Page 4 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

E verything smelled wrong.

Joseph Cresson knew that didn’t make sense, but it was true regardless. Every scent they’d encountered since hitting the Thames estuary had been wrong, somehow. Even the ocean spray at the port call in Dover had felt alien.

The river, the streets, the hedgerows here, none of them were quite right, not quite what he remembered.

Perhaps it was because it was so dark. Perhaps it was because it was cold and the rain was coming down in icy globs that captured and distorted scent as they fell.

But Joe didn’t think so.

He suspected, with a growing sense of unease, that it smelled wrong because everything in Lisbon had come to smell so right.

It had been a year. Only a year, he reminded himself.

By tomorrow, London would smell like home again.

The gentle darkness of the night was so quiet. There was no revolution here; there weren’t midnight dance clubs or all-hour cafés turning out hot bread and sizzling meat with no regard for the crack of midnight.

There was no unrest here. There were no men to carry to safety. There was no contraband to stow and transport. There was no need to keep watch, lest an alarm sound.

You love the quiet , he reminded himself, but it felt odd, all the same. Peace is a gift .

He shivered, the cold setting in through his coat, which had often been entirely too warm back in Portugal. The plopping icy drops from the heavens soaked against the oiled leather, dribbling down his arms and into his pack.

Very few windows were lit along the avenues that led to Bow Street at this hour. Everyone here knew night was for sleeping.

Joe had known that once too.

He had been certain of it. Once.

He sighed and shifted his pack from one shoulder to the other, shaking out the thoughts and the clinging bits of sleet in his hair. He looked down at the gleaming cobblestone and firmly said to himself: Home .

He hadn’t intended to be away for so long.

The trip to Portugal was supposed to last a matter of weeks.

Perhaps two months at the very most, to attend to a Portuguese client’s necessary legal interests while the man was otherwise occupied here in Britain.

However, arriving in Lisbon in the middle of a political upheaval had complicated things significantly.

Joe had found himself needed for far more than legal paperwork during his time in Dom Raul’s estate. And he had found himself more than happy to provide whatever aid he was able.

The ship back to London had made better time than intended. He was supposed to have arrived back firmly in the midst of daylight, when the contrasts would not be quite so sharp. And, most importantly, when the man he’d let stay in his flat while he was away would be awake.

He had already come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t getting his own bed back tonight. He could sleep in the sitting room. His couch was plenty hospitable. He only hoped his houseguest didn’t have a short fuse for unexpected guests or any weapons with which to dispatch them close at hand.

Freddy had, after all, gotten his letter. Some part of the man was expecting him, even if he was presently three hours into a ripping good dream. That, at least, should prevent any violence.

It should.

He passed a man, portly and bundled, nursing a cigar. They nodded to each other as though they were having the same night.

Joe’s little flat lived above a café near Bow Street called The Cuckoo’s Nest. He’d bought it some six years ago, directly from the café owner. It was a modest thing with a narrow landing and a narrower staircase, but it was plenty for him.

He’d filled it with books and green things and furniture that felt welcoming. He’d made it into a sanctuary here in this strange city, which ironically had felt so terribly noisy to him back then, when he’d first arrived from the Midlands.

He gave a small chuckle to himself at the memory because, once roused, it felt like a comfort.

Everything is familiar and right , he realized, once you’ve spent enough time with it.

His key still worked, still turned like he’d used it every night that he’d been a world away. The fourth step still creaked like a toad who’d been nudged by a boot. The landing was still too narrow and always would be.

It was too dark to really take in the place once the door swung open. But it hit him with a swell of anxious release, of pure relief.

His flat, he realized, still smelled right.

He was careful, picking his way through the little receiving room and around the kitchen. His sitting room was tucked into the rear corner, with a corner of glass panes looking down over the sidewalk.

He slipped the jacket from his shoulders and hung it on the peg he’d put there himself, without even being able to see it properly. He stripped off his boots, his socks, his ascot, all the damp and icy pieces that had been weighing him down on the walk home.

There was nothing to be done for pajamas. Not in this light.

Mercifully, though, he thought it would be all right anyway. His bones were starting to complain with a loudness they’d had the sympathy to keep quiet on the ship. His body wanted nothing of contemplation anymore, not with the sleet out there and the warmth in here.

And so he crawled onto the couch, dragging a blanket from the armrest over his tired body.

And he slept.

Freddy did wake him up in the end, but not with his voice.

It was morning, an overcast, silver sort of morning, and Joe found himself pulled from his slumber by the sounds and smells of a coffee roast.

There, in the distance, was the sizzle of butter on a pan, of a whisk scraping a bowl.

It was all playing out on the conscious edges of a dream that did not want to let go, letting Joe believe he was here and on the ship and in Lisbon and at his mother’s hearth all at once, in the way only partial consciousness can.

And then there was a gentle clack of ceramic on wood, and his eyes finally opened.

Freddy Hightower, peer of the realm, was serving him breakfast.

Butter-soaked oatcakes sat on a dollop of apple butter. A softly boiled egg was cracked open, its golden yolk leaking onto the plate. The bread was toasted on each side, with the same burnished gilt from the butter on the oatcakes. And, above all, there was the coffee.

Cresson pulled himself up with some effort, his body creaking in protest as he rubbed the silt of sleep, crystalized with ocean salt, from his eyes.

He yawned, stretching his arms over his head as Freddy bustled back into the room, carrying a second plate for himself.

He froze in the archway, blue eyes widening as he took in his unwitting landlord, fresh from the seafoam.

“Good Lord, Cresson,” he said by way of greeting. “What happened to you?”

“So much,” Joe rasped, already grasping for the mug of steaming relief in front of him.

Freddy pulled a footstool over for his own perch, setting his plate opposite Joe’s with a little too much pleasure at his own culinary outcome.

Joe suspected that if he’d been permitted, Freddy would have halted any actual eating until an artist could be summoned to capture the effect in oils first. And perhaps most irritatingly of all, it did taste just as good as it looked.

“I got in early,” Joe began, knowing it was unnecessary to say. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Yes, fine,” said Freddy, still staring at him over the rim of his own mug as though he’d grown a horn. “Your hair got long.”

“Did it?” Joe reached up without thinking to touch one of the dark ringlets sitting on his forehead. “Oh, I suppose it is a bit longer.”

“A bit,” Freddy repeated back with the dry irritation of someone whose observation was not being given his due. “You’ve gone brown, too. Very brown.”

“It was the sun.”

“Hmm,” said Freddy, as though such things were suspicious, his eyes still scanning Joe as though looking for more evidence that he’d gone and changed too much.

It made Joe sigh. “Once I’ve had a bath and a shave and changed into proper clothes, I’ll look just the same.”

“No,” said Freddy. “I don’t think you will.”

Instead of humoring this nonsensical line of conversation, Joe took a moment to sit back and look around his sitting room, at the little reading nook he’d carved out here over the years.

Nothing immediately looked amiss. His plants had been watered, his bookshelves had been dusted. He did note a new rug, which was well, as the old one had been fraying before he left.

What did surprise him was that the reading desk looked well-used, an assortment of books stacked on it with two lying open with paperweights in their spines. He looked a little harder, trying to identify them, but couldn’t place the colors of the binding.

Were they new?

He looked back at the shelves again, his brows rising. They did look fuller than he’d left them, he realized.

“The rug?” Freddy guessed, a nervous bent in his voice. “I know it’s a little bright, but I thought the dark blue would suit all the blue books on your shelves.”

“No, I like it,” Joe said, and meant it, watching how the cloud-filtered sunlight bounced off the woven threads of the new rug. “It looks nice. Suits the room.”

“Oh,” said Freddy, clearly thrown off balance by the approval. “Oh, good. That’s good, then.”

The breakfast began to vanish in segments: the yolk mopped up by bread, the apple butter relished between oats. The coffee they refilled.

“I’ll have to tell the Murphys you’re back,” Freddy said, handing Joe his refreshed mug. “But I’ll take the sofa, obviously, until I can get out of here.”

Cresson blinked at him. “There’s no rush.”

“It’s all right,” Freddy soothed, shaking his head. “I always knew you’d be coming back.”

Cresson squeezed his teeth together briefly, conjuring his patience. “I said there’s no rush, Lord Bentley. And I mean it.”

And at that, the other man smiled. He smiled and said, “I’ve told you a thousand times, Cresson. Call me Freddy.”

Joe narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth to say something back, but was caught off guard by a rapping at the door. He looked at Freddy in surprise but got only a shrug in return.

“I’ll get it,” Freddy said, “but for what it’s worth, I haven’t been inviting people over.”

“I wouldn’t care if you had,” Joe answered to a room that was already empty.

The jostle of the chain and the click of the door latch got him up off the couch, dusting oats from his legs and attempting one last stretch.

He wasn’t fit to greet a guest like this, in his sea-splashed trousers and shirtsleeves, but he couldn’t help but feel a little curious about who might be knocking on his door.

“It isn’t a good time,” Freddy was saying from beyond the kitchen, his voice low and urgent. “I really can’t— Oh, for Godssake! What could possibly be this important?”

A voice came in answer, a feminine Irish lilt that would have frozen Joe in his tracks if he hadn’t been rounding the corner at that very moment, his fingers tucked firmly into the sleeve bunched up around his elbow in an effort to tighten the hold.

He stood there in full-body paralysis as she turned to see him there, momentarily distracted from whatever pain or vengeance she had come here to deliver unto Freddy.

“Mr. Cresson?!” she exclaimed, looking truly shocked to see him there, in the home that he owned. “Grace to God, is that you?!”

She was staring at his open collar, untied down to the center of his chest. Those gleaming golden eyes blinked, traveling over to more and more unseemly features on his person.

“This must be a bad time,” she announced, snapping her head around to glare at Freddy.

Freddy threw his hands in the air.

“Please, no,” Cresson managed to blurt out, dragging her attention back, dragging those eyes back. “No, I won’t interfere. I’ve only just arrived.”

“You certainly have!” she clipped back, as though that sort of agreement made any sense.

“Ember, please,” Freddy tried again, though at this point Joe wasn’t certain he knew what the other man actually wanted her to do.

“No, this is good. This is perfect!” she declared. “A barrister’s advice and observation will stop me from making a display of myself.”

“You?!” Freddy gasped with theatrical sarcasm.

“Mr. Cresson, if you don’t mind,” Ember Donnelly said to him. “Can I steal a moment off you? Just a moment, I promise.”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “As many moments as you want.”

She smiled at him and he immediately forgot every single thing that had changed in his life since the last time he’d seen her. When had it been? The Murphy wedding, when she’d poured his wine and teased him with hope that she never intended to honor?

Had that been the only time she’d ever spoken to him? Had it been the only time he’d ever stood in the same room and merited her interest?

“Wonderful,” she chirped. “Shall we?”

Joe Cresson followed her into the flat and quietly realized that those memories wouldn’t have been the only time. As of this morning, it would instead be the first time.

Yes, that had been the first time.

That sounded better.