Fool Me Twice

  “I’ve already heard so much from you,” Alastair said. Again, so calm. This script was excellent. “Granted, the letters were intended for my wife. But you know the saying: Adam’s rib. What was hers is mine, and so on.”

  Bertram gave him a thin smile. “Of course. And I imagine you must be feeling very pleased with yourself, for I have received your letter, as well.”

  “Did you? I sent none.”

  Bertram took a seat. “You must hope that your henchman denies it, too. Ah—that surprises you, I see. Did you really imagine that I would go myself?” He laughed shortly. “Did you imagine those documents were genuine? Your own wife drafted them—it was her idea, in fact.”

  He deserved a knife across the throat for daring to speak of her. For mentioning so casually what should be his shame and dishonor.

  But Alastair kept his hands loose at his sides, his face neutral. He gathered that Bertram felt convinced he was sharing a great coup. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’ll have to elaborate.”

  Bertram sighed. “Must I? All those sordid secrets you collected, imagining yourself somehow superior—what did you mean to do with them anyway? Did you truly imagine that honorable men would stand for blackmail?” He shook his head. “Margaret agreed with me. It simply isn’t done. And if you were vulgar enough to try it . . . why, she thought, and I agreed, how fitting it would be if your blackmail was turned against you. If the evidence you collected was, in fact, forged—and in such a way that, should you ever attempt to use it, you would be exposed as the villain.”

  Alastair held himself very still. The files on Bertram that Olivia Johnson had stolen—these were what Bertram meant. “They were false,” he said softly.

  “You fool!” Bertram’s color was rising. A redhead could never hide an emotion as piquant as triumph. “Of course they were false. Did you truly imagine me so idiotic as to get myself tangled up in a land swindle? But no, you thought yourself so much cleverer. And so you’ve destroyed yourself, Marwick—for as you may have gathered, I did not make that meeting today. Scotland Yard paid the visit in my stead.”

  Alastair felt something shift inside him, minute but profound: the center of his gravity, readjusting. “I see.”

  To feel so right—to feel one’s instincts, with savage bitterness, confirmed—and then, after all, to be so wrong, to be so blind: Olivia had not been lying about her intentions.

  She had tried to use the documents to blackmail Bertram. We have a common enemy, she’d said.

  Was this relief? Why? He took a great breath, for he felt suddenly drunk, though he’d not finished his wine.

  Bertram interpreted this breath as a sigh of despair. “Yes, indeed, now you’re seeing the way of it. And for your own sake, you must hope you paid your man well enough to resist interrogation. For when he confesses your role in it, what will the world think? That you hired a man to blackmail me with documents that you forged. Ruination, Marwick. A laughingstock extraordinaire! Yes, I hope you paid your man very well.”

  Looking at him now, Alastair saw, with fresh eyes, the significance of details he had not thought to notice before:

  The man’s square jaw. His unusual height. And his hair, carrot red, even in the darkness of the room.

  He felt his lip curl. He knew something of how a man earned enemies. But Bertram’s deeds must be blacker than he’d imagined. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “But I wonder if you guessed that my henchman would be a woman—ginger, by the name of Olivia.”

  Bertram gave a gasp. And then he leapt from his chair for the door.

  “No.” Alastair grabbed his shoulder, hauled him around. And then, with great satisfaction, he made a fist and slammed it into Bertram’s nose.

  Bertram dropped to the ground.

  Alastair stood over him, breathing heavily. His knuckles throbbed, the sweetest sensation he’d known in a very long time—or at least, since that night in his library.

  He shook his head to rid it of that thought. “Dead?” he said.

  No reply.

  Kneeling, Alastair felt for a pulse, and found it beating strongly. Convenient; this would give him a fine head start.

  “Never fear,” he said as he rose. “I’ll take very good care of your daughter.”

  * * *

  Alastair had been instrumental in drafting several measures for prison reform. As he followed the jail keeper down the moldy corridor, he wondered what he had been thinking. It was very useful to have a penal system so dependent on bribery and corruption.

  The keeper took the precaution of looking through the peephole before unlocking the door. Intriguing. Olivia had obviously made quite an impression during her arrest. To believe the official account, she’d been waving Alastair’s pistol and threatening to take off somebody’s head.

  Quite credible, that story. A wonderful system they had at work here: lies, money, mold. “Leave us,” he said.

  The jail keeper hemmed and hawed as though working himself up to an argument. How quaint. Alastair let his own face telegraph his opinion of the prospect.

  The man snapped his mouth shut and pocketed the key. “When you’re finished, sir—”

  “Your Grace,” Alastair said softly.

  “Simply ring,” the man said in a more subdued tone. He nodded to the small bell by the door. “A guard will come to lock up.”

  Alastair waited until the jail keeper’s footsteps had faded. The bell, the iron door, the reek of filth and damp, the narrow peephole—positively medieval. When he laid his hand on the latch, he was introduced to a layer of cold, slimy moisture.

  He pushed open the door. In the moment it took his eyes to adjust to the dimness, he heard her gasp. “You came!”

  Her greeting threw him off. The gratitude in it struck at some small, tender, rotten spot inside him. She came into focus in the dimness, standing two feet away, bedraggled, straw clinging to her skirts, her right cheek swollen and purpling. “How did you know I was here?” she asked hoarsely.

  “That doesn’t matter.” She brandished the gun, the jail keeper had told him. She was hollering that she would shoot anybody who tried to lay a hand on her.

  The point of that bunkum was apparent now. Short of a proper murderess, perhaps even a cannibal, the public would scruple at police striking a woman.

  He scrupled. That the police, whose sacred duty was to protect, would abuse a slip of a girl . . . Contempt burned through him.

  He resisted the impulse to go to her, to tilt her chin up to the meager light from the murky window and make certain her eye was intact. She had stolen from him. Made a fool of him. Lied to him. These were her just deserts. It was not his job to protect her.

  “I can help you,” she said. “Do you believe me now?”

  He felt his upper lip curl—an animal reaction to this confusion swelling inside him. She could help him? She had decided to take on Bertram singlehandedly. See how well it had turned out.

  If you had shown them half the spine you’ve shown me, perhaps Bertram would not have been my problem to solve.

  He recognized the childishness of his anger. He was sick of being shown up by her.

  Her hands nervously kneaded her skirts. “Please,” she said. Her knuckles were bloodied. Had she thrown a punch? Or—the image flashed through his mind, sudden and vivid—had they dragged her? Had she grabbed onto the gravel, the walls, to save herself—

  He gritted his teeth. “Very well. Tell me, Olivia, why I shouldn’t leave you here to rot.”

  Her lips trembled. And then, quite suddenly, her strength seemed to leave her. She fell onto her knees in the straw, and the gasping breath that tore from her sounded too much like relief. He had not promised he would help her. He should warn her of that.

  But instead, he knelt and took hold of her elbows. “Are you all right?” Whose words were these? Whose concern was this?

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  His grip wanted to tighten. He understood suddenly that this was his concer
n. She was his concern. He was no longer going to hide in the dark, for she had pulled him out of it. He would not hide even from himself.

  To hell with that! She was a thief. She had deceived him. Stolen from him.

  But she had also brought him into the garden. She had shown bravery that he had no choice but to admire.

  He made an angry noise and let go of her. “Don’t lie to me,” he said. “We’re done with lies. You will speak the truth to me, or nothing at all. Now, tell me: are you all right?”

  She swallowed, the noisy sound of a very dry throat. She looked past him to the door, and then around the little cell, a certain blind quality in her gaze, as though she was only now discovering where she was, and did not trust her vision. “Yes,” she said unsteadily. “And I will tell you—everything. But quickly! Once Bertram realizes I am here . . .”

  Her naked fear struck some chord within him, a shocked and startled note that reverberated. How had he missed her fear? In his bedroom, when he had manhandled her, he had thought her afraid of him. But he saw now that he’d been mistaken.

  He could not make sense of it. This terror was for Bertram? He had not understood his wife’s choice of lovers, Bertram least of all—and now he could not understand Olivia Johnson’s fear. She had never flinched in front of him. But the mere mention of Bertram made her shake.

  He grabbed her arm again. His fingers flexed on her smooth skin; he wanted to run his hands over her, to check for hidden wounds, because she was a liar, he could believe nothing she said, not even her protests that she was well.

  Their eyes locked. Of course she would not look away from him. “Tell me why you fear that bastard,” he said. “What do you think he will do to you?”

  She lifted her face, showing him Bertram’s chin, Bertram’s hair clinging in matted curls to her temples. But her eyes were her own, an oceanic blue, the blue of prophetic heavens, cloudless summers. “He will kill me. He has already tried once.”

  He let go of her. Recoiled. Preposterous. A single punch had knocked Bertram unconscious. And she thought him a murderer? A man did not kill his own blood.

  Yet he could not dispute that she believed it. Her conviction showed in her pallor, in her desperate eyes. And to see her look like that, when she had never so much as flinched from him . . .

  He took a long breath. Rage, confusion, amazement . . . his emotions were pinwheeling; he could not understand any of them.

  He found himself groping for another script to guide him. But there was nothing now in his brain but his instinct, his rotten instinct, which wanted to smash something. Or tie her up, swaddle her in gauze, lock her away somewhere he could study her until he understood . . . something. Something important, to which he could not yet put a name.

  He made himself look at her. It was not difficult. Taking his eyes off her would be the challenge. What are you?

  Something was missing. “Where are your spectacles?”

  “They smashed them.”

  There was the anger, boiling up again, scalding. How stupid; she did not even need them to see.

  He turned away, pinched the bridge of his nose. Found himself staring at the door. From this side, it looked even more of a relic from the dark ages. Streaks of rust resembled blood. The dents must be where—his mind’s eye supplied the possibility—some past occupant had banged his head, over and over, frantic for escape.

  Christ, how was she so alone? How was it that she had been grateful to see him here? How had her own goddamned father put her into this mess?

  He turned back. She visibly gathered herself, straightening, jaw squaring. She would not beg him. Even her eyes had ceased to plead. She merely watched him, resolute, ready to hear his decision.

  She had not gotten her dignity from Bertram.

  He held out his hand. Her lips parted. She seized his fingers and he hauled her to her feet—too easily. She was not light, but she was not as heavy as she should be. Her bones should be made of iron, for what else was fit to support her bravado? It would shame generals. Emperors. Professional pirates.

  If anyone was going to break her will, it would be he. Not Archibald bloody Bertram.

  He pulled her out the door, past the silent bell, down the hall. In the guardroom, the jail keeper and one of his thugs had begun a game of cards. When they caught sight of Alastair, the keeper stood. “How now, Your Grace! What is this? That woman is a prisoner of the Crown—”

  Alastair dropped her hand—ignoring how her fingers clung, how he had to shake them off as he stepped forward. It made something in his chest twist, to feel her reaching for him. It was so unlike her. “This woman was waylaid without cause. The pistol was mine, which she was carrying to be repaired.”

  The man flushed. “A likely story!”

  He felt a strange smile twist his lips. The jail keeper retreated a pace. “You doubt my word, sir?”

  The man looked uneasily to his guard, who found a new purpose in reshuffling the deck. “I—perhaps you didn’t know, Your Grace. But this woman is involved in a very bad business, a scheme to blackmail Lord Bertram—”

  “Indeed? You mean to say that Bertram, a member of our prime minister’s cabinet, is in the business of being bamboozled by other men’s domestics?”

  The keeper shifted his weight. “I . . . am not privy to all the details, but the charge sheet—”

  “Yes, you’ll want to keep your eye on that. The newspapers would be glad to print it. What a curious lark. Rather awkward for Salisbury, of course. Indeed, the PM should be apprised before all of London begins to laugh at the fool he appointed. Will you inform him, or shall I?”

  The jail keeper stammered a few incoherent syllables. Finally he found his retort: “This is intimidation!”

  “Is it?” Alastair inspected his nails. “I had imagined that intimidation required a busted face, at the least.” He looked up. “Or was my maid abused for no cause?”

  “Perhaps . . . there was some mistake. She was loitering in the very spot that the criminal had promised to wait—but perhaps that was only a coincidence.”

  “I will leave it to you and the baron to decide. In the meantime . . .” Alastair lifted a brow. “Get out of my way.”

  The jail keeper swallowed and inched aside, clearing their path to the street.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In the guardroom, Marwick had faced the jail keeper like a predator encountering a new species of food. His smile should have exposed fang. But once outside the prison, he seemed to withdraw into himself. He handed her silently into the carriage and then settled in a brooding silence on the opposite bench.

  Olivia kept her eyes on the window, for she barely knew how to look at him. For four days she had nursed her anger toward him. But the moment he had stepped into her cell, her hard work had been undone. He had rescued her. How could she recover her resentment? She had wondered before what it would be like to have him as a friend. Now she knew it meant freedom—quite literally. The Duke of Marwick could pull a prisoner out of Newgate as easily as some other man might bully a beggar into ceding the sidewalk.

  She gazed at the bustle of afternoon traffic. How odd that sunlight still shone. She felt as though she’d lived through a century or more of terror since walking into St. James this morning. She touched her cheek and found it hot and tender.

  “Here.” He moved onto her bench, took hold of her chin, and angled it toward the window. The intimacy, the presumption, made her go still.

  She could not quite forget how he had touched her in his bedroom. If he tried that again, gratitude be damned—she would punch him.

  But after a moment, he released her and sat back. “Yes, quite nasty,” he said calmly. “Was it a baton?”

  “Only a fist.” Only. She shuddered.

  He remained on her bench, studying her. He was too broad shouldered, his legs too long, to share the space comfortably. His thigh pressed against hers; his knee came into her soiled skirts. She should mind it. For every inch she ceded him, he no
doubt intended to take a mile.

  But she rather liked the feel of his body against hers. It was not desire; she was too exhausted for that. But he was tall, strong, powerful; he would make a very good shield. A bodyguard . . . She caught her thoughts from wandering. He was no knight. But he’d rescued her from prison, so for the time being, she’d let him crowd her as much as he liked.

  The carriage leaned into a turn. She glanced out and discovered the receding shape of Swan & Edgar’s. This was not the way back to his house. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll soon find out. They said you pulled my pistol on them. True?”

  “Of course not.” She hadn’t known the police could be so vicious. She had been waiting for Bertram outside the bird-keeper’s cottage in St. James Park. The older policeman had walked up to her and struck her across the face. “They didn’t say a word. They didn’t even ask my name. They’d been watching me, staring for a bit, and I’d felt . . .” She laughed unsteadily. “Safer knowing they were there. And then, all at once . . .”

  “Bertram must have given them some incentive.”

  He believed her now? She felt a great relief come over her, weakening, like a plunge into a hot bath. “Yes, I think you’re right.” What sweetness to finally have someone who understood, if not the whole of it, then enough to see the blackest implications. Finally, she was not alone in glimpsing them.

  But when she turned to him, his expression ended her relief. There was no sympathy in his face. No revelation, no understanding. He watched her the way a cat might watch a mouse hole: narrowly, with dark plans.

  “What am I to do with you?” he said quietly.

  She swallowed. “You might thank me. Were it not for me, you’d probably still be sitting in your bedroom.”

  His mouth flattened. “How you do go on about that. But your entire campaign was designed to facilitate your theft. Is that not so?”

  “It did . . . begin for that reason.”