Chapter Twenty Two

I never thought I would say this," Emma mused over tea, "but I suppose marriage agrees with you." Phoebe blinked, startled by the statement. "Do you think?" she asked. "How so?" Emma offered a small shrug. "You simply have an air about you that you never have before. Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen you quite so comfortable in your own skin." Diana gave a nod of agreement from across the table as she selected a sugar lump with a pair of tongs to drop into her tea cup. "The strain of so many Seasons," she said, "obviously takes its toll. But you were always so harried, dearest, flitting from one event to the next. I think I began to think of it as your natural state." "I never realized how tense you had been, even at tea," Lydia added as she passed a plate of biscuits across the table. "You're smiling, dear, and it isn't that tight-lipped monstrosity you've worn in the past." "Am I?" Phoebe resisted the urge to touch her face, but she supposed—she supposed there must be some truth to it. Just months ago, her head had always been crammed full of plots and schemes as to how she might avoid attracting any suitors, how to carefully side-step matrimony without irreparably damaging her reputation. And now— Now she had gotten everything she had ever wanted. In a roundabout fashion, perhaps, but yes—now that she had married and had taken a pronounced step back from the social whirl in which she had spent the better part of a decade embroiled, she was…content. In a way she never had been before. In way she had never expected to be. "And just look," Emma said, with a vague wave of her hand. "You've turn Kit's house into a home." Phoebe resisted the urge to snort. "I'm afraid not," she said. "It's just the public rooms, really. The house is far too large to have filled it already." But she had been making steady progress at least, though she'd devoted far more of her time to finding books for the library than to acquiring furniture and art to fill the empty rooms. But it did look like a home, a little more every day. And Kit, ever observant, always noticed when he passed something new in the halls or noted some freshly-acquired decoration hanging upon a wall. Sometimes they bickered over color schemes and paper hangings. Sometimes she suspected he picked at her over some nonsense he didn't truly care about only so he could proceed to debauch her in some deserted room for the fun of it after he'd ceded the argument in her favor. "The fare has improved considerably," Lydia said. "Why, the first time we took tea here, I thought I would crack my teeth upon the biscuits." That was because Phoebe had had the kitchen staff trained up properly at last. It hadn't been too onerous a task—all they had wanted was a little direction and a great number of new recipes. "Yes, well, the staff has come along nicely," Phoebe said. "But Kit—" Well, Kit would be Kit. His table manners often left something to be desired, but since he had previously demonstrated that he could be trusted to behave properly when it was absolutely necessary, she'd decided not to remark upon it when he came to dinner with his waistcoat unbuttoned, or sans shoes. Particularly because he was fond of sliding his toes up the inside of her thigh beneath the table when he did. "Kit is irredeemable," she concluded. "But do you know, I think I like him that way." A little more beast than gentleman. "Has there been any resolution of that…other matter?" Diana inquired carefully. Russell, she meant, Phoebe supposed. She had not told them about the incident herself—hadn't want to relive it, even to explain what had occurred—but Kit had told Rafe, and Rafe had told Emma, and Emma had told Diana, and Diana had told Lydia, and she suspected the tale would have continued to spread if she had not then sworn them all to utter secrecy. As they shared a similar social circle, inevitably her parents would have heard of it, or her sisters, or her brother. The last thing she wanted was her massive family descending upon her in a frenzy of overprotectiveness. She wanted only to find her peace again. The one she'd been living within these last months, until that nefarious Russell character had upset it. "Kit's not said anything on that front," Phoebe said, with a slow shake of her head. She'd told him she didn't want the details, and when she had spoken the words to him, they had been the truth. She'd thought it would be best not to know. She'd been wrong. It was awful to live with the certainty that he was concealing things from her. To protect her, no doubt, and to honor her wishes. A few times she had delicately asked, but he had sidestepped her questions with a practiced ease. Some days he spent hours at a time locked within his study with Brooks, though she had never heard anything more than the muted murmur of voices from within. Some days he left the house for hours at a time and came home a bit bloodied, though she suspected little of it, if any, was his own. She'd been loath to ask if whatever bit of violence in which he'd indulged had been for business or pleasure. Or perhaps a little of both. "But he would tell you," Lydia said, her brows drawing together, "if there was something he thought you ought to know. Wouldn't he?" He would. She was certain he would. It was just that she suspected what she would want to know and what he thought she ought to know vastly differed. "I think so," she said. "If there were something I ought to be concerned about." He'd not said anything about her rare outings, other than to remind her to bring along a footman and to take both the stiletto she'd stolen and the tiny muff pistol he'd purchased for her. "It's just that it's clear that he's up to something. And he's become rather fanatical about teaching me to brawl." "I beg your pardon," Diana said, with a flurry of blinks behind the lenses of her spectacles. "To brawl ?" "To defend myself, I mean to say," Phoebe said. "It's rather undignified," she admitted with a sheepish shrug, "and I'll confess I'm not much good at it. He's a terrible taskmaster, besides, and he wields an unfair advantage with that cane." Twice last time he'd rapped her firmly on the bottom with it and once more she had had her knees knocked out from beneath her before she'd realized she had been meant to wrest the cane away from him. "How…unusual." Lydia stared in open astonishment. "I imagine he's rather proficient at it himself. I suppose he'd have to be, wouldn't he? I mean to say, he's got something of a reputation." That was a bit of an understatement, and Phoebe had to bite her lower lip against the defense that wanted to erupt. He isn't like that , she supposed she had meant to say, but it wouldn't have been quite the truth. He was very much like that, indeed. It just wasn't all he was. "Ah," Emma said, somewhat abashed. "I'd not say the rumors are exaggerated, per se. But there is more to him than what they would imply. It would be easy to judge him on the standards upon which we were raised—" "But Kit was not raised upon those standards," Phoebe said. By his account, his mother had been a good and decent woman, forced by circumstances into a harsher and less forgiving life than that which she ought to have had. And he had been so young when she had died—horribly, tragically. That incident had left an indelible impression upon his forming sense of morality, which had then only become eroded further when he had fallen in with a gang of child thieves under the cruel mastery of a kidsman. "Just so," Emma said. "He's not devoid of morality, truly, but instead possessed of a rather strict set of his own morals. They do not always—or even usually—align with my own, but he always acts according to his conscience." Yes; he did. The wrong thing for the right reasons. The ends justifying the means. A man capable of murder without a qualm, without suffering even the slightest pangs of conscience over the ending of a life. Capable of easily making difficult decisions, where another might have hesitated. Perhaps a more decent woman would have been alarmed by the thought of it. Then again, perhaps Phoebe was just a little more morally flexible herself than a lady of her station ought to be. "He's not a bad man," Emma said, and she reached out to lay her hand over Phoebe's. "Or at least, he isn't all bad. I didn't expect that he would ever marry, but, Phoebe, I am so glad it was you. I think perhaps you are capable of understanding him—appreciating him—in a way that few others could manage." She did. Of course she did. Kit would never be reformed, never made over into someone whom polite society would find acceptable . But she thought…she thought he was exactly as he was meant to be. Exactly how she wanted him. Exactly how she—oh, fucking hell . Exactly how she loved him.

∞∞∞

"I can't believe ye stabbed me," Chris grumbled as he pressed a clean cloth to the wound Phoebe had recently inflicted. "I didn't mean to!" she wailed for perhaps the sixth time, wringing her hands in distress. "And besides, you oughtn't to have sneaked up upon me." "Weren't my fault ye was woolgathering." To all accounts, she'd been browsing the bookshelves in the library, but he'd called her name several times without garnering a response, and so he'd touched her shoulder to attract her attention. He simply hadn't expected her to draw her blade quite so quickly. She'd never managed such a swift response before. "Got to commend ye for it, though," he acknowledged resentfully. "Ye surprised me. That's not easily done." She'd tucked the sheath of the stiletto into the bodice of her gown, between her breasts; a clever concealment. There were few other places where a blade could be both hidden and easily accessible. She might've strapped it to her thigh instead, but that would have required rummaging beneath skirts and petticoats to retrieve it. "I really am sorry," she said—again—and by the glint of her eyes he suspected she was significantly more distressed by the mishap than even he had been. And he'd been the one who had gotten himself stabbed. "Phoebe," he said, striving to modulate his voice through the pain in his side. "It's all right. Really. I've had worse." And he had. Of course it had damn well hurt , but not so much as a gunshot. And she'd pulled her swing at the last second—a bit too late to avoid stabbing him altogether, but enough that only the very tip of the blade had gored him. He'd bled a great deal, but it was already slowing. "Truly, the worst of it is going to be enduring Haddington's complaints about the shirt." Probably the valet could patch a split on a seam, but the slice of a knife straight through the fabric would no doubt make the shirt fit only for the rag heap. Perversely, the assurance he'd meant to offer only seemed to add to her distress. "What if it should become infected?" she said fretfully, turning in a tight circle to resume her fractious pacing. "Then it becomes infected, and you can bet your arse I'll malinger about it." With his free hand, he patted the seat beside him on the couch. "Sit," he said. "Your pacing is making me dizzy. If you want to make yourself useful, you can come and rub my knee for me. It aches something awful." "Perhaps it wouldn't," she said tightly as she turned toward him once more, "if you spent less time walking about on it." But at least the brief flare of anger in her eyes had burned away the tears he'd feared she would shed. "Don't be a scold," he chided. "Come; you've gored me. Rubbing my knee is the least you could do." With an agitated little flutter of her hands, she stalked across the room toward him and flounced down upon the couch. Her fingers found the tight muscles of his knee even as her brows pulled together in consternation. "Kit, is there something going on which I ought to be aware of?" she asked. "You've been locked away in your study a great deal just lately. And—and out of the house." "Nothing with which you need concern yourself." He knew she had worried each time he'd left. But there was still a villain on the loose, and he knew she wouldn't feel safe until he'd been gotten rid of. To that effect, he'd called in a great number of the favors he'd acquired over his career. Wherever Russell was hiding, he'd not been rooted out yet—but Chris had had decades to develop connections in both low places and high. Before his arrest and the wreck of his knee, he'd been one hell of a spy. Subterfuge and deception came easily to him. His spying days were long behind him, but the patterns of them, the habits of them—they were not. "I want to know," she said softly, tucking her head against his shoulder. "I know you've been keeping secrets. Please, Kit." Ah, hell. "I'm laying out a trap," he said, and wound his arm about her shoulders, threading his fingers through her hair. "Brooks has been working with me to write up a good number of papers offering a substantial reward for information on Russell's whereabouts, spreading the word in every low place he's likely to frequent—or to know someone who does. Probably it won't yield anything substantial, but it will put him on the defensive." "You'll send him to ground," Phoebe said, her voice inflected with worry. "He'll become more difficult to find." Yes—until he wasn't. "I'll force him to ground," Chris said. "That's the point of the trap. To make him suspicious of friend and foe alike, knowing he might be informed upon at any moment. To make him desperate enough to act when I wish him to do so. Until now, he's had the advantage of me." It could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. "Sooner or later, he'll be forced to make a move—but I can give him an opportunity too convenient to resist. I've let it be known I'm selling my office in Cheapside," he said. "You are? Why?" Chris gave a one-shouldered shrug. "It was convenient," he said, "when I was living above it. Less so now that I must take a carriage to reach it. I suppose I held onto it out of habit more than anything else. Besides, my current place of residence is hardly a secret and I don't need a carriage to reach my study. Easier by far to conduct business here as necessary." He laid his hand over her own. "It would be foolish," he said, "for Russell to invade the house. There's too many servants about. But the office—it's on a busy street, and there's a good deal of noise. An altercation is not likely to be heard, much less heeded." "But you'll have reinforcements," she said. "Won't you?" "I'm afraid not. A proficient criminal can spot them a mile off. Were I to have people waiting in the wings, he'd know he was being set up." It was a near certainty that they were being watched, though he'd not been foolish enough to divulge that unpleasant fact to Phoebe. Even the hint of a trap could send Russell to ground again, and perhaps Chris would be dodging bullets the rest of his life—however long that happened to be. Probably not very. It hadn't bothered him much before, the fact that his life could abruptly be cut short. He'd lived with that danger for too many years to lend his own mortality more than the occasional passing thought, and he'd come right up to the very precipice of it more than once. But he'd never truly had anything much to live for, either. He'd never been vulnerable; not in any meaningful way. And now…now there was Phoebe. Who couldn't feel safe in her own home whilst Russell yet breathed. She was a distraction—a vulnerability—he could not afford. He'd tossed the dice with his own life more than was prudent, but he would never gamble with hers. For her safety, and for his own peace of mind, he would have to take this risk alone. He squeezed her fingers in his. "Don't worry," he said. "The advantage will be mine. Even with a bad knee, I'm a force to be reckoned with."

∞∞∞

"Tomorrow," Kit said into the darkness as he settled back into bed beside Phoebe and folded her into the circle of his arms, "I'm taking you to stay with your parents for a time." It took a moment for Phoebe's mind, still pleasantly foggy from a delightful bout of lovemaking, to catch up with her ears. "What?" She wrenched herself away from him, and a rush of air slid between them, cooling the mist of sweat from her skin. "No!" " Ouch , woman," Kit grumbled as her elbow knocked a bit too close to his fresh wound in her efforts to pry herself free of his arms. "It's only for a little while. A week, perhaps. Just until I've taken care of this—" "No!" she said again, wedging a pillow between them and scraping the tangled covers to her bare breasts, though he could hardly see them in the darkness. "You can't send me away." "Don't be dramatic. I'm not sending you away. I'm sending you to your parents, just over the wall. Your parents' house is the safest place for you at the moment. Smaller than ours, more secure, and staffed with servants who have been with your family for years, decades—incorruptible." "I won't go." Phoebe slid her legs over the side of the bed, found her footing upon the floor, and vaulted out of bed entirely. Kit had tossed her nightgown somewhere distant, but her dressing gown had been left draped over the bottom corner of the bed, and she jammed her arms through the bunched sleeves. "You can't make me go!" By the faint huff that floated through the darkness to her ears, she sensed that he disagreed—though he wisely kept the fact that as her husband, he had the legal right to send her anywhere he pleased buttoned firmly behind his lips. "Phoebe," he said, though there was a notable coloring of exasperation heavy laden within his voice. "Come back to bed." Had she thought she loved him? More fool, her. She found the nightstand—with her toes, to her chagrin—and swept her palm across it to find the candle she'd recently snuffed out, then turned to carry it toward the dying embers of the fire in the hearth. A longsuffering sigh drifted from Kit's lungs as the wick caught fire, shedding dim light in a corona around her. "I need just a bit of time free of any distractions," he said, with a helpless shrug. "Distractions!" The word stabbed a barb of hurt through her heart. Had she not been so very close to the hearth, she might have stumbled back a step. "I'm a distraction ?" He threw up his hands. "Of course you're a damned distraction!" With a furious exhale, he shoved at the covers tangled about his legs and crawled off the bed himself. "I told you once," he said as he hobbled toward her, hindered by the lack of his cane, which he had left leaning against the foot of the bed, "that no one would be fool enough to target you. I was wrong about that. Probably I'm not wrong this time, but I won't take chances with your life." "I can defend myself," she snapped irritably, skittering away as he approached. "I stabbed you, didn't I?" "By accident," he said, a scowl tugging at his lips as he reached out to grab her wrist, only to be neatly evaded in the next moment. "Could you do it on purpose?" he asked, his voice rife with mockery. "Could you look a man in the eyes and stab him intentionally? Could you willingly take a life, even to save your own?" "I—I—" She didn't know. She'd never been in such a position before. Was it possible to speculate upon such a thing before it had happened? "As I thought," he huffed, and the sliver of a grin lingering at the corner of his mouth raised her hackles. He'd back her toward a corner, and she hadn't realized it. And he got the better of her once more as he feinted right, and then caught her when she tried to flee around him. "You can defend yourself," he allowed, manacling her wrist in the grip of his fingers. "But you shouldn't have to. Think on it for a moment. You haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks. You're suffering nightmares most nights. You don't feel safe in your own home." "And you think evicting me from it will somehow help?" How was she meant to sleep alone? How was she meant to sleep at all, when she would be worrying over whether or not she would ever see him again? "For Christ's sake, Phoebe, you're not being evicted. It won't be a long stay." It would be interminable. Mama and Papa would be full of questions. The rest of her family was wont to reel in and out of the house without so much as a note of warning. And worst of all—there would be no one there beside her in bed at night. No one to rouse her out of an inescapable nightmare should she happen to suffer one. "I need a clear head," Kit said ruthlessly, and she knew that there would be no budging him from this. "I need you somewhere secure, somewhere safe. Somewhere I won't have to worry about you." Somewhere he wouldn't have to think of her at all, more likely. "I hadn't realized my presence was so injurious to your state of mind," she said stiffly. "Far be it from me to inflict it upon you further." "Damn it all, Phoebe. That's not what I meant." The glowing embers in the hearth lit his eyes with an unholy light; flame bordered by glacial blue frost. "I'd send you to China if that was what it took to keep you safe. Best you resign yourself to it. Now come back to bed." She wrenched her arm free of his hold with such a violent motion that, absent the stability the cane would have provided, she nearly unbalanced him. "Go to hell," she spat, turning on her heel to flee for the door. "Phoebe? Phoebe !" There was a harsh curse from somewhere behind her, but he couldn't hobble fast enough to catch her. She didn't care. He could go to the devil. And she— She swallowed back the anguished sound that wanted to escape from her throat as she burst into her room and slammed the door closed behind her, giving the key a vicious twist in the lock. She would be going home to her parents, it seemed.