Maddie, who had been untucking her shirt from her breeches, felt bile rise in her throat.
“Tretham,” Christian spat out, “I will enjoy killing you with my bare hands. In fact, I shall use that very whip to make my point clear.”
“Oh, Gresham,” the other man said with a laugh, “you did always have a fine sense of humor. I only regret that you will soon be too dead to continue your amusing repartee. Of course, I will enjoy your wife first. While you watch. I think you should be able to see one beautiful thing before you depart the earth, don’t you?”
Maddie, unable to stand the anguish on Christian’s face, called Tretham’s attention back to her. “My lord, I shall need some help removing my boots,” she said, trying to make her voice sound husky.
Turning to look at her, Tretham’s eyes darkened with lust as he saw that she had removed her shirt. The binding that she’d used to hide her breasts was still in place, but she still felt quite naked.
“Of course, my dear,” he said with a leer. “Never let it be said that I would say no to a lady.”
Maddie lifted her booted foot to his hands and then, with all her might, shoved hard at him, managing to kick him in the chin.
“You little bitch,” Tretham snarled, backhanding Maddie just before Christian, his hands still tied, butted him in the head.
Unfortunately, Tretham still had hold of the pistol, which, upon the blow from Christian, he fired wildly. In horror, Maddie looked on as a red patch appeared on Christian’s arm.
Unable to stop herself, Maddie threw herself at Tretham, slapping, hitting, biting, doing whatever it took to bring him down.
Thanks to the sound of the gunshot, the door to the chamber flew open and Mrs. Pettigrew and two very large men burst in. “Here now!” she shouted, as a whip flew through the air. “This is a respectable house!”
“This couple has assaulted me,” Tretham said shrilly. “I demand that you call the authorities.”
“Is that what you seen through the peephole, Toby?” Mrs. Pettigrew asked a young lad just inside the door.
“Not by ’alf. This cove were plannin’ to ’ave ’is way wif ’er. And not wif this bloke’s by-yer-leave, neither.” He wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve, for emphasis.
Maddie paid no heed to any of them, having knelt down beside Christian and untied his hands. Using the cravat, she made a pad and pressed it against his arm, which was bleeding profusely now. “It’s just a flesh wound,” Christian assured her, though his pallor said otherwise. “I’ve had much worse in the war.”
Her hands shaking, Maddie kept her hand over the wound. “I do not doubt you did,” she said, “but humor me.”
“I’m sorry, Mads,” Christian said, sitting up, and holding the makeshift bandage against his arm. “For all of it. I would not be alive if you hadn’t come here today. Tretham would have killed me as soon as he saw me.”
“You can’t know that,” Maddie said, brushing a lock of honey-brown hair from his brow. “You were right about the danger. I should have listened. But I am glad I did not.”
“Me, too,” Christian said, kissing her.
They watched as the two bruisers Mrs. Pettigrew had brought into the room lifted Tretham by the arms.
“Mrs. Pettigrew,” Maddie said, “you should call the watch. This man is responsible for two murders.”
“Don’t you worry, dearie,” the madam said with a frown. “Toby saw the whole thing. He heard everything.”
“Then why the devil didn’t you come to help us sooner?” Christian demanded, his anger giving him a burst of strength despite the blood loss. “We might have been killed.”
“Well, now,” Mrs. Pettigrew said with a sheepish look. “How was we to know you didn’t like having a gun trained on ye? Gents like some strange things these days. But I don’t hold with shooting in my ’ouse. So then we decided to come in whether ye liked it or no’.”
“I demand that you let me go at once,” Tretham ordered the two bruisers. “Do you know who I am? Do you?”
But they ignored him as they carried him bodily from the room.
Christian got to his feet and swayed a little.
“Dearest,” Maddie said, wrapping an arm around him, “you should sit down for a bit. Your shoulder has bled quite a lot.”
“It’s just a flesh wound, Mads,” he said again, handing her the shirt she’d abandoned. “Put this on so that we can get the devil out of here.”
Maddie pulled the shirt on over her head, and retrieved her waistcoat and coat, putting them on over it. “I have rather a fondness for this little room,” she said, looking around her. “You told me you loved me, here.”
Christian’s eyes darkened as he pulled her into his arms. “I thought I would go mad when Tretham put his hands on you. Do not ever put yourself in danger like that again. Please, Mads, it’s not good for my health.”
She kissed him. “I promise not to put myself in danger if you promise not to keep things from me.”
“Only if you promise not to keep things from me.”
“I promise,” she said, not letting her gaze waver from his.
“I should have told you, I see it now,” he said. “But I was so afraid that you would figure out how much I loved you. And I was convinced that you could never love me as much as I love you.”
“Silly man,” she said, tucking her head beneath his chin. “How could I not love you?”
Reaching down, he grabbed her hat and set it upon her head. “Now, Mr. Femane, let us go home.”
And arm in arm, Lord and Lady Gresham walked quite happily out of the Hidden Pearl.
Much to the scandalized delight of everyone who saw them.
Twenty-two
“I cannot believe you did it,” Cecily said with wonder, sipping a cup of sweet tea in Maddie’s writing room.
The cousins had chosen to meet at the Gresham town house for a change so that Maddie could show them her new room dedicated to her writing. After Cecily and Juliet pronounced the chamber the loveliest thing they’d ever seen, and the best wedding present Gresham might have given her, they settled down in the cozy corner space where Maddie often enjoyed tea and biscuits of an afternoon.
“It took more daring than even I knew I had,” Maddie said, biting into a macaroon. “Though it was strangely liberating to venture into a space where no proper lady had dared go before.”
“We have always been good at breaking down those kinds of barriers,” Juliet said, lifting her teacup. “I am quite proud of all we’ve accomplished this season.”
Maddie and Cecily clinked their teacups with Juliet in a toast of sorts.
“When will Linton and Lady Emily return from their wedding trip?” Cecily asked, leaning back and touching her ever-so-slightly protruding belly. “I cannot imagine embarking on a carriage trip in this condition. It’s all I can manage not to cast up my accounts the short distance from Grosvenor Square to Berkeley Square.”
Maddie frowned in sympathy. “I believe they are due to return next week. Now that Papa has consented to the match, I think their way forward will be much smoother. Plus, Mama has begun to speak in reverent tones of the expected heir.”
Her brother and Lady Emily had married by special license as soon as Linton was able to leave his sickbed. Only Maddie, Christian, and Lord and Lady Essex had been in attendance. None of Linton’s or Lady Emily’s former cronies had been invited and they were not missed by either the bride or the groom.
“I still cannot believe Tretham was responsible for both Lord Fielding’s and Tinker’s murders,” Juliet said, shaking her red curls. “I never did like him much, but I thought he was a decent enough gentleman, at the very least.”
“I thought the same,” Maddie said. “I thought I simply disliked him because of his relationship with my brother. And I told myself that the feeling was unfair to Tretham, since my brother’s behavior was his own. Now I will know better than to discount my first instinct.”
“So, it was Tretham
you overheard threatening Linton on the night of the Marchford ball?” Cecily asked. “How did he disappear like that?”
“There’s a secret passage in the fireplace,” Maddie said with a shrug. “I asked Lady Marchford about it last week and she said her son and Tretham used to play there as children.”
“It seems a shame that one man could be responsible for so much death and unhappiness,” Juliet said with a sigh. “I suppose we all know now how easy it is for a single person to damage many lives.”
“Which is why I am so grateful that we are all of us safe and happy at last,” Maddie said, taking her cousins’ hands in hers. “I am so thankful for you both. Without your excellent examples I might not have had the courage to fall in love with Gresham.”
Cecily raised a dark brow. “I am grateful for you, too, Maddie, but we must give credit where credit is due. Without Amelia’s dance card, none of us would be sitting here, disgustingly happy and contemplating a happy future.”
Remembering something, Maddie leaped up and hurried over to her desk. Opening a drawer, she slipped in her hand and brought the fan-shaped dance card over to her cousins.
Before she could speak a sharp knock sounded on the door to the writing room.
“My lady,” Yeats intoned, “your guest is here. Shall I send her up?”
“What’s this, Maddie?” Cecily demanded.
“You didn’t,” Juliet said, raising a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes widened as Maddie nodded her head in confirmation. “You did!”
“Miss Amelia Snowe,” Yeats said, opening the door to usher Amelia into Maddie’s inner sanctum.
Her eyes narrowed, the beauty looked at the three cousins, seated so carelessly around the tea table. “Lady Gresham,” she said, offering a slight curtsy. “To what do I owe the very surprising invitation?”
Maddie stood and waved her guest over to the table, pulling a chair over from the other side of the room for her. Once Amelia was seated, Maddie picked up the dance card from the table.
“I believe this belongs to you,” Maddie said, proffering the mother-of-pearl-and-gold fan to her.
Amelia reached out and took it from her. Opening the card like a fan, she looked at the names scrawled on the ivory petals in pencil. And turned it over, frowning as she read the admonition to: smile, bat, tilt.
“I found it in the retiring room at the Bewle ball,” Cecily said carefully. “I believe you dropped it.”
“We’ve been meaning to get it back to you this age,” Juliet said casually, as if she were discussing a missing glove.
Amelia looked up at them. She looked … confused.
“This isn’t mine,” she said finally, setting it back on the table.
“Of course it is,” Maddie said with a strained laugh. “Who else could it belong to?”
“I have no idea, Lady Gresham,” Amelia said, for the first time in Maddie’s memory showing genuine emotion. “I do have one like it.”
She pulled open the drawstring of her reticule and pulled out a dance card identical to the one on the table. “You see?” She held it out to her and Maddie took it. Sure enough, when she unfurled it like a fan, the petals were empty of names. As it would be if Amelia had planned to use it again before the end of the season.
Amelia laughed. “I must admit, I was quite puzzled when you asked me to call on you, Lady Gresham. Though I had hoped that we might have gotten past our earlier … enmity.”
“You mean when you shrieked like a banshee at Maddie’s betrothal ball?” Cecily asked casually. “I would call that enmity.”
Maddie shushed her cousin. “That’s all behind us, Cecily. Miss Snowe and I came to an understanding. She’s the one who told me about Gresham’s trip to the Hidden Pearl.”
Juliet choked on her tea. “I hadn’t realized that.”
“Oh, yes,” Maddie said seriously. “She did me a great service. Without that news I might not have known of the threats against my brother and Lord Tretham. So thank you, Miss Snowe.”
Amelia looked at the floor. “I perhaps didn’t have the best motives for that visit, Lady Gresham.” She looked up, her cornflower-blue eyes shadowed with remorse. “I was so angry, you see. That the three of you had all managed to get husbands before the end of the season while my prospects just seemed to dwindle with every day that passed. And when I overheard my brother talking about Gresham at the Hidden Pearl, I decided to tell you. In an effort to destroy your marriage.”
She looked up. “I am sorry, now. I’ve done a number of things this season that I am not particularly proud of.” She turned to Juliet. “Like mocking your limp. And worse when the truth of your injury became known.” Now she turned to Cecily. “I was simply horrid to you as well.”
Maddie watched as the young lady who had gossiped and harangued and in general made her and her cousins’ lives difficult over the past few years sat before them. It would be easy to dismiss her now. To tell her that she had burned her bridges with them and would never be allowed the luxury of their forgiveness.
But that would be the wrong thing to do. In her heart she knew it. Remembering how she and Juliet had spilled punch on Amelia’s gown at the Bewle ball, she realized that she and her cousins had been just as awful in their own way to Amelia as she had been to them.
It was time for all that nonsense to stop.
“I forgive you,” Maddie said, catching her cousins’ startled eyes and willing them to follow her lead. “We all forgive you. For everything. But only if you’ll forgive us for our own bad behavior.”
“Yes,” Cecily said with a slight shrug. “We were hardly innocents.”
“I suppose I can forgive the cruel remarks about my limp,” Juliet said carefully.
Perhaps sensing that Juliet’s case might be the most difficult to navigate, Amelia reached across the table to touch Juliet’s hand. “I am so sorry, Lady Deveril. It was horrible what I said and did to you. I am ashamed to admit it, but I was so desperately jealous that you’d caught Lord Deveril’s eye. I said the first thing that I could think of that would put you in your place and would keep me on my pedestal.
“But it was lonely there on that pedestal,” Amelia continued. “With only Felicia for comfort. Do you know how awful she is?”
“I have some idea,” Juliet said wryly. “Perhaps you’ve been punished already.”
They all laughed together at that.
“Peace, then, Amelia?” Maddie asked.
The other girl smiled, and for the first time since she’d met her, Maddie thought that Amelia was actually quite as pretty as she was rumored to be.
They had settled back down with their teacups when a soft mewl sounded from the other side of the room.
Cecily sat bolt upright. “I almost forgot!”
Rushing over to the table where the basket she’d brought with her sat, she picked it up and hurried over to the cozy corner. “We had the most shocking surprise last week,” she said over the noises coming from the basket. “You’ll never guess.”
Opening the lid, she revealed her cat, Ginger, who was nursing three kittens. One black, one tabby, and one snow white.
“Ginger’s a girl!” Juliet cried, leaning over to get a better look at the kittens. “How marvelous.”
“We didn’t know until we found him with the kittens,” Cecily said, shaking her head. “I thought he was finally growing up. He was small when Winterson gave him to me, but I thought that was because he was still a kitten. Instead he was small because he was a female.”
“I want the black one,” Maddie said, lifting out the tiny mewling baby and snuggling him to her ear. “I’ve always wanted a black cat.”
“I would love to have the white one,” Juliet said, slipping a gentle hand down to remove that one from the basket.
Amelia peered over the edge of the basket, looking in wonder at the ginger-haired tabby who moved toward the side of the basket and began to climb out.
“You shall have the ginger, Amelia,” Cecily said, lift
ing him to put him in her outstretched hand. “He likes you.”
The ginger kitten, not knowing that he was being held by the most reviled beauty in London, began licking her palm with his tiny sandpaper tongue. Amelia laughed.
The cousins exchanged a look. None of them had ever heard her laugh.
“May I?” Amelia asked, her eyes filling with tears. “I’ve never had a pet before. Mama forbids them. But I think I could keep him hidden in my bedchamber.”
“Of course,” Cecily said, lifting out her own Ginger from the basket and cuddling her close.
The four ladies sat playing with the kittens and Ginger for some time.
Like friends.
Epilogue
“How long has it been since the last report?” Winterson demanded, his hair sticking up at all angles while he paced the Aubusson rug in his study.
“Only an hour, old man,” Deveril said, putting an arm over the other man’s shoulder and drawing him to the leather sofa.
“How about a drink?” Gresham asked from the sideboard where he poured out three glasses of brandy.
As married ladies, Juliet and Maddie had been allowed into the bedchamber where Cecily labored to bring the next generation of Wintersons into the world. Though Maddie had confided to him that she was not quite prepared for the realities of the birthing process, Christian had known that when the time came she’d not be kept away from her cousin’s bedside. She was a brave girl, his Maddie. And come next summer, she’d be going through the whole business herself, so he knew she was taking mental notes.
“Babies are born all the time,” Deveril offered, taking the drink from Gresham. “Cecily will be right as rain. You’ll see.”
“Spoken like a man whose wife hasn’t gone through the process,” Winterson growled, getting up to pace again.
A brisk knock on the door had them all turning. Smiling, despite the tears coursing down her cheeks, Maddie stepped in.
“It’s a boy!” she cried, rushing over to hug the duke, who was looking suspiciously close to tears himself.
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