Chapter Eight

Eyes like a cat.

As Charlotte’s steps ate the distance between the vicarage and the stone wall, she could not stop thinking of those four words.

Eyes like a cat. Nancy Goff had said this as she swanned about the Pig and Blanket’s common room, and she had said “cat eye” as her life slipped away.

Edward Selwyn’s eyes were tawny green. And Charlotte knew from experience that he would do anything for a bit of notoriety. Wearing a cloak for the devil of it; paying a serving girl with a coin he knew to be stolen—that sounded like Edward, who treated life as a masquerade ball.

But arranging a theft from the Royal Mint? Shooting four guards? Stabbing a healthy young woman, who would surely have fought him? No. No, that did not sound like his way. He wanted to charm the world, not control it. He’d be more likely to stab a woman to the heart figuratively than with a knife.

Still. Charlotte would feel more at ease once she checked the hiding-holes she knew to hold meaning for Edward. Not only because he was the father of her child and the artist who had made her infamous, but because . . . well, she hated to think of someone she knew proving she did not know him at all.

For the next several hours, she searched every place in which Edward had once hidden secrets. First, the stone-covered crannies along the vicarage’s side of the wall where she and her sister—and later, she and Edward—used to stash messages and treasures. She pried up rocks, cursing the softness of her hands, and confirmed that the spaces beneath were empty. Once, a brownish-yellow lizard, striated and spotted in black, put out a narrow tongue at her.

“Same to you,” she murmured and covered its home back over. Better to find a lizard than a hidden note confessing a crime. Or a stash of stolen coins.

Where next to check, then? The great hollow tree just outside of the village proper had shielded many notes and packages. It might be large enough to hide some of the coins; its obviousness might divert suspicion.

But when Charlotte, skirting the rare figure she caught sight of, reached the spot where the tree had stood for generations, it was gone. Nothing remained but a stump, with its cut edge gray-brown with age. The tree must have rotted out and fallen at last.

For a long moment, she stared at the stump, almost dizzy. She knew it was illogical to expect the village would remain the same every time she returned, yet indeed she did. Strawfield was not the sort of place where one changed the color of one’s shutters or converted a thatch roof to wooden shakes. It persisted unchanging—until it didn’t. Change, when it came, was large and swift. A centuries-old tree felled. A lover wed.

A young woman’s life ended, and all because of a bit of gold.

She turned away from the old stump, holding the hem of her veil down over her face. A breeze teased her, nipping her uncovered neck with a coolness that was not unpleasant.

Into her mind flashed Benedict Frost, stern but kind as he drew her shawl about her. Kissing her as deeply as a man drew breath, yet doing nothing Charlotte did not do to him first.

If she had met such a man ten years before, her life might have taken a very different path. But she hadn’t. She’d met Edward instead.

She was careful as she slipped onto his lands, watching out for some member of the grand house’s staff. She saw a man with a shovel once, but he was too far away for her to tell whether he was a gardener or whether he trespassed like Charlotte.

For a moment, she toyed with the notion of returning to the vicarage for a shovel of her own. There were several hiding spots on this side of the wall, too, and she must check them all. No; better to leave no trace or turned earth. She could pry free the stones with her hands. She always had in the past.

Empty. Empty. All of the nooks were empty. When she heaved the last stone back into place, her hands were raw, several fingers bruised.

This search had not set her mind at ease, though it was a necessary first step. As she had told Frost, there was an infinity of places to search in Strawfield and the surrounding land. No one would ever find the stolen sovereigns by chance.

This whole search had been ridiculous. Edward didn’t need to steal money. Lady Helena Selwyn, eldest daughter of the Earl of Mackerley, had brought a rich dowry to their marriage eight years before and transformed Selwyn House into a showplace.

Eyes like a cat, Nance had said. But she had also said demon eyes, red as fire. They glowed in the dark. Even to the last, the barmaid had stuck to her unlikely story, talking of cat eyes and a cloaked figure. Comforting herself, maybe, that what had happened to her made sense. That it wasn’t terrible and random and undeserved.

But it was terrible. And it made no sense.

Charlotte picked her way back to the vicarage, taking care no one should see her—not that she needed such caution today. That fellow with the shovel was the only possible reward seeker she’d seen. The formerly blithe visitors to Strawfield had retreated in the aftermath of Nance’s death. Maybe some of them had decided the promise of riches was not worth the newfound risk. Or maybe they were lurking about the Pig and Blanket, hoping for a glimpse of the dead girl or a chance to be chosen for the coroner’s jury.

She shuddered, wrapping her shawl more tightly about her with hands that were much less careful than Benedict Frost’s had been.

When she let herself into the vicarage, she hung up her veiled bonnet on a hook by the door. After a second’s thought, she added the shawl, too. Mrs. Perry’s study door was still closed, and Maggie’s voice could be heard through it faintly. “Stin pragmatikótita, eg o ídios, me ta diká mou mátia, eída tin Sívylla stin Kými krémetai se éna boukáli . . .”

So, Maggie was learning to speak Greek. Yet another thing about her that Charlotte had not known. The precious infant had become a fat child in leading strings, then a darling curious girl. Now she was a half-grown mystery. The only constant was Captain, now gray-muzzled and slow, curled outside the study door.

Charlotte bent to pet the old hound. Captain raised her head with a whuff.

“Does that mean you’ll put in a good word for me with your young mistress?” She petted the graying brindled fur of the dog’s head, until Captain lowered her head again and fell into a doze.

Charlotte would have returned more often if she could have, if she dared. But each letter to her parents was met either with silence or with a not yet; maybe next year. And it was wise, she knew, to give Strawfield time to forget her face between each visit. Wise to keep Maggie from growing too attached to her.

Her own attachment, she could not help.

“If you are quite done lurking outside the study, Miss Perry,” came a low voice, “I should like your assistance sending a letter.”

Frost stood in the doorway of the small parlor. Of course he had heard her enter; his scrupulous ears noted every footfall.

“I shall be glad to help.” She straightened up, finding that she was not quite able to look at him. He was no longer just Mr. Frost, but someone she had kissed. Someone she had been unable to resist touching. Someone she had pushed, and who had pushed her right back.

Yet he called her Miss Perry, correct and proper as though she had never made him hard, as though he hadn’t shoved her into his bedchamber. The memory made her blush; she, who had lived in the naked world of sex for years.

How little it had to do with her own desire.

Thank heaven he could not see her burning cheeks. “What is the letter, Mr. Frost? Do you need to seal it, or only to address it?”

“It is to my sister, Georgette, in London. I have written the direction, but need a seal or wafer. And then if it could be placed with the other correspondence—”

“Yes, certainly.” She brushed past him, trusting him to follow her voice. “If you take your letter into Strawfield for posting when you attend the inquest, it ought to arrive in London the day after tomorrow. Oh—wait, tomorrow is Sunday. Well, perhaps two days from tomorrow, then. The mailing supplies are kept in the desk in the far corner of this parlor.”

“The southeast corner or the southwest corner?” He slapped the folded letter against one palm, his smile puckish.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Charlotte replied drily. “Five paces forward, and you’ll knock right into it.”

“Southwest, then.” And with as much grace as Charlotte possessed on her most swanlike days, he wound around the long sofa and stood before the writing desk.

She moved to his side, handed him a gummed wafer, and took the sealed letter from him when he was finished. “It’s past time I wrote to Georgette,” he admitted. “She is . . . not aware of my present whereabouts.”

“Is she usually? I thought you were busy poking your—”

“Miss Perry.”

“—nose into any bit of the world you could.”

“That’s one way of putting the matter.” He stepped around her, finding the back of the long sofa, and took up the noctograph he had laid upon the seat. “She usually doesn’t know where I am, no. But at present she probably thinks I am sailing on the Argent again. I intended to be in England for only a few days. Long enough to turn my manuscript over to a publisher and arrange payment to Georgette.”

Charlotte added his letter to the pile of outgoing post. “I presume nothing about your plan went as you expected, since you aren’t sailing the seven seas.”

“You are correct. Publishers are eager for accounts of travel abroad, but not those written by blind men. Not even if such a man pays the costs of publication.”

Charlotte blinked, bewildered. “How could that not be of interest?”

“Oh, they thought it of interest. But not as a memoir. They think I made the whole damned thing up.” His fingers clutched the wooden edges of the noctograph, the strength of his grip turning his knuckles bloodless white.

“How stupid of them. I am sorry.”

“Do you believe me to be truthful, then?” His gaze was unfixed as ever, but his brows had furrowed, head turned toward her.

“It had not occurred to me not to believe you.” She added, teasing, “Especially not with the illustrious Lord Hugo Starling vouching for you.”

Though he murmured an epithet, a smile twisted his lips.

“Remember, Mr. Frost, I’m meant to have been abroad for almost ten years. But really, I’ve never left London save for a few brief trips home.” She hadn’t quite meant to admit that, but once she did, she was not sorry.

With great care, he set the noctograph down again. “So . . . you wish to write a fake memoir? I do not understand your meaning.”

“So . . . it’s difficult to keep a pack of lies straight in one’s mind. Far too easy for them to get shuffled about. It is far easier to write the truth if one can.”

“Is it just as easy to go somewhere as not when one is blind? That is the question to which George Pitman, publisher, says no.”

“I am sure it was not as easy to travel as to stay home, but I believe you did it.”

“Sometimes leaving is easier than staying.” His smile was thin. “When one has no home to speak of. Though I don’t suppose you know what that feels like, since you have ties to Derbyshire I could never presume to imagine.” He spoke with lightness, but it hurt to hear her own words flung back at her.

“The ties of which I spoke are hardly the sort in which one would wish to be wrapped. I might understand better than you realize.”

She had no home either, after years of dividing her heart. She had a house in Mayfair, but she could never return to it. How easy had been the decision to leave London at last, to cut ties with Randolph and the ton and the glittering world of fashion. The leaving itself had been difficult, with much to arrange, but the decision had taken no thought at all.

Coming to Maggie? No thought there either.

Where to go next? She hadn’t a clue.

Gingerly, she perched on an arm of the sofa, hitching one leg up as though she were on a sidesaddle. “Why do you want to claim the Royal Mint’s reward, Mr. Frost?”

“I know you don’t ask for an answer so simple as ‘because I want the five thousand pounds.’” With a sigh, he flanked her, seating himself on the other arm of the sofa. “Yet I do want the five thousand pounds that will come to whomever finds the stolen coins. I want the money for my sister’s dowry. As a Naval Knight—that is, an unmarried lieutenant of stellar character—I draw half pay and claim an additional pension from the Naval Knights’ trust. But since our parents passed on, Georgette has nothing of her own.”

Charlotte ought, perhaps, to have commented with sympathy on the loss of his parents, or on the difficult situation of his sister. But what struck her most was his financial dilemma. He received room and board, a half salary and a pension, but in exchange he had to remain a bachelor living in a room in Windsor Castle. The arrangement took as much freedom as it gave.

To a much less luxurious degree, this was not unlike the life of a courtesan. Since shaking free from Randolph, Charlotte had never been poorer; she had escaped with little, and her remaining wealth was unavailable, untouchable. But she also woke and slept when she wished, went where she liked, and kept the company she preferred.

This last part was the best of all.

And it would be for the unknown Georgette, too, Charlotte thought. “What if you claim the reward, but she doesn’t wish to marry? Will you turn the money over to her and allow her to live as an independent spinster?”

“Would she like that?” He tipped his head, considering.

“I cannot imagine she would mind having the choice, but you know her better than I. Maybe there’s already some young man she’s decided to wed, and her lack of a dowry is the only thing preventing their marriage.”

“If there is such a man, she’s never revealed his existence in her letters.” He felt along the side of his boot, reassuring himself, probably, of the presence of the blade within. How elder brotherly.

“Where does she live now?”

“Where she always has.” He sighed, as if this were a dreadful thing. “My parents owned a bookshop, with living quarters above. I was raised there until the age of twelve, when my wish to go to sea was granted. As their eldest, the bookshop came to me upon their deaths three years ago.”

“You own a bookshop.” Charlotte considered. “How intriguing. I was not aware you were a man of property.”

“Ah, are you going to start flirting with me now? I’d be delighted by it, but I mustn’t let you throw yourself at me under false pretenses. I have sold the bookshop to cousins with the understanding that they were to house Georgette until she turned twenty-one.”

“I understand. A man can hardly run a bookshop when he is sliding down one of the Alps, or whatever it is you plan to do next.”

“Right,” he said drily. “Sliding down a mountain does have appeal, but there is also the fact that blind men are poor readers.”

This she had to grant. “This is none of my affair, of course, but you could give your sister the money you received from selling the shop.”

“And I may yet do that.” A humorless laugh. “It was meant to finance publication of my book—which would, of course, become the latest fashion and would sell in the thousands. I intended that the proceeds from the sales would go to Georgette while I continued to travel.”

Charlotte mulled this over. Publishers either bought the copyright of a book outright, ending the author’s chance to profit from it, or the author paid publication costs and granted the publisher a commission on each copy sold. Frost had evidently preferred the latter method, though it might never earn the author a shilling. “It was not a bad plan, though trading your inheritance for publication of a book would be a gamble.”

“It proved a gamble I couldn’t win on my own terms, so I chose not to make the bet.” He shrugged. “Perhaps one day I’ll write a novel based on my travels. Perhaps not. At present, though, Georgette is almost twenty-one.” He shook his head. “How odd that is to realize. I suppose she might have a beau after all.”

“I did when I was twenty-one.”

“I have no doubt of it. I imagine you had all of London at your feet.”

“Not precisely all of London.” She coughed. “I was cultivating a . . . close acquaintance with one of the royal dukes.”

To her surprise, Benedict laughed. “Was it Clarence, that old salt?”

“It was not. The Duke of Clarence was devoted to Mrs. Jordan and their children.” An actress who had never been any sort of Mrs. as far as Charlotte knew. Kept women required their fictions.

“Not to sound like an overprotective older brother, but I do hope Georgette doesn’t come in the way of any of the royal dukes.”

“I heartily wish her the same,” said Charlotte. “Does she like living with your cousins at the bookshop?”

“She has never told me she does not. But she has told me she cannot stay beyond her birthday. I shall send her the inheritance if I must, and she can use it to pay room and board, but . . .”

“The arrangement could only be temporary,” Charlotte replied. “Until she sorts out what comes next.”

Yes. That was how she felt about her stay here. Family did not equate to home, or even to welcome. Her parents never chastised her for the choices she had made; they simply ignored them. When she returned to their house, she was Miss Perry. Maggie’s aunt.

The door across the corridor opened, spilling forth a final “Méchri ávrio” from Mrs. Perry.

“Entáxei,” said Maggie, followed by “Captain! You waited for me! Good girl.”

Mrs. Perry called for the capable Barrett, ordered a light luncheon, then poked her head into the parlor. “Lessons done at last. That girl of ours hasn’t my head for Greek, but she’s not entirely without talent. She’ll make a fair translator one day.”

That girl of ours.

Of hers and the reverend’s, of course. “Mama, what if she does not want to be a translator of ancient Greek?”

“Then she can translate modern Greek instead.” Mrs. Perry frowned. “Why the sudden questions, Charlotte?”

A good question. She couldn’t put the feeling into words; she only knew that she felt some duty to Maggie—and even to the unknown Georgette Frost—to claim freedoms for them.

“They wanted asking,” she replied simply.

Her mother, sturdy and ruddy-faced and pragmatic a creature as had ever been made, shrugged and moved on. “Mr. Frost, do you intend to go to the inquest? The vicar should be able to walk over with you after luncheon. I expect him home anytime.”

“I think I will, yes. It might give him comfort not to go alone.”

“You can keep him from being worn to a thread. Always finding someone else to talk to or someone else’s house to go visit.”

“Well, he is the vicar,” said Charlotte. “People look to him for comfort. It’s not as though he’s playing cards at all hours.”

“And who’s to comfort his family if he’s never here?”

Who was to comfort him if his family was always in London or ancient Greece? “That wants asking, too,” Charlotte said.

“Asking. Eureka. We ought to work on interrogatives next.” Mrs. Perry disappeared from the doorway, saying something else in Greek to Maggie, then mounted the creaking stairs.

Maggie was next to peek in. “Why are you sitting like that on the arms of the sofa?” Before either Charlotte or Frost could answer, she added, “I am going to take Captain outside. She missed the fresh air during my morning of lessons.”

“Captain missed the fresh air, did she? What about her mistress?” Charlotte slid to the seat of the sofa, mindful of the noctograph at her side.

“I did, too. This is the only time of year when I can be outdoors without wearing an itchy cloak or getting itchy with sweat.”

With her light brown curls and green eyes, Maggie really was the image of the late, lovely Margaret. Charlotte could almost wish the family’s lies were true, and that her sister had birthed this child. Her life would be easier, she knew, if Maggie had no claim on her heart.

But then there would be no reason for it to keep beating at all. “Give dear Captain a pat for me, Maggie, and mind you stay off the Selwyn lands.”

“Entáxei.” Maggie smiled, her nose wrinkling. “That means ‘all right.’ Grandmama says my accent is terrible.”

“It’s much better than mine,” said Frost.

Maggie laughed, and she was off.

Frost slid to the sofa seat as well, then cleared his throat. “Look, Miss Perry, I think we ought to speak about—”

She pressed his hand, quick, hard. Silence. She had got in the habit of caution, of speaking her mind only behind a closed door.

This morning, at the top of the stairs, had been a rare exception—but then, she had been provoked.

“About the inquest,” she said smoothly. “Yes, I agree that we should speak of it. And how kind of you to wonder if I wish to go with you. I think not, though. Not many other women will be there. It doesn’t seem quite the thing to do.”

As though she gave a damn about that.

No. Rather than that, she did not wish to hear Nance spoken of in the past tense when she had so recently been present to so many. The jury would look at her, laid out, and look at where she had died, then where she had lived. Her plain chamber in the attic of the Pig and Blanket, with the scraps of her dreams around her. Maybe a silk ribbon from an admirer, or a book or two, or a family miniature. An inquest was just another way of leering, with no justice to be had at the end of it.

Charlotte had been the subject of inquests, time after time. Her naked body on canvas, draped only in jewels, stilled in paint by Edward before the stares of many men. The courtesan and the artist; they made one another famous. And Edward knew every inch of her.

On the outside.

“If you could go,” she said through a tight throat, “and listen to everything quite well with your marvelous noticing ears, there might be clues as to what Nance knew. And that might have something to do with where the coins are, and—”

“Why, Miss Perry, are you suggesting I share information with you?” Somehow his hand had found hers again; they rested together atop the ruled surface of the noctograph. “That sounds suspiciously like cooperation.”

When one of his fingers began to stroke the back of her hand, her heart began to beat faster. “You swore you should not be my foe.”

“Nor shall I. I shall be the ears where you cannot go, and you can spend the time in . . . virtuous works.”

She choked back a laugh that trembled a bit.

“And in return,” he stated, rising to his feet and pulling her up to face him, “will you be the eyes for us both?”

“That sounds as though we would be one flesh.” Still, he held her hand, and her fingers could not seem to release his much thicker ones.

“Perhaps later,” he murmured. “In the meantime, I rather think we shall be unconquerable. Don’t you?”

Without waiting for her reply, he eased his hand free, then took up his noctograph and the cane he’d laid next to the doorway. “Méchri ávrio,” he said. “‘Until tomorrow.’ Just as your mother told Maggie.”

“You speak Greek, too?” She raised her eyes to heaven. “I am outnumbered.”

“Only a few words of it. I picked up bits when sailing about the Peloponnesus.” He winked, the gesture looking oddly shy over his unfocused gaze. “Marvelous noticing ears, you know.”

He sketched a small bow, then left her with a smile that was reflected on her own features.

Unconquerable, he said they would be. Though she suspected, as she gave a little shiver of longing, that she was already beginning to surrender.