The Emperor's Conspiracy (6 page)

But it was hard to keep that in mind sometimes, with the raucous shouting and shoving and shrieks.

She hated it.

It was poverty twisted into something even more desperate, more degrading, than it already was.

The front door opened, not, as one would expect, into a room, but onto a small landing with a staircase leading only downward, to the heaving, shouting mass of people below in what had once been a cellar, but was now a sort of open pit.

The smell of sweat, vomit, urine, and cheap alcohol rose off the crowd like steam.

As they stepped off the last stair into the seething mass, a woman slammed into her, and Kit swung her out of the way.

The woman was laughing, but desperately, as if this would be the only time she would laugh for a month, and she wanted to make sure she laughed long and loud.

She frightened Charlotte.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she saw Bill Jenkins. He said nothing, jerking his head to the back of the room.

Charlotte followed him, sensing Kit just behind her, and found the going easier. People moved out of the way for Bill Jenkins. Being built like a garden outhouse had its advantages.

Advantages Luke wasn’t shy to use.

And there was Luke himself, sitting in his corner in an old armchair, surrounded by a few of the old lads, but mostly people she didn’t know. There were more strangers hanging about him each time she came here. Another reminder that they were losing something. Losing the connection they once had.

He would say she was the one trying to sever it, but she knew it was not so. Not entirely.

When he saw her, a look passed across his face; pain, a need to hurt, and she went very still, wondering if they would play the same game they had last time. Humiliate Charlotte. It wasn’t a game she cared to repeat, and she’d told Luke if he ever tried it again, her visits were over.

He seemed to remember that, at the last moment, or
maybe it was the look in her eye, because he pushed himself up and walked over to her.

His old injury hurt him this evening, she could see, and her whole body softened, her arms coming up before she was even aware, to embrace him.

“We’re feeling lovey-dovey tonight, are we?” He spoke against her ear, his warm breath holding a hint of brandy—the fine stuff they drank over on her end of town.

“You know I will love you until the day I die.” She shouldn’t have to say this to him, but she suddenly felt the need to remind him that she truly never would be free of him. He was buried deep in her soul. It might be a different kind of love to the one he wanted, or thought he wanted, but it was stronger than that love, to her mind. The love of family. No matter what he did, no matter how it hurt her, she would always love him, even if she could no longer see him because of what he’d become.

He said nothing to that, but took her hand and led her past the curious eyes of his hangers-on and into the back room he used as his office.

He looked over her shoulder, and she turned her head slightly, saw Kit waiting to be told what to do. Luke gave a tiny shake of his head and closed the door, muting the roar to a manageable level.

They were alone in the beautiful room. It was polished, and gleaming, each piece as fine as any to be found in the best homes. A haven of absolute luxury. In one corner, a tight spiral staircase twirled upward, the only way to access the rooms on the floors above.

Charlotte sighed and sank into a plush French chair.

“You came home early from your weekend house party.” He did not even try to hide that he knew this. Had made it his business to know.

“I saw someone from the old days. Someone I didn’t want to see again.” She stretched out her legs and tipped back her head, eyes closed, suddenly tired to her bones.

“Who?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you’d know him. You were already in the Hulks when I worked his place.”

“What’d he do?”

Something in his voice warned her and she opened her eyes, saw his fists were clenched, and the tendons in his neck stood out in cords.

“Tried to rape me.” She spoke calmly, her thoughts racing. Why was he so angry, so ready to explode? His fury seemed to come from nowhere.

“Want him dead?” He spoke as if offering her a cup of tea.

She hesitated. She wanted Frethers to pay. Wanted him to pay some compensation to those whose lives he’d ruined, if that was possible. “Maybe,” she conceded. “Not right away, though.”

“And before then?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want you putting your nose in this, Luke. I’m going to take care of it. It’s high time I did.”

He looked at her, his eyes sharp and hard. The way they’d been since she’d nursed him back from death after his time in the Hulks. It ripped something deep inside her every time she looked into them.

“You might want to rethink playing games with your victim before going for the kill.” His voice was as hard as his eyes.

She frowned. “What have you heard?”

“Someone’s been asking questions about you. Straight after you came back. Trying to find out about you from the servants of those useless nobs you hang around with.”

She sat up straight in the chair. “Well, we both know they don’t know anything about me.”

He conceded this with a wave of his hand. “The fact they was asking the wrong people don’t mean it ain’t concerning that someone is asking at all.”

She nodded. “How do you know about it? You don’t hang around with the servants of useless nobs.”

“Got my sources. You know that.”

Oh, yes she did. Some of those sources were to help him steal from those nobs; some were to make sure the nobs didn’t lay a finger on her.

“Any clue who was doing the asking?” She couldn’t believe Frethers had recognized her, but if he’d heard from Lady Holliday’s husband that she was the one who’d given his wife and children a lift to London, that might account for it.

“Whoever it is, those that were fishin’ said they didn’t know. And I was most persuasive in the asking.”

A quick, hot flash of fear ran through her at that, at the casual way he said it. The way his lips twisted.

“Luke, you didn’t—”

“You think I’d tolerate a couple of noses going round my own patch, ferreting out information on you, Charlie? You really think that?”

Her heart stood still a moment, then came painfully back to life again so that she almost cried out. She shook her head, her hand curling into a fist just under her left breast. “No. You wouldn’t tolerate that.”

He said nothing, turning his back to her and running a finger along a shelf of burnished leather books. She had taught him to read after learning with Catherine, and it was the one secret pleasure he had that only she knew of.

He devoured those books at night, in private. The rest of the gang thought he only had them for show. To thumb his nose at the nobs and prove he could own a library of books as well as the next person.

“I’m setting someone to watch you, Charlie. For that type to not know who they were working for—well, it’s rum. And if they did know, they’d ’ave said. It ain’t worth it to keep quiet. But these prats … they wouldn’t change their story. No matter what I had Billy do.”

She was quiet, not able to speak at the thought of what Bill had done. At Luke’s order. She watched his back—broad, muscled. It had carried her burdens, once, and she had eased the muscles in his shoulders, soothed him, and given him some comfort.

He tilted his head, looking up and snagging a volume high on the shelf. His face in profile was strong. Hard but so achingly familiar and beloved. “There is something dangerous
here, and I’m keeping an eye, no matter what you say about it.”

She stood. “You wouldn’t have killed them a year ago.”

He shook his head. “I would have killed them a year ago.” He turned back to her with a shrug. “I just wouldn’t have told you about it.”

8

A
gin house?

Edward stared at the door Charlotte Raven disappeared into with her servant, and knew there was no way to follow without revealing himself.

These places were notorious for their cliques. Strangers were not tolerated.

He felt uneasy as it was, this deep into the Tothill Road rookery. Especially without a weapon.

He’d never ventured here, though he lived only a twenty-minute walk away. He’d never had the need.

If he were going to wait for her, he should wait closer to home, rather than the rancid alley he’d wedged himself into. She would pass him on the way back. But the thought of her, in there, amid the ruffians and thieves, made him almost nauseous. And his feet would not move.

What possible business could she have?

She was so far beyond what she seemed that if he had not
been standing in the stink and decay of Tothill Road, he wouldn’t have believed it himself.

At last the door of the house was flung open and he heard the muted roar of the drinkers as Charlotte and her man stepped out into the night.

They turned and spoke with someone behind them, their voices too quiet to hear over the noise that swirled around them. A simple, rhythmic melody was fighting to be heard over shouting and boozy jocularity.

As they took the stairs down to the street, a man stepped into the doorway, dominating it with his size, and closed the door.

The noise was suddenly gone, and the night too dark to see, after the light from within was closed off.

The two said nothing to each other, turning back the way they had come, and walking at a brisk pace. The man whistled the same melody Edward had heard coming from the house, but Charlotte Raven made no sound, so deep in thought, she must truly trust the man beside her to keep an eye out for footpads and thieves.

They passed him, hidden in his narrow alley, without a second glance.

They did not seem to be lovers, which had been his first, hot thought. They did not touch as they walked, and Edward sensed no spark between them, other than a comfortable friendship.

He started after them, keeping well back and stepping carefully, so his boots made no noise on the cobbles.

And then, suddenly, he was no longer on the street. He was up against a wall in another narrow alleyway, with a man slashing a knife terribly, terribly close to his eye.

It felt like someone was using a blacksmith’s vise on his shoulder, and Edward made a strangled cry of pain as he dipped his knees, twisting as he went down and kicking hard at the shin of the man clamping him.

He got loose of the iron grasp, but his kick bruised the outside of his foot and he hopped out of reach, his hand massaging his shoulder.

His attacker lashed out and Edward was slammed up against the wall again, with a hand closed over his throat. The knife was just visible from the corner of his eye.

“Mind telling me why you’re following the lady?”

Edward’s eyes widened. “Miss Raven?” He croaked the words out, past the unyielding chokehold on his windpipe. This cutthroat wanted an account of his interest in Miss Raven, not his purse?

“Aye, so you know the lady then? And what is your business, following her about at night?”

Edward lifted his knee, fast, vicious, as if trying to hit the man in the balls, and as the man moved slightly away, clicking his tongue in sarcastic chastisement, Edward used the space he’d opened up to hit out with his fist, driving it straight into the footpad’s stomach.

With a soft whoosh of air, he let go of Edward’s throat, getting in a hard smack of his elbow just above Edward’s eye.

Edward punched out, his fist connecting with the man’s
jaw, and with a choking cry, the man went down, his knife clattering to the cobbles.

“What is
your
interest in Charlotte Raven?” Edward asked, crouching down beside him.

The man spat, just missing Edward’s face, and rolled away into the pitch black of the alley.

Edward heard the pounding of feet and then nothing.

Nursing his hand, he picked up the knife and walked back out onto the street. Charlotte and her servant were gone, and he had nothing to show for his evening but a bruised left eye, grazed knuckles, and a lot more questions.

Who the hell was Charlotte Raven?