Authors: Kate Moore
To Tempt a Saint (6 page)
“ ’Ey, beak, oi’m a free man now. You don’t get to pump me no more.” The boy flashed his toothy grin at Will.
Will leaned down to get in the youth’s face. “Don’t choke on your own sauce, Wilde. Transportation’s your best hope. Let Bredsell and March give you orders and you’ll end up in hell.”
“Bugger off. Weasels like you got nowt to say to me no more.” The boy shook off Will’s hold and followed Bredsell out of the court.
“You owe me a pony,” Xander told his brother.
Will stared after Bredsell. “I hate that bleeding maggot. If I could prove what he does, he’d swing for it.”
“You got a lot of information out of young Wilde, I notice.”
“Sod off. Wilde will be back in the dock in a month.”
“When he returns, be sure to ask him about our brother’s disappearance.”
Will advised Xander as to some immediate forms of self-abuse he could practice and suggested a permanent address in the hereafter.
The next case, a carver brought up on a charge of wife beating, was creating a row. The brothers left the court, Will still grumbling about Wilde’s release into Bredsell’s custody. Xander listened to the angry voice with half an ear. Each of them had to deal with the loss of Kit in his own way. Anger was Will’s way. Flight had been their mother’s choice. Action was Xander’s. Outside the court they paused. “I’ve got another investigation for you.”
“What?” Will made the subtle adjustments to his dress that allowed him to slip into London’s darkness. He rarely came to the house on Hill Street but kept some mean apartments elsewhere, to which Xander had never been invited.
You don’t want to know
, he once told Xander.
You don’t want to know
, he once told Xander.
It was like Will to reject the gentlemanly trappings their mother had sought to give them. He refused to hide the stain of his birth. A baseborn fellow ought to live like a baseborn fellow.
“I need to know everything about Cleo Spencer.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s a chit not much above twenty, who claims to have a fortune in Evershot’s bank.”
“Ah, another shot at lighting the streets.”
“Find out about her for me.”
“You’re going to try again?”
“I still need twenty thousand to buy into the partnership.”
Will whistled, his transformation complete. His black staff of office tucked up his sleeve, nothing remained of the official costume of a Runner. “And Miss Spencer has it?”
“Apparently she needs a husband to get access to her money.” Xander had figured that much out in the wake of her astonishing proposal. What he didn’t know was why she hadn’t found one.
“If she has twenty thousand and needs a husband, why should I call you?”
“Because, if anyone has less heart than I do, Brother, it’s you.”
A short, harsh laugh was the only reply as Will slipped into the darkness.
Xander didn’t envy him much. Will seemed to seek those roles that most hardened a man. As a Bow Street Runner he entered London’s darkest streets, places that never saw another officer, without hesitation. His fellow Runners declared that he could see in the dark. Xander didn’t credit that assertion, but he knew Will had uncanny abilities, honed as an army spy, to operate with swiftness and sureness where other people stumbled blindly. Sooner or later his brother would get whatever information Nate Wilde possessed.
Xander stood alone in the middle of Bow Street. Across the way the Brown Bear did a brisk trade in spirits, indifferent to which side of the law a man was on. Up the street, luckier souls streamed out of the colonnaded front of the Opera House, laughing and chattering about the evening’s performance, climbing into carriages and hacks, heading for bed or assignations, or a club, people careless of the light, not imagining how quickly darkness could snatch away laughter.
Xander’s search for Kit had been fruitless. First, injuries delayed him. Then the regent’s fickle solicitude and his father’s objection in the Lords to Xander’s knighthood cost him precious days. By the time he recovered and Will returned from France to begin the search in earnest, London’s darkest rookery had swallowed Kit deep into its fetid belly, and their mother had retreated into impenetrable grief.
Now he had a new chance. Lighting St. Giles meant entering the dark places at will, tearing down walls, tearing up streets, taking picks, axes, and shovels to all the district’s secrets. Lighting St. Giles meant unlocking a dark closet in the heart of London and freeing those huddled inside.
A woman’s high, brittle laugh caught his good ear, a false laugh of the kind he’d heard too often in the months after he’d been knighted. In those first months of searching for Kit, when finding him seemed possible, the exclusive ballrooms of London, and some of its still more exclusive bedrooms, had opened to Xander as they never had before, and he’d discovered he could draw on the vanity and self-interest of certain fine ladies to fund his search with no other price than his own body. And perhaps some pieces of his soul. The scent of his mother’s letter caught his notice again. He reached for it, and his fingers encountered a piece of straw.
In the bank in that first moment of realizing he had an audience for his awkward proposal, he had expected to find Meese or some underling of Miss Finsbury’s father paid to spy. Then he had seen the girl’s wretched bonnet on the chair. Ironically, it was the straw on her hem that had convinced him she was no spy. Whether she proved to be an heiress or not, he had to thank her for making him understand his reluctance to marry Miss Finsbury. And for making him laugh. He would go home and put his mother’s latest letter in a drawer with the others. He knew its message.
Leave the lamps burning. He will return.
Chapter Three
X
ANDER found Fernhill Farm just where his brother’s information had placed it, at the edge of the village of Woford in a low-lying set of acres along the river. The summer just past still had a grip on the fields and hedgerows, and the morning mist had burned off in the heat of a long afternoon. Nothing about the place suggested that its mistress possessed a fortune.
ANDER found Fernhill Farm just where his brother’s information had placed it, at the edge of the village of Woford in a low-lying set of acres along the river. The summer just past still had a grip on the fields and hedgerows, and the morning mist had burned off in the heat of a long afternoon. Nothing about the place suggested that its mistress possessed a fortune.
A plain brick farmhouse and barn stood at the end of a boggy lane past a pond. A few geese made a welcoming party, waddling away with unhurried arrogance as his rig approached. Xander tended to his pair, armed himself with the picnic basket he’d purchased from the local inn, and strode in the direction of the house.
A slight breeze carried the scent of washday. No one answered his knock, but from the rear of the house came the rhythmic thwack of someone beating the life out of a carpet. He followed a weedy path to his right toward the sound.
Cleo Spencer had squared off against a sorry rug of indeterminate hues draped over a sturdy line and was beating it with a broom. Her hair, coming loose from its pins and knots, dangled in coppery wisps about her face. He could see the pink flush of her exertions in her cheek. An unbleached apron covered a faded green muslin gown, hiked up around her waist, exposing a pair of coltish legs. She looked more like a laundress than an heiress, and Xander had to remind himself of what he now knew about his ragamuffin. She was a lord’s pampered daughter. She might have fallen from fortune and grace, but he would be wise to remember that she was a London-bred blue blood of his father’s ilk, and he would be better off keeping their relationship commercial.
He put the basket at his feet to watch her. She took a wide stance, hauled back her broom and let fly with a swing like the most determined of batsmen trying to loft a bowl over the boundary fence. Every line of her person was angry.
Take that
, her body seemed to say,
and that
.
Take that
, her body seemed to say,
and that
.
“Taking aim at your banker?”
She spun toward him. The reach of her broom just missed his chest and sent a sweet stir of air wafting over him, filled with the scent of her. She wore no perfume that he could detect.
“You.” She let the broom drop, and he could see in those green eyes the proud sting of being at a disadvantage. Will’s report said she had only a meager allowance controlled by Evershot and March until she turned thirty.
Or married
.
Or married
.
“I’ve come to accept your proposal of marriage.”
“You haven’t.” Her doubting gaze took in his whole appearance and the basket at his feet, stuffed by Mrs. Lawful, the very accommodating and openly curious proprietress of the Swan in Woford.
“You had the advantage of me the other day in making your offer while I was reeling from another woman’s rejection.”
“Reeling?” She put a hand to her brow, pushing aside damp curls of that brandy-colored hair.
“It was a low moment.”
“You’ve recovered, I’m sure. Your heart did not appear to be involved.”
“But my hopes were.” He took a step closer now that the broom rested on the ground.
“Hopes that require a great deal of funding?”
“Twenty thousand pounds.” He gave her credit for not gasping.
“So I’m to be your accommodating heiress?”
“You are twenty-four and have no access to your fortune until you reach thirty . . . unless you marry. Evershot is one of your trustees, and Archibald March, your father’s half brother, is the other. He lives in your old home and has sole control of your brother’s fortune, though not your own.”
Will’s investigation had been remarkably thorough and told him as much about March as the heiress herself. Her uncle had proclaimed her mad with grief over her father’s death and incapable of managing her fortune. No wonder March had such deep pockets to fund charities.
Xander didn’t say anything about March’s character. He doubted she knew anything about March’s questionable connection to Bredsell’s school. But it struck Xander as odd that the titled niece and nephew of a noted London philanthropist lived on a weedy farm.
The girl’s frank gaze was fixed on him. “To think I accused you of not finding out more about Miss Finsbury.”
“I have my sources.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that I proposed to you, for once again, you are making a mull of it.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “You might as well drag me to the pond, shove my head under, and hold me down.”
He had to laugh. “Until you come up spitting and swinging?”
“What woman wants to be told unpalatable truths about her circumstances as a prelude to seduction?”
His laugh faded at once.
Seduction
was an interesting choice of words
.
“I should follow your advice then and notice that fetching gown you are wearing.”
Seduction
was an interesting choice of words
.
“I should follow your advice then and notice that fetching gown you are wearing.”
She unhitched her skirts from her waist and let them fall. “You might as well admire the barn as this dress.”
“The barn doesn’t cling so well to your person or bring out the color in your eyes.” He didn’t lie.
She laughed, a fresh, spontaneous sound, dangerous to listen to, because he’d like to hear it again. “Stop. You mustn’t think that I require false coin from you.”
“I think what you require is cash.” He meant to stick to his purpose. Any sexual interest in her would only complicate his plan.
Her lively glance sobered at once and fixed on him. “Is that what you’re offering me?”
“I promise you I am a more generous banker than Evershot.”
“I don’t want a banker.” She began to pace as she had in Evershot’s office, as if the energy of her thoughts could not be contained, back and forth across the dry grass until she halted in front of him again. Her hands flew up in a quick gesture of disdain. “Why should men always be the bankers?” Another slash of the hands. “Why shouldn’t I have charge of my own money and sit on a throne of golden guineas and let you come begging to me on your knees?” Those angry hands came to rest on her hips.
“In that case, you would be a most unaccommodating heiress.”
The green gaze measured him, full of hostility and longing. “No.” She turned away from him, and a startled thrush nearby took flight at her sudden vehemence.
Xander regarded the girl’s profile. He could see the round curve of her cheek, a curl tucked in the hollow behind her ear, and the delicate ridge of her spine. There was not much to her, far less than Miss Finsbury offered. She was prickly as a holly bush and haughty to boot. He should have no sympathy for her, but he understood the desire to control one’s own money. His mother had taught him how essential that control was to a woman’s independence.
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