Page 5 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“ Y ou owe me, Freddy,” Ember said again, fisting her fingers in her skirts. She could feel the impatience bubbling under her skin, threatening to fly from her fingertips or out of her mouth at any given moment.

She glanced at a calm, baffled Mr. Cresson, who’d perched himself by the window, and forced herself to breathe. Calmer, she added, “You know you do.”

“I did!” Freddy shot back, clearly exasperated. “I paid my debt! Did you not skin me for every penny I had? I can’t even go back to my own damned estate anymore!”

“That was what you owed to your wife,” Ember reminded him. “That was Claire’s repayment.”

“Oh! Well, that’s news to me, then,” Freddy returned, his cheeks warming. “What about smuggling two fugitive women out of the country last year? Whose debt was that? Still not yours?”

“That was Dot’s,” Ember replied. “And you know it.”

“I can’t go to Blackcove, Ember!” Freddy raged, coming up out of his seat. “You know I can’t!”

“I’m not asking you to throw the dice yourself,” she returned, just as loud. “Not unless it’s completely necessary! Freddy, this is my entire life. It’s the very ground I stand on. I almost lost it once before, because of you . Don’t let it happen again!”

“But why does it have to be me!” Freddy cried, a raggedness to his voice that spoke to barely contained tears.

This gave her pause, a buzz of discomfort landing on her skin at his rawness. It felt a little bit like guilt.

He was right that he shouldn’t go there, and Ember knew it.

Freddy Hightower had ruined his life in the roll of so many dice, and these last few years he’d finally stopped.

She didn’t know how he’d stopped, how he’d managed it, because God knew she saw plenty of men who had already lost everything stumbling through her doors even so, but Freddy, one way or another, had found a path to abstinence.

“Because,” she answered, softer now, almost apologetic, “everyone else already left London for the low season. Everyone else who’d be invited. And I know you always are. I won’t make you play, Freddy. I wouldn’t do that.”

He looked at her warily, as though she’d entirely missed the point.

“If I might,” said Joseph Cresson, leaning forward in that damned open shirt in a way that made Ember’s pulse spike, “could the invitation just be transferred to Miss Donnelly?”

“No,” they both answered with identical looks of displeasure over this fact.

“Right,” said Cresson, frowning.

He steepled his fingers, heaving a little sigh as he regarded Freddy, then quickly flicked his eyes to her with a shake of his head.

She realized then that he knew. He knew about Freddy’s demon, his hunger for the tables, and this man, this lovely, sweet man who’d once blushed every time she entered a room, was upset with her. He was upset with her for threatening it.

She didn’t enjoy that at all.

The clock at the end of the street chimed, alerting them to the hour. Each toll echoed through the little sitting room like a death knell.

“Let us get some additional opinions,” Cresson decided, glancing over his shoulder with a look that, if the clock had been able to see it, would have shut down those peals mid-ring. “I need to go to the office this morning anyway, and it’s only a short walk. Does that sound agreeable?”

Both Ember and Freddy stared at him, perhaps simply out of shock that he’d said so many words just now, all at once, without being prompted. This muscled, golden-skinned stranger who was wearing Mr. Cresson’s face had discomfited them both.

“I’ll go change,” Cresson offered, pushing himself to his feet. “I shan’t be a moment.”

They both watched him rise to his feet, though Freddy’s look of confusion was hopefully far more stark than Ember’s. She couldn’t account for what her own face might have been doing in that moment.

Had he always been so tall?

He ran a hand through that glorious, fluffy mop of black ringlets he’d grown and blew out a breath with his stubble-flecked cheeks puffed out. “Are my things still in the wardrobe?” he asked Freddy.

Freddy nodded, pointing with his finger to the direction the bedroom likely lay, as though Cresson would require directions there.

They watched him go, Freddy sinking back onto the couch next to Ember.

“Portugal, eh?” he said, giving her a sardonic little smile. “Maybe I should visit myself.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Leave him alone,” she said with a sniff.

“Me?” Freddy replied, grinning at her like they were still friends, like none of the things that had destroyed that friendship had ever happened. “And here I was thinking I’d need to slap a muzzle on you at any moment for the poor man’s own safety.”

She laughed despite herself. “Oh, shut up,” she said. “Cad.”

He laughed too, punctuating it with a wistful sigh. And then, absurdly, he said, “I’ve missed you, you know.”

Ember rolled her eyes, chuckling, and said, “Shut up, Freddy.”

She did look at him again, though, only quickly.

He did seem healthier, somehow, more himself.

This was still the Freddy she’d known, that she’d contracted herself to, but she felt an ease here that had never been there before.

Perhaps because there was no whiskey in reach?

Perhaps because there were no games of hazard unfolding belowstairs?

Perhaps. She couldn’t say for certain.

Her thoughts were quickly interrupted as Cresson re-emerged, wearing what appeared to be his perfectly sensible barrister’s clothes. Clothes that had likely looked decent a year ago, the last time he’d put them on.

They did not look that way now.

“God’s teeth, Cresson!” Freddy barked, coming back to his feet immediately. “You can’t wear that!”

Joseph Cresson frowned, tugging the straining buttons at his collar and attempting to stretch his arms to the sides. “Did you do something to my clothes, Lord Bentley? Did you have them pressed or … or cleaned or …?”

“No!”

Even the trousers looked precariously tight, clinging to his bottom half like a second skin.

“It looks fine to me,” Ember said immediately. “I think you should wear it.”

Freddy’s hand shot out, pinching her arm sharply through her sleeve. Sadly, Mr. Cresson did not observe it, being that he was looking down at his own body like he’d gotten the wrong parcel in the mail this morning.

“Wear whatever you’ve been wearing,” Freddy instructed him, firm as a lord dispatching a servant. “Something from your luggage. Anything but that.”

“I liked this,” Cresson said glumly, picking at the linen that was currently plastered to his abdomen like someone had thrown water on it. “It was my favorite suit.”

“Take it off!” Freddy snapped.

“Yes, do,” Ember added mildly, leaning around the corner to enjoy whatever remained of his departing form as he turned to head back to the bedroom. “Gracious.”

Freddy grumbled, slumping backward and crossing his arms over his chest. “Shut up, Ember,” he muttered.

Ember fell behind the two men on the walk to Bow Street. It wasn’t out of deference, certainly not! It was, instead, of a desire to observe.

The two men walked in step, neither leading, neither following. They bent their heads toward one another while they chatted, though it was clear Freddy was doing the lion’s share of the talking.

Typical.

She had known, of course, that Mr. Cresson had gone to Portugal on some mysterious barrister’s business. She remembered being told that in the same breath as the news that Freddy would be occupying his empty flat in the interim.

She had, at that time, imagined that the arrangement was only for a handful of months, not a full year and change besides. But, if the papers were to be believed, Portugal was no longer the sun-drenched, pomegranate-laced holiday destination it had once been.

Some king with a name that was impossible to pronounce had gotten up to some mischief in Brazil, from what she could tell. Some other lad had refused to come back to the motherland when it happened, and now the whole country was a tinderbox. It sounded, Ember thought, correct.

It sounded like the exact kind of stupid powerful men always were.

Of course, it was possible that revolution had been quietly brewing for decades and Ember had just never noticed before. Admittedly, she’d only started looking for Portugal in her Evening Standard after Cresson’s departure. It was a reason to think of it, she told herself. Something to notice.

Nothing more.

Silas Cain’s office came into view quickly, not more than a block and a half from the Cuckoo’s Nest, and open to the general public with a wide-open door and a meticulously maintained approach.

Ember liked the place. It smelled like authority.

And if anyone was surprised by their arrival, mercifully, Mr. Cresson immediately bore the brunt of it.

The clerks’ heads popped up one at a time like daisies, each one with identical wide-eyed and silent shock at the return of their prodigal issue.

Cain himself was already in the lobby, discussing a brief of some sort with one of them, his looming frame casting a shadow over the poor lad’s desk. Behind him, the door to his private office hung open, revealing another pair of gentlemen farther in.

“Mr. Cresson!” announced Silas Cain, immediately snapping up to attention like a general who’d been observed slouching by one of his cadets. “You’re home!”

“I am,” agreed Cresson with a bashful little hiccup of his steps, his hands immediately flying to the casual hang of the clothing he’d been forced to wear. “I’m afraid we had to come in on short notice. I’ve brought—”

“Ah,” said Silas Cain, his eyes falling on Freddy, his half brother, with something of a sigh. “Good morning, Freddy. Miss Donnelly.”

Well! He’d apparently seen her without even looking.

“Morning, Cain,” Ember said back, a little louder than necessary.

“If you don’t mind,” Cain said, gesturing toward his office. “I won’t be a moment.”

Freddy immediately shuffled off toward the office, knocking the door farther open with his knee. Silas looked a little surprised that Ember followed, likely expecting that she’d come today about the Thaddeus Beck issue, not as part of Cresson’s little coterie.

Well, she had come about that, hadn’t she? Silas just didn’t know the additional details yet.

Inside the private office, two men sat at the round meeting table next to the balcony: Cain’s investigator, Abraham Murphy, and a distinguished older gentleman that Ember vaguely recalled from the Murphys’ wedding last year.

Both came to their feet immediately, both evidently delighted at the appearance of Mr. Cresson.

Really! It was enough to make a pretty woman feel invisible.

“Ach! He returns,” exclaimed Abe Murphy, clapping his hands together with unabashed delight.

The other fellow strode across the room with his hand outstretched, clasping Cresson’s forearm like he’d just been reunited with a brother-in-arms. And Cresson, or whomever was masquerading as Cresson this morning, was grinning back in full unbridled happiness, dimples in his cheeks, even white teeth flashing.

“ Senhor Cresson! ” cried the other man. “De volta da minha terra! Que alegria vê-lo outra vez!”

Ember blinked, both at that blasted smile and at the sudden onslaught of foreign percussion. Before she could even process those two things, an absurd third thing happened.

Cresson opened his mouth and said, “é uma alegria estar de volta, Dom Raul, mas já sinto saudades de Lisboa.”

Dom Raul chuckled. Cresson pumped his hand in earnest. And the other three people in the room gaped at the display with open shock and fascination.

For Ember’s part, her stomach had jumped right into her throat to scream directly into her ear, shrieking, How dare he?

She’d had to bite down on her own tongue to avoid reacting to her stomach’s very valid observation, in fact.

Murphy looked like he wanted to march right out into the lobby and force Cain to come share in their shock, his eyes flicking between the door and Cresson with building indignation.

“Ninguém se livra da saudade de Lisboa,” the Dom said, clapping Cresson fondly on the back and guiding him back to the table. “Not ever.”

Cresson then seemed to feel the weight of their stares, his smile melting slightly off his dimpled cheeks. “Oh,” he said, a touch of pink crawling up his throat. “Sit down, everyone. Please.”

They did, though Cresson himself was interrupted during his descent into the chair, a quick call from Cain ringing back through the door.

“Mr. Cresson! Come have a look at this, will you?” the voice boomed, as though Cresson hadn’t been gone for a year and instead had just been at his desk last night.

If there was anything amiss in that, Cresson did not register it, sliding back out of his seat and making a smooth journey back to the outer office like he was perfectly reaccustomed to the tempo here despite any time away.

They waited for the door to click shut behind him before Abe, Ember, and Freddy rounded on Dom Raul as though he could explain what they’d just seen.

“What in the name of sense,” said Abe Murphy, baffled, “did you do to that poor lad?”

“It’s worse than you think,” Freddy mumbled.

“I wouldn’t say worse,” Ember put in. “Better, even.”

And Dom Raul began to chuckle, leaning back in his chair with the look of a proud papa. “It wasn’t me,” he said with a shrug, “it was the seven hills. A Lusitania . No one is immune, I am afraid.”

“No,” said Abe, shaking his head, “no, no. You’ve turned our Cresson into a damned Corinthian! It’s abominable.”

“I don’t mind it,” said Ember, winning her another pinch from Freddy.

“What is he wearing?” Abe continued to rant.

“Oh, trust me,” Freddy returned, “it was better than the alternative.”

“It wasn’t,” said Ember, just to give herself the opportunity this time to snatch her arm away before it could be pinched.

Dom Raul looked like he was having a wonderful time.

Truth be told, Ember couldn’t blame him for that.