Vanity (42 page)

Griffin exhaled, his chest almost visibly deflating as he unburdened himself. “I couldn’t rightly say, madam. He failed to join Mr. Morgan for his lessons after breakfast. I caught him with his hands in the silver, my lady. But before I could remonstrate with him, he ran off. I haven’t seen him since.”

“He was stealing the silver?” Octavia looked incredulous and then immediately wondered why she should be surprised.

“He was putting two teaspoons in his pockets, my lady. I caught him redhanded. And things have been missing from the servants’ quarters ever since he arrived.”

“Oh, dear.” Octavia frowned in dismay. “I’ll discuss it with Lord Warwick, Griffin. If Frank returns, bring him to me.”

She went upstairs to her father’s apartments, still frowning. It was really inevitable that Frank would steal. He was an uncivilized little animal who knew only the imperatives of survival. The only difference in essence between Frank and herself and Rupert was that Frank had been born to a life of crime, whereas she and Rupert had chosen it as the most expeditious, and it was to be hoped temporary, means of survival.

“Good morning, Papa. Frank didn’t come for his lessons today, Griffin tells me.”

“No. He’s not overly fond of the discipline of learning,” Oliver remarked placidly, kissing his daughter as she bent over him. “He’s too concerned about where the next meal is coming from to concentrate on sitting still and listening.”

“But he knows he gets fed here.” Octavia sat on a low stool beside her father’s chair.

“Knowing and trusting are two very different things,”
Oliver said. “I doubt very much you’ll make a model citizen of the lad.”

“You sound like Griffin.”

Her father merely smiled and stroked her head in a fleeting gesture. “Where’s your husband these days? I find myself missing his company.”

“Oh, he has business in the City,” she said vaguely. “I haven’t seen much of him myself.”

Oliver nodded and cheerfully changed the subject. But when Octavia left him twenty minutes later, his liveliness vanished, and he slumped in his chair with a brooding expression on his patrician countenance. Something was amiss between Octavia and Rupert Warwick. Neither of them said anything, or even so much as hinted at difficulties, but they couldn’t disguise the coldness and distance between them. Oliver could feel his daughter’s unhappiness, but the urge to ask her what was troubling her was as always superseded by his innate reluctance to hear something he didn’t want to hear. It would go away, if left alone. Once things were spoken aloud, they took on a shape and substance that became impossible to dissolve.

Restlessly, he rose from his chair and went to the window. Rupert was approaching the house from the mews, his caped riding cloak flowing from his shoulders, his riding whip tapping against his boots. Oliver couldn’t discern his expression from two floors above, but there was a tension in the broad frame that shouted up from the street. Oliver watched as he mounted the steps to the front door and disappeared from view as he was let into the house.

Rupert was handing his cloak to Griffin when Octavia came down the stairs. “We have a problem with Frank,” she said without preamble.

“Another one?” He raised his eyebrows wearily.

“He is a thief, my lord,” Griffin declared with succinct satisfaction, smoothing his lordship’s cloak as it hung over his arm.

Rupert grimaced at Octavia, who shrugged and preceded him into the library.

Rupert closed the door behind him. “So what’s he stolen?”

“Things from the servants. And today he was in the process of making off with two teaspoons from the silver when Griffin caught him.”

“It poses us with a somewhat interesting dilemma. Do we take the moral high ground, or the pragmatic low ground?”

“The latter,” Octavia said without hesitation. “Always assuming he comes back. It wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve seen the last of him.”

“Probably,” Rupert agreed. “I imagine he’ll be too frightened to come back.”

“I suppose it was foolish to hope that we could give him a different life,” Octavia said. “The mud of the stews doesn’t release its grip too easily.”

Rupert heard her bitterness, but he could find no sugar with which to sweeten the pill. They had both lived the realities of the city’s underbelly.

“Wednesday,” Octavia announced with sudden briskness. “I will meet up with Wyndham at two o’clock in a hackney. We should reach the heath by three. It’ll be broad daylight. Won’t that be dangerous?”

“You’ll instruct the coachman to take a different route across the heath. A less frequented road toward Wildcroft. We’ll take our chance there.”

“And after the robbery, where will you go?”

“To the cottage until the hue and cry has died down. You will play the hysterical victim of a highwayman for the benefit of the jarvey and Wyndham and return to town to lay evidence with the Bow Street Runners. You will, of course, be somewhat hazy in your details as a result of the shock.”

“Of course.”

And then what?

But Octavia knew the answer to that, so the question remained unposed. They would go their separate ways, and this sojourn in purgatory would be mercifully ended. She began to rearrange a vase of yellow roses.

“Octavia?”

“Yes?” She didn’t look up from her task.

Can’t you forgive me?

The words hovered on his lips, cried out to be spoken, but he couldn’t say them. He didn’t know how to ask for forgiveness. He’d been hardened over too many years of living a life dictated by the wrongs others had done him. He was a man to whom apologies were owed, not a man who owed his own. A man who had been hurt, and if he caused hurt to others, it was as a result of the hurt that had been done him. But he didn’t know how to explain that, not in the face of Octavia’s closed expression, the cool distance in the tawny eyes. And not in the face of his own haunting shame that he’d stooped to such a detestable deception … that he’d callously twisted such a courageous and candid spirit as indifferently as he would bend a pipe cleaner.

Octavia looked up from the roses, waiting for him to say what he had to say. He wanted to seize her in his arms, crush the anger and resentment from her body with the strength and warmth of his embrace. Press his lips to hers and take the bitterness from them with the sweetness of his kiss. He wanted to take her body with his own, plunge deep within her and exorcise the gall and wormwood of betrayal.

But she stood there behind an invisible wall that he didn’t know how to scale or to tear down.

“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t important.”

“Oh.” She dropped her head, and he missed the flash of disappointment that crossed her eyes. “I have to meet with Cook to discuss the menu for tomorrow’s dinner party,” she said, going to the door. “You haven’t forgotten that we’re dining this afternoon with the Monforts.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. But I have time to visit the Royal Oak first. I need to discuss arrangements for Wednesday with Ben.” He moved to open the door for her.

As she passed him, he inhaled her delicate fragrance of orange flower water and lavender soap, and a wash of nostalgia swamped him. He allowed his hand to brush against
her bare forearm, and for a second she paused. She glanced up at him, and the haunting unhappiness in her eyes tore at him.

“Ah, sweeting,” he said softly, but the shutters immediately went up again. She drew herself aside as she slipped through the door, and he closed it quietly behind her.

Octavia stood for a minute in the hall, struggling for composure. How she yearned for him to take her in his arms, override her misery and her stubborn inability to forgive. She needed him to explain, to express his deep regret. She knew what she wanted, and yet it had to come from Rupert.

In the past he’d been so good at sweeping her along on the tide of his own plans and enthusiasms. So good at discounting her protests and her resentments. And now, when it mattered more than anything that he should do so, he simply stood back and accepted her withdrawal.

Desolately, she made her way to the stairs.

R
upert set off for Putney as soon as Octavia had left him. All he wanted now was for the business to be done. Then they could go their separate ways, and he would no longer be tormented by what might have been.

The front door of the Royal Oak stood open to the afternoon sun, and the taproom was busy as Rupert entered it. Bessie was behind the bar, drawing ale with her customary morose efficiency. Ben was sitting beside the empty hearth, engaged in idle chat with his cronies, blue pipe smoke circling above them.

Tabitha, carrying a laden tray of tankards to the bar, saw the new arrival first. “’Ere’s Lord Nick.”

A chorus of greetings rose on the hazy air. “Eh, Nick, come and sit yerself down.” Ben rose from the settle and pulled a chair over to the hearth.

“What’ll ye drink, Nick?” Bessie took down a pewter tankard from a shelf behind the bar and polished it on her apron.

“A pint of ale if you please, Bessie.” Rupert flicked
aside the skirts of his cloak as he took the chair, letting his riding crop rest across his knees.

He glanced around the crowded room and was pleased to see that there was no sign of Morris. For all Ben’s confidence in the man, Rupert was not entirely convinced of Morris’s reliability. He knew how easily the informer could be bought.

“Ye’ve not brought miss with you this time,” Tab observed, dropping a curtsy as she handed him a foaming tankard.

“Not this time,” Rupert agreed placidly. He took a deep draft of ale and wiped the foam from his upper Hp with the back of his hand. “That’s good. I’ve a thirst on me powerful enough to drain an ocean.”

“Aye, it’s ’ot out there,” one of the smokers said comfortably. “I ’eard that Lord George ’as called a meetin’ fer next week. St. George’s Field or some such place.”

“An’ then a march on Parliament,” one of his fellows declared knowledgeably. “You goin’ along?”

“I might,” the other said as comfortably as before. “Then agin, I might not.”

Ben raised an eyebrow at Lord Nick and gestured with his head to the door. Rupert nodded and drained his tankard.

The two got up and left the taproom as the arguments for and against Lord George Gordon’s rabble-rousing activities grew heated.

They made their way by mute consent into the stable-yard.

“You’ve a new stable lad,” Rupert commented, leaning his shoulders against the warm red brick of the wall and closing his eyes for a second as the sun beat down on his eyelids.

“Aye. Freddy’s pa needed ’is ’elp in the fields fer the summer. So young Bobbie there is takin’ ’is place.”

Rupert opened his eyes and languidly regarded the lad grooming a shire horse in the shade. Then he pushed himself off the wall. “Let’s walk a bit.”

Ben followed him out of the yard and into the lane beyond. They strolled slowly in the shadow of the wall.

“Y’are plannin’ to take to the road fer this personal business?”

“Wednesday,” Rupert said. “But on the Wildcroft road. It’s less populated.”

Ben nodded, bending to pluck a grass stem from the roadside. He sucked reflectively.

“There’s a goodly stretch of that road that runs through trees. That’d be as good as anywhere.”

“I know where you mean. I’ll need more time than usual, since this operation requires stripping my quarry to his small clothes.” Rupert’s lazy smile was far from pleasant.

“Ye’ll need someone to watch yer back,” Ben declared. “I’d best come along … watch the road while y’are doin’ your business.”

“No, Ben. I’ll not involve you more than usual. Have the cottage ready. That’s all that’s necessary.” The drawl had vanished from Rupert’s voice.

“What ’arm would an extra lookout do?” Ben was reluctant to yield.

“No, Ben. I work alone.”

Ben glowered. “An’ what of miss? Ye work with ’er.”

Rupert was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Be that as it may, old friend, I’ll not risk your safety. You’ve too many people dependent upon you. What would happen to the Royal Oak if you found yourself swinging from Tyburn Tree?”

Ben grunted and didn’t look any happier but he shrugged his acceptance. “What time Wednesday?”

“Midafternoon, or thereabouts. I’ll stop in here first.”

“Right y’are. I’ll ’ave yer pistols primed. Ye want Lucifer?”

“No, I’ll take Peter for this.”

“That’s something, I suppose,” Ben said grudgingly.

Rupert merely smiled and punched him lightly on the shoulder before they turned to walk back along the lane beneath the wall, reentering the stable yard where the new
lad was whistling between his teeth as he lovingly combed the shire’s thick mane.

“Ye’ll come in fer a bit of dinner?” Ben invited. “Bessie ’11 be expectin’ ye.”

“No, I have to get back, thanks. Tell Bessie I’ll be up Wednesday night, once the coast is clear. She can feed me to her heart’s content then.”

Ben smiled a little grimly and called to the stable lad. “Bobbie, fetch the gentleman’s ’orse?”

Bobbie left the shire and went into the stable, returning in a few minutes with Lucifer. “’Ere y’are sir.”