The Emperor's Conspiracy (18 page)

She latched on to it like a limpet. “It’s the way they look at me, as if I’m lacking for not sobbing and wailing and gnashing my teeth because Geoffrey’s dead.” She drew in a long, shaky breath.

“Hush.” He drew her down the narrow lane, toward the carriage, parked in the yard of the inn. “That’s all in your head. They see you’re distressed, and unhappy, and burdened. They think you’re grieving him. And they’re right. You are.”

She was quiet as they entered the yard. He waited for the coachman to open the doors and then helped her in.

“I am grieving. And I’m not. It’s all mixed up inside.” She fell back into her seat and closed her eyes.

Edward followed her in. He waited for the carriage to start moving, for the noise of the horses’ hooves and the rumble of the wheels over the cobbles to create enough noise that they could not be overheard. “Did you know Geoffrey was involved in smuggling?”

She looked up at him sharply. So sharply, there really was no doubt as to her answer. She gave a tight nod. “When I found out, I made him promise to stop it. He said it would save us from ruin, but he wouldn’t tell me any more than that. I made him swear he would stop.”

“He lied.” Edward suddenly wished the words unspoken, but Emma was nodding, her lips twisted in a bitter smile.

“So I discovered. When Charlotte came to tell me about Frethers, asked to speak to me in private, at first I thought she’d heard something about the smuggling.” She shook her head. “Instead, she saved my sons, and when I confronted Geoffrey, he told me he hadn’t stopped the smuggling, and he’d got into some trouble with a ship as well, something about it sinking with all his money invested in the cargo.” She rubbed her brow. “He’d sworn by all that was holy he would stop, but he hadn’t, and he had sold our sons to a lech.” She brushed a tear from her cheek. “How could he, Edward? How could he do those things? I never knew him at all.”

She put her face in her hands, her body shaking with her effort to keep control.

Edward shifted, rested a hand on her upper back and held it there, not sure there was anything he could say to her that would help.

As they entered the long drive down to Fairlands, he could hear the boys whooping and laughing in the distance, and the sound of it seemed to center her. Slowly, the racks of her body lessened and she raised her face from her hands, dug into her reticule, and wiped the tears from her face.

“You never wanted me to marry him. What did you see in him that I didn’t?” Emma turned to him, her eyes red-rimmed.

Edward shook his head. “Let’s leave it now. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

She paused and shook her head. “I need to know. I never want to make that mistake again.”

Edward shrugged. “I saw an ugliness in him, a sense of entitlement, which I didn’t like. I knew his reputation as a gambler, and a risk taker, far beyond his means, and I didn’t think marriage to you would change that. I didn’t think he deserved you.”

She looked at him, her face solemn and serious. “Well, you’ll get no objection from me with
your
choice, not that I have any say in it.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What on earth are you talking about, Em?”

“Charlotte Raven.” The coach slowed, and she concentrated on collecting her things. “If anything, you don’t deserve
her
.”

22

C
harlotte refused to meet Luke back at the gin house. She would not. It was time, for once, that he come to her. He agreed to a meeting in the garden—he wouldn’t come into the house.

But when he walked from the direction of the stables, he did so with familiarity and confidence in the dim moonlight. She had a strange, certain feeling that he had done this before. Come here before under cover of night.

She looked up from where she was standing and saw her bedroom, lit up with a warm glow from within, and Betsy’s shadow as she made the room ready for Charlotte to sleep in. It was hard to breathe, suddenly. Her chest was tight and her hands shook.

She should’ve guessed he would keep an eye on her personally. Why hadn’t she?

She turned her gaze back to him, and found he had stopped, and was watching her, watching her make the connections. But he said nothing.

He’d been limping when he’d come round from the stables, but he made an effort to walk without one as he took the last few strides to her.

Her fingers trembled, wanting to stroke him, ease the pain. She had been there when it was at its worst and she had never been able to shake the bone-deep empathy she had with him over this.

Falling from a height, lying helpless and in pain with no one to help, had been a fear, a daily, all-too-real fear, for so much of her childhood. He had suffered exactly that, except the irony was it was not in the chimneys he had long before gotten too big to climb, but the narrow, foul stairs of the Hulks.

His gaze met hers, and she could not read him at all. He was so closed, she shivered.

“Frethers,” she said.

His eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips. “I told you to stay out of that, Charlie.”

“And I told you I wasn’t yours to command. Was it you who killed him?”

The question surprised him, and he slid onto the garden bench beside her. He did not sigh with relief, or show the slightest sign of his pain, and her heart broke a little more. He was ripping her up from the inside out, and offering nothing in return—no kindness, no gentleness.

All for pride. Or it had been, at the start. Now she wasn’t sure he hadn’t truly become what he pretended to be.

“I planned to kill him, but later. It’s inconvenient he’s
dead, truth to tell. And I wouldn’t have done it like that, anyway.” He gave a contemptuous snort. “Shot dead in his library, in an armchair?” Luke shook his head. “I’d have slit his throat in a brothel and taken all his clothes. Maybe tied him up, put on a little rouge or powder.” He snorted again. “Or like as not, he’d have been like that already. And I’d have nothing to do but the cutwork.”

She hesitated a moment, the image he created tightening her throat, and then she slid next to him, stared up at the stars and the half-moon.

She believed him. He hadn’t killed Frethers. “What business were you doing with him? What was enough to make you break your rule and get involved with the nobs?”

He was silent a long time. “They came to me. And I took them up on it ’cause I finally caught wind of something that would make the people hate ’em.”

“Hate who?” She turned.

“The upper classes. Like the French. A revolution, Charlie. I saw a chance to maybe move this feeling of resentment that’s all round us up another notch. And like the French did, we’ll get some real change.”

“How?”

“I’m digging a hole for ’em. Sure, I’m making money, but I put every cent o’ it back into the rookery. An’ all the while, I’ve kept a record of meetings, and I’ve written down names, and kept lists of transactions. The newspapers will ’ave a fine story with what I’ve collected.”

“Who else is in this?”

Luke paused. “That’s a problem. They’ve kept it small. Just the person who approached me to start, and Frethers. All the others are just lackeys. I don’t know who came up with the scheme. I’ll ’ave to wait and see if they send anyone else to me, now Frethers is dead. Just a matter o’ time—my initial contact’s too old to do the legwork. They need me. And I’d like to bring at least one more down, if I can. One dead peer doesn’t make a conspiracy. But two or three live ones? That’s convincing.”

“How do you know Frethers wasn’t the leader?”

He laughed. A genuine laugh, the like of which she hadn’t heard since she was much too young. “Frethers was an idiot. There’s no way he was behind this. He was the front man.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I’ve ’ad someone on him from day one. Other than me and the trips to the brothels, he only met with nobs. They’re in this, up to their starched white collars.”

“And what
is
this?” Edward hadn’t told her, and Luke wouldn’t, either, the other day. She waited while he sat silent beside her.

“It’s dangerous to know, Charlie.” He shrugged, as if that were the end of that, and she stared at him.

She wondered if it was worth fighting him over it. Edward had promised to tell her when he got back. But how much would he actually tell?

She shook her head. “I’ll have to do my own research then.” She leaned back on the bench. Closed her eyes in the silence that had been thrown up like a barrier at her words.

“Why?” His voice was quiet. “Why would you even want to look into it?”

“Because I’m involved.” She fiddled with the ribbons on her skirt.

“That’s not a good enough reason.”

She looked across at him, but Luke’s eyes were closed like hers had been, his head tilted up to the sky.

“I’ve been told to watch my back. That I’ve come to these people’s attention because of my visits to you, or because Emma Holliday was staying with me. But either way, I’d rather know what this is about than go around with a vague sense of fear for everyone and everything.”

Luke straightened. “Who told you that? Your nob?”

“Yes, Edward told me.” She looked him in the eyes. “Those men watching the house, he says it’s them—sent by Frethers’s associates.”

He touched his jacket, and she noticed for the first time that he was dressed like a delivery boy. He never dressed as well as he could afford to, but he never pretended to be something he wasn’t.

He caught her stare and shrugged. “Didn’t want the watchers to suspect me. So I delivered some vegetables to the kitchen. They’ll think I’ve stopped for a cuppa and a chat.”

“So there are still watchers.” Something didn’t jibe here. Why was Luke tolerating them?

He must have sensed her surprise, because he finally looked at her. “This is a deep game, Charlie. Just stay the hell out of it. Trust me. I won’t let the blighters watching you
touch you. For every one of them, I’ve got a couple of watchers of me own.”

She hesitated, not sure whether what she was about to say was a secret or not. But no matter what, she couldn’t not warn him. “Edward is investigating this thing you’re involved in for the Crown.”

Luke went very still. “He’s investigating it for the Crown.” He repeated the words slowly. “And you’re only just telling me now?” He threw himself back against the bench in disgust.

“I only found out yesterday morning.”

He swore, low and vicious. “You’ve known a whole day and didn’t let me know? He could ruin this, Charlie. I’ve been working on it for
months
.”

She looked back at him without a shred of regret. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t read your mind, and your people don’t confide in me the way mine do to you.”

He swore again and turned from her, looking farther into the garden, down to where the apple tree and oaks spread their branches and threw deep shadows over the lawn. His hands were fists resting on his thighs.

She reached out and covered one with her hand and he flinched. Pulled away.

“I asked you this before, and you said no, but I’m asking you again. Do you not come to me because of what I can’t do—can’t be—anymore?” His voice was hoarse.

She wanted to weep. She faced, in that moment, the truth that while the harm Luke might do to them was one reason she held back from any would-be suitors of the ton, another
was this. This guilt and sorrow, all mixed up, because of how Luke’s accident had left him.

“I don’t come to you because I’m afraid you will swallow me up.” She hesitated. Thought back to the first time she’d answered this, and realized she understood so much more now. Could say it better. “And I have always loved you, but not the way you want, or think I should. Even when we were lovers—could be lovers—I did that for you, not for me. Because it was what you wanted and I wanted to please you.” She had been so young, and yet, so, so very old.

He was silent for a long time. “And this nob? What do you feel about him?”

She sucked in a breath. “I don’t know.” She hunched over.

“You’re lying, Charlie. You do know.” He spoke so softly, she almost didn’t hear him. She closed her eyes and lifted up her feet, hugging her knees to her body.

When she looked at him at last, she found he had gone.

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