by Darcy Burke
“For a man who lost his job, he certainly is doing well,” Daniel said, as he extended a hand to help Kate down from the hack.
Her hand came to rest on his arm as a proper woman did with her escort. He turned to her, brow arched and about to comment, when he saw her face. Her lips were set in a line so thin as to be barely visible. Her eyes were dark.
Of course she’d be upset, he realized with a start. The snake Bartleby, culpable in the bankruptcy of Emporia, resided in relative wealth. She instead had been forced from her family’s home through no fault of her own.
“Shall we?” He asked, cocking his head toward the looming townhouse.
Sunlight splashed across her high cheekbones as they stood on the street. She ran a hand across the folds of her skirt to straighten out the wrinkles from the carriage. She wore the same blue plaid dress as when they’d gone to Jacob’s Island, but this time she’d paired it with a gray pelisse instead of her father’s greatcoat. Regally, she held her head high and her shoulders back. The dress suited her willowy frame perfectly, from the full skirt to the circular bodice. For a second he simply watched her move, struck by her.
She was magnificent, and soon, he’d make her realize this.
Her nose wrinkled as they stepped onto the stoop, as though she’d smelled something rancid. Daniel knocked.
No one came.
“You’d think he’d have servants, the pompous arse,” Kate sniffed.
He could easily imagine Bartleby deriving great joy from being able to order around servants. He had lost count of the number of times the accountant had barked a racial slur at him, even though he had been Bartleby’s superior.
Daniel knocked again. Still no answer.
On his third try, Kate stopped him mid-raise of his hand. She pulled out her flintlock, ramming the door with the butt of the gun. “Bartleby, you pathetic mongrel! You worthless coward! Come out here, before I break this door down and drag you out by your balls!”
Daniel would have paid good money to see that. “Are you quite done?”
“No.” She banged the door once more with the pistol butt before turning to face him. “Now I am.”
The lock turned. The door was partially opened. “Listen here, I don’t know who you think you are but—” A lean, cavernous face peered out the door and stopped mid-sentence as he recognized them. “Miss Katherine,” the man sputtered.
“Bartleby.” She greeted him flatly, disdain chalked on her face. “Pardon me if I don’t bother with an honorific. You did try to kill me, after all.”
“What?” Bartleby blinked rapidly.
“Let us in.” She pushed at the door with her flintlock, opening it wide enough that Daniel was visible as well.
Bartleby’s thin face turned ashen. His nostrils flared. “O’Reilly. I heard you were dead.”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m sorry to report that rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
Bartleby could not close the door with Kate’s pistol wedged so firmly. Morgan had kept Bartleby because he was a “damn good accountant.” Kept him despite his surly manner, kept him despite his lack of regard for anyone but himself.
Kate pushed the door open all the way, barging into the townhouse.
“You can’t—”
“Best not fight her.” He closed the door behind Bartleby.
Daniel took a good look at Bartleby. His shoulders were hunched, his gaunt frame so insubstantial that a steady push might send him reeling to the ground. Bartleby had never been this reedy before. The accountant wore a silver waistcoat of good quality cloth that didn’t taper to his chest, yet his fitted shirt was of cheap linen. His breeches were large and baggy.
“I really don’t have the foggiest notion of what you’re gadding on about, or why you’re here. Please leave, and take O’Reilly with you.” Bartleby looked furtively toward the door, as if assessing his escape routes.
“What? No ‘Paddy’? No ‘Bog-Trotter’?” A slow smirk slid across Daniel’s lips as his leaned back against the door. Unless there was another entrance onto this side of the street, the accountant would have to use the window if he wanted to leave.
It wasn’t exactly equal revenge for Bartleby’s attempts at humiliating him over the years, but it’d do.
Bartleby followed his movements uneasily. “I don’t want any trouble. Whatever money I’ve got you can take.”
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t need to steal from those who are ill.”
“He tried to blow us into tiny-sized Kate and Daniel bits. I should think his mental sickness is obvious,” Kate scoffed.
“No.” Daniel gestured to Bartleby. “Your waistcoat and breeches are of good quality but your shirt is cheap, as though you had to replace it recently with ready-made. Probably due to your weight loss from the illness, I’d think. Medical bills can be quite harsh on the extravagant dandy’s budget. Pity for your wardrobe you haven’t the blunt to pay your tailor.”
“No one pays tradesmen,” Bartleby huffed.
“You do realize you were an accountant, correct?” Kate walked further into the house, ignoring Bartleby’s attempts to herd her back toward the door. She entered the small parlor off to the side, plopping down in a gold embroidered armchair. “Cushy.” She stretched out in the chair, head back as a cat in a sunbeam. The flintlock lay across her lap.
She was enjoying herself far too much, but he couldn’t blame her.
Bartleby perched on the couch. Like a bird’s talons, his spindly fingers gripped the arm with nails dug into the fabric. “Why are you here, Katherine?”
She crossed her ankles, a debonair queen on a gold throne. From her pocket she fished out the offensive foolscap. “Here is what is going to happen. You are going to tell us exactly why you sent this note.” She leaned over, passing the foolscap to Bartleby.
Bartleby put his glasses back on, reading the note. “I never sent this.” He passed the paper back to Kate with a shrug.
“It is your signature,” Daniel said.
“That it is a decent representation of my name I don’t doubt. Regardless, I never sent it.”
“Then who did?”
“King William?” Bartleby’s sarcasm was broken off by a coughing fit. His entire body shook, head falling to his knees from the violence.
“How long do you have?” Daniel asked.
Bartleby rose shakily, hobbling to the wine cabinet by the window. He poured from the glass bottle of claret, drops of the red liquid splashing onto the wood.
Red, red drops like the blood in Ezekiel’s nose. Wine that once had danced on his tongue seductively in spirit’s kiss.
“Two months, to approximate.” Bartleby took a sip of claret, gasping as the alcohol burned his throat. The accountant made his way back to the chair, absorbed in his own thoughts. “I hate approximates. There’s no beauty to be found in a number one can’t define.”
He should feel some level of pity for the accountant, but he felt nothing. Did that make him deadened inside? He didn’t know, and at that moment, he didn’t care.
Bartleby sucked down another sip of wine. Daniel watched as he swallowed, the muscles of his throat straining. Claret had never been his favorite, but it’d do the job as well as any other. It would help him to make sense of the insanity that was his relationship with Kate.
He shook his head to rid it of the images. This was not the time to submit to old habits.
“But I guess death is the final number of them all.” Bartleby sighed.
“I’d think you would like obscure mathematics. After all, isn’t that what you used to hide your stealing from Papa’s company?” Kate’s voice held an edge he could not place. Anger, bitterness, fury...or a combination of all three that seethed and bubbled under her icy exterior.
Bartleby’s glance flickered to Daniel, ignoring Kate. “You wonder why Morgan would keep an odious bastard like me on staff. He always liked charity cases—you should know that best of all.”
Daniel bristle
d, his hand clenched around the arm of the chair. “I believe Morgan had his reasons.”
Reasons which he had begun to suspect were not so noble after all. Could Morgan really not have known about Bartleby’s misappropriation? The two had met weekly to go over the books.
“Daniel worked for his salary. He didn’t steal, unlike you,” Kate sneered.
Her defense of him made up for Bartleby’s rudeness. In fact, he half-wished the accountant would insult him again so he could see the outraged flush of color on her cheeks.
No matter how she might protest, she cared for him. He needed no further proof.
“Grin all you want, O’Reilly, but I know you suspect the truth. Good for you.” Bartleby’s voice was laced with condescension. “That’s the wisest you’ll ever be.”
Kate huffed. “Daniel knows my father had nothing to do with this. You tried to have us killed, Bartleby, and I demand to know why.”
“Miss Katherine, I will tell you what really happened with your father’s company. I’ve got two months left, what are they going to me now?” Bartleby tilted his head toward Daniel. “But not with him here. I may be dying, but I still have my pride.”
Kate sent him a disbelieving look, so hard that the accountant cowered under the weight of her stare. “He stays.”
She wanted him to remain, wanted his help to fight her battles. Daniel was buoyed, even though he knew she’d deny it all.
“And you will tell me what I want to know,” she continued. “Because of the people in this room you should be afraid of, it’s me, not Daniel.” She lifted the flintlock from her lap, distractedly fingering the trigger on the half-cocked gun.
“You honestly expect me to believe Morgan’s spoiled pet would know how to shoot that?” Forgetting himself, Bartleby crowed with laughter.
In the blink of an eye, Kate had the gun fully cocked, and aimed. She squeezed the trigger. The bullet sailed, smashing into an expensive-looking vase on the mantel. The vase shattered, mint green tulip shards flung across the oriental carpet.
Bartleby dissolved in another fit of coughs.
Daniel grinned, shamelessly proud of her. Damn, he liked that gun when it wasn’t pointed at him.
“You were saying?” Kate snickered.
“Ah.” Bartleby flinched. “I was saying that I have been many things in my life, but a smuggler is not one of them. Whatever money I hid on the books, it was because Morgan requested I do so. It was he who was embezzling, not me.”
“You lie.” Kate was up on her feet, furious. The pistol swung at her side.
Devil take it, she’d shoot Bartleby. He crossed over to her, reaching for the gun. When she wouldn’t release it, he covered her hand with his own. “Come, Kate,” he urged, voice low. “Release the gun, love.”
“Adorable,” Bartleby muttered. “Kate blusters and her Paddy defends. Nothing has changed.”
Daniel wrenched the gun finally from Kate’s grip, uncocking it. He turned on Bartleby, words uttered through clenched teeth. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” The accountant propped his jaundiced chin up on his hands, as if the act of holding up his own head was becoming too taxing.
Two months. Doubtful. Whatever information they wanted from Bartleby, they better get it fast.
Bartleby blinked. “Morgan would come to me periodically, in the last few years of Emporia.”
Kate took a deep breath, chest shaking with barely contained fury. She opened her mouth for another harsh retort. Daniel grabbed for her hand, squeezing it. She inhaled again, composing herself. In a second he felt her squeeze back.
“He got involved with some very bad people, Miss Katherine. Have you heard of resurrection men?”
Chapter Seventeen
Everything Laurence Bartleby said was false.
Kate’s heart beat once against her chest and stopped. Her breath died without being released. There could be no other explanation but that he was a vicious liar out to smear the last shreds of her father’s good name.
“I am aware of such villains.” Her voice was eerily flat, when all she wanted to do was scream.
Daniel’s hand clenched around hers. He rooted her to this spot. She couldn’t even throw her hands up around her ears and block out the vile sounds of Bartleby’s nasal words.
“I would not call them villains, when your father was in league with them.” Bartleby’s reddened eyes took on a gleeful sheen. “Unless you wish to class your dear Papa as a dastardly blackguard, in which case I should rightly agree.”
“My father was a good man. A better man than you, you unrepentant arse.” She spat out the insult, for it was dirt on her tongue.
Grave dirt.
“Oh, Miss Katherine, how I have missed your spunk.” Bartleby’s thin lips curled into a sneer.
“I’ll show you spunk—”
Daniel maneuvered himself half in front of her, cutting her off. “Let the man talk, Katiebelle,” he murmured.
“So that he can spread more lies? I think not.” In a fit of rage, she wrenched her hand from Daniel’s. Quick steps took her toward Bartleby.
“Hit me, if you like. It shall not change what your Papa did. How do you think I got the funds for this townhouse?” Bartleby shrugged bony shoulders.
She clenched her fist, nails biting into her palm. The quick sting of pain centered her. “You stole from Emporia.”
“Only what your father failed to provide for me. We had a deal, him and me. I’d hide his illicit activities so the Board wouldn’t realize he was taking from the company, and he’d make sure I was set for life.” Bartleby’s eyes narrowed, slits seen through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Then the bastard died. What I was supposed to do? No one wanted to hire the accountant from a business that had gone bankrupt. As if it was my fault!”
“How exactly was Morgan involved?” Daniel faced Bartleby with a blank expression.
His lack of emotion shot through her. Did he not care at all? This was her father they discussed as if he were a common criminal!
Bartleby tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “I learned of the smuggling a year into my employment at Emporia. Morgan started small at first, just a few crates of wine every other month to avoid the duty.”
Six years. Six years Papa had been working with Bartleby. She had known he smuggled wine crates occasionally—every shipping company did—but this sounded far worse. It couldn’t be true.
“He was overly cautious, afraid the authorities would find him.”
Yet that sounded like Papa. He’d always had an exit strategy.
Daniel didn’t hide his skepticism. “That’s a hell of a leap to make, from smuggling wine to selling bodies for ready money.”
“When I confronted him I convinced him to seek other lucrative means.” Bartleby had no shame, proud of what he’d done.
“You! You’re to blame.” Her voice shook.
“For the resurrection men? Hardly. That was all Morgan and Finn. I merely convinced him we could up the cases without anyone noticing, as long as I hid it. I needed to make it worth my while, Miss Katherine. Surely an enterprising woman such as you can understand that.” He arched a brow, his viper gaze sliding down her form.
A chill settled in her spine.
Daniel was by her side in an instant. His eyes glinted, dangerous and wild. “If you insinuate one more thing, Bartleby, I will make sure the Runners know exactly what you’ve done.”
“How do you plan to do that, O’Reilly, when they want you far more than they’d care about a dying man?”
“I have contacts,” Daniel asserted.
“Through who, the Gentleman Thief?”
Daniel’s hand faltered halfway to her arm. “How did you—”
“Did you think I didn’t know about Atlas Greer? Morgan knew too—in fact, he thought it’d make you more willing to help him. Why do you think he encouraged Miss Katherine to set her cap at you?” Smugly, Bartleby smiled, paper-thin skin stretching ghoulishly.
Daniel’s face hardened. He took a step back from her, a step so small it was barely noticeable, but she felt it like it was a chasm.
“Daniel, you know Papa never thought that,” she cried, bridging the gap between them. She reached for his hand, his palm hanging limply in the grasp of her slighter fingers. “He hired you because he knew you could do the best damn job of anyone. Because you’re smart, and you work hard, unlike some people.”
Bartleby snorted. “When you turned out to be honorable, Morgan backed off of you. He realized he was never going to push you into our world.”
Daniel’s jaw clenched. His shoulders were set back, his free hand balled into a fist like he would gladly punch the nearest person. He believed every lie Bartleby spouted, ignoring what he’d known before of Papa’s character.
“Let’s go.” She tugged on his hand, pulling him toward the door.
He didn’t move. His hand clenched tight around her own. “I want to hear the rest.”
“You can’t believe this.” Her pleas fell on deaf ears, yet she had to keep talking. No one would defend Papa but her. “He’s telling you whatever he can to incriminate Papa because it makes his sick mind feel vindicated.”
Bartleby stifled a yawn. “Miss Katherine, I don’t have to invent stories. Richard Morgan was a pathetic waste of space. He lacked the vision to turn the enterprise into something truly lucrative. In fact, if Jasper Finn hadn’t uncovered his smuggling in the first place, I doubt there would have been enough money left for me to survive on.”
Papa had always been there for her. After her mother had left when she was eight, instead of hiring a governess and forgetting about her entirely, he’d taken an active role in her education and life. Almost every night he made a point to share supper with her and ask about her day. He’d provided her for every step of the way, until he left her alone with no funds.
Papa couldn’t have anticipated that Daniel would leave her, or that he’d become ill so quickly. He’d intended for her to be set for life.
She glanced toward Daniel, yet he looked at Bartleby. He had no eyes for her, no condolences for the ruination of the man who had raised her. That was fine; she didn’t need sympathy when she knew Bartleby’s claims to be false.