Page 26 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

S he knew she shouldn’t have done it, but Ember had never been very constrained by the shoulds of life, and the timing had been too perfect to ignore.

Joe had been up at the hazard table, taking his turn to shoot the dice, and it just so happened that at that very moment, Beck decided to quit the gaming room for the night.

So she’d followed him.

Of course she had followed him.

She was only ever what she’d always been. It was everyone else’s fault if they expected something else, wasn’t it?

She frowned. But she didn’t stop herself. She followed him anyway, into the halls and around the corners, down a deep corridor with bigger rooms than the ones her company had been granted.

She saw him realize he was being trailed. She saw the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, even as she pulled herself into shadow before he could turn around.

When he did turn around, he was not satisfied by an empty corridor. He began marching back in the opposite direction, right at her, his face setting in a grim determination.

“Is that you, Woodville?” he demanded, low and menacing, making shockingly large strides with each footfall. “I’m happy to grant you a rematch if that’s what you’re after, but you need to come out and face me.”

“No! No, it’s only me,” Ember said quickly, her heart lurching at his approach as she stepped into the light. “It’s only me. I wanted to speak to you. Alone.”

Beck stopped, one foot still raised for the following step, just at the toe, the shadow of his boot streaking down the hallway toward Ember.

His face relaxed, curiosity and surprise overtaking that menace, and he drew himself back to standing still.

“Miss Donnelly?” he asked, as though he wasn’t quite sure he could trust his eyes and ears.

“Woodville,” she repeated, tilting her head. “That was the man you punched? The blond one?”

Beck stared at her but gave a single jerking nod.

She felt herself deflate, felt herself forget any justification she’d had for doing this. “Why did you do that, Mr. Beck? Why did you punch him?”

Beck’s brows drew together, but he didn’t balk or boggle at her. “Because he deserved it,” he said, that velvet-smooth timbre unwavering.

“Because he asked to contract Hannah Lazarus as his mistress?” Ember pressed, taking a step forward, her shoe landing where that shadow had been before he’d lowered his foot. “Why would you care about that?”

Beck drew in a sharp breath through his nose, nostrils flaring. “It was disrespectful,” he replied.

“To her?” Ember continued to push, knowing she should stop, knowing her heart was about to leap right out of her mouth and onto the floor. “To her father? Why does it matter to you?”

“Miss Donnelly,” he said, a hint of impatience puncturing that seamless suede of his tone, “is that why you’re following me? Truly?”

She lifted her chin. “Is there another reason I should, Mr. Beck?”

He stared at her for a second, and she thought she saw the ghost of a smile tempt his sharp features, something cool and satisfied lurking beneath the visage of propriety he was holding aloft as unnaturally as those fine, tailored clothes on his scarred and calloused body.

“Miss Lazarus does not belong here,” he said rather than acknowledge her question. “She is in danger every breath of the day. I can’t remove her from your room, but I can stop men like that from trying to snare her in their seedy traps.”

“From …” Ember breathed out, something smoking in her chest like a kicked campfire. “From my room?!”

“That man wanted to make her what you are,” Beck replied, rubbing his fingertips together, staring down at his hands and the scabbing on his knuckles. “I can’t have that.”

“What I am? A mistress, you mean?” she managed to say, her voice sounding deceptively even. “I am no one’s mistress anymore, sir.”

“Your husband was a good man. It is a shame you have humiliated his memory so, with your dear earl and that other fellow that the two of you seem to share.” Beck paused a moment, clicking his tongue. “He deserved better.”

“He … oh, you are an ignorant bastard,” she breathed. “You dare to presume you knew mine own husband better than I did? You dare to think you know anything ?”

“I know that Woodville wouldn’t have gotten the idea to contract out Miss Lazarus,” Beck replied softly, “if she hadn’t been next to you so often.”

She felt it drip into her blood like ice, spiking and spreading like hoar over her veins. It was horrible, she realized, but only because it was probably true.

“But it doesn’t bother you, does it?” he continued, raising those black eyes to meet hers. “Collecting on the luck of your inheritance, the returns on your beauty and womanhood, all the while turning your back on the suffering of those younger and less lucky as they fall to ruin?”

She opened her mouth. She tried to summon her fire, but it was frozen in her, stuck to her ribs, lodged in the stuck half-beat of her heart.

“Merit will always win out over luck,” Beck whispered, something ragged in his voice. Something that sounded genuinely hurt as he added, soft as grief , “You don’t even use his name.”

She stared. She wanted to argue. She wanted to explain . She wanted to rage and sob and flee and burn him to the ground. She wanted all and had nothing, and there was Beck, just watching her, hating her, and worst of all pitying her too.

“It isn’t even luck, is it?” Beck added with a shake of his head. “I know you’re counting. He told me you had that talent, bragged about it. About you. I could tell them all, you know. I could destroy you and I haven’t.”

“That’s enough.”

Ember would have turned, if she’d been able. She would have turned and blazed and told whoever that was who dared to come to her defense, who had the audacity to save her, to go directly to the devil.

She couldn’t move more than her fingers, her useless fingers flexing, praying that it wasn’t Joe, that it wasn’t anyone she knew. Perhaps it was just some good samaritan, come to intervene. Please God that was all it was.

“Oh,” said Beck, raising his brows. “It’s you.”

The shadow that drew up alongside her was not Joe.

It was Freddy.

Beck held his hands up in mock surrender. “I haven’t harmed your mistress, Bentley. She’s perfectly fine.”

“I—” Ember attempted, tears pricking at her eyes, rage attempting to crack the thick layer of ice holding it down. “I—”

“She is not my mistress,” Freddy told the other man, his fists clenched at his sides, his teeth barely parting. “She is my friend. She is my equal. And you, sir, are not.”

He sounded furious, she realized. It startled her enough to turn her head to see him, and that only deepened the shock in her bones.

He looked furious.

She’d never seen Freddy angry. Not ever.

Desperate, yes. Sad, yes. Panicked, certainly.

Never like this. Never … enraged?

“Walk away,” Freddy said, a rumble under his voice that was deeply unnatural, as dry and hot as fresh ash. “Now.”

The shock, she realized. The shock was splintering the ice. It was allowing her to move, bit by bit. To think. To react. To shake off the horrid paralysis that seemed to only strike her in the presence of this particular adversary.

Beck chuckled. “Really, Lord Bentley?”

“Don’t,” Ember managed to say, her voice a hoarse crackle, but neither of them heard her.

“Yes,” Freddy confirmed, stepping in front of her. “Really. My patience is waning.”

“Is it, now?” Beck mocked, tilting his head.

Freddy set his jaw, reared back, and sent his fist directly into Beck’s chin.

It happened so quickly that Ember did not have any purchase to react. She wasn’t able to move or make a sound or even process that it was happening.

Freddy was a full head shorter than Beck, but even so, the larger man’s head did snap back. He hadn’t been expecting it either.

He reacted more in what looked like instinct than intent, the back of his hand flying out and launching Freddy backward and onto the floor. His whole body rose and flew, landing softly on the carpet with a thud.

“Freddy!” Ember managed to cry, falling to her knees. “Jesus Christ!”

She looked up, intending to scream at Beck until his ears bled, but he was already gone. He’d vanished, somehow, the long hallway empty of even his shadow or the imprint of his boots. Gone.

She looked down at Freddy in horror and concern, her hand coming up to touch his jaw and the obvious swell at his cheek.

And Freddy, the idiot, just looked up at her and smiled.

She got him back to the room with some effort.

Freddy wasn’t the towering beast that Beck was, but he was still a fair sight larger than Ember, and he enjoyed being supported like a wounded war hero entirely too much.

“My room is closer,” she’d moaned twice, only to have him moan louder in response, barely able to stifle his own amusement with his theatrics.

When she reached the door, she’d jerked him past it just out of sheer pettiness, and tossed him bodily in through Joe’s entryway instead.

“Oh, stop complaining,” she sang at him, “the rooms are joined, aren’t they?”

This, of course, meant that Joe would be pulled into their chaos. A happy consequence of her choices.

“What in mercy’s name?” came the puzzled, clearly alarmed voice she’d wanted from the washroom as Joe came stumbling out, his tails still half on, his hair covered in droplets of water. “What happened?!”

“Freddy got slapped,” Ember said. “It was my fault.”

“It was actually mine,” Freddy argued proudly. “Do I have a black eye, Donnelly? Is it dashing?”

“Freddy, you have a fat cheek like a chipmunk,” she told him quietly, seeing him propped up against the foot of Joe’s bed, his legs splayed out in front of him like he’d fallen off the roof. “We’ll get you something cold.”

She looked up at Joe, a plea in her eyes, and he nodded immediately. “Won’t be a tick.” He sighed, obviously aware he would be several.

“Thank you, my own,” she said softly as he passed, warmed by the way he glanced back at the title, even in the wake of the open and shut of the door.

She sighed, collapsing next to Freddy with a shake of her head. “That was well stupid, Freddy.”

“Well,” he said with a shrug, “so am I.”

She cut her eyes to him, torn between agreeing and telling him to never say that again. Instead, she just deflated a little, dropped her head on his shoulder, and let herself breathe again. “Thank you,” she said, “my friend.”

He draped an arm over her shoulder, letting out his own sigh, and they sat there like that for a time, listening to the gentle patter of rain tapping at the windows.

“I was wondering something,” Freddy said softly. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

He took a breath, pulling the words into his lungs. “Why … hm,” he cut himself off, shaking his head.

She pulled back, watching him. “Why what?”

There was a self-conscious shrug, half a chuckle, an attempt almost to escape it, but when she didn’t look away, he turned to meet her eye. “Why didn’t you tell Jones what I did? You didn’t, did you? If you had, he wouldn’t have been happy to see me at all.”

She frowned. She wanted to say something glib, but the truth was that she wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t told Jones. It wasn’t because she was embarrassed about what had happened, about her own weakness when Freddy had snapped, though that would have been the easiest answer.

Freddy understood shame, didn’t he?

“Because it was no one’s business,” she decided, chewing on her lip. “I didn’t want to tell anyone, ever. I knew that wasn’t you.”

“You told Dot,” he reminded her without any rebuke, just a soft acknowledgement of a thing.

She nodded. “I told Dot and Claire and Millie,” she confirmed, “because they’d seen it too, one way or another.

They understood. And because I was so hurt that I wanted to get you back, to make you feel it.

I thought maybe you hadn’t felt it, Freddy.

I thought maybe you walked away from the ruin you made and didn’t feel any sadness about it. About me.”

He didn’t move for a moment, like it took all the muscles in his body to listen to her answer. He nodded. “I felt a lot of sadness about it,” he said quietly.

“I know that, fool,” she said with a sniffle, shaking away the urge, yet again, to dredge up a bunch of useless, hot tears. “I know that.”

“I … yes, I know you do,” he said with a little laugh and then a wince at the way it bent his face. “But Ember, I just want you to hear me say it, all right? I am sorry.”

“Damnation and spoils, Freddy,” she snapped, reaching up to palm away the tears that had started to escape now. “I know you are. I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.”

“You did?”

She nodded, blinking rapidly, forcing herself to look up and into the light dancing in the lantern on Joe’s chest of drawers. “Yes,” she said briskly. “Yes. But tonight … tonight goes beyond forgiveness. Tonight was … what was that, Freddy?”

He laughed again. “I don’t bloody know.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “I don’t either.”

They watched as Joe opened the door again, returning with a cold compress and a cut of steak. He had brought the elements of healing, Ember thought.

But everything in this room was already mended.