Page 11 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“ T hat’s him!”

Freddy had appeared so suddenly at Ember’s elbow that she had half a mind to slap him for the startle. As it was, she jumped, squeaking a little in surprise.

He’d ruined a perfectly enjoyable rumination of the ocean view as bleary-eyed guests started to mill into the breakfast room, showing up like that.

But then she realized what he meant.

“Which one?” she whispered, turning on her heel as slowly and carefully as she could to regard the line of grumbling merrymakers turned shambling undead that were currently lined up for croissants and pears.

She scanned the men. Most were old enough to have gone gray, purple sacks of regret tugging at their eyelids until they could have a cup of something hot and stimulating. Was Beck one of these aged dandies, looking for a thrill before he drove her out of business?

“Not them.” Freddy sounded impatient. “There, in the doorway.”

She tilted her view, frowning, her fingers pressing against the hot edge of her teacup to remind herself what was at stake.

Sadly, it seemed Thaddeus Beck was determined to be something other than a pampered, doddering peer. An unfortunate choice, Ember thought, but a respectable one.

The man exchanging words with Lord Penrose in the doorway looked to still be in his second decade and in very hale health.

He was large, over a head taller than Penrose, though he’d been tailored into clothing that attempted to diminish this imposition, carefully cut to present the illusion of decorum.

She narrowed her eyes, scanning him, his shiny umber hair, the prominence of his brow, the crisscross of scars on his hands, which he was using to emphasize whatever he was saying to the other man.

Just who the hell did he think he was? How had this ostensible bruiser been more acceptable to invite to Blackcove than Ember herself?

He looked like someone she’d hire to work the door at the Forge, she thought, not someone who could afford to buy it out, fine clothes be damned. She would place a wager, if asked, that if you ripped away that finely folded cravat, you’d find a prison tattoo underneath.

Hell, she’d stake the damned bet. She’d call the ante. And Ember never gambled.

“Don’t stare,” Freddy hissed into her ear, bringing her back to herself enough that she jerked her hand from the heat of her teacup, her fingers singing in pain.

“Thank you,” she muttered.

But what now? Damn it all, but she hadn’t planned for him to be anything other than a dip-dyed version of Freddy: familiar and manageable.

Looking at him now, this tavern brawler in silk, she had no idea what to do. She wasn’t even sure she should greet him.

Sadly, it seemed she wasn’t going to have a choice, for the instant Beck turned to enter the dining area, his eyes fell on her and widened in surprise.

Black eyes, she thought. The eyes of a criminal.

“Miss Donnelly,” he said, with a voice like a stiletto wrapped in velvet, “what a pleasant surprise to see you again.”

“Oh?” She tilted her head up, gazing at him as he approached, her fingers thrumming with the embedded feeling of heat from the teacup. “Have we met?”

He laughed. He laughed at her.

“Many times, in fact,” he said, drawing a polite distance and extending his hand, as though they were simply colleagues and not at odds.

“I attempted to buy Brigid’s Forge from you thrice: once when it was still the Sparrow’s Tail, once a few years later, and most recently perhaps a year past. I’m afraid I’m quite captivated with the place. ”

Her brow wrinkled and she took an involuntary step back, sizing him up one more time.

“No,” she said in disbelief, shaking her head, “no, that can’t be you.”

She didn’t remember him from last year or five years past, no. Like she’d told Dot, there were too many of those men strolling in from off the street, attempting to casually purchase her very lifeblood away, to keep track of.

But only one person had ever tried to buy the Forge back when it was only a sparrow’s tail: a boy.

Ember herself had only been nineteen at the time, of course, and to her, he had seemed absurdly young. Maybe sixteen? Maybe less?

He’d been dressed like so many errand boys and news hockers, ill-fitted and functional with a dirty hat pulled over his brow.

He’d come in with a cracking voice and a frame too big to manage, desperate and insistent that he was already the owner, that he’d already shaken hands with Mr. Withers. He’d begged her. He’d cried. He’d shown her pocketfuls of money and offered to go retrieve witnesses to confirm his story.

She’d told him to go away. She’d closed the door on him and his devastation, which had only served in that moment to collide with her own. And she’d walked away.

He shrugged, looking unabashed about the boy he’d been then, some ten years ago. “I’m afraid so.”

For the first time in a very long time, Ember Donnelly was rendered speechless.

And Freddy, bless him, offered a gallant assist in the only way he knew how: by being an overly social annoyance.

“Well, Beck, I expect you don’t remember me quite so well as Miss Donnelly,” he said, leaping almost bodily in front of her with his hand outstretched, as though he was going to catch a falling blade she couldn’t see.

“We’ve also met a few times! I’m very impressed with the Tod it’s come up very finely and very quickly, hasn’t it? ”

“Lord Bentley,” returned Beck, stepping back with what looked like smug amusement as he accepted the handshake. “I remember you very well. I suspect people rarely forget you.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Freddy warned. “I’ll just want more.”

Beck laughed then, seemingly charmed by Freddy’s one and only skill. “I’m proud of the Vixen, yes. Later to the game than I’d have liked for her to be, but thriving all the same. I’m thinking of opening a second club, in fact.”

Ember recoiled, her back coming against the cold pane of glass behind her. It was the only thing stopping her from toppling right off the cliff and into the sea.

“You must not have siblings,” Freddy said easily, “or you’d know a beloved child hates when a sibling comes along. Even in business, I think one beloved child has far more potential than a brood of resentful siblings. However would you choose which one to frequent, night to night?”

“I’d find a way,” Beck replied easily. “But your concern is noted, Lord Bentley.”

It was at this moment that Mr. Cresson reappeared, seemingly from the ether. Ember hadn’t seen him enter the dining area or weave his way through tables and breakfasting toffs. She hadn’t seen much of anything other than Beck looming over her and Freddy attempting to be a human shield.

Nevertheless, he was suddenly at her side, his warm fingers brushing against the inside of her elbow as he gently pulled her from the pane of glass that had been holding her body up.

Those silver eyes scanned her face with open concern, but he did not speak. He did not embarrass her.

“Ah,” she managed to say, her voice gone only a little ragged. “I had forgotten, Mr. Cresson, please forgive me. Gentlemen, I’m afraid I am wanted on a tour of the winter gardens. Please don’t mind me.”

“By all means,” said Freddy with a little bit too much enthusiasm.

Beck only tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Perhaps we will talk more later, Miss Donnelly,” he said with that same measured voice. “Enjoy the gardens. Hopefully they are not so bare as they seemed when I saw them before.”

She clutched at Joseph Cresson’s arm, squeezing more than she knew was appropriate or necessary, begging him to get her out of that room.

Bless him. He did exactly that.

She did faintly hear him the first three times.

“Miss Donnelly,” he had attempted, and she’d wanted to answer, but she felt somewhere outside of herself as they walked, somewhere beyond control of her own tongue.

“Ember,” he finally tried, low and concerned, and that was enough.

That was enough to bring her back to herself.

She blinked, looking around at their surroundings, surprised to find that they were not in the gardens at all, but rather an indoor conservatory lined with flowering bushes and sculptures. A fountain tinkled in the middle.

She looked down at her shoes, somehow expecting dirt, and found only polished flagstones against the heels and toes of her soft suede boots.

When she looked up again, it was into Joseph Cresson’s silver eyes.

“Ember?” he said again, rounding his body to face her, pulling both of her hands into his own.

“Yes,” she managed to say, still creaking, still raspy. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’ve done nothing amiss,” he said, still looking so awfully concerned. “Who was that man? Was that Thaddeus Beck?”

She nodded, trying to make herself swallow, to do anything to soothe the odd, jagged edges of her throat.

“I … I knew him? I know him? I didn’t know that,” she said nonsensically, bending her fingers in his grip, hooking them into the spaces between his so that he would not let go. “Joseph, I knew him.”

“It’s all right,” he assured her. “It’s all right. We are alone here. Do you want to sit? Do you want to just catch your breath?”

She filled her lungs and nodded, the whole concept of it hitting her like a revelation. “Yes,” she said. “I should sit.”

Somehow, he led her to a bench and sat her down on it without requiring her to relinquish the hold on his hands. He settled beside her and let her grasp him, their entwined hands sitting in her lap, cradled by the braided wool of her skirt.

She stared down at it, at the clash of flesh, freckled pale fingers and smooth tanned ones against the thick golden wool. Absurdly, it seemed to calm her; it seemed to tell her heart to stop knocking quite so hard, because the door was open now. Someone had answered.

“Do you prefer Joseph?” she heard herself asking, knowing it was silly and non sequitur. “Or something else?”

He smiled at her again, that close-lipped, gentle smile that she’d liked so well last night. “Joe if you like,” he answered softly, “but Joseph is just fine.”

“Joe,” she decided, nodding. “I like Joe.”

“That is nice to hear,” he replied, a note of something teasing in his voice.

It surprised her so much that the last floating part of her soul snapped right back into her body, and finally, she could exhale.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for coming to save me.”

“Always,” he assured her, as though such a promise was a natural thing. As though she deserved it.

She relaxed her fingers, easing her clinging grip on his hands, but he did not take them away from her. He left them there in her lap, loosely laced with hers, as though she could keep them for as long as she needed them.

It was so hard not to keep staring at the effect of it, and even harder not to let her mind unspool with what it might mean. The only sensible option was to force her attention elsewhere.

Before them was a large copper statue of the first Lord Penrose, looking very much the privateer. Ember stared at his slashed, flared pantaloons, at the curling toes of his buckled shoes, at his absurd feathered hat, and she reminded herself that life was as it always had been: perfectly absurd.

Thaddeus Beck couldn’t take that away. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t.

She wanted to tell Mr. Cresson that he was a marvel. That he was singular. That he was unlike any other man.

But she knew he wouldn’t believe her.

So she sat instead, holding his hands and looking up at Lord Penrose the First, and letting her body find its ease in staggering little breaths.

“You know,” she said without looking at him, “I was a little sad at first by how you’d changed. It was selfish, really, and short-sighted. You are not changed at all, are you? You are just more yourself.”

He was quiet for a moment, digesting what she said. “I hope that is true,” he answered, “but I don’t think I am so very different.”

She laughed, a chuckle opening a tap of warmth back in her chest as she brought her gaze back to his. “Haven’t you a mirror, Joe?”

He blushed, looking positively chastened by his own transformation. “Oh,” he said, averting his eyes. “Yes, that.”

“No, not that.” She shook her head, squeezing at his hands so he’d look back at her. “This. And here I thought I couldn’t make you blush anymore.”

It only made his blush deepen and her grin widen.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a little sigh. “I don’t mean to tease you. I suppose it just makes me feel worthwhile. Important.”

“What does?” he asked, sounding truly baffled. “My predisposition to social ruin?”

She laughed again, coaxing a little smile out of him as well. “No! I suppose … I suppose it’s knowing that someone like you could ever be affected by someone like me. It’s a little thrill in thinking that I can get under your skin. I will stop.”

“Don’t stop,” he said, and there, at long last, was that full smile, the flash of even white teeth, the depth of his dimples. “I’d hate it if you stopped.”

“Would you?” she asked, her heart forgetting everything she’d just told it about ease and safety, thrumming against her ribs like they were a washboard. “Why’s that?”

“Because,” he said softly, looking down at their entwined hands and turning them over, sliding the pads of his thumbs up the backs of hers. He looked back up at her, holding her eye, and told her in that gentle, steady voice of his, “I like feeling you under my skin.”