Page 28 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

I t had occurred to Joe in the third or fourth round of circular arguments with Freddy that he deserved this, after how he had played the other fiddle this morning.

“But why was she there?”

“She followed him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why were you there?”

“I followed her.”

“Why?”

“Because she followed him.”

“But why did she do that?”

“I don’t know!”

And so on.

Freddy’s face really didn’t look half as bad as he’d anticipated it looking when they’d spilled into his room the night before. Once the swelling had gone down, the bruise was already dappled and yellow at the edges.

Freddy, of course, was treating it like a fatal battle wound, and insisted on being brought breakfast the following morning.

It was just as well, Joe thought, because Ember hadn’t been at breakfast. She hadn’t been at tea. She missed dinner too.

He considered trying to talk to Beck directly, but without knowing exactly what had happened or why, he thought it ill advised. This was Ember’s battle, and as much as Joe wished to be her faithful lieutenant, he could not act without her blessing and expect her to enjoy the fact.

So he waited.

And the waiting had never been so difficult in all his life.

At the gaming tables, which he only attended for an hour, Miss Lazarus told him that Ember had spent most of the day asleep.

“I don’t think she slept much last night,” the girl said, blinking innocently. “But of course, I slept the usual amount, so I can’t know for certain.”

What Joe knew for certain was that the angelic-looking little thing was a practiced liar, if not yet a good one. In another life, he would have taken note of her as someone he should avoid in the years to come, should she pursue a career in the courtroom.

“Have you seen Mr. Beck at all?” she’d asked him back.

Joe blinked just as innocently right back at her, refusing to share what he’d overheard at breakfast and how it knitted into his own suspicions—that Beck was making himself scarce in concern for having assaulted a peer.

The peer, of course, being Freddy.

It was easy to forget Freddy was an earl, Joe thought, but only because such a fact was patently ridiculous.

He went to bed in a huff all his own and still managed to sleep somehow, because deep down he knew Ember would eventually appear. She simply danced to her own tick of the clock.

It was why he loved her, wasn’t it? Even if it made him want to shake her a little.

And then, like a prophecy fulfilled, she appeared at his door at the break of the sun, a stack of letters in her hands, ink-stained at the fingertips, and her wide golden eyes fringed with the stiff, spiky lashes of a woman who had refused to close them for quite some time.

“Ember?” he managed to say, only to be kissed very hard and shoved out of the way as she blew into the room like a summer gale.

“Get Freddy,” she said, practically vibrating with whatever had kept her sequestered for so long. “Grab the fool.”

So, Joe had.

“Why are you limping?” Ember snapped at him. “Beck didn’t slap your legs.”

“He may as well have!” Freddy returned, somehow both cheerful and moaning all at once as he collapsed onto the foot of the bed. “What’s the news?”

“Well, first,” Ember said, arching an eyebrow, “are you quite well enough to hear it? I should hate to crack your fragile constitution.”

“I will endure,” Freddy intoned, grinning and ducking away when she swatted at his head.

Joe, despite his utter commitment to not indulging this, laughed.

“So, I’ve had a letter from Millie,” Ember announced, dragging out the chair from the windowside table and falling into it. “A long letter, with annotations from Dot. Many things have happened. Something for me, something for you, Joe, and even something for Freddy.”

“Me?” said Freddy, perking up. “Is it a gift?”

“It is a gift,” she agreed in a tone that sounded like it was absolutely not a gift.

Freddy didn’t seem to mind.

“I haven’t mentioned it because I truly thought it unimportant, but my late husband’s sons have been trying to disrupt the peace for some months now.

There were some minor stories in the press, fraud and so on.

I believe they’ve burned through the entirety of the estate.

The only thing that remains standing is the bit they gave to me, the castoff failing business I turned into the Forge. ”

“Right,” said Freddy, “good.”

“Indeed,” Ember agreed, flashing her sharp little teeth at him.

“However, they aren’t the sensible sort of villains who go to ground when caught out.

One of them made a loud fuss about being held accountable and is being confined at Bow Street.

The other one keeps showing up at the Forge to attempt to extort us.

Me. Well, Jones for now, since he is running the place in my absence. ”

“Jones?” clarified Joe, feeling a bit skeptical. “That’s the one who …” He held his hand up as high as it would go, in an attempted approximation of Jones’s height.

“That’s the one!” Freddy confirmed happily.

“Well, that seems in hand, then,” Joe returned, looking back at Ember.

“It is. Or it would be, had they not gone an extra mile in their incompetent wickedness.” Ember laughed, shaking her tangled and frizzy curls. “They’ve been selling debt slips for my club, you see. They forged debt slips.”

“Oh,” said Joe. “Of course they did.”

“Yes, and once Jones showed them to Dot and Millie, he unknowingly handed two dogs a very meaty bone,” Ember squeaked, her excitement overpowering the sleep deprivation in her voice.

“Millie’s been tracking them down, and Dot?

Dot has been approaching the poor sods who bought them with the offer of legal representation to pursue both recompense and criminal justice. ”

Freddy whistled a low tone. “Oh, that is meaty,” he agreed. “Silas will take that and run.”

“Well, he would,” said Ember, blinking rapidly, “if he had time. Silas, poor lamb, has taken the silk and as such serves at the pleasure of the crown. He’ll need assistance with such a large group of victims and their individual wholeness.

Isn’t it a blessing, lads, that he has such a capable partner? ”

They both turned to Joe as though he’d announced himself as said partner, which of course he was, but he could only stare back at them in numb silence.

“I’m not in London,” he protested.

“You will be,” Ember told him, “soon. We just have to tie up our loose end here. If Mr. Beck has been flitting around London buying up my debt slips, what are the odds that some of the ones he holds are Withers forgeries, do you reckon? It’s a gamble I’d take, and I don’t gamble.”

“You’ve been gambling this whole time,” Freddy reminded her, getting immediately shushed. He mumbled to himself, barely audible, “Well, she has.”

“Do you think Beck was complicit in the forgeries?” Joe asked, wrinkling his brow. “Do you think he helped them?”

“I don’t, actually,” she said, leaning back in the chair until the wood creaked.

“I think he remembers my late husband as infallible and sees me as the wicked young widow who benefitted from his death. It makes him a perfect mark for my darling stepchildren. Beck wants to buy the Forge, not steal it. He’s made that very clear over the last decade. ”

“But you do think he has some of the forged slips on his person?” Joe clarified, uncertain if this was good or bad news.

“Worse than that,” Ember said, widening her eyes, “I think he submitted them to Penrose and Lazarus as collateral. Whether he knows it or not, he’s committed a very serious crime if so, and it does explain why I haven’t seen nor heard of the slips since arriving here. He’s got them in escrow in good faith.”

“He’s cooked, then,” Freddy put in, dragging over a stack of Joe’s pillows and plumping them up to lean back on. “Completely cooked. He’ll be ruined.”

“He would be,” agreed Ember, “if I planned to tell anyone about it.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Freddy demanded lazily as he found his repose, “after he tried to kill me like he did?”

“You’re right,” Ember said, snapping her eyes to him, “I should, but only because he failed and you’re still talking.”

“Oh, my heart,” Freddy returned, grinning and unbothered.

“Freddy’s question is mine too,” Joe said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t you? You’ve got what you need now to ensure your safety and his removal from the board. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It is what I wanted,” she acknowledged, her gaze floating out to the window overlooking the winter garden. “Isn’t that funny? It is exactly what I wanted, and here it is, and now I don’t want to do it.”

“It’s justified,” Joe protested. “Legal. He has done something that merits punishment. Why would you shy away from that, after everything?”

“Because,” said Ember without turning back, her eyelids flickering shut in the bathing light of the early morning, “because he didn’t know. Because I might have made the same mistake on a different day, in a different life. And because my husband would be disappointed with me if I did.”

“Your husband,” Freddy repeated flatly. “The dead one?”

“Him, yes,” Ember sighed. “And the next one.”

There was a long, gonging chime of silence. Joe felt it resonate in his stomach, in his ribs, in his heart, but no one else seemed to. Ember stayed in the chair, eyes closed against the sunrise, and Freddy just stared, his mind attempting to parse what she’d said like a bird tugging on a worm.

“You’re going to marry Beck?” he blurted out, indignant.

“What?” she said, lashes flickering open, a giggle on her breath. “No, of course not. I’m going to marry Joe.”

“You are?” Joe heard himself ask.

“Of course I am,” said Ember, and she closed her eyes again, like the matter was settled.

“Oh,” said Freddy, turning his eyes over to Joe. “Congratulations?”

“Thank you,” said Joe, just as baffled but far more grateful. He thought he ought to sit down, so he crossed the room and took the chair opposite Ember, dropping his weight into it while his limbs caught up with the words still echoing from corner to corner.

He glanced up at the piskies in the upper corners of his room and saw how gleeful they looked at this development. They approved, it seemed, and that was well, because if they hadn’t and it would have spelled doom, Joe still would have gone along with it anyway.

“You said there was something for me,” Freddy reminded her from his throne of pillows. “A gift?”

“Oh.” Her eyes opened, a grin spreading over her face. “It’s about your mother’s wedding.”

“Weddings! More weddings. Of course it’s weddings.” Freddy sighed, shaking his blond head.

“They’re going to wed at Crooked Nook,” Ember told him, her eyes fully open now, her attention fully fixed on Freddy, “and they’re going to invite you.”

“Of course they’re going to invite me,” Freddy said petulantly. “I’m their son, aren’t I?”

“You’re her son,” Joe corrected, baffled.

“They’re going to invite you to Crooked Nook, Freddy,” she said again, watching, waiting for it to sink in.

Freddy sat up, a frown stretching his bruised cheek. “So I can’t go?” he asked, the playfulness gone from his tone. He fiddled with the gold band on his left hand, seemingly unaware of the instinct. “I can’t go to my own mother’s wedding?”

“You can, in fact,” Ember corrected, waving the stack of written sheets in Millie Murphy’s handwriting in his direction. “Claire has withdrawn the blockade officially. You can go home.”

“I can …” He stared at them, his eyes deep and reflective like cores of arctic ice. “I can go home?”

“You can,” said Ember, grinning this time with no sharpness, with no taunting. “You can go home, Freddy.”

Joe turned to look at the other man then, at the conflict of laughter and sobbing that skittered across his face, at the shock of it and the promise. He had felt like that now and then, he thought, like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.

He sort of felt that way now. It had only been a few minutes, after all, since Ember had announced their impending nuptials.

“Freddy,” he said softly. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations,” Freddy repeated, nodding faintly. “Congratulations to me?”

“To all of us,” Ember corrected. “At long last.”