Page 15 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

J oe was in tumult.

He was not often one for more than one emotion at a time, much less the very strong ones, but as he guided Ember Donnelly down the halls of Blackcove, he thought perhaps he might need to peel his own skin away and crawl out of it for a time. Such was the strength of the storm raging inside him.

Jealousy? Yes. At first. Confusion. Panic. Rage.

So much rage. He couldn’t look at her without it spiking up again, threatening to spill out of his mouth and the narrow channels of his nose and ears. He was hot with it. Burning.

He stopped near her bedroom door only for her to shake her head, silent tears still dripping down her beautiful freckled cheeks as she made tiny gasps for air.

He took her to the next place that came to mind, that little corner of the back halls with the fireplace and three grotesques.

There was still a little table there where he and Freddy had eaten dinner some nights prior, but this part of the house was just as empty now as it had been the night they’d arrived, dark and buried away from the windows.

The only light here was coming from the fireplace itself, cracking and low with red coals burning on the frayed edges of the firewood. It was warm here, at least. Much warmer than the conservatory.

He let her sit and rounded the other side of the table so he wouldn’t have to let her hand go if she didn’t want him to.

She didn’t seem to want him to.

She sniffled, pushing away the tears from her face with the heel of her free hand, trembling with the effort of it.

She pulled in breaths that grew a little with each attempt, and looked up at the smiling faces on the fireplace with an expression on her face that melted from confusion to something like calm.

“Oh,” she said in their direction, “hello.”

She watched them for a long moment, like someone devoted to listening well might watch the other side of a conversation, and at the end of it she nodded and turned back to him. Perhaps they’d given her some advice.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said with an embarrassed little wince and a shrug. “I don’t know why I cried. I’m probably all puffy and red now, aren’t I?”

“You are beautiful,” he said, letting as much of the feeling in him out as he could without combusting entirely.

She stared at him, perhaps because he’d been out of turn, or perhaps because she thought he was being dishonest.

So he said again, “You are always so beautiful.”

She seemed to deflate just a little, though her hand tightened in his, clinging to him, holding him in place. “I was married once,” she said suddenly, cutting through the uncertainty of her own silence with a quiet revelation. “Did you know that?”

He shook his head. He hadn’t known it, but it didn’t surprise him. Of course he couldn’t be the only one who had ever wished to take her home and keep her forever.

“He died,” she provided, like she could see assumptions forming in the air. “He was old. I was very young. It wasn’t a love match, Joe, but I did love him in my way. I think he loved me too. But never like husband and wife, you understand?”

He nodded, though he didn’t entirely understand. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were on the wrong side of a century, he thought.

She sighed. “In winter, where I grew up, we have a festival. It isn’t like the harvest or May Day, because it’s so cold.

We have it in the buildings around the church, to honor St. Brigid.

That’s where he found me. I was seventeen and I was with my friends and I was tormenting some poor booth operator who was trying to run a good-natured scam as one does at these things. ”

“What game?” Joe heard himself asking, even though it was likely irrelevant.

She paused, an actual smile cracking the edges of her sadness. “Find the pea. You know, with the cups?”

He nodded as she mimed the game, three cups moving around with a treasure hidden under one of them.

“He wasn’t bad at the sleight of hand part,” she told Joe, allowing herself the ghost of a giggle, “but he had a pattern, a very obvious one to me. My friends and I always did this to the traveling games. They’d let me watch first, then we’d go take them for every prize they had.

I had an unseemly talent for it, and it was always fun for everyone but the poor sharper.

“This particular Imbolc, however, a pilgrim was watching me do it, an older gentleman in a fine coat. I didn’t see him until I’d been at it for a while, not until it was time to settle up because I’d gotten bored.

The sharper tried to tally me wrong, to give me a short on tokens, but I’d kept track.

I gave him the exact number he owed me, and when he slumped away in a snit after it, the Englishman vanished. I thought he’d gotten bored too.”

She paused for a second, leaning back and blowing out a long breath. “When I got to the pub at nightfall to meet my parents, he was sitting with them. They’d made a deal. For me.”

“What?” said Joe, suddenly jerked out of the reverie of listening to her speak. “Without you there?”

“Well, I still got asked, of course,” she replied with a little smile. “My parents love me enough for that. I don’t think a lot of farm girls would get asked, though, if a wealthy man burst out of the air and asked for them. What’s to ask?”

“Everything,” said Joe grimly.

She blinked at him. “After this story,” she said carefully, “I want to know where you are from, Joe. What corner of Elysium raised you, that this sounds shocking at all?”

“The Midlands,” he answered automatically, seeing immediately that it wasn’t enough. “I … all right. I’ll explain when you’ve finished.”

“Good,” she said with a note of something he couldn’t quite name. “Yes, good.”

It sent another roil of feelings up in his chest, each one hammering at his bones, trying to get out until he had to physically swallow to push them back down. It didn’t matter how much outrage or horror or curiosity he felt, this wasn’t his moment to speak.

“So we married, of course,” she continued, waving her hand as though that much was obvious.

“He was so excited to get to know me, to show me all of his businesses and ledgers and accounts.

I felt like a new farm hand, but the farm was his empire of coins, not a field of crops, and Joe, I loved it.

I felt so important. So wonderfully conspicuous.

Because that was the kind of man my husband was, that was his gift: he could see talent and potential.

He could see it like you were wearing it on your sleeve in bright red thread.

“And I’ve just had the most horrible revelation.

He had the same sort of establishing meeting with Thaddeus Beck.

If Beck had been there two years earlier, if he’d been a girl, if my Mr. Withers had still been a widower, he would be where I am.

The only difference between Beck and me is that I was luckier. That’s it. That’s all.”

“Ember,” Joe said, struck with what she was saying. “That’s not true.”

“I think it is,” she returned right away, shaking her head like it didn’t even necessarily distress her anymore, after having spoken through it.

“I really think it is true, and worse, I’m not sure Mr. Beck knows it.

I don’t think he realized it today, the way I did, because I didn’t give him a thing. I’ve only taken it from him. Again.”

He watched her, uncertain if she needed anything from him beyond his ear.

He waited; he let the room sit and the fireplace breathe.

He let the air settle when he could have disturbed it, until he was certain she wouldn’t mind if he asked questions, until she turned and looked at him with a raise of those russet brows.

“So he used you as … as an accountant?” he clarified, uncertain even now. “Not as a wife?”

“Oh, you mean did he ever …” She trailed off, chuckling. “Of course he did, Joe. He was still a man.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” he protested, though maybe it was.

She only laughed a little more, though it was perhaps a better outcome than any answer might have been.

He could see her shoulders softening, feel the release in her fingers, still holding his.

“I was given every courtesy that a wife ought to be given,” she told him soothingly.

“He was old, but he wasn’t a lecher or a brute or a slavedriver.

He respected me, and because of that, I respected him right back. ”

“Well,” said Joe with a frown, “I suppose that’s something.”

“The worst thing he ever did to me was the dying,” she added with a thoughtful incline of her head. “That bastard. No warning at all, mind. He just left the room and stopped being alive. It was awful.”

“It sounds awful,” Joe acknowledged, watching her relive it with a helpless distress. “I am sorry.”

“Me too,” she said with a nod. “But it had to happen sometime, didn’t it? Maybe he was lucky too. He never even realized he’d seen the last of his life. Whatever errand he had in progress was something wonderfully mundane and free of tension. May we all be so lucky, someday.”

She sighed, releasing his hand and pushing her chair back. She stood for a moment, shaking her arms and fingers out like she was sending all the discomfort and history off her skin.

“Your turn,” she said, tapping her toes. “I want to pace a little.”

He couldn’t help but smile, watching her do exactly that, her boots tapping on the edges of the uncarpeted floor every time she made a round. She was so wonderfully embodied in herself, he thought, watching her prowl, still shaking out her hands. She was so beautifully real.

“Joe!” she said fondly, snapping him out of watching her. “The Midlands?”

“Yes, right,” he agreed, clearing his throat and nodding. “Shropshire. I grew up in a bit of an enclave outside of the main village.”

“An enclave?” She paused for a moment, looking intrigued. “You mean outside of the parish?”

“Just so,” he said, feeling the color creep up his neck. “We had our own … parish of sorts. The Society of Friends.”

“Friends?” She had stopped in earnest now, framed by the fire.

“People call us Quakers,” he clarified, the color and heat sweeping up over his face. “Do you know that word?”

“Only in commerce,” she answered, which did make him laugh, sending the concern out of his body with a flush of relief. “I see it on dyed fabrics sometimes.”

“We do love our fabrics,” he replied. “My mother’s business is hosiery, in fact.”

“Not your father’s?” she pressed, taking small steps back toward the table.

He shook his head. “No, his is precision tools. They sometimes compare and compete about which the world needs more.”

She sat down with a thunk, like she couldn’t quite fathom this. “He let her keep her business?”

“Let her?” he repeated, amused at the thought of it. “No. Not his domain.”

“Whose domain is it?”

He watched her, unable to stop the smile from spreading over his face, unable to tamper it down. “God’s, of course.”

“Oh, I know Him,” she said dismissively. “He’d punt it back to your da. So how does that work, then? Two businesses? Will you inherit both?”

“Me?” he laughed. “What am I going to do with them? No. My sister is apprenticing with my father, and my brother and his wife are learning the hosiery.”

“You don’t fecking say!” Ember cried, clearly both delighted and a little scandalized. “Your da will just give it to your sister? With you right there?”

“I’m a barrister,” he reminded her.

“And a man!”

“And a man,” he agreed with a chuckle. “I am that.”

She stared at him unblinking, like she wasn’t sure if she was about to wake up from a particular nonsensical dream. “So if you and I were to marry, you’d just keep practicing law like no never mind and I’d have the Forge and your people would shrug and think nothing of it?”

Ah, he thought, there was the blushing again, whipping back into him under the protective deniability of a nearby fire. He nodded, not trusting himself to answer with words.

She grinned. “I don’t believe you.”

And he laughed and said, “Maybe one day you’ll see it for yourself.”

Her smile widened, the constellation of freckles on her nose rearranging. “Maybe I will, in fact. So, if Mr. Withers had shown up for Quaker new year and picked out a clever girl, what would have happened?”

“A clever girl who is only seventeen?!” he replied, his eyes widening.

“He’d have been chased out with stinging nettles, Ember.

That is not how marriage works amongst us.

Not only were you a child, still learning who you were, but he was old .

We don’t even consider it until we are well into our second decade, and matches must be equal. His wealth made your marriage unequal.”

“Well, to my benefit,” she retorted softly. “Right?”

“No! He had all the power,” Joe exclaimed, clearly startling her with the very slight raise in his volume.

“Oh,” she said with feeling, “I suppose he did!”

He reached across the table, taking her hand again, this time for him, only for him and what he wanted. “I know how you must have felt,” he said softly, watching her surprise and feeling carefully for any indication that she might not want it, that she might pull away.

She didn’t. She looked down quickly at their hands entwined and then back up at him, curious perhaps, but not unwelcoming.

“How I felt then?” she asked, a little breathless. “How’s that? Powerless?”

He shook his head, watching her with that faint smile of affection on his face. “Not powerless,” he corrected, “just not quite as powerful as the force across from you.”

She gave a dry little titter, shaking her head. “You are plenty powerful, Mr. Cresson. Joe.”

“Am I?” he wondered. “Let’s find out.”

And he pushed himself from the chair, leaning across the table with her hand captured in his. He looked down at her, watching her face, watching for any sign of disapproval or discomfort.

When he saw none, he took what he wanted.

He kissed her. Softly. As softly as he could manage. He wanted to feel it, to savor it. He wanted to take it in tiny breaths rather than gulps, so that every step would crystallize in his memory, should she let them.

She lifted her free hand to touch his cheek, to stroke the line of his jaw, and she took too, so softly, so carefully. Uncertain, perhaps, but wanting.

And when he pulled away, she looked a little dazzled, and he felt like he’d never breathe properly again.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper, gripping their clasped hands hard. “Plenty powerful.”