Lady Be Good (25 page)

A muscle flexed in his jaw as he moved back to his bench. But he did not reply. After all, what answer could he possibly make to that admission? She knew better than he what a fool it made her.

The coach slowed. They were pulling into the queue alongside the curb at Paddington. She wanted to cry out, or pound her fist. Instead she put it against her lips, which trembled. How had he gained this much power over her? It had nothing to do with his blackmail.

“On the other matter,” he said with frightening calm. “The gutter rat. I will destroy him for you. That can be my payment. We can dispense with the letters altogether.”

She had never heard that savage note in his voice. It succeeded where his threats had not; at last, she felt fear.

She did not want him to go to war with Nick. She could not say who would win. She could not say . . . whom she would want to win.

“No,” she said. “I want our original agreement. That’s all.”

“A pity,” he said after a moment. “I would have enjoyed it.”

“It could be the work of poachers.” Howard Stowe had served under Christian in Afghanistan; more recently, he had put his scouting skills to keeping watch of comings and goings on the perimeter of Buckley Hall. He led Christian now into a stand of oak trees,
where bright-winged butterflies and songbirds flitted to and fro beneath the boughs.

“Very stupid poachers,” Christian said. The temper in his own voice gave him pause. He’d returned to London very late last night, and had chosen to closet himself with a bottle of whisky rather than risk his restraint by summoning Lilah for a more thorough debriefing. He no longer trusted himself around her. His judgment was corrupted. And he needed, God’s sake, to be able to trust himself. For his family, he needed to be steady.

“Aye,” said Stowe, “it’s a poor place to set a trap, right on the path. And I’ve never seen rabbits caught by such an effort.”

Christian knelt at the edge of the pit, knocking aside the woven mat of branches that had disguised it. He bit back an oath. The bottom of the pit was lined with six sharpened spikes. A bit much for a rabbit, indeed. “How deep is that? Six feet?”

“Deep enough to catch a man.” Stowe squatted beside him. “Would have taken some muscle to dig it.”

“Or sheer lunacy.” Christian scanned the vicinity. “There.” He rose and walked into the brush. Seven paces from the pit, concealed amid the trees, stood the pile of earth that had been excavated.

Howe whistled. “Took some effort to move it all.”

And time. And murderous determination. Christian looked back the way they had come. The turrets of Buckley Hall were visible over the crest of the hill. The house stood very close, not five minutes’ walk away.

He turned back, scanning the glen, breathing hard to channel his rage. A very lucky thing that Catherine Everleigh showed such dedication to her work. She had not once stirred outdoors. And her assistant . . .

His jaw clenched. Lilah had been setting out for a stroll alone that day he’d found her sneezing in the hall. Had an allergy not beset her, she might well have come this way. It was the clearest path into the woodland.

“We must assume there will be others,” he said. “Put Potter on the search.” Another member of the old regiment, Potter had an uncanny sense for where the enemy might lay an ambush.

“Will do. And if you’ll allow it, I’ll go down to the village pub tonight, pass word around that the poaching won’t fly no more.” Stowe spat a long stream of tobacco juice. “This ain’t the only trap I’ve found. Handful of snares elsewhere on the property. Don’t want nobody stealing up at night to collect rabbits, and find themselves at the bottom of one of these.”

“Or at the wrong end of a rifle,” Christian said. “You go anywhere, you go armed.”

“Yes, sir.”

He realized that Stowe was standing at stiff attention, waiting for orders or dismissal. Old habits died hard. “Drop a word of warning,” Christian said. “But keep the cause vague. If the magistrate gets wind of this, he’ll want to know who did it. I don’t want some local lad rotting in jail for someone else’s crime.”

He caught the twitch of Stowe’s hand—an aborted impulse to salute. Stowe saw him remark it, and offered a sheepish grin, flashing the wad of tobacco stuffed into his cheek.

Christian began to roll up his shirtsleeves. “Let’s dismantle this.”

“Oh, no call for your help, sir.”

Christian shook his head. He could not walk away before the foul thing was disarmed. “Go ask Mrs.
Barnes where you might find a shovel. I’ll start with the stakes.”

As Stowe started up the rise, he lowered himself carefully into the pit. He ripped the first spike out of the ground, then held it up to the light. The oaken spike had been carved into a point that would pierce straight through muscle and tendon.

Bile churned up his throat. Lilah had never been to the country before. What a welcome this would have given her. How long would she have lain here, bleeding, calling out with no reply, until she died?

A vision came to him, a nightmare as clear as the spike in his hands. Her cry for help. The sound of leaves crunching underfoot. Her face lifting toward the daylight. A shadow falling over her. Bolkhov’s face filling her vision.

A thousand times since his brother’s death, he had seen such nightmares. But for the first time, it was not his mother or sister who suffered. Stay out of
White-chapel
, he’d told Lilah. But Buckley Hall was hardly safer—and he, no less dangerous than any East End thug. He’d brought her into the crosshairs of a madman.

He tossed the stake over the edge of the pit. If the discovery of this trap proved anything, it was that he could not afford distractions. Bolkhov did not want to kill him. Otherwise it would only take a bullet. What the lunatic intended was to terrorize and torture him. Nobody in Christian’s proximity was safe.

In light of that, what did his inward turmoil matter? He had imagined himself on a bed of nails last night—or a rack, stretched unbearably by incongruous compulsions: fury at her recklessness and lies; anger at his own brutal treatment of her; and worst of all, desire. Desire
to touch her again. Desire, God forgive him, to know her beyond touching. Beyond fucking or fighting. Beyond anything so simple.

There was his true sin. This gruesome trap showed him so clearly. For what could he achieve by drawing her closer but the temporary satisfaction of his lust, and far darker and more lasting possibilities besides? He had no tower for her. Instead, he could be her death.

The hell of it was, if he respected her less—if she were less intelligent, less accomplished, and even, perhaps, less gloriously, infuriatingly deceitful—he would never have wanted to know her. And he would have endangered her now without a thought.

For he
was
a bastard. He cared for nobody but his own.
Catherine’s
fate hardly troubled him. He didn’t lie awake worrying for her.

And people called him a hero.

In grim silence, he yanked out the rest of the spikes. When Stowe returned, he claimed the shovel and sent the other man off. But the labor of refilling the hole made a poor penance. Both women at Buckley Hall deserved far, far better.

“Not entirely awful.”

Not entirely awful! Had a more satisfying verdict ever been spoken? Hiding an amazed smile, Lilah began to replace the teacups into their crates. Her judge turned away to consider the rest of the dusty room.
Tap-tap-tap
went Miss Everleigh’s pencil against the notebook she carried.

“This will be our staging space,” she said, her voice echoing off the bare walls. “We’ll begin with the most breakable items—porcelain, crystal, all the delicate wares. You have the list still?”

“Right here, miss.” That she was entrusted with it seemed encouraging, too. Now that they had finished their canvass and begun the more detailed work of appraisal, Miss Everleigh’s temper had mellowed. Her mood, Lilah had observed, followed her work exactly; if it was proceeding at a satisfactory pace, she sometimes even managed a smile.

“Your job is simple enough,” Miss Everleigh said. Her attention fell to the vase Lilah was wrapping. “Careful, there. Don’t swaddle too tightly.”

“Yes, miss.” Lilah tucked the loose end of linen into the lip, then carefully placed it into a crate filled with wood shavings. That was the last of the hard-paste porcelain, for which she was thankful. Handling such valuable objects made her anxious of her grip.

Together they looked over the china still to be cataloged, a minefield of dishes littered across the floor. “You’ll take the English plate,” Miss Everleigh said. “Bone china only. I’ll start with the soft paste. Once you’ve labeled an item, you’ll write a brief description. Focus on distinctions that might increase a piece’s value—and imperfections that might lower it. For instance, that vase you just put away. What did you observe before wrapping it?”

“A small scratch in the glaze along the rim,” Lilah said instantly. “Barely noticeable.”

“Highly noticeable,” Miss Everleigh corrected, “to the clients who will be bidding on it. What else?”

Reluctantly, Lilah started to peel back the linen wrapping.

“No,” Miss Everleigh said. “From memory, if you please.”

Was this a test? Lilah hoped so. A test meant that Miss Everleigh saw a chance for her to prove herself. “The stones are agate and jade. The underglaze is very vibrant.”

“What color?”

“Red.”

“Red as a brick? Red as blood? Red as a rooster’s—”

“As copper,” Lilah said.

“Yes, precisely. It’s a classic example of Jihong porcelain.” Miss Everleigh eyed the crate. “One of two dozen in existence, if that.”

Lilah goggled. “And you let me wrap it?”

“Your hands seem steady.” She shrugged. “Keep your notes in plain language. The more florid descriptions are the job of the catalog editors. They know best how to stir the public’s interest.”

Breathless, Lilah waited. This was all very interesting information, nothing she’d ever learned as an Everleigh Girl.

But her instruction was over. “Proceed,” Miss Everleigh said, and gathered up a porcelain figure, carrying it to her seat at the table. With elegant economy, she turned the figurine with one hand, while with the other, she began to take notes.

Lilah turned to her own business. For the first few minutes, as she worked through the cups and saucers, she remained acutely aware of her employer’s scrutiny. But when a half hour had passed without scolding, her nerves settled, and she began to make good time with her share of the china.

She was unprepared, then, for Miss Everleigh’s sudden remark. “Lord Palmer takes an interest in you, I observe.”

She nearly dropped a saucer. Inwardly cursing, she made a great frowning show of concentrating on her next notation:
C-F-44. Minor imperfection of pattern: one branch of leaves is in different shade of paint
. “Why should you say so, miss? I rarely see him about the house.” In fact, she’d not seen him since leaving town, yesterday.

“You meet with him regularly, don’t you? In the afternoons.” Miss Everleigh wrinkled her nose. “These maids cannot keep from gossiping.”

“He—” Drat the gossips! “I don’t—sometimes he does invite me to take tea with him, but I—”

“Tea, is it?” Miss Everleigh’s voice was perfectly neutral, though her next words revealed her opinion. “I’m not surprised. All you girls are very good at making impressions on gentlemen.”

There was no wise reply to
that
. On a steadying breath, Lilah turned over the saucer. It felt as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
See, miss, how industriously I work
.

“Curious name, ‘Everleigh Girls.’ ” Miss Everleigh loosed a brittle laugh. “I wonder what my grandfather would have said, had he guessed that his auction rooms would become the byword for women who advertise tooth powder on the sides of omnibuses.”

“I can’t imagine,” Lilah said carefully. Their truce, she gathered, was approaching its conclusion. “I have never been called to advertise anything myself.”

With an unpleasant smile, Miss Everleigh looked her over. “No, I suppose you haven’t.”

Lilah laughed. She did not mean to do it, and Miss Everleigh looked startled.

“You find that amusing? I am given to understand that you girls jostle and compete for such . . . opportunities.”