Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 03]

by The Charmer

“Not bloody likely,” Collis murmured to his uncle’s back. He firmly extinguished memories of a strong, supple creature writhing beneath him. No.

  Once he was dressed, he headed out. At the door, he took his hat and coat from Denny with a quick nod. “Ho there, old man.” Keep walking, or he’ll twist your ear—

  “Sir, if I may have a moment?”

  Collis turned with exaggerated patience. But of course, Denny would never choose to see such subtle signals. One had to dunk the fellow in ice water to get him to see past the end of his haughty little nose. “Denny, I’m on my way to—”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I wish to talk to you about.”

  Collis braced himself. If Denny thought he could complain about Rose, he was sadly mistaken. Rose might be disagreeable and, well, unbearable, but she was a good spy. She deserved to be in training. Collis wouldn’t hear another word from Denny about it. “Well, what is it?”

  “If you would tell me where you’re off to, sir? I might need to reach you.”

  Collis snorted. “Hardly. Anyway, I’m not going anywhere important. Simply trying out a new gentlemen’s club.”

  “What club would that be, sir?”

  Denny had a tendency to mind business other than his own. “Nothing special about it. Simply a lark.”

  “Will anyone be accompanying you, sir?”

  “No.” Collis was abruptly tired of Denny’s questions. “I must go. Thank you, Denny.”

  Denny nodded, clearly not satisfied that he had given gossip his best. Collis rolled his eyes as he left. Denny needed something more to do, that was obvious. To be frank, Collis didn’t know what had possessed him to take the little man on.

  Oh, he performed his duties well enough. Collis simply didn’t need a valet. He’d been dressing himself for years and didn’t need anyone holding his drawers for him.

  It had been pity, he supposed. When James Cunnington had confessed that his betrothed had an aversion to Denny, Collis had felt sorry for the little man without a place in the world.

  Collis ordered his uncle’s most anonymous unmarked carriage, the one he’d used to pose as Sir Thorogood, to take him to the club mentioned in the dossier. Yes, he was definitely feeling sorry for Denny. Being a servant was a difficult life in itself. Collis was sure he could never bear the constant insecurity of needing to find a good master and get himself hired on—

  Servant. Hired.

  Rose.

  Collis let his head fall back onto the carriage cushions in dismay. Here he’d been thinking himself ahead in the race. He’d completely forgotten that all Rose had to do to get into the house was get herself hired by the target!

  He pounded one fist on the ceiling of the carriage. “Hawkins! Hurry!”

  He was late for a one-sided appointment with a certain Louis Wadsworth, proprietor of Wadsworth & Son, Munitions.

  Louis Wadsworth’s pale blue eyes gazed at Rose from the life-size portrait like an arrow shot from the past. She stood there in the gallery, frozen in her memories with the dust rag dangling from her limp fingers and her heart beating in her ears.

  Louis Wadsworth. She was in Louis Wadsworth’s house.

  In an instant Rose was back in the past. A girl again, proud of her first position in service to a fine household. She’d tried so hard to do well and the housekeeper seemed mostly inclined to approve of her.

  Rose had been determined to succeed in Mr. Wadsworth’s house, no matter how strange and lonely it all was. The master seemed a cold man, and the mistress spent her days locked quietly away in her luxurious rooms with what Rose suspected was a barrel of laudanum.

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Pool, kept things running smartly nonetheless and Rose was beginning to feel comfortable with the routine. She ran the dust rag around the spindles of the banister once again, just in case she had missed some. Dust was very hard to see, although Mrs. Pool didn’t seem to have any trouble spotting it.

  Rose had just finished up the railing when she heard a smooth voice behind her.

  “It shines like a new penny, but not as brightly as do you, my girl.”

  Surprised, she turned to see a handsome young man smiling at her. Louis Wadsworth, the master’s son, was twenty years old, with white teeth and eyes that twinkled with what she originally believed was kindness.

  All too soon, of course, she had discovered that Louis Wadsworth, scion of the Wadsworth manufacturing empire, had not a dust mote of kindness within him.

  Collis Tremayne was having a nice glass of brandy by a toasty fire. From his comfortable chair he could see the front hall and any new arrivals. The surroundings were reassuringly masculine and expensive. Not a single female presence penetrated the smoky atmosphere of this particular club.

  Unlike the public portion of the Liar’s Club, this establishment was a place of quiet masculine escape, a place of genial business and low-voiced toadying, if one aimed to climb higher. Of course, this was a few steps below the level of Collis’s own usual membership, which his target could never aspire to.

  As he waited for Louis Wadsworth to arrive, Collis ran over what he knew of the man. The owner of several very profitable factories, the man was married, with no children. His wealth made him a valid player in the industrialist party of the government, although his role seemed more of quiet contributor than campaigner for the conservatives.

  Wadsworth had never been accused of a crime. He worked hard, ran his factories with a tight hand, and frequented only the most respectable of private clubs.

  How utterly boring.

  Trust Dalton to give him the dullest assignment possible. Collis gazed into the cheery flames, nearly asleep. If chatting up conservative factory owners was the best the Liar’s Club could come up with for him, perhaps he’d be better off pissing away his life at court. At least with his dry wit and bottomless bottles of wine, the Prince Regent was excellent company.

  Hadn’t there been a Wadsworth associated with that dust-up a few months ago when Dalton had met Clara? Yes, that was right, a man named Wadsworth was killed while trying to stop that circle of traitors, the Knights of the Lily. Was this Louis Wadsworth related to the heroic Mr. Edward Wadsworth?

  If so, the file said nothing about it. There was nothing about Louis Wadsworth’s parentage at all, now that Collis thought on it. That alone was curious.

  A somberly liveried footman passed Collis by and gave him the prearranged signal with one gloved hand. Ah, the quarry had arrived. Looking casually to the door, Collis spotted a slender dapper fellow handing his hat and—oh, for pity’s sake—a walking stick to a servant. The man couldn’t be more than thirty years old!

  Lovely. Boring and pretentious.

  Collis waited. When he’d arrived, he’d lubricated relations with the staff with a bit of pocket change—very well, rather a lot of pocket change—but Rose had said by any means necessary.

  Now to await the result. He casually raised the news sheet he wasn’t reading to see the doorman pointing out the attractive prospect of the heir to a title in the club—himself. Rather like shooting hares in a cage, putting himself out to bait the slavering social ambitions of a man like that one. God only knew why everyone wanted a title. Collis would give his away if he could.

  From his paper hunting blind, he watched the hare hop hesitantly forward. He could almost hear the thoughts in the man’s head.

  Cannot introduce myself, too forward. But if I wait, someone else will grab him. How can I induce him to speak to me first?

  Collis decided to put him out of his misery. He closed his paper with a snap and folded it neatly. “I’ve finished with this. Have you read it yet?”

  “No, I have not.” The fish took the worm carefully, with a nod of thanks. “May I repay the favor with another brandy…” His voice trailed off, obviously hoping for further introduction.

  Collis rose to extend his hand. “Collis Tremayne, sir, of Etheridge. And you?”

  Something flashed in the hare’s pale blue eyes, probably pure social gre
ed. He clasped Collis’s hand in an enthusiastic grip. “I am Louis W. Wadsworth, sir, of Wadsworth Munitions.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rose couldn’t breathe. She was in Louis Wadsworth’s house. Worse yet, she was a servant, a maid, in his house. Old fears, old nightmares, seemed to tingle across her vision like a mist. Out of ancient habit, she backed away from the portrait until she stood in shadow.

  She’d lived in shadow before. She’d been like a mouse, keeping always to the edges, peering carefully around corners, starting at a footfall in the hall. Yet Louis had found her, again and again, in that month before he’d moved to his own establishment in what was probably a more interesting part of town.

  For Louis had simply been bored. She was convinced of that. A bored young man trapped in a dull house, who had made up a little game to pass the time.

  “It’s called ‘Hunt the Maid,’” he’d whispered to her once when he had her pinned against the bookcases in his father’s study. “I am the hunter and you are the doe.” He’d slipped his hand beneath her apron bodice to fondle her breast. She’d cringed but not cried out, for who would come to her aid against the master’s son? She’d escaped eventually, her stomach roiling but her body twanging discordantly in response to his liberties.

  The game went on, a pursuit combined of dark seduction and blatant intimidation that kept her mightily confused in her innocence. She did not imagine herself in love with him, yet he filled her days and worried her nights until she thought of nothing else but when he would next appear.

  Until the day he’d shown her the man he truly was.

  Mrs. Pool had gone to the master in a rage after finding Rose hiding in a cupboard in the kitchens, her uniform torn and her face and body bruised, and had accused the master’s son of rape. Mr. Wadsworth had fired the housekeeper on the spot, simply turning her out without references. He probably would have done the same to Rose had not something more urgent caught at his attention. Days went by before she realized that he had apparently forgotten the entire matter.

  There was something wrong in the house after that. Up until that day, every servant had received a day off, even the scullery. But the butler seemed to have his own way of running things, one that didn’t seem to agree with the higher quality of servants in the house. One by one, the better ones left. The worst of it was they had Rose to blame.

  What bit of friendship she’d managed to win from the other servants was lost from that day. She was ignored to despair even while she was discussed to shreds.

  “She orta kept them knees locked,” the cook opined with a sniff.

  “Weren’t so bad here afore that one got the young master worked up,” the butler agreed.

  As much as Rose tried to remind herself that she’d done nothing so wrong, time and disdain wore her down. With no one to bolster her against the blame, she came close to believing in it herself. Perhaps she was shameless, for hadn’t Louis made her feel things?

  She would have fled from it all, if she could have.

  Yet where would she go? No other house would have her now, once they heard about her and the master’s son.

  So she stayed and kept to the darkest shadows, and out-waited Louis and the butler and all the other servants who came, only to leave again when the abominable conditions continued.

  Finally, there were only the crooked and the desperate left who would work for the Wadsworths. The new butler who was skimming from the top of the housekeeping budget, the cook who sold half the food she bought and served little but gruel belowstairs, and Rose, the desperate, who had nowhere else to go.

  Until she’d been plucked from the mire of her desperation and sent to the Liar’s Club.

  Until she’d found a home.

  Louis Wadsworth could not hurt her now. She was not the lonely, desperate maid of the past. And she was on a mission, directed by the spymaster himself to—

  No. His lordship had said the family was named “Wentworth.” He had sent her to fetch the file from his study. “The Wentworth file. On top of the pile on my desk.”

  Wentworth. Wadsworth. Oh, God. Rose covered her face with her hands. She’d bungled it when she’d stubbed her toe on the leg of the desk and sent the files slithering out of their pile.

  She’d sent herself to the wrong house.

  She turned and hurried back down the long gallery. She had to get away—away from that portrait, away from this house. Away from Louis. Crikey, it was as if she could feel his breath on the back of her neck!

  “I am not afraid of Louis Wadsworth,” she muttered to herself. “Not anymore.”

  Oh? Then why are you fleeing?

  She wasn’t fleeing. She was staging a sensible retreat after realizing that she was in the wrong house.

  Then why are your hands shaking?

  She looked down. It was true. Her stomach was shaking as well. That was beside the point, however. The point was that she was in the wrong house and ought to skip right back to the club to report her mistake.

  Leaving Louis in peace.

  That thought stopped her in her tracks. Why was Louis Wadsworth living in peace? Why had he not been swept up in the circumstances that had finally disbanded his father’s traitorous Knights of the Lily? Why was he living unworriedly in Mayfair, wealthier than ever, and dining with the Prime Minister?

  The Liars didn’t know. They couldn’t know, or they would never suffer it.

  She knew. She knew things about Louis Wadsworth that likely no one else on earth knew.

  Memories swirled in her mind. The day Louis had left the house was not the last time he’d visited, simply the last time he’d lived there.

  No, he’d been back many times over the intervening years.

  There had been many secret meetings, those she had been present for when no one else wanted to serve the late-night gatherings. Meetings between her own master, Mr. Wadsworth, and his group of anti-Crown French collaborators, the Knights of the Lily. And in the midst had been the scion of the industrialist’s empire, his son, Louis—every bit as guilty as his father.

  Mr. Edward Wadsworth had died for his crimes. For reasons of their own—probably to keep their own part secret—the Liars had allowed him to be publicly lauded as the hero of the piece. Harmless enough, she supposed, since the man was far too dead to get up to more treachery. Louis, however, was all too alive and apparently not under suspicion.

  Louis was very wily. Rose had no doubt that he’d been clever enough to emerge clean from the debacle of the Knights of the Lily.

  “The master of this house is no ordinary bloke. Not him what dines with the Prime Minister himself!”

  Louis had indeed become a powerful man if he was associating with the likes of the Prime Minister of England.

  Lord Liverpool was not a man Rose wanted to cross. He’d objected to her entry into the Liars on the grounds that she was too common and too female. He would not want to hear anything she would have to say about one of his friends. After all, it would be her word against Louis’s.

  Louis would win that battle, as always, unless she came armed with more than memories and accusations. She knew what would happen if the Liars heard Louis’s version of events. She’d been shunned before and had barely survived it with her soul intact. No, she could only go to the Liars with something so damning, so concrete, that no one would ever take Louis’s word again.

  Hot excitement began to tingle through old chilly memories, burning them away in the flame of realization.

  She was here, in Louis Wadsworth’s house. She was a spy, trained to seek out treason, honed to fight for England…and the day was wasted anyway. She’d never manage to get back to the club to report and be able to make any progress on her actual assignment.

  Which would be embarrassing. Clumsy housemaid makes mistake. Unless she went back with something in hand to remove the sting of failure. Unless she found something on Louis to prove his French allegiance, something that would set the Liars on him full-force. Something other
than her opinion versus the friendship of the Prime Minister.

  And maybe something that would prove to herself that she was no longer afraid of Louis Wadsworth.

  Something niggled at the back of her mind. Oh, no. Collis! He was even now stalking Louis Wadsworth to cadge an invitation into the house, where he would be looking for falsely planted evidence of treason.

  She hesitated, tapping her chin with one finger. Surely Collis’s plan would not bear fruit in one day? She could tell him about her mistake tomorrow before he got any farther.

  She hoped.

  Louis Wadsworth was a traitor, and if she could prove it, she could bring him to some kind of justice at last.

  She only hoped Collis Tremayne would stay out of the way in the meantime. Not only might he muck up her single chance—he’d never let her live it down.

  Collis followed Louis Wadsworth into Louis’s desperately grand house with a smile. He hoped he could see Rose’s face when she found out he’d walked right into their target’s house only half a day into the mission.

  It was probably some kind of Liar record, come to think of it. He’d enjoy telling Dalton about it as well.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I excuse myself a moment, Tremayne,” Louis said. “I’ll have the staff bring you some tea if you like.”

  Collis nodded genially. It would be a relief to get rid of his host for a breath or two. There was something repellent about the man. Louis’s smile was friendly, but his eyes were always cool. Uneasily Collis wondered if he’d given himself away already. Dalton had said the family would know something of the assignment—had he said or done anything to make the man suspect him?

  No, he decided. Other than his own casual overture with the news sheet, he’d ensured that Louis had made all the invitations.

  Collis was led to an overdecorated guest parlor, typical and worthless. As soon as the butler was gone, he stepped back into the front hall to gauge the lay of the land. The house was very fine and modern, as was the Wadsworths’ wealth.

  If they’d had the slightest clue how to get on in Society, they would have tried to mask the newness of their importance with the acquisition of a fine old property, perhaps one that still retained the impression of the highborn blood that had built it. Etheridge House was nearly as new, of course, but the Etheridge line had no need to mask a thing.