Lady Notorious (Royal Rewards #4) Read online

  Charles groaned. “She’ll have the five pounds off me in half a second.”

  Cass was quite sure he would yield the money, and happily, should Janey slip a hand into his pocket. He had never admitted to tender feelings for her, but his face was an open book whenever the young cutpurse was near. “Then you’ll have to ask her for tips on how to survive on one’s own.”

  “Tips from Janey . . .” His cheeks were faintly flushed.

  Cass rolled her eyes. “Behave yourself. Remember the old saying: ‘Flirt when you have a broken right leg, be impotent forever.’”

  “That’s not a saying.” Turning his head, he eyed her slantwise. “Is that really a saying?”

  “It should be.”

  “Cass!” Leaning forward he tried to cuff her, then fell back against the pillows with a groan. “Where is your sisterly feeling?”

  “It fell out the window at Deverell House,” she said crisply. “But it had a rollicking good time first.”

  She left the room then. In her own tidy little bedchamber, she packed a valise with her essential belongings. She hesitated over her favorite gown. Its deep green cotton print seemed so pretty hanging from a dress hook in this little room, but in the drawing room of Ardmore House, it would look cheap and plain.

  Her clothing would never suit the role of a bastard ducal cousin. Perhaps she could say she’d disguised herself as a maid when she made her way to the bosom of her family.

  She decided to take the gown, rolling and folding it with a care not even a lady’s maid could have matched. She’d be entering a world of silks and satins and subterfuge, and the things Cass Benton liked were of no consequence to that world. But they were of consequence to her, and it would brace her immeasurably to know she had her favorite things around.

  Which reminded her: there was one more item she wanted to bring along.

  Returning to the small parlor that abutted both bedchambers, she picked up a miniature painting in a gold case. It lived on the mantel, almost the sole ornament to the plain little room.

  Cass cradled the painting in her palm, looking at the familiar face done in pigments on ivory, then snapped shut the gold case that protected it. She peered into Charles’s room. He was looking at La Belle Assemblée again, this time with real interest.

  She cleared her throat to draw his notice from the magazine, then held up the gold case. “I’m taking Grandmama with me to Ardmore House.”

  Charles protested. “Why should you get to take her? She’s my grandmother too, you know.”

  “I do know that. I just . . .” Cass hesitated. “I need something familiar with me.”

  The little painting, made when their grandmother was a gentleman’s daughter hoping for a good society marriage, was all that remained of what had been a generous dowry. Two generations of marrying down had laid waste to the rest.

  How the miniature and its case hadn’t been sold for bills years ago, Cass didn’t know—but she was grateful, and she would never allow it to be sold now. Grandmama was her namesake: a woman she’d never known young, but who had kept the strong-boned attractiveness and good humor so apparent in the miniature until the end of her life. Though she lost a husband and a daughter, though her son-in-law proved inconstant and undependable, she persisted. She provided.

  In return, Cass had given her grandmother all her love and admiration. When the elder Cassandra had died five years earlier, when Cass was twenty-one, she’d felt lost.

  But if such loss was the price of love, it was well worth the cost.

  So she copied her grandmother’s example. She provided, finding a job for Charles and then doing most of the work herself. She would not be dimmed by grief, and she would not be caught with nothing. She might leave behind five pounds, but only because she was going to earn more.

  And she would take Grandmama and her favorite gown with her.

  “Very well, tuck Grandmama into your pocket,” Charles said. “Then come sit and I’ll tell you about our cases for Fox.”

  Cass plunked her valise onto her brother’s bed and sank down next to it. “I didn’t hit your broken leg. Don’t yelp. All right, what have you got going with Bow Street? Something I don’t know about?” Sometimes Charles went into court without her, though not often. Cass wasn’t an official Runner due to her sex, but the magistrate was happy enough to have her work alongside Charles.

  Charles turned the magazine around and showed a page to Cass. “Do you think Janey would look well in a bonnet like that?”

  “Not if it was bought using the money I just left you. And Janey could steal a bonnet before you could buy her one.”

  “She should steal one for you. Your bonnets are always in a state.”

  “They’re not in a state. They’re just not as fashionable as the ones in La Belle Assemblée.” She snatched the pages from her brother’s hand. “Fox. Bow Street. Cases. What work do you need me to do?”

  “Right.” His brow creased, a rare troubled expression. “The new one you don’t know about. It has to do with the Watch house by that lovely pie shop.”

  “The one on Hart Street?” She remembered everything that had to do with cases. Or pies. Both in their own way were a matter of survival.

  Charles nodded. “I believe he’s taking bribes.”

  She picked at a thread on the bedclothes. “You’d know.”

  “Unfair! Well, not unfair. But in this case, there’s harm being done. Fox thinks girls from the country are offered honest jobs by the watchman, who then takes them to bawdy houses.”

  “Poor lambs,” Cass said grimly. “So he’s using their trust in him to betray them.” No wonder Charles looked bothered. Even if they sometimes looked the other way or took the occasional bribe, Bow Street Runners held the public trust and safety as sacred.

  “Yes, if Fox is right,” Charles replied. “To know for certain, we’ve got to catch the watchman in the act of taking a bribe. I don’t suppose you’d like to be a girl from the country in need of help?”

  Cass snorted. “Hart Street. That’s Felix’s watch, isn’t it? If he didn’t recognize me right off as Miss Benton from Bow Street, it’d be a wonder. And playing one role at a time is enough.”

  When Charles looked as if he wanted to protest, she lifted a hand. “I’ll come up with something. All right?”

  The hard set of Charles’s shoulders relaxed. As well they should. I’ll come up with something was a magical phrase that shifted a burden from him to her.

  “What else?” she asked.

  Nothing else he described was so urgent. The usual round of pockets picked, heads coshed, watches stolen, drunkards bumbling about and breaking things. Simply being in court, ready to dart off as needed at a moment’s notice, was an essential part of the job.

  “I’m not sure how I can work in court and with Lord Northbrook at the same time,” Cass mused.

  “Have a twin. That was my strategy for getting twice the work done.”

  “Well planned. Very good,” Cass said wryly. If he’d not had a twin, she wondered just how much he’d ever get done. Maybe without Cass to lean on, he’d have stood a little straighter.

  Or maybe he’d have done nothing at all.

  “I will try to keep up with these cases,” Cass added.

  This job for Northbrook was brief; Bow Street was their long-term support. She’d check in with their usual informants, maybe, and use some of her next week’s wages from Northbrook to pay them for extra vigilance. Their friend Callum Jenks, a former Runner, had inherited a slew of underworld contacts along with the happy notoriety of closing the case of a theft of gold from the Royal Mint. These contacts were vouched for by Sir Frederic Chapple, a baronet deeply implicated in the theft of the gold sovereigns. Sir Frederic had eventually gone free, but even criminals had consciences.

  Some of them. Sometimes.

  “And what will you live on while you’re shadowing the Watch and play-acting as a ducal cousin?” Charles jutted out his jaw. He was annoyed, perhaps,
that she hadn’t given him back the picture of the bonnet. “Not Northbrook’s charity?”

  “I’ll be doing honest—well, sort of honest—work for him to earn a wage. That’s not charity, and it’s not improper.”

  “Unless he’s like Felix, and he’s leading you to his own dark ends.”

  “Even if that’s so,” she said, “what I do away from here is none of your affair.”

  Charles muttered something. Cass ignored this. She wouldn’t mind seeing where Lord Northbrook would lead her, and how dark the ends might be.

  Just for curiosity’s sake.

  She stood, then grabbed the handle of her valise. “I’ll come check on you when I can,” she said for a second time. “Mrs. Jellicoe will have meals sent up to you. Get well and don’t jump out any windows.”

  “Ha.” Charles was already reaching for the next periodical in his stack.

  “And, Charles? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  “I definitely can’t buy a new bonnet, then,” he replied.

  Brothers. “Cheer up. You can pretend to be a duke’s by-blow instead,” she said sweetly, then shut the door on his reply and made her way to Bow Street.

  * * *

  The Bow Street magistrate’s court was as familiar to Cass as her own lodgings. It was an always-crowded room, smelling of sweat and cheap perfume and sometimes a meat pie or spilled ale if someone was eating while they waited. A few long wooden benches made neat rows, facing the railing dividing the public space from the officers’ warren of desks and papers and shelves.

  Front and center behind the railing, the magistrate’s own bench took pride of place. From that seat and desk, Augustus Fox considered testimony and rendered verdicts. Long after regular hours ended, he’d been known to sift through evidence in his cramped private office. Portly and eagle-eyed, the magistrate was as fair as he was stern, and as much a fixture of the court as were the pillars that held up its roof.

  Cass sidled through the ever-present crowd, ducking her head to avoid greetings and questions from Runners asking about Charles. To see one Benton twin without the other was, she knew, rare and strange. Too much about this past day had already been rare and strange.

  The old leather valise bumped her thigh with every step, reminding her that she wouldn’t be walking home again. Lord Northbrook had arranged to send one of the ducal carriages to Bow Street to retrieve Cass, and she had less than an hour before its arrival to arrange matters here.

  She struggled past a drunken woman singing a song about Cupid, then a man who smelled of fish and who tried to embrace everyone who came near. At last, she burst through the crowd to the clear space before Fox’s bench. He had just dismissed a case and was opening his mouth to call up the next.

  “Mr. Fox!” she called, all but falling against the railing. “I need to speak with you.”

  He looked down at her with surprised blue eyes under heavy black brows. “On your own today? Where’s that brother of yours? Here, come around, Miss Benton.”

  Another Runner opened the gate in the railing, and Cass slipped through to stand beside Fox. “Well?” said the magistrate. “What’s on your mind?”

  She drew a deep breath, braced by her employer’s familiar scent of peppermint and pipe tobacco. “Charles was injured while on a private investigation.”

  “Injured?” The beetle brows rose.

  “A broken leg. It happened last night.”

  “Ah.” The brows slammed down. “I am sorry to hear it. He’ll recover?” At Cass’s nod, Fox added, “Do I want to ask for more details about the injury? Or the case?”

  Cass shook her head. “Best not.” It wouldn’t do Charles credit, and they needed all the credit they could manage.

  “Very well.” Fox steepled his hands over his round belly, over which a plain black waistcoat stretched. “How long before your brother can resume work?”

  “Six weeks.” Her hand felt like a claw around the valise handle. “Maybe eight. But the surgeon said it would be at least six.”

  Fox stroked his chin, where grizzled bristles were beginning to poke through. “That’s bad. He was to handle the Watch case.”

  “I’ll cover his work,” Cass blurted. “I can do it. I do have a private investigation to begin, so I won’t be able to do a shift straight through. But I can cover his hours, if . . .” She swallowed. “If I keep doing Charles’s work, can we collect his salary?”

  Fox looked at her shrewdly. “How would that be different from usual?”

  But he looked concerned too, his blue eyes kind. Cass and Charles had begun working for him five years before, as soon as they attained their majority at twenty-one, and he’d become the nearest thing to a father they’d ever known.

  Still. Concerned though he might be, and not uncaring, Fox was an employer. And he needed work done, for the sake of the safety of London and its inhabitants.

  “I don’t know,” he added. “It’s not only the Watch case. We’ve got a terrible problem with pockets being picked at Drury Lane. We need someone there on site.”

  Everything was we with Fox; he had conscience enough for all his Runners and the whole city besides. This sense of obligation was hard on a man. In the five years Cass had known him, he seemed to have aged a decade—his hair graying and receding, his middle growing thick, the lines of worry slashing deeper around his mouth. But this same sense of responsibility for all that went on around him—for the safety of a city and its inhabitants—made Cass willing to throw herself into a job that wasn’t even her own.

  That, and the salary. A person had to live on something.

  “I’ll see if I can get there during my work with Lord Northbrook,” she offered. “The ton like their theater as much as the Runners do.”

  “Lord Northbrook,” mused Fox. “The Duke of Ardmore’s son? Do I want to ask for more details about your case?”

  She could almost smile at the familiar question. “Best not,” she said for the second time. “But I can manage it. The pickpocketing—I’ll see it handled.”

  I’ll come up with something, she had told Charles. Now she had told Fox the same. Future Cass had best be even more resourceful than Present Cass if she were to do all the work she’d promised.

  The magistrate looked skeptical. “And the Watch case?”

  “A watchcase?” piped up a familiar voice. “Need it fenced?”

  Janey Trewes, pickpocket and informant and prostitute and clothing seller, stood before the bench. She was pulled in before the bench nearly every week for some trespass against the law, and each time she cheerfully paid fines and promised never to stray from the path of righteousness again. Fortunately, it was all a hum. If she stopped reporting on the seamy doings of Covent Garden and Seven Dials, the Runners would have a much more difficult time closing cases.

  “It’s not a case for a watch, Janey,” Cass said. “You needn’t . . . oh, never mind.”

  “Why are you here today, Janey?” Fox shuffled the papers before him. “Have you been picking pockets at the theater?”

  He sounded weary; Cass couldn’t fault him. Janey had been hauled before the court innumerable times for that very offense. If she were to stop picking pockets at the theater, Drury Lane would become more secure than the Royal Mint.

  “I was doing what I oughtn’t’ve,” Janey said with a shrug.

  She was swathed heavily, as usual, a walking advertisement for the clothes in which she traded. Men’s shirts over gowns over petticoats, belted with pinafores and tied at the neck with scarves. Her dark brown hair was sleeked back with a fillet of silk handkerchiefs knotted together. Cass would have bet the five pounds she no longer possessed that neither the handkerchiefs nor Janey’s jangling string of gold and brass buttons had been acquired honestly.

  “And you’re sorry and won’t do it again,” Fox said, his hand already reaching for the gavel.

  “Oh, sure.” Janey grinned, showing crooked but white teeth. “Never.”

  And Fox’s hand stopped
. “Would you care to atone?”

  “Care to what?”

  “Atone. Make amends.” Cass watched, mystified, as Fox struggled for another way of putting the matter. “Ah—would you like to make up for what you did wrong by doing something good?”

  Janey thought about this. “Not really.”

  With a gimlet stare, Fox replied, “The correct answer is yes, if you want to avoid a fine.”

  “Yes, then. Unless it’s somethin’ I don’t want to do. Then maybe I’ll pay the fine and bing off.”

  Fox smiled. “It’s nothing much. Check in on Charles Benton every other day, report to him on his cases, and report back to me. Especially the Watch case. Which is”—he shot a look of sympathy at Cass—“not the case of an actual watch.”

  Janey plucked at the end of her knotted silk hander-chiefs, her hands covered in fingerless gloves. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Fox confirmed. “That’s your atonement. His lodging is . . . what is the address?” Cass gave it to him, explaining Charles’s injury to Janey, and the younger woman nodded her agreement.

  “Aye, I’ll do that. He never give me trouble when he’d got two good legs, and now he’s got a broken one I c’n make sure he behaves.” She narrowed her eyes. “For how long?”

  “Why, until he’s back on his feet,” said Fox.

  “And then I’ll be—what was it? Atoned? And no fines?”

  “No fines this time,” Fox corrected.

  “And you’ll be as atoned as Charles ever is,” Cass said. “Let me give you some papers to take to him, for I won’t be able to visit him again today. Maybe not tomorrow either.”

  “Oh, aye?” Janey flashed that strangely charming grin again. “Got a ass-ig-nay-shun?” She pronounced each syllable carefully.

  Cass had to laugh. “That word you know, but you swear you don’t know ‘atone.’”

  “I know the words that matter to me. Girl like me, she hears about ass-ig-nay-shuns all the time.”

  “Yes, all right.” Fox looked a little sheepish, as if he were already regretting his leniency. “Miss Benton, you’d best be off to one job or another. Janey, take whatever papers Miss Benton gives you, and hold them as fast as you would a brass button.”