“Know of him, but do not actually know him, you mean.”
“Well, yes, but—after he called on you, I wrote to a friend who has not dropped our friendship despite my current circumstances. She has married very well. Her husband is the cousin of a viscount. So while she does not move in the highest circles, either, her shoulder brushes against the edges of them at times. She wrote back at some length.”
Nothing but tittle-tattle, in other words. Rumors shared by women in drawing rooms when they paid calls. Nothing this friend had to report could be of any value or worthy of confidence. Padua detested such gossip and refused to participate.
Usually.
“What did she confide?”
“That he is among the most well-respected barristers in England. That for the most part his character is without blemish. That he has an income that is impressive, and considerable charm to go with his handsome face—and he is handsome, isn’t he? I near fainted when I saw his face in our reception hall—that he even has a friendship with the prince regent despite their age difference.”
“He sounds like a paragon.”
“Doesn’t he indeed.” Jennie’s lids lowered. “Except for one flaw, he would be perfect.”
Padua waited for it. Jennie waited, almost bursting. Padua sighed. She was not very good at wheedling gossip out of people.
“What flaw is that?”
Two pink blotches colored Jenny’s cheeks. “It is not the kind of thing I normally talk about.”
“Perhaps you can manage it just this once, so I am properly forewarned. I promise to forget at once that you spoke of scandalous things. That is what it is, correct? Something scandalous?”
Jennie nodded.
“Recent scandal?”
“Not recent. Also not a scandal as such. But scandalous.”
“How can one be scandalous without creating a scandal?”
“I suppose if one, in a private conversation, broaches subjects that are not virtuous.”
Padua wondered if the conversation in question had been hypothetical. “Pray, enlighten me.”
“Well.” Jennie licked her lips. “My friend says that when he was younger, and pursuing a lady, upon gaining her favor but not, I think, her favors, he was very frank in explaining his preferences regarding the latter.”
Padua hoped blotches were not now on her cheeks.
“I suppose there is something to be said for finding agreement on the expectations,” she murmured.
“According to my friend, those expectations were not merely the ordinary sort. They involved things ladies do not do. Wicked things.”
“If your friend knows so much, this lady must have told others and not kept her discovery to herself.”
“It would be hard to keep it to oneself, what with the shock.”
Padua pictured that lady enjoying the attention for a whole Season while other ladies cornered her in drawing rooms, wanting the details. Did her descriptions get specific? Unlikely. This gossip was built on innuendos and euphemisms.
“You say it was some time ago. He was very young then.”
“My friend says most ladies will not allow his pursuit as a result. His reputation precedes him. Although one can’t picture him forgoing all female companionship.”
“I am sure he does not do that.”
Jennie took her hand and gripped it. “He probably pursues others now. Actresses and such. And women who are vulnerable and in need, who can be lured to wickedness due to their poor circumstances.”
Women like you.
Padua stood. “How good of you to warn me, although I am sure that, even with wicked intentions in his heart, he can do better than me. Now, let us investigate this house and ogle its riches. Wait until I show you the dining room. The table can hold fifty guests, I am sure.”
* * *
A night of drinking and gambling with old friends took its happy toll, and Ives slept soundly, oblivious to the impulses that plagued him. With daylight came sobriety, however, and thoughts of Padua once again intruded.
While he dressed, he considered that perhaps he should visit a brothel, so he might avoid going around town insulting women by propositioning them. One good rut, and Miss Belvoir might cease to fascinate. He had better do something, because if she continued to absorb his attention, he would be thoroughly compromised regarding her father.
How bad would that be? He mulled the question while he broke his fast. He was not the only lawyer who could prosecute. Let them find someone else. He knew the likely prospects. While all good men, they placed winning above fairness, just the way the courts expected. The way he used to. Justice sometimes suffered then. Rarely, but it happened, especially in cases where the guilt was not clear-cut.
Of course it was with Hadrian Belvoir. Supposedly. Only, between imagining what he would do with Padua when he had her naked, he also mulled her father’s case. And Strickland’s information. And that apartment on Wigmore Street. For a crime in which the man was caught with the evidence in his home, there were questions unanswered and coincidences unexplained.
He called for his horse, with the intention of riding out of town. Instead after a few blocks he cursed, and turned his mount toward that apartment.
When he stopped at the nearby corner, he was still trying to convince himself to ride on. Then he noticed the blond head at the low window. Mrs. Trenholm had not left for the flower shop yet, despite it being two o’clock.
The head disappeared. A few minutes later the door opened, and out she came. Even from a distance he could see the paint on her face.
He followed her as she walked down the street, then turned left for several blocks. She stopped and stood there. Once more he watched from a crossroads.
Five minutes later a carriage stopped where she stood. She approached the window and spoke. A man’s arm reached out and their hands met. Then the carriage door opened and Mrs. Trenholm climbed in.
Ives rode back to the apartment. He could not damn the woman for lying about working in a flower shop, considering the work she did instead. Still, her presence in the same building as Hadrian Belvoir had become one of those coincidences that nudged at him.
What were the odds of two people with serious criminal activity in their backgrounds living on that street, let alone in the same building? And although Strickland thought there were no political overtones or suspicions in Belvoir’s case, Ives was not convinced. So Mrs. Trenholm’s husband and Belvoir may have had something else in common.
Back at the apartment, he dismounted and tied his horse. He climbed the stairs and entered the cluttered chambers. Padua said there was nothing of use here, but he did not think she had looked very far before those old letters absorbed her.
He opened a window, shed his frock coat, and began digging.
An hour later he had viewed enough mathematical notations to last most men a lifetime. He sat back in the desk’s chair and viewed the chamber. He was disappointed. He had hoped—damn, he had hoped to find something that might help Hadrian, he supposed. He would bear it to Padua like a gift. And he would avoid the moment when he had to choose whether to don his wig and robe and enter the Old Bailey, or whether his friendship with Padua meant he must leave her father to his fate at the hands of another lawyer.
While his mind worked, his gaze drifted over the motley assortment of publications that filled the case of books on the chamber’s wall. The collection spoke of other interests besides mathematics. He could spy history books and volumes of poetry amid the scientific titles. Many purchases had never been bound, however, and their contents remained invisible.
Just as his thoughts were leading to unfortunate introspection about the first time his instincts on a case had been proven right, but too late, his gaze lit upon a binding that made him smile. He rose and walked over. Thin, small, and red, a schoolbook for children on mathematics had been stuffed between two tomes on chemistry. His tutor had used the same book when he was a boy.
His gaze saw anoth
er one, then another, interspersed on the shelves. Padua’s schoolbooks, he assumed. He pulled out the first one. Perhaps she had put her name inside. The idea of seeing her childish hand charmed him.
He opened the book, and froze. He turned the pages. Then he pulled out all the other children’s books, and did the same. When he was done, he had a stack of ten little books. No, twelve, because two others had already been removed and placed on the table near the chair.
He also had a stack of something else.
Money.
CHAPTER 9
“Dear child, how often must I repeat the same thing. Do not come here.”
Padua hugged herself while her father scolded her. His words were harsh, but he appeared pained and his tone sounded more exasperated than angry.
The men in his cell laughed. One of them sidled over, and stuck his lascivious smile to the grate through which she saw the cell.
“Don’t you listen to the crazy old man,” he said. “We all like your visits, don’t we? When we are out of here we all will be happy to show our gratitude.” He reached over and plucked a book out of her father’s arms. “More food and less of this, though, if you don’t mind.”
She burned the man with a furious glare. It appeared her father had not heard the insinuations and lack of respect.
He had other things on his mind. “I wish you had never left Birmingham,” he muttered, his sad eyes refusing to meet her gaze. “You are too willful by far. That is your mother’s doing. That is the reason for your disobedience now. You think you know better than I do, but you do not.”
“I only think you need my help, so that you have a bit of fresh food now and then, and some books to occupy your mind.” She spoke quietly, praying at least half of this argument would not be heard by the whole prison.
“I don’t need books to occupy my mind. My thoughts alone can do that, and I rarely can keep these scoundrels off the food, so you waste your money.” He paced away, and dumped the books in his corner, then came back.
He was under duress, she reminded herself. His cruelty could not be held against him. “The gaoler said you refused to meet the lawyer I sent to you.”
His heavy eyebrows joined over his nose. “He came with a clerk. You can’t have confidence in a man who needs another to remember what he says.”
“The clerk makes a record, for reference later. Much as a person takes notes of a lecture. Mr. Notley came well recommended. He can advise you on how to respond to the questions put to you, before and during a trial.”
He dipped his head until his nose touched a bar right in front of her eyes. “I am not addled. I can respond on my own well enough. Tell this Nutley—”
“Notley.”
“Tell him his services are not needed. Now, be gone. Stop trying my patience with your infernal interference.”
He turned away so she saw only his back. He walked over to his corner, his manacles clanking. He sank down against the wall, and closed his eyes.
She thought her head would explode. He had rendered her invisible. Gone for sure, to his awareness. As gone as when he sent her to that school.
If he had not walked away, she would reach through the grate somehow, grab his coat, and force his ear to her mouth so she could spew out the fury racking her. Only knowing the whole prison would hear kept her from pouring out her resentments anyway.
That he did not love her was the least of it. She could live with that truth. Many relatives do not love each other. That he denied her any connection to a family, however—she had lost two parents when her mother died, not one. The difference was that her father had chosen to be dead to her. He wanted it that way.
She glared at the stack of books beside his hip. Would he even care about that handkerchief inside the top one? Maybe those letters had been the product of a brief, passing tendre. He probably had not even cared much for her mother either.
A painful fullness choked her breath at the idea he might have spoken to Mama the way he just spoke to her. How horrible and sad. No, surely not. Mama had always spoken of her marriage as a glorious passion. She had taught her daughter to seek the same, and never settle for less. If there had been disillusionment, she would not have done that. Would she?
She had to leave, before she lost her composure right there in front of the criminals sharing the cell.
“I will tell Mr. Notley to try again later this week, Papa. Perhaps you will feel better then. More yourself.” She turned on her heel and passed blindly through the prison’s passages.
The autumn air outside brought some calm. The breeze blew away the worst of her indignation, but the hurt remained a nauseating lump in her chest.
Ives had been correct. She had done her duty and all that she could. She should leave her father to Mr. Notley now, for whatever good it might do.
She looked at the low sun and experienced a moment of panic before she remembered she no longer had to answer to Mrs. Ludlow. She judged she could walk back to the house before night fell, and set off.
Two hours later, her arrival at the house raised more notice than she expected. A footman waited right inside the door, his wig visible from the street. When she entered he asked her to wait while he retrieved something for her. He returned with a letter. “It was delivered by messenger a few minutes ago, Miss Belvoir.”
She carried the letter up to her chamber. A lamp cast soft illumination from its place on the inlaid writing desk. She sat and opened the missive.
One of Mr. Notley’s clerks had written, asking her to call on the lawyer this evening on a matter of importance. They would remain in chambers until ten o’clock, he explained, in the hopes she could meet tonight.
She set the letter down, then removed her bonnet and pelisse. She would wash first, and eat something. Then, if there were still time left to hire a carriage to go into the city, perhaps she would visit Mr. Notley. Right now she had no inclination to do so. She did not think she could bear being disheartened even more about her father in one day.
* * *
Ives patted the flat package in his coat while he trotted through town. The mere existence of the money he carried put him in a black mood. That he now carried it into Mayfair—when he should not—did not make the ride any more pleasant.
He had told himself he would decide on the way. He had debated with himself while his horse’s hooves clipped out his progress on the stone streets. Even as he turned onto the block dominated by Langley House, he pretended he still had the choice of turning around, and instead visiting the magistrate in the morning.
Curses flowed in his mind while he paused and looked at the house. Curses at himself, because he knew he was going to do what he should not do. Curses tinged with resignation. God help him, he was an ass.
All the same he began to move his horse again, but stopped abruptly. He squinted into the shadows across from the house. He was sure that for an instant he had seen a hat poke forward before being absorbed by the darkness again.
He slid off his saddle and tied his horse to a post. Assuming a casual gait, he strolled down the street toward that shadow. As he drew near, the figure of a man became more obvious. He watched Langley House so intently that he noticed Ives rather late. When he did he pretended to be scraping his shoe. He looked over his shoulder at Ives, and smiled. “Damned shit. Can’t even walk on the best streets without risking your shoes.”
Ives smiled back. When he came abreast of the man, he reached out. He grabbed the fellow by the collar of his coat, and swung him around. The man immediately took a fighting stance.
“I would be glad to beat you soundly, in a sportsmanlike manner, but I don’t have the time,” Ives growled. He hauled the fellow over to a gate illuminated by a street lamp. “What are you doing watching that house?”
“I’m not watching—”
Ives tightened his hold on the collar. “One more time. Why are you watching that house? Why and for whom?”
“You have it wrong.” As he protested, the man glance
d down the street. Ives looked, too, and saw the small carriage waiting there.
Ives pulled the culprit’s face into yet more light. Narrow and long, the face needed a good shave. The eyes, close set and round, appeared familiar. “I know you. I have seen you before.”
“That you have, milord.”
“In court.”
“As a witness for the Crown, I am proud to say. We were on the same side. The loyal side. Crippin’s the name, milord.”
Now he remembered. Crippin worked for the Home Office. A year ago he had infiltrated a radical group, and led them into acts for which they were arrested once he informed on them. The jury had shown little sympathy for radicals lured into crime by the state. Ives sorely regretted agreeing to serve as prosecutor after he learned of the government’s involvement.
He looked down the street at the carriage again. “You are planning to abduct someone, aren’t you? The guest in that house?”
“Not abduct. Borrow. For a conversation. You know how it is done, sir.” His voice came out strangled and low. “Will be quicker this way, than your trying to pry it out of her.”
“I have concluded there is nothing to pry, so you can spare her the outrage.”
“I just got word she visited Newgate again today, and talked to the prisoner for some time, so there’s those who don’t agree with you on that conclusion. Now, if you would unhand me, and take yourself elsewhere, she will be coming out soon, I believe.”
Ives did unhand him, but only to ensure he did not throttle him completely. “You will leave, not me. Nor will you return. This is the home of a duke, and no one has the authority to set a surveillance on it. Whoever sent you here will pay dearly for the insult. As will you, if I see you here again.”
Crippin sighed heavily. “Maybe he who sent me will talk to that duke, and you will be the one to pay for interfering with matters that address the safety of dukes, and others like yourself.”
“Do you dare to threaten me? Leave, before I thrash you senseless.”
Tall, Dark, and Wicked (Wicked Trilogy) Page 9