The Emperor's Conspiracy (15 page)

Luke clenched his teeth, shifted his body as if to find some relief. “You want to know where I hurt? My hips were smashed when I was sixteen, when I was thrown down four flights of stairs on the Hulks, and a barrel of water was thrown down after me, landing on me at the bottom.” Luke sucked in a long, whistling breath of air. “I came by my hatred of nobs the honest way. Didn’t like ’em much when they threw me in Old Bailey for hitting out at a nob who backhanded Charlie for smearing coal dust on his Turkish carpet. But when they sentenced me to transportation for stealing some bread a couple years later, and threw me in the Hulks to wait for a ship to take me, well, that’s when I got my hate on good and proper.” He shifted again, and the pain seemed to ease back a little. “Ever been in one of the Hulks, Lord Nob? Ever even been near one?” Luke laughed, hoarse and weary. “It is how I will always imagine hell. Dark, cold, damp; men crying, rocking, or giggling mad. It is starvation, and depravity, and pain come alive and floating on the Thames in the shape of ships.”

Edward stared at him. “How did you get out?”

Luke got his legs under him and pulled himself up, using a table and his massive arms and shoulders to do it. “Charlie got me out. First thing she did when Lady La Di Da took her in was get the money to bribe the watch.”

“Were you—?”

“I was almost dead. They probably thought I’d be dead any day. That it didn’t matter turning me loose, because I wouldn’t live to enjoy it.” Luke cautiously moved first one leg, then the other, shaking them out.

“But you lived.”

“Thanks to Charlie.”

“And Lady La Di Da’s money.” God knew he wasn’t exactly Catherine Howe’s favorite person at the moment, but Luke seemed very able to forget who had contributed to his release.

Luke’s lips twisted. He finally stood, but Edward saw the pinched look on his face. His pain was very real.

“Your men out there going to stop me leaving?” Edward looked down the stairs.

Luke shook his head. “I’ll call down. You can go.” He walked to the top of the stairs, and Edward felt a reluctant admiration for him. He refused to limp, but his lips were white with the agony the few steps cost him.

“Boys, let the man through.” His voice trembled a little, but Edward heard two
aye
s.

He started down the first step.

“Wait.”

He stopped, looked back over his shoulder, and stared at the white envelope thrust in his direction.

“Take it.” Luke shoved it at him.

As Edward’s fingers closed over it, Luke stepped away, his whole body hunched over itself. His eyes showed nothing but fury, though.

A fury stronger, more powerful than the pain.

In a wave of understanding that ripped any sense of superiority from Edward with the drama and flare of a toreador before a raging bull, he saw that fury had fueled Luke’s rise to power; it fueled everything he did.

This was no lightweight opponent.

Edward descended the stairs slowly, aware of Luke’s steady gaze on his back.

Luke already knew what the letter said, so giving it up was purely a way back into Charlotte’s good graces. Handing it over was less a concession and more the throwing down of a gauntlet.

H
er heels rang out on the cobbles of Tothill Road like castanets, the staccato sound as fast as the thoughts racing in her head.

She had cried. Shouted.

She didn’t do that anymore, her temper and her responses muted through the years. Young ladies did not exhibit strong emotion of any kind, except devotion to their families.

She had certainly not played the lady tonight. She’d always winced at the sound of a raging fishwife, or the corner whore, shrieking abuse. But there was a certain catharsis in saying how you truly felt.

It would make no difference. Luke would still do as he pleased, would not take her into account.

Perhaps, when he’d first come back from the Hulks, when
he’d been more grateful to her, and brooded less over the system that put him there he would have. But not anymore.

He was a different person. It would be astonishing if he weren’t.

She realized she was halfway down the street, and Edward was still not out of the gin house.

She slowed, stopped, and turned.

Kit was walking toward her, a limp in his step, and she frowned at the thought of Sammy turning on him for helping her.

They had fought. Chosen sides.

She had put friend against friend. Or Luke had. Or both of them. She rubbed her forehead.

This would have been her world, this street, if she’d stayed with Luke, as he’d begged her. She’d have been watched and guarded so that she would be safe. She would have had to listen to the sounds of despair below in the pit as the poor of Tothill Road made their pitiful kind of merry.

She started back. As fast as she had left.

Luke would say it was no different, her life with Catherine. She was required to walk about with a maid or groom, was chaperoned to every function. Forced to listen to the superficial social lies of the upper class as they made
their
kind of merry.

And he was right.

She smiled at the idea of being a captive princess in the rookeries, or a restrained mouse in the glitter of the ton.

But Catherine’s love and generosity had never come with a single string attached. That was what had won her the battle.

She reached Kit, lifted a hand to his cheek, but he shook his head, straightening his jacket and standing tall to show her nothing was wrong. She took a step past him to the gin house, and he made a sound in the back of his throat, as if forcing himself not to speak. Not to advise her against it.

But she hadn’t even got her foot on the first step when the door opened and Edward stepped out.

He looked even worse than he had before. There was the shadow of a new bruise on his jaw. And in his hand, he held the envelope.

19

“W
hat does it say?” Charlotte sat close to the fire. Ridiculous to have a fire going in midsummer, but she was chilled, and basked in the warmth of it. Little luxuries like these always struck her full force at odd moments. Who would have guessed she’d be able to have a fire in midsummer if she wanted one? “Who is it from?”

Edward swirled the brandy Greenfelt had poured for him, the letter in his other hand.

He seemed to be weighing what to say to her, and she tried to suppress her irritation.

“It’s unsigned.” He took a sip. Held the letter out. “Read for yourself.”

She took it, studied it. Lifted her head, frowning. “‘His death is not my fault, whatever they’re whispering. I didn’t do a damn thing.’ And then a little picture of an arrow.”

He lifted a shoulder, and she could see, even though he tried not to show it, that the movement was painful.

“It meant something to Luke. I could see it did.” Charlotte studied the scrawled note again. The paper was thick and expensive, the hand that wrote it careless, but with a carelessness that could not disguise a good education.

“There is only one death close to my stepfather at the moment that I know of, and that’s Geoffrey’s. I knew he was lying when he told me he didn’t know Emma was here in London, but I didn’t think he knew about Geoffrey’s death.”

“Perhaps he didn’t. He didn’t receive this note, after all.”

Edward conceded the point with a nod that she thought held a hint of embarrassment. “But the writer of this note assumes he does. Declares his innocence. Which begs the question, what is my stepfather involved in that he would know of Geoffrey’s death before me?”

“If they’re talking about Geoffrey at all,” Charlotte reminded him. “We don’t know that they are.”

“If the death is Geoffrey’s, what connection has Luke got to all this? How did this mean something to him? That he’s involved with my stepfather and my brother-in-law beggars belief.”

Charlotte lifted her head in shock as a thought occurred to her, caught Edward’s gaze. “Frethers.” She looked into the fire. Thought it through. “It’s Frethers.”

When she turned back, Edward was watching her with complete attention.

“Luke has a deal with Frethers. He’s involved in some scheme with him.”

“I agree that’s a start. Geoffrey at least knew Frethers, and you say Luke knows him, too?”

She nodded. Twisted her fingers together. “This arrow.” She unclasped her hands, held up the letter. “Frethers calls himself Cherub, when he goes out to the brothels. It would fit that he signs his letters with an arrow.”

Edward set his glass down with a sharp crack. “How do you know about Frethers? About what he calls himself?”

She looked up at him, surprised. He sounded angry. “I went deep into the stews the other night, met one of the boys he uses. Bribed him for information. I planned to stop Frethers’s little habit. By blackmail, if I had to. Luke interrupted the meeting, told me my plans to bring Frethers down couldn’t happen.” She pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear. “I’ve tried for the last two days to get more information, but Luke has shut everyone down. I’ve gotten nowhere.”

Edward said nothing. He strode toward the doors out to the garden, then swung back. “Why are
you
trying to bring Frethers down? I’m not saying he shouldn’t be stopped, but why you?”

She realized he didn’t know. That Emma had not told him. She wondered if this secret would be the one that finally did him in. Pushed him away. “Frethers tried to rape me when I was twelve. Thought I was a boy. I was dressed like one, and filthy black from cleaning his chimneys. When he realized I was a girl, he beat me in frustration, cracked a rib or two. He would have broken more, if Mr. Ashcroft hadn’t heard the ruckus and come in to get me.”

Edward had stopped his pacing; he stared at her. “You told Emma about it when you heard Geoffrey had made a plan to send the boys to him for a weekend?”

She nodded.

“Risky, wasn’t it? Emma might have been a gossip.” His voice was not quite steady.

She raised her eyebrows. “Gossip is one thing; seeing three boys sent off to Frethers without trying to do anything about it is another. I took a chance, because I couldn’t do anything else.”

“Do you know what business Frethers and Luke are doing together?” His voice was carefully neutral.

She looked at him curiously, then shook her head. “I wouldn’t have known they had a deal at all if Luke hadn’t tried to put a stop to my plans.”

“So we can link Frethers to Geoffrey, to my stepfather and to Luke.” He tipped back the last of the brandy and placed the glass on the table. “And somehow, Frethers is afraid someone will think he had a hand in Geoffrey’s death.”

“It isn’t that far from the truth.” Charlotte leaned back a little from the fire. “He set in motion the events that caused Geoffrey to lose his wife and sons. Forced him to confront what he had almost allowed to happen to his own children. Even if Geoffrey pulled the trigger himself, one might say Frethers was culpable.”

E
dward climbed the stairs to the main reading room of his club, but for once the quiet murmur of male voices and the click of glasses on high-polished wood did not soothe him.

He had left Charlotte only because Catherine Howe had
joined them, ending their frank discussion. He’d been forced to leave by the rules of propriety, and he had never felt so restricted by them until today.