's tone was all self-congratulation, the smirking preen of an aren't-I-bad rogue who had never quite grown up.

“Look at you, though!” Selwyn moved to Charlotte's chair, tutting with dismay. “This scar—quite ruins the effect of your features. How ever did you get it?”

“I received it in the course of my work. Trying to protect a child.” Her tone was crisp.

Protecting Maggie, she meant; indirectly, from Randolph. The response dovetailed nicely with her identity as a virtuous-work-performing spinster, too.

“How noble!” Benedict said. “You are very brave. Anyone who would endanger a child is surely the worst sort of scum.”

Selwyn shifted his weight. “Friend of yours, Char—ah, Miss Perry?”

Lady Helena had gone completely still and silent upon her husband's entry into the room, but now she spoke. “He
says
he is a friend of Lord Hugo Starling.”

“Not that that's relevant at the moment,” Benedict said cheerfully, turning his cane between flat palms. “I'm happy to be known as a friend to Miss Perry. And I'm glad you regard yourself as one too, Mr. Selwyn. One would never want to hurt a friend.”

“Of course not,” he agreed jovially.

“Or betray a friend's confidence,” added Benedict. “For example.”

“Did . . . you call for a reason?”

“Purely a social call. Upon friends,” added Charlotte. Benedict was pleased to hear the arch lift in her voice, as though they were all in on the same joke.

If only it were not such a serious matter, having a man she feared here in her home village.

“Tell me, Mr. Selwyn,” Benedict said. “When did you and your illustrious guest arrive? Saturday night, was it?” When he had been attacked.

“Sunday morning, rather. You mustn't tell your father, Miss Perry! I know vicars hate knowing that someone has traveled on Sunday.” Again, that tone Selwyn was
sure
was charming.

“I don't think it would make a difference to him, Mr. Selwyn,” she said. “It's a person's heart he's concerned with, not the rote following of a rule.”

“Right, right.” Selwyn seemed to be casting about for some jaunty reply. “Well! Heard we missed a bit of excitement. Murder and inquest and all that, eh? Pity I wasn't here to enjoy the show.”

“It was a lot of nonsense about a barmaid, Selwyn,” murmured Lady Helena. “No better than she should be, clearly. I did not see fit to attend.”

Benedict was too polite—barely—to knock their heads together. In her own chair, Charlotte was perfectly composed, but he thought her breathing came a little faster.

No better than she should be
. Who the devil were they to judge? Especially Selwyn here, who took whatever he liked of the world.

Sailors became either callous or tender as they saw loss and fighting. Benedict had become the latter—a boy of twelve, surrounded by cannon fire; a midshipman of sixteen who tied off his shipmates' gory wounds; a lieutenant of twenty-five who could not protect his men from the tropical ailment that took their lives and took his sight.

“Do you see fit,” he said at last, “to acknowledge the fact that her death was related to coins stolen from the Royal Mint, and not to any fault of hers?”

Four guards had died at the Royal Mint; Nance made a fifth loss. Would any more fall before the glow of the stolen gold? Fifty thousand pounds. There were many to whom lives were cheap, far cheaper than the promise of fortune or reward.

He felt a little ill, being part of the hustle to find it. Sitting in this pompous palace, the pursuit of wealth for its own sake seemed tawdry.

Georgette. He must remember, he was in Strawfield for her.

And he was in Selwyn House for Charlotte, who spoke up in that daughter-of-a-vicar tone that could not be gainsaid, the one she'd used to such great effect with Mrs. Potter. “As the first family of the area, I'd have thought you'd be involved. Not in a bad way. In a noble way.”

“Of course, it's our responsibility to—”

“I have instructed the groundskeepers to warn reward seekers off our lands, Selwyn,” cut in Lady Helena. “We are not concerned with the carnival atmosphere cultivated by the villagers.”

“No, no. Right, right.” Selwyn fell silent, but his feet tapped against the carpeted floor.

Lady Helena stood in a rustle of silk skirts. “I thank you for calling, but I must see you out now. Lord Randolph—”

“Talk of the devil, and he is presently at your elbow,” came a lazy voice.

And as Lady Helena took her seat again, the Marquess of Randolph joined the group.

* * *

“Randolph!” Edward stood, bowed, and sat again in an obsequious flurry. “Randolph and I are planning a little exhibition of my work—the portraiture, of course. He has taken an interest.”

This explanation was likely for Charlotte's benefit, but she hardly listened. She only studied Randolph, trying to decide how she felt about seeing him again.

The last time, she had been alone with him at night, and he had a knife in one hand and a switch in the other. He'd refused to listen; he had slashed her with a cool fury that terrified her.

Now the flight was over. In the daylight of Selwyn House's Blue Parlor—an overstuffed horror of horsehair furniture and velvet drapery—Randolph regarded her with the same possession, the same cold anger. His lean jaw was set, his eyes appraising. He had changed from riding clothes into a bespoke coat of superfine, a satin waistcoat, a pair of buckskin breeches too immaculate ever to have seen use. His dark hair was sleek and groomed.

But none of this made of him a gentleman—and at that thought, Charlotte found, she could look him in the eye and pretend that she did not tremble.

“Well, well,” said Benedict in a hearty voice. “The devil! What an honor for me to meet you at last. I can't tell you how many times I've been told to go to you, sir.”

“Did you not hear, Mr. Frost?” asked Lady Helena. “This is the
Marquess
of
Randolph
.”

Benedict thumped the end of his cane against the floor. “
Oh
. My mistake. Blind, you know. I thought—well, he
did
introduce himself as—hmm.”

His feigned confusion was generating real confusion on Edward's face, which Charlotte didn't mind in the slightest. Edward Selwyn was the sort of man precisely calculated to appear handsome to a vicar's daughter who hadn't met many men. Because he was exactly that: calculated. Everything from the angle at which he tilted his head to the arrangement of the fobs in his waistcoat. The lilac of his cravat, tied in intricate but not ridiculous folds and pierced by a diamond stickpin that probably cost as much as her father's annual stipend.

The light brown hair, just the shade of Maggie's, coaxed into cherubic curls. The smile that showed a scoop of a dimple in one cheek, disarmingly youthful.

He
was
young, really. Only three years older than Charlotte herself. Only twenty when their affair had begun; far too young, he said, to think of marriage. Barely of age when Maggie was born. The youngest artist ever
almost
to have paintings accepted to the British Institution, he was fond of saying. His fame had been won by his startling portraits of the woman who became known as
La Perle,
though he cemented it with more traditional portraiture. He had a gift for seeing what he wished to in people.

Charlotte had always looked, in his paintings, like a woman in love, just tumbled or just about to be. Only in the first portrait had this been accurate. To Edward, the world was full of things that might be taken. The fact that something might be destroyed in the taking seemed never to have occurred to him.

Since Maggie's birth, Charlotte's arrangement with Edward had been a cordial use-and-use-alike. The notoriety that had been thrust upon her alongside his fame could be made to benefit them both.

Until Randolph, when Charlotte began to feel all used up.

Next to Edward, Benedict appeared rough and dark. But not ill at ease; never that. She wondered if he had been so comfortable in his large, blunt body before he went blind, or if his enforced habit of listening, of taking note of his place in the world at all times, had put him at ease in his own skin.

Right now, he appeared to be enjoying himself, going on and on about what an honor it was to meet the Marquess of Randolph even if he
wasn't
the devil.

“How charming,” murmured Randolph, extending a finger of greeting that, of course, Benedict did not see.

His hand bore a cabochon-polished emerald ring. It winked, first tawny yellow, then green. Like the eye of a cat.

A cat-eye ring. A cat-eye dagger. A man with cat eyes—Edward—who now looked ashamed that he had led Randolph to Charlotte. Yet none of this present meeting had anything to do with the Royal Mint's sovereigns. Charlotte had stolen herself away, and Randolph was determined to reward himself for locating his lost property.

“You have been busy traveling of late, Miss . . . Perry, should I call you?” Randolph's voice was lazy, but his gaze missed nothing.