It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (15 page)

Sally was standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. She’d slept through everything, and this was a blessing.

“Mr. Friend!”

She was wholly delighted to see someone she’d met only once before in her life.

Jonathan stared at her. She was so . . .
small
. So willing to trust. To believe the best of people, despite what she’d experienced. To find delight in something simple.

A cold fist clenched his heart. Hitting her for
any
reason was inconceivable. The notion of it was grotesque. Not only was she a child, but a servant. Someone who would
never
be able to defend herself.

“Good morning, Sally,” he said politely. Somewhat abstractedly.

She smiled shyly at him. “Do you have any scars?” she asked.

He blinked. “Do I . . . ?”

“Will you show me?”

She had anarchic glossy black ringlets and enormous brown eyes. How in God’s name did anyone say “no” to those eyes? They were horribly unfair.

And now Tommy was biting back a smile.

“Go on, Mr. Friend. I told her all the most dashing people have scars. She will have a particularly fine one on her forehead.”

“Oh, I’ve scars. It’s just that there are so many to choose from,” Jonathan hedged.

“The bravest one,” Sally requested.

“The bravest one . . .” He inhaled. “Very well.” He shook off his coat, unfastened his cufflinks, rolled up his sleeve, and knelt down near her.

There, on his forearm, was that raw red slash. From the last time he’d intervened to save someone.

“It’s not yet officially a scar, Sally. But it will be, and a grand one, too. A gentleman was accosted by a group of ruffians outside an” —he substituted the word “establishment” for “gaming hell”—“and I intervened to help him. I was slashed a wee bit by a knife but all the
good
people got away unscathed.”

Implying that the “bad people” had been scathed indeed. From the floor, the deeply sleeping Rutherford gave a snort and turned.

“He’s just sleeping,” Jonathan said smoothly, and Sally accepted this with apparent equanimity.

“Ooooohhhh.” She peered at his scar admiringly, not at all upset by the violent story. “Does it hurt?”

“Not so much, anymore. This bruise, you see, went along with it, and it’s going away, too.” He pointed to the fading spot below his eye. The one that had seemed to brand him as a ruffian in the eyes of the Duke of Greyfolk.

Tommy was watching the two of them, and when he glanced up he found a look of studied innocence on her face, a certain triumph underlying it. “So you intervened, did you, Mr. Redmond, when you saw a wrong being committed?”

“How could I not?”

“Do you make a habit of intervening? Didn’t you rather intervene in my circumstance today?”

“It’s not so much a habit as . . .” He trailed off.

He thought about Klaus Liebman. And the costermonger, and the child thief, and how Tommy had given him her sorry handkerchief. And the mysterious gentleman outside the gaming hell, whom Jonathan had rescued from knife-wielding ruffians, and who had staggered, dazed and frightened, away into the night, bleeding on Jonathan’s handkerchief, muttering thanks.

And then, of course, today, when he’d been quite prepared to do murder for the woman standing in front of him.

“Not everyone intervenes, Mr. Redmond.
You
simply have no choice. It’s your nature.”

“I haven’t a choice,” he repeated faintly. With grim resignation.

She’d made her point, then.

It wasn’t quite the same thing, but he wasn’t about to argue it now. And she’d also neatly taken advantage of this quality in him by enlisting his assistance, which, in a perverse way he admired, and he almost smiled ruefully. The woman was deucedly shrewd.

He sighed. Christ. What she did was untenable and mad, and it unnerved him greatly. The lawlessness and peril of it. The grandeur and heroism of it.

It terrified him to his marrow.

And frankly, it thrilled him.

God save him from complicated women.

She quite simply couldn’t go on doing it. She would be caught. It really was only a matter of time.

Every muscle in his body contracted in protest. No. No. He didn’t want to be Tommy de Ballesteros’s savior. He quite seriously doubted Lady Grace Worthington, for instance, would ever need to be saved from a mad doctor. He indulged in a moment of imagining her serene, predictable, exquisitely-bred blond beauty.

Well, he’d demanded details from Tommy. He supposed he only had himself to blame.

He sighed. “Have you any tea?”

Very few circumstances weren’t improved by the addition of a little tea.

“It isn’t very good tea,” she warned.

“When your investment pays off, your tea will be excellent.”

Her face brightened instantly. “Oh, so is your plan underway?”

“I sold the pearls at Exley & Morrow, I came from Klaus’s a few minutes ago, and then paid a visit to Mr. Wyndham, who will prepare the images for the plates. We should have the plates made and the decks printed inside a month. I predict you’ll have your investment returned, and then some, quite soon.”

She beamed and gave the slightest little gleeful hop, and this pleased him absurdly, and not only because she seemed to share his joy in the making of money. Her face was luminous when she smiled genuinely. She had the sort of smile one felt smack in one’s solar plexus.

“Tea it is!” she said, and swiveled toward where cups were stacked on shelves and stretched up for one. And for a moment he lost himself in the quiet pleasure of watching her slim back, the quick deft movements of her white hands selecting saucers. Her grace was innate and subtle, as though she moved to silent music. By contrast, the colors of her—the rich hair, the exotic eyes, the black brows—were as vivid and surprising as her personality. And for a moment he indulged in simply baldly admiring her as if she were a woman he’d never before seen. He understood how she could have captivated the imaginations of so many men.

And yet none of them truly knew her.

He glanced at the snoring Rutherford on the floor, and considered wryly whether he envied all those young men their ignorance of the real Tommy de Ballesteros.

The one who had a bullet scar on one slim pale arm.

He felt every muscle in his body tense again, as if he was springing to defend her from something that had already happened. As if he could take the shot for her.

“Tell me, Tommy . . .” he said slowly. “Who gave you the pearls?”

He hadn’t realized he was going to ask the question.

She froze. And pivoted reluctantly. Her green eyes studied him, gauging whether the well of his patience had begun to refill.

“A gentleman. And that’s all I’ll tell you.”

Apparently she’d concluded it was safe to be circumspect again.

After a brief staring contest, he acquiesced with a shrug and a quirk of the corner of his mouth. He supposed, in the end, it didn’t matter; he told himself he didn’t care. It wasn’t as though he had a claim on her, or remotely wished to join the ranks of besotted sheep who wagered absurd things about her in White’s Betting Books. And yet, if they were to be friends, he supposed it would be useful to anticipate from which direction trouble would next come. Because with Tommy, trouble was inevitable.

Besides, he had every confidence in the world that if he truly wanted to know, he’d eventually have the information out of her.

“Very well.” His chin pointed to Sally. “What are you going to do with her?” he asked sotto voce. “It’s hardly safe for her here, is it? For her
or
for you.”

Something flashed in her eyes then; a shadow darted across her face. A wounded defensiveness about the rooms she could afford, about her ability, perhaps, to keep Sally safe.

She composed herself swiftly.

“I haven’t a place for her yet. And usually I have a place . . . it’s just the timing of it was unfortunate . . .”

“
Usually
you have a
place?
”

How many of these rescues had taken place? And then he recalled the little thumping sounds he’d heard above his head the night she’d shown him the pearls.

“Was there a child upstairs with Rutherford the first night I was here?”

Again, a stubborn silence.

In other words, yes, there was.

In other words, she made a
habit
of this sort of thing.

She read his expression, and again her voice was a fierce, persuasive, unapologetic hush. “Nobody cares about these children! When they disappear, it doesn’t cause an uproar or histrionic articles in the broadsheets. They haven’t families. They’re
property
. When you use up kindling, why, don’t you simply go and get more? That’s how they’re used by the workhouses and by wealthy men like Feckwith.”

Her words were appalling. And true. He just hadn’t thought about it in this light.

He glanced at Sally, who looked up and beamed at him. She’d lost interest in their incomprehensible adult conversation, and was paging slowly through what appeared to be a little picture book. She had a dimple, he saw, on the right, and what appeared to be a crumb on the left. Reflexively, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the crumb.

“Thank you, Mr. Friend.” She beamed. And returned to the picture book.

Well. He was charmed motionless for an instant, despite himself. Polite child, for all that.

He looked back at Tommy and found her as frozen as a pointing retriever, an aura of amazement on her face.

He frowned faintly at her. “And the reason you need money more quickly . . . is to fund this enterprise?”

There ensued more stubborn hesitation, which he knew heralded more circumspection.

“Why does anyone need money? Perhaps I want more than this.” She gestured to her rooms.

“So you
do
live here.”

Her silence, followed after a moment by a noncommittal one-shouldered shrug, rather confirmed it.

“Ah, Miss de Ballesteros. But I thought you were going to
marry
money.”

“Oh, of course,” she said smoothly. “Just like you.”

He couldn’t help it. He grinned at that.

She smiled back at him.

He shook his head and turned away from her and sighed at length.

Damn the woman. There was still no question that he
liked
her. He just wasn’t certain his world needed to be as . . . interesting . . . as it had become since she’d entered it. Then again, Argosy was also his friend, and Argosy could, on occasion, be a trial, too.

As Tommy pulled down cups and saucers with homey little clinking sounds, he turned his attention to Sally again, who was still absorbed in the book, her legs swinging gaily.

He wondered if she could read, or if she was just looking at the pictures.

And from that thought . . . an idea dawned.

He was going to regret saying it. He would only embed himself deeper into Tommy’s quixotic madness.

But in truth, there was no way he couldn’t say it.

“Tommy . . . about Sally . . . I’ve an idea . . .”

Chapter 13

A
RGOSY ENTERED
W
HITE’S WEARING
a smug secret smile, and wove through the club purposefully, greeting his friends abstractedly, which of course captivated all of them.

His destination was clearly the Betting Books; such was the languid Argosy’s charged purpose, all heads turned to follow his progress.

He scribbled something in it, then wiped his hands with satisfaction, and turned.

To find that five young men had leaped from their chairs and clustered around him to read it.

I wager Jonathan Redmond one hundred pounds that he will marry the Queen of Spades by the end of the year.

They all reared back at once.

“What the
devil
does that mean, Argosy?” It was Harry Linley, whose sister Marianne yearned after Jonathan.

“Well . . .” He made a great show of reluctance. “Very well. I’ll tell you. Do you know how Redmond excels at Five-Card Loo?”

“Took me for seventeen pounds last month,” one of them said sullenly.

Argosy nodded. “He’s going to let the cards choose a bride for him.”

A silence.

“He’s going to do
what?
” This was a general exclamation as the word “bride” and “cards” seldom occupied the same sentence, or even their minds, simultaneously.

“Do you mean he intends to
win
a
bride
in a card game? I’m going to the wrong gaming hells, if brides are on offer.”

“Is that an option?” one of them muttered. “I’d like to trade in the one I’ve got.”

Argosy held up a hand for silence. “Very well. I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t tell a soul.” This admonition was critical to ensure that the gossip would be spread immediately. “Klaus Liebman & Co. on Bond Street is having a special deck printed. In
color,
mind you. A magnificent new process of printing. And the suits—all of them—will be represented pictorially by the most beautiful women in town. Only Diamonds of the First Water, the most beautiful women of the finest pedigree, you see, will be allowed into the deck.”