by Evie Dunmore
His gaze locked with Arthur’s. You knew what I was and yet you took me along . . . you are a monster, you have no care. . . . An emotion, hot like shame, rolled over him. Many developed an attraction to him, he could hardly help it, but the truth was, he hadn’t cared either way.
He ran his hand over his face. “I apologize.”
Arthur gave him a hard look. “What for, exactly?”
For not giving a damn. For these dire times, where the laws made it a bitter thing to be alive and in love, at least when one had not been born a man, and one who happened to love in accordance with the rules. He had not made the rules, but he had never set out to change them, either. He had wasted a lot of time fighting the wrong wars.
“For several things, I suppose,” he told Arthur.
“I’m not in need of mollycoddling,” Arthur said curtly. “In the end, I only wished for some respect.”
“Do you prefer men exclusively?”
Arthur drew back. “What is it to you?”
“You are a younger son. It is not imperative that you marry. There are ways . . . a confirmed bachelor can keep another close. A valet—”
“Blimey.” Arthur waved a slender hand, looking bemused and annoyed. “Of course there are ways. We have always found them, and we always will. However, there was precisely one reason why I would have desired for you to surprise me in my chambers at night, Ballentine, and assault or matchmaking gossip was not it. So, if you please, get out.”
The hallways of Merton College drifted past in a blur on his way out. He had come to settle a score and left feeling humbled and distracted instead.
* * *
The morning sun filled Lucie’s reception room with a cheerful brightness, as though it were a regular summer day. But today she was leaving. She had packed; she had her papers.
Catching Boudicca, however, was another matter. The cat hated the travel crate as if it were a portal to the underworld and had been in hiding all morning.
When Boudicca finally tried shooting past to reach her food bowl, Lucie lunged. She had a firm grip on the cat’s middle, but the beast made herself impossibly long and she had to let go, unwilling to be left holding just a white-tipped tail.
The cat was already on top of the cherrywood cabinet in the drawing room. Her ears were completely flat.
Lucie moved the footstool and climbed on it.
“Give up,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes. “I know all your tricks, and I always win—ouch!” She stared at the beads of blood blooming on the back of her right hand.
She glared. “Have you lost your mind?”
Boudicca’s irreverent stare said she’d do it again, scratch her. Possibly bite her, too.
“Just you wait.” She stomped to the washbasin to follow the burn of the scratch with the sting of soap. “Don’t move, you mad beast.” She kneeled by the carpetbag and rifled through it for her leather gloves.
She had found one when the doorbell rang.
She froze.
She hadn’t imagined it—the bell was already ringing again, shrill and intrusive, and her nerves jangled in response. Whoever it was, she did not wish to see them.
The presence of the caller seeped through the walls like noxious smoke—they were still there, waiting, listening, holding their breath.
They would not go away.
She rose and strode down the corridor, glove in hand, and unlatched the locks.
A drawn, fine-boned face looked back at her—the last person on God’s green earth she had expected. “Mother.”
“Hush.” The countess cast a nervous glance back over her shoulder.
A small hackney was waiting on the side of the road.
She hadn’t heard it approach during her efforts to catch the cat.
Her mother’s gaze swept over her travel dress and the glove, randomly held in her injured hand. “Well. Are you not going to ask me inside?”
She didn’t open the door any wider. “What do you want?”
Her mother’s lips thinned into a hyphen at the rudeness. “I would prefer to discuss it in private.” Again she half-glanced over her shoulder, her brittle frame, if possible, stiffer than usual; quite possibly she was expecting a mob of nosy commoners to descend upon them at any moment. Her mother rarely ventured into residential parts of a town, unless, perhaps, to dispense charity. Whatever business had brought her here, she must consider it to be urgent. It was also, quite frankly, none of her concern and thus, she did not budge.
“Very well,” said Lady Wycliffe, her blue eyes steely. “I need your help to make someone disappear.”
Chapter 37
I need your help to make someone disappear.
On the list of Least Likely Things her mother would utter, this came at the very top.
She stepped aside. “Whom have you killed, Mother?”
Lady Wycliffe strode past her, giving her a long-suffering look. “No one is dead. Yet.”
The moment they had entered the reception room, the countess turned to her, her gaze pointedly fixed on Lucie’s face. “You are not really with child, are you?”
She shook her head, because for all she knew, she was not. She wondered how her mother would have reacted had she said yes. But thus satisfied, Lady Wycliffe simply nodded. She cast a glance around the room, taking in the ink-stained printing press in the corner and the worn upholstery of the divan. She refrained from walking over to the fireplace to swipe a gloved finger over the mantelpiece, but it was obvious that she was tempted.
She did step closer to look at Aunt Honoria’s portrait. “How cynical,” she remarked, studying the Vinegar Valentine cards Lucie had tucked into the ebony frame. “Though I suppose Honoria would have found it amusing.”
“If you don’t mind, I must catch the train.”
Her mother stiffened. “Of course.” She turned and faced her. “It is about Lady Rochester.”
The name hit her chest with the stunning force of a fist, and for a terrible moment, she couldn’t breathe. Pain bloomed beneath her ribs as if the wound there were physical and had just begun to bleed again.
It would be very good to reach Tuscany, where no one had ever heard of the House of Rochester and wouldn’t accidentally make her feel mortally injured by mentioning the name.
Her mother was watching her compose herself with far too knowing eyes.
“Go on,” Lucie said hoarsely.
“There was a situation at Ashdown. The countess cannot stay there for the time being.”
“I know.”
“I suspected you knew, after yesterday’s outrageous interlude. However, I would have sought your advice either way—she cannot stay hidden at Wycliffe Hall any longer. The house is vast, and Wycliffe is inattentive, but eventually the staff will talk.”
She spoke with an utter lack of inflection, the tone saved for matters she found truly, deeply tedious. Admittedly, hiding a runaway noblewoman was highly scandalous. Why was her mother risking trouble by sheltering a vulnerable woman? A sense of duty toward an old friend? Wishing to spite her husband? Whatever the motivation, she, Lucie, had to help keep Tristan’s mother safe. Tristan. It hurt. But she would have to let him know. At the very least, she would have to send him a cable.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked, trying to focus on the pressing task at hand rather than her aching chest.
“She needs to leave Britain posthaste,” her mother said. “However, I prefer for her to stay in the familiar climes of Europe. Her son’s death has left her . . . a little unwell. Any added stresses from living among, say, Americans, would be her undoing.” Her eyes assumed a piercing quality. “Can you do this?”
Lucie shrugged. “Yes.”
For every prostitute and her baby she’d sent to a halfway house, she had helped a noblewoman disappear: the pregnant, unwed relations of titled men,
who wanted to keep their children; ladies who could not file for divorce.
“Well, I’m glad,” her mother said, the stern set of her mouth relaxing.
“It costs,” Lucie warned. “A lot.”
“It should pose no problem.”
“Oh?”
“Wycliffe has his faults,” her mother said. “But tightfistedness is not one of them. A prudent woman may set aside a considerable fortune over the course of thirty years.” She looked a little smug saying this.
“I see,” Lucie said slowly. “Very well—I shall refer you to people who will assist you.”
Her mother stilled, and then a worried furrow appeared between her brows. “You won’t be involved in this . . . operation?” She sounded worried, too.
“My contacts are capable.”
She stepped around her carpetbag and walked to her desk, which was already neatly tidied up for abandonment.
She opened the drawer and laid out a blank sheet of paper, pen, ink, and a lump of sealing wax.
Her mother had followed and hovered, watching intently as her pen scratched across the paper.
“Cecily confessed to scattering the pamphlets around Claremont,” she said when Lucie was setting her signature.
Her pen slipped, adding an extra swirl to her name. “I know.”
“Apparently, she feared you would come to replace her in my affections after we had conversed at Claremont in a friendly manner. You are my daughter, after all. The thought of not being first anymore put her in a panic of sorts, and I understand she went to your room with the intention of causing you some mischief and saw the pamphlets.”
Lucie sprinkled sand over the letter. This confession could simply be Cecily’s latest manipulation, to flatter her aunt and make her think her affections were worth causing havoc in a ducal palace.
“She has shown an admirable combative spirit,” she allowed. “Unfortunately, she applied it badly.”
The countess shifted from one foot to the other. “Her conduct has been a great disappointment to us.”
Lucie lit the candle to melt the sealing wax. “Will you send her to live with Aunt Clotilde in Switzerland? I remember you wanted to send me to her whenever I was a great disappointment to you.” Which had been often.
“She is set to leave for Bern tomorrow,” her mother admitted after a pause.
“Huh.” Aunt Clotilde was a dragon. She could almost feel sorry for her cousin. Almost.
“Cecily never truly recovered from her parents’ death,” her mother said. “She has a potent fear of being alone in the world.”
Lucie shook her head. Even confined, a woman could still make choices. “I had the impression you and Tommy adored her.”
She poured the liquefied wax and pressed her seal into the splash of red.
She would visit the postal office on her way to the train station and have a message sent to Tristan. He wanted to find his mother, then work for her forgiveness, he had said. A dull ache filled her at the memory. After what she had said to him at Wycliffe Hall, he probably considered them even. She could safely assume that he would not work for a thing. She willed another burning surge of tears back down. It had crossed her mind to seek him out and have a conversation, like an adult woman in possession of all her rational faculties. But what would it change? The laws were what they were. And her fears would not simply dissolve into thin air. She would only prolong the inevitable: more heartache.
Distance. Distance would help.
She handed her mother the letter. “This will help you.”
Her mother eyed the envelope with suspicion. “What precisely am I to do with it?”
“It contains my letter of recommendation. Furthermore, the addresses and code words for a woman who forges travel documents and a woman who shall select a suitable destination and take care of the logistics. I must ask you to treat this confidentially at all costs.”
“Oh,” Lady Wycliffe said weakly. “I must seek out two more people?”
The ignorance. “You wish to make someone disappear without a trace. Not just anyone, the wife of a horrid and powerful man. Believe me, this is as expedient as I can make it—years of work were required to make it so, in fact.”
“Very well.” Her mother slid the envelope into the inner pocket of her jacket, which was prudent. A reticule could be grabbed by a pickpocket. “Are you certain you can’t be directly involved?”
“I would, but I must catch a train.”
Her mother’s gaze slid to the trunk and open carpetbag next to the door, then traveled back to Lucie.
“You surprise me,” she said. “All things aside, I had not taken you for a woman who runs.”
Lucie blinked. “Well. And I had not taken you for a woman who fights.”
A slight intake of breath. Then her mother gave a tiny nod. “I suppose we all run and fight in our own way when the occasion requires it. Don’t we.” Again she looked at the bag. “You are planning to travel awhile, I suppose.”
“Awhile, yes.”
A pause.
“Would we be able to find you?”
“No.” Why would they wish to find her?
An emotion flickered in her mother’s gaze, erratic and fleeting like a candle flame fighting the draft. And then her gaze became distracted. “Oh, who have we here?”
Lucie glanced back over her shoulder. Boudicca, impudent traitress, had finally deigned to stroll from her hiding place. Ignoring Lucie entirely, she began circling the visitor’s skirt, delicately sniffing the hem.
“How curious,” said her mother. “So this is where you went.”
She bent to stroke Boudicca’s glinting black fur with a familiar ease.
Ice spread through Lucie’s chest. “What do you mean?”
“Hm?” Her mother glanced up, her gloved knuckles still rubbing behind Boudicca’s ear.
“You said ‘this is where you went.’ As if . . . as if you knew her.”
“But I do. I’m quite certain this is one of Lady Violet’s offspring.”
Lady Violet?
Her mother’s hand gave an impatient flick. “The one who won second prize at the London Exhibition.”
Her mind was blank. No, she had not paid attention to her mother’s obscure preoccupation with cat shows, back in the day.
“I should have known he would give her to you,” her mother said. “Lord knows why. You were nothing but prickly to him.”
The whole world went quiet.
Foreboding ran coldly down her spine. “He?” she said. “Who is he?”
“Why, Lord Ballentine, of course.”
For a beat, she was suspended in thin air, disoriented.
“You must be mistaken.” Thoughts were clanging around in her head, not making sense. “It could be any cat.”
Her mother looked affronted. “Any cat? Hardly. It took me years to have the breeder achieve such a look: black fur, a white-tipped tail. The long-legged build. I would know the line anywhere. How old is she?”
Her voice reached Lucie through a ringing noise.
“Ten,” she managed. “Ten years old in autumn.”
“Then this very much confirms what I said. I remember it clearly; Lord Ballentine took one of the kittens during his last summer at Wycliffe Hall—ten years ago. He claimed it was for a young lady who was in dire need of company—he reasoned very charmingly; I remember because I never give cats away lightly. But I indulged him because I owed his mother a debt, one I will consider settled in excess after this ghastly—child, are you all right?”
She was not. Her throat was tight. Her nose burned, her eyes pricked hotly. She had never been more wrong. She turned and staggered along the corridor, into the kitchen. She stood where she had slapped him, a hand clutched over her middle.
“Goodness.” Her mother had followed, and he
r expression was concerned. “I confused you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. Everything is perfectly clear.”
Tristan had left Boudicca on her doorstep. She was the young lady in need of company.
She watched her mother spin in a bewildered little circle, how she took in shabby cabinets and the cast-iron sink of a commoner’s kitchen, foreign objects to her eyes, the kitchen an alien place.
All those years, she had despised him.
All those years had been kinder, warmer, more purpose-filled because of her four-legged friend. At some points, her only friend.
What if I always liked and admired you, Lucie. . . . I had wanted you for half my bloody life. . . .
She had brushed his words aside instantly, because her temper had been high, and besides, who could ever really know with Tristan?
And had she taken him seriously, what would it have done to her?
She had known she could resist a handsome, wicked, clever, unexpectedly tender rogue.
She had known she could not resist a handsome, wicked, clever, unexpectedly tender rogue who had quietly held her in his affections half his life.
“I’m such a fool,” she said.
Her mother made a triumphant noise. She had discovered a wine bottle next to the ice chest, still half-full and recorked, and lunged for it.
“Here,” she said, pouring wine into a tea mug. “You need a sip.”
“Thank you, Mother.” She meant it, and her mother heard it—she looked up midpour, wearing a startled expression.
“I don’t have time,” Lucie said. “I must catch a train.”
Chapter 38