The Perils of Pleasure (32 page)

“I didn’t linger to question anyone, Colin, once I learned where Horace was. Getting here seemed rather urgent. I thought I’d leave the satisfaction of confront
ing Redmond to you. I can say that Baxter’s salary rose by a few hundred pounds after your arrest, and that a driver was paid to take the Mercury Club carriage here to Marble Mile. I still don’t know who rescued you from the gallows.”

“I do. I just don’t know who
paid
, er, this person to rescue me.”

This caused a silence from his brother. Which stretched.

“For God’s sake, Colin, are you going to
tell
me who rescued you? Bloody impressive, is what it was. Father might want to make their acquaintance. For future ref
erence, of course.”

“In good time. What kind of Eversea would I be if I didn’t have a few secrets of my own?

Marcus hesitated, then decided to shrug this off. “Do you want to hear something odd, Colin?”

“Of course.”

“Robert Bell, the driver, took Mrs. Fanchette Red
mond to St. Giles the day you were supposed to be hung.”

Colin was speechless. “
Mrs
. Redmond? Isaiah Red-mond’s wife?”

“The very same. Did
you
spend any time in St. Giles the day of your hanging, Colin?”

“Let’s refer to it as Saturday, rather than the day of my hanging, shall we? I’ll answer your questions later. We—Horace and Mrs. Green and I—can take the sol
diers’ horses, but what will we do about Snap?”

They stared down at the cheerful, toothless, leg de
fi cient dog.

“He can run like the wind on those three legs,” Mad
eleine said, with some authority. “I wonder if he tires quickly, however.”

“If you can ride as far as the inn, you should be able to get a hackney into London. Difficult to be discreet with a three-legged dog, and the fact that you’re Colin Eversea, but . . . ” He shook his head. “I imagine you’ve . . . business . . . you’d like to see to in London. As for me, I’m returning to Pennyroyal Green. I’m getting married in two days.”

The silence that fell was so sudden and total it was like a dome had dropped from the sky.

A pair of dark eyes meeting a pair of green ones with the intensity that Everseas cultivated nearly from birth.

“Perhaps,” Colin said fi nally, evenly.

The stare continued. And as Colin said . . . no one was more determined than Marcus. And he’d learned the unblinking stare from his older brothers, after all.

The corner of Marcus’s mouth finally lifted, and he looked off over Colin’s shoulder.

Giving way, just this once.

“Louisa would never forgive me if anything became of you, Collie. I decided it was only cricket to come see to you first. It’s a habit of mine, pulling you out of messes.”

“Of course. Only cricket.”

But Colin did know that he’d managed to get him
self into this mess in the first place: by entering a pub containing Roland Tarbell. By dramatically galloping to London. And etcetera.

He wouldn’t be behaving that way again.

Cricket, indeed.

“How is Louisa?” he said quietly.

“Happy you didn’t hang.”

Colin supposed he couldn’t in all fairness ask for a detailed report about Louisa from his brother. “Very good.”

“The rest is up to you, Colin.” Marcus’s voice was harder now.

“And Louisa,” Colin couldn’t resist adding. And his voice almost light.

Marcus hesitated. “And Louisa,” he agreed tonelessly.

“See you in Pennyroyal Green, Marcus. In a day’s time.”

“Perhaps.” Marcus said that with an upraised brow, and swung up to his horse.

And when he was up there he stared down at Colin and Madeleine, and finally smiled crookedly. “God, I’m glad you’re alive, Col.”

His voice was a bit rusty. And this was tantamount to gushing emotion for Marcus.

Colin couldn’t help but smile back at his brother.

And then Marcus saluted Colin and Madeleine with a touch to his hat, pulled hard on the reins to turn his horse into the road, and tore off at a gallop in the direc
tion of Pennyroyal Green, Sussex.

Madeleine watched Colin watching his brother dis
appear down the road in puffs of dust.

Colin’s jaw was set, his eyes inscrutable. It was an expression she’d never before seen on his face. Inscruta
bility was
her
bailiwick, or had been, until he happened along.

His mind, she would guess, was on the Sussex Downs, and Pennyroyal Green, and a beautiful girl named Louisa, and the peaceful life that, despite ev
erything he’d done so far in life, he really wanted—he’d
risked his own life for days on a quest that could just have easily been futile in order to win that life back.

Madeleine could only guess at the rest of his thoughts. She did know she wasn’t part of them at the moment.

It had been fascinating to watch Marcus and Colin. Everything was in the rhythm with which they spoke to each other: their shared history, the humor, the money, their connection to an ancient place in Sussex. The love for each other, of course, and their family, and Louisa. Marcus was both different and somehow precisely as Madeleine had pictured him.

Somehow she doubted there were any truly
homely
Everseas.

Colin finally turned back toward her slowly. And stood still and looked at her, in that way he had of making her feel like he’d just discovered her and was a little puzzled and delighted by her very existence.

“Why didn’t you put your pistol down, Mad, when the soldiers first asked you to? They could have killed you, you know.”

Ah, and that was Colin Eversea. Good at noticing things. And at startling her with questions.

“They were interested in
you
, Colin. They would have killed you before they shot at me. And I intended to shoot if any of them fired at you.

He frowned faintly. “But—they
would
have killed you, Mad. You would have been dead.”

“But I would have at least got off a shot.”
For you
, she didn’t add.

But she was only realizing it now herself.

Colin gave a short stunned laugh. For he knew what she meant, too. And likely why she’d done it.

He turned away swiftly then, as if he couldn’t quite
look at her, and thrust his hands in his pockets, as though he didn’t want them doing something untoward of their own accord, like touching her.

He stood like that, frowning into the middle dis
tance, for a good long time. Madeleine didn’t know how to speak into that silence.

“Let’s go tell the soldiers to start walking,” he said finally, and strode back to the three grumpy redcoats without looking at her.

Marcus told his family that he’d seen Colin, that they’d found Horace Peele, that Colin would try very hard to return for the wedding. And then, with the glee
ful shouting and questions still ringing in his ears, he rode out to Louisa Porter’s house.

He found her in the front garden, wearing a basket over one arm and a bonnet fastened firmly beneath her chin with thick blue ribbons. Louisa had learned her lessons about leaving bonnets untied, apparently, when she was eleven years old. She was cutting a pink fl ower of some sort.

She straightened then, noticing him watching her from the gate. “Marcus!”

She smiled and blushed beautifully, and he smiled slowly at her. His heart gave a lurch. He wondered if it would be inconvenient to have a wife who always made his heart lurch, and decided, really, there was no way he could rationalize himself out of wanting to be with her forever. A lurching heart was a small price to pay.

Still, he needed to do what he’d come here to do.

“Good morning, Louisa.”

He kissed her hand, as he was her fiancé and it was his right to do that for now, and couldn’t help but linger
just a little over it, thinking it might be the last time.

She took it away from him slowly; he hoped there was reluctance to end his kiss in the gesture. Her eyes were warm, and her cheeks remained pink, and Marcus thought he could have kissed her mouth then and she would have welcomed it. But he needed to say what he’d come to say.

“Louisa, I’ve seen Colin.”

The blood drained out of her face.
“Oh.”

It was a sound almost of . . . pain? And then scarlet flooded in to replace the white, and Marcus thought for a moment she might faint. His hand began to go out to catch her, but she took a deep breath instead.

“He’s well?” Her voice was quite steady. Almost amused. She knew Colin, after all.

“He’s very well. And everything’s going to be fi ne. He’s found Horace Peele. And he’s going to try to be home . . . tomorrow.”

She stared at him. “Tomorrow?” she repeated, the word threadbare. “He’ll be home tomorrow?”

The wedding was tomorrow.

“Tomorrow,” Marcus confirmed gently. It took all of his courage.

Louisa was silent. She was looking at him, but not really seeing him now, Marcus knew. He took a deep breath. “Louisa, I’ve come today to ask if you’d prefer not—”

“I hope he does make it home,” she said quickly. And the life was back in her eyes, and they were warm on his face, and she’d deliberately stopped him from saying anything further.

Marcus understood then. She was asking him not to make her decide anything just yet. Not to make a declaration.

Not until she saw Colin.

It would have to do. But he was glad he’d given her the choice, because he couldn’t have lived with himself if he hadn’t told her.

And he knew he wouldn’t sleep at all tonight.

“I shall see you tomorrow then, Louisa,” he said gently.

He wanted to kiss her. He almost did. Her eyes never left his face.

But he bowed low to her instead, then turned to ride back to Eversea House, leaving her standing staring after him, a bright yellow pink dangling in one hand.

Louisa watched Marcus until his horse vanished over the rise.

Then her eyes turned toward the road to London.

It was upon his routine monthly review of the Mer
cury Club books that Isaiah noticed the notations. He went motionless, eyes riveted to the page.

And then he sighed, and knew a brief heaviness of heart followed by a profound and lasting irritation.

He’d rewarded the man for his diligence and unques
tioning loyalty, delighted to have an employee whose intelligence—so he thought—nearly equaled his own. But Baxter’s diligence clearly outweighed his intelli
gence, and it was this diligence that would sink both of them.

Unless, Isaiah thought, he acted fi rst.

Oh, Baxter.

The bloody man had actually
noted the date
Mr. Robert Bell took out the Mercury Club carriage, and that Bell was paid to drive it. And Baxter had increased his own wages. It was there for anyone to see, and the
very clever Marcus Eversea, Isaiah knew, had already seen it. He needed to act quickly.

Isaiah dashed off a note, rang for a footman, and told him to take it discreetly to the Home Secretary, who was a friend—as it suited him—both to the Red
monds and the Everseas.

And in respect for Baxter’s diligence and loyalty, Isaiah went home.

He would wait until the soldiers came for Baxter.

nm

obody, not even Isaiah Redmond’s formidable butler, argued with a pair of pistols pointed by a very tall, determined-looking Eversea with a New-gate pallor and a lovely if grim and rumpled woman. And it required only a word or two of persuasion to get the butler to tell them precisely where Isaiah could be found at that moment: his sitting room, upstairs.

Madeleine and Colin and Horace had come straight from Marble Mile to London in a hackney, unmolested by soldiers and untroubled by broken axles or thrown horseshoes or any other sort of accident that could have befallen them. Straight to the Redmond town house on St. James Square.