“Thank you,” she said, her attention on the tea tray as if it had been the one speaking. “I had not thought how the matter might seem to you.”
“Then you’ll stay? Keep to the case?” He held his breath.
She lifted her eyes. “Yes. Through the end of the week at the very least, since you have paid already. Longer than that, if need be, and if you wish it.”
“I wish it.” He was blurting, he knew—but God, it was so good to know she believed him. He wouldn’t have to sort out on his own how to protect his father and Lord Deverell and the other fools who’d formed the tontine so long before.
“One point that strikes me as strange,” Miss Benton said slowly, “is that everyone in Deverell Place, from scullery maid to the earl himself, knows that Charles paid visits to Lady Deverell’s bedchamber. But the earl is now choosing not to admit that.”
“Quite natural, it seems to me,” George replied. “He’s preserving his own reputation. A man never wants to be known as a cuckold.”
“True, though his lady seems determined he shall be.” Miss Benton leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “It was one scene of drama after another during the night, and it needn’t have been. Her ladyship could have said she didn’t know what had happened, she’d never seen the man before, he fell from the trellis before he ever reached her window. Instead, she tearfully told her husband that she and Charles had only exchanged kisses before he left.”
“You doubt her tale?” Fair enough. George doubted it, too.
“My brother wouldn’t climb a trellis only for kisses!” She rolled her eyes. “Well, he might. Charles does love a trellis.”
“Never mind the trellis,” George said. “Whoever left the note will soon know that Deverell survived, and that person will try again to kill him. You’ve got to get back into that household and keep watch again.”
She slapped her hands on her knees, an unmistakable gesture of farewell. “If I must, but I can’t stay any longer at the moment. I need to see how Charles fares, and then I’ll go in to Bow Street and talk to the magistrate about covering his cases myself.”
“Because you don’t want to lose his salary?”
She stood, shaking out her skirts. “Obviously. It is what we live on. If I can do Charles’s work while he’s unable, the magistrate might not stop his pay.”
That was a fair assumption, yet the necessity of it seemed unjust. “You work very hard, Miss Benton.”
“And you don’t work at all.” She stood. “There, we’ve exchanged obvious observations.”
He had to smile. Miss Benton had a beautiful speaking voice. Her accent was undistinguished, neither the swallowed consonants of the wealthy or the blurry vowels of London’s working class. But the timbre, oh!—it vibrated through one like the playing of a glass harmonica. Swooping, vibrant, crystalline. She could have insulted him in every way, and he’d have leaned into the sound of her voice on the tips of his toes.
Thus it had gone the first time they’d formally met, too. It was at the Bedford Square house of his old friend, Lady Isabel Jenks—who had married a former Bow Street Runner, Callum Jenks, and assisted him in private investigations. Just recently, Lady Isabel had stepped back from active investigation due to her expectant state; still, one never found more interesting conversation than at the Jenkses’ place.
On the occasion when George met Miss Benton, she was in deep conversation with Jenks about disguise. “The ton notices only the clothing of servants,” she’d been saying. “If I’m placed among his staff, Wexley won’t even realize we’ve met before.”
Wexley. He’d thought the red-haired woman was familiar, and now he placed her. She’d helped rescue Lord Wexley, George’s brother-in-law, from an attempted murder at a ball celebrating the man’s betrothal to George’s sister. It had been a year or more by now, hadn’t it? Yet he knew Miss Benton’s name, and her face wasn’t the sort one forgot.
“Wexley would know her at once,” George blurted to Jenks. “She’s so plain.”
This was, of course, the wrong thing to say. It wasn’t even what he’d meant to say. Better for him to have called her plainspoken, or plain and straightforward in her manner. Plain of dress, plain of hairstyle; even those would have been marginally acceptable.
Yet what he’d meant was none of those at all. He’d meant that Miss Benton was not a woman of fashion, so decidedly that she made fashion seem irrelevant. She was so capable that she made chivalry seem like self-indulgence and mannerly words a useless frippery.
Before he had the chance to bumble through any apology or explanation, the lady’s head had whipped around. “Jenks,” she said sweetly, fixing George with a narrow stare. “You might mention to the gentleman that the front of a lady’s face has nothing to do with the brain behind it.”
Jenks looked amused, damn the man. “Right. Lord Northbrook—”
“You might also mention,” Miss Benton said, “that a woman’s appearance has nothing to do with how good an investigator she is.”
Jenks tried again. “I was about to—”
“And,” she added ruthlessly, “you could note that it is most rude to comment on the appearance of a lady when one’s opinion has not been solicited.”
Jenks gave up; he simply made a gesture from Miss Benton to George. “You heard the lady.”
“Since I heard him, I’ll warrant he heard me just as well,” Miss Benton sauced back.
Isabel looked as if she wanted to laugh, but she schooled her features almost as soon as George turned suspicious eyes upon her. “Lord Northbrook,” Isabel hastened to explain, “is a very old friend.”
Miss Benton looked him over. “He doesn’t look that old.” She studied him for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “We’ve met before. You were at the ball celebrating the engagement of the Duke of Ardmore’s daughter.”
“I was indeed,” George said. “You see, the Duke of Ardmore is my father, which makes his daughter my sister. So I was rather expected to be there.”
“Well done, then,” she replied, and turned away from him again to pick up the thread of her conversation with Jenks.
And there he was, standing like a ninny. He’d done wrong, and she’d put him in his place, and there was nothing for it but to grovel. “I beg your pardon, Miss Benton.” He spoke up. “What I said was flippant and rude.”
She did not face him again, but she went very still. The back of her neck looked vulnerable, a pale stripe between the collar of her dark gown and her fiery pinned-up hair. “It was honest” was all she said.
“No, it was flippant and rude,” George repeated, trying to explain. “Those are the qualities I’ve cultivated. Not honesty. I assure you, honesty would get me nowhere in high society.”
“Politeness would,” Isabel pointed out with all the unhelpfulness of a lifelong friend.
“Men don’t have to be polite,” said George. “Especially not ducal heirs. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be. And I should.”
The stern posture had relaxed a bit; Miss Benton showed him her profile. “Yes. I agree. And if there’s an apology in there—”
“Oh, there definitely is. I apologize for my flippant and rude words that were not at all honest.”
“Then I accept it, with the understanding that if you ever insult my person or ignore my intelligence again, I will give you cause to regret it. Physical cause.”
Strange how soothed he felt by her reply, coupled with a threat as it was. “You intrigue me. But not enough to want to discover what you mean.”
With this, she granted him a smile. “Truth be told, Lord Northbrook, you’re not the first to call me plain. I suppose I was piqued to have it be your first judgment of me, when surely the Jenkses have told you of my abilities.”
“And those are the relevant qualities. Of course.”
He hadn’t forgotten it since—and not because of her threat. Because he’d been wrong, and she’d been gracious enough not to hold a grudge.
Since that inauspicious meeting, she had stayed with his godfather to make sure the man didn’t bleed to death. She’d shared news with George by the stairs each night after toiling all day. She had agreed to continue working for him when she already had so many other jobs to do.
Yes, she was gracious indeed. And she worked damned hard, and he wanted her at his side. On his side.
She was pulling on her gloves now, her expression as distant as if she were already on the way to her next destination. The only reason George had a right to her time was because he’d paid for some of it.
But what to do for the remainder of the week? Would keeping a watch on Deverell be the most effective way to protect him, or would it be better to trace the old earl’s attacker? What would be the best way to use Miss Benton’s unique skills? Could he even ask her to keep watch, burdened as she was by the need to carry out her brother’s work?
And then it came to George: the one thing that was more likely to yield answers than spying.
He sprang to his feet, cursing as he barked his shin against the tea table. “Miss Benton. I’ve an idea. For the rest of the week—or beyond, if need be.”
She flexed her fingers in their gloves of tan kid. “You’re not planning to ask me to be a housemaid again, are you?”
“No, no.” He waved the possibility away. “You were a terrible housemaid anyway.”
She laughed, a quick peal too soon cut off.
“We need to cast a wider net,” George said. “Collect gossip. You need to be in the midst of the ton, not hanging about its fringes cleaning fireplaces and listening at doors when you can.”
“Admirable summary of my time in the Deverell household,” she granted. “You pay a good wage, and if it doesn’t require me to clean out grates, so much the better. What do you have in mind?”
His idea was coming into focus, like lining up a camera obscura with just the right sort of light. “I want you to listen to gossip. Women talk about all sorts of things when men aren’t around, surely, and such secrets might be relevant to this case. Someone saw something, or heard something, or knows something—”
“Yes, but what would you have me do? Parade through Almack’s with an ear trumpet? You’d have to get me a voucher, and the proprietresses won’t be eager to grant one to ordinary Miss Benton.”
“So you’ll have to be someone else. Someone fashionable and tonnish. Maybe even a bit fast, so you’re always at the center of a swirl of gossip.”
She looked much struck by the idea. “A noble by-blow would serve the purpose, maybe. Or shall I have made a scandalous marriage, which I must now escape?”
He grinned at her. “Perhaps both at once. How would you like to pose as my notorious cousin, arrived lately from the Continent?”
Chapter Three
“I don’t like this plan, Cass,” said Charles. “Not one bit.”
Cass had expected her brother to say this; she’d predicted it word for word. She’d even echoed his posture, the crossed arms and stubborn chin, and mouthed it along with him.
Charles was never patient, and being unable to do what he wanted put him in a bad humor. His bedchamber bore every sign of a temper ready to snap, from the broken cake of soap atop his shaving stand to the discarded periodicals beside him on the bed. The room smelled of liniment; expensive, no doubt. The surgeon would have been expensive, too.
And now Charles couldn’t work; he could only keep to bed and loudly dislike things.
He did not deserve sisterly compassion, and so Cass replied, “I don’t like that you climbed the trellis at Deverell Place and fell off of it. And broke your leg. So, if you don’t like Lord Northbrook’s plan, we’re even.”
Stretched out on his bed atop the covers, Charles eyed his right leg—splinted and wrapped and propped on a bolster—with yet more dislike. “I didn’t fall. The trellis broke. And I was collecting information.”
Cass kicked the footboard of her brother’s bed. “About Lady Deverell’s breasts.”
He almost smiled. “Secondary to my main purpose, I assure you.”
She glared at him.
Now he did smile. Smirked, really, looking like a smug shark. A smug shark with coppery hair. “Fine, but my main purpose was no less important than Lady Deverell’s breasts.”
The devil of it was that he was perfectly sincere, and annoyingly able to pursue his own pleasures alongside an investigation. Charles’s natural gifts with people were far greater than Cass’s, and from him she had seen how to shape one’s behavior to the situation. He was flirtatious with this person, stern with that one; dull-witted to bring out the superiority of an arrogant witness, then jovial with one who resented the law but wouldn’t mind a friendly drink. The sluttish servant was a role, too—though one Charles played with particular relish, it being oriented to his own pleasures.
Just as Lord Northbrook behaved, telling Cass he cultivated rudeness and flippancy for his own enjoyment. Oh, these men.
“I don’t have time for this,” she muttered. “I have to get back to Ardmore House.”
“Why do you have to stay there?” Charles was using his Grumpy Brother voice again.
She smoothed the bedcovers at his feet. “Because a bastard ducal cousin fleeing a marriage gone bad wouldn’t stay in a hotel. And before you suggest I stay here at home—no. The Ardmore cousin would certainly not stay with a random Bow Street Runner who has a broken leg.”
“I still don’t like it.” Charles’s favorite weapon: persistence. It sometimes succeeded when far more dramatic weapons failed. Rather like erosion.
Cass was immune to erosion. She would not be eroded. “It’s not as though I’m posing as Lord Northbrook’s mistress,” she reminded her brother. “I’m to be his fake cousin, and married to boot. I could have a nose like Napoleon and a chin like the Habsburgs for all it matters to his lordship.”
She’s so plain. Would she never forget those words? But they didn’t matter. She’d be plain in silks and satins. Garbed in scandal, the most fashionable cloth of all.
When Charles still looked mulish at this reassurance, Cass realized, “That’s not the problem, is it? What Lord Northbrook is planning? You don’t fear for my virtue, such as it is. You thought I’d be here to take care of you.” She sat at the foot of his bed with a thump that made him howl for his injured leg. “Do have the courtesy to look ashamed of yourself.”
“How can I look ashamed when you’re sitting on my broken leg? You should look ashamed.”
“I never touched it. I only sat next to it. And you should know that I have to work, Charles. I can’t play nursemaid to you.”
He messed about with the stack of periodicals at his side, looking chastened. Almost.
“We were each of us getting five pounds a week from Northbrook for the Deverell House job,” she reminded him. “What have you done with your first payment?”
Charles’s brandy-brown gaze, so much like her own, slid away.
“Did the surgeon take it?” she pressed.
“No, Northbrook covered the fee. Said it was only right since I’d broken my leg while working for him. An expense of the investigation.”
“Thank the Lord for that.” The Duke of Ardmore’s financial troubles were legion, but his heir still commanded far greater resources than a pair of fallen gentlefolk who worked for Bow Street. “So, you still have your money?”
Charles picked up a periodical and began flipping through it.
“You’d be far more convincing if you weren’t looking through an old issue of La Belle Assemblée.” The magazines were clearly a gift from their landlady, Mrs. Jellicoe, who doted upon Charles and also collected fashion plates.
But Cass had suspected the answer to her question before she’d asked it—twice. Charles’s money had gone for whatever caught his fancy: expensive handkerchiefs, flowers for a pretty lady who winked at him, drinks all around for the Bow Street Runners. Money slipped away from Charles as if it were meaningless. He had always spent like a
wealthy person.
She stood again, rummaging through her reticule. “I’ve still got my fee for the first week, and you’ll have to live on it somehow.” She eyed Charles’s trousers, slit up the right side to accommodate the bracing for his leg. “You’ll be needing some new clothing once you’re healed, for one thing.”
He tossed aside the pictures of spring fashions from three years before. “If you give me your pay, what are you going to live on?”
“Good for you! You finally remembered to ask about my welfare.” She pulled out coins by the fistful, raining shillings and pence into the basin upon the shaving stand. She studied the effect, then forced a final coin on end into the broken cake of shaving soap. “While I’m staying at Ardmore House, Lord Northbrook will cover my expenses. And he’ll continue paying me at the same weekly rate.”
His brow creased. “I still don’t like it.”
Slam. She slapped the cake of soap down so hard, the coin flipped out of it and went flying. “Don’t you? Well, since you’ve done exactly what you do like for the past week”—and for twenty-six years before that—“then perhaps this will be good for you. It will expand your mental bounds.”
Charles’s mouth hung open.
It was so much like hers, his face; all angles and planes. They were the fair spit of each other, their grandmother had often observed, alike from their dark red hair to their strong jaws. With adulthood, Charles had stretched a few inches taller, but his face still mirrored her own. At his stunned expression, at the wounded look in his eyes, Cass felt as if she’d hurt her own self.
Crouching, she felt about on the floor for the fallen coin. When she laid hands on it, she stood again and dropped it into the basin with the other money. “I’ll come check on you when I can.”
Charles made a thunderous sort of grumble.
“Or”—Cass tried for levity—“I’ll see if Janey can come peek in on you.”
One of their favorite Bow Street informants, Janey Trewes was a sometime prostitute and frequent pickpocket. She also sold clothes—sometimes right off her heavily swathed body—and was, overall, the most resourceful person Cass had ever known.
Lady Notorious Page 3