Page 12 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

J oe would have happily stayed in that conservatory for the rest of his life, but once Ember had regained her steady footing, she’d smiled at him, squeezed his hands one more time, and promised him that she’d see him before dinner.

And of course, after she’d gone, the only person left to spend time with in that place was the patina-soaked copper sculpture of the first Lord Penrose, a fellow who, based on this likeness, likely made even Sir Walter Raleigh feel austere.

He did spend a few moments admiring all the finer details.

His mother, whose entire business was in buttons and fastenings and seams, would probably love this sculpture—and make awful fun of it, of course.

Then she’d likely lock herself in her study in a frenzy of sketching, refusing to acknowledge she’d been inspired.

And his father, without fail, would frown at the whole thing and say, “But Leah, you always loved my simple waistcoats.”

He smiled at the thought of it all the way back to his room.

He thought nothing would suit him better after this tumult of hours that had been the first half of his first day at Blackcove than a nap.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

First: the door was not locked. It was not even properly closed. And all Cresson could think was that if someone had come to rob him, the joke was on them. He had nothing but wrinkled Portuguese clothing in his pack and a few items of sundry.

But it was the opposite of having been robbed.

The room was full of hanging clothing, a very diminutive little man bustling around with measuring tape, and Freddy and Lord Penrose deep in conversation over the state of a set of formal tails.

“Ah, Mr. Cresson!” cried Lord Penrose. “You return! Just in time, too—we were about to take measurements from your dirty trousers instead of you.”

“What?” was all Joe could say for a moment, followed more eloquently by “Why?”

“You didn’t bring tails,” said Penrose with a sniff. “Pack in a hurry, did you, lad? We’ve all done it. Once, I got all the way to France and realized I had only packed one shirt!”

“Yes,” said Freddy, grinning. “Of all your sets of tails, Joseph, you forgot to bring one.”

Joe gave a tired grimace of a smile. “You keep a tailor at your home, Lord Penrose?”

“Of course! You think I’d have a banker here and not other essential businessfolk?” Penrose said with a puff of his chest. “A Penrose is always prepared!”

The little man was already quietly measuring him, Joe realized, having appeared soundlessly at his side.

Joe didn’t have the heart to resist him.

It was true, he reasoned. He didn’t have tails.

The measuring and fussing and idle chatter ate up two solid hours, during which he learned several things about the Penrose family, from their (apparently) proud Tudor roots as privateers to their strong ties to the Anglican church—“brother’s a dean, uncle’s a bishop!

”—to their aggressively Cornish legacy—“never marry a girl from beyond the border. Weaker blood, my father always said, and narrower hips to boot.”

It explained the house crest that Joe had observed on the sculpture earlier— Fideles et Parati. Faithful and Prepared.

Yes, he thought. That seemed to be correct.

Worse, it was harder to hate the current Lord Penrose after two hours of tone-deaf avuncular charm. He seemed to be ignorant rather than malevolent, but in that way that wealthy people always were.

Joe supposed everyone was ignorant in some way or another. No one chose their upbringing, after all.

He’d had a thousand questions about Portugal.

“I do intend to visit sometime,” the older man had boasted, as though he’d already gone and come back again. “Yes, absolutely, when it’s a little safer, of course. I hear the women are a sight to be seen! I’m sure you can attest, Mr. Cresson.”

“I wouldn’t presume to, Lord Penrose,” Joe had replied. “After all, they don’t have Cornish hips.”

“They might,” Freddy had put in, helpful as always. “Plenty of Celtic folks settled in Iberia.”

And then the idiot had grinned as he won glares from both Cresson and Penrose, and perhaps the little tailor too.

In the end, Joe had his first and only set of tails, and it appeared to be a gift at that.

The satin of the lapels and inner lining was perhaps the finest thing he’d ever owned in his wardrobe.

Even the fine knit of the wool on the jacket would have had his mother swooning, and she was a damned zealot about textiles.

He was, privately, quite excited to wear it tonight.

“You’ll get another suit in a couple of days,” the little tailor had assured him, snapping to attention like it was his divine calling. “You are more strongly built than many of the gentlemen in attendance, and I will have to find the right starting garment.”

It was the second time that day that Joe found himself blushing.

“More strongly built,” Freddy tutted while they dressed for dinner, helping Joe with the fussier bits of wearing formal tails. “I beg his absolute pardon!”

“You’re probably still his favorite,” Joe said absently, which only made Freddy laugh and proffer pomade at him.

“Let’s tame those curls, hm?”

“What do you mean, tame?” Joe replied in wary bafflement.

The final effect, when he’d taken in his appearance in the mirror before they departed toward the dining room, had been a little startling.

Joe thought he looked very much like a gentleman. He looked, he realized with a little thrill of horror, like someone he’d defer to if he passed himself in a room.

“I need a favor,” Freddy said, hovering a little conspicuously near the door. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” said Joe without hesitation, because he never did mind, truly.

Freddy held out his hand, two ivory cubes sitting in his palm, glinting with accents of gold. “I need you to take these and hold them while we are here. Please.”

Joe turned from the mirror with surprise. “Are those your famous dice?”

“Yes. Well, yes and no. They were grandfather’s, actually,” said Freddy with a grimace.

“Torn from some poor elephant a world away. I brought them because I know Penrose and the others will expect to see them, but I can’t carry them around, Joseph.

I can feel them burning against my skin, even through my pockets. ”

Joe frowned. “Why not give them to Ember? She’s planning to actually play, isn’t she?”

“Ember prefers cards,” Freddy explained, moving his hand a little like he needed them gone immediately. “And I … I can’t give them to Ember. I did once before and it ended very, very badly. She doesn’t forget when things go badly. You might want to remember that.”

Joe took the dice, letting Freddy drop them into his hand and slump with obvious relief.

“Thank you,” said Freddy, as though he hadn’t just said a bunch of ominous and terribly intriguing things. “Thank you very much.”

“It’s nothing,” said Joe, a little unsettled by how much this was affecting the other man. “It really is nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” said Freddy, already turning and walking out into the hall. “I owe you, Cresson.”

“I promise that you do not, Lord Bentley.”

“Please,” said Freddy for the thousandth time. “Please call me Freddy.”

And for the first time, Joe did.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he amended, “Freddy.”

He was, sadly, unable to speak to Ember Donnelly before dinner, despite casual promises previously made.

They were all seated apart, for some sadistic reason.

Freddy was with the Lazaruses, apparently charming them to pieces for the duration of endless courses.

Ember was at the foot of the table, flanked on either side by white-haired gentlemen who apparently did not have a healthy respect for her personal space.

And Joe himself? Stuck near the front with two widows who were both treating him like the dessert course.

“Oh, but how is it we don’t know you?” they pressed, giggling like they were thirty years younger than they actually were. “Bow Street, you say? My, but am I going to have to find a reason to need a barrister?”

It was interminable.

At least the food was very good, although one of the widows had gasped at one of the dishes, a little pocket of beef stew stuffed into crispy dough, and exclaimed, “Pasties?! Really?!” as though it were a scandal.

Pasties , Joe thought. It sounded a little bit like piskies.

By his estimation, there were at least half a dozen in this very room, perched over the diners in gleeful, possibly malevolent, observation.

He wondered what the piskies would make of Freddy’s dice, currently buttoned into his waistcoat. They seemed, strangely, perhaps, of the same ilk to Joe.

It was almost difficult to believe his own relief when the whole affair had ended. It was even more difficult not to make a beeline for Ember Donnelly like an overly attached puppy.

He did catch her eye, though. He caught it long enough to see a flicker of surprise and a quick accounting of his tails and “tamed” hair.

She smiled, seemingly to herself rather than at him, and for some stupid reason it had turned his insides to molten liquid, even after she looked away again.

She’d been making him nervous and embarrassed and red on purpose ! She’d confessed to it. She’d said she enjoyed doing it.

He wondered how long that had been true for. Surely not the entire time he’d known her.

They’d met first via post, when she’d sent multiple threats to the Cain law office directed at Freddy himself, by way of his towering debts at the Forge. In those letters, she’d deliberately signed her name E. Donnelly . Genderless.

When Cresson had physically gone to the Forge, she’d sent that giant barman out to pretend to be her for matters of courier exchange, and he had believed it.

It wasn’t until the day she’d physically come to the office to confront Silas in person that she’d revealed herself, humiliating Joe in the process. She’d blown in that afternoon like a curly-haired force of nature and had smiled at him like they were sharing a fine joke.

That was the day his heart had cleaved in two.

No woman had ever shattered him like that. It wasn’t just that she had outsmarted him, though that certainly had played a part. And it wasn’t only that she was beautiful, though she was. So beautiful, it made him ache.

He couldn’t quite name it. He couldn’t explain it with rational thought.

Something about her just shattered him and made him love all the cracks from the shattering besides.

He had thought, during that year in Portugal, that he was somehow evolving past the Joseph Cresson who had burned from the inside out every time she drew near, every time her name was said, every time he thought of her.

He had become someone else there, someone deferred to in a crisis, someone helpful and certain and important.

And of course, there had been girls who liked him very well. Portuguese girls whose hips were just lovely, thank you very much.

They hadn’t been Ember Donnelly, though. They hadn’t left scars in his soul and poured gold in the rivulets to make them precious.

He hadn’t even had time to properly sleep upon returning to London before every idle curiosity he’d had about whether he’d gotten past his fascination with her had been overturned, toppled, stomped on, and then—miraculously—enabled.

He didn’t know if he’d ever actually have her, and worse, he didn’t know if that fact was unacceptable. It was very possible he’d spend the rest of his life remembering that moment in the conservatory today as the moment God had granted him a realization of his dreams.

And perhaps also the moment it had turned from fascination to love.

Was that mad? Yes, probably. It was likely both mad and delusional, but no one could tell his soul that. No one could correct his secret memory.

She’d been terrified of that man, hadn’t she? The one who was trying to buy out her club in the most underhanded way, the one who’d refused to let her say no and was now trying to force the matter, the way some men always would when facing off against a woman.

He hadn’t thought anything scared her.

Seeing her like that, pressed against the thin pane of glass, such a feeble, horrifying guard between that magnificent woman and the perilous reality of the cliff below had nearly sent him sprinting toward her today.

It had taken more than a breath of frozen horror to notice Freddy there, and then, of course, the other fellow.

Thaddeus Beck, he thought. Just who the hell was he, anyway? And how could someone like Joe protect her from something so insidious and also so perfectly, horribly legal?

She’d held his hands in the conservatory. She’d put her own fingers between his, warm and soft and cradled in the embrace of those golden skirts. She’d really touched him, with purpose. She’d wanted their fingers like that, interlaced, gripping together.

He felt the dice adjust against his ribs, as though by wondering it he’d awakened them in all their bloodthirsty, elegant fury.

Perhaps we could help , they seemed to whisper.

It was the whisper Freddy must have been hearing. All this time.

He glanced around the room for Freddy as they filed out toward the gaming tables and thought, perhaps unfairly, that his jester antics toward Owen and Hannah Lazarus were taking on a slightly more frantic air.

Would it comfort him if Joe approached and told him it would be all right? Or would it only make matters worse?

He hadn’t the faintest idea how to help, how to really help.

At least his concern had silenced those dice for now, the pair of them seeming to curl up and fall silent until such a time as their voices might be heard again.

It ended very, very badly , Freddy had told him, of once trusting the dice to Ember.

How, exactly, could it have ended badly? Especially if he got them back?

Joe sighed. No matter how fine his clothes, he was deeply out of his element in this place, with these people.

No matter how much he’d grown, he was still only himself, just like Ember had said.

So what in heaven was he meant to do with that now that he knew it? What could he do other than simply guess and hope?

If Penrose was “Faithful and Prepared,” then Joe would have to be something too.

Guessing and Hoping, he thought.

It would make a very poor crest indeed.