The Emperor's Conspiracy (8 page)

“You sure it isn’t a play for sympathy?”

She shook her head. She knew why Catherine asked but she had seen Luke when he’d come back from the Hulks. She knew this was all too real. And one more thing that lay between them that he would not talk about.

There was a furtive knock at the door, and Charlotte turned. Saw Betsy standing, flushed and flustered, in the doorway. “Kit couldn’t find Luke. He’s not at Tothill Road. No one would say where he’s gone.”

“Did they refuse to say, or don’t they know?” It would make a big difference, because there were some she could force to speak.

Betsy’s eyes went wide. “Kit didn’t say.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte watched her walk away, dread sinking deep, sharp claws into her chest; they curled inward, holding her close.

“What will you do?” Catherine sat still and afraid. Afraid for her.

“Keep Lord Durnham close to my side.” She glanced out the door, the way he had gone. “Until we find Luke, until I can talk to him, it’s the only way I can keep him alive.”

10

“W
here are you going, my lord?” Charlotte Raven stepped in his way, a slim green-and-white-clad obstacle to a quick escape. He could not get into his phaeton unless he moved her bodily.

His fingers twitched.

“Home.” He took a step closer, to crowd her. “Not that it is any of your business.”

She said nothing to his rudeness, simply stared at him for a moment and then turned her head to the stables. One of the stablehands was watching them from just within a stall.

Another, older man stepped out of a small room to one side, and he saw her shoulders relax a little. “Gary.” She kept her eyes away from his. “Lord Durnham will be staying with us for a few days, to visit with his sister. Would you have his horses stabled and his carriage put away until they are needed?” At last she turned to look at him. “Or would you
rather have Gary return them to your own stables, and we can take you home when your visit is over?”

He could not help that his mouth fell open. He closed it with a snap.

“Ah, your horses are most likely fussy.” The smallest spark of humor lit her eyes and was gone. “Gary, rather arrange for his lordship’s horses to go to their own stables.”

“Right you are, my lady.” The stablehand stepped up beside him and held out his hand for the reins although his eyes were on Charlotte. He exchanged a look with her that Edward could only describe as mischievous.

Charlotte grinned back, her face transformed for an instant from inhospitable desert to an English summer garden.

This was not the man who’d accompanied her to the gin house in Tothill Road, though. He knew the stable boy watching them from the stall was the one who’d gone with her. The wiry strength of him was unmistakable.

Edward handed the reins over with an easy movement.

Charlotte held out her arm. “Shall Gary take a note with him for your butler to send round some clothes, my lord? Seeing he’ll be going anyway?”

“Before that, I’d like a word.” Edward was not having an argument with her in her stable yard. Especially as it was clear the men listening were more than just servants.

“Of course.” Her lips twitched as his hand closed over her arm, and he wondered if she had any idea how angry he was.

He led the way to the back garden.

“You can start snarling now,” Charlotte whispered near his
ear, making him jerk away. “They can’t see your face. Although I’m sure they’re listening, so you’ll have to keep your voice down.”

He kept his gait smooth, but inside he stumbled. “Do you always live like this? Afraid of what they’ll see?”

She put out a hand, let her gloved fingers brush over the thick velvet of pink rose petals that lined their path. It occurred to him that he had never seen her without gloves that came to above her elbows or long-sleeved gowns, no matter how hot the weather. “I forget, sometimes, how much of my life it controls.” She pulled a handful of petals off an overblown rose and rubbed them between her fingers, releasing their scent. “Gary is loyal to me, but Kit—he’s Luke’s ears and eyes here. Some of the house servants, too.”

“Even though you pay their salaries?” He looked behind him, before the path swung sharp right, toward the back of the house, and blocked the stable yard from view. Kit watched them, leaning on a broom.

Edward tightened his grip on her arm and swung her through an arch of climbing roses, into the cool shade of the hedge that surrounded the garden in a wall of green.

“Luke might give them extra.” She shrugged. “Or it may be because I’m not really one of them anymore. Luke’s probably got more money than me, but he’s kept to the rookeries. He doesn’t put on airs.”

He looked at her and raised a brow, and she laughed softly.

“I can simper with the best of them, Lord Durnham. You wouldn’t recognize me at one of the balls you never attend.”

He shook his head. “I doubt that’s true.”

She lifted her hands as if in defeat. “Perhaps. I turn down as many invitations to dance as I accept. I can’t help looking at the men who approach me and wondering if they would think my dowry is worth bringing themselves to Luke’s attention.”

“And does it?” He stopped completely. He had to force his hand not to shake.

She frowned, and he cleared his throat. “Does it bring them to his attention? And how so, if you don’t tell him?”

She shivered in the deep shade of the hedge, and he led her out onto the lawn, into the sun again. “Oh, this end of London is Luke’s patch. He’s got servants on his payroll everywhere. How do you think he found out about your men asking questions?”

He was such a fool. He had not thought of criminals being so organized, but why not? “You make him sound like a lord of crime.”

She raised her face to his, startled. “I thought you understood. That is what he is.” She turned away and neither of them said anything for a moment. He could still smell the sweet perfume of the rose petals, crushed where her hand had become a fist, and looking down on her face, at the dark lashes against her cheek, some emotion rose up in his chest, so intense, so huge, he was stunned. He was still holding her arm and his hand trembled against the fabric of her sleeve. He let go of her and stepped back to put space between them.

He’d thought himself incapable of anything this strong.

“I will not hide behind your skirts, Miss Raven. And I will not let a thug rule my life as he seems to do yours.” He spoke gently, and she lifted those dark blue eyes to his, then cut away to study the lush, green grass of the lawn.

“You really don’t understand.” She let the petals drop and gripped her hands together. “This is not about pride. This is about your life. In the last few months, things have been getting …” She paused and looked back toward the stables as if Kit could still see them. “Getting worse. I truly fear he is capable of murder.”

“According to you, he’s already murdered my men.”

She lifted her shoulders. “Men asking questions in his patch, that’s fair game, to him. Someone paying me too much mind? Until now, he’s limited himself to filching them in the street.”

She used the word
filch
instead of
rob
deliberately, he thought, broadened her accent on purpose. Trying to push him away, make him understand she was truly of another world. It was too little. And much too late.

He let it pass for now.

“You may owe this man something, that you let him rule you like a despot, but he doesn’t rule me. And I am far from the youngbloods and dandies of the ballrooms.” He took another step away.

“Are you?” Her words could have been a taunt but were not. She was serious. “Have you spent your life fighting hard just to stay alive? Been thrown in the equivalent of a pit with hardly any food and way too many people, most of them much bigger
than you?” She straightened her spine and lifted her head. “Luke and his boys—I—have lived like that, Lord Durnham. I worked from dawn to dusk with barely a meal to sustain me and so little pay that there was literally no way for me to ever better my circumstances legally. I was a slave in all but name. Luke and the men in his gang, they have been thieving and yes, killing, since they were children. It was either that or die themselves, and where you might hesitate, or think something through, they will not. They will act, act hard, fast, and they will not think twice about your death. It will not weigh on their minds.”

She was trying to protect him. Either scare him off or give him the best advice she could.

He thought of the hours he’d spent learning to fight, and the desperation he’d felt when he’d first begun, to never be helpless. But the edge was off him now. When he’d hired the footpad who’d once tried to accost him to teach him street fighting, he’d had the beatings his stepfather had given him in mind. But his stepfather was in his power these days, old and dependent on Edward’s largesse.

He didn’t have the same fire in his belly. And as Charlotte pointed out, these men faced life and death in every fight they threw themselves into. Had been tempered in a much hotter furnace than he’d ever faced.

He looked at her again and wondered if this feeling that thrummed inside him at just the thought of her was enough to give him an equal footing. “If your Luke thinks I will be easy pickings,” he said at last, “he is very much mistaken.”

11

W
ith sinking dread Charlotte watched Lord Durnham ride away. Out on the street, an urchin leaped up from the gutter and threw a half brick at his horses’ legs, narrowly missing the left one’s fine fetlocks.

She moved fast, and with his attention still on the retreating phaeton, managed to grab the little bastard by the neck and arm. “Who are you?”

He gave her a disgusted look, taking in the fine-patterned green-and-white lawn of her dress, her expertly dressed hair, and tried to eel his way out of her grasp. But she knew all the tricks. Had used them countless times herself.

“I said, who are you?”

He looked like he was going to spit in her face, and she raised an eyebrow.

“No one.” It was a feral snarl.

Her heart hurt, looking at him. What was Luke about? This wasn’t how this child should be. He’d promised her.
Promised! Every child who worked for him would have a better life.

“Luke sending balmy brats to do his dirty work? I am disappointed.” She kept her voice cool. Emotion would be just another weapon to use as far as this boy was concerned.

“Wha-?” He was still a child, beneath the grime and the hard-edged layer of fury. He couldn’t help show his confusion.

“That horse ever do you harm?” She tightened her grip.

The lad shook his head, his eyes narrow.

“Funny, looked like you was trying to cripple it, ’n’ all. Do it down and have it sent to the knackers.” She gave her tongue full rein and felt a twinge of regret she couldn’t speak like this more often. She forgot she could, sometimes. “Luke’s policy’s always been hurt those what needs hurtin’ an’ not a poor sod more.”

She leaned back a little, took the measure of him. “An’ if you were here as a nose, to watch the house, the jig’s up cos o’ that stunt.”

He said nothing and turned his head away, looking down the street, to where Edward had already turned the corner, oblivious to the near miss of his prize horseflesh. “Sometimes I can’t ’elp it.” His words were calm. Way too mature and measured for his age. “I look up at a carriage like that, nags like those, and wouldn’t the sale of all of tha’ set me up for life, an’ all? Just want to break it all, I do. Just smash it. Cos no matter what, I can’t ’ave it, can I? Why should anyone else?”

“Look at me.” She held him even tighter, until he winced, and she loosened her hold a little, waited for him to turn to
her again. “If you’re working for Luke, you should know there’s a chance. And a better than average one, if you’re with him.”

He shook his head. “Don’t know who you’re talking about, Miss ’igh an’ Mighty.”

“Luke didn’t send you?” She blinked, and loosened her hold just a fraction too much.

He was out of her grasp and running before she could so much as shout.

“Who did send you, then?” She called after him, and he stopped, far enough away he knew she wouldn’t catch him, even if she tried. He cocked his head, rubbed finger and thumb together.