Page 1 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“ S uch a thing is unnatural,” the barristers had muttered amongst themselves, not quite hushed enough not to be overheard, “a widow young enough to be a debutante.”

Privately, Ember Donnelly Withers agreed.

She sat with her hands folded in her lap, clutching her reticule until the knuckles under her satin gloves felt prone to split apart. The starch was still shiny and pungent on her mourning dress. It refused to allow her movement. It protested at any attempts to breathe.

Her tightly coiled curls had been dragged into order, pinned to her head with painful precision, and oiled to an acceptable dark brown. She had been curated into this picture, tamed to acceptability by her maid in the hopes that the people in this room would see her as worthy of regard.

Her maid, Ember thought, was naive. Covering up the notes of cherry red in her hair, lashing away the kinks and coils into pinned-down obedience, none of that mattered. None of it mattered because the whole package was wrong. Ember herself was wrong.

Any doubt about that was dispelled by the presence of the other mourners, by their very regard.

My stepchildren , she thought with a humorless twist of her lips, regarding the two men and two women crowded into the little room.

The youngest of them was ten years her senior.

They were, all of them, clustered together like insects in the heat, only pausing in their plotting to sneer at her, dwarfed in the barrister’s big leather chair, draped in unforgiving black crepe.

“The reality of the situation,” the barrister with the white hair said with a sigh, addressing Ember as though she were a child in leading strings rather than a grown woman, “is that your husband’s will was written with very vague language.

He does not specify which business you are to inherit, my dear, only that you are entitled to one of them as such that you may continue to thrive and support yourself. ”

“It seems obvious to me,” Ember said, attempting to damper her Irish accent, attempting to force the barrister to take her seriously, “that by this very language, it is clear that he is referring to a successful business.”

One of her stepsons scoffed. “What does it matter how successful it is, pigeon? You’re just going to sell the thing anyway.”

“Because she wants more money,” the eldest daughter said with a disgusted sniff. “Her kind always do.”

Ember was uncertain if her kind was simply women, young women, or worst of all, her countrymen.

She supposed her reaction would be the same regardless, and so she smiled back at the woman, flashing her incisors, and replied, “I’m sorry your own husband hasn’t knocked off yet, Beatrice. That must be getting awfully tedious.”

Beatrice, of course, immediately fainted, while her sister started gasping for air like a broken train horn. The brothers, bless their black hearts, both looked like they wanted to laugh.

The barrister only sighed, aggrieved.

“Mrs. Withers,” he said to Ember, again treating her like a lost little girl who couldn’t possibly know what she had meant by her words, “perhaps we ought to get you home and I will drop by when we’ve reached an accord.”

“Home?” Ember repeated, blinking at him. “Where’s that now? Do I have a home?”

“Oh,” wailed Beatrice, suddenly miraculously awake now. “Now the little Jezebel wants our ancestral estate!”

“By no means!” cried the other sister.

Meanwhile, Ember privately thought that the only woman in this room right now who understood her suffering was the one just invoked. Queen Jezebel, in Ember’s estimation, hadn’t deserved any of it either.

“Madams,” the barrister clucked, “ladies. Mrs. Withers should not be put immediately onto the streets! She must be given a reasonable amount of time to—”

“To steal all the silverware?” suggested the only sibling who hadn’t spoken yet, the youngest brother, whose regard of Ember was distinctly hungry in nature.

Ember bit her own tongue to prevent her body’s desire to shiver. She bit it until it bled.

In the end, they had handed her a deed, old and brittle around the edges, and the barrister, in his kindest voice, had suggested she find somewhere new to lie her head as quickly as possible.

She had ridden all the way back to the house without looking at the deed in her hands, utterly convinced that literacy had gone the way of serenity in her own body.

She wouldn’t even try until she’d slammed herself into her marital bedroom and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

She intended to rip this blasted gown from her body and to send it heaped and undignified into a corner with all the fanfare of a hanged man who’d just been cut loose.

The staff, at least, didn’t know what the meeting had entailed. All of their awful, peaceful faces clearly thought that Mr. Withers had been intelligent enough to use specifics in his own damned will.

Fools.

Ember demanded bath water so hot it might boil her, wanting to feel the revulsion sloughing off, welcoming it.

She knew she should write her parents, write to Kildare, and tell them she was coming home. She knew that was the sensible thing, but the taste of it on her bruised and punctured tongue was unbearable. She could not. Would not.

She had left. She had come to London. And London was hers now. It was hers, and she would not be giving it back. They could take everything else, but not that. Not the only thing she’d really claimed in her short life.

She tore open her vanity table, clawing through it.

She heaved into the wall the pack of playing cards Mr. Withers had put there in all his stupid, blind optimism that he’d live to see another day.

Just last week, he’d put them there. He’d chuckled at her.

He’d walked out of the room. And then he’d died.

He’d just … died!

The bastard.

Not a single word of warning. Not a flicker of respect as Ember had raged and screamed and clawed at his body. Not a single word of advice as he’d been carried out of their home, silent as the grave.

She didn’t know when she started crying, only that her face was wet. She threw the jewels, the combs, the bottles of cosmetics, sending each thing crashing into the stone and wood around her, all of it just as cold as her husband. Just as dead.

Until the only thing left was a silly little thing, cheap, worthless, and older than her marriage.

She’d forgotten she put it there, in truth. Forgotten she’d even brought one from home. Her mother had packed it in her things when she’d left, and Ember had laughed to find it. She had only put it here to age enough that she would not feel guilty throwing it away.

But there it was. A brooch made of rushes, a bit browned, a bit bent, woven into Kildare’s own cross.

It was a bit of fluff for pilgrims and lookyloos and children. It was cheap.

And it was the only thing she could not bring herself to throw.

She picked it up with a gentleness far greater than was necessary and slumped to the lush carpet on the floor. She sat with it cradled in her hands for a long time, silent and frozen. Eventually, she felt herself move and found the scattered deck of cards rebuilding itself in her hands.

She felt guilty about throwing them, about disrespecting that last little moment she’d had with her husband before he’d wandered off ’cross the pearly gates.

Her husband, a silver-haired man who’d chosen a bride of seventeen because she had a head for numbers, who’d treated her as more accountant than wife, had been delighted to test her talents in so many new and funny ways.

For the two years they’d spent married, he’d have her plot routes home using only street numbers. He’d have her read long sums and recite them back. He’d ambush her with puzzles and calculations and scenarios. And most recently, he had taken great delight in having her cheat at cards.

“They say the house always wins,” he’d said to her. The last thing he’d said. “But Ember, my dear, you would topple the house right over.”

And after all, she thought as her heart started to slow back down, that was all she wanted right now. To knock a house over. To kick it until its walls buckled and it fell to dust.

“Sorry, my friend,” she said aloud to the dead man. “I know you didn’t mean it when you died.”

She wished her mam were here. Wished she knew that in her darkest moments, Ember had found that cross and that it was exactly what she needed.

She imagined her voice, crooning softly, “Brigid always knows, my love. That’s why we remember her.”

She never said Saint Brigid. Cara Donnelly never had. And Ember thought sometimes she was the only one who’d ever noticed.

She’d asked her about it once, when she was little.

“Mam, do you mean the saint or the goddess?”

“What do you mean, A stóirín?” she had answered, insisting on familiarity as though Brigid were her old friend. “They’re one and the same.”

Ember, despite herself, felt a smile cracking through the iron veil of her rage. Leave it to her mother to comfort through heresy.

It was enough. Enough to get her up off of the floor and over to the deed she’d been handed.

She didn’t bother bracing herself. There weren’t enough braces left in her anyhow. She knew those four, the Withers brood, had chosen the absolute worst, most insulting, lowest-value thing they could give her without breaking the law.

She was ready for that.

“Sparrow’s Tail,” she read aloud, baffled. “St. James.”

There was a little note from the barrister tacked to the document.

This was an attempted gambling establishment, though it has been boarded for some years. Please allow us to assist you with its sale or conversion to something more suited to a young widow’s business ventures. Playing tables, bars, crystal, and more may be sold to assist your new needs.

She stopped reading, a hot little stone growing in her heart.

“You bastard,” she said again to her dead husband. “You clever bastard.”

She stood there frozen in body while her mind hurtled a thousand miles and back, her fingers going numb from the force of it. She stood there for half the night. She stood there instead of sleeping.

When she descended the stairs the next morning, a small valise in her hand, the butler tried to stop her with a concerned and alarmed, “Mrs. Withers!”

And she’d smiled at the man, feeling freer than she thought she’d ever feel again. “That’s not my name anymore,” she told him. “My name is Donnelly.”