Passion Favors the Bold

by Theresa Romain

The pause that succeeded these words was heavy. The news was so sudden that Hugo could hardly take it in. After all this travel, all these weeks, the coins were just . . . found?

  “All of them?” asked Sir Frederic, at the same time Georgette said, “Where?”

  “Not all of them. A small number.” Jenks frowned. “They were placed upon my bed. Clearly, a taunt. And most likely it came from someone here in this room.”

  With narrowed eyes, he scanned the gathered throng. The room was beginning to grow too warm. “There might be a person or two I’ve missed. Someone who came to be looked at by the doctor last week, but who didn’t return. If you know of any such person, name him now.”

  Keeling spoke up at once. “Me wife isn’t here this afternoon. She’s been here mebbies three times in the past week.”

  What a prince, throwing his wife’s name out for suspicion. Jenks seemed to feel the same way. “I’ve spoken to Mrs. Keeling recently and am satisfied of her innocence.”

  “That’s more than I can say, like,” the hind grumbled.

  “Sir Frederic,” said Jenks. “Which of these people have you invited, and who entered unknown to you?”

  The baronet looked about the room helplessly. “Why, every one of them was welcome. Today. Last Saturday. The first Friday of the month, when I see all callers.” He drew up his stocky form, puffing his chest. “The only person here I did not invite was you.”

  “Hmm.” The Runner seemed unperturbed. “You weren’t expecting other visitors, were you? A niece, say, and her . . . husband?”

  Oh. Shit.

  Hugo’s gaze flew to Georgette. Amidst the crowd, tucked between a footman and a housemaid, she looked as calm as Jenks. She even shot Hugo a wink.

  The woman loved melodrama. But she was right in her calm: they hadn’t done anything wrong. Much. Besides lying to a Runner about who they were.

  Sir Frederic was speaking again. “Merely because I don’t confide all my plans in you, Mr. Jenks, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I don’t want to tell you everything, because I don’t know you.”

  “Nor do you know your other guests. Or your tenants, with whom you’ve met only a few times since attaining the title.” Jenks was as calm as ever.

  Sir Frederic took this in, his puffed-up chest sinking like a balloon. “Can it be?” His whisper carried through the silent room. “My own niece? My nephew by marriage?”

  What? “Come now, Sir Frederic,” Hugo said. “We’re perfectly innocent.” He snatched at a vague memory. “You must know that. Mr. Keeling gave gold to his bondager before we ever arrived.”

  The baronet went the color of a custard. “You accuse me of conspiracy? With my own hind?”

  “They gave me the gold,” shouted Keeling. “When I was away south looking for work, before the planting begin here. I came across them in a pub and they gave me the gold and told me they’d kill me if I told!”

  “If any of that were true,” Georgette said, “then you have done something most unwise by telling. But since none of it is true, you’ve only made an ass of yourself.”

  But no, he had done more than that. In the silent room, whispers dropped and rippled out. Wondering whispers. No-smoke-without-fire whispers.

  Hugo spoke above them. “I never had the misfortune of meeting Mr. Keeling until I entered this house. And I never had a piece of gold likely to have come from a stolen sovereign until he gave me one.”

  “Likely to have come from?” Jenks turned to Hugo. “You don’t know, though.”

  “No, I don’t know. But the circumstantial evidence—you found it yourself. The gold had been melted down.”

  This would be a wonderful time for Mr. Lowe to speak up. Hugo caught his eye, but the blacksmith only shook his head. Furiously. Frantically.

  “Mr. Lowe,” Hugo pressed.

  “I never knew where anything came from,” he cried. “It just appeared, like. Gold coins, and I were to melt them down. There was a note. But I didn’t do it, because I knew they were stolen, and a man in a hood came into the foundry and crushed my foot with me own hammer.”

  A man in a hood.

  “Before you arrived here, Doctor.” Jenks considered. “But not before Mr. Keeling did.”

  “I had to melt it,” Lowe added, leaning heavily on his crutch. “Drop it into cold water so it made blobs no one would recognize. Then I’d get to keep me other foot, and me hands, and even some of the gold. But what’s a man to do with gold hereabouts?”

  “A man can do anything with gold,” said Sir Frederic.

  “Not here. The shops in Bamburgh won’t take it, nor I can’t eat it or feed me family with it. And I can’t make meself a new set of toes with it.”

  “I am sorry about the toes,” Hugo said. “They are—”

  “You saved me life, Doctor, and I don’t mean to fault you. But I wish I’d never seen that gold.”

  “I could wish it had never been minted,” Jenks said. “But then none of us would have the undeniable pleasure of being here today.” His voice held a touch of triumph. “A few of you must stay. Mr. Crowe. Mrs. Crowe. Mr. Keeling. Everyone else is free to leave for the moment.”

  “Wait,” said Hugo, even as the other people stirred and shoved and immediately made for the door. “Mr. Jenks. The lady and I are innocent. What sort of evidence do you need in order to believe us?”

  “For a start, I’d need to know who you really are.”

  No. Impossible. If he told the truth, then Georgette would be ruined. He had done too much to ensure her safety to compromise it now.

  “If you’re married to the lady,” said Jenks, “then you’re culpable for any crimes either of you may have committed. If you’re not, then I could take her up for licentious behavior.”

  “No,” Hugo blurted. “No.”

  Jenks regarded him narrowly. “Or,” he added, “she could leave. Just leave, as if she were never here. And you could start telling me what you know.”

  She could be free. Georgette could just . . . go. Go away from this inquisition, and the amputations and the honey and the empty library and full wine cellar. She could be done with this whole coil.

  The idea should have made him soar. But so much had altered that he was too muddled to know how to feel.

  “May I speak to the lady in private?” Hugo asked.

  Jenks lifted his chin, catching the eye of some of the servants before they filed out. He made a complicated set of motions with his hands, which they seemed to comprehend. When he turned back to Hugo, he said, “Very well. You’ll be locked in this room. I’ll see Mr. Keeling shut away somewhere secure, then I’ll return. And I’ll need answers from you then.”

  * * *

  The door lock was turned with a dreadful grinding that seemed very loud.

  “Alone at last.” Georgette tried for lightness. The chairs set up in neat rows had been scrambled, some overturned. She busied herself dragging them back into order. Not that it mattered, did it? Hugo would not be seeing patients that day.

  “Georgette.” He stood at a careful distance. “You must blame everything on me. Take some money and leave. Throw yourself on Jenks’s mercy and tell him who you are, and that I spirited you away with the promise of bringing you to your brother.”

  She let a chair fall with a muffled thump. “That is both correct and entirely inaccurate. No. Hugo, I’m not going to compound a lie and leave you in the lurch.”

  “Georgette. I’m fine.” He gave a twist to his gold signet ring. “I’m the son of a duke, remember? Everything is lovely for people like me. But if you stay, you’ll be ruined.”

  The bit about dukes’ sons was true; she’d told him often enough. But his plan didn’t sit right with her. “Ruined for what? Not for such purpose as I have. Not for my dream of a cottage in the country.”

  He sighed. For the first time, she thought he looked much older than she. “You think life is like a story and you want to live inside one. But this is reality.”

  “I assure you, I am n
ot unaware of that.”

  “If you want your cottage, you must help to save yourself. If you don’t want your choices to be seized from you, this is the one you must make.”

  “But how can I get the cottage without the gold?”

  “There’s no gold, Georgette. There never was.” He was standing before the fireplace, and he turned to cuff the mantel, hard. “This is not the sort of treasure that does anyone good. Jenks will chase it in dribs and drabs until July, and then it’ll be done.”

  She could not have been more surprised if he had slapped her. “I knew you never wanted to come along, but I didn’t realize you never thought there was hope.”

  “There can always be hope.” His fingertips ground at the stone of the mantel, as if trying to crush it. “But there has to be a plan, too. And the original plan is rubbish, Georgette. Let it go now that it’s rubbish. You can’t be Mrs. Crowe anymore. You need to go back to being yourself.”

  “Even so. That doesn’t mean I have to leave.”

  He didn’t say anything; his jaw worked on unspoken words.

  And she realized: “It does mean that, doesn’t it? You want me to leave, because I was never part of your plan. Your perfect hospital in London to honor your brother. If I am compromised, you’ll be stuck with me, and you can’t pursue your own aims.”

  He had never made any bones about his determination. He had never promised he would stay with her. He’d taken care to keep his distance; he’d done no more with her than what she’d asked. I’m only doing this because you begged me. Ha. She’d been the first to make that joke, but the joke was on her.

  “This is not a tragic ethical dilemma.” Hugo turned to face her, one hand on the mantel. “It’s not. Not even close. You should leave and protect yourself. It’s the right thing to do.”

  She could almost laugh. “At last, you’re granting that I could protect myself. When I never asked you to protect me at all.”

  But he’d felt the obligation all the same, she knew. And at some point between the time she took his hand and the time she loosed her bodice for him, he thought he’d failed in it. Otherwise he wouldn’t be looking at her like this, with such a plea in those deep blue eyes. She loved them, but she could hardly look at them. There was too much and too little feeling in them at once.

  Carefully, deliberately, she set one of the hard wooden chairs upright and sat in it. “Your idea of what is right,” she said slowly, “has been determined by someone who died years ago.”

  He turned on his heel, away from her. Smacking into the folding screen, he cursed, steadying it with an outstretched hand. When it settled into place again, he knocked the end panel flat into its neighbor. There was the table, so carefully laid out with medical instruments.

  “You mean my brother Matthew.” His tone was clipped. With sharp gestures, he began tucking the instruments away into the long leather case in which they were stored. “But everyone’s decisions are guided by someone who has died. My father, for example. He’s the duke because his father was, and before that an uncle, because the direct line broke. And you—what would your life be now if your parents had lived?”

  She wanted to pace, but she did not want to draw close to him. So instead, she sat, all in knots. “I promise you that I am not guided by what my parents would want me to do.”

  “No, rather the opposite. You think of them, and you react. You live in stories. Who pins a future on the promise of a reward from the Royal Mint?” With more force than necessary, he snipped a pair of scissors closed and shoved them into the case.

  “You did the same,” Georgette pointed out.

  “No. I pinned mine on the hospital plans. The reward was not the end in itself. It was the means to make the hospital happen.”

  “And the hospital? Is it not for Matthew?”

  His hands went still. He looked at them as though he’d never seen them before. “It is. It was. But it’s for—many things.”

  “And all our travel? Our time together?” She searched within, finding a kernel of bravery. “Was it all in service of your plan?” What have I come to mean to you?

  Her words seemed to snap him out of a reverie. With quick and practiced gestures, he finished replacing the instruments. “It wouldn’t have happened without the plan, but that doesn’t mean it was only because of the plan. I did what I wanted to do.”

  “Yes, as did I.” She laced her fingers together in her lap. “And a bit more, too.”

  He fumbled the latch of the case. “You cannot mean that I disrespected you?” He looked toward her, stricken. “I would never want—”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. You have never disrespected me.”

  No, she meant that she had fallen for him: deeply, irrevocably, hopefully as a girl in a conte de fée. And foolishly, too, for she knew she and he were not the same. He was a scholar, with training in innumerable fields. She was self-educated, best at carrying things where they needed to go. Where she was Cinderella, he was vegetable acids. Where she was adventure, he was a plan.

  Though for a while, she’d lived along the edge of his plan and liked the backbone it gave her days. And she had thought that he liked the chance to leap outside its bounds, maybe. To stop and pet a sheep, or to make a castle in the sand.

  No, it was not a maybe. He had liked it. But not enough. That, more than Cinderella or Rapunzel or any old tale told and retold by the French and Germans, was the story of Georgette’s life: you are not enough.

  She tried again, desperately. “You took a bullet to protect me. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  This time he succeeded at latching the case. “It means I am not a villain, Georgette. That’s all I’ve ever been able to say.”

  “I’m better with words than you are,” she said, “and that’s not how I’d describe you at all.”

  He said nothing. Maybe there was nothing more to say.

  “Well.” She slapped her thighs, then rose to her feet. “I ought to be going, ought I not? You have been most clear about that. You are right, I need a purpose. And I won’t find it here.”

  He dropped the case to the table, then strode toward her. “Georgette . . .”

  The key tangled with the lock of the parlor, the noise drawing her notice.

  “Jenks,” she said. It was too soon; they had agreed on nothing. “What will you tell him?”

  But it wasn’t Jenks who the servants guarding the door admitted to the room. It was a tall dark-haired man with sightless blue eyes and a stout wooden cane in one hand. He slammed it to the floor, then tilted his head, listening.

  “Georgette,” he said. “You are in here, the servants told me. And Hugo, yes? Hullo to you both.”

  Oh, damn. Damn the man.

  Years too late to be of any good, and with the most unwelcome timing ever, her elder brother, Benedict, had made an appearance.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Your timing is terrible,” Georgette told her brother as soon as the shock of introduction and the obligatory greetings were completed. “Lord Hugo and I were just having a towering argument.”

  “And I missed it? What a pity. That is terrible timing.”

  “No,” said Hugo. “You didn’t miss it entirely. But I believe we shall have to leave it unresolved.”

  He had packed up his medical case. The chairs were in a neat line. The parlor door was no longer locked, and somewhere Keeling was informally imprisoned.

  So many questions remained unanswered, but for Georgette, this was the end of the journey. Hugo’s plan had always been to see her to her brother, and there was nothing more important than the plan. Leave, he had told her. For a moment he’d forgotten that she could not safely travel alone. But now it was a moot point. Benedict had saved the day.

  Sometimes she hated Benedict.

  “How did you find me?” she asked. “And why now?”

  “I was determined to find you by your birthday, to make sure you were all right.”

  Georgette groaned.
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  “If you are making a horrid face, you know I cannot see it,” Benedict replied. “The effect is wasted on me. And I found you after much clever investigation and labor.”

  “Did you really?” Hugo was seated in one of the little chairs from the attic, his large frame incongruous upon it.

  “Ah—much labor, at the very least.” Seated, Benedict held his cane lightly across his lap. “I began by visiting the Duchess of Willingham. Is she here, by the bye?”

  “Of course not,” said Hugo. “Why should you think such a thing?”

  “Because my sister is with you, and you wrote me that she was a guest of your mother’s.”

  Hugo bristled. “And so she was, when I wrote you.”

  Georgette placed a hand on Benedict’s elbow. “Leave that,” she said. “I suppose you followed us north, the blond woman and the bespectacled man with the ridiculous long leather case.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Not far off,” Benedict said smoothly. “And as to the why, it wasn’t entirely because of your birthday. I’ve much news.”

  “Oh God.” Georgette flopped back against the hard rungs of her chair. “There’s a woman in it. You’ve met someone.”

  “I have, and I hope I haven’t bollixed my chances too badly. I’ve much more to do before I can declare myself to the lady. But no, the real news is this: I was there in Derbyshire when three chests of stolen gold were found. And I’ve come to give you money, Georgette.”

  Jenks poked his head through the doorway. “All finished here? Mrs. Crowe, you’re free to leave. With your brother, if you wish.”

  Mrs. Crowe, mouthed Benedict with an exaggerated play of his features. Fortunate for him he could not see Georgette’s response.

  Jenks stepped into the room. “There’s nothing more for you to do here, Miss—Madam. If you go now, you needn’t be mixed up in the story of the theft at all. And there will,” he added grimly, “be a story.”

  “But Hugo . . .” She looked at him.

  He gave his signet ring a twist; he gave her a wry smile. “Will be fine,” he replied. “You’re free, Georgette.”

  Such a beautiful sentence, under ordinary circumstances. But nothing about Hugo Starling was ordinary to Georgette.