Fortune Favors the Wicked (23 page)

“It's not mine,” he said. “It's not my reward.” His expression was perfectly calm, but there was something unyielding in the crease of his brow, the jut of his jaw. “You found the chests, Miss Perry. You take it.”

She wished he had meant that when he said it.

Let me leave you
. That was what she had to say instead.

And she would, just as she'd planned.

“Since the sovereigns were found on the land occupied by my parents,” said Charlotte, “I rather think the reward goes to them.”

Lilac's shrewd eyes, she was sure, missed nothing. “Two thousand five hundred pounds. In the funds, that'll be one hundred a year. Not a bad income for a couple looking to retire to a new home, say, if things get a bit too dramatic for them.”

“Not a bad retirement,” said Charlotte. “But not a good one, either.”

The gold was found, and it wasn't enough to change anyone's life—except for that of those who had stolen it, those who had died for it. The sovereigns were pure and perfect and new, yet there was not enough good in them to make up for all the harm tied to their existence.

But she had one more idea, before she left. One more way to help her family.

And then, she really did need to find a traveling trunk in all this mess, and she had to be on her way.

“‘I strongly believe,'” Maggie read aloud to Benedict and her grandparents, “‘that Lady Helena Selwyn will purchase this necklace, if only to destroy it. Do not accept less than seven thousand five hundred pounds.'”

Charlotte had left that afternoon, alone, with a trunk so broken that she had to fasten it shut with the cinch of an old saddle.

So Benedict had been told by the Reverend John Perry. “I asked her not to go,” he said, “but she said she must. She would take nothing, no money at all, except a little for her coach fare.”

And then Maggie had found the note on the dining room table—and alongside it, Benedict gathered, a spill of gemstones that proved to be a necklace.

The
necklace, he realized. The one that had collared
La Perle
in painting after painting. It had lost its mystery and its sting when Randolph caught up to her, then revealed her identity to her home village.

The bastard. Benedict wondered if he was still here or whether his crested carriage had trundled off, work accomplished.

“Your daughter means to take care of you,” said Benedict. “With the reward money, and the money from the necklace, she has arranged a comfortable income.”

Four or five hundred pounds per annum if they chose to invest it in the funds. Enough to pick up stakes, certainly, if they decided to do so. Enough that they would never have to worry about money again.

There were always other things about which one could worry.

With a gentle pat, the reverend splayed his hands on the table. “I am sixty-two years old. It's time one started thinking of retirement.”

“What do you mean?” said Maggie.

“Indeed,” sniffed the vicar's wife. “If—but—Perry, I thought you would never wish to leave here.”

“I would rather not
have
to leave.” Ah, the familiar fidgeting movements of his hands, dry and faint on the tabletop. “But I have been thinking of retirement. An impossible idea, it seemed for a long time. But—well.”

“Oh, Perry—I did not realize.”

“Well, now. You've been in ancient Greece for a long time.” Benedict could imagine the sad smile that touched his host's face. “You won't mind a retirement, will you? It does not matter to you where you live, or even in what century.”

“It matters to me if it matters to you.”

“It matters to me,” said the vicar. “Very much. To have you with me.”

Benedict began to feel highly superfluous, and one step at a time, he sidled toward the doorway. The last thing he heard before reaching the stairway was the vicar's voice: “This all would have been much more difficult without Charlotte.”

And Benedict was glad he had said this, when her parents could also have said the opposite.

* * *

The sound of tears, muffled and sniffled, interrupted Benedict in his packing.

He stepped across the corridor; though the door was open, he knocked on the wooden frame. “Miss Maggie? Would you like some company?”

“I don't have any company,” she said. A tiny voice, low to the floor. She was sitting on the carpet before the hearth, Benedict guessed, where Captain had been used to curl.

“You can have some for a while,” he said. “If you like. I'm just a rough old blind sailor who couldn't even find any flowers today, but maybe I'm better than nothing.”

She sniffled. “You are.”
Sniffle
. “You can come in if you want to.”

He plumped right down in the doorway, leaning his back against one side of the frame. “What's bothering y—”

“Why does everything have to change?” The words were thick and bitter.

“Um,” Benedict began. “I don't know. Some changes, I don't like at all.” Some he did, of course, but this was obviously not the time to mention such things.

“She left me the ribbons.” The identity of
she
was quite clear. “Green silk ribbons. I thought she forgot about plaiting my hair, but she remembered. She just didn't do it.”

“Or maybe,” Benedict tried, “she wanted you to have a way to remember her.”

“No. It's easier to leave something behind than to stay and care for someone.” Maggie sniffled.

“What if someone else asks that first someone to leave?”

Wrong answer. Wrong question, rather. This earned him a fresh burst of tears.
Shite
. What did he know about talking to a ten-year-old girl?

He patted his pockets until he found a handkerchief. His last one. These Perry women were rough on his handkerchiefs.

On hands and knees, he reached out and set it beside Maggie on the hearth rug—then, tentatively, he seated himself nearby. “You know,” he said, “I met a lot of people when I traveled the earth. In . . . Tahiti . . . there was a family with a daughter. Two daughters, actually, but one of them had left that island as soon as she grew up.”

The sniffles had subsided a little; she had plucked up the handkerchief. Encouragement enough to continue, then. “The second daughter always wanted to come home, but she could help her family more by staying where she was. She sent them money and food and other things that were difficult for them to get. If she'd come back to them, she would have felt like a burden.”

“But one of the sisters got to stay.”

“She was the lucky one,” said Benedict. “But then, the second sister got to see new things, and learn about different parts of the world, so maybe she was lucky, too. They were both exactly where they needed to be.”

A long silence followed.

“You made that up,” Maggie said, and for a moment Benedict heard Charlotte in her tone: half-laughing, half-exasperated.

He grinned. “Perhaps. But wasn't it a good story?”

Tiny picking sounds, as though she were plucking at loose bits of the hearth rug. “Do you think it's true? That a person can love someone even if they aren't there?”

“For some people,” he said carefully.

“For me,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“For you?”

This, he was not expecting. “I don't know. I only have one sister, and so we don't fit the story, and—”

“Mr.
Frost
.”

He sighed. And thought about it.

Since the age of twelve, he'd been used to looking after himself. But he never expected the same of Georgette, and he didn't want to. He didn't want his only remaining family to feel she couldn't count on him, or that he wouldn't care what became of her.

But he'd had the treasure in his hands for her, and he'd let it slip away. Literally. Because he knew, he could find another way to secure Georgette's future. He'd give her the money from the sale of the family's bookshop.

In that moment, he'd known Georgette would find her own future. In the present, with Charlotte feeling so alone, he'd wanted her to have the reward. Just one way to show her she
wasn't
alone, even if she left.

But she had left, and she'd left the reward behind, too. And a fortune in jewels. And the family she'd said she wanted.

She'd left
him
.

Because giving people things—that wasn't enough, was it? It wasn't enough. He had a sister he hardly knew, and he'd been beside a pile of gold, and now he was just as alone as Maggie.

“I think the sisters should have switched places sometimes,” he decided. “Then they'd both get to be with family and they'd both get to see the world.”

“Or the whole family could travel,” said Maggie. “If it were a real family.”

“It could be real,” he murmured. “For the lucky ones.”

Pick pick pick
at the rug. “Sometimes there's a sister no one needs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone like me.” She gulped against another swell of tears. “Grandpapa and Grandmama don't need me.”

“There are a lot of ways to need someone besides relying on them to shelter or feed you. You might not bring them money, but you bring them joy. They take care of you because they want you to have a good life.”

“My . . . mother. She doesn't need me. She didn't want to have me.”

At times like this, he was almost glad he could not see. He feared the pain on her young features would break his heart. “She
never
said that,” he told her. “Your mother has loved you every day of your life.” He flailed for some evidence that would convince her, then remembered. “The day I met her—and you—I knew she was your mother just by hearing her speak to you. Because she loved you so much, she couldn't hold it in, and it just shone out of her voice.”

“I didn't hear it shine,” she said.

“Well,” he said modestly, “I'm used to listening for these things.”

Pick pick pick.
A long silence. “My mother made this rug. Both of my mothers.”

“Ah.” Benedict decided against saying more.

“They wanted me to have a good life, too, didn't they?”

“Yes. They wanted that more than they wanted their own happiness. And that's love.”

It hurt so badly to be the one left behind. In his travels with the Royal Navy and on his own, had he ever left anyone feeling like this: scooped hollow and grieving?

No, because no one knew him well enough to love him.

He had come here for treasure, and he had found it, and he had given it away, because he wanted Charlotte's happiness more than his own.

And that meant—good
God
. He really
had
found a treasure, and it was Charlotte, and he was
stupid,
so stupid, to tell her he couldn't accept it. To tell her he couldn't make a future with her, because of—what? Money? Obligation?

Pride?

If he gave up his wandering life, his post as a Naval Knight, he would lose everything he'd earned from the last seventeen years of his life. He'd lose his income, his connection to the navy, his right to call himself a lieutenant. There would be so many ties, snapped irrevocably. Ties for which, as a boy, he had traded a home and family.

But what might he gain instead? If his travels led him not
from
but
toward
? Might he get that home, that family, back again? Was there a chance?

He wanted Charlotte's happiness more than his own. But how much greater would his own be if they were together? Somehow, sometime—maybe when she flirted with him over sour ale, maybe when she bandaged his arm—she had come to rest upon his heart.

Somehow, he had come to love her.

The thought was as clean and resonant as his metal-tipped cane striking solid marble. How ringing; how obvious. Yes.

“Miss Maggie,” he said. “I seem to have made a horrible blunder.”

She sniffled.

He smiled.

She giggled, a little.

“Will you help me send a letter?” he asked. “No—a parcel.”

* * *

A month after Charlotte had left Strawfield, she had achieved a state of tolerable contentment.

Benedict had suggested she write a memoir, and she did just that. It was a short one, and highly specific. Not intended for publication.

Charlotte had become popular and respected as
La Perle
in large part, she thought, because of her loyalty. Her skin was all on display, but her private business remained exactly that: private.

The Marquess of Randolph also held the esteem of others; maybe due to his reticence, maybe because of a fist of fear. But if the world really knew him . . .

When she finished her work, she made two fair copies. She placed one with a solicitor in London, one with a solicitor in Edinburgh, and sent the original to Randolph himself.

The accompanying note was brief.

His reply was just as terse.

Always the last word. Always the win.

She remembered the
items
to which he referred: a few baubles, nothing of great value. The gifts of a man testing how little he might get away with giving.

In her haste to sell everything and flee London—flee Randolph—she had only received a few pounds for the trinkets.

I sold them,
she wrote back.
Here is the amount I received.

When she sent it off, cutting the final tie with the marquess, she felt free.

He thought he had won. But she felt that she had, too.

Without the need for haste and panic, she was able to sell her house in Mayfair for a good price. For a fraction of the money, she bought a cottage in Edinburgh. So it was called by the seller—but the word
cottage
made her laugh. It was sturdy stone, two stories high, with a walled garden and plenty of space for servants' quarters.

She liked the idea of living outside England—even if only just. Benedict had planted the notion, with his travels and his medical studies here, and so, so, many jokes about the virtuous works she was meant to have performed in distant parts of the world. The weather in Edinburgh was not so different from what she was accustomed to, yet the
climate
of life here was a new thing entirely.

Once she had a settled address, she had remembered to write to Barrett, asking the maid to return from Yorkshire to work at the Strawfield vicarage. But the Reverend John Perry and his wife were gone from Strawfield, Barrett replied, so the servant came to her instead.