Lady Be Good (12 page)

Ashmore cleared his throat. “May I?”

Christian handed over the bar. Ashmore was a man of multifarious talents. Very good at secrecy. Even better at killing. There was no weapon that he did not recognize.

“A thief’s tool,” Ashmore decided. He squatted to look in the man’s eyes. “A common burglar?” he asked gently. “Is that it?”

The man hesitated.

“Come, now. If you don’t answer honestly, I’ll leave you here with him.”

“Fine! Yes! I was casing the houses in the square—”

Ashmore rose so quickly that the redhead cringed. He had always been remarkably light on his feet. In Afghanistan, troops had taken to calling him the Black Cat, for his knack at slipping past the men on watch. Too, his mysterious visits had always signaled bad luck ahead: a hazardous raid; a battle with losing odds. Certainly he’d never appeared to celebrate a victory. “You want me to deliver him to the police?” he asked Christian.

“Fine. But first—” Christian nodded toward the door. “A word.”

“Of course.” Ashmore bent to pick up his book.

“Don’t go!” the man cried. “Sir, please, take me to the police. Don’t leave me with—”

Christian shut the door on his cries.

“I recall an argument outside Kabul, long ago.” Ashmore leaned against the wall, an odd look on his face. “A young lieutenant, castigating me for claiming that torture had its uses.”

Christian allowed himself a faint smile. “You dismissed him as a useless idealist.”

Ashmore gave a quick, wry tug of his mouth. “I’d only just met him. I quickly revised my opinion.” He paused. “But I admired his idealism from the start.”

“Have no fear. Barring the burglar’s removal from the park, I never laid a hand on him.”

“Indeed? Only words?” When he nodded, Ashmore looked struck. “A good thing you didn’t discover that talent in Afghanistan. They might have reassigned you, put you to work with me.”

“A pity they didn’t. I could have used the experience.” It would have prepared him better to face an enemy like Bolkhov, who aimed at innocents and struck from the shadows.

“No,” Ashmore said. “You’re not a man who would thrive in that line. And I mean that as a compliment to you.”

“One does as one must.” Christian recited the words flatly. “Your words to me once.”

“Spoken in wartime. But Bolkhov is a common criminal, and this territory is yours. Never forget that you have the advantage here. You’re home now.”

Home, was he? Christian bit his cheek to stop a bitter smile. He felt no sense of homecoming, not even at Susseby. All he sensed was his brother’s ghost at his heels, demanding justice . . . and accusing him.

This is not your life. None of this was meant to be yours
.

These ruminations were pointless. As long as Bolkhov lived, regret and doubt would hold no interest for him. He turned toward business instead. “I’m leaving London at week’s end. Catherine Everleigh will be traveling to Buckley Hall, and I mean to join her for the duration of her visit.”

Ashmore’s narrow, unblinking gaze probably proved very useful in his own interrogations. “The Russian collection goes to auction in June, yes? That’s eight, ten weeks.”

Christian nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll make a show of courting Catherine. If that doesn’t lure Bolkhov out, the auction will do it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

The prospect of this nightmare extending indefinitely . . . “He’s putting that candelabrum to auction for a reason. It was a message to me; he’s done with waiting.”

“I do hope so.” Ashmore turned his book in his hands, his signet ring gleaming as he rubbed his thumb across the gilt-stamped spine. “Bolkhov deserves a bullet, of course—for his crimes in the war, as much as for your brother. But . . . once it’s over, Kit. Have you thought on what awaits you?”

“My conscience won’t trouble me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Indeed. I’m not one to lecture on that, am I?” A grim cast came over Ashmore’s face; his brief silence felt fraught, clouded by what he’d never plainly admitted. But Christian had pieced the truth together, over the years. Before Ashmore had inherited his title, he’d traveled the globe for the government, but he’d never done so as a proper soldier.

Assassin
. An ugly word. No honor in it.

Ashmore continued, a rare hesitance slowing his speech. “I will help you in whatever manner you allow. And you’re probably right to say you must take a direct hand in it; that he won’t emerge from his hidey-hole unless you offer the bait. But I can’t like it, Kit. This isn’t the role you’re meant for.”

Wasn’t it? Christian glanced toward the bolted door, the medieval-looking padlocks. He’d made a prison in his own home, and another one for his family at Susseby. Each night, he prayed to shed a man’s blood.

No wonder that he no longer slept well.

“What role do you recommend, then?” he asked. “Am I more suited to signing autographs and donning medals, while a lunatic plots to murder my family?”

“Of course not,” Ashmore said sharply. “But don’t mock the man who won those medals. God knows he earned them—not just at Bekhole, but every day of that bloody war. I saw that with my own eyes. And I hope to see him again, soon enough. For his scope and promise are far larger than this passing lunacy with Bolkhov. And I won’t allow you to forget that.”

Christian recognized kindness when he heard it. But it felt wasted. “Once I kill him,” he said. “We’ll revisit this discussion.”

“Fine.” Ashmore loosed a long breath, then pulled the book from under his arm. “I’ve been carrying this all day. A gift for you, fresh from New York.”

Christian glanced at the spine, then startled himself with a genuine laugh. Sun Tzu:
The Art of War
. “From you? No—from Mina, am I right?” Ashmore’s wife was an American
bon vivant
, petite and pretty as a doll, and dangerously sharp. She had once told Christian that etiquette manuals were a sham; all a woman needed to
succeed, she claimed, was a copy of Machiavelli’s advice for tyrants.

“Her newest inspiration, yes. I advise you to read it thoroughly.” Ashmore added dryly, “She’ll probably quiz you on it when next we meet.”

An intuition brushed through Christian. Here was why Lilah Marshall sometimes seemed so familiar to him. She and Mina shared the same brand of brazen self-possession, a winking awareness of their own charm and wit. “Cover to cover, then,” he said, and tucked it under his arm before taking his leave of Ashmore.

Once upstairs, however, he left the book unopened in his sitting room. Ashmore was right in one regard: Bolkhov had claimed too many pieces of his inward reserve. For months he had fantasized about nothing but blood. But tonight, he would push aside all thoughts of warfare, and dream of more pleasant villainies.

With God’s grace, he would dream only of what he wished to do to Lilah.

Tu n’es pas qualifié pour être mon assistante
.”

Lilah had been staring out the window at rolling fields. Startled, she looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

Miss Everleigh sat across from her, swaddled to the chin in a most unattractive, but no doubt extremely expensive, coat of fine-twilled puce-colored cashmere. “I said,
Tu n’es pas qualifié pour être mon assistante
.”

Lilah recognized the language as French. There, her knowledge ended. “Yes,” she said. “Indeed.”

Miss Everleigh narrowed her eyes, which Lilah knew could shine a striking violet, but which today—thanks to the coat—more closely resembled the color of a mud-clogged puddle. For all Lilah knew, that was the very reason Miss Everleigh had chosen such an unflattering color. If the past two hours of stony silence had demonstrated anything, it was the lady’s ability to make everything—even Lilah’s first trip into the country—deeply unappealing.

“You have just admitted that you’re thoroughly unqualified to be my assistant,” Miss Everleigh told her.
“Either you do not understand French, or you are unusually honest.”

Charming! They were bantering now, only a hop and a skip away from becoming bosom friends. “I would like to think myself honest,” Lilah said. It
would
be nice to be Lilah Marshall in truth, the daughter of a respectable clerk. “Alas, my French is very poor.”

Catherine sniffed. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because you’re a woman of great insight,” Lilah said smoothly.

From Catherine’s sour look, it was clear that flattery would not work. “This is a mad arrangement. You will only get in my way.” She straightened her muff—was she really so cold that she required all that outerwear?—and returned to staring fixedly out the window.

How could someone so pretty, so fortunate in her circumstances, and so widely admired by handsome young gentlemen in need of a fortune, be so unpleasant? In her shoes, Lilah would never have stopped smiling. Every door in the world stood open to Catherine Everleigh. She only needed pick which one she felt like exploring, as the mood took her.

Instead, she buried herself in business. Nothing else seemed to bring her joy.

Her gloom was a subject of some speculation among the Everleigh Girls. “See if you can crack her,” Vinnie had advised Lilah, in an uncanny echo of Palmer’s instruction. “They say she had a lover once, but he was too proud to marry a woman whose family was in trade. I’m sure that’s what left her so shriveled inside.”

Vinnie, Lilah feared, was a secret romantic. The truth was probably much less interesting: Miss Everleigh had
been cursed by a fairy at birth, to be as ugly in her disposition as she was beautiful in looks.

But all this was irrelevant. She could be an actual monster, for all it mattered. Lilah would still win her over—and get her betrothed to the viscount by the last week of June.

“I’m a very quick learner,” she offered. “And very motivated, miss, to learn as much as I can from your admirable example.” For instance, she’d not known that ladies never handled money. For a brief, happy moment, she’d imagined that the coin purse Miss Everleigh had thrust at her on the platform at Paddington was for
her
.

But, no. Apparently it was her job to tip everyone, sparing Miss Everleigh’s delicate hands from the touch of filthy lucre.

“I’m sure you’re very shrewd,” Miss Everleigh said, in a tone that suggested shrewdness was the province of lepers. “But my task at Buckley Hall is not to play tutor to the ignorant.”

“Naturally,” Lilah murmured. In the concealment of her skirts, she made a fist so tight that her knuckles throbbed. “I shan’t impede your duties, I promise you.”

“Of course not. I would not let you.” And with that pronouncement, Miss Everleigh pulled out a book and began to read.

Had Lilah wished earlier for a spot of conversation? She now sank most gratefully back into silence. The sights of a country road offered ample diversion. She had only been outside London three or four times in her life, always to Margate. That was where the common folk went on their holidays, to take the sea air and clear their lungs of soot.

But coastal Kent looked nothing like its verdant interior.
Here, the soil must be rich and fertile, for oaks grew in abundance alongside the road, and in the openings through the trees, Lilah spied endless rolling fields of green and yellow, bushy crops she could not name, which waved in the unseen breeze.

The carriage took a fast turn, causing them both to gasp and reach for their straps. “This coachman!” Miss Everleigh snapped, and banged the ceiling. The vehicle instantly slowed, the driver already having been chastened thrice for his speeding.

Lilah had no sympathy for him. Once at their destination,
he
would get to leave.

The coach crested a gentle slope, and suddenly the vista opened up. In the distance, at the top of a green grassy knoll, perched a house of . . . terrible proportions.

Lilah must have made a noise—a gasp of horror, she didn’t doubt. Miss Everleigh laid down her book and leaned forward to take the view. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Buckley Hall.”

The building was long and squat, no more than two stories, built patchwork in red brick and pink wash, with long, narrow windows that stretched from ground to roof. Above these windows, strange turrets were capped by copper-topped cupolas, which stretched like taffy into fantastical points.