“Perhaps we might consider solutions that do not lead to your subsequent hanging,” Kate suggested.
Ned flicked a glance at Kate. She had no notion what he intended. The hardest part of her hobby had always been convincing the women in question to act. She didn’t understand why it was so hard to make the decision to leave a violent husband. A man who was willing to break bones didn’t deserve much consideration, in Kate’s opinion. And yet there was this vacillation. She tried not to let it irritate her.
Sometimes it still did.
Louisa pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them to her, as if making herself smaller would shrink her problems. “It’s easy for you to tell me to make a choice,” she said. “But when I try to think of the future, my head just hurts. I can’t face it.”
Kate exhaled in exasperation. “But you shall have to do so.”
Louisa set her fingers to her temples and didn’t respond.
“You know what?” Ned’s voice rang out, doubling Kate’s annoyance. “Did I ever tell you about my experience with Captain Adams in China?”
At those words, Louisa looked up, and Kate pressed her lips together. This hardly seemed the place to exchange anecdotes. They needed to plan, to think, to charge forward. They had little enough time as it was. Kate turned toward her husband, and her brows drew down.
But at least Louisa had uncurled from her little ball, as if once the tension was released, she could sit straight again.
“No,” she said softly. “You didn’t. I’ve heard almost nothing about your journey. What was China like? Was it foreign? Exotic?”
Ned rested one hand easily on his knee and leaned back. He looked toward Louisa, as if she were the only person in the room, and Kate felt her annoyance grow.
“It was frustrating,” he replied. “Very frustrating. I arrived, thinking my mission would take me maybe a month or two. But when I first got to the Eastern hemisphere, hostilities had broken out. The ship I was on rerouted, so as to find a safe place to land. It took me months just to make my way to Hong Kong. But I’d promised Gareth I would investigate the opium situation in China. And I was bound and determined to go forward, war or no war, hostilities or no hostilities. After all, I hadn’t traveled halfway round the globe, just to be fobbed off with secondhand accounts. I wanted to see the British action in China, and I wanted to see it personally.”
Kate tapped her foot, one hand on her hip.
Ned put his hands behind his head and looked up. “The man I needed to talk to was Captain Adams. He’d been appointed as a liaison to all the silly, foolish second sons and aimless aristocrats who’d been shipped out East for no reason other than that nobody wanted us back in England. I suspect he despised us all. He took one look at me and knew precisely what to make of me.”
“He thought you were someone he had to respect, as the heir to a marquess?” Kate asked. “The sort of person who could solve problems decisively?”
Ned cast a glance at her, that smile on his face, but ignored her. “Absolutely not. He thought I was useless, and that I would prove to be a headache.”
“Well. I hope he learned his lesson, judging you so quickly,” Kate said. “But back to Louisa…”
Ned shrugged. “He was right. I went to his office day after day, requesting that he allow me aboard one of the ships they were sending down to the mouth of the Pearl River, to observe what was happening. At first, he said no. Then I began to wear into the thin veneer of his patience, at which point he said, ‘Definitely not.’ After about three weeks of my constant badgering, it turned into, ‘My God, man, don’t you frivolous idiots have the brains to see I have real work to do? Stop pestering me.’”
“But then he gave in,” Kate predicted. “As for Louisa…”
Ned smiled more broadly. “No. He didn’t. It took another week to turn into ‘Mr. Carhart, as God is my witness, if you set foot in my office one more time, you will regret it for the rest of your life.’”
At this point, Kate noticed that Louisa had begun to lean forward, her eyes alight. And when Ned paused contemplatively, she let out a little gasp. “Oh, don’t stop there. Did you? Set foot in his office, I mean.”
“Of course I did. I was scared out of my wits, too. I had promised Gareth I’d not leave until I had personally seen what was happening. And so the next morning, I presented myself once more. By that time, I wasn’t really sure why I continued to march into his office. I surely did not expect to meet with success. I had all the feeling of throwing myself against a brick wall, violently, repeatedly, for no other reason than there were no other brick walls available. It was pure foolishness. Only idiots and madmen continue to better themselves in the face of persistent failure, and by that time, I was certain I was both.”
There was a certain gentle humor in his retelling, a glint in his eye, and out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see Louisa smile. Ned had always had this skill, even when she’d first met him—this ability to say something funny and unassuming, to set someone at ease, to bring out the light in shadowed eyes.
He’d been sweet. Over the years of his marriage, that sweetness had been given more substance than she’d guessed.
“So? What happened?” Louisa asked.
“He clapped eyes on me. And this time, he didn’t say one word. Instead, he rang a little bell on his desk.”
Kate was leaning forward as much as Louisa, now. “And then?”
“And then, eight soldiers marched in. They must have been lying in wait for the moment. They grabbed me by the arms and legs.”
“Didn’t you fight?”
“I tried. But there were eight of them and one of me. If I’d had as many arms as a squid, I’d still have been at a distinct disadvantage. Especially at close quarters. In any event, they lifted me off the ground and carried me like a sack of potatoes. And the only thing the captain said was this—‘Dunk him.’”
“Oh, no.” Louisa covered her mouth in sympathy. “Did they toss you in a lake?”
“I can tell you’ve spent no time around soldiers, if a lake is the worst you can imagine. That would have been very kind, in comparison with what actually happened. You see, the garrison had built these privies. And it was so wet there, that… Well, in any event, the waste eventually collected in these massive holes in the ground. They were foul, disgusting swamps.”
“Oh, dear God.” The words escaped Kate’s mouth.
Ned smiled at her, his cheerful tone at odds with the filthy scene he set. “So in I went. It was quite possibly the most humiliating moment of my life. It was disgusting and degrading, and I do not have the words to describe how impossibly awful it was. I couldn’t even scream in protest, because that would have required me to open my mouth. I have never felt quite so helpless in my life as I did at that moment.”
The two women stared at him in shock.
“You realize,” Ned said in a low voice, “that if this story ever gets out, I will be a laughingstock. I am trusting you ladies with my deepest, most shameful secret. You must never tell another soul. I know I can count on you.”
Louisa nodded, and in that instant, Kate’s breath stopped wildly. Somehow he’d managed to calm her friend’s fears. He’d managed to make her smile. And now he was subtly making her feel that she was important, trustworthy. Somehow he’d known that she’d had so much taken from her that she couldn’t possibly give anything back. Her husband didn’t need to beat his chest or roar. He didn’t need to make arrogant demands. He just needed to smile and make Louisa laugh. Now Kate’s heart stung just a bit.
“So,” Louisa asked, “what did you do?”
“What would you have done? I took a bath.” He grinned. “A long bath. Then I got in a little boat and I tooled around and I thought. There’s something extraordinarily valuable about having someone do their worst. If you survive it, they can’t truly touch you again. There’s nothing they can do to bring you down. And Adams—well, he’d done his worst. He couldn’t kill me. My cousin would inve
stigate my death and make his life miserable if he did. He’d had me thrown in the privy on the assumption that I’d be too humiliated to admit it to anyone once I got home. He believed I would simply make up some rubbish for a report and leave him alone.” Ned leaned back in his chair. “He believed wrong. The next morning I got dressed. I went down to his office one last time. And then…” Ned smiled, stood. He walked over to Louisa and bent down, so that he was level with her.
“Then I looked in his eyes, just like this.” He fixed Louisa with a look. “I smiled, just like this. And I leaned forward and I said, ‘Captain Adams, I believe I’ll be on the next boat to the river.’”
Kate watched him in breathless agony.
Ned straightened. “He looked at me. He looked at that damned bell. And then he looked back at me. It was as if he’d bullied me as far as he could. Once he realized I could outlast him, that was that. From there on out, he actually proved quite helpful.”
At those last words, Louisa looked away. “Oh, Ned. I know what you’re trying to say. But I can’t. I can’t testify in court. I can’t petition for a divorce. I can’t even imagine looking Harcroft in the eyes.”
“You can’t right now. I needed that time on the boat, Louisa. I burned my skin crimson that day, sitting on that boat and thinking. I needed that time, because if I’d seen him right after coming from the privy, I would have flinched from him, and that would have been the end of it all. I needed to know what I wanted.” He flashed Louisa a grin. “You can’t know what to do, until you know what you want. What do you want?”
“I want my baby to be safe.” Louisa’s arms curled about her, and Kate bit her lip. “I want him to take his father’s place as earl one day. I want him to believe that love and affection are typical, and violence a mere aberration.”
Ned tapped his lips. “So, for instance, escaping to America and obscuring your identity might cloud his chances at taking his seat.”
Louisa nodded. “I want to stay here with my family.” She glanced at Kate. “And my friends. And I don’t want my husband to ever, ever threaten me again.”
“There,” Ned said. “Was that so hard, then? To want?”
“But I don’t dare want all of that, Mr. Carhart. It’s impossible.”
Ned glanced at his nails, as if in boredom. “A minor detail,” he announced airily. “My wife has been performing the impossible for years, and this time around, she has me to help her. We’ll find out how to get you much of that. It might take some time, but we’ll manage it.”
Oh, he was impossible himself. Impossibly attractive—and impossibly heartwarming, to say such things of her.
“The first step,” she said, “is to keep you safe. And to that end, we need to distract Harcroft. We’ll need to direct his attention elsewhere.”
Ned nodded. “We should let him think we’re desperate. That we’ll make mistakes. That we’re running off somewhere—perhaps rushing to your side.” He looked over at Kate. “What say you to going to London? I have some unfinished business there in any event.”
“And what am I to do there?” Kate asked.
Ned gave her a slow grin. “We,” he said with emphasis, “are going to drive Harcroft mad.”
AS THEY WALKED BACK TO THE HOUSE, Ned felt Kate’s eyes on him. His little story had undoubtedly piqued her curiosity. Unfortunately. She’d not been distracted by her own worries the way Louisa had, and no doubt she’d noticed that there were holes in his tale.
“That,” she finally said, “was very brave of you. To take your embarrassment and use it to make Louisa feel comfortable.”
“Hmm,” Ned said, looking away. “More like foolhardiness.”
“You told us that story with such a smile on your face, as if it were all some sort of joke. But I get the impression there was more to it than you disclosed. What really happened?”
“It was basically as I laid it out.” Precisely as he’d said, except so much more.
By the small puff of air she expelled, she knew it, too.
“Oh, very well. If you must know.” He rubbed one hand against his wrist. “I left out this—they didn’t just throw me in the sump. They bound me, wrists and ankles, and blindfolded me. I didn’t know where we were going, what they had planned. When they threw me into what was essentially a lake of human waste, I had no notion what was coming. The liquid closed over my head, and trussed up as I was, I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t do much more than wriggle futilely.” He’d woken up for months afterward, with that memory of bonds cutting his flesh. Thankfully, his mind seemed to have expelled the worst of the memory.
“How did they dare?” She looked at him in shock. “How did you escape?”
“They’d tied a rope to my feet. After about a minute, they just dragged me out, and I came, flopping like a fish. They intended to humiliate me, not hurt me. I have never felt so helpless in my life.”
She was looking at him with something akin to pity. Christ. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him.
“Don’t look at me like that.” The words came out rather more sharply than he’d intended. “It was quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to me. I spent a great deal of time out on the ocean, in that boat. Under that sun. It didn’t just burn away my skin. It burned away my most timid parts. I needed to look that part of myself in the eye and reject it. The experience built substance.”
More than he would ever tell her. She didn’t need to know precisely how weak he’d been at the time—and how close he’d come to crumpling. All she needed to know was that he’d survived.
“What sort of substance?” she asked.
“The sort that brought me home to you,” he replied shortly. “The sort that made me brave enough to venture into naval battles and opium dens alike.”
“The kind that made you sleep in bitter cold?” she asked.
He nodded, jerkily, and she subsided into a frown.
He had no wish to tell her the entirety of what had transpired out there on the lake. She didn’t need to know how close he’d come, how dark that final darkness had truly been. She’d seen enough for her to understand what had happened to him without understanding precisely what sort of person it had happened to.
He’d tamed his dragon. He wouldn’t leave Kate. And that was all she needed to know.
Chapter Eighteen
SOME THINGS TRULY HADN’T CHANGED in the years since Ned had left London. One of those things was the dimly lit gaming hall that stood in a disreputable portion of town. From the doorway, Ned could hear the crack of dice bouncing on green baize. Smoke permeated the air of the room, so thick he could imagine it spilling out into the night air and meeting the fog bank in a swirl of cloud.
He’d spent much of the day traveling back to town, but this particular encounter with the gaming tables could not be put off.
His quarry—five fellows who no doubt called themselves gentlemen—sat in a corner, clutching cards. They might well have been playing loo again. The only thing that had changed in the intervening years was that while Ned had been growing muscle, his erstwhile friends had gone to fat.
Any other man in his position might have challenged them to a duel. But there was little honor in slaying a quintet of oversize drunkards, and besides, Ned’s method of dealing with the problem promised to be more amusing. Real heroes, after all, tamed their dragons.
Ned stepped into the room. As he made his way around tables littered with jugs of cheap wine, he fingered the silky bit of fabric he’d purloined earlier. They didn’t see him approach, so caught up were they in their game. They didn’t even catch his shadow—multifaceted, from the many lamps—falling across their table. It was loo, and by the pile of papers on the table, play was deep.
Once, Ned had been as oblivious as these men. He had been so desperate to drown his past in spirits that he had tried to wager away his future on the deal of a card. Thank God he had stopped.
Lord Ellison—a onetime friend of his—crowed in triumph as he la
id his final card. “I win!” he gloated. The others murmured congratulations. Another man shook his head in disgust—and then stopped, seeing Ned. He peered at him through eyes made bleary with spirits.
“Carhart?” Alfred Dennis asked slowly. “Is that you? I heard you had returned.” He blinked a few times, as if trying to make sense of Ned’s appearance. One rusty mental process must not have been entirely dissolved in alcohol, because he brightened. “I say, are you joining us?”
He reached for a chair and made an attempt to pull it up to the table.
“Come on, Carhart!” Ellison said. “It’s been ages since we last had a good time together. You’re feeling up for a little wager, aren’t you?”
Neither seemed to have the tiniest inkling that they might have done something wrong. Another reason Ned couldn’t duel them: It would be like slaying pond slime. Algae never understood when it gave offense.
Ned straddled the chair. “Actually,” he said, “I’m here to collect on a wager.”
“Which one?” Ellison asked. “Dennis—no, Port-Morton, you can still stand. Fetch the book.”
One of the men from the back began to heave to his feet on wavering legs.
“No need,” Ned said. “This wager is quite famous.” Ned set the fabric he’d been carrying on the table. It was a fine specimen of work—roses embroidered on pink silk with satin ties.
“Carhart,” Dennis said, “is that a garter you laid on the table?”
The five men stared at him, lips pursed together in identical expressions of dismay. No, not identical; they turned different colors, ranging from a pale green—that was Port-Morton—to Ellison’s bright red.
“That’s the wager,” Ned said equably. “Any man who seduces Lady Kathleen Carhart and delivers an undergarment as proof collects five thousand pounds.”
Dennis stared at the embroidered cloth. He stared at it for ten full seconds, in dull incomprehension. Finally, he looked up, his eyebrows a mass of confusion. “Carhart,” the man finally said, “you can’t seduce your own wife.”
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