Page 25

The last thing Freddy needed as he climbed out of his unfortunate recent spiral was this paragon of what a nobleman should be arriving in his face, seducing his mother. But maybe, after a time, a role model wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

“You are reporting on the young man today?” Raul assumed as they rounded the block toward Lady Bentley’s townhouse.

“I am,” Abe confirmed, though to be honest, he didn’t have much in the way of useful intelligence for Lady Bentley. He had been heading this way in the hopes of advancing his own seductions of a woman in that house, and he couldn’t rightly say that, could he?

Now he had to think of something to tell Lady Bentley about Freddy by the time they reached the stoop.

“I thought you would have an accent,” he said, both because he had thought that and because Freddy was probably not a subject he should dive into with Lady Bentley’s suitor. “You sound like a native.”

Raul laughed. “Well, if you check my ancestry, I suppose I am somewhat of a native? My grandmother was English, and she did not tolerate any Portinglês in her presence . And of course, I did spend a portion of my education here in England.”

Abe nodded sagely, his brain clinging to Portinglês and repeating it in echoing somersaults of Raul’s pronunciation.

“You, though, Mr. Murphy. You have quite a distinct brogue,” Raul pointed out. “Such a lyrical sound the Scots have.”

“Oh,” replied Abe, blushing like a maiden who’d just been called pretty for the first time. “I suppose I do.”

“I like Scottish words,” Raul continued. “Bairn. Gallus. Braw. It is practically its own language itself.”

Abe almost stopped walking, staring at the other man in open surprise. “It used to be,” he said after a moment. And then, “You must be a menace at dinner parties.”

This won a rich laugh from Raul as they approached the house.

Abe knew he wasn’t intimate friends with this man. He knew that logically. He’d barely known him an hour. But it was hard to feel like they weren’t getting drinks later and comparing life stories.

Stepping into Lady Bentley’s townhouse was the splash of cold water he needed before he fell completely in love with the man and ran off with him instead of Millie. Even the receiving foyer was so overwhelmingly, beautifully feminine that Abe instantly felt more at ease.

He could smell floral tea and the melted beeswax of the primal female urge to light far more candles than necessary. Yes. It was like a balm.

Lady Bentley and Millie were in a brightly lit sitting room together, appearing to have been wrapping up a military review of several fabric swatches.

Both looked up in surprise at the pairing that had arrived in their house, delivered to them by a footman with what appeared to Abe to be a very bruised jawline.

He wanted so badly to make a joke about these ladies battering their staff, but he forced it down, allowing Raul to greet them both first and trying his best to avoid the look of confusion on Millie’s face.

Because it hadn’t occurred to him until just that moment, that exact moment, that Millie was oblivious to not only Freddy’s presence in London, but also to his current living arrangement.

“Mr. Murphy!” Lady Bentley said, rising with a warm smile. “I was not expecting you so soon! Welcome to my home. I see you’ve met Dom Raul, how wonderful.”

“We were acquainted at Mr. Cain’s law office,” Raul put in warmly, reaching out to take her hands. “It seems Mr. Murphy and I have many overlapping interests. Sometimes the world is small that way.”

Millie had come to her feet slowly, busying herself with stacking up the fabric samples, but it was clear she had a sharp ear turned to this conversation, her eyes snapping up at a mention of overlapping interests.

Lady Bentley gave a little sigh, glancing at Millie. “Millicent, my dear, have you met Mr. Murphy? Perhaps you know one another through the Cains?”

“We are well acquainted,” Millie said, her voice deceptively even and pleasant. “Friends, in fact.”

“Oh, wonderful!” said Lady Bentley, drawing closer to Dom Raul while she spoke to Millie. “Then there is no need for airs. Mr. Murphy is assisting me with a family matter, nothing terribly concerning, it’s just Freddy again.”

“Freddy?” Millie repeated, confusion evident. “I hadn’t realized he was still making mischief.”

Abe and Lady Bentley both scoffed, the sounds varying in tone but doubtlessly communicating the same sentiment.

“Lady Bentley, I confess I have very little in the way of updates about the earl,” Abe said apologetically. “I was simply dropping by to check in and also to see Miss Yardley.”

Millie’s eyes narrowed very slightly at that. As to any other reactions, it was hard to say. Abe felt that the light in the room had all but fled, leaving only Millie in what remained.

“By all means,” said Lady Bentley, somewhere in the void.

And somehow, in the next moment, he’d been steered out of the sitting room by Millie herself and deposited back on the porch outside the house.

“Abe.” She didn’t say it like it was a question or a rebuke or an absolution. She just said it, clicking the door shut with murderous calm behind her. “Freddy?”

He grimaced, trying very hard to summon a smile and failing. “I … have just realized,” he said carefully, letting her psychically push him down the porch stairs and onto the sidewalk as she followed steadily behind, “that I have been remiss in not mentioning a particular detail of my life to you.”

“Oh?” Millie replied, her head dropping a dangerous fraction of a degree to the right. “And what would that be?”

“Right, well.” He cleared his throat, which had become dry at some point. So very dry. “Shall we walk?”

“Abe.”

He heard himself release a sound adjacent to a nervous giggle, but she did fall into step beside him.

“You recall what we did to Freddy a year or so back,” he began, then cursed himself in his mind.

Of course she did. She was there. She was his wife’s sister.

“Um, yes, the whole business with the jail in Bruges and the custodianship of his home and fortune and … yes.” He nodded brusquely at her silent but impatient expression.

“So, after that, the poor sod had nothing but his allowance. And I, by chance, was also in a bit of a bind. I’d been drummed out of the Runners, as you know, for punching that magistrate, and Silas had opened up a new world of possible recovery for me by hiring me as a private investigator.

“Freddy owed me a favor after he drugged and robbed me back in Bruges for trying to save his sorry arse.” He stopped, wincing.

“Sorry. For saving him. We had a rapport, even if it wasn’t a particularly good one, you know?

And I saw an opportunity—his allowance, my business, both of our precarious housing realities—it all sort of fit together. ”

Millie stopped walking, blinking rapidly, a disbelieving and humorless smile coming and going from her face.

“You live with him,” she realized in that infuriatingly observant, whip-sharp, cruel way of hers.

“I.. ah …” He stopped, trying to swallow again through the total lack of moisture in his mouth. “Yes. I do, aye.”

And then she did laugh. True, overpowering, possibly a little mean-spirited humor. She almost doubled over, putting her hand on his shoulder and just … just letting it out in front of all these fine people on the street.

“That’s why!” she realized between the peals of it. “That’s why you were following Lady Bentley! Because of Freddy!”

And Abe had to just stand there and listen to it while his insides shriveled up like raisins.

Through her gasping hysterics, she managed to say, “How is it that I am the only person on this spinning planet who has never once been seduced by that blustering peacock of a man? How! I don’t understand it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I was sed—” he attempted, but she was still going.

“My best friend,” she said, holding up a finger, “was going to marry him. My little sister eloped with him. Silas protects him. Ember trusted him so much, she almost ended up homeless. My patroness has to mother him. And now you! You! My … my … friend? No, you’re more than that, aren’t you?

My … my Abe.” She paused, her eyes wild. “Whatever you are! You live with him?!

“Is it me? Am I the deficient one here?” She shook her head, the laughter starting to dissolve into something more sober and resentful. “It must be me. I just do not see it.”

Abe didn’t know what to say. Absurdly, he wanted to defend bloody Freddy! He wanted to say something like “Well, hold on now, that’s not fair. Have you ever actually talked to the man?”

But that would have just proven her point. Her very salient, very fair point.

“Millie,” he managed to croak, “I am so sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t bring it up.”

She laughed again, taking her hand away from his shoulder like she was retracting a gift. “Yes, you do.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, the street continuing to spool out around them in conversation and passing horses and glittering sunlight, as though the world hadn’t just irrevocably shifted.

“Have I ruined everything?” he heard himself ask.

She didn’t answer right away. She watched him, emotions flickering delicately over her pretty face.

“I don’t know,” she finally said with a shrug. “I’d hate to give Freddy the satisfaction, but I can’t say it doesn’t matter.”

Another beat of silence. Another pocket of people moving on with their lives around them, rude as you please.

“I just need to think,” she said.

“Clearly, so do I,” he replied raggedly, “more often than I have been, in any event.”

It won a very slight smile from her, something that could’ve been easily missed in her tumble of emotions, but he saw it. He saw it and grabbed it to hold as tight as he could until she’d finished her thinking.

And then he let her go.