Chapter Thirteen

P hoebe!" It hadn't been the first time Chris' insistent shout had echoed throughout the house, and Phoebe doubted that it would be the last. "I swear," Charity murmured as she daintily selected a lump of sugar with a tiny pair of tongs and stirred it into her cup of tea. "There is simply no reasoning with such behavior." But she had said it with such a longsuffering sort of air that Phoebe suspected it was hardly the first time Charity had been treated to such nonsense. "Is he always like this, then, in your experience?" Phoebe asked. "Oh, yes," Charity said. "Can't abide not having his own way. Rather like a child." She gave a judgmental sniff. "He's seven and thirty, if you can believe it. One might think he'd have learned better by now." Well, when one was forced to endure a succession of plaintive and petulant shouts, it did seem hardly believable that the man had nearly two score years to his credit. "He's just ill-tempered because he didn't wish me to meet with you," Phoebe said. And now, like a child, he sought to interrupt them in any way he might. "Really?" Charity blinked. "That doesn't seem very like him. Ought I go?" "I don't see why you should," Phoebe said. "Presently, you're my guest—not his." And if she were honest, Chris had been correct. She did like his mistress. She'd expected Charity to be beautiful, since a man of Chris' wealth could likely have had his pick of mistresses, and what gentleman would not prefer beauty when it was available to him? But the woman was also a pleasant companion. Genteel, even if she had been born common. Elegant and polite and refined. And, most happily of all, well-read. They'd discussed a fair few books together during tea, while doing their best to ignore Chris' caterwauling. "It was kind of you to invite me," Charity said. "I suppose most women would prefer to ignore their husbands' mistresses." Not simply to ignore them, in Phoebe's understanding, but to pretend as if they did not exist at all. "Oh, well—we don't have the sort of marriage that might give rise to jealousy or resentment over such things," Phoebe said as she served herself another tiny slice of cake. " Phoebe !" came another plaintive shout from above. Charity smiled over the rim of her teacup. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever heard him so desperate to gain someone's attention," she said. "Really?" Phoebe blinked in surprise. "Not even yours?" Charity gave a light laugh. "My goodness, no," she said. "He's paid for the privilege of my attention, dear. He doesn't have to shout for it. Oh, don't misunderstand me—I am fond of him, naturally, as a friend would be. But our relationship is one of business, not one of love." "Is that—usual?" Phoebe inquired as delicately as she could. "I mean to say, it seems a cold sort of arrangement." "Not at all," Charity said. "I'll admit I've been luckier than most. Some men use their mistresses like—like mere vessels to slake their lusts. But when one's partner is competent, well, then, there's a great deal of satisfaction to be gained. And if one might earn a tidy income from the purveyance of pleasure..." She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. "I live a life of leisure," she said. "And when we part company, I'll have put enough away to maintain my standard of living indefinitely. Perhaps then I shall take lovers only for the fun of it. Or perhaps I shall marry, if I should find a man worthy of me." What a marvelously self-assured woman Charity was, Phoebe thought. Entirely certain of her place within the world, unburdened by the shame that others might have thought she deserved to bear. Confident and content to live her own life in the manner of her choosing. She wished she had ever had half so much poise and dignity. A certain strange curiosity compelled her to ask, "And is he…competent, then?" "What, you don't know already?" Charity's rich brown eyes widened in surprise. "Not even to consummate your marriage? I'd thought certainly you would have at least once." "No, I—I said I didn't want to," Phoebe admitted, feeling her cheeks burn with a violent blush. "And, really, unless we intended to seek an annulment, no one was ever going to ask." For a moment, Charity only stared in mute shock, as if she could not conceive of the notion. "You said you didn't want to," she repeated at last, as if the words had made little sense to her. " Didn't ? Do you now?" "I don't know," she admitted. "It's just—" She would have been reluctant to speak of such things to a virtual stranger under ordinary circumstances, but this woman was her husband's mistress. Probably she would understand. Though children were often the obvious results of such arrangements, often enough they were ruinous to such a career. If any woman of her acquaintance could empathize, it would have to be Charity. "I have no natural affinity for children, no maternal instinct to speak of," she admitted. "The risk of such a thing…" "Pish." Charity's full lips pursed into a little moue. "There's numerous ways one might prevent the conception of children, darling. I've avoided that unwelcome circumstance for well over a decade now, myself. There's condoms, sponges—if you like, I'll give you the direction of an herbalist of my acquaintance who produces a tea known for that quality. It's a bit bitter, to be sure, but a squeeze of lemon and a bit of honey, and it's perfectly palatable." A thump from upstairs that fairly shook the walls. " Phoeeeebeeee! " Charity issued a tolerant sigh. "If one must be married, one might as well avail oneself of the pleasures to be found within one's marriage," she said. "And despite all evidence to the contrary"—this, with a pointed glare toward the ceiling, where suspicious thumping sounds continued to rain down upon them—"he is quite competent. Well, except in certain matters." She lifted her wrist, displaying the diamond bracelet. "I requested sapphires. He knows I've got no fondness for diamonds. Bland, colorless stones they are." Phoebe gave a little wince. "Oh, you mustn't hold him responsible for that," she said. "I made a mistake with them. I assumed he'd purchased them for you, but—but he said he'd meant them for me." "Truly?" Charity's brows rose in interest. "A gift, unprompted? How lucky you are. In my experience, men provide much better for mistresses than for wives." Conspiratorially she leaned closer. "Would you mind terribly if I were to hold onto it for a few hours more? Naturally, I am happy to return it—but I could leverage a sapphire necklace from it with the liberal application of guilt over a withdrawn gift. He's promised a bracelet already, and I do so love sapphires." A bubble of laughter rose in Phoebe's throat. "Be my guest," she invited. "It would serve him right for being so intolerable a patient." "Yes, well, he does excel in being that," Charity sighed. "I suppose I'd best go up and give him my well wishes for a swift recovery. But I do thank you, for the tea and the conversation. I didn't expect you would be quite so pleasant to me." "It was my pleasure," Phoebe said. And it had been, truly. "I'd be happy to host you for tea again, if you're willing." "That would be lovely," Charity said, and she reached out to touch Phoebe's hand. "A little advice, if I might be so forward. He can be a difficult man. Pigheaded, stubborn, prone to sulks if he finds himself thwarted in his aims. But his bark is worse than his bite." She rose from her chair, smoothing out the blue silk of her skirt. "In fact, under the right circumstances, you'll find his bite is pleasant indeed."

∞∞∞

Chris tossed the bracelet in Phoebe's direction hardly a second after she had entered his room, and she fumbled to catch it. "There," he said. "I'll have you know it cost me the promise of a sapphire necklace to gain the return of it. I've half a mind to take the price of it from your allowance." Phoebe lifted her brows in disbelief. "You don't give me an allowance," she said. "I don't? How am I meant to deduct the cost of the necklace from it, then? Sapphires do not come cheaply." With an imperious gesture of his hand, he said, "Tell Brooks to write to my solicitor on my behalf and instruct him to provide you with a suitable allowance, so that I may retract it until the necklace is paid for." "I will do no such thing," Phoebe said. "Besides, it is only your own fault." "It is not!" With some effort, he levered himself up on an elbow, stifling a grimace. " You gave it to her. I merely reclaimed it." "Well, how was I to know it was meant for me?" Phoebe asked. "I made a perfectly reasonable assumption given the circumstances. You made the promise; the consequences of it are yours alone to bear." "Mouthy wench," Chris grumbled, and sank back upon the pillow. "Sit," he ordered, with a flippant gesture at the chair that remained positioned near the bed, which she supposed Charity had most recently occupied. "It's painful, having to peer up at you. If you're going to argue, do me the courtesy of doing it while seated. Besides, I need someone to change my bandage." "Then you ought to have called someone to help," she chided as she settled onto the chair. The bracelet was cool within the cup of her hand. She wondered how difficult it had been for Charity to pry the promise of a sapphire necklace from him. "I did," he said. "Did you not hear me shouting?" "Not me . Haddington, or—or Brooks, perhaps." "Haddington's hands are somewhat less than gentle," he said. "I suppose he's too accustomed to keeping clothing in order. Thought he'd press and fold me like a shirt when he was done last evening." "Brooks, then," she said, tucking the bracelet into her pocket. "Brooks is Brooks," he said irritably. "He'd do it, but I'm not in a mood to hear him natter on about the inconvenience of it all. You've patched me up before," he added. "And look. My knuckles have healed without so much as a scar to show for it." He presented his hand for her inspection as if she should be honored by the praise he had bestowed upon her, for his judgment of her competency for such a task. "Yes, well, you've got enough of them already, I suppose," she said. "And you'd have reason to know. What with the way you had your hands all over me evening last." "Oooh!" Cheeks stinging with mortified heat, Phoebe popped up from the chair and fisted her hands upon her hips. "Change your own damned bandage you—you—" "Wait," he called, the hum of a laugh in his voice. "You can't just leave. I can't even reach the bell pull on my own. Could take ages to get anyone else in." "I'll be kind enough to pull it for you," she fumed as she turned for the door. "Phoebe," he said plaintively. "You can't leave me alone. I'm ill." Her hand curled around the cord. "You're not ill," she said. "You've been shot. The surgeon was confident that you'll recover." "I'm weak as a kitten," he insisted. "And I think I've got a fever." "A poor analogy. I've seen kittens with a great deal of ferocity. And you have not got a fever." Her fingers clenched; her arm tightened in preparation to give the cord a good yank. "I have, though. I'm sweating something awful. Just look." Cautiously, Phoebe peeked over her shoulder. True to his claim, there was a sheen of moisture upon his forehead, and his face was bit more flushed that perhaps it ought to have been. But there was also a convenient glass of water set upon the nightstand within reach and she would not have put it past him to sprinkle water upon his face and pinch his cheeks to sell a falsehood. "Please," he said on a faint whine, endeavoring to make himself look small and pathetic, which was not an easy task for so large a man to accomplish. "I can't sleep when my bandage is this damned itchy and uncomfortable. And I'm so bloody bored." Of course. He'd already been slowed down by the injury to his knee which he'd sustained some months past. Now, to be confined to a bed besides—for a man so accustomed to doing as he pleased and going where he pleased, the unwilling confinement must be intolerable. "You could bring Hieronymus to visit," he wheedled. "And I won't even press you about your tea with Charity." A frisson of alarm raced up Phoebe's spine. "Did you press Charity about it?" she asked. "I would never," he declared, striving to look affronted by the accusation. Striving a little too hard, in Phoebe's estimation. "All right, I would," he admitted. "But she wouldn't. Not even for sapphire earbobs to go with the necklace." He said it with a startling amount of peevishness, as if that little bit of disloyalty had been both exceedingly unwelcome and unexpected. Still, Phoebe found herself releasing the bell pull as she turned back toward him. "You were right," she said. "I did like her." "You are not going to be friends with my mistress," he said, in a firm, determined tone. The sort that intended to assert itself as law. The same sort that she had never been much good at heeding. "I don't see how you intend to stop me," she said. "You can't even make it out of bed at present." There was something just a little reassuring in that. Weak as a kitten, he'd said. Well, he wasn't quite that. But he was probably close enough to it. "Where are the bandages?" she asked as she wandered back over to the bed. "The nightstand drawer," he said. "Haddington wouldn't leave them out. Said it ruined the elegance of the room to have evidence of injury left in the open. Thought he might just toss my arse out of it as well just to be safe." Phoebe suppressed a chuckle, and reached out to touch her wrist to his forehead. "Oh," she said, in mild surprise. "You do have a fever." "I do?" Not to his credit, he also sounded surprised. "Hell," he said, sinking back in the pillows piled behind his head. "Probably why I feel so fucking wretched. Would you fluff my pillows after you change my bandage?" Digging through the drawer in search of the supplies, Phoebe gave a light laugh. "No," she said succinctly.

∞∞∞

Phoebe hadn't put on the damned bracelet, but then she hadn't left the room either. Instead, she had yanked the bell pull and spoken softly to the servant who had answered the summons, and then she'd situated the chair closer to the edge of the bed, where she had taken a seat. Chris held himself still as she unwound the length of bandage from his waist that secured the gauze to his side. He'd had to sit up to make it a task possible to manage—well, as much as he could sit up, given that every flex of his abdominal muscles sent pain careening through his nerves. It wasn't the first time he'd been shot. Probably wouldn't even be the last. And every fucking time it was a miserable experience. Only this time, he'd got a fever into the bargain. He hadn't been lying when he'd said he was sweaty; he'd just thought the room had grown uncomfortably warm in the August heat. "I've sent for some ice water and a cool cloth for your head," Phoebe said as she tugged the bandage out from behind him, pulling it free at last. The gauze stuck to his side where it had been placed, no doubt crusted to his skin by his dried blood. "As well as some willow bark tea to bring down your fever, and a meal. I don't suppose you've eaten already?" "Not recently. Brooks didn't bring me any breakfast." He left out the small fact that he'd lobbed a succession of missiles in the man's direction when Brooks had had the poor judgment to appear at his call instead of Phoebe. He sucked in a breath as she picked gently at the gauze in a delicate attempt to pry it away from his skin. "It's been left to sit too long," she said, and something about her tone suggested she harbored the suspicion that he had intentionally driven away those who would have changed it out well before now. "Perhaps Haddington would be better—" "No." He was in pain, ill-tempered, feverish, hungry, and most of all, bored out of his damned skull. "You do it. Just yank it off." Blond brows arched high over those queer grey-blue eyes. "I am not going to yank it off ," she said. Her white teeth nibbled at her full lower lip, pinching a deeper rose hue into the soft pink. "I'll change it out," she said. "If you tell me what became of Scratch. What you did to him." She thought herself a bargainer. He could almost respect it. "I told ye," he said sourly, his proper enunciation slipping away from him with the advent of her small fingers delicately pulling away the gauze in tiny, painful increments. "Don't ask questions ye don't—" "I do want to know," she said, her brows furrowing in concentration. "That is, I'm ready to listen." "Why?" "I suppose because I might learn something from it," she said. "Why, for instance, your butler thinks it would be a simpler task to compile a list of people who don't wish you dead." "I told you I weren't a good man." "Good is relative," she said patiently, wincing in sympathy as he sucked in a breath when she pulled with a little more pressure and broke open a forming scab in the process. "It's a subjective judgment rendered upon one's limited observations. Have you…hurt many people?" "Yes." He hadn't even regretted it. If she expected remorse as a condition of goodness, even a subjective one, then she was bound to be disappointed. "I've killed a fair few, as well. More than I've bothered to count." "Oh," she said, chewing at her lower lip. "Hm." "Hm?" Just that? "Well," she said. "It's just that—there's been gossip. About what was said at that dinner party." She let out a low sigh, having successfully peeled back perhaps half of the gauze. "I've never had cause to think of it before, but…I think you were right." "About what?" "That we assign a certain morality to killing when it suits our purposes," she said. "That the act itself is less rendered less despicable when we tell ourselves there's a good reason. We make some deaths more moral than others." Had he said all that? He'd thought he'd merely be rubbing their hypocrisy in their faces. And Phoebe—Phoebe wished to know if she might find a shred of good mixed in with the bad. Whether there had been any sort of morality, in his estimation or hers, within it. "So I am asking," she said. "Did you kill him?" "Yes." The admission had not surprised her. Probably she had expected it. "Yes, I killed ‘im. I weren't the first child ‘e ‘ad sold—or tried to. Couldn't let ‘im do it to someone else, someone weaker than m'self. And do ye know, it weren't even difficult. Alls I ‘ad to do was to lure him down to the river wiv a tale I'd spun o' some fancy whisky I'd found washed ashore while mudlarking. The damned fool couldn't swim. One little nudge, a splash, and he sank like a bloody stone. If ‘e's not even now at the bottom o' the Thames, then probably he got fished out and put in a pauper's grave. I ne'er cared enough to ask." "Hm," she said again. "What? Nothin' to say?" "Good riddance to bad rubbish?" Phoebe suggested wryly. "I'm afraid I can't manage to dredge up much sympathy for him." At last the bottom edge of the gauze came free, and she sank back in the chair with a sigh. "Perhaps I'm not a very good person, either. Have you killed anyone who did not deserve it?" "Depends on how ye define ‘deserve,'" he said. He let the words settle uncomfortably there between them for a moment or two, collected himself, and at last admitted in a crisp, precise voice, "I don't kill people for insulting me, nor for defaulting upon debts." "You implied differently to my brother." "I lied. I didn't particularly want to have to break his arm or knock out his teeth for his insolence. Better he fear what I might do than experience it firsthand." A grin, half-feral, split his face. "I said I wouldn't kill over it. Maiming's a different story. I've killed too many men to count, but they all got what was coming to them in the end. I'm not sorry for it. But I've never intentionally hurt a woman or a child. Seen too damned much of that sort of violence in my youth. Never cared to make myself one of those men." "I suppose you're implying that you don't intend to beat me if I displease you?" she guessed as she folded up fresh gauze into a new pad to lay against his wound. "Can't imagine it'd go over any better than shouting," he said. "Can you throw a punch?" "I don't know. I've never tried," she said, and her fingers were so careful, so gentle when they pressed the gauze pad to his side. "Hold that in place, if you please." She unspooled a clean bandage and rose from the chair to position it carefully—not too tight, not too loose—as she wound it around him once more. "Do you suppose I'm in any danger?" she asked. Chris snorted. "I doubt it," he said. "The difference is that if someone should kill me, I'm dead. But if they should so much as hurt you— they're dead. There's not a man alive with a grudge against me that wouldn't know it. It'd be a foolish notion on its face." "Somehow, I don't imagine men desperate enough to try to kill you would be possessed of superior reasoning skills," she said lightly, as she leaned across him to tuck the end of the bandage in. "Most don't. People are a stupid and panicky lot." The faint fragrance of roses wafted to his nose. He didn't much care for the scent of them in gardens, but he enjoyed it far more warmed by the heat of her skin. He had the strangest inclination to lean in suck that scent deep into his lungs. "After I did him in, Scratch became something of a bogeyman," he said. "For the children in the slums—and beyond. They often claimed to have seen him wandering the streets. Or the ghost of him at least. It became a local legend, the sort the older children used to scare the younger and keep them in line." A tiny shudder slipped down her spine. "How dreadful," she said as she retreated back into her chair, taking the aroma of hothouse roses with her. Absently she smoothed at the rumpled covers draped over him, and he was damned lucky she'd missed sliding her palm directly over his cock by perhaps an inch in her efforts to right them. Or damned unlucky, depending upon how one chose to look at it. When one considered that she wasn't likely to do anything about the state of his cock at the moment—or, indeed, ever—he'd have to put it definitively at lucky. Her fingers knitted in her lap, and for a moment she turned her head toward the door as an odd, pensive expression slid across her face. Like a silent war raged within her head, battling forces vying for supremacy over two contrasting decisions. Stay or go, he decided they had to be. At long last, the tip of her pink tongue swiped out to moisten her dry lips, and she said, "May I ask you an…indelicate question?" "Would've thought interrogating me about murders was indelicate enough," he said, enjoying the little frown of annoyance that graced her lips. "I'm in earnest," she said. "I haven't anyone else to ask. I'm certain it's too improper to inquire of." "Really? Now I must know." She seemed to gather her courage, setting her shoulders and firming her lips. She drew in a large breath through her nose, and asked at last, "What is a condom?"