Fortune Favors the Wicked Page 5

  Though Charlotte had named Captain at the age of thirteen when her father brought home the puppy, the skittish hound had always been Margaret’s dog. The elder Perry sister had named the second puppy, an Irish Water spaniel with a curly liver-brown coat and a tail that whipped like that of a donkey. Frippery was calm and loyal, with a menacing bark and no bite whatsoever.

  He became Charlotte’s chum for loping around Strawfield and slipping onto the Selwyn lands to explore the caves there. Margaret was happier at home, where Captain was often to be found curled at her feet alongside her work basket of quilt pieces.

  Frippery had been gone for years. Charlotte had been long away. Margaret had sickened within a year of her marriage, following her young husband to the grave.

  All that was left was this girl with her name and the hound that linked them. And the same vicarage, where her parents grew grayer and more absent each year.

  The walls were still papered in the tiny flowered print from Charlotte’s own youth, but a new shelf hung above the bed. Books were stacked upon it, and a small tin horse. Time marched on. Maggie was changing. It seemed unbearable that Charlotte should not know Maggie’s favorite book, or that she had not shared the girl’s joy over acquiring the toy horse.

  Charlotte blinked her eyes dry, then swallowed hard. She must sound calm and pleasant. “You know I’m to stay with you in your room, don’t you?”

  Another quick nod. “Why are you here?”

  For you. For us. “I had—been away too long.” This was not quite an answer, but it was close enough for the present. “Do you remember the last time I visited?”

  “I think so. I was only six then.” Childish fingers combed through the coarse fur of the hound’s back. “You plaited my hair with silk ribbons?”

  “I did. With green, to match your eyes.” Charlotte closed her lips on further words. How many nights had she climbed into bed in the four years since, praying to dream about that brief visit? Lord, please, let me see her again, if only in sleep. Let me remember the feel of her hair, the softness of her cheek.

  How it felt to seat her in my lap, to hold her like the precious girl she has always been to me.

  “I thought you were nice.” Lifting her hand from Captain’s back, Maggie pushed back her unbound hair. Tentatively, she glanced over her shoulder.

  Young Maggie Catlett was going to be a beauty, some had said. Rot and rubbish. She was already a beauty. Had been a beauty from the day of her birth.

  “I thought you were nice, too.” Charlotte smiled.

  Maggie turned forward again—but she scooted a few inches across the floor, closer to Charlotte’s skirts, despite Captain’s whine of protest.

  “I am not sure how long I can stay,” said Charlotte. “But may I write to you once I go? I should like to have a friend with whom to exchange letters.”

  The girl nodded, then tipped another curious glance over her shoulder. Her brows were straight and thoughtful over Perry-green eyes. “Why do you not write to Grandmama and Grandpapa?”

  Somehow Charlotte managed a laugh. “Oh, they know enough about me already.”

  Too much, really. For the past ten years, since Charlotte had first left Strawfield, it was enough for her parents to know that she was alive and sufficiently far away so as not to embarrass them. She did write to them, but rarely did she receive a reply. She wondered whether they read her letters at all.

  Plucking at a loose thread in a quilt block—one of her own resentful stitches, no doubt—she said, “I shall brush and plait your hair tonight, if you like. You may choose the silk ribbons; I’ve brought many colors from”—London, she almost said—“my travels.”

  “And will you tell me about the places you’ve been?”

  “Oh . . . you might find them dull. But I’ll tell you stories. How is that?” The stories would be the bare bits of truth of her life, as much as would be appropriate for a child’s ears. She could speak of evenings of wine and wit, of a house papered all in gold and furnished in red, and of a princess with many suitors who could choose none.

  She could not bear the idea of lying to Maggie about what she’d made of herself. Nor, however, could she tell the girl the truth.

  While she stayed in this room, she must try not to show too much feeling. She must not let the weight of every missed day with Maggie bow her shoulders, or strip from her the joy of the present. If Charlotte could find the stolen coins—if she could claim the reward of five thousand pounds—there would be no more regrets.

  Her London life had paid well, but only well enough to finance her escape. Her house in Mayfair was now an empty shell, almost everything else converted into money, handed out in bribes. She had returned to Strawfield with a few trunks, not much more than what she had taken to London a decade before. Barely a woman at eighteen, immortalized on Edward Selwyn’s canvases, fallen in heart and body.

  Charlotte’s chest felt heavy, and she breathed deeply to settle the old weight into its familiar position. “I must go now, to see how dinner preparations are getting on.” As good an excuse as any for giving them both a bit of space. “Your grandpapa will be tired and sad when he returns home. We can at least feed him well, hmm?”

  She rose from the bed, then crouched next to the girl. Stroking back the hair that fell over Maggie’s face, soft as silk thread, she asked, “All right?”

  The piquant little face frowned—then Maggie nodded. “May I bring Captain down to dinner, Aunt Charlotte?”

  “She’s not usually allowed in the dining room, is she? Best not. But she can wait in the corridor just outside. It’s nice to know an old friend is nearby, isn’t it?” Charlotte smiled.

  When Maggie managed a small return of the expression, Charlotte rose to her feet and exited the small chamber.

  Benedict Frost stood outside the door of the spare chamber, wearing an expression of doubt that clashed with the assured lines of his uniform. “Miss Perry?”

  “Yes.” She closed the distance between them. “What can I help you with, Mr. Frost?”

  He lowered his voice, no more than a faint tickle of sound in her ear. “An answer. Please believe I do not mean to pry; I only seek not to blunder.”

  Chill wariness touched between her shoulder blades. “Of course,” she replied equally low.

  “Is Miss Maggie aware that you are her mother?”

  * * *

  Benedict did not regret asking Charlotte the question, though he guessed it would break the easy flirtation into which they had fallen.

  Charlotte’s hand clutched his sleeve, a spasmodic gesture of alarm, and pushed him into his own chamber. “No,” she whispered, shutting the door behind them. “No, she does not know. How could you be . . . how did you realize?”

  He couldn’t say, exactly. As he’d made to return to his chamber once Charlotte entered Maggie’s, he had overheard her speak to the girl. Her voice was different, like a string plucked that ran straight to her heart. It harmonized with the way she had spoken of her supposed niece earlier.

  “I heard in your voice how much you loved her,” he tried to explain.

  It was a tone of yearning for something that was already present, a yearning so deep it could not be satisfied. He couldn’t think of anything he had wanted that much in his life. Wanting in the negative—to leave England, to undo his blindness—was not the same thing as treasuring another creature so deeply that one’s voice shimmered like gold.

  The frantic grip on his arm relaxed. “If she hears love in my voice, that cannot be a bad thing. But she is not to know of—the other. Known as the child of my sister, who was wed, Maggie is legitimate. Her life’s path will be easier.”

  He wanted to take up her hand, to hold it in his own. “And yours?”

  “The best thing I can do for my daughter is to be her aunt.” The words were heavy with sadness—but also determination.

  He flicked his fingers out, just a whisper of a touch against the back of her hand. “You are brave, Miss Perry.”
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br />   “I am what I have had to be, Mr. Frost.” Her hand turned beneath his, and for a second they were palm against palm. “As are you.”

  And then the door opened, and she left.

  * * *

  “I hope it was no inconvenience to travel to Cheshire. I have summoned you here as an admirer of your work.” The Marquess of Randolph leaned back in the chair behind his study’s desk, regarding Edward with hooded eyes.

  “Yes, my lord,” Edward Selwyn murmured. “I mean—no, my lord. No inconvenience. I am honored.”

  So honored, he hardly knew what he was saying. The Cheshire seat of the Randolph marquessate was everything he had imagined luxury to be. Where the floors in his Strawfield home were wood or slate, these were marble. His own walls were carved wood or hung with paper; the Randolph chimneypieces were marble and the walls were swaddled in painted silks.

  And best of all, in a place of honor behind the marquess’s desk, hung one of Edward’s paintings. It was a small figure in oils inspired by Botticelli, depicting a Venus pudica arising from the sea. One of Edward’s early works, but still a favorite of his.

  “I am honored,” Edward repeated, trying to sound both respectful and confident, “that my art has come to your attention. It would be my pleasure to paint your portrait, my lord.”

  Randolph’s pockets were deep, and there was no denying the man was powerful. This, at last, could be the patronage he had been waiting for. He’d be the next Gainsborough, the next Lawrence.

  “A portrait isn’t precisely what I had in mind.” A decanter of brandy and a pair of glasses sat on the marquess’s desk. Randolph poured out a generous measure into each glass, then handed one to Edward. “I was thinking of an exhibition of your work. A private one.”

  The brandy stung Edward’s nose. He’d arrived only an hour ago and was hoping for a cold luncheon of some sort. It was early, surely, for drinking brandy. But marquesses kept to their own schedule.

  He took a small sip. “Excellent brandy. And an excellent idea, too, to arrange an exhibition. I know a gallery in London that would—”

  “I haven’t settled on a place yet, but I rather think it will . . . not be London.”

  Edward blinked. “Well . . . the Royal Academy exhibits in London. If the purpose is to. . .” He coughed. “To promote an artist’s work, then that would be the most logical—”

  “Ah. Well.” Randolph folded his hands. Edward noticed the marquess hadn’t touched his brandy and quickly set down his own glass. “What I’m looking for, to be honest, is information. About your model.”

  Somehow the nobleman’s stillness guided Edward’s eyes back up to the painting behind the desk. To the Venus, dark-haired, her straight locks like a waterfall over her bare body, revealing as much as they cloaked. About her neck winked a necklace in diamonds and emeralds, her only garment.

  “If you tell me what I need to know,” added Randolph, “then I’ll see to that exhibition.”

  Edward hesitated. Since his marriage to an earl’s daughter eight years before, he had grown used to having few secrets. Really, there was only one.

  Randolph lifted his glass at last. “Regardless of its location, I promise the result will be to your advantage.”

  A new Lawrence. A new Turner. As good as Gainsborough.

  Edward took up his own glass and clinked it against Randolph’s. “What would you like to know?”

  Chapter Five

  Dinner represented Benedict’s first acquaintance with both Maggie and Mrs. Perry. Upon entering the dining room, he made a bow to the vicar’s grandchild as though she were a grown woman, recalling how much his sister, Georgette, had enjoyed being treated so during her girlhood.

  “Mr. Frost,” Maggie replied. “I am giving you my finest curtsy.”

  “I have no doubt of it.” He smiled, then turned toward the doorway as another set of footsteps entered the room.

  “Ah, the blind traveler,” said an unfamiliar female voice. “Welcome to my husband’s vicarage, Mr. Frost. Let me think—the usual sort of greeting won’t make you feel welcome if you can’t see it. Shall we shake hands?”

  “If you like, yes.” Benedict extended a hand. “Though your words of welcome are fine enough for me.”

  Knowing the vicar’s wife to be dedicated to scholarship, he had expected an ethereal creature with the dreamy voice of the perpetually distracted. Instead, Charlotte’s mother possessed a matter-of-fact tone and a remarkably firm grip.

  “Be seated, everyone,” said Mrs. Perry. “Frost, stick out your left hand and you’ll take hold of the chair. That’s right. We can begin our meal now. No reason to wait for the vicar with all this food ready to eat.”

  Benedict thought a man attending to a serving girl’s last moments of life ought at least to come home to a hot dinner and the sympathy of his family. But rather than gainsay his hostess, he found the chair to which he’d been directed, and a slide and scrape of furniture ensued as the three generations of females took their places. Charlotte and Maggie, he gathered, were across from him, and their hostess sat at one end.

  Service was the usual à la francaise, with all the foods laid out on the table. He caught the aroma of roasted beef, of some vegetable in a peppery, buttery sauce.

  “Mr. Frost,” said Charlotte, “shall I describe the dishes around the compass?”

  “Do you recall which way is north?” He could not resist teasing her.

  “Oh, good heavens—that is too difficult for one who hasn’t a lodestone in her head. What of describing the table like a clock face?” When he agreed, she said, “There’s a joint of mutton at nine o’clock to you, and a fish at three.”

  On she went, describing the vegetables, and Benedict did a creditable job serving his own dinner just as the others did. Once he missed the dish of peas and scrabbled for nothing, but someone pushed the dish toward him without a word.

  It was a simple dinner, but well-cooked. And it was rather nice to be taken care of. On board a ship, one had nothing fresh to eat, little leisure, and even less space. Nothing to oneself save one’s thoughts.

  When Benedict had consumed about half the contents of his plate, the vicarage door opened. The usual fumblings ensued: greatcoat removed, hat stowed, boots scraped. Then came a heavy thump, as of a piece of furniture being moved. Quiet words, then the shutting of the door again.

  A few seconds later, the light tread of the Reverend John Perry entered the dining room. “Oh—you have begun your meal without me.”

  “Everything was hot, Vicar,” said his wife. “You wouldn’t have wanted us to waste the good work of the cook, I’m sure.”

  “Right, right. No, of course not. Frost, a servant brought your trunk over from the Pig and Blanket.”

  That explained the thump. Benedict offered thanks, then added, “How is . . . Nance?” He realized he didn’t know her last name.

  “She’s at peace now, poor girl.” The vicar settled himself in the empty seat at the head of the table. “There will have to be an inquest. The coroner is convening a jury. I shall be called as a witness.”

  No one could have missed the strain in his voice.

  Or in Maggie’s. “Are you in trouble, Grandpapa? Will you have to leave us?”

  “Not in trouble, my girl. My help is needed with answering questions.” The vicar collected a plateful of food along with his thoughts. “I can’t think what the coroner will want to know, though. I’ll describe the scene, I suppose. The prayers—will they want me to remember the prayers I said, Mrs. Perry? I do not recall . . . I was agitated, you know, and I might have stumbled over the words.”

  “I cannot imagine your exact words relevant, Papa,” said Charlotte quietly. “They will want to know only that you were there at the time of her passing.”

  “But her hands—Potter wanted me to fold her hands across her breast once she expired. Can it matter? I hesitated—but I should not have, to offer Potter comfort. I did so, of course. He was right.”

  “Her fam
ily will have to be notified,” said Mrs. Perry.

  “She has no family,” said the vicar. “She was orphaned three years ago, and that was when she began her work serving at the inn.”

  “Her family is Strawfield,” said Charlotte. “She will be greatly missed by the habitués of the Pig and Blanket.”

  “One of them likely did the . . . the act.” The vicar chose his words carefully. “The terrible act. Nance had little to say about that—she had weakened and fallen out of her wits. I couldn’t make sense of what she said.”

  What did she say? Benedict wanted to ask, though he supposed it would be callous.

  “I wish I had gone with you to translate, then,” said Mrs. Perry.

  “It was not another language,” corrected the vicar. “No, she only said ‘cat eye’ and ‘cloak’ a few times, and she shivered. Cold, I suppose, as the life drained from her . . . .” He trailed off.

  Charlotte broke in. “You must be hungry for your dinner, Papa. We’ll talk of it later.”

  “Must we?” The reverend sounded tense, reluctant.

  “No, not if you don’t wish to.” Charlotte paused; when she spoke again, the color of her voice was warmer. “Maggie, would you care for peas or potatoes?”

  “I want to pet Captain.” This, Benedict had gathered, was a beloved old hound.

  “After dinner, dearest.”

  This was the last Benedict heard from the girl at table. Since he did not hear her chair drawn back, she must have stayed. Maybe even ate her food.

  Maggie didn’t mind having someone to look after her, it seemed. With the grandfather anxious and the grandmother more concerned with the ancient past than the present, Benedict wouldn’t be surprised if Maggie spent more time with servants than with her relatives.

  He had done the same himself. In boyhood, surrounded by books that seemed to mock him for his difficulty deciphering their wiggling, shifting letters, he’d often fled to the kitchen.

  Yes, he had been sick for home his first time aboard ship, but not in the sense that he wanted to return to live amidst his parents’ books. No, he missed being in a space where one felt at ease, surrounded by the clink of crockery and the splash of dishes being cleaned; of voices calm and orderly. Of errands, fetching and carrying, and the praise heaped on one for completing a task well that one did not have to do.