Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

  He said something under his breath, in…Latin?

  She had to breathe and did so, with a gasp.

  The hand was back, now gripping her shoulder.

  “Open your eyes,” he said, in a low, menacing voice, “and bloody look at me.”

  Her eyes popped open and met his, a winter blue, like ice. He was so angry that she could feel it vibrating through him like a struck tuning fork.

  “What were you doing with my letters?”

  “I—” Invention completely failed her, and she spoke the truth, hopelessly. “Putting them back.”

  He blinked. Looked at the open drawer, with the key still in the lock.

  “You…er…you saw me,” she said, and found enough saliva to swallow. “Saw me close the drawer, I mean. Er…didn’t you?”

  “I—” A small line had formed between his dark brows, deep as a paper cut. “I did.” He let go of her shoulder and stood there, looking at her.

  “How,” he said carefully, “did you come to be in possession of my letters, may I ask?”

  Her heart was still thundering in her ears, but some blood was coming back into her head. She swallowed again. Only the one possibility, wasn’t there?

  “Mr. Twelvetreees,” she said. “He—he did ask me to steal the letters. I…wouldn’t do it for him.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he repeated. One brow had risen slowly, and he was looking at her as though she were some exotic insect he’d found crawling over his chrysanthemums. He cocked his head at the drawer in question. “Why not?”

  “I liked you,” she blurted. “When we…met at the princess’s garden party.”

  “Indeed.” A faint flush rose in his cheeks and the stiffness returned to his person.

  “Yes.” She met his eyes straight on. “I could tell that Mr. Twelvetrees didn’t like you.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” he said. “So you say he asked you to steal my letters—why did he think you would be the person to employ for such a venture? Do you steal things professionally?”

  “Well, not often,” she said, striving for composure. “It’s more that we—I—discover information that may be of value. Just…inquiries here and there, you know. Gossip at parties, that sort of thing.”

  “We?” he repeated, both brows rising now. “Who are your confederates, may I ask?”

  “Just my father and me,” she said hastily, lest he recall the chimney sweeps. “It’s…the family business, you might say.”

  “The family business,” he repeated, with a faintly incredulous air. “Well…putting that aside, if you refused Edward Twelvetrees’s commission, how did you come to be in possession of my letters, anyway?”

  She commended her soul to a God she didn’t quite believe in and threw her fate to the wind.

  “Someone else must have stolen them for him,” she said, with as much sincerity as possible. “But I had occasion to…be in his house, and I found them. I…recognized your name. I didn’t read them,” she added hastily. “Not once I saw that they were personal.”

  He’d gone white again. No doubt envisioning Edward Twelvetrees poring greedily over his most intimate wounds.

  “But I—I knew what they must be, because of what Mr. Twelvetrees had told me. So I…took them back.”

  She was breathing a little more easily now. It was much easier to lie than to tell him the truth.

  “You took them back,” he said, and blinked, then looked hard at her. “And then you thought you’d come put them back in my house? Why?”

  “I thought you…might want them,” she said in a small voice, and felt her own cheeks flush. Oh, God, he’ll know I read them!

  “How very kind of you,” he said dryly. “Why didn’t you just send them to me anonymously, if your only intent was to return them?”

  She took a small, unhappy breath and told him the truth, though she knew he wouldn’t believe it.

  “I didn’t want you to be hurt. And you would be if you thought someone had read them.”

  “You what?” he said, incredulous.

  “Shall I prove it?” she whispered, and her hand floated up without her actually willing it, to touch his face. “Your Grace?”

  “What?” he said blankly. “Prove it?”

  She couldn’t think of anything at all to say so merely rose on her toes, hands on his shoulders, and kissed him. Softly. But she didn’t stop, and her body moved toward his—and his toward hers—with the slow certainty of plants turning toward sun.

  Moments later, she was kneeling on the hearth rug, fumbling madly under folds of eau-de-nil for the tapes of her petticoats, and Hal’s—she was frightened and exhilarated to realize that she was thinking of him as Hal—uniform coat had struck the floor with a muffled crash of buttons, epaulets, and gold lace, and he was ripping at his waistcoat buttons, muttering to himself in Latin.

  “What?” she said, catching the word “insane.” “Who’s insane?”

  “Plainly you are,” he said, stopping for a moment to stare at her. “Do you want to change your mind? Because you have roughly ten seconds to do so.”

  “It will take longer than that to get at my blasted bum roll!”

  Muttering “Irrumabo” under his breath, he dropped to his knees, rummaged her petticoats, and seized the tie of her bum roll. Rather than untie it, he jerked it, broke the tie, slid the bum roll out of her clothes like a huge sausage, and flung it onto one of the wing chairs. Then he threw off his waistcoat and pushed her onto her back.

  “What does irrumabo mean?” she said to the hanging crystals of the chandelier overhead.

  “Me, too,” he said, breathless. His hands were under her skirt, very cold on her bottom.

  “You, too, what?” The middle part of him was between her thighs, very warm, even through the moleskin breeches.

  “I’m insane,” he said, as though this should be evident—and maybe it was, she thought.

  “Oh,” he added, looking up from the flies of his breeches, “irrumabo means ‘fuck.’ ”

  Three seconds later he was alarmingly hot and terrifyingly immediate and—

  “Jesus Christ!” he said, and froze, looking down at her, his eyes huge with shock.

  It hurt shockingly and she froze as well, taking shallow breaths. She felt his weight shift, knew he was about to leave her, and gripped his bottom to stop him. It was tight and solid and warm, an anchor against pain and terror.

  “I said I’d prove it,” she whispered, and pulled him in with all her strength, arching her back. She let out a stifled shriek as he came the rest of the way, and he grabbed her and held her, keeping her from moving.

  They lay face-to-face, staring at each other and gulping air like a pair of stranded fish. His heart was hammering so hard that she could feel it under the hand she had on his back.

  He swallowed.

  “You’ve proved it,” he said at last. “Whatever it…What was it you wanted to prove again?”

  Between the tightness of her stays and his weight, she hadn’t enough breath to laugh, but she managed a small smile.

  “That I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Oh.” His breathing was growing slower, deeper. He isn’t wheezing, she thought.

  “I didn’t want—I didn’t mean—to hurt you, either,” he said softly. For an instant she saw him hesitate: should he pull away? But then decision settled on his features once more and he bent his head and kissed her. Slowly.

  “It doesn’t hurt that much,” she assured him when he stopped.

  “Mendatrix. That means ‘liar.’ Shall I—”

  “No, you shan’t,” she said firmly. Over the first shock, her brain was now working again. “This is never going to happen again, so I mean to enjoy it—if such a thing is possible,” she added, a little dubiously.

  He didn’t laugh, either, and his smile was only a trace—but it reached his eyes. The fire was hot on her skin.

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “Let me prove it.”

  Some little t
ime later…

  HE PUT OUT a hand to her and, dazed, she took it. His cold fingers closed tight on hers, and hers on his.

  He took her to the back stairs, where he let go her hand—the stairs were too narrow to go side by side—and went down before her, glancing back now and then to be sure she hadn’t disappeared or fallen. He looked as dazed as she felt.

  Noise echoed up the wooden stairwell from the kitchens below—pots clanging, voices calling to and fro, the clash of crockery, a crash and subsequent cursing. The scent of roasting meat struck her in a gust of warm air, and she was suddenly ravenous.

  He took her hand again and drew her away from the smell of food, through a plain, dim, unvarnished corridor into a larger one, with a canvas floor cloth that muffled their footsteps, into a broad corridor with a Turkey carpet in blue and gold and candles flickering in the bronze plates of reflectors that shed a bright, soft light over everything. Servants flitted past them like ghosts, carrying trays, jugs, garments, bottles, eyes averted.

  It was like walking through a soundless dream: something between curiosity and nightmare, where you had no notion where you were going or what lay before you but were obliged to keep on walking.

  He stopped abruptly and looked at her as though he’d found her walking through his dream—and perhaps it was, she thought, perhaps it was. He put a hand very lightly on her breast for an instant, fixing her in place, then vanished round a corner.

  With him gone, her stunned senses began to awaken. She could hear music and voices, laughter. A strong smell of hot punch and wine; she’d drunk nothing save that first glass of champagne but now felt very drunk indeed. She opened and closed her fingers slowly, still feeling the grasp of his hand, hard and chilled.

  Suddenly he was there again, and she felt his presence like a blow to her chest. He had her cape in his hand and swung it open, round her, enveloping her. As though it was part of the same movement, he took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely. Let go, panting, then did it again.

  “You—” she said, but then stopped, having no idea what to say.

  “I know,” he said, as though he did, and with a hand under her elbow led her somewhere—she wasn’t noticing anything anymore—and then there was a whoosh of cold, rainy night air and he was helping her up the step of a hansom cab.

  “Where do you live?” he said, in an almost normal voice.

  “Southwark,” she said, sheer instinct preventing her from giving him her real address. “Bertram Street, Number Twenty-two,” she added, inventing wildly.

  He nodded. His face was white, his eyes dark in the night. The place between her legs burned and felt slippery. He swallowed and she saw his throat move, slick with rain and gleaming in the light from the lantern; he hadn’t put on his neckcloth or his waistcoat, and his shirt was open under his scarlet coat.

  He took her hand.

  “I will call upon you tomorrow,” he said. “To inquire after your welfare.”

  She didn’t answer. He turned her hand over and kissed her palm. Then the door was shut and she was rattling alone over wet cobbles, her hand closed tight on the warmth of his breath.

  She couldn’t think. She felt wetness seep into her petticoats, with the slightly sticky feel of blood. The only thing floating through her mind was a remark of her father’s. “The English are notorious bores about virginity.”

  16

  SIC TRANSIT

  IT WASN’T THAT HARD to disappear. The O’Higgins brothers were masters of the art, as they assured her.

  “Leave it to us, sweetheart,” Rafe said, taking the purse she handed him. “To a Londoner, the world beyond the end of his street is as furrin as the pope. All ye need do is keep away from the places folk are used to seein’ ye.”

  She hadn’t had much choice. She wasn’t going anywhere near the Duke of Pardloe or his friend Quarry or the Twelvetrees brothers. But there was still business to be done before she could go back to Paris—books to be both sold and bought, shipments made and received—and a few bits of more-private business, as well.

  So Minnie had written a note paying off Lady Buford and announcing her return to France and then stayed in Parson’s Green with Aunt Simpson and her family for a month. She allowed the O’Higginses to do the more straightforward things and—with some reluctance—entrusted the more delicate acquisitions to Mr. Simpson and her cousin Joshua. There’d been two or three clients who had declined to meet with anyone save her, and though the temptation was considerable, the risk was too great, and she had simply not replied to those.

  She had gone once with Aunt Simpson to the farm, to take leave of her mother. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to go into Soeur Emmanuelle’s chamber, though, and had only laid her head and hands against the cool wood of the door and wept silently.

  But now it was all done. And she stood alone in the rain on the deck of the Thunderbolt, bobbing like a cork over the waves of the channel toward France. And her father.

  THE LAST THING she would ever do, she vowed to herself, was to tell her father who it had been.

  He knew who Pardloe was, what his family background had been, just how fragile his family’s present grip on respectability. And thus Pardloe’s vulnerability to blackmail.

  Perhaps not outright blackmail…at least, she didn’t want to believe her father engaged in that. He’d always told her to avoid it. Not on moral grounds—he had principles, her father, but not morals—but on the purely pragmatic grounds that it was dangerous.

  “Most blackmailers are amateurs,” he’d told her, handing her a small stack of letters to read—an educational exchange between a blackmailer and his victim, written in the late fifteenth century. “They don’t know what it’s decent to ask for, and they don’t know how to quit, even if they wanted to. It doesn’t take a victim long to realize that, and then…it’s often death. For one or the other.

  “In this instance”—he’d nodded at the crumbling brown-stained papers in her hand—“it was both of them. The woman being blackmailed invited the blackmailer to her home for dinner and poisoned him. But she used the wrong drug; it didn’t kill him outright, but it worked fast enough for him to realize what she’d done, and he strangled her over the dessert.”

  No, he probably hadn’t had any intent of blackmailing Pardloe himself.

  At the same time, she was certainly intelligent enough to realize that the letters and documents her father dealt in were very often commissioned by or sold to persons who intended to use them for blackmail. She thought of Edward Twelvetrees and his brother and felt colder than the icy blast of the wind off the English Channel.

  Were her father to realize that it was Pardloe who had debauched his daughter…What on earth would he do? she wondered.

  He wouldn’t scruple to kill Pardloe, if he could do it undetected, she was pretty sure of that. Though he was very pragmatic: he might just demand satisfaction of a financial nature as compensation for the loss of his daughter’s virginity. That was a salable commodity, after all.

  Or—the worst possibility of all—he might try to force the Duke of Pardloe to marry her.

  That’s what he’d wanted: to find her a rich English husband, preferably one well-placed in society.

  “Over my dead body!” she said out loud, causing a passing deckhand to look at her strangely.

  SHE’D REHEARSED IT on the journey back. How she’d tell her father—what she wouldn’t tell him—what he might say, think, do…She had a speech composed—firm, calm, definite. She was prepared for him to shout, to rebuke, disown her, show her the door. She wasn’t at all prepared for him to look at her standing in the doorway of the shop, gulp air, and burst into tears.

  Flabbergasted, she said nothing and an instant later was being crushed in his arms.

  “Are you all right?” He held her away from him, so he could look into her face, and swiped a sleeve across his own wet, anxious, gray-stubbled face. “Did the swine hurt you?”

  She couldn’t decide whether to
say “What swine?” or “What are you talking about?” and instead settled on a dubious-sounding “No…”

  He let go then and stepped back, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he handed her. She realized belatedly that she was sniffling and her own eyes were welling.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, all her speeches forgotten. “I didn’t mean to….to…” But you did, her heart reminded her. You did mean it. She swallowed that down with her tears and said instead, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Papa.”

  She hadn’t called him that in years, and he made a sound as though someone had punched him in the belly.

  “It’s me that’s sorry, girl,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I let you go by yourself. I should never…I knew…Christ, I’ll kill him!” Blood flooded his pale cheeks, and he slammed a fist on the counter.

  “No, don’t,” she said, alarmed. “It was my fault. I—” I what?

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, though not hard.

  “Don’t ever say that. It—whatever—however it happened, it wasn’t your fault.” His hands dropped away from her shoulders and he drew breath, panting as though he’d been running. “I—I—” He stopped and ran a trembling hand down his face, closing his eyes.

  He took two more deep breaths, opened his eyes, and said, with some semblance of his normal calm, “Come and sit down, ma chère. I’ll make us some tea.”

  She nodded and followed him, leaving her bag where it had fallen. The back room seemed at once completely familiar and quite strange, as though she had left it years ago rather than months. It smelled wrong, and she felt uneasy.

  She sat down, though, and put her hands on the worn wooden tabletop. There was a spinning sensation in her head, and when she took a deep breath to try to stop it, the sense of seasickness came back, the smell of dust and ancient silk, stewed tea and the nervous sweat of many visitors curling into a greasy ball in her stomach.

  “How…how did you find out?” she asked her father, in an effort to distract herself from the sense of clammy apprehension.