Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 0]

by The Spy

  Damn! How did Lavinia always stay one step ahead of him? She wasn’t terribly intelligent, though she possessed a certain amount of cunning cleverness. Then again, it only proved that she’d recently spoken to Jackham, didn’t it?

  “I’ve no time for games, Vinnie. You cannot win this time. I have evidence against you now. Jackham kept every bit of correspondence, you realize. It seems he’s learned something from all his years with us.”

  Abruptly, Lavinia dropped her lascivious pose of welcome. “That idiot!”

  “Then you admit your involvement?”

  “Why not? I still hold all the cards. I have your fiancée, do I not?”

  “Did Phillipa tell you that?” He couldn’t resist a small smile. It was a roundabout acceptance but James decided he was going to hold Flip to it anyway.

  “How badly do you want her?”

  James considered Lavinia for a long moment. “How badly do you want me?”

  Vicious light flared in her eyes. “Are you suggesting a trade?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps I’m wondering what you’re wondering. How much power do you truly wield now that I know your true nature?” He tilted his head. “Convince me to stay if you want me. Unless you don’t think you can? I am the one that got away, am I not?”

  It was the worst thing that could be asked of him, to put himself in her hands again. He didn’t hesitate. A little time was all the Liars would need to catch up.

  She couldn’t resist the challenge, as he had known she could not. “En garde, my love,” she said, with a smile as lovely as it was evil.

  She stood, sliding off the bed like liquid sex. She approached him slowly. “Did you like my letters, my love? Did you read them and remember? Did you ever feel as though they were written just for you?”

  He’d been correct, then. She’d known her letters would be read. She’d known he would be one of those reading them, had virtually addressed them to him.

  And he had read them and reread them in his search for evidence—as undoubtedly she had planned for him to. Her words had crept into his dreams, poisoning his sleep, toying with his mind.

  “You are truly evil, aren’t you?”

  “You like me that way, remember?”

  It was true. He’d dubbed her evil many times in the past. Then, he had said it with bemused arousal. “Now I truly mean it.”

  “Yet here you are, putting yourself at my disposal. Surely you would not give yourself to me solely for the sake of that scrawny little redhead. I think you want to be here. I believe you have never stopped dreaming of me.”

  “Poor Lavinia, always wanting what she cannot have.”

  “I did have you, remember? I had you this way—” She stroked a hand across the front of his trousers. “And that way—” She ran her other hand over his buttock.

  James shook his head. “No, Vinnie, that wasn’t you. That was the false Lavinia you painted in my mind. The lonely wife of a busy man who was looking for a bit of harmless entertainment. She was worth wanting.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of yourself, James Cunnington. You forget. I know you. All of you. I may have kept something back from you, but you gave me all of yourself.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Why not?” She breathed it into his ear.

  “Because you never had my heart.”

  She stepped back, her eyes flashing. “I do have it. Your heart and your soul! Why, then, have you been with no one else since I was arrested?”

  “Ah. Jackham has been informative, I see.”

  “He told me of your brooding and your nightmares and that you still call my name in your sleep.” She smiled, sure of her ground once more.

  “The two of you must be very close. Are you quite sure he’d want you to be here alone with me?”

  “I know what you’re doing, James. You’re mistaken if you think to make Jackham jealous. The only one he hates more than me is himself.”

  Understandable. “Everyone turns on you in the end, don’t they?”

  “My husband is still quite under my spell. Oh, there was that incident with the pistol and the safe box, but it only took a moment to convince him that I was out of my mind with the devastation that you caused with your seduction and then spurning of me.” She shook a finger at him playfully as she moved closer once more. “Bad James, trying to sway loyal wives from their husbands that way. And for sport too! You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “You’ll never know how much so, Lavinia. Nor would you understand.”

  Jackham paced the roof, peering from this side, then that one until Phillipa thought she would go mad.

  Finally, she could take no more. “Why are you party to this, Jackham? James was your friend. They all were. They trusted you—”

  He turned on her. “You don’t know nothing about it! All the years I worked for Simon Rain, and he was lyin’ to me all along. I’d wondered if thievin’ was all they were up to, had for a long time. But I figured it was only a bit o’ business, maybe some blackmail, maybe some wet-work for pay. I figured Simon didn’t tell me for my own good, him knowin’ I don’t hold with that kind of job.”

  He shook his head. “Then she come. Looking like an angel, but with the heart of a devil. She told me that they’d killed James. He’d been missin’ for some time, and I was right worried. I knew he’d had a woman, some married lady, so I didn’t have no reason not to believe her. She told me that the Liars had done him in, when he’d gone against their plan to assassinate Liverpool.”

  He ran a hand through his grizzled hair. “I thought they’d killed James, I really did. So I gave her names, I gave her everything.” He closed his eyes. “I sold that bitch my soul.”

  “But then James came back.”

  He sighed and took a seat on the lip of the flat roof. Phillipa didn’t see how he could bear to be that close to the edge. She pulled her stomach from her throat to listen to Jackham.

  “Then James came back. I’d always minded my own business before, but I’d started listenin’ at keyholes by then. When I found out what I’d done . . .”

  He looked down, letting his hands dangle between his knees. “You could have just left it alone. It was over. I gave her no more names. Why didn’t you simply leave it alone?”

  Even in her fright, that was too much. “You think it was over,” she gasped in disbelief. “Over for you perhaps, and over for those who died, but it will never be over for James.”

  Jackham shook off that concern. “James is fine. Landed on his feet right well. He’s even to become leader someday, as far as I can tell.”

  “James is a shell, you fool! A walking, talking figment of our imaginations! The man inside is dying by the day and you are killing him!”

  Jackham looked at her for the first time. She leaned forward urgently.

  “Jackham, if you have had their trust for so long, perhaps they will forgive you. It was Lavinia’s hand on the weapon, not yours. But if you kill me, you will be casting such a shadow upon your soul that you will never dare come out into the light of day.”

  He turned dead eyes to her. “They don’t forgive, don’t you understand? Can’t you see it in James? Can’t forgive himself, can’t forgive you, though his love is plain to see.” His gaze was distant and cool now, almost resigned. He stood. “They’ll never forgive.”

  Lavinia’s hands were all over him, as they had been in his dream. She caressed him, explored him—rediscovered him.

  James waited for the conflicted feelings of lust and disgust to overwhelm him as they always did. Her touch was poison, aphrodisiacal venom. The mere scent of her made him feel—

  Nothing.

  Unbelievable. He waited breathlessly to be consumed by hateful need, to be twisted into gut-wrenching knots by her wicked, enticing—

  He felt nothing. Not a bloody thing. The only thought on his mind, the only ache in his heart was for Phillipa.

  He felt like laughing. By God, he felt like flying.

  Her to
uch brought with it no sickening half-guilt, half-arousal. It brought only distaste and a compulsion to bathe as soon as possible.

  With great relief, he realized that he was not the slave of his senses after all.

  In addition, it seemed his obsession to avenge his friends had quite run its course. He still desired justice, but it was with a cool and deadly detachment that he’d been unable to manage before.

  “You do realize,” he said conversationally over her musical sighs, which were probably meant to arouse him, “that I am entirely free of you now.”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t think so, James.” Her voice was cold, but he was heartened by the defeat in her eyes. He had won after all. She turned away from him to move to her dressing table.

  “Oh, yes,” he assured her. “Now I know that even narcotics and torture cannot make me betray my comrades, much less the wiles of one well-used traitor.” He took a deep breath of freedom. “You cannot reach me with your tricks any longer, Lavinia. You cannot touch me at all. Phillipa is the only woman who can.”

  “Then that is too bad for her,” Lavinia said, turning back. She held a pistol in her hands. James blinked. He should not have been surprised, after all. She had killed many men, yet somehow he must have believed that her feelings for him would prevent the same fate from happening to him.

  More the fool he.

  He stepped forward, but she was too fast for him. In a blur, she turned—

  And ran from the room.

  The sound of someone scrambling onto the roof brought Phillipa to her feet. He ’d come—

  It was Lavinia, pistol in hand. Her lovely face was now a mask, crumpled and reddened with obvious rage. “Get her up!” she choked out. “Take her to the edge and throw her off!”

  “What?” Even Jackham was forced to shake off his resignation at that. “Not that.”

  Lavinia waved the pistol at them both. “You’ll do it or I’ll shoot you right off this bloody roof. You survived such a fall once, Jackham. Do you think you can survive when you’ve been shot?”

  James appeared behind Lavinia. Phillipa stopped herself from crying out for him, but it was too late. Lavinia heard him and swung about to point the pistol at his heart. “I’ll kill you before I’ll let her have you.” She seemed to calm now that she had everyone under her control.

  Jackham pulled Phillipa across the roof to the edge. With weak knees and panicked strength, Phillipa struggled. It did no good. She was dangled over the edge like an unwanted bit of rubbish.

  She clung to Jackham’s sleeve with her free hand, clutching at him in her fear. She wanted to scream for James, but her throat was closed. She could only watch while Lavinia backed up until she could keep all three of them in sight. The blonde woman half-turned to push a stack of roof slates tumbling in front of the access door, neatly blocking it shut.

  “I want you to watch, James. I want her to die before your very eyes.” She motioned to Jackham with the pistol. “Do it! Kill her!”

  Phillipa heard James, a hoarse, formless shout of protest.

  “P-please!” Her voice was only a whisper.

  But Jackham’s eyes were flat and dead. “Time for you to go.”

  The man’s grip shifted slightly and Phillipa felt one heel slide from the stones. She clutched at him in desperation. “No! N—”

  Falling. She felt the wool of his clothing slip past her hands. Her reaching arms struck stone. Slid. Tumbled. Stone under her grip. Hold.

  The fall stopped abruptly and her arms felt jerked from her body, but she held. Her arms were wrapped about a decorative protrusion from the stone. She held it tightly, pressing her cheek to the filthy sooty granite with passionate affection. Her feet dangled and her booted toes scrabbled for some sort of hold in the building’s façade.

  She found one with her left foot and used it to take some of the strain from her arms, though her embrace of the gargoyle remained nothing less than passionate. The top of the piece was gritty and encrusted with what seemed to be bird droppings. The morning dew had turned the sandy stuff into slime, making her hands slip.

  She couldn’t hold. Her fingers gave bit by bit.

  Please, God, pleasepleaseplease—

  She fell.

  She was gone.

  James gasped. His chest turned to ice with shock. The cold of the loss began to spread, stealing his breath and his reason. James’s final thought as he threw back his head to release a roar of grief and rage—

  She was gone.

  And it was his distrust that had killed her.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Jackham turned back from the edge to face Lavinia, ignoring James’s agony entirely. “Made a bit of a mess, that did.”

  Oh, God. The pain was unbearable. James’s mind and heart transmuted it to rage before he went completely mad from it. Red tinged the edges of his vision as he saw Lavinia eagerly step forward to see what she had wrought.

  “Is it horrible?” she said. “Is it bloody?”

  James moved forward, no longer caring if she held a pistol or not. In fact, he would welcome death, for it would release him from the knowledge that Phillipa lay broken below.

  He scarcely registered the fact that Jackham took the pistol from Lavinia as if to help her step up closer to the edge. The fact that Jackham then calmly pressed the pistol to Lavinia’s heart meant little to him.

  The sound of the shot finally broke through his awareness as he reached Lavinia—only to have her fall at his feet, stone dead.

  Jackham cocked his head as he gazed down at the woman who had been his partner and tormenter for so long. “She was as evil as Satan himself, but nobody ever said she was smart,” he said.

  James stepped over the body as if it were nothing but rubbish, his blood lust still boiling for the man who had thrown his love to her death. “I’m going to kill you now, Jackham.”

  Jackham moved back a step and held up both hands in a soothing manner. “I wouldn’t if I was you, James.”

  “Why not?” He would kill him and he would like it, by God.

  Jackham cocked his head toward the edge of the roof. “Because you’ll need me to fetch your girl off that ledge she’s standin’ on.”

  The words took a moment to filter past the black tempest of his berserker rage. Then James blinked. “Wh-what?”

  He threw himself flat on the roof to peer over the edge. Just below him was Phillipa, standing on a ledge with her face pressed to the stone and her arms spread, looking for all the world as if she were trying to paste herself to the wall.

  James could scarcely breathe, for his heart had swelled to occupy every crevice of his chest. Mad laughter filled him. “Flip! Flip, darling, reach for my hand!”

  It did take both him and Jackham to pull her onto the roof, where she immediately began to crawl to the exit. “I’ll get you, Jackham, just see if I won’t,” she muttered brokenly through her gasps. She paused when she reached Lavinia. “Oh, isn’t that simply perfect.” She sent a disgusted look at James over her shoulder. “She’s even beautiful when she’s dead!”

  James moved past his crawling cursing fiancée and knelt in her path. “Flip, please stand up.”

  “No!” She sent him a furious glare, but her lower lip was trembling and her face was streaked with tears. “I am bloody sick of being dragged here and thrown there. If I want to bloody crawl, then I’m going to bloody crawl and you’re going to get out of my bloody way.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Aren’t you?”

  James opened his mouth to reason with her. Jackham stepped up. ‘The Liars are here.”

  James stood slowly. Even Phillipa sat up, though she kept a two-fisted grip on the gable. She was filthy, her trousers and coat covered in soot and droppings.

  “The Liars will kill you, Jackham,” James said. “Killing Lavinia will never be enough.”

  Jackham nodded, then ran the back of his hand over his perspiring forehead. “I—I don’t want to die, but I know they’ll never let me go.
”

  James felt one of Phillipa’s hands wrap around his ankle. He looked down at her bruised and mottled face. His brave and lovely Flip.

  She gazed up at him. “He did save me, James.”

  Jackham shrugged. “Just a bit of a shell game, that.”

  James looked at Jackham. “You saved her. You also allowed yourself to be used by a French spy, and then you kept her secret. Men died, Jackham.”

  “I know it. I couldn’t live with myself. I’m glad it’s over, I am.”

  “Men died—but Phillipa didn’t.” He reached one hand to Phillipa and this time she took it to stand beside him. He touched her cheek with his thumb, wiping away a tear gone cold. “Run,” he said, still gazing into Phillipa’s eyes. “Run, Jackham, and run far.”

  Phillipa smiled slightly, keeping him still with her emerald gaze. They heard the scrape of Jackham’s feet as he ran, flinging himself over the very roof edge that he had thrown Phillipa.

  “Can he make it down?” she asked.

  “That is entirely up to him. I have better things to think about.”

  She gazed at him, a slight frown line between her brows. He wanted to know what she was thinking, but he never had the chance to ask.

  With a blow to the blocked access door that broke it clear off its hinges, the Liars came.

  “What can you be thinking?” James was trying not to shout, truly he was, but the woman he loved was being so bloody-minded stubborn that he was about to pound his fist into a wall.

  She didn’t so much as look at him, but only kept packing her valise. They stood in her room at the club. James had left her there to rest this morning after her ordeal. It had only seemed the polite, gentlemanly thing to do.

  Now he wished he’d rushed her off to Gretna Green while he’d still worn a heroic glow in her eyes.

  Rubbing at his face with both hands, he forced himself to calm. Reason was needed here.

  “Phillipa, you don’t understand. You set me free.”

  “I understand perfectly. You are proposing out of gratitude. I realize what being absolved meant to you, and I am glad. I simply do not see that as a reason to wed.”