Six Degrees of Scandal

by Caroline Linden

  Jamie put out his hand to help her up, but Olivia climbed to her feet without it, pretending she hadn’t seen the gesture. As it was he stood much too close to her, and she thrust the book at him. “It’s a ledger,” she said. “Even I can see that much, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.”

  He flipped it open. “I don’t suppose Clary’s name is in it.”

  “No.” Her voice came out in a squeak. He hadn’t stepped away, and she was trapped between his body and the cabinet behind her. His attention was focused on the book, but Olivia’s every nerve seemed tense and alert to him. Helplessly she stared at his hands as he turned the pages. His beautiful hands that had once held her so tenderly and passionately. Out of the blue she remembered that he was adept with each; as a lad he had amused her and his sisters by writing silly messages with one hand, and equally ridiculous replies with the other. Now he absently flexed one hand every few minutes, still shaking off the effects of being hit by a shovel—wielded by her.

  With some effort she tore her eyes away. Her private vow not to touch him again had been a hard one to make, but a necessary one. Even a simple touch, purely out of courtesy or friendship, would be a searing reminder that he had once been so much more than her friend.

  “I believe this is going to be a godsend,” Jamie murmured, startling her. While she had been trying to hide how much he affected her still, he’d been reading the diary, trying to solve her problem.

  “Really?” Olivia mustered a smile. “I hope so. My luck is sure to turn soon.” Too late, she winced at the words. Henry used to say that, with great confidence, and he’d been spectacularly wrong.

  Jamie just grinned. “I’m staying here tonight.”

  She jerked backward in alarm. “What?”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “Not . . . that. I should have asked. I meant to say, you shouldn’t be here alone. If Clary, or anyone else, came along and discovered you, there’s no one nearby to come to your aid.”

  “I hoped I wouldn’t be here long enough for him to find me . . .” But Jamie had. He was clever and resourceful and he knew her well, but Clary was ruthless and determined. If Jamie could find her, Clary could as well. Suddenly she felt every whistling draft in the isolated cottage, and the enormity of her task loomed over her.

  “Let’s hope not,” Jamie said, “but just in case, I would feel better if you let me sleep by the fire.”

  By the fire. Of course. Color flooded her face as she realized her mind had immediately jumped to the thought of sharing the only bed with him. Of course he didn’t mean that. “Very well.”

  There was a pallet upstairs, rolled up under the eaves. Jamie carried it downstairs and laid it near the wide hearth. Olivia tidied up the remains of her dinner as Jamie organized the room to his liking. He barred the shutters and door, then pushed the table so it stood squarely between the pallet and the door. He checked his pistol and put it at the ready. Olivia fetched as many blankets and pillows as she could spare and made up the bed on the floor. She gave it a rueful glance. The pallet was surely meant for the children of the house, and it looked ludicrously small for someone of Jamie’s height. “I fear it’s not going to be comfortable,” she said in apology.

  “Out of the wind and near the fire: that’s comfort in my book.” He had brought one of the chairs near the fire. “Thank you, Livie.”

  She closed her eyes. After she’d disappeared without a trace, putting his sister in danger, then assaulted him with a shovel when he came after her—to help her—Jamie thanked her for letting him sleep on her floor.

  “It’s late,” he added gently. “You should go to bed.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. It had been a long day and she was suddenly exhausted. For weeks now she had felt as if a dark cloud hovered menacingly above her, creeping closer and closer until she could barely breathe from fear of being choked by it. In the course of the last few hours, though, it had receded somewhat, driven back by Jamie’s forceful confidence. He’d made her laugh. He’d eased her worries about Penelope. And now he had sworn to help extricate her from Henry’s tangled affairs, whatever they might be, and sweep away that dark cloud forever. It was almost too much to comprehend in one day. Besides, she’d already read Henry’s diary and made little sense of it. Perhaps it was best for Jamie to view it uninfluenced by her frustration. “I will. Good night.”

  She went upstairs and readied herself for bed. When she had blown out her lamp and lay in the darkness, listening to the now-familiar wind howling mournfully past the eaves, she could hear something else. His footsteps below. A soft thud, then another; his boots coming off.

  Unbidden her brain called up memories of Jamie pulling off his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt and trousers. But her memories were of the stripling young man, still lean and lanky, disrobing in the hazy sunlight of a summer afternoon. Jamie of today had filled out, broad-shouldered and strong. Against all her wishes, her mind dwelled on what he would look like now, without his shirt on. How he might look at this very moment, stretched out on the pallet before the hearth, the firelight painting his skin gold. How different her life would have been if only . . .

  Olivia pulled the blankets over her head to muffle any more provocative sounds—and thoughts—and somehow managed to fall asleep.

  When she awoke after a surprisingly deep slumber, the sun was slanting through the tiny windows under the low roof. Something made her lie still, hardly breathing. A thud sounded faintly up the stairs, the front door opening or closing, and it all came back to her. Jamie was here.

  Olivia exhaled. She was glad of it, really she was. It was nerve-racking to be alone, always worried that Clary would walk around the corner at any moment with his terrifying smile and menacing air. Jamie’s presence also wound her nerves tight, but for different reasons. She had nothing to fear from him. And while he couldn’t prevent Clary from finding her, his company gave her courage that she could survive such an encounter.

  When she went downstairs, dressed and composed, he looked up with a grin. “Good morning.”

  She had to smile. He crouched before the fire, newly built up, angling bread over the flames with a toasting fork. Gratefully she came to the edge of the hearth—it was cold enough to see her breath upstairs—and inspected his cooking. “Bread with cheese?”

  “No ordinary bread with cheese.” He pulled the fork from the fire and shoveled the bread onto a plate. “Taste it, but beware: the cheese is hot.”

  Gingerly Olivia took a tiny bite. The cheese, crowned by crispy brown bubbles, had melted into the toasted bread. “It’s delicious,” she mumbled, taking another bite.

  “I know.” Jamie took the second piece of bread from the fire. “When I was a sad and lonely university student, far from my mother’s table, my mates and I would roast anything over the fire when we were hungry. Apples and pears were best. Bread was also good, but the day we put cheese on top of it . . .” He closed his eyes and bit into his bread, making a throaty noise of pleasure as he chewed, his expression one of rapture.

  A shiver went through her. The intimacy of breakfasting with him suddenly seemed to thicken the air. All these years, this could have been her life—this, and more. Yet again the weight of all she’d lost pressed on her heart.

  Jamie opened his eyes. “Besides, there was precious little in your larder.” If he felt any charge in the atmosphere, he didn’t show it. “Eat, Livie.”

  She ducked her head and obeyed. It was disconcerting to think that she was still haunted by things he appeared to have tactfully forgotten. After all, she had been the one to insist they could remain friends, and she had been very careful to keep it so. She even wanted it to be that way. It was too late for anything else, and she would have to remember that.

  “I read Henry’s book last night.” He paused to catch a bit of cheese before it fell from his bread. “If he wasn’t a smuggler, he was engaged in some very shady dealings of another sort. By my rough tally, he paid out more than two thousand pounds over t
he last two years of his life.”

  Olivia choked. “How much?”

  He pushed a mug across the table, filled with warm tea. “Twenty-two hundred pounds. There’s no income, but I daresay Mr. Brewster has that book.”

  “He said not . . .”

  Jamie shrugged. “I wouldn’t admit it, either. If the price of transporting goods was two thousand, I imagine the income from the sales exceeded ten or twelve thousand.”

  She put down her bread. “That is impossible.”

  “We’d have to review Mr. Brewster’s books to know, and I wager he’s hidden them very carefully by now, if not destroyed them.” He stopped at her expression. “Impossible for a man to spend ten thousand in two years? Think, Livie. You know it’s not. Especially when one considers all the people who must be paid for their silence. Not that it matters now.”

  Her mind raced. Bitterly she thought of her canceled annuity. If Henry had that much money flowing through his hands, he hardly needed her pittance, and yet he’d taken it, too. “Why not?”

  “I thought about it all night. Why would Clary come after you? It seems Henry was a vital piece of the operation and once he died, the chain was fatally broken. Every other friend of his vanished from view, you said; only Clary kept prowling around. Aside from any . . . er . . . repulsive propositions, he wanted something from you. He conspired with Lord Stratford to get my sister on a yacht where she couldn’t escape his demands for information about you, and he told her Stratford wanted to find you as much as he did. Stratford himself told his son you had information he wanted. Since you never met Lord Stratford, it couldn’t be something personal that he wanted. Clary and Stratford must have been referring to something else, some object Clary thinks you have.” Jamie paused as the color bled from Olivia’s face. “I believe Henry smuggled something into England right before his death, but failed to deliver it, and they want it.”

  “Oh, that’s just too much!” she exclaimed furiously. “Of course I don’t have anything but they’ll never believe that!”

  “We’re not going to persuade Lord Clary to leave you be,” Jamie retorted. “This item—if it exists—doesn’t belong to him at all. Even if you did have it, you would hardly invite him to take it and wish him well.”

  “You’re right.” She calmed a bit. “But I know you must be thinking of using this mystery item in some way. How?”

  “You know me too well,” he said in admiration. “Or is my devious nature becoming more obvious?”

  She laughed reluctantly. “The former, I hope! Although a little deviousness would be helpful now, too.”

  His eyes darkened and his smile slipped, and something like pain flickered over his face. But it was gone in an instant, and when he spoke his voice was the same. “I never could hide anything from you. Still, this isn’t the best plan I’ve ever had.” He held up one hand, ticking off on his fingers. “First, no such piece may exist; Clary could be utterly mistaken and as you say, it would be nigh impossible to convince him of that. Second, even if it does, we don’t know the slightest thing about it. Third, we haven’t got it or anything remotely close that could be used to dupe Clary into revealing himself. And fourth . . .”

  “Fourth?” she prompted as he fell silent.

  “Fourth . . .” Jamie avoided her rapt gaze. “Looking for it could attract even more attention. There’s no telling who else might suspect Henry had things hidden away.”

  Oh. Olivia sat back, the black cloud billowing around her again. As if Clary weren’t bad enough, there might be more people waiting to see if she had any of Henry’s smuggled valuables. “Perhaps I should flee to America,” she said darkly. “It can’t be any more daunting than this.”

  “It never hurts to have a plan in reserve.” Jamie pushed the book into the center of the table, where Olivia eyed it with displeasure. Perhaps she ought to throw it on the fire after all. “But I think we have good odds. What was the solicitor’s name who turned you away yesterday?”

  “Mr. Armand. But he said he burned everything from Mr. Charters, who was Henry’s real solicitor.”

  Jamie nodded. “I’m sure he told you that. My father used to be an attorney. They don’t destroy clients’ papers blithely. If anything, most solicitors are guilty of keeping things far longer than they ought. It’s tedious to sort out what should be destroyed and what should be kept, and it’s far easier just to pack it all away. Even if Mr. Armand knew he had proof of illegal activity that his client wanted destroyed, he might still keep parts of the record—to prove himself innocent, if nothing else. Think of the suspicion he would be under: he bought the practice of Mr. Charters, who turned out to aid and abet smugglers. Did he know that when he bought it? Was that, perhaps, part of his desire to have it? Perhaps he wanted entree to those smugglers for his own purposes . . .”

  “Well,” Olivia managed to say. “That certainly is devious.”

  “With this much money at stake, never rule it out.”

  She simply hadn’t thought of it. She could barely comprehend the sum Jamie mentioned. Her mood grew dark as she thought of all the liars and cheaters she had to deal with. Henry, the selfish, lying cad. Clary, odious and cruel. Mr. Armand and possibly even Mr. Brewster, deliberately lying to her, uncaring of the danger—and poverty—they exposed her to, all to cover their own actions.

  “Livie?” Jamie’s soft voice broke through the black haze of fury enveloping her. She blinked and focused her gaze on him. “You went away,” he said. “Don’t despair. It’s not hopeless.”

  If not, it was only thanks to him. As wary as Olivia was, she couldn’t deny that she stood a much better chance of outwitting Clary with Jamie’s help. Only he believed she could save herself from this mess, and was willing to risk his own safety to help her—even after she whacked him with a shovel. A little voice inside her head whispered that she was risking all her hard-won detachment by doing this, and that she might rue this day for years to come if Jamie broke her heart again. But at this moment, Olivia thought it was worth the gamble. She had kept her head and her poise around Jamie for years, after all.

  She leaned forward and fixed a determined gaze on him. “What should we do? I presume you have an idea, hopefully a very devious and underhanded one.”

  His brows rose with pleased surprise. “Hopefully?”

  “If Mr. Armand and Clary and all the rest can deceive and bully me, I feel no qualms about lying to them. What shall we do?”

  His grin grew wider. “I like the way you reason. We’re definitely going to tell some lies. And they are never going to bully you again.”

  Chapter 8

  The plan they conceived was both brilliantly simple and frighteningly brash.

  Jamie had stayed up late reading Henry’s diary from cover to cover. Nothing in it contradicted his theory that Henry had been a smuggler, but nothing confirmed it, either. Every entry listed a payment made to someone else, but not a single payment received. There had to be a book recording income, which must list Henry’s customers. If Lord Stratford and Clary were a representative sample, that could be dangerous knowledge, but Jamie thought it was better to know than not, if only to guard against any other lurking threats.

  Plumbing the depths of a ring of smugglers, though, wouldn’t necessarily help Olivia. It was unlikely that Clary would take such risks if he only wanted Henry’s personal papers. The logical answer was that he wanted something else, something far more valuable, but he needed the papers to find it. That meant Olivia had to get them before Clary could.

  “And those are the papers Mr. Armand kept,” Olivia guessed when he pointed it out.

  Jamie held up one hand. “Perhaps. I still think the London solicitor knows more than he told you.” Her jaw firmed, and her eyes flashed. Something inside Jamie sparked to life at the sight of her temper; it brought color and animation back to her face, and banished the anxious air that clung to her. “But Armand is closer, so we’ll deal with him first. Obviously he wouldn’t have sent you this b
ook if he’d realized what it is. This documents at least two years’ worth of smuggling.”

  Olivia threw a malevolent glance at the little book. “I still can’t believe it . . .”

  “I could be wrong,” Jamie allowed, but he doubted it. There were only so many explanations for entries like Ten Pounds, six shillings to Capn. B (Madonna). Henry Townsend had been one bold fellow, openly recording his payments to local contacts who either hid or transported the illicit goods. Jamie appreciated that now, as it would make his and Olivia’s task much easier.

  “But you think he hasn’t burned everything else,” Olivia said, returning to the main point. “You think Mr. Armand still has useful information.”

  “If we were wagering, I’d lay a large sum he does.”

  She pressed her lips together. “He lied to me.”

  “Probably.”

  “He won’t do it again,” she vowed. “I’m going back to his office.”

  Jamie grinned. That was his plan, and he was pleased Olivia agreed. “We should. I think we can—”

  “No.” She avoided his startled gaze. “Not we, Jamie. I can do this.”

  Instinctively he scowled. “Of course you aren’t going alone.”

  “Why not?” She picked up the diary and seemed to weigh it in her hands. “I’ve managed thus far.”

  Primed to argue, Jamie had to clench his hands into fists to keep his mouth closed. Of course she was right. Not only had she borne up under Clary’s intimidation and Henry’s neglect, she had taken her fate into her own hands when she slipped away from London in secret to conduct her own investigation—and then defended herself violently when she felt threatened. There was steel in Olivia, more than most people recognized.

  As for him, his desire to leap to her aid and spare her any more unpleasantness might feel noble, but he had to remind himself that he had no right to overrule her. Even more, if he wanted to win her trust again, swooping in to order her about was not the way to do it. Olivia hadn’t liked that when she was a child, and he had no doubt she would put him in his place if he tried it now. As little as he liked it, he had to give way.