The Likelihood of Lucy (Regency Reformers Book 2)

by Jenny Holiday

  He must have sensed her unease, for he dropped his arms. “You’re freezing.”

  “You still have a gift for stating the obvious, I see.” She forced the words out because to jest seemed safer than anything else. And jesting was how they had interacted back then. It was what they knew.

  He stared at her without smiling, then closed and bolted the door. “Come upstairs.” He turned and gestured for her to follow.

  She hesitated a moment. This was what she wanted. What she’d been counting on when she’d swallowed her pride, abandoned her principles, and knocked on his door, having read about him and this unlikely place in the newspapers. She was only suspicious because getting inside had been so easy. She had knocked, and he’d let her in. Ease wasn’t something she was accustomed to, even though she’d spent the past eight years inside the homes of London’s elite.

  He made it entirely out of the kitchen, leaving her standing in the dark, before he called back, “Are you coming?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he popped his head back in. He glanced down at her feet. “Leave your boots here.”

  Nodding, she obeyed, and after she’d struggled out of the wet leather, she padded after him. It was too dark to see much, but she could feel the luxury. The plush carpet that lined the corridor must have been three inches thick. The banister under her hands as she trailed him up the stairs was solid and perfectly smooth.

  As they climbed silently, she took in the shape of him, both strange and familiar. She hadn’t noticed at first that he was barefoot, too. She might have laughed had she not been so weary. Trevor and Lucy, running around London’s soon-to-be grandest hotel, barefoot. She supposed some habits were so ingrained that even a lifetime wasn’t long enough to dislodge them.

  Allowing her eyes to drift upward as he climbed ahead of her, she took in muscular thighs and a narrow waist encased in knee breeches. An untucked, loose white shirt obscured his upper body, but judging from the cords of muscle rippling in the forearm that held the candelabra aloft, it was as powerful as his lower half. The long, gangly legs and sharp angles of the boy had sorted themselves out surprisingly satisfactorily in the man. As if he could hear her thoughts, he glanced over his shoulder, his face painted in warm yellow light.

  Yes, Trevor Bailey was handsome. And, if accounts were to be believed, powerful and obscenely wealthy. He probably thought she was running some sort of con on him. It’s what he would have taught her to do back then. “Ha!” It was out before she could help it.

  He turned again but still did not speak. The boy Trevor would have set upon her with a thousand questions by now. This one had hardly said two words.

  When they reached the top floor, he led her through a door that stood open, into what resolved itself, as he lit more candles, as a small but grand foyer. A round, marble-topped table stood in the middle, surrounded by rich, cherry-paneled walls. Gesturing wordlessly, he led her through a sitting room—they didn’t stop this time, so she could make out no more than the silhouettes of the furniture—and into another room.

  Here they stopped, and he lit more candles. So many candles! It seemed impossibly extravagant. Even in her recent posts, when she would have been given as many candles as she asked for, she’d spent her evenings straining her eyes by the light of a single flame.

  When she was done marveling at the luxury, she realized they were in a bedroom. His, judging by the fact that the room seemed well lived in. Stray clothing was draped over a side chair, and a pile of books perched precariously on a bedside table. A bedside table that flanked the biggest bed Lucy had ever seen. Unmade—nay, downright disheveled— it was badly in need of tidying.

  “If I had a housekeeper, you could borrow a dress.” His voice startled her out of her thoughts. “But I don’t—I don’t have anyone yet. I’m terribly behind schedule with the hotel.” He was speaking from inside a small interior room—she’d been so busy gaping at the surroundings that she’d lost track of him. When he emerged, he handed her a stack of clothing. “Something here will have to do until tomorrow. We can put your clothes to dry by the fire in the library. It’s through that door.” He nodded toward a second door, this one on the far side of the room. Before she could think what to say, disappeared through it, leaving her shivering and holding a stack of men’s clothes in a bedroom blazing with candlelight.

  Trevor knew Lucy. Or at least he had known Lucy. Though still slender, the girl who was all elbows and knees and freckles had blossomed into lush curves. The renegade thought was a little astonishing—and, frankly, confusing. As a boy, he would have planted a facer on anyone who thought about Lucy like that.

  But he had to assume that despite outward changes, she was the same elementally. And if she was still anything like the stubborn, proud girl from the rookeries, besieging her with inquiries was not the way to get her to talk. When they were very young, he’d been in the habit of pestering her with questions. He’d always wanted to know everything about her. How had her night with her mother been? Had she managed to find anything for breakfast? Had any of the miserable neighborhood children—they were always taunting her about thinking she was too good for them—given her any trouble since they’d parted ways the night before? But toward the end of their years together, when he’d been starting to understand what kind of woman she was going to grow into—and what kind of man he was—he had learned that interrogation didn’t work with her. He’d realized by that point that talking was not going to help Lucy, that, in fact, the only way to do right by her was to return her to the world from which she and her mother had fallen.

  To have her appear on his doorstep now, though, shivering, sodden, and so…desperate made him wonder if he had made a mistake somehow, if perhaps she would have been better off with him all this time, where he could have watched over her.

  But no. He was letting emotion get the better of him, and he was not a man who permitted himself lapses of sentiment. So he poured a brandy and sat, willing his heart to slow and forcing his mind to make an impartial assessment. She must have done well enough for herself. Her clothing, though wet and torn, had been respectable. Plain, but made of fine wool. He smiled, realizing he’d been casing her from the moment he opened the door downstairs, as if she were a target. Blackstone, who had taught him to notice everything, would be proud. Let’s see, if he were making a report to the spymaster, what would he say?

  Fine, plain clothes. Good walking boots. No wedding ring. A figure that did not betray signs of having borne children. Nice teeth. Signs of distress, yes, but those were more recent. A fresh cut on her face. Disheveled hair, but not dirty. An upper servant of some sort, a teacher maybe, fallen recently into some trouble.

  On the surface, it appeared Lucy had made good, just as he’d intended. Just as he’d willed all those years ago when he’d manipulated things so she was chosen. He wanted to take satisfaction in the notion, but he couldn’t until he knew that she was well—really and truly well beyond just whatever trouble had deposited her on his doorstep this stormy night.

  A soft tap on the door preceded her entrance. His dressing gown dwarfed her. She’d rolled up the sleeves several times, and the hem brushed the floor. Pouring her a glass of brandy, he dragged a side chair over to the fire and gestured for her to swap her wet things for the drink he held. She shook her head, cheeks coloring as she hung the wet clothing over the back of the chair herself. Hmmm. Lucy Green gone all prudish?

  After she’d taken the brandy and tucked herself into the chair farthest from him, she sipped her drink and stared at him. Her eyes were wary, but beyond that, if one didn’t look too closely, she looked like she belonged. The thought startled him. But it was true. Curled up in his too-big dressing gown, damp hair drying by the fire, bathed in candlelight, she looked like mistress of the place. But then, she had always been a mistress of disguise. That’s why they’d made such a good team back then—they’d both been experts at deception.

  Finally, she spoke. “Aren’t you going to ask me anything? L
ike what I’m doing here?” Her tone was confrontational, as if she didn’t trust him.

  “You said you needed help.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

  It didn’t matter, but if she wanted to answer, he would ask. “Why are you here, Lucy?”

  She closed her eyes for a beat, and when she opened them, they were trained directly on his. Then words tumbled out, rushing over him like a waterfall. This used to happen when they were kids, too, once he realized it was better not to overwhelm her with questions, to wait her out. Left to her own devices, she would clam up, but eventually, as if she couldn’t stand it anymore, she’d spew forth a torrent of words. “I am here because I got turned away from my post as a governess without a reference and without wages owed me, and I had nowhere to go, and I have spent a week outside, thinking, as perhaps you are, that I should be able to land on my feet just fine, but I can’t seem to run cons anymore. All I could manage to do was steal a cloak, and there were these men…”

  “What men?” He spoke more sharply than he intended.

  “It doesn’t matter. I got away. It’s just that I can’t slip in and out of places unnoticed like I used to, and I just can’t…I can’t…”

  “You can’t go back to the streets,” he finished softly, his chest aching with understanding.

  Eyes welling, she nodded.

  He’d only seen Lucy cry once before. The prospect of seeing it again was surprisingly distressing. So he focused instead on the satisfaction of a job well done. He had returned her to the life she deserved. Her mother had been a governess, too, until an employer had gotten her with child. By the time that child—Lucy—had been born, her mother had fallen under the spell of the poppy and, like his own mother, had been forced to resort to selling the only thing she had left. So to know that not only had Lucy made it out, she had become a governess like her mother before her—well, there was a kind of justice there. It was as if the world had righted itself.

  “We’ll get you a new post,” he said.

  “But I have no references. My previous employers won’t recommend me.”

  He wished he could erase that circumspect look from her eyes. He wanted to see a hint of the old, feisty Lucy. She had teased him in the kitchen about stating the obvious, but the jibe hadn’t reached her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I can take care of it.”

  “How? Have you a magic wand somewhere? Is that how you’re building this hotel?”

  Still so suspicious. Hadn’t he always looked after her? That she thought he would stop now stung a bit. “No. But I have friends.”

  “And money, it would seem.”

  He shrugged. “Yes. Money and powerful friends can do a lot to make up for poor references.” He paused. He didn’t want to give offense, and he would help her regardless of the answer, but he needed to know what he was dealing with. “Just one question: were you conning these people? Your employers, I mean.”

  Trevor’s question was fair, given what he knew of her, but it smarted. “No,” she said. “I stopped…doing that the day I left Seven Dials.”

  He regarded her evenly over the rim of his glass. “Did you harm the children in your care? Did you knowingly provide a sub-par education? Were you dishonest in any way?”

  “No! That’s exactly the point! I was the best governess that household ever had! Or ever will!”

  “Well, then, that’s all I need to know. I’ll fix things.”

  “But how? How did you do all this?” She gestured around the room. If he could assume she was conning her employers, didn’t she have the right to ask how he had risen so extraordinarily high above his station? She and Trevor had never stood on ceremony, and she didn’t see any need to start now. “How did you make all your money?”

  “After I got out of the army—”

  “Army!” she exclaimed. She had thought of him over the years, of course—despite her vow never to rely on a man again, it had been impossible not to—but she had never imagined him in the military.

  “Yes. After you left Seven Dials, I got out, too.”

  “How?”

  “I talked my way into a blacksmith’s apprenticeship. Those skills were highly valued by the army.”

  He made it all sound so easy, so unremarkable. But she had to marvel over the image of Trevor “talking his way” into an apprenticeship. Boys from Seven Dials didn’t just do that. But Trevor had never been like other boys.

  “So how did you get from the army to all this?” She hadn’t been implying that there was anything untoward in his extraordinary rise, but he must have thought she was, because he shot her an annoyed look.

  “After I got out of the army, I started investing.” Did she detect a hint of defensiveness in his tone? “Then, about a year ago, I started a shipping business. The blunt was fronted by a friend I’d made in Portugal. It turns out I have a knack for making money. All I needed was an initial infusion of capital.”

  “A friend gave you enough money to buy a ship?”

  “He’s a close friend.”

  “Is he a gentleman?” She had been reading about Trevor in the papers as the hotel project took shape. Hotels were still relatively new in England, and so his grand venture had captivated London.

  “Yes, an earl in fact.”

  She wanted to whistle her admiration—or disbelief. If she’d known just how posh Trevor had become, she would never have had the courage to prevail upon him to help, even as desperate as she had been.

  He stood suddenly, signaling an end to the conversation. “It’s late. I have one guest room furnished. I’ll take you there, then fetch you some food and drink.”

  Understanding that she, with her probing questions, was being dismissed, Lucy followed him silently down one flight of stairs to a fourth-floor room at the front of the hotel. The four-poster bed that took up most of the floor space was disheveled, covered with piles of toweling and linens.

  “This is a sample room of sorts,” Trevor said. “We’re using it to try out different combinations of bed linens and such.”

  “We?”

  “I’ve had advice from the wife of a friend.”

  “You’ve had advice from the wife of your earl, haven’t you? You’ve had advice from a countess, is what you mean.” She could not keep the incredulity from her voice. Scrappy little Trevor Bailey had elbowed his way into quite the life. “I hope me being here won’t—”

  “Won’t what?” He looked up suddenly from where he was moving piles of linens from the bed onto a long, low dresser that lined one side of the room.

  “I know it’s improper for me to be here. I’m unmarried. We have no chaperone. I don’t want to endanger your—”

  “I don’t care about that sort of thing,” he said sharply, as if he were offended she would think as much.

  Ah. So he hadn’t become too terribly fine. “But you have to, don’t you? With your money-lending earl? And I imagine only the finest sort of people will be able to afford to stay in your hotel.”

  “Oh, I know how to have a care when circumstances require it, but it’s just for show. These aristocrats with their elaborate, arcane rules. They cling to them so tightly, they haven’t noticed their world is changing.” There was a hint of scorn in his tone as he finished setting aside all the linens to reveal the bed. “You’re welcome to use anything in this room. It’s all just extra.” He handed her a fine ivory bathing cloth. “This is what we settled on. Everything else will go.”

  The cloth was lovely, elegant but understated. There was a monogram at the base of the fabric. She held it closer to a candle he’d set on the bedside table. It was a small “J,” embroidered in a deep green thread.

  “What’s the J for?” she asked.

  “It stands for the name of this place.”

  She looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing. “And the name of this place is?” she prompted.

  Several beats of silence elapsed before he spoke, eyes glittering. “The Jade.”

  S
he heard her own sharp intake of breath in the silent room, and as if hypnotized, she slowly floated her hands up to the top of the dressing gown she wore, to where the lapels met and crossed over. He didn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t even blink. Heart pounding, she pulled the fabric down a few inches to reveal the green-stoned ring she wore on a chain around her neck.

  This time, the sharp inhale came from him. “You still have it?”

  It was the one thing she’d kept. The one thing that had survived her line-drawing exercise. The jade that had survived the immolation of her old life. And he had named his hotel after it.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ve never taken it off.”

  Chapter Three

  Lucy dreamed that night of the jade—the gem, not the hotel. The dream started where her nocturnal trips to the past so often did: under her favorite tree in the park.

  She was mending some stockings when he appeared. The willow’s weeping branches fully obscured her, so her presence wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of the fine people who used the park, inspiring them to chase her out. It was where she went when she wanted to be alone, to escape the thick air of their neighborhood or the jeers of its inhabitants. Trevor didn’t count, though. It was as easy being with him as it was being alone. Easier, because he so often made her forget her circumstances, either with a jest or an unlikely adventure.

  Today, his self-satisfied grin told her something was afoot.

  Affecting a joking aloofness, she raised her eyebrows and re-threaded her needle. They often did this—communicated without speaking.

  He plunked himself down on the ground across from her and held out two closed fists.

  Ah! No doubt he’d stolen a lemon biscuit. There was a shop on Queen Street that sold them. He’d filched one once from the pocket of a customer on the way out and given it to her. She’d never tasted anything so divine as the explosion of tart sweetness on her tongue. And he’d been nicking them ever since, though she couldn’t imagine how.