Educating Caroline (32 page)

28

T
ommy crouched in the dark. He was breathing hard. Too hard. So hard, he feared he might be overheard. He had to be quiet. He had to be quiet, and he had to think.

It was impossible to think, though. His heart was hammering. He thought it might burst. He felt the drum of it too loudly in his ears. That was all he could hear, though. The pistol had gone off so close to him, he was convinced the blast had deafened him.

He
knew
it had deafened him. He’d had to peer hard at the lips of the impossibly large man who’d answered the door of the house near where he now crouched.
No, Mr. Granville was not at home.
At least, that’s what he thought the giant had said. There was a negative shake of the head to accompany the giant’s reply to Tommy’s next question—
no, he did not know when his master was expected.

And then the thick lips moved rapidly, irritably. The giant pointed to a pocket watch he took from his waistcoat pocket. The hands indicated that it was past one o’clock in the morning.
Shove off, mate. Come back in the morning.

But Tommy did not shove off. Because he’d be dead by morning.

He’d known how he must have looked to the butler— if that’s what the frighteningly large man had been. Covered in mud, from when he’d dove beneath that carriage in front of the gambling hall. His cravat askew, his coat torn. There were flakes of gunpowder embedded in the skin of his cheek. He could smell them. Feel them, too, dozens of raised welts. They burned.

But at least they hadn’t managed to put a bullet through him. Not this time.

He couldn’t say who’d taken the shot. There’d been the usual crush outside the gambling hall, a mob of people, half of whom were trying to get in, the other half, like Tommy, trying to get out. One minute, he’d been shoving through the throng, then climbing into his waiting chaise, with Slater right behind him.

Or so he’d thought. Because the next minute, he’d tripped, and had gone sprawling on the floor of the carriage.

That was what had saved him. Tripping. Once again, he’d lost his footing, and his clumsiness had saved his life. The shot had been aimed too high, so the bullet grazed his cheek and sailed harmlessly into the seat cushions, instead of into his brains, where it had been intended.

Slater had probably called out. Tommy supposed he must have. But he hadn’t been able to hear even the sound of his own breath after that first shot. The world was suddenly, eerily silent. He could no longer hear the incessant chatter of the crowd that streamed around his carriage, the whinnies of the nervous horses, the deep booming voice of his driver, urging the team to remain calm.

He knew what had happened. He knew it at once. And he had moved instinctively, throwing himself out of the chaise’s opposite door—only to find, when he dropped to the street, another carriage, filled with drunken boys about his own age, blocking his way.

No matter. He’d ducked, and rolled beneath it.

And then he scrambled to his feet and ran. Ran for all he was worth.

He had not known where to go. Home was out of the question. Go home, when someone wanted him dead? No. He would not risk putting his mother and sister in danger. After the first few streets, he’d realized he was heading in the direction of Slater’s rooms. Yes, Slater would help. Slater would look for him there, first thing. Wait there, he thought to himself, as he sprinted past startled flower sellers and ladies of the night. Wait for Slater. Slater would know what to do.

And then something strange happened. He remembered Braden Granville’s startled look that morning, when Tommy had mentioned that Hurst had been the one who’d introduced him to The Duke.

And somehow, when Tommy came to the street where his sister’s fiancé had lately taken up rooms, instead of pounding on the door for the marquis’s surly landlady to let him in, he ducked down an alleyway. He’d stood there, panting in the dark, trying to catch his breath.

Slater had been right behind him, helping him climb into that chaise, one hand on his elbow. He knew the marquis had believed him drunker than he actually was. Tommy had given up gin, however, since the night he was shot. He would drink wine with dinner, and ale with breakfast, but since his injury, he could not abide the taste of hard liquor. Instead, he slipped the waiter a guinea, and whispered for him to bring him water—only water, but in a glass like the gins ordered by others, only with an orange twist in it, so that he could tell it apart.

He had not been half so drunk as Slater had thought him. That was why, he realized, with a growing chill, he was not dead now.

He could not think where to go. He could not go home, and he could not go to Slater’s. But he couldn’t stay in an alley all night, not deaf as a post, as he was. He had other friends. He was debating which one lived the nearest when he saw the chaise pull up—his chaise, driven by Peters. As Tommy watched, Slater burst from the carriage, and pounded up the steps to his front door, where he stood hammering on the thick portal.

And that’s when it really came home to Tommy just how deaf he was. He couldn’t hear the hammering. He was standing not a hundred feet away—he could see the worried look on his driver’s face—and yet he could not hear the hammering.

The door opened. Slater’s landlady stood there in shawl and nightcap, shouting at the marquis, by the contorted twist of her features.

But Tommy could not hear her.

She must have assured the marquis that he had had no visitors, since Slater turned, and dove back into the carriage.

Tommy, in his dank alleyway, almost came forward then. He almost flagged down Peters, and climbed in beside his old friend. Because it couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be. Slater was his friend, his best friend. He was marrying his only sister, for God’s sake. Why would Slater want to kill him? Slater had saved him back in Oxford, had pulled him back from the brink of death. It was ridiculous to think he might wish Tommy harm.

But at the last minute, Tommy ducked back into the dark alley. His chaise rolled by, moving at a dangerous clip on a street that, even so late at night, still teemed with activity. He let them go by, his heart drumming a frantic beat in his ears.
Idiot,
his heart seemed to say to him.
Idiot idiot idiot idiot
. . . .

Something had held him back from climbing into that carriage with Slater.

He could not say what it was, beyond the expression Braden Granville had worn that morning at the mention of The Duke. The Duke, who had already shot him once, would certainly not hesitate to do the same again. But he had not been in that crowd tonight. Tommy would have recognized him at once. There was no disguising that terrific bulk.

No, it had not been The Duke who’d shot at him. But it had almost certainly been someone working on his behalf. Tommy was as sure of it as he was sure he couldn’t hear the orange seller standing across the street, her mouth opening and closing in eery silence as she hawked her wares. The Duke had appointed someone to assassinate the Earl of Bartlett.

And Slater had been right behind him at the carriage.
Right
behind him. . . .

No. It was impossible. Not Slater. Slater hadn’t shot at him. He wouldn’t.

Would
he?

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter who it had been. What mattered was that he’d lived. He needed to go on living. He couldn’t go home. No, he wouldn’t be safe there, nor was he willing to put his mother and sister’s lives in jeopardy by returning home. But he couldn’t stay out on the street all night. Before his injury, yes, but not now. He hadn’t the strength.

But he also had no money. He had gambled it all away, and then some, at the card tables. He could not take a room anywhere. Where could he go? What could he do?

And then quite suddenly, he knew. There was one man in London Tommy knew for certain wasn’t on The Duke’s payroll. One man in London he knew he could trust above all others.

And so he headed there, taking back alleys all the way.

Now he huddled by the servants’ entrance, in the shadow of the steep steps leading to Braden Granville’s front door, hugging himself even though it wasn’t cold. It was a warm night, with a heavy layer of rain clouds overhead, pink in the bright lights from the city. It had not yet started to storm, but it would. Rain, Tommy was convinced, would kill him sure as any bullet. He was in shock. He recognized the signs in his uncontrollable shivering, his chattering teeth, his clammy skin. Tommy could only pray that before the heavens burst, Braden Granville would come home.

He must have nodded off, crouched there in the darkness, because it seemed as if he were in the middle of a prayer about the rain, when suddenly a light shone in his eyes, and he realized the front door, high at the top of the steps, had been flung open.

He said a name—or at least he thought it did. He still couldn’t hear himself—and came out from the shadows. A phaeton stood beside the curb, pulled by a magnificent team of grays. Braden Granville’s Arabians, stamping nervously, rolling their lovely eyes at him.

And at the top of the steps stood the man himself.

He’d turned questioningly in Tommy’s direction. The light from his front entrance fell full across his face, plainly revealing his shock when Tommy finally came stumbling into view.

He said something, Braden Granville did. But Tommy could not hear him. He saw the man’s lips move, but he could not hear what he said.

And then—Tommy did not know how it came about—he was sinking, and hands were reaching out to him, trying to keep him upright. Tommy tried to tell them what had happened, only he did not know whether or not he spoke out loud, because he still could not hear his own voice.

But he was certain that he was crying, because he felt wetness on his cheeks, and he had time only to think that it was a sorry thing, when an earl—even a young one— wept before another man, especially a man like Braden Granville.

And then everything went black, and the last thing he remembered was Braden Granville’s arms going around him, and his lips moving, his expression one not of shock anymore, but concern.

29

I
t was at ten o’clock sharp the next morning that Braden Granville raised the elaborate brass knocker on the Earl of Bartlett’s door and let it fall back again.

Ten o’clock, Braden realized, was early for a social call. Ladies like Caroline Linford and her mother had hardly risen by that hour, or if they had, they were only just finishing their toilettes or breakfasts, or sitting down, perhaps, to write letters. How vastly different from life back in Seven Dials, where, by ten o’clock in the morning, the day had already been under way five or six hours, since all the women there rose at daybreak, in order to prepare the morning repast for their husbands or fathers and brothers, or stoke the fires for the day’s baking, or help to scale the first catch. . . .

And to Braden, who’d been unable to break some of the habits he’d acquired back in the Dials, ten o’clock was rather late in the day. But he was quite conscious that this was not a popularly held opinion with people in his new circle, and so he had restrained his impulse to call on Caroline any earlier—although it had taken everything he had to keep himself from doing so, from doing to Caroline’s door what he’d done to Jacquelyn’s.

But breaking down Caroline Linford’s door wouldn’t have done at all, no matter how urgently he needed to see her. . . .

And his reason in this case was, he felt, very urgent indeed. Not because he wished to assuage her concern on her brother’s account—for he knew she must be frantic with worry for him. No, not that at all. The boy was well enough. He had been sleeping soundly when Braden left his house for Caroline’s, with no injuries worse than a powder burn and a ringing in his ears that would last only a day or two.

No, there was another matter far more pressing—to him, anyway—than Tommy’s welfare that made him eager to see the Lady Caroline. And it wasn’t even a desire to ascertain for himself the truth of Jackie’s extraordinary revelation that Caroline Linford was in love with him. No, it was something more important than even that. For as unpleasant as his interview the night before with Jackie had been, there was one thing she’d been right about:

He had never, not in all the years since his first sexual encounter, uttered those three words Jackie had accused him yesterday of not having anywhere in his vocabulary.

He had certainly had them said to him—whispered to him—even screamed at him, once or twice. Plenty of women had told him that they loved him. But he had never returned the favor.

And not because he was incapable of feeling love. He had loved his mother, and his father, and even Weasel, in his own way. But a woman? Never. They had all been pleasant, the women he had known. Unquestionably beautiful. But none until Caroline had kept him sleepless, tossing and turning until the wee hours, going over, in his head, her every word and gesture. None until Caroline had made him feel so completely out of control, as if the world over which he’d once thought he had mastery was slipping inexorably out of his grip. None until Caroline had caused his heart, each time he saw her, to flip inside his chest.

None until Caroline.

And that was why he was standing there at that early hour, knocking at her door. He intended to tell her what he’d told no other woman, what he ought to have told her last night, only he’d thought his kisses might better form the words.

But he would tell her today, and she had better listen, because he only intended to say them just the once. And if she laughed, or worse, turned her back on him again, he . . . well, he didn’t know what he’d do. But he could guarantee he’d never say them again, those words. Never.

And then the door to her house was opening, and a tall, hawk-nosed man—a butler, Braden supposed, though the fellow looked a little familiar, causing him to wonder if perhaps they had met before—was looking down at him haughtily.

“Yes?” he drawled.

Braden extended his card with matching haughtiness. “Lady Caroline, please,” he said.

The butler did not even glance at the card. “Lady Caroline,” he said, “is not at home.”

This was not something Braden had anticipated. Oh, not that Caroline would have left the house before ten o’clock. He did not, for a moment, believe she had. But that she would have instructed her butler to say she was not at home to anyone.

Braden, who’d continued to hold out his card, now turned it over, and, removing a pencil from his pocket, hastily scrawled something across the back of it.

“Be so good,” he said, when he was finished, “as to give this to the Lady Caroline, and tell her I’ll be waiting for her inside my curricle.”

The butler glanced at the large black carriage that stood below them, on the street. He said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but you’ll be waiting quite some time. Lady Caroline left town this morning. Upon her return, I will, of course, inform her that you called.”

Braden stared at the butler in utter disbelief. “Left town?” he repeated. “Left
London?”

But that was impossible . . . absurd. The girl couldn’t have simply
left.

“When?” Braden heard himself bark. “Where did she go?”

The butler looked disdainful. “Really, sir,” he said. “But I am not at liberty—”

Braden hardly heard him. Something had begun to buzz inside his head, as if it had been he, and not the earl, who’d been too close to a pistol blast.

What was he to do now? Caroline, it appeared, was gone. But where? And why?

He knew why. He knew perfectly well why. He had bungled it. In his ham-handed attempt to make her forget about that blasted fiancé, he had only made things worse. She was so unlike the other women in her circle in so many ways— so scrupulously conscientious, unaffected, without a trace of vanity—that he had forgotten that in some ways, she was as absolutely conventional as most girls in the
beau monde.

And one of those ways was her complete ignorance of all things sexual. Oh, certainly she knew how the thing was done. But she knew nothing of the pleasure that could be had between a man and a woman. And when he’d tried to show her, he’d certainly succeeded in arousing her. . . .

But he’d also, he knew from the way she’d run from him, frightened her witless.

Shaking his head to dispel the buzzing in it, he asked the butler, “Is Lady Bartlett at home?”

The butler’s look of disdain now grew openly hostile. “Lady Bartlett is unwell. If you would like to leave a message for her ladyship, I will see that she gets it.”

Braden thought about leaving a message concerning the earl. It would, he thought, be politic to let the Lady Bartlett know that her son, whom she’d surely noticed had not come home the night before, was all right.

Politic, but not, Braden thought, wise. The fewer people-who knew the earl’s whereabouts, the better—even if it meant causing her ladyship a bit of anxiety.

“No,” Braden said. “No message.”

He turned to go.

And then, to Braden’s utter astonishment, the butler’s arm shot out, and his shoulder was squeezed excitedly.

“Dead?” The butler peered down at him, all haughtiness gone from his slightly narrow face. “Is that you?”

Braden, startled, stared at the man. And then quite suddenly, he said, “My God. Wormy?”

The butler’s expression had changed from one of extreme boredom to one of the most agitated recognition. “Aye, it’s me,” he whispered, raggedly, with a quick glance over his shoulder, back into the house.

“My God,” Braden said. “I hardly recognized you, all done up in suit and tails. When did they let you out of Newgate, then?”

Paling, Wormy Jones slipped from the house, carefully closing the door behind him, so that they could speak without being overheard.

“Jesus, Dead,” he said, taking a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, and mopping his suddenly damp face with it. “I didn’t recognize you, either, in that cravat. What’s it been, then? Twenty years?”

“At least,” Braden said. “But you’ve done well for yourself. Last time I saw you, Wormy, they were dragging you off to prison for stealing that—”

Wormy flung a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he hissed. “What are you trying to do? I’m clean now, I swear it. Have been ever since they let me out the last time. I’m not sayin’ it’s been easy—”

“No,” Braden said, thoughtfully. “No, I don’t imagine it has been. But your luck’s done a bit of turning, hasn’t it? I mean—” He nodded meaningfully toward the Earl of Bartlett’s front door.

Wormy flinched. “Aw, that,” he said, dismissively. “Aye, it’s not bad. Wouldn’t ever’ve got the post, though, if that bleedin’ Lady Bartlett knew a mule from a thoroughbred, which, I can tell you, she don’t. But the wages are good, and I get on well with the cook, so . . .” He broke off, with a philosophical shrug.

Braden did not like to take advantage of a friendship as old as this—particularly since he had not seen the fellow since he himself had been knee-high—but he had not lost any of his eager desire to see Caroline. And so he asked, with all the nonchalance he could muster, “I don’t suppose you could tell me now where Lady Caroline’s gone off to, could you, Wormy?”

Wormy hissed at him, “It’s Bennington now. None of that worming me way into tight spots anymore. I’m clean, I tol’ you.” He glanced furtively up and down the block, as if he expected at any moment the local constable to come tearing toward him. “Look, mate, I can’t tell you where she’s gone, only because I don’t know it. All I know is, I called for the brougham to be brought round at six this morning, on her orders, and had the boys load it up with her bags.”

An oddly helpless feeling—a feeling Braden Granville did not like at all—came over him, and when he spoke again, it was in a voice raw with emotion. “You must have some idea where she went, Wormy.”

The butler shook his head. “Honest I don’t, Dead. In quite a rush she was to leave, though. Didn’t look as if she’d slept a wink.”

How well Braden knew the feeling.

Then Wormy brightened. “I know,” he said. “You want to find Lady Caroline, you’ve only got to ask the Lady Emily. She’s a rum’un. She’ll tell you.”

Braden blinked. “Lady Emily? Yes. Yes, I suppose she’d know.”

Wormy took a step back toward the door, then flung a glance in Braden’s direction. “I swear I wouldn’t’ve known you, Dead. You’re that changed. You’re one of
them
now.” On the word
them,
he nodded back toward the house again.

“No,” Braden said, firmly, and without the slightest regret. “That’s not true.”

Wormy looked distinctly disappointed. “Oh,” he said. “Well. Good luck then, Dead.”

Braden nodded. “Same to you, Wormy. I mean, Bennington.”

And then the thief became a butler once more, and slipped, with chin raised high, back into the house.

And Braden went in search of Lady Emily Stanhope.

Only first, of course, he had something he needed to do.