Since the Surrender (35 page)

Sitting on a narrow bed, face pale, curly dark hair down around her shoulder, brown eyes wide, was Lucy.

“Rosalind?” she said querulously. She stared for a moment. Then frowned, puzzled. “What did you steal?”

Kinkade cast a long-suffering look at Chase.

“Lucy.” Rosalind felt sick relief. Her voice shook with it. Chase gripped her arm to steady her. “Lucy, we’re here to fetch you. You’re free to go.”

Lucy still looked puzzled. “But I haven’t decided whether I’ll be a merm—”

“Yes you have,” Chase said quickly, firmly.

“Captain Eversea?” She looked very surprised to see him, as recognition dawned. Then began to smile a little, flirtation around the edges. She couldn’t help it, bloody woman.

“You’re going home with Rosalind, Lucy.”

“I can go?” Lucy stood up cautiously and looked at Kinkade with some worry. “You’re certain?”

Kinkade, grim-faced, said nothing.

Lucy inched past him through the door. And then she flung herself into Rosalind’s arms and burst into tears.

“Are you going to kill him?” Lucy wanted to know between sobs. She’d noticed all the pistols, and she glanced from Chase to Kinkade with interest, and not without a measure of bloodthirstiness.

“Rosalind, I thought he was lovely and handsome, but he’s really quite na-naaa-sty!” She sobbed bitterly.

“We know, Lucy,” Rosalind said patiently, patting her back. Kinkade sent a look to Chase that seemed to say, See what I mean?

Bubbles in the head.

Rosalind held her sister fast.

Her sister might be a featherbrain, but she was her featherbrain. And Lucy’s tears made Rosalind feel savage. She would have happily killed Kinkade on the spot.

He sighed and said, “Well, so that’s Lucy.” He handed the ring of keys to Chase.

Who hesitated, then took them tentatively, surprised. There was a silence, apart from Lucy’s weeping on Rosalind’s shoulder.

Everyone looked at Kinkade. He seemed to realize that everyone expected him to speak.

“Well, are you going to kill me, Eversea?” He sounded amused.

“You certainly seem to have grounds for calling me out, if you’re so hell-bent on protecting honor and so forth and doing things the right way. We’re both excellent shots. We can probably do without swords, given that you’re not exactly…quick on your pins. But you’d have to do an awful lot of killing if you intend to start with me. Every man in the place is armed. You’d like as not have trouble getting out again alive, you and Mrs. March and the lot.”

Chase’s head went back with amusement.

“Here is the wager I’ll take, Kinkade. Every man in this place is far more interested in saving their own skin than avenging yours or protecting their right to his particular brand of entertainment. I warrant these men—at least some of them—have a great deal to lose should this be discovered. Am I right? You’ll be dead, your brothel will close, and they’ll lose the money they paid for your little secret venture, but not their reputations or livelihood. So I feel quite free to shoot you. I haven’t decided yet whether I will.” He turned to Rosalind’s sister. “Lucy.”

She was still sobbing noisily and rocking her head back and forth in her hands.

“Lucy!”

Chase and Rosalind simultaneously barked it.

Chase and Rosalind simultaneously barked it.

It dried Lucy’s tears as surely as the desert sun. She looked between them in surprise.

“Are you whole? Are you sound? Did anyone at all hurt you? Answer me truthfully. If you don’t, I shall know it. Tell me, in your words, what happened to you here.” Chase’s voice was the clear, dispassionate one of a judge.

It was impossible for anyone not to answer truthfully when Chase barked questions.

“Well, I was arrested. For stealing a bracelet. The bracelet was gold, with—”

A long, exasperated sound from Chase. As though he were attempting to siphon patience from the very air. Rosalind nudged her sister sharply.

“Anyhow, I was taken before the magistrate. I wound up in prison very quickly. My goodness! So terrifying! So dirty! Everyone was so loud and unkempt. Billy heard about it, and he came to see me there. Just the once. He said it all looked very dire for me indeed, and that the trial could not have possibly gone my way, particularly since the bracelet was so very, very valuable and the merchant so angry. I swear to you I didn’t take it!” She paused, perhaps remembering the caution about telling the truth. “Well, I didn’t mean to take it. It all rather happened suddenly and I can scarcely recall,”

she said very airily and quickly. “It was just so pretty!”

Despite everything, Rosalind knew an impulse to turn her sister over her knee and spank her.

“But Billy said he could get me out if only I’d do a wee favor for him, and he told me all about…all about this place. The museum. The wall. The painting. He said he told me because I was a friend. He gave me but a week to decide what I wanted to do. He said I could

…care to dress up as a fantasy, or, as he said, earn it…” She cleared her throat. “…earn my freedom faster on my back.” She said it gingerly, and made it sound as though she was quoting someone. She did have the grace to flush and duck her head. “I was so afraid, Ros. But I cannot say truthfully that anyone physically hurt me. But my feelings!”

Rosalind sent a sizzling black look at Kinkade.

“If you were going to go that far, Kinkade,” Chase said, sounding disgusted, “why in God’s name didn’t you just release her?”

Kinkade laughed. “God, Chase, I do believe you have me confused with you. The honor bit. You’ve entirely missed the point. I wanted a go at Lucy, don’t you see? I would have been her very first. And sweet Mary, I have wanted a go at her ever since she allowed me into her bodice in the first place.”

Lucy darted a guilty look at Rosalind. And then ducked her head again.

“She was perfect for this place. The gents would have enjoyed her thoroughly and she would have helped to make my reputation. And, in all honesty…I mean…look at them.”

The “them” in question was, of course, Lucy’s bosom, because that’s where his eyes went.

Lucy looked down, and Kinkade looked down.

Chase and Rosalind and the queasy looking MacGregor forbore to look.

look.

“Do you think I’d miss an opportunity to indulge in that, Eversea?

Are you mad? She was very close to capitulating, too, weren’t you, Lucy?” He smiled a loose, sensuous smile that had Lucy clinging ever closer to Rosalind.

Chase sent Rosalind a warning look, as she appeared to be itching to slap Kinkade.

“Didn’t precisely fight off my caresses, did you, Lucy? Chase told you to tell the truth, now.”

“To Chase,” Lucy said, in a rare and clever grasp of semantics.

“Captain Eversea told me to tell the truth to him.”

Which of course was tantamount to an admission from Lucy that she had rather liked it.

Kinkade sent another See? look to Chase.

“I cared for you!” Lucy wailed.

“Yes, yes, of course you did, darling.” Kinkade sounded bored. “I like you, too. It would have been marvelous, dear, I promise you. But I’m not a rapist. Just very inventive and very persuasive, and I do happen to want what I want and generally get it.

“All in all, given her tremendously unfortunate circumstance

—brought down upon her own head, I might add—Miss Lucy Locke was presented with a reasonable option,” Kinkade went on, turning back to Chase. “More than most women would have been presented with. I could not have prevented her from hanging or being transported if the jury decided this would be her fate, and such is the system of justice in our fine land that they would have sooner hung her than freed her. Once a thief, always a thief, and all sooner hung her than freed her. Once a thief, always a thief, and all that. England does like to rid itself of criminals. As we’ve discussed, Eversea.”

“But I’m not like those other girls! I’m not!” Lucy burst out.

“Lucy,” Kinkade explained with a horrible exaggerated patience,

“stealing makes you like those other girls.”

“It was just a bracelet!”

“Just a bracelet! Just bread! Just a button! Just a shirt off a line! My love, it matters not at all to the courts. Not really.”

“For God’s sake, Kinkade.” Chase’s voice was dark with contempt.

“What the bloody hell is wrong with you?”

Kinkade whirled on him. “Do you think I like it, Eversea? It never, ever ends. Nothing helps, nothing saves them, nothing stops them. Every single day I see it happen. They’re not saints. They’re not evil. Some are quite hopelessly wicked, others unfortunate or victims of poor timing. But every single one of these girls could well be dead right now. They would have died at sea on their way to Botany Bay. There’s naught I can do. I feed them and clothe them—

”

“Like pirates!” Lucy said indignantly. “Like leprechauns!”

Chase fleetingly wondered which of his acquaintances liked seeing women dressed as leprechauns. He didn’t think there was such a thing as female leprechauns.

“—and in return for a little entertainment or a little leg spreading, they get a chance at freedom…if they please the clients. If we’ve complaints from the clients, well, they’re out and they know it, and they know what their fate is likely to be when they go back to prison, they know what their fate is likely to be when they go back to prison, for we can’t have them talking. And I am, for the moment, temporarily quite amused by all of it and pleased with how things are going and profiting greatly from the whole endeavor. It isn’t cheap to keep these buildings standing, you know, and I’ve finally found a use for this one.”

Chase listened to this with a growing, weary incredulity. His mouth quirked ironically. “Ah, yes, you’re quite a savior, Kinkade. Do you remember the conversation we had about whether a woman could make or destroy you?”

“Are you laboring under the misapprehension that I’ve been destroyed by women, Eversea?” Kinkade was scornfully amused.

“I’m making a fortune and having a splendid time. I contemplated asking you to participate, but no, no. I knew you’d be appalled. So upright, Captain Eversea. So…honorable. Right, Chase?”

All dark, insinuating irony.

“No, Kinkade,” Chase said thoughtfully. “I don’t think a woman can destroy you. You can’t be destroyed because…there’s nothing to destroy. I warrant that you just reflect whatever’s near you. Like a puddle of mud. You reflect honor if you’re near it. You reflect decay if you’re near it. Left to your own devices, you’ve no moral center at all, no concern except for your own pleasure. This is the result.”

Quietly, casually said.

Something poisonous and subtle and dangerous shimmered in the air between the two men, and frightened everyone into silence for a moment.

Kinkade’s voice was lazy and very, very low.

“Very inspiring speech about honor from a man who cuckolded his commanding officer.”

Rosalind sucked in a sharp breath.

Lucy looked at her sister in great interest.

Kinkade threw Rosalind a coldly disdainful look.

“So you told him,” Chase said softly to Kinkade. Despite everything, Rosalind could hear a hint of the pain of betrayal in his voice.

She wanted to kill Kinkade in that moment, too.

Kinkade gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. “I had to, Eversea.”

Chase was motionless, absorbing the blow of a long withheld truth.

“You had to hurt him, and hurt Rosalind, and possibly destroy me?”

His voice was taut and flat.

“I had to save you, you fool.” Kinkade was exasperated. “And the rest of our regiment. I’m not you. No one is. I knew how he—how all of us—relied on you. And I saw how you looked at her, Eversea. I saw how she looked at you. And then I saw…well, I saw you rather climbing each other that day. Your hands all over her. You idiot. She’s just a woman! But I knew it would affect your judgment, and so help me God I wanted to live through that war. So I told Colonel March. And he reassigned you.”

A long, complicated silence, broken only by Lucy’s sniffles, followed. And then MacGregor stifled a sneeze in his fist. “I beg your pardon,”

he whispered.

They all stared at him for a surprised instant.

And then Rosalind spoke and everyone stared at her.

“Mathew forgave me,” she said with quiet contempt to Kinkade. “And Mathew forgave Chase. He knew Chase—and me—well enough to know that our own consciences would punish us more than he ever could. But he never forgave you, Kinkade. I never knew for certain it was you—he never told me the name of the person who betrayed us—but if there’s one thing Mathew understood it was the difference between a good man and a weak one. He made certain Chase was reassigned for Chase’s sake, too, and for the sake of his pride as a man. But in his eyes, your crime was the greater, because he understood your true reasons for doing it. He despised you for it.”

Kinkade went still. He inhaled at length and pressed his palms to his eyes. He sighed out the breath.

And then he lowered his hands again, and his face was gray and weary, too.

“Kinkade…” Chase’s voice was truly curious. “Did you…hate me?”

His friend gave a short laugh. “I never hated you Chase. There were times that I wished I was more like you, but I warrant it’s rather more uncomfortable possessing a great overstuffed conscience than I should ever like to be. I prefer comfort to honor. I prefer pleasure to productivity. But you know this. The world is not quite the black-and-white place you need it to be. We cannot all be you

—imagine how very dull it would be. Not to mention people like you would have no one to go about fixing and judging.” He quirked his mouth bitterly.

“Aaaaaah!” They heard the desultory scream of the pirate wench below.

Chase stiffened in anger and resolve. “You will end all of this now.”

His tone was even and lethal.

“And you’ll do what, Eversea? Unleash thieves upon London again?

They’re not all of them weeping bubbleheads like the one you see before you.”

“I—” Lucy squeaked indignantly.

Rosalind pinched her arm.