…A deal could still be made.
He turned to find her staring up the stairs to the balcony above. The morbid glint in her eye revealed the nature of her thoughts.
“Yes,” he said. “As I understand it, this is where Baneham died.”
She inhaled quickly, and then exhaled long and slow. “Pity.”
“Shall we proceed to his study?”
An unholy ice-smile graced her lips as he led her to Baneham’s study. He used the tinder he carried to light candles, one by one. Something in the air was off—but he could not place his unease. The window vestibules were empty—no one hidden in the curtains. Surreptitiously, he checked beneath the desk. Nothing.
“I am waiting,” Helena said.
“Come, Helena,” he said softly, seeking a way to soothe her hate. “Let us come to an accord.”
“Randolph, Randolph, Randolph.” Her voice transformed to a cat-like purr. “How quickly you have forgotten your training. You are supposed to court the enemy, draw them under your spell.”
“I have forgotten nothing,” he said flatly.
“I hope”—she circled him while running a finger across his chest and back—“that includes what you did to me.”
“I followed orders.” The excuse was not enough to save his soul, but it let him sleep.
Helena snorted. “At first, Baneham’s games were fun, weren’t they? You had the world at your fingertips. Money. Power.”
“I had both before Baneham. I have both now he’s gone.”
“One can never have enough. Never.”
Once, he might have agreed. But if Sophia were happy and safe, he swore on his soul he would not ask for more. His eyes wandered to Baneham’s portrait. By placing Sophia in his care, had Baneham known Randolph would ceaselessly continue the fight against Kasai?
Of course Baneham had. He, too, had been Baneham’s pawn.
“I serve his majesty,” Randolph said. “Ideals, Helena. Not wealth. Not power.”
Her laughter trilled, high and bitter. “You serve yourself, as do all of Baneham’s boys.” She crossed her arms. “I suppose you have a proposition for me. What, I wonder, will you propose in service to your ideal? From my vantage, you have nothing to bargain. You want my records—the real ones I took from the brothel.”
“Your records? They were the property of one Lord Montechurch and, since the man is deceased, they are now the property of the crown.”
Her eyes flashed. “They are mine.”
“How so?”
She lifted her chin. “Debt paid.”
“Did Montechurch owe you a debt?”
“Montechurch sold those records to Kasai’s emissary. He owed me a debt.”
“So,” Randolph said, “you took the emissary’s life and his papers?”
She lifted her brows and he realized, too late, his mistake. She had not been the killer.
“Bloodthirsty and greedy.” She looked down at her gloves and smoothed the fitted leather over her fingers. “All in the work of a day.”
She would dance this little dance until he could no longer remember his purpose. He began to slice to the heart of the matter.
“Who murdered Baneham? And do not tell me you don’t know.”
“Of course I know.” Helena tilted her head to one side. “You killed Baneham.”
He sucked in through his teeth. “You know that is not true.”
“What happened is irrelevant. What’s in the records is what matters.”
Randolph frowned. “The brothel records?”
“Those…and more.” She grinned—a fiendish version of Sophia’s light-hearted smile.
“I never went to the brothel. Not as a customer.”
“Oh but you were there, weren’t you?”
He snorted. “I was there because the Under Secretary asked me…” Ahhh. The truth slid through him cold and serpentine. “The Under Secretary asked me to watch Montechurch’s movements.”
“You are starting to understand now, aren’t you?” She made a pitying face. “That’s not what the records say. You know, the records you paid me to steal. The Under Secretary is anxious for you to face retribution for your treasonous acts.”
Randolph’s cold blood rushed in his ears. “The Under Secretary is the rat. I never paid you.”
Her lips spread; her eyes twinkled. “Perhaps you should have.”
“What do you want, Helena?”
“Why should what I want make any difference?” she asked.
“You can help me,” Randolph stated calmly. “While you still have the real records, you can help.”
“Tell me—in detail, mind you—what you will risk for the real documents?” She lifted her head and her gaze locked on his. “You and Baneham took my life, Randolph. So your offer had better be commensurate.”
“I tried to free you,” Randolph said. “Over and over I tried.”
“Forgive me for not being overwhelmed by your kindness. After all, you delivered me in the first place.”
Randolph side-stepped the rush of guilt and fixed his mind to his end. “Helena, you were a willing participant in Baneham’s game.”
“Is that what Baneham told you? Or is that what you told yourself to ease your conscience?”
Both. “You are hale.”
Her eyes flashed. “How would you like to be forced to serve in Kasai’s private harem?”
“Harem?” He chuckled. “You and I both know Kasai is English.”
Helena eyes grew wide, then she smiled. “Clever. But late. The records say you are Kasai.”
The sensation within was like nothing he’d ever experienced. Life, draining through a sudden chasm in the earth. Garrett’s voice echoed in his ears.
…it is already too late—for me, for you, for Baneham’s daughter and for England.
He grabbed Helena by her shoulders. “Another lie.”
“Yes,” she purred. “And don’t think I fail to recognize the murderous glitter in your eyes. Killing me will not stop what Kasai has planned.”
He lowered his lids. He settled his breath. She was toying with him.
He’d watched Baneham burst with firework-rage more times than he could count. With each spitting performance, Randolph’s resolve to command his person at all times had grown. The greater the threat, the greater the calm required. Randolph’s rule number one.
He steadied his breath. He lidded his eyes. He engulfed the churning puddle of rage and fear with a deeper sea. He could contain the tide. Control it with a subtle pull, like the moon commanded water.
“I grow tired of your games, Helena,” he said. “You aren’t working toward Kasai’s ends. If you were, you would not have come. And if you were, you would not have tried to shoot your sister.”
A growl-like hum emanated from Helena’s throat. “That coddled bitch is not my sister.”
Randolph stretched the silence like netted cloth. Hands clasped behind his back, he circled Helena as she had circled him. “You and she share Baneham. You inherited his guileful cunning, she his fortune and this house.”
“She is nothing,” Helena said.
“Nothing to you. Everything to Kasai. To Kasai she is entre into society…wealth and connections and this magnificent city mansion.”
“He wants me, not her.”
“Perhaps. But he will act according to his greater advantage.” Randolph stopped at the point in his circle where he had started—directly in front of Helena. He tilted his head. “He may bed you, but he will marry her fortune.”
“He will not.” Helena slapped the table so hard it rattled.
“You know he will, Helena.”
She gritted her teeth. “He cannot. Not if she is dead.”
He tsked. “Remember the rules. Keep the larger objective in sight. You want Kasai. He wants,” he spread his arms wide, “all of this.” He fixed on her eyes. “Both of you can get what you want. Sophia does not have to die.”
Helena squinted. “What could you possibly of
fer me?”
“You have not been listening,” he said. “I can give you all that should have been yours.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For Sophia’s life. And for the real records.”
She became far too still. “Kasai would kill me.”
“Yet you tried to kill Sophia the other night. Would he welcome that bit of news?”
Her eyes flashed, but she remained silent.
“He wants Baneham’s fortune. If Baneham’s fortune were in your hands, you would have power over him.” He tilted his head. “That is what you truly want, isn’t it? You don’t actually care for Kasai—you just do not want to be discarded when the time comes. Relinquished without a second thought—just like what happened before.”
She inhaled. “How are you going arrange to give me all of this?”
How did one trick the devil’s handmaiden? With the truth. “Kasai has planned for me to take the fall because he has discovered that I now stand in his way.”
“Because you are a brilliant spy?” Helena asked derisively.
“No. Because Sophia is my wife.”
He reached into his pocket and took out his copy of the special license. She examined the paper, frowning. “Everything she owned now belongs to you?”
He nodded. “Helena,” he said, “understand this: I will bring down Kasai, I do not care if he is, as I suspect, the Under Secretary himself. This desperate attempt to frame me will fail. And you will suffer for your complicity. I am offering another way—help me and not only will you remain free, you will have your father’s legacy.”
“All this?” she asked. “For the real records?”
“All this,” he answered. “All that should have been yours.”
“If you believe Kasai’s plot against you will fail, why offer me this?”
“Because,” Randolph said, “with your help, I can put a quick end to the threat against Sophia.”
Helena’s gaze scoured his eyes. “Good God, Randolph.” A look of horror froze her features. “You love her.”
“Yes.” The truth was, this time, his final resource. “I love my wife.”
She eyed him as if he were a grotesque fiend on display for her pleasure. Perhaps he was. He hadn’t been truly surprised that Kasai planned to frame him. When he’d married Sophia, he’d become a target.
What Kasai had not anticipated were the Furies…their devotion to each other and the devotion of the men who loved them.
“Baneham called love weakness.” His voice started low but grew in strength and power. “Love is the opposite. I have the strength of a legion of mercenary bastards. I will be damned,” the last word echoed out into the empty halls, “before I let anything happen to Sophia.”
“I hate Sophia,” she said.
“So give her the worst punishment you can imagine—a life with me.”
She snorted—harsh and unwilling—before shaking her head in disbelief.
“If,” she said, “I decide to take you up on your offer, where would I deliver the records? And when could I expect the deed?”
“Deliver the records here—tomorrow night, just before dawn, and you will have your deed at once.”
“I will consider your offer.”
She lifted her hood back over her head and disappeared back into the growing gloom.
He shivered with his proclamation’s force. He did have the strength of a legion. He would match Kasai wit to wit, sinew to sinew. He would win.
He set his hand down onto the desk and jerked back when his finger sunk into a spot of still-warm wax…beside a candle he had not lit.
…
“When nothing makes sense, reach out from your heart.”
~Sophia Baneham Countway, Lady Randolph
Sophia remained within the secret panel longer than necessary. Nothing but darkness existed, eyes open or shut. Curled into a ball and resting her cheek on her knees, she had no cue for direction but the unseen floor. There, in the dark, she examined the puzzle pieces she possessed.
One. Kasai—whoever he was—planned to lay ignominy and ruin at Randolph’s feet.
Two. To save himself, Randolph had offered all that was hers.
Three. Her sister, however wronged, was as soulless and ruthless as her father had been.
This grouping of three called out for her anger, distrust, and fear.
In Cimmerian solitude, she started a shell game with those pieces. Carefully, she felt rather than thought through each, one at a time. And then she rearranged, and felt through the pieces once again. An answer eluded.
She wove in three more pieces to her dark game.
Four. Randolph had given her laudanum and sent her away.
Five. Randolph had stolen her nightgown.
Six. Randolph had admitted he loved her—to someone else.
Together, her mind-shells made a six-pointed star, a distant light to guide her through the darkness. Love at war with darkness.
But was the North this grouping led to true or false? What did she or Randolph know of love? She thought of her mother, waving Sophia away, to pine in wasting solitude for Baneham. She thought of Baneham warning, Kasai will come for you, his eyes crazed and fingers biting into her arms.
She laid these images aside and chose the shell that hid her pearl.
Randolph declaring, I love my wife.
Love did exist. Not the kind of selfish love that had caused her mother to wallow. Not the kind of possessive love that caused Baneham to stutter and rage. Sophia’s love was a coin stamped on one side with Emma’s challenge, vulnerability and sacrifice, and on the other, with Elizabeth’s soul-healing light. Thee will remember what thee has learned.
She remembered. She remembered the idea that had taken hold just before the laudanum. She need not be taken back down into Baneham’s darkness; together she and Hugh could be lifted by love.
“Hugh,” she whispered into the gloom.
She started the game again.
One. Hugh loves me.
Two. I love Hugh.
She stitched both ideas—bright and pulsing—into and around her heart until the perception taken from her returned. She saw Hugh through her heart: flawed, passionate, arrogant, and yet beautifully, consummately devoted.
She lifted her face. There was hope.
She stretched out her arms and pushed open the panel. A familiar face was silhouetted against the light.
“What an interesting place to rest.” Hands on his knees, Hugh peered inside her hiding place. “Come out so we can have a proper row.”
As always, she could not read his intent.
“I’ll emerge with pleasure.” Rather inelegantly, she scooted from the crawlspace. “A moment, please.”
As her eyes adjusted, she shook out her skirts. A cloud of coal soot misted down over her lovely carpet of pink, ivory, and gold. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Hugh’s answer to the tale she had promised to tell the day he’d gone to the madhouse.
Bring him home so I may tell him the truth about our wager and show him I care.
Hugh. Her North. Her star.
She would have preferred to wait—wait until the transformation had become solid, wait until her senses and her wit sharpened. But she had only now. Now, when he expected a proper row.
Not quite ready to face him, she used her foot to swing the panel closed.
The latch failed to click; the panel bounced back. She swung it again. The latch failed a second time. She kicked yet again. Hard.
A nasty, screeching noise sounded above her and the gargoyles’ leering face broke free.
Hugh’s arm hit her chest and she was yanked back. The gargoyle smashed the spot where she had been standing. Hugh held her back to his chest, both of them breathing heavily. She blinked to clear her confusion.
“Look.” He released her and pointed to the ceiling. “Something is there.”
Even at his height, he could not reach the opening.
“Lift me,” she sa
id.
His features knit into an expression of concern.
“I won’t fall,” she assured.
“That,” he replied, “was not my primary concern.
Reluctantly, he put his hands to her waist and lifted. Steadying herself with a knee to his shoulder, she grasped the piece of panel and pulled—the panel extended into a box. When she had the box grasped against her chest, he lowered her slowly and gently to the floor.
“You can let go,” she said.
“Right.”
She placed her prize on the desk. Flushed from exertion, they both stared at it as if they had found a living creature.
“Deeds, perhaps,” she said, knowing it was not.
She retrieved a book page cutter from her desk and worked to open the lid. Sheaves of paper curled like bonnet ribbon within the box. Hugh lifted one out and let the scroll fall to the floor. It was dotted with letters and numbers, seemingly at random.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A code. I won’t know what it says until I find the key.”
“It’s written in his hand,” she said.
“Yes.” He squinted. “Yes, it is.”
“His notes perhaps?” she asked.
He nodded. “All I can make out are dates. Is there anything else in the box?”
Sophia carried the box to the window to better catch the fading light. She examined the stitching in the velvet lining. Poorly done. She loosened the thread and carefully picked out the stitches. She lifted the lining and gasped. The most beautiful jewels she’d ever seen lay within.
“Sapphires,” she breathed.
Randolph joined her at the window. “Have you seen them before?”
“No.” She frowned. “They are very good quality—I’ve rarely seen the like. They must be worth a fortune.”
“May I take them?”
She eyed him askance. “So you can give them to Helena?”
He grimaced. “So I can show them to Harrison.”
“To Harrison, not to the Under Secretary?”
“The Under Secretary could be Kasai.”
She raised her brows. “Lord Eustace could be Kasai.”
He audibly inhaled. “Damn.” He bit his bottom lip as he considered. “Lord Eustace could be Kasai. The fact remains: I cannot trust anyone but Harrison.”
“Does that,” she asked softly, “include me?”
Lady Scandal Page 20