Fool Me Twice

  She had told Amanda not to embroider the point. “Lady Ripton is too kind. It’s true, once in a great rare while, I did assist her—”

  “Well, here’s the rub.” The words tumbled over each other; it was evident that Jones was aghast at his own proposal, and wished to get through it as quickly as possible. “Until we find a replacement, I require someone to fill Mrs. Wright’s shoes. You are educated; you are familiar with the ways of the better classes. I wonder if you might not step into her post—until, of course, I can find her replacement. Only until then.”

  Olivia caught her breath. This was a stroke of luck beyond all imagining. She needed a weapon very badly indeed. The Duke of Marwick was likely in possession of this weapon. And a housekeeper would have license to look everywhere for it.

  But—her spirits sank—it would still be fraud. And it would still cost Jones his job, in the end. “I couldn’t,” she said miserably. “I have no experience—”

  “I would instruct you.” Jones caught her hand. “I do entreat you, Miss Johnson”—his grip tightened as his voice dropped—“to think on the great advantage it would do your future. To be able to say you had once served as housekeeper to His Grace. Why, no domestic of your age could dream of such a boon!”

  Gently she pulled her hand free. He was right, of course. Had she truly been Olivia Johnson, parlor maid—and not Olivia Holladay, former secretary, now operating under her second alias, with a falsified letter of reference—she never would have refused the opportunity.

  And so, lest she rouse his suspicions, she said, “It is a fine honor, indeed. But you must give me a day or two to think on it. To consult with myself, and see if I am worthy of it.”

  Olivia’s humility pleased him. Smiling, he agreed to her terms.

  * * *

  “Oh, it’s you.” Mrs. Primm stepped aside, allowing Olivia to step into the shabby little hall.

  Mrs. Primm behaved as though she were doing her lodgers a great favor by letting them rent rooms the size of mouse holes. Meanwhile, she hoarded the coal, so they fell asleep shivering each night. But oh, could she cook like a dream! Olivia breathed deeply; the smell of beef stew filled the air, rich and savory. “Is supper laid?”

  “Laid and finished. You know I don’t wait for nobody.”

  Swallowing her disappointment, Olivia mounted the stairs. Her stomach was growling, but hunger wouldn’t kill her.

  Once in her room, she knelt to make sure the lockbox still sat beneath her bed. She lived in fear that somebody might steal it.

  On the omnibus, she had been tallying sums in her head, calculating her options. It was time to consider what she’d most wanted to avoid: fleeing to the Continent, someplace far enough away that Bertram would never think to look for her there.

  She glanced up at the drawings she’d tacked on the wall. They were benign prints clipped from magazines: an ivy-covered cottage with a lamp burning in the window. A village sleeping beneath the snow. Treacle dreams, but she could not scorn them—or let go of them, no matter how hard she tried.

  Abroad, she would always be a stranger. Forced to avoid her fellow expatriates in order to hide, she would be even more alone than she was now.

  Bah! She shook off the self-pity. Such a bittersweet, sticky feeling. Wallow in it too long, and one found oneself trapped.

  She unlocked the box and took the comfort of weighing her pound notes, a solid brick of savings. Elizabeth Chudderley had paid her a generous salary, and together with her mother’s savings, she had enough to stay comfortably lodged for several months if she did not find work as a fräulein, signorina, or mademoiselle.

  She laid down the money, and then, because she had not allowed herself to look at it in months, she lifted out her mother’s diary. The leather cover needed oiling; it had begun to crack. But her mother’s handwriting still looked crisp and fresh.

  Mama had never feared Bertram. Had he always been a villain, it would have been easier to understand him now. Olivia skimmed past observations on flowers, descriptions of the changing seasons, of dresses newly arrived from London, and of course, of Olivia herself (My precious angel has become a young woman; I can’t tell how it happened). The last entry was what drew her in, every time. It was the only one she didn’t understand.

  The truth is hidden at home.

  What truth? The mystery would remain unsolved, for Olivia dared not go to Allen’s End.

  The stairs groaned. She shoved away the lockbox just as a key rattled in the lock.

  “Am I to have no privacy?” she demanded as the door opened.

  Mrs. Primm ignored this. “There’s one thing,” she said sourly. “I forgot to mention it before.”

  Olivia rose. She would not be extorted again! “I have already agreed to the new rate, ma’am. You said that was the final price. And I keep this room very neat—”

  “A man came looking for you today.”

  Dread seized her. “What?” Be calm. She cleared her throat. “How curious. I can’t imagine who it might have been.”

  Mrs. Primm had a round, rosy-cheeked face. It lent her an air of benevolence that sat oddly with her cynical tones. “I expect you’d prefer it that way. Came by foot, he did. Well dressed, but not well spoken.”

  “Did he leave a name?” How she managed to sound so indifferent, she didn’t know. Her skin was breaking out in gooseflesh; she had to clench her teeth lest they chatter.

  “Munn, was it? No—Moore.” Mrs. Primm nodded to herself, missing, thank God, the small sound that Olivia could not swallow away before it escaped her. “He left an address as well, mind you, and asked that I let him know when you returned.”

  “And did you?” She realized she was cupping her throat, squeezing it as Moore had once done. She tucked her hand into her pocket, made a secret fist. Thomas Moore was Bertram’s man, perhaps even Bertram’s . . . assassin.

  Mrs. Primm shrugged. “Well, he wasn’t police, and I don’t fancy myself a matchmaker. I told him you’d moved on.”

  “Oh.” Olivia blinked hard and tried to master herself, for she was seized by the most inappropriate impulse to give Mrs. Primm a hug. “Thank you! Oh, thank you, ma’am.” How she had misjudged the cantankerous old woman!

  The woman rejected this gratitude with a sharp pull of her mouth. “I don’t want trouble. You’ll need to leave now.”

  “Do you think—that is, could I perhaps leave through the back gate?”

  Mrs. Primm gave a grim nod. “I expected you might. Should you find yourself in need of a place, you’ll not come back here. You follow?”

  “I won’t. I promise you.” It was the easiest promise she’d ever made.

  The door closed. Olivia quickly gathered up her belongings. Every time she fled, she abandoned more than she took. Her possessions now fit into a single valise, the weight of which felt like evidence of her own failure. How on earth had Bertram tracked her here? She’d taken such care with her movements.

  Outside, in the safety of the narrow passageway behind the house, night had fallen. This footpath was the sole reason she had chosen Mrs. Primm’s establishment for her lodging. But she’d prayed she would never need to use it.

  She stole quickly down the rutted trail. Where would she go? Amanda had departed with her husband for Italy. Lilah, lodged by her employer, could not take Olivia in. Nor could a woman simply prowl the city at night, begging for a room. The steamers bound for the Continent all left with the morning tide. She might go to Waterloo, take the first departing train—but what would she do once she arrived, in the dead of night, God knew where?

  The traffic of the nearby high street grew louder with each step, the rattle of tack, the rumble of wheels, promising her the safety of a crowd. You are safe, she told her racing heart. But she wasn’t. Bertram’s man knew that she was in London . . .

  His Lordship don’t want no trouble. That first night in London seven years ago, Moore had met her at the station. He had sat across from her in Bertram’s brougham, the swinging s
ide lamp painting his face then casting it back into shadow, visible and then invisible, in rhythm to the thumping of the wheels. And you’re trouble, I expect.

  Moore had lured her into the coach with the promise of taking her to a decent hotel. He’d said that Bertram wanted him to see her safely settled. After how hotly Bertram had opposed Olivia’s plan to come to London, this kindness had surprised her. She’d supposed it was meant as an apology; Bertram probably felt guilty for having missed Mama’s funeral.

  But his manservant did not take her to a hotel. Instead, the vehicle had turned into a road that grew progressively darker, traveling into the wild darkness of the heath. And when Moore began to speak of trouble, she grew amazed, then afraid. I won’t be any trouble, she’d said. I told Bertram. I don’t need anything from him. I have my own plans now.

  But Moore had not seemed to hear her. He don’t want no trouble, he’d repeated. So I take the trouble for him.

  And then he had shown her what he meant by that.

  She could still feel his hands around her throat. She remembered it so vividly. One’s mind did odd things when starved for air. It saw colors, lights, visions of better times, when one had felt loved.

  She had fought him. But he was so much stronger.

  She had woken in a ditch by the side of the road, as dawn broke overhead. Even as her eyes had opened, she’d realized she was meant to be dead. Moore never would have thrown her out of the coach if he’d imagined she would live.

  When she had appeared at the typing school and asked the headmistress to register her by a different name—not Olivia Holladay, but Olivia Mather—the woman had taken one look at the bruises on her throat and kindly agreed.

  Now Thomas Moore had found her again. He was looking for her even now. And she had nowhere to go.

  She pulled up where the path opened onto the high street, putting her hand over her chest, willing her gasping breath to slow. She had air. She had enough air.

  And it wasn’t true that she had nowhere to go. She watched a hackney pass, and then another, wrestling with herself. One house stood open to her tonight. It was also a place Bertram would never think to look: the house of a man he’d betrayed.

  Could she do it? Had she given up on her soul? She had stolen the letters from Elizabeth rashly, on a moment’s wild whim. But this undertaking would be different. She had planned it as thoroughly as a hardened criminal.

  But forced to choose between her soul and her safety, her soul and her dignity, her soul and freedom—her soul be damned! Thomas Moore could take part of the blame, for he had forced her into it. Bertram would take the rest, for setting Moore on her trail.

  She hailed the next cab. “Mayfair,” she said to the driver. “Green Street.”

  Inside the musty cab, as the wheels thumped steadily against the pavement and St. Giles receded, her panic began to ebb, her mind clearing.

  She would play the housekeeper. She would find Marwick’s information on Bertram. And she would use it.

  This was the last time that any man of Bertram’s would ever make her flee.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two hands and a throat: that is all that murder requires.

  Alastair sits on the floor. The wall presses like a hand against his back, trying to shove him away, but he will not go. He will stay here. In the darkness he looks into his hands, spreads and flexes them. They itch for something to break.

  Simple. Murder is so simple that boys must be warned against it. The throat is a delicate instrument; the hyoid bone, once crushed, blocks the airway completely. On playing fields, boys are taught the rules by which they must abide as gentlemen: Never squeeze the throat. Poor sportsmanship.

  But in the end, the laws of honor have nothing to do with games, or with honor, either. They are simply lies invented to dissuade boys from knowing their own power, and from using it to kill each other.

  Why? Why not kill? There are worse deaths than murder. Alastair’s wife, for instance, died alone in a rented suite at Claridge’s, an opium pipe beside her. But no, he’d told the inspector, no, no, it can’t be that. You’re wrong. There has been some mistake. She knew her limits. She knew how to use the stuff safely.

  You knew, Your Grace? You knew she smoked the pipe?

  The sudden change in the inspector’s tone had startled him. Before that night, nobody had spoken to him so. Yet this paid lackey of Alastair’s own government had dared to challenge him.

  Yes, he’d replied icily. I knew.

  What arrogance, that he hadn’t thought to lie. He’d been stunned, of course; grief-stricken, baffled, any number of florid adjectives that only a fool would willingly use to describe himself. Still, what arrogance! And what naïveté, that he’d ever imagined there was a safe way for Margaret to dabble in such drugs. What idiocy that he had believed her (I take it for my headaches; it is harmless, it works better than laudanum). Any sensible, intelligent man, upon discovering her habit, might have made the next leap: if she had kept this secret from him for so long, she might be keeping any number of other secrets, too.

  But self-doubt had never come easily to him. For he did everything right, did he not? He lived well; he performed his duties with panache; he defied all the sordid legacies of his father. He had married well, and his marriage was nothing like his parents’. Margaret was the perfect wife. The opium was only a fluke.

  And then suddenly she was dead of it, and Scotland Yard did not know what to do. A duchess found dead at one of London’s finest hotels? Dead in a plush suite that had cost fifty pounds a night, between floors of Americans planning their tours of the Tower and the zoo? How to contain such a story? How to bury it quickest?

  No one at Scotland Yard knew of the letters Margaret had written, or of the lovers she had kept, or of the countless betrayals she had made in the dark, pressing her body to her lovers’ bodies, speaking into their ears of her husband’s plans, the schemes with which he sought to defeat them in Parliament. On that night, Alastair had not known yet, either. He had still been telling himself a story, believing it: their lives had been perfect until now. But if Scotland Yard had known those details, they might have suspected Alastair of murdering her. And had he known those details, perhaps they would have been right.

  He flexes his hands. So easy. The wall gives another shove. He digs in his heels and resists.

  The death of Margaret de Grey, Duchess of Marwick, was ruled an act of nature. Her body was removed from the hotel under cover of nightfall, while all the curious Americans were sleeping. Influenza, the official report read. Alastair’s friends consoled him. The injustice of it. God’s ways are mysterious indeed.

  But there had been no mystery, no injustice, in her death: her own stupid vice had caused it. Likewise, it would be no injustice if her lovers died. No mystery, either. It would be murder. It would be murder if Alastair left this house.

  So he does not leave this house. He does not even leave this room.

  He looks into his palms. His eyes have grown accustomed to the dark he has made for himself, behind these curtains that never open. He sees clearly his lifelines, supposed harbingers of fortune: another lie, as much a lie as honor or ideals. He curls his lip. Fuck these lies.

  His language is filthy. Foul thoughts swarm through his rotted, useless brain like flies across shit. He thought once that he saw every possibility. That he would make his own destiny. That he and Margaret, together, would be everything the world required. He thought he had control, and that everything he did, was done perfectly. I have done everything right—or so he’d thought.

  He makes fists. His knuckles crack. He feels no pain.

  “Your Grace.”

  That is the third time someone has addressed him. He becomes aware of that, all at once. The soft voice comes from the doorway. It is female. He does not look up.

  Glass clinks: the woman is collecting empty bottles from the carpet. He has not drunk in some days, though. Even alcohol has ceased to affect him. With it or without it, he
feels equally numb.

  “Your Grace,” she says, “will you come out? Take the air, while I tidy your rooms?”

  They always leave after a minute; the trick is to ignore them. But the more frequently this question is put to him, the more foolish and dangerous it seems. All of them are ignorant: the servants, his brother, the world. They fail to understand that their best interests lie in leaving him here. It is safer if he stays—not for himself, but for them.

  For he knows that he could kill very easily. These hands, his own, could kill. He is no longer Parliament’s brightest star, celebrated husband to a society beauty, someday to be prime minister. He is not the country’s best hope, nor the corrective to his parents’ foul legacy. He is not the new chapter of anything.

  If he decided to take the air now—to step out, to return to the world—people would die, because he would kill them. He would kill them for what they had done.

  “Your Grace.” The girl is pale, tall, with hair as red as a warning. She is too bright; she hurts his eyes. “If you will just—”

  Idiots must be saved from themselves. He gropes for a bottle and hurls it.

  * * *

  Olivia slammed the door, then leaned against it, heart pounding. She had not started her day intending to meet the duke. But in the library, when she had remarked on the empty spots on some of the shelves, one of the maids had replied, Oh, the duke has them upstairs. It’s like a jumble sale, his rooms! Loads of books and papers and whatnot. He won’t even let us in anymore.

  Papers.

  Olivia had been here five days. She had not yet searched an inch of the place. Contrary to her expectations, the disorder of the household worked against her. The maids, the footmen, even the cook’s assistant forever seemed to be popping up where they shouldn’t. She caught them in odd places, doing everything in the world (loitering, dozing, playing cards) save their work.

  How was a woman supposed to pry when potential witnesses roamed wherever they pleased?