Page 19

“The Queen will be at home this evening. Her hip was paining her yesterday.” Charity let go of his arm and walked toward the carriage. “We should hurry. If I am to change her mind, I will need to do it before she decides Selina’s fate without us. ”

“You will help?” Perry asked from behind her, surprised.

Charity glanced at him over her shoulder. “Would you prefer I argue?”

He swiftly caught up and she let him hand her up into the carriage.

Sitting opposite her on the rear-facing bench, Peregrine carefully angled his legs so that they did not touch hers.

And as the carriage jerked into motion, he settled his hands on his knees, the corner of his lip showing the barest trace of a sardonic curl.

“I admit, I thought you would have more questions.”

“Oh, I have plenty of questions, Peregrine Fitzroy,” she said, a note of exasperation colouring her voice as she stared out the window, unable to meet his eyes when they were so close.

A hot flush crept up her chest towards her collarbones as she thought about her words on the balcony.

Perhaps she should have never said anything at all.

“I thought I might let you explain first. Beginning with where you so suddenly disappeared to while I was being questioned about the Order’s possible involvement by the Queen. Or perhaps you should go back even further and let me know what you have been doing for the entirety of this past week.”

When he held onto his silence, she finally glanced back his way—and then wished she hadn’t. Like the hawk he was named for, he was still watching her with an unnerving, steady attention.

“What?” she asked sharply. "Is it your intent to shame me further, or is your staring just idle curiosity?"

“She asked me if I trusted you.”

“...Did she? I suppose I can guess what your answer was.”

He took a patient breath. “Then I suppose you might be surprised. Because however angry I am—was—I have been forced to reconcile with the fact that, in a way, your hands were as tied as mine.”

Whatever that meant. Charity wrapped her arms around her middle to still the butterflies. “I do not understand. ”

He told her, then, how he had taken Selina home, and how the Marchioness of Normanby had confessed that her ‘offer’ to Charity had been nothing of the sort.

Charity’s mouth hung open. “She played me for a fool. And I was. I went right to the Queen and offered you up, exactly the way she wanted me to.”

“It is an uncomfortable feeling, is it not?” Peregrine asked, his voice gentle and ever so slightly amused. “Being used.”

Uncomfortable? She felt positively ill, digging her nails into her thighs to reduce the nauseating, terrible sense of wrongness. She hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse about her deal with the Queen.

Suddenly, warm pressure captured both her hands. Peregrine was holding them tightly, letting her fingers bite into his, even as he stroked her knuckles with his thumbs. “Stop,” he told her. “It is not your fault, Charity.”

Isn’t it? If she had half of Peregrine and Selina’s experience with these sorts of dealings, perhaps she would not have been nearly so easy to dupe.

“What I cannot seem to understand,” she said, her words high and strained, “is why you want me to help her. Despite this very wretched way she went about everything, when she could have just told me?—”

“I would not have cooperated.” There was no give; it was a statement of simple fact.

“At least, not easily. Persuasion takes time, and when it comes to submitting to other people’s governance over my actions, I have…

strong feelings about it, to say the least. Selina needed me to be able to investigate the Order, and to not be spending my time fighting the Crown and my mother all at once. She wanted you to get that pardon .”

He squeezed her hands to emphasise those last words, and Charity swallowed, trying to generate moisture in her suddenly very dry mouth. Investigate the Order? Why would Selina want Peregrine to dig into her own organisation?—

“Marian Fitzroy has another man in the Order, and Selina does not know who it is. Tell me I am wrong.”

The faintest, ironic smile touched his lips. “I cannot. We met three of the four other leaders of the Order of the Centuriate the morning I took you to Selina’s home. One of them appears to be in contact with her, at the very least.”

Suddenly self-conscious about the fact that he was still touching her hands, she returned her arms around her middle, unable to think of a single word to say. Cameron had nearly killed them both. Would they survive dealing with another one of his mother’s men?

Peregrine let her sit in thoughtful silence for the remainder of the trip to Buckingham House.

Of course, if the Order was compromised, they would need Selina to help unearth the villain, Charity’s mind reasoned, filling in the gaps.

She shivered, trying to imagine if one of the three men who had smiled at her so politely was far more sinister than he had appeared.

At Buckingham House’s front drive, he descended first from the carriage and then turned around to help her down. When he stepped aside to walk her to the door, Charity saw the Queen’s butler striding down the front steps at a hurried pace to intercept them.

“My Lord, Your Grace, Her Majesty is not available to receive you this evening,” the older man said the moment he was within speaking distance.

The Queen must have been aching worse than she let on. Charity rushed to reassure the butler of their intentions. “We do not need long. If she can spare us but a few minutes of her valuable time?—”

The butler cleared his throat, interrupting her.

“I am afraid you misunderstand. Her Majesty will not be receiving you , this evening. She left word in case you came by, to tell you that the Marchioness of Normanby is her guest for tonight and she is busy entertaining. Her Majesty will send for you when she has further need of you, and otherwise wishes you both a fine evening.”

Charity blanched at the terse message, which though politely phrased, landed like a slap across the face. For all her loyalty, all her sacrifices, she’d been reduced to a message delivered by a butler.

Should she protest? She cast a look from the side of her eye at Peregrine and saw him shake his head sternly.

Perplexed at the fact that he was willing to give up so quickly, she turned back to the butler.

“Yes, well, thank you for letting us know. Please send the Queen my regards and let her know that we—I am, as ever, at her service.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” the butler said, his voice breathy with relief that the two of them did not plan to argue. He bowed once and then retraced his steps back to the door.

Her knees shaking slightly, Charity did not wait for any help to climb back into Peregrine’s carriage.

She slid onto the seat, hunching close to the wall, with less than her usual grace and then pinched the bridge of her nose.

The bench shifted as Peregrine sat, this time slouching into the seat beside her.

She startled at the sharp rap he gave the roof, but did not look at him.

“A penny for your thoughts?” he asked her lightly, as though her world was not falling down around her head.

Was this the end of her social circuit? Was she about to be banished from London, doomed to live out a quiet life in the distant reaches of Scotland?

She shook her head, her eyes still closed while she tried to keep her breathing steady. “I am starting to think you don’t just invite calamity into your life, you also introduce it to everyone you know. ”

He chuckled ruefully. “The good thing about being acquainted with calamity is you become very adept at surviving it, at least.”

“But Selina?—”

“If Selina is a guest at Buckingham House, she will, no doubt, be cooling her heels in the Garden View Chamber. It is not ideal, but at least it sounds as though she is not under any formal arrest. There should be time to persuade Her Majesty to hear us. The Queen will not commit to any rash manoeuvres while she thinks she is holding all the cards.”

“That is assuming I will have any standing among the peers by tomorrow,” she said sourly.

“It will be all right, Sparkles.”

That stupid nickname , Charity thought desperately.

But at the same time, it felt as though some piece of the world had been restored to balance.

How unbelievable was her life these days, that his contemptuous irreverence for her title was an unexpected source of comfort?

A furtive happiness began to unfold in her stomach, and Charity shook her head in disbelief.

After a little silence, he added, “It seems I owe you two apologies, and the first is for ruining your evening plans for nothing. Though you were generous in coming without question.”

“Please,” she interrupted. “I owed you that much at least after the way things fell out between us.”

“Well, that does not excuse my behaviour,” he continued, his voice muted. “I was… rather beastly to you, and I am sorry for that.”

“You were speaking the voice of your worst fears.” Charity hadn’t put the words together in her head before, but as she spoke them now, it felt true. “The idea of being manipulated—being used— ” she said, employing his own specific turn of phrase, “it is a nightmare for you, isn’t it?”

“...Yes.”

It was as though, little by little, finer details were emerging in the portrait of the man.

The way he wore armour to protect his vulnerabilities from the world at large, much as she did.

His was a shell built with a stand-offish attitude, isolation, and the secrets he collected but only rarely employed.

“I do not want your penny,” Charity said impulsively, seeing a rare opportunity. The question was whether she had the courage to take it. Finally she turned to face him, though she could barely make out his face in the little light afforded by the crescent moon and the gas lamps. “I want a secret.”

She could feel his appraisal from the shadows.

“I seem to be a bad influence on you, Charity.”

“Or a better one than you think. Besides, you owe me at least one answer. I have already answered several of your questions tonight.”

She could hear the soft snort of amusement. “Shall we play a different game than Question or Command, then? One where we are trading in information? Best pose your question carefully. Because you know there are some I cannot answer. And if you refuse to answer any of mine, then the game is done.”

Carefully, she considered that. “I agree to your terms.”

“Then, pose your question.” He bent his head towards her, waiting as though it were a dare.

What questions from the past would she answer, given this power? She considered their history, stretching back to their mamas before either of them had been born. “What did my mother really do to start such a rivalry between our families? Do you know the truth?”