Lady Notorious

by Theresa Romain

  One had to believe it to be convincing in a role, but every investigator could tell tales of a role that had sunk in too deeply. The false dockworker who couldn’t shake the rough language when he went home. The sometime pawnbroker who saw worthless trinkets posing as items of value everywhere. The pretend pimp or madam who couldn’t help but wonder how many men one passed on the street each day had given coin for sex, had treated a prostitute roughly or given her a disease.

  Comparatively, this was a lovely role, but it would be all the more difficult to shed because of that. Someday soon she’d change sleek silks for stiff cotton; a bath brought by a servant for a cold morning wash in a basin.

  She ought to guard against the inevitable end, but if she carried it always at the forefront of her mind, she wouldn’t be who she needed to be for George.

  Not for George. For the role. The job. The case.

  Yet the two were tied together, and she was entwined with all.

  The most difficult part came each night, when she told George what she’d learned, and then they looked at each other as if that couldn’t be everything. There must be something more to come. The silence was tight, a tension that filled her from belly to breast, until every night she almost burst out with a “stay with me”—but instead he said good night, and she said it back as if there was nothing else on her mind, and she turned the key in the lock more to keep herself in than to keep anyone out.

  If she really were a duke’s bastard, she would take him to bed. Wouldn’t she? Surely she would. Everyone thought she was the sort of woman who would do such a thing, and they were living in the same house, and they were both unencumbered, and . . .

  It wouldn’t be the first time Cass had taken a man to bed on a case. But it was the first time she’d thought about it so much without leaping in to get a result. More and more, she wished they were together by choice, not because he’d hired her. She wished there were no case at all—though if there never had been, she’d never have come to know him.

  Maybe that would have been for the best.

  She wanted to take him to bed because she liked him. His words, his laughter, his curiosity. The gentle way he treated her and the burning way he looked at her. She liked it all.

  But liking something, wanting something, had never been reason enough for Cassandra Benton to pursue it. She knew too well: it would be difficult enough to leave this case with her head turned by luxury. If she surrendered her body to George, her heart would follow, and she would never recover from the impoverishment.

  Chapter Eight

  Any time George needed a respite from his thoughts, he came to the walled yard behind Ardmore House. Here he had once hung a block of wood and painted target circles upon it for a bit of archery. He could fire a few arrows to one side of the yard, away from the bustle of servants going to and from the small garden, the shed with tools, the washtub and boiler, the cook’s small flock of chickens.

  Here he was solitary, but not alone. On this particular morning, barely past dawn, he couldn’t be alone. His thoughts were too persistent. Intrusive, really. Obstinate. Unexpected.

  Much like Cassandra Benton.

  Since that night of the Harroughs’ ball, he’d never been able to forget the sight of her bared skin and scattered clothing. She wasn’t only Miss Benton anymore, or resourceful Cass. She was a woman, lovely in her trust of him. He held it gingerly as he would a glass ball, unwilling to let it go, unwilling to do anything that might harm it.

  Caught by it.

  He took up bow and arrow. Nocked the arrow, tightened his fingers around the string. Held the tension, tested it, let the arrow fly.

  Shh-whup. His ears caught the whisk of the arrow through space, the thump of its metal tip into the wood target.

  It was a short distance to shoot; hitting the target was as easy and unsatisfying as cracking a rotten nut. But it kept his arms in good trim. And that was more important day after day: his grip on the glass ball had become ever more determined—and ever more slippery.

  The more he thought about it—Cass—trust—those discarded stockings . . . the more difficult it was to remember that she was here because of a case. A genuine need; a true danger.

  Peck. Scratch. Peck peck peck.

  Little taps and scratches on George’s boots drew his notice downward. A feathery back, a dainty head with a leathery comb. Peck peck peck.

  The cook’s precious chickens. Let out of their coop each dawn, they pecked at George’s boots with mild interest.

  “There aren’t any insects on my boots,” George informed the chickens. “Or seeds or whatever it is you love.”

  The chickens ignored this sage insight and continued abusing his boots.

  George scowled. He attempted to ignore the attack on his footwear, aiming and letting another arrow fly. Shh-whup.

  Ting!

  Uh. Hmm. That one had bounced off the stone wall, rather far above the target. It lay on the ground now like a reproach.

  “Stop pecking,” he told the chickens. “You messed up my aim. You’ll be put into a soup if you keep that up.”

  Again, the chickens ignored him. They did, however, lose interest in the boots when those items proved not to be edible, and they swaggered away to peck and scratch outside the kitchen door.

  Now George did feel alone. There were too many questions on his mind, and he wanted to forget them. He wanted them, really, not to exist at all.

  But they did, and no number of arrows or chickens would undo that.

  Was he right about the case? Wasn’t he? He’d doubt everything if it hadn’t been for that note left beside his wounded godfather. FOUR LEFT. But there were five survivors left still, and when would the person who’d left the note—attacker or assassin or trickster—do something more?

  Why was he trying to protect his father, who clearly disbelieved in the danger?

  Why was he living here still, when both of his parents needed help and neither would take it?

  And why should anyone trust in his judgment, when he’d never done anything more significant than waste paper and chemicals on failed experiments? His recent experiment with the camera obscura had imprinted vague lines on treated paper, an image of Cavendish Square if one squinted and prayed. But after a few minutes in daylight, it had darkened and faded into nothing. As apt a symbol as any: everything he tried led eventually to nothing.

  He asked too many questions now, and thought too much about the answers. The influence of one Cassandra Benton.

  Narrowing his eyes, he fired another arrow. Shh-whup. Thump.

  This one hit the target.

  A breeze ruffled his hair. This passed for fresh air in London in summer: damp gusts with the promise of rain, then a heavy whiff of acrid coal. This passed for leisure: arrows fired at a bit of wood amidst every pedestrian and unpretty item necessary to run the household. He wasn’t solving anything this way.

  All right, then. Why shoot? Because arms in good trim were worth having. Because the sound of the arrow twanging on the bow string was pleasant. Because a marquess bred and raised to a title from birth couldn’t give rein to temper and annoyance, but he could fire an arrow into a block of wood and yank it out again.

  So he did. He retrieved the arrow from the ground, then yanked out each of the arrows he’d fired into the target. He touched his fingertip to the wounds left in the block of wood. Eventually it would be shot so full of holes that it wouldn’t hold an arrow anymore, and he’d have to replace it.

  When he turned in the direction of the house, hand bristling with arrows, Cass was standing at his heels.

  His shoulders jerked. “Ah—good morning. Didn’t hear you approach.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I have the velvet tread of a panther.”

  George raised an eyebrow. “Velvet tread? Have you been into my gothic novels?”

  “Maybe. It’s also possible you were distracted playing Robin Hood.” Her mouth was a tight line, pulled not by humor but something more pr
osaic. Distraction? Preoccupation? “I have to leave for a while. I just wanted to tell you because we had planned to go to Gunter’s today.”

  He squinted at the colorful sunrise sky. “Surely not before six o’clock in the morning.”

  “No, but I don’t know when I’ll be back. I received a note last night from Bow Street. There’s a case I need to work on.”

  You’re supposed to be working on my case, he thought, but he refrained from pointing this out. She’d never hidden her need to continue her brother’s work during his recovery. At the moment, dressed as she was in a plain dark gown that Selina’s modiste would never have touched, she was clearly not Mrs. Benedetti. She was Miss Benton, the Bow Street Runner.

  “Has something happened?” he asked, curious.

  “Something is always happening, and I need to find out what it is. I’m meeting an informant in Billingsgate. And after that?” Her shrug was elegantly noncommittal. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

  “Billingsgate? Where people sell all the fish? It must be . . . how far?” As George tucked away the arrows again, he tried to calculate the distance in his mind, then gave up. “Well, it’s some miles from here. Would you like use of the carriage?”

  “Oh, no.” Now Cass did smile. “I can’t go to Billingsgate in a crested carriage; what a spectacle I’d make. I’ll walk a few streets to get away from the nobs, then hire a hackney.”

  The nobs. He snorted. He liked getting away from the nobs sometimes himself. “Would you like company?”

  “I can go on my own.”

  “I never doubted it. You’re the investigator, and you don’t need my presence. But I’m very handsome and you might like having me around to look at.”

  A chicken scratching nearby paused, regarded George with a beady eye, then stalked away.

  Cass appeared no less skeptical. “You say the most sensible things, then the strangest things.”

  “Part of my appeal,” George said. “But my question was sincere, and no more nor less than what I meant. I know you don’t need company, but would you like it?”

  “Would I like it?” She sounded bewildered by the question.

  “Yes. Company. Would you? I ask because I know you are used to working with your brother as a partner. Of course you would not request my presence because you want to gaze upon my masculine beauty. At least, not only because of that.”

  “You praise yourself more than you do any lady,” she said, but she was smiling again. Which was, of course, why he’d made such foolish jokes.

  “Come along if you like, then,” she agreed.

  Which was also why he’d made such foolish jokes. On that, at least, his mind was clear and he’d no questions.

  Stowing his bow and arrows in the cluttered shed, he noticed a slouchy gardener’s hat. He clapped it onto his bare head, then joined Cass in slipping through the back gate and into the mews. From there, they made their way around to Cavendish Square. It was all but empty at this hour, its green expanse and walking paths peaceful and silent under the rosy-pale sky. Behind the quiet facades of each grand home, George knew servants were already bustling about, their work never done. Sleep and peace were privileges for the few.

  But look at the sky one missed if one slept the day away; look at the company one missed. At George’s side, Cass strode quick and determined. Her marvelous hair was covered by a simple hat of cloth and straw. The shoulders he’d seen bare were garbed in a sensible spencer that buttoned under her breasts and did little to make him stop thinking of them.

  His mind was a bordello around Cass Benton; it had been ever since the Night of the Stockings. The Night of the Torturous Undressing. It deserved capital letters in his memory.

  Not that Cass needed to know that.

  “Do let me know when we’ve gone far enough from the nobs,” George said lightly, “so that we might hail a hackney.”

  They’d reached a street corner already awake and busy. Cass looked up and down the street, then nodded. “This will do.” With her blessing, George hailed the first vehicle he spotted, then directed the driver to Billingsgate.

  “You can pay him as well,” Cass said once they’d settled onto the worn, greasy squabs. “Since you’ve a mind to be so involved in this case.”

  “I was trying to be polite and helpful,” George pointed out.

  “Paying the driver would be both.”

  With this, he could not argue. Fortunately he always carried a notecase in his coat. It was almost the end of the quarter and his purse was thin, but he’d money enough for traveling around London.

  He looked about him with interest. Grimy windows, through which the streets outside appeared a hazy dream. Stubs of candle within smoky lamps, unlit now. Seats on which innumerable other arses had planted themselves.

  When had he last taken a hackney? His Oxford days, maybe. Ripping around the streets half-drunk and laughing with friends. Pursuing pleasures instead of his studies.

  A private carriage was another luxury he hadn’t thought about much. Like sleeping when one wanted to, working when one wished. He really did get his own way a lot of the time.

  “So what is this case?” George broke the silence. “Do you think it has to do with the tontine, your meeting with the fishmonger informant?”

  Cass was clearly deep in thought, her mind already at her destination. “She isn’t a fishmonger,” was all she said.

  “She? How intriguing. I thought you were one of a kind. That is—you are one of a kind, but I thought you were the only—”

  “It’s all right. You needn’t talk yourself into a fit. I know what you mean.”

  This was all she said, though, so he tried again. “Is this rather dangerous?”

  She blinked. “Buying fish? Not really.”

  George folded his arms. “Buying fish? So we’re cooks’ assistants now? I mean meeting an informant, of course.”

  Her hand strayed to her gown pocket. “Sometimes. But you needn’t worry; I’ll protect you. I’ve a pistol, and I’m good with my fists.”

  “Oh, I remember.” He rubbed his midsection, recalling how she’d turned on him in the surprised dark of Deverell Place. Less than a fortnight ago, yet long enough for the memories to become essential to him. “Is it strange that such talk is attractive to me?”

  She rolled her eyes, but did not look displeased. “No. It’s not strange to want someone else to manage trouble for you.”

  But that wasn’t what he’d meant. He’d meant the attractive bit. Cass was splendid, with her pockets and her weapons and her matter-of-fact ways.

  Before he could say some of this, or maybe even all of this, the hackney jolted to a stop. Cass craned her neck to look out the window, then nodded. “We’re here. Hop down, my lord—you’re about to become a Runner.”

  * * *

  Cass hadn’t meant that literally, that George would become a Runner. Or a runner, without the capital r. Almost the moment they descended from the hackney, though, a boy brushed against Cass’s side.

  She knew the move well: a pickpocket’s bread and butter. She slapped a hand to the pocket of her gown. Empty! Her pistol was gone. And worse, her miniature of Grandmama. She’d been foolish to bring it, but she was in the habit of having it with her.

  She’d been careless.

  Lunging, she snatched for the boy’s collar, but he was quick as mercury and slipped from her grasp. The crowds about the wharf were thick. She couldn’t lose him. Shouldering her way after him, she cried, “Catch him! He stole—”

  Before she spoke another word, George was off in pursuit. With his broad shoulders, he made a path through the crowd; his gloved hands reached, his legs scissored in long strides. Cass gathered up her skirts above her ankles and pelted after him.

  It was like running through a tunnel, crowded and odorous. The wharf squatted on a hairpin bend in the Thames, hemmed in by huge buildings of brick and stone, then open to the water. Porters carted fish around; fishmongers laid it out on tables
and booths beneath low wooden sheds over which they watched with gimlet eyes. And people crossed and laced and ducked and wove, and somewhere in the crowd was Grandmama’s picture. George was pulling ahead, and Cass’s skirts were tangling about her ankles, and the cobbles were slippery under her feet. She lost sight of them both in the crowd for a moment.

  Blindly, she shoved, not minding the famously coarse language of the fishwives. Where had that boy got to? Where was George? If only she’d been quicker, she could have prevented—

  And then she slipped past a ruddy-faced woman, hands on hips and squalling, and it was as if she’d walked into a different part of London. The crowd had backed up, making a perfect open circle, and at its center stood George. And the struggling boy. And, surprisingly—or maybe not?—Janey Trewes, swaddled and swathed as always, whom Cass had arranged to meet here, and who had a gift for being exactly where she was needed.

  Cass shoved past the muttering onlookers to join the little group at the center of the circle. Somewhere George had lost his odd hat, and his gloves were dirty. They were clenched on the boy who’d picked Cass’s pocket: one on the boy’s shoulder, and one about his wrist.

  “Smart,” Cass said, nodding toward the double grasp. “In case he slips out of his jacket and tries to run for it.”

  “Lemme go!” yowled the boy. “I didn’t do nufink!”

  He was small and thin and grimy from soot and mud. Likely not an errand boy fetching fish for a household, but an opportunist. A thief, come where the crowds were.

  “Check ’is pockets,” Janey said. “If he’s innocent, off he goes.”

  Cass crouched before the struggling boy. “I’m going to check your pockets. And if you have my things, I’m taking them back.” His glare was pure hatred.

  His jacket, threadbare and too short at the arms, yielded a wealth of goods. Cass’s pistol, yes; Grandmama, in her gold case. There was a spill of coins, too; Cass looked at them dubiously in her hands.

  “Those is mine,” said the boy. “Can’t prove they isn’t.”