Read A Lady's Guide to Ruin Online

Authors: Kathleen Kimmel

A Lady's Guide to Ruin (8 page)

“I'm not mad,” Joan said. Too forcefully. She steadied herself with a long breath. “Moses—that's my brother—and our partner, Hugh, said I was. So I wouldn't be hanged, I suppose, though they're the ones that turned me over in the first place, so I'm not exactly grateful.”

“That seems like a complicated story,” Elinor said. She couldn't quite hide the curiosity in her voice.

“Not really,” Joan said with a shrug. After the number of times she'd run her mind over it during her imprisonment, it was a rather drab, worn thing. “We had a mark. A swell, bit of a rum cull—
er,
he was rich, I mean, and not too smart,” she clarified at Elinor's look of confusion. “Never had a big love, so I made myself the first. Had him hooked, too. Only his father found out, hired a man to look into me. Didn't have to look too hard. I never meant to fool anyone but the boy, so my story didn't hold up. The man offered a reward to whoever turned me in, along with a family ring of theirs I had. I was set to run, but Moses and Hugh tossed me to them. Said I wasn't a thief, just crazy,
thought myself really a lady. Like I said, they'd probably have hanged me otherwise. But Moses could've let me run.”

Might have, too, if Hugh hadn't been hissing in his ear for the last few years. Hugh had a golden touch but a more wicked mind than she'd first realized. She never should have let him hitch his life to theirs.

“You are a thief, then,” Elinor said. “And not just from your brother. Your voice changes, you know. When you aren't pretending.”

“I know,” Joan said, with an unkind sneer. She didn't like talking things to death. She wanted it over with: authorities called, her fate decided. “It was a nice holiday while it lasted, anyway.”

“I wouldn't send you back there,” Elinor said. Joan looked at her in surprise. “You say you have your prize already, your future. I presume it doesn't require that you steal anything further from me.”

“I haven't taken anything from you,” Joan said, but then she looked down at her clothes and sighed. “Nothing you didn't give, I mean.” It held the echo of her father's words. She'd loved him but she hated hearing him in her voice.

“As I'm sure that boy gave you his family's ring.”

Joan tried to ignore the sting of it. She stretched her hands toward the flame, too close for comfort, letting the heat whip and snap at her palms. She'd never felt guilty about a job before, not really. Maybe she'd gone soft. She scowled. “If you won't send me back, where will you send me?”

“You can go where you wish. I will try to give you a few days. After that, there will be no hiding Daphne's absence. Not when Martin arrives and finds you gone. I'll give him the story and ask him not to go after you. That's
all I can promise. Assuming that Daphne is truly well, I believe he'll abide by my request.”

“She is,” Joan said. “I have the letter, still. I can show you.”

“Please,” Elinor said. She sounded tired. Wrapped in the thick blanket, she looked it, too. Tired and weak. Not, Joan prayed, ill. “It's a pity. I rather liked your version of Daphne. I don't suppose it's anything like the real thing.”

“I don't think so,” Joan said. “She seemed . . . young.”

“So are you,” Elinor said.

“I think I'm older than you, in a few of the ways that count. Older than Daphne, at least. Twenty-two, or thereabouts.”

“You don't know for certain?”

Joan shrugged. “Stopped keeping track.” She folded her hands back from the fire. It had been such a nice game, while it lasted. With a better end than she might have expected, if Elinor kept her word. Still, there was more sorrow than relief in her. She couldn't explain things properly to Elinor, wouldn't get the chance to explain anything to Martin—which was a relief in so many ways, and yet seemed an impossible injustice. He would think her . . .

He would think her exactly as she was. She'd only managed to fool him, for a time. She pressed her eyes shut. She would not cry. Not falsely as Daphne, nor truly as Joan. She had not earned tears.

And yet one came, hot and obstinate, raking a track down her cheek. She blotted it with the back of her hand.

“I wish I could believe your tears,” Elinor said. “But unlike mine, your tears lie.”

Joan glared at her. “Ask me any question you like and I will tell you the truth. I am already exposed. What more could I lose?”

Elinor looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Why did you bring me out today? Why not run the moment you could?”

“Because I wanted to be her,” Joan said, with a derisive laugh. It hurt to admit. She'd spent her whole life learning scorn for the nobs she bilked, with their silk handkerchiefs and upturned noses. She'd thought herself too smart to go longing for their lives, but maybe the misery of Bedlam had rubbed the wisdom from her skin. Now this taste of an idyllic life was falling away from her, and she wanted to dig her nails in, cling to it until it was tatters. “I wanted what she had. I wanted you. And your brother. And Birch Hall, even borrowed. I wanted this.”

Elinor glanced around the room deliberately, and then raised one exquisite eyebrow. “You might set your sights higher than a leaky cottage,” Elinor said. Joan couldn't help it. She laughed, half-choking as tears threatened to mingle with the laughter. The laughter fell to hiccupping sobs, and then Elinor's arms were around her, and Joan buried her face against the other woman's shoulder.

Elinor murmured something into Joan's hair.
You won't
, she said, and then Joan realized she'd been speaking while she cried.
I can't go back.
Repeated like a chant. “I give you my word,” Elinor said. “You have been a friend to me. I will not repay your kindness, however opportunistic, with such cruelty.”

Joan pulled away. She was sure she looked a fright. As much as she had that first day outside the town house. Was it only a few days ago? It had to have been longer; a lifetime. “Thank you,” she said, heartfelt. Elinor was watching her with a queer expression. It bore some distant relation to one that frequently graced Hugh's face in the early hours of a job
when the plans were coming together and the prize beginning to gleam.

“Daphne will be in no hurry to contact her parents,” Elinor said. “As far as she is concerned, no doubt, a long silence means time for their anger to cool. In fact—do you know where she meant to stay, in Scotland?”

“It's in the letter,” Joan said carefully.

“Then I shall arrange for her return. Quietly. If she is not yet wed, there may be a chance yet to spare her reputation, but only if she is thought to have been here for the duration. That means you cannot leave. That is, if you wish to stay. Truly. For a little while longer.” At Joan's look of confusion, Elinor touched the back of her hand. “I have felt more myself these past few days than in the past three years. It seems a shame to pass up the opportunity for further adventure.”

It was Joan's turn to gape. “You cannot be serious.”

“I believe I am.” Elinor looked upward, as if considering. “Yes. I am. I am not at all keen to see you gone, or on the road alone when you have not even had a week of proper rest and feeding to strengthen you. And it is the best way to rescue poor Daphne's reputation, if the elopement has failed. If it hasn't . . .” She shrugged. “In either case, you will be long gone. We can make proper arrangements. You can go wherever you like.”

“What about Lord Fenbrook?”

“Oh, let me deal with that. I will plead ignorance, and swear Daphne to the same. Even if she lets something slip, Martin will forgive me, and her parents will be wild with anger no matter what the sequence of events. You must only promise me one thing.”

“What?” Joan asked, mind wheeling. What single promise could be enough, when she was who she was?

“You must not allow my brother to fall in love with you,” Elinor said, and pinned Joan with an unflinching look.

Joan choked. Swallowed. “In love . . . ? I can't rule a man's heart, but I think it's safe enough a promise to make. We're not suited.”

“Not in title or wealth or family, no. But marriage cares for those things; love doesn't. You are suited where love is concerned, and there is the danger. I won't have his heart broken, and you cannot help but do so. Whatever happens, come the summer's end you will be gone to your new future, and he cannot follow.” Elinor's stare did not relent. “Now, promise.”

“I promise,” Joan said. It should have been easy. And yet the words felt like giving something up, scraping herself just a little bit hollow. What foolish fantasies she entertained. Her father would have disowned her if he could see the contents of her mind. Then, “I can stay.” The words were a revelation. The hollowness eased beneath her breast.

“You can,” Elinor said. “And tomorrow, you will teach me to pick locks.” They grinned at each other, wide and wild.

And then came a hammering on the door.

Both women leapt to their feet. Joan clutched the hatchet, heart beating with violent rhythm against her ribs.
Moses
, she thought; by Elinor's stricken look, she shared the thought, or something like it. Joan hefted the hatchet and motioned for Elinor to get behind her. The latch worked and the door swung open.

Chapter 8

Martin stooped in a vain effort to keep the rain from funneling down his neck and under his collar. He was wet to the waist from the muddy water of the creek, which was to say that all of him was wet, and some of him was muddy. And Elinor was somewhere out in this tempest. He tried not to imagine the girls trying for the bridge, losing their footing. Surely Elinor would not have tried to cross if the water had overcome the planks. But sick fear had grown in his belly until he saw the light through the cottage window. A pale, glimmering thing, like a will-o'-the-wisp to lead him to his doom. But hope at last, whether it proved false or true.

With a tangle of hope and panic wrestling in his gut, he sprinted the remaining yards. A flash and thunder clap, nearly simultaneous, dazed him for half a second, but he plunged forward. He reached the door with his jaw
clenched tight enough his teeth hurt. He slammed his fist three times upon the door.
Be here,
he prayed.
Be safe.
No answer. He tried the latch, found it unlocked, and pushed his way in. And stopped dead.

Daphne stood in his path, stripped to her shift, largely sodden, and wielding a rusted hatchet. Her lips were peeled back from her teeth, her eyes large and wild. Her arms tensed to swing, and then—

“Martin,” Elinor said, an exclamation and an assurance to Daphne, who shook herself a little and lowered the grim weapon. Elinor drew up behind Daphne, hand lighting briefly on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Martin nearly sagged against the door in relief. The pain that had thudded behind his eyes since he arrived at Birch Hall and discovered them gone eased at last. He strode forward and seized both of them, drawing them into a quick embrace as the buck and strain of his emotions settled.

And then he stiffened, drew back. Daphne, in her shift and nothing else. Elinor, at least with a blanket around her shoulders. Neither of them in any fit state for his gaze to fall upon them, much less for him to be crushing them to his chest as he had—as he still was, somewhat, for his arm was lingering around Daphne's slim shoulders. Her head tilted up, a slight, quizzical smile playing across her delightful lips. She'd been crying. Her lashes were wet with tears, their tracks on her cheeks, and her eyes were red-rimmed. He wished he could brush the silvery trails of those tears from her face.

“Martin,” Elinor said again, and he started. He released Daphne and took a full step back, clearing his throat. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Martin fixed his eyes on the fireplace, trying not to catch
Daphne's form in the corner of his eye and failing. “I decided to come to Birch Hall earlier than I had planned,” he said, knowing that Elinor would sense that he was leaving something out. She would not press, not in front of Daphne, but he knew she would as soon as they were alone. He would have to tell her everything later, as little as he wished to distress her. “I arrived only to find you missing, and with the storm I feared . . .”

Elinor waved a hand. “We can guess at all your fears. We suffered them ourselves, I think. But here we are, safe and dry.”

“Well, safe,” Daphne said, and moved again into the field of his vision. He swallowed. The shift was damp and clung to her back. The light of the fire brushed a rosy outline around her. In truth, her body was not alluring; she was too thin for her own frame, having more the look of starvation than beauty. But she moved as if she had another form altogether. He had the sudden conviction that he ought to host feasts every night until she reclaimed it. Could she have gotten so thin from her ordeal on the road? It had not been so long.

She turned slightly, and the light touched where her shift clung to her skin. He sucked in a breath. A large bruise, now yellowing, marred the space below her ribs, and a scabbed-over wound of some kind followed the sharp contour of her hip.

Elinor touched his arm, drawing him away. “Daphne, your clothes are not quite dry but they are at least warm. Martin and I will wait while you dress.”

Martin flushed. Nodded tightly. He had forgotten himself. Again. He followed his sister to the other room, which was steeped in a darkness complete enough, he hoped, to
hide his expression, which hovered somewhere between rage and mortification. “She is hurt,” he said, voice low enough not to carry to Daphne's ears.

“I saw,” Elinor said. “Likely from her . . . misfortune.”

“She said nothing of being injured.”

“I doubt she would want to tell you. Or speak of the ordeal at all.”

A sound escaped him, something alarmingly akin to a growl. His hand tightened into a fist. He was reconsidering his decision not to go after the men who had robbed her. If they'd hurt her—God, they wouldn't have . . . ?

“Cuts and bruises only, I think,” Elinor said. “If it was more than that, she would be . . . different. The incident is behind her, Martin, and we should leave it there. I will make sure any injuries have been properly tended to.” She shivered and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself.

He cursed himself for a fool. “And you? We must get you near to the fire.”

“It's not chill, only excitement,” she said. “J—Daphne has thoroughly looked after me. We are more capable than you presume.”

“I know you are capable. I also know that you are not well.” He gentled his voice. His anger was not for her, or for Daphne; it was for the storm, for the bullet that took Matthew, for the illness that had stolen so many years from her. He might as well stand outside and throw all the tempest's rage back at it, for all the good that anger would do. What he wouldn't give for a problem that could be solved by
hitting
something.

“I'm quite decent,” Daphne called cheerily. Martin quelled a traitorous note of disappointment, and he and Elinor rejoined their cousin in the main room. She was
settled near the fire—reluctant, he supposed, to allow her wet clothing time to cool again. The damp had sent her hair into a tizzy of curls. It stood around her head like a wreath, and make her look not young but
youthful
—which startled him into the realization that he had stopped thinking of himself as such sometime in the last few years.

“It looks as if we're trapped here awhile,” Daphne said. “I'm afraid it will be quite cold when the fire dies. You should hang your coat to dry while we have it.”

Martin grunted assent, looking over at Elinor. She seemed well enough for now, but if the storm did not break by nightfall it might grow bitter; while the day had been warm before the storm, the wind did short work of snatching the heat from it. “There may be some wood around back,” he said. He shrugged out of his coat and laid it before the fire. Daphne pulled her feet out of the way. She'd kicked off her shoes, and her toes curled under. “I won't get any wetter with or without it,” he said absently and straightened.

“Be quick,” Daphne said. “Or we shall think you've been blown away.”

“I pledge it,” he said solemnly, laying a hand over his breast. He meant to earn another smile from her, and he did. A warm one, now, less sly. But it vanished quickly, and she cast her eyes to a far corner with a slight frown. Had he made some misstep?

“Martin,” Elinor said. So many ways she had to speak his name. This one he could not quite interpret, though it had some of the gentle chiding of before. Though he wasn't certain why she should feel the need to chide him. He frowned at her, and she made an exaggerated mirror of his expression until he was forced into a grimace to stifle a grin. He turned before she could score another victory,
and strode out into the rain to the sound of a strange little sigh—from which of the two women, he could not say.

*   *   *

Joan bit her lip as Martin waded back out into the downpour. Elinor looked at her crossly. “What?” Joan asked. “Do you want me to be cruel to him? Shrewish? I am only being friendly, not seducing him.”

“Play your part a bit better, is all. Martin has little patience for girls who . . . flit. Daphne flits. You do something else entirely.”

“I'm afraid I don't enjoy being Daphne,” Joan said with a frown. Besides, she was only playing the same role she had been since arriving at Birch Hall. If she reversed course now, she would raise suspicion. “Even Daphne isn't a proper match for him,” she said. “Shouldn't he marry a woman of wealth, of title? Daphne has neither, for all that she's your relation.”

“Which would all matter a great deal more if Martin's thoughts had dominion over his feelings. But while he has both in strong measure, they rarely communicate. Logic will occasionally call on passion, but even when both are present at once they cannot come to agreement. Martin thinks and overthinks, and then acts according to his heart. Which is the organ we are seeking to guard from your influence, if you recall.”

Joan listened with no small amount of wonder. There was no doubt that Elinor knew her brother, knew the ins and outs of him. Joan knew Moses, certainly. Could predict him. But she could not lay out in such ornate detail the why of him, nor would doing so bring her voice to such a warm cadence of affection. She had made a study of her
brother for survival's sake, to learn his moods and guide him to wiser action than he could manage on his own; Elinor had undertaken it for love alone, it seemed. Joan wished, traitorously, fervently, that she could make such a study of Martin Hargrove. That she could know by his gaze when his mind was working through a puzzle, or when his heart was thundering a command.

One thing only Elinor was wrong about: she posed no threat to that heart. She had seen the look on his face when the light caught her body. The distaste, bordering on revulsion. The way he avoided looking at her, the bland care of every touch. It was duty to family that spurred him to his kindness, and to his hints at friendly banter. Nothing more.

She would not long for more. Imagine it, yes. Imagine him taking her in his arms, both still wet from the storm.

Imagine him as he entered now, his hair dripping into his eyes, the well-formed muscles of his arms showing beneath a shirt so slicked with water she could see every line of his chest, his shoulders. Imagine those eyes going not to the grate, with a calculating air, but to hers.

Instead, he set down the wood and moved nearer Elinor. Joan forced her eyes from Martin and turned, warming a new section of her back.
Elinor was not old enough to be a proper chaperone but she was an effective one,
Joan thought crossly, then berated herself for the thought. Whatever her impressions, she had sworn to tamp down any budding affection between Martin and herself. These were Elinor's terms, and it was Elinor's protection she was afforded. The least she could do after such an extraordinary agreement was to abide by it.

More like Daphne
, she thought resignedly. She drew in
a stuttering breath and thought of sick puppies and other sad things. “I hate the rain,” she said mournfully.

Elinor choked back a laugh, turning it into a cough at the last moment. Well. At least someone found this amusing. But the other woman gave her a little nod and a grateful look.

Steeling herself, Joan let loose a fat teardrop and hunched over with her arms wrapped around her knees, doing her best to look like a bedraggled rat. From the look of displeasure on Martin's face, Elinor was right. The best way to keep Martin from any affection for her was to act like the person he thought she was.

The whole thing was going to give her a headache.

*   *   *

The interval between Daphne's departure and Martin's arrival had not supplied him with any new insight into her character, and he found himself as lacking in comprehension as he had been before. She seemed all the more like two women at once—or rather, in turns. The one he caught out of the corner of his eye, or for a few minutes at a time. Then, as soon as he fixed his full gaze upon her, she slid away, and the silly, quavering child was left in her place. He had no philosophical objection to tears, but Daphne, it could not be denied, was excessively leaky. Except when she wasn't.

Now, for instance. Elinor was asleep, wrapped in the blanket and her head cushioned as best she could manage with her rolled petticoat. The storm thundered on. The clouds made the hour difficult to determine, but he guessed it was late evening. Daphne had sniffled and complained her way through each hour, exclaimed on his bravery, and heaped
herself dramatically by the fire in the preceding hours. But now she walked a slow, deliberate circuit around the room, touching the wall with the tips of her fingers and stopping at the door after each revolution. She regarded it with thin lips and a sort of promise in her eyes.

“You don't like to be cooped up, do you?” he asked on her third turn.

She froze, as if she'd forgotten he was there. A shadow passed over her face. Then she shifted her weight, let her head drop to the side, and gave a silly smile that didn't suit her at all. “It's just so dreary in here, don't you think?” she chirped.

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