Page 32 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

T here had never been a man better suited to creating a distraction than Freddy Hightower.

Joe hadn’t performed much in the way of help, truth be told. Once Freddy was told to get anyone who might cause trouble out of the way, he’d sprung into action like he’d been born to it.

He didn’t know exactly how it had started, but the outcome was as undeniable as the grit in Joe’s boots. Half the damned house was now free of its walls, having wound down the twisting path from Blackcove proper to the shoreline access.

They trailed along in the wake of Lord Penrose, who was excitably gesturing and pontificating on his family’s history, pointing to islets (allegedly) in the distance, identifying (and misidentifying) colorful mollusks underfoot, and promising them all grandeur and dazzlement once they reached the cove that had made his ancestor a (reported) legend.

“That’s actually a periwinkle,” Freddy would mumble now and then. “Whelk,” he’d whisper. “Cowrie.” And then he’d return to his wide smile and eager egging-on of the esteemed baron.

Meanwhile, little Hannah Lazarus was wearing a heavy winter gown that was clearly getting more and more sodden by the step.

“Did I encourage this?” she asked Joe at one point, squinting up at him against the already setting winter sun. “That couldn’t have been me. I’ve never been the stupid one.”

“I think,” Joe had replied kindly, “that we’re all the stupid one sometimes.”

“Inconvenient,” she’d replied, instead of arguing.

The cove itself, however, was almost worth the discomfort. In milder climes, it would have inarguably been so. The little inlet was almost silver with froth and foam, arcing into the embrace of the hidden channel, and in the slate-gray cliff face were two little caves, facing one another.

The sand underfoot glittered with the natural quartz deposits, looking so much like little chips of ice amidst the sediment that Joe couldn’t confidently say that’s not what they were.

“Damn fine storage!,” Penrose said, waving them into the larger of the two, “and surprisingly warm!”

“Warm, you say?” muttered Hannah to herself, winning a warning look from her father over his shoulder.

“Doesn’t look warm,” Joe had returned, though he could not say whether he was speaking to the girl or himself.

The rock was smooth, worn down by centuries of salt and wind. It was streaked with little deposits of something pale and silvery blue, and in the spaces where it had caught flecks of the seawater, it glimmered.

Joe pulled his coat tighter around his arms, stepping under the precipice and letting his eyes adjust to the torches Penrose was lighting. Several were stamped down the length of the wall, strongly smelling of whale oil.

Every time they caught, the quartz deposits in the little enclosure exploded with glitter.

“It wasn’t a good hiding place, however,” Penrose was saying, rising onto his toes to continue to spread the light.

“No pirate wants to be caught, of course, but under our beloved Queen Bess, it was perhaps a blessed outcome, a way forward. Skulking pirate to celebrated privateer! On the path to booty and dominion.”

“Booty and dominion,” Freddy repeated with delight, catching Joe’s eye and immediately getting shushed.

It did not dampen the glint of his smile, just as ostentatiously sparkling in the light of the torches.

Joe thought, in just that moment, that Freddy looked every bit the privateer. He just needed a feathered hat and a ship’s wheel.

“Now,” said Lord Penrose after making sure the whole of his little coterie had come into the arms of the cave. “Let me tell you about the capture!”

Joe did his best not to sigh.

The grotesquerie fireplace, hidden beyond the halls of Blackcove, received them in the wake of their sojourn, warm and crackling and amused at the lengths mere mortals would go to avoid detection.

“I thought it was quite good,” Freddy was saying, his shoes upside down on the mantle, drying. “Hannah liked it too, didn’t you, girl?”

“Did I?” said Hannah Lazarus, wet tendrils of copper-red hair still clinging to her forehead.

“Don’t make me jealous that I missed it,” Ember tutted, curled into Joe’s side, watching the flames. “That was likely my only chance to pursue a life of piracy, and I gave it up in the name of business.”

“Ember,” Freddy returned, turning over his shoulder to gaze at her with a somber expression, “that door will always be open. Say the word, and I will buy us a ship.”

“He will,” Joe told her, dropping his cheek on her curly head. “He’ll do it.”

“And off you’ll all go again,” Hannah sighed, reaching her hands out toward the fire, “without me.”

Ember frowned, stirring from her spot. “You’ve still got work to do here, a stóirín. You’re the girl with the notary seal, remember?”

“What romance!” Hannah muttered with a quirk of her lips. “I’d rather go with all of you back to London. You’re even taking Merryn away.”

“Merryn?” Joe asked, looking from one woman to the other.

“Cornish girl,” said Ember with a flick of her fingers. “Capable. I want to steal her from Penrose.”

“The maid?” Freddy asked, looking truly confused. “You don’t keep maids.”

“No,” agreed Ember. “I don’t.”

Freddy rolled his eyes and turned back to the fire, slouching down in his chair. His stockinged feet stretched toward the flames, still wet at the toes.

Joe breathed in the relief of the warmth, still smelling the sea and sand a bit on his hair and clothes. It had been difficult, he acknowledged, being down on the ground while Ember was up here, executing her confrontation.

It had been difficult, not because he wished to do it for her or because he worried it would go wrong, but simply because being away from her was difficult.

Sacrificing even the handful of seconds that may have passed between the conclusion of her business and a reunion with him, where she could tell him all about it, was unfathomable to him now, unnatural.

He used to battle between the urge to flee and the urge to collapse when she was in a room. He used to think she’d never see him, much less speak to him. He knew that those things were true once. It was just hard to remember what it had felt like to live in them.

He could not truly consider a version of himself that would hesitate to speak to her, to touch her, to expect her to see him and be pleased to do so. He kissed her head, tightening his grip on her, and breathed in this better version of reality, the correct one.

It smelled like anise.

“You’re going to miss Christmas,” Hannah continued. “You’ll have to celebrate on the road.”

“What do you care for Christmas?” Ember returned, amused.

“I don’t, I suppose,” Hannah replied with a dramatic little sigh, “but it always does motivate everyone else. Besides, I don’t mind the presents.”

“No one minds the presents,” Freddy agreed with a sage nod. “Everyone loves a present.”

“I’ve got all the gifts I need already,” Ember told them, winning annoyance from both as she wound her fingers through Joe’s. “Don’t give in to avarice on a high holy day, now.”

“It isn’t Christmas yet,” Freddy grumbled. “And this whole house is a temple to avarice.”

The piskies on the fireplace grinned.

“Papa frets over the presents every year, but he never turns them away,” Hannah said with a confiding little smirk. “He’s going to lose his mind if he sees that cross I made with you the other night. Christian corruption everywhere, and what’s a girl to do?”

“Ah, then don’t call it a cross,” Ember replied, raising her brows. “Call it a wheel. And if he frets, assure him it’s more pagan than Christian anyhow.”

“Oh, all right,” Hannah said, giggling. “That will surely soothe him.”

“Pagans and Christians,” Freddy reflected, “all gentiles at the end of the day, hm? Might as well choose the fun ones.”

It made everyone pause and look at him, oblivious and still focused on the fire.

“Did you know,” Joe whispered to Ember later, as they walked back to their rooms, “that Freddy is a bit of a naturalist? He spent half the morning naming cockles and such in the sand.”

“Is he?” she replied, clearly not aware of the fact. “Well, that’s not terrible, is it? Bottom-feeders at the beach are better than the ones in the gambling rooms.”

“They often taste better as well,” Freddy announced loudly from in front of them, the grin apparent in his voice at having caught them discussing him. “I’ll make a dinner when we get back to the city.”

“He’ll make a dinner, he says,” Ember marveled, those golden eyes wide.

“He’s not a bad cook,” Joe told her quietly.

“That’s true,” Freddy agreed, still a little too loud. “A good one, even. You’ll see.”

They would, Joe thought with a feeling in his heart that was something between contentment and a daze.

They would see.

There was nothing but the future now.

Ember stopped at her room, bidding them to wait a moment as she stole inside, the door still cracked open and her shadow moving back and forth against the rug in the hall.

“I think I will pack before anything else,” Freddy told him, sinking his fingertips into his waistcoat pockets. “I’m so ready to be off from here. Penrose offered to buy my dice, you know.”

“Did he?” Joe asked, surprised he had missed this exchange. “And what did you say?”

“I haven’t said anything yet. I want to be rid of them, of course, but I had pictured something far more dramatic and final, like a last shooting roll off the cliff and into the ocean.” Freddy gave a wistful little half-smile. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should do what pleases you,” Joe told him, lifting his brows. “If it would disturb you to have them linger here, especially with a man like Penrose, then give them to the sea.”

“Oh, Joe,” Freddy said with a sigh and a chuckle. “I’d hate for the sea to develop a bad habit.”

Ember returned, knocking the door open and inviting them inside.

“I just wanted to get the fire going,” she said, something bright green flashing in her hand as she walked backward, presenting the room, “and of course I had to hide all of our feminine underthings so neither of you became overtaken with scandal.”

“How many underthings could possibly have been out and about?” Freddy asked, sounding genuinely in want of an answer.

“You’ll never know, Bentley,” Ember replied happily, and then she held her hand out, revealing the green thing, the thing she’d made with Hannah that was neither cross nor wheel nor relic. “This is for you.”

“For …” Freddy frowned, staring down at it. “But I gave that back to you.”

“Oh, Freddy,” she said with a grin and a shake of her head. “Don’t be an idiot. This one is brand-new. It’s not mine. It’s yours.”

“Mine?” he repeated, still clearly not understanding.

She sighed, pulling it back and turning it in her hands.

“It’s a talisman, you understand? A protective item.

You’re supposed to make a new one every year, actually.

I’m being a very naughty Kildaran having preserved mine, but I think it still has its magic, despite its advanced age and heretical lacquer. ”

“What?” said Freddy.

Silently, Joe agreed.

Ember made a click of annoyance with her tongue. “I think the protection still works, is what I mean. I think it protected you. I think it kept you whole all the time that you had it. It’s mine, though, it’s mine and I’m keeping it, so I made you one. Tuig ?”

“I … I think I tuig ,” Freddy replied, his brows still furrowed but his hand creeping out toward the thing. “You made it for me?”

“Yes,” she said, exhaling with relief as she handed it over. “And I’ll make you a new one next year. I’ll keep making them as long as you keep deserving them, Freddy Hightower. Do we have a deal?”

Freddy thought about it, looking down at the braided greenery in his hand. He looked at Joe and then he looked at Ember and then he looked down at the cross again, as though he were looking at himself.

“Yes, all right,” he said at last, fingers closing over the spaces between the points of the cross. “I’ll take that wager.”