Her Quicksilver Lover: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 6 (3 page)

Chapter Four

“Hairy legs and cloven feet?” With both bushy brows raised, Charles Spencer grinned. “Girl, I asked you for the truth, not some fairy tale.”

“It wasn’t a fairy tale!” Indignantly, Joanna pushed to her feet, but her father waved her down again when she stumbled.

She sank into the deep wing-chair before the paltry fire. Joanna unfastened the white housemaid’s cap and took it off, laying it on her lap when she’d rather have given it to the flames. She hated that thing, so heavily starched with not a scrap of lace or ribbon, but it served to hide her hair. While she was not possessed of a particularly unusual colour, her mane was hard to tame, and if anyone had seen it—and her efforts to control the thick mass—they might have remembered her.

She couldn’t rely on her spectacles to hide her any longer. Both Lightfoot and the comte had seen her without them. Neither had shown a scrap of recognition, so that was a good thing. But then, why would they? She hardly moved in their circles, either below stairs or in society. Using her real name had not been a risk, either. Her name was common enough.

With swift, angry motions, she pulled out the hairpins. All day they had poked and prodded every time she moved, and a few had embedded themselves into her scalp. Her hair flowed down, untamed and uncontrolled, tangling into knots. It was the bane of her life.

Waiting for her father to speak again, because she knew he would, she went over that astonishing sight once more. “Cloven hooves,” she said. “I swear he had them.”

“You are sure you saw them?”

“Yes.”

Her father shifted in his chair. His was a duplicate of the one she sat in, except it was upholstered in an entirely different fabric, a worn dark green where hers was faded deep red. “Some unfortunates are born with unusual characteristics. We could get a story from that. I will look around me for more examples. Did you learn anything else? Did they leave you alone in his drawing room?”

Before she could think properly, Joanna nodded.

“Your foot does not seem too badly hurt.” To do him justice, her father had examined her ankle before he had begun questioning her. He’d even made tea. The brown teapot sat on its trivet in the hearth, waiting for the replenishment of their tea dishes. Joanna had finished hers ten minutes ago, but her father did not seem to notice.

Her esteemed parent continued to speak. “Did you investigate the room? He took you to his private drawing room, you say? What did you see?”

Joanna spread her hands. “Nothing of note. It was just a drawing room. Gracious and well furnished, as you’d expect of a peer, but nothing out of the ordinary. If he has papers or information, then he keeps them elsewhere. He receives visitors in that room, so perhaps that is the reason.” Although the locked desk by the window said otherwise. Joanna would not mention it.

“I need more,” he said flatly. “Mr. Gough wants the journal to become the first journal people turn to in the morning, and when they enter a coffeehouse. He says if we can produce some useful information about Lord d’Argento, he’ll increase our budget.”

She heaved a sigh. “I know. But these things take time. I’m in the main rooms now, serving the customers, so I’ll hear a lot more.”

This was the first time her father had found a way to infiltrate the clubs. Most were male bastions, and employed mainly male servants as a consequence. They ran the journal on a tiny budget, so paying for gossip would be beyond them. They were not circumstanced to pay the huge vails most of the staff at the clubs in St. James demanded. Although, if their new patron actually lived up to his promises, they would. Already they lived in this house on a peppercorn rent and had enough to buy the paper and ink they needed, even a boy to help with the printing and a few to distribute, but the tight-fisted Gough would give no more until he got results. At least, that was what her father said. Since he met Mr. Gough in the coffeehouse, Joanna had not yet met him.

“That as well, but I’ve always suspected more goings-on at the club than they care to admit. A club for both sexes is scandalous enough, but my word, if we can discover gossip about the owners, we’ll increase the circulation hugely.”

“I heard that Lady Davenport has seduced Lord Stephens,” she said brightly.

“The peers’ bishop?” The nickname had been bestowed on the baron a long time ago, gained by the very public piety of the man. Her father grinned broadly. “We can use that, for sure. I shall make enquiries at the coffeehouse tomorrow. If we can publish the story first, we can guarantee selling a few dozen extra copies of the
Argus
.” At her quizzical look, he lifted a bushy brow. “Our new patron asked for a change of name. I like it. Don’t you?”

A hundred-eyed god. She supposed it had its points. “It’s a good name.” She had liked the
London Artificer
, but the
Argus
would serve.

He clapped his hands, and then reached into his pocket and brought out his snuffbox. “This calls for a celebration.” He smiled in a benign manner. “Add a few snippets about Lord d’Argento and we will have him.”

“I have discovered nothing yet,” she protested.

Why she felt so…
protective
towards Lord d’Argento, she had no idea. Except he’d been kind to her today. That had been the first significant time she’d spent with him and the first time he had noticed her. “I cannot go back.” Although the notion of never seeing Lord d’Argento again set up an ache she should definitely not be experiencing, Joanna would cope with that. Goodness knew she’d managed worse.

Thanks to the generosity of the new patron, she and her father occupied a narrow house in Fore Street. They had known far worse. That time when they had shivered through a winter in a room that was little better than sleeping in the street, for instance. And in Vinegar Yard too, miles from anywhere, infested by every creature in London, especially the flies that hovered above the vats of spoiled wine that gave the place its name.

She couldn’t go back there either. Rather than that, she’d walk into a Covent Garden brothel and offer her services. Or become a domestic servant in truth. Heaven knew she had plenty of experience at the work.

“And why can you not go back?” her father demanded. At last, he picked up the teapot and poured for them both while he was speaking. “You say the comte took a fancy to you. Did he touch you in a way you didn’t like?”

Joanna snorted. “You mean as if he wanted me? No, Papa, he did not. He attended to my ankle, only moved my skirts as far as he needed to, then left me to rest.” She ignored the fact that his touch had made her shiver, that she’d actually wanted him to touch her. That was nobody’s business but her own. And that he’d sent her home in a sedan chair.

“Well then, perhaps he will regard you as a pet or some kind of special case.”

She shrugged, ignoring how appealing that sounded. “No.” Picking up her tea, she noted that her hands were not entirely steady. “I need to hover and be unnoticed. At least I didn’t take a tumble in the ladies’ drawing room. If I go back, I’ll be the talk of the kitchen.”

“Ach!” The sound of frustration almost made Joanna smile, but she remained straight-faced and silent. Her father spoke again. “That doesn’t matter. Perhaps you can make some particular friends. You know how to do this, girl.”

Yes, she did. Make friends with the staff, particularly the ones who would overhear juicy snippets of information. “Parliament opens next month. Perhaps I should take a position there.”

“As what? A gentleman usher?” Her father grunted. “Besides, they know us there. We’d never get past the initial scrutiny. No, keep going to the club. Listen for special pieces of information and talk to the servants. These places give us new opportunities. Gentlemen’s clubs, exclusive to the upper crust, where the cream of the gossip is exchanged. We can cut out all the nonsense, all the small stuff, and go straight to the top.”

“How long do I do this?”

“Keep going.” He shrugged, his generous shoulders shifting against the coarse but serviceable fabric of his tobacco-brown coat. “You’re a good girl, Joanna. You know I do not expect you to imperil yourself. You’re a good and sympathetic listener. You’ll find something, I have the utmost faith in you.”

She was glad that somebody did. Today she’d had a glimpse of what she could have had. If her mother had married a man less indigent, if she had not forced him to retire from his position as a Fellow at Cambridge, they might be living in a snug little house in a beautiful city. Instead, her father had put his considerable talents to other uses, and they now scraped a living in London, with no hope of anything better. They needed the gossip to leaven the commentaries her father wrote, learned pieces about political affairs and economic dealings. He haunted the coffeehouses while she scrabbled about gathering the society chat.

Sometimes she enjoyed her work. Very few women had the opportunity to experience some of the things she’d seen and done. Under the guise of “Peter Pepper”, she even wrote articles for the
Argus
. Most people who bought the paper imagined a large staff of journalists, but in truth there were only two, and they were both in this room.

“Could we not invent more stories?” she asked wearily. Other journals did, especially when news was thin on the ground.

Her father’s cheeks mottled with red and his eyes narrowed. “I do not know what you consider to be the contract with our reader, but telling lies is not one of them!” He plunked his tea dish back in its saucer, shattering the china. The pieces of the saucer fell apart from the dish as if shunning it.

Her heart sank. They didn’t have a great deal of money to waste on replacing china, and that was one of the last sets they had. However, what he said—she couldn’t blame him for that. The
Argus
gained its reputation over the plethora of other journals because they always told the truth. They might exaggerate it a little, but a nugget of honesty always remained. Other hacks made up their stories if they could not gain them honestly.

“Yes, Papa,” she said meekly, but only because he was right. That nugget kept them honest, or as honest as they could afford to be.

“And you will go back,” he said.

She sighed. “Yes, Papa.”

It seemed she had no choice. Besides, the wages she was receiving were the best she’d had for some time, enabling them to live in relative comfort. For the money, and to keep her father happy, she would face the lion in his den. Again.

* * * * *

“Is she back?” Amidei murmured to his factotum. Standing in the hallway of the club, nodding to the visitors, he was satisfied that the mixed-sexes policy had deterred nobody but the highest sticklers, and they would never have entered the club in the first place.

“She’s been serving in the ladies’ room all day.”

“You made sure she had time to rest her ankle?” he asked sharply.

Lightfoot grinned. “Since when did you concern yourself with the servants’ welfare?”

Amidei rolled his eyes. “Since one of them was nearly killed on my property.” He kept the words very low, hardly putting any sound into them, so that he delivered them mind-to-mind more than vocally. He had no desire to have anyone overhear him. No word had reached the press of the incident. He knew the gossip, and for the most part loftily disregarded it, but there had been a lot of it recently.

“She’s fine. She has worked very hard today, but she’s been reluctant to leave the kitchen when she knows you are at home.”

Amidei touched the heavy skirts of his green coat. They stood out stiffly from his waist, the fashion even more exaggerated when he wore it. “I shall transform,” he said thoughtfully.
And follow her,
he added, mind-to-mind.
It’s time we discovered what she is up to.

Lightfoot grinned and bowed. “Indeed, my lord.”
I had expected you to ask her to visit your parlour.

To trap her in my web?
Amidei added before he strolled away. Upstairs he gave no indication that the landing had been a perilous place the day before. It certainly was not now. The dark blue carpeting was firmly in place, preventing any similar incidents.

Upstairs in his room, he stripped off his magnificent coat, tossing it carelessly across a chair. After dropping his emerald pin into the tray lying on his dressing table, he unwound his carefully folded neck cloth, and tossed that aside too. He took care unbuttoning the heavily embroidered cream-coloured waistcoat. After all, it was a work of art, and Amidei appreciated art. This had a pattern of twining vines, with the occasional flower peeping coyly from the raised and padded stitches. It reminded him of the shy violet currently doing her best to avoid him. The girl fascinated him, and her reason for being here gave him the excuse to take a personal interest in her doings.

That all-enveloping cap on her head covered a multitude of sins. If he was fortunate, they were sins of the best possible kind. The kind it took two to commit.

No, he was wishing for the truth there. Joanna—if that was her name—was what common parlance would call a good girl. Every movement she made proclaimed that, every time she looked away. Her discomfort when he was attending to her ankle disarmed him. She touched a part of him he had not consulted for a long time, had almost forgotten existed. That part of him that yearned for something for himself. He had firmly put his personal concerns aside after the explosion thirty years ago. Perhaps it was time to think of his own needs once more.

He stripped off his breeches and toed off his shoes, leaving them for his valet to organise. The highly polished, faceted steel buckles on them were too flashy for his destination, as was their glossy, unscuffed brilliance.

Lastly, he plucked the elaborate wig from his head and dropped it on the dressing table. A puff of fine white powder went up. He gave a tight grin. He left the comte behind so easily, as he had left other personae, in other times. From a cavalier sporting lace-topped boots to a gruff Roundhead, to an officer of the Crown in the second Charles’ reign. And before, and after. Yet he remained essentially what he was.