The Duke of Hearts (The Highwaymen #2)

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

ARTHFORD TOLD DUNROSE that he was no longer overseeing his rehabilitation. If Dunrose wished to get himself off of the opium, it was his own affair, but Arthford was done with him.

Dunrose took this badly. “Well, I’m only halfway there,” he protested. “I can’t believe you’re simply abandoning me in this. Because of her .”

But it was not simply about Seraphine, it was also about Marjorie.

Two women, the only two women he’d ever had any feelings for, ever been intimate with, and Dunrose had tainted them both. He wanted to strangle Dunrose.

He didn’t wish to explain this to Dunrose, however, though, so he kept his counsel as they prepared for the night they’d intercept Hellingswith’s carriage.

Dunrose sulked, which was his way, and Arthford ignored him. Dunrose went about, loudly asking servants to get him laudanum, and Arthford loudly told them to do whatever the duke asked for.

To his credit, Dunrose sulkily took it back, saying he’d come too far to ruin it all now, and that he was sort of enjoying the fact that his prick worked again.

This sent Arthford into a rage, and he had to go shut himself away from the other man to keep from actually killing him.

The night that they were to rob the carriage, they dressed in masks and cloaks and loaded their pistols. It was late autumn, and there was a chill in the air as they waited in the night. Their horses blew out clouds of hot air from their nostrils, stamping their hooves in anticipation.

Dunrose tried to engage him in conversation about it again. “Where am I to go?”

“You’re a duke with any number of estates and a very fine London town house in the most fashionable part of town,” Arthford returned. “I should think you have a number of places to go.”

“I simply don’t understand why you’re being so sensitive about this,” said Dunrose.

It took everything for Arthford not to hit him then. Of course, he didn’t think they could rightly have a proper fistfight while atop horses.

Their latest scheme was to pretend that they were French, that they were stealing from the rich in England to fund Napoleon’s aggression in the continent. Nothshire had thought it up, and it was a bit more clever than their first scheme. In that, they’d been a band of thieves called the Lords of the Crossroads, which had been a bit too obvious, really, because they were lords, and there were four of them, and had they continued at that, someone would have guessed their identities.

Still, Arthford wondered if the French scheme was a good one. Dunrose’s French accent was terrible, which usually didn’t matter, because Nothshire often did a lot of the talking. Nothshire, of course, wasn’t there.

“Let’s not be French,” Arthford said suddenly, even as Dunrose was going on and on about how he was likely to start eating opium at the first opportunity if no one was there to keep him off the stuff.

Dunrose broke off. “What? But that’s what we’ve been doing.”

“I know, but I don’t like it. You can’t sound French. Even when you speak French, you sound like an Englishman.”

“Back to the Lords of the Crossroads, then?”

Arthford shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Let’s say nothing of what we are, nothing at all. But if we must address each other, I shall be Romulus and you can be Remus.”

“The wolf-fed twins who founded Rome?” said Dunrose, and he sounded a bit disturbed. “You think that’s what we ought to evoke.”

It reminded them both of their fathers, which was why it was right, but also horrid.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t Romulus kill Remus?” said Dunrose.

Arthford shrugged.

“I don’t wish to die, you know, Simon,” said Dunrose quietly. “And I never would have fucked your aging mistress if I’d known you were going to hate me forever.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Arthford. “And it’s not even about her anymore.”

“So, then who is it about?”

Arthford lifted a finger. “Hoof beats. You hear that?”

Dunrose nodded.

“Let’s go,” said Arthford, nudging his horse to move forward.

Dunrose followed suit.

They took off at a gallop, directly in the middle of the road, heading straight for the carriage that was approaching.

If there had been more of them, someone could have gone off to scout it out and be sure it was Hellingswith, but Arthford didn’t care. If they got the money from someone else, Champeraigne would have to be satisfied with that. He wanted this done. He wasn’t in the habit of fighting Champeraigne’s battles for him. If the man wanted to humiliate Hellingswith further, he could do it his damnable self.

The carriage came into view, and Arthford galloped even harder, yipping into the air as he bore down on it.

The carriage came to a halt, the horses attached to it whinnying in worry.

The driver eyed him, worried, as Arthford pulled his horse to a halt in front of the carriage. Arthford whipped out his pistol and waved it around. “Stand and deliver,” he shouted.

“Don’t shoot, we’ll cooperate,” said the driver in a tight voice.

At that moment, the carriage open and Hellingswith’s head peered out. “What’s the delay?”

Arthford smiled grimly. Well, they’d gotten the right carriage after all. He trained his pistol on Hellingswith. “Remus, relieve the gentleman of whatever of value he happens to be carrying with him, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, Romulus,” said Dunrose, dismounting and approaching the carriage.

Hellingswith dipped back inside.

“If you’re going for a gun, my lord, I’d think better of it,” called Arthford. “My friend Remus here will shoot you the minute he sees anything untoward.”

Dunrose leveled his gun at the door of the carriage. “What’ll it be, my lord? Your money or your life?”

A string of swears from within, but Hellingswith opened the door again and began taking off his rings.

“You’ve a coin purse,” said Dunrose. “Hand that over.”

Hellingswith did as he was told, seething.

“Oh,” said Dunrose. “What’s that around the lady’s neck? That’s lovely. We’ll have that jewel as well.”

“Please leave my wife out of this,” said Hellingswith.

“Yes, we’ve heard all about your wife,” said Arthford archly, which he really shouldn’t have done, because that would implicate Champeraigne, but he was feeling perverse. “Give us the necklace. Now.”

Hellingswith handed out the necklace, sneering at the both of them.

With the loot secure, they galloped off, leaving Hellingswith swearing in their wake.

They went directly to Bess’s. It was a brothel situated outside of London, and it was their place. They were all friends with Bess, and she had even given them a room in the bottom level of the place to conduct their business. Well, given was perhaps the wrong word. They paid her for her trouble. Even so, they were all friends.

It was there, in their sitting room, that the two counted out the money in the coin purse and tossed their masks on the table in the middle of the room and warmed their chilled fingers by the fire.

“Who is it about?” said Dunrose.

Arthford had no notion what he was even talking about.

“You said,” Dunrose continued, folding his arms over his chest, “that it wasn’t about the marchioness. So, then, who is it about?”

Arthford remembered having said that now. He sighed heavily, shaking his head.

“Well, I suppose there’s really only one other person it could be about, isn’t there?” said Dunrose. “It’s about what’s-her-name, Miss Allan.”

“Adams,” he said. “She told me that you were the one other man who’d ever seen her cunt.”

“Well, that’s a lie, because I never have,” said Dunrose, sticking out his chin. “And I haven’t any idea why she’d say that, none at all.”

Arthford blinked at him. Wait, had she said that? Or had he supplied it? And had she simply agreed with him? No, not even that. It had been sort of a tacit agreement, but the truth was that she simply hadn’t contradicted him. She hadn’t said one way or the other, now that he thought about it.

“I did witness that little negotiation, though, if you want to know about it,” said Dunrose. “I can tell you who it was, who paid for the privilege, because her father—yes, Adams, it was Adams,” he said almost to himself. “Anyway, her father was quite hesitant, as if that meant something, as if he was doing something so noble to keep her covered between her thighs, as if she wasn’t already thoroughly ruined and destroyed and as if he weren’t some kind of mongrel to have used her body to get coin for his drink. So he hemmed and hawed and refused ever so many offers, but eventually Champeraigne prevailed.”

“Champeraigne?” Arthford sat down heavily, feeling this like a blow to his stomach. The wind had been knocked out of him. For several moments, he couldn’t quite breathe.

“Aye,” said Dunrose. “It wasn’t like him, you know. He’s not that way. Nothing affects him and he never wants anything and he certainly doesn’t pay money for women, so that’s why I remember it. I still don’t know why he did it.”

Why hadn’t she told him that?

She didn’t know about Champeraigne. She knew he’d killed his father, but he’d sort of volunteered that, and he’d been so willing to spill his secrets to her that he hadn’t considered she’d want to keep her own. Even so, she hadn’t concealed information from him because she knew that Champeraigne was the architect of Arthford’s own prison or that the man was blackmailing him.

Of course, he’d handed her the keys to the prison cell, given her all she’d need to lock him away herself. And he hadn’t even considered she would use them.

He thought too well of her.

Damn it, he thought too well of everyone.

No, maybe just women.

Maybe just women who he was attracted to. Witness the way he’d thought of Seraphine, after all.

“She said it was me?” said Dunrose. “Truly?”

“I…” Arthford shifted on his chair uncomfortably. “I said it, and she didn’t correct me. At the time, it didn’t bother me. I hadn’t yet had her, and I didn’t feel like she was… mine.”

“Well, she’s not yours,” said Dunrose. “I don’t even know what you did with that woman. All I know is that you came back in the morning significantly poorer, as I understand, because you said you were going to have to make up the coin we’d taken from the last gambit we went on for Champeraigne’s benefit. What did you do?”

“I bought her house for her.”

“You did what?”

“She was worried about the state of things. Her nephew owned it and he was not being responsible, and so I…”

“And then, what? She just fell over on her back in gratitude?”

“She said I could take her virtue as payment.”

“And you did it? ” Dunrose sat down too. “God in heaven, even I’m not that bad.”

Arthford rubbed his jaw. “So, you never looked at her.”

“We all looked at her,” said Dunrose. “If you want her to be yours, you need to grapple with the fact that there were a great number of men in and out of that house gaping at her, watching her do things to herself. She may have kept her cunny covered, but he had her pleasure herself in front of us.”

“God,” said Arthford, swallowing. “I didn’t know that.” He winced. “I shouldn’t have… I really shouldn’t have…”

“You should not have,” said Dunrose.

“But I did,” said Arthford. “And I seem to be, erm, it seems that if I do things like that with a woman, I become very attached. I seem to have some sort of inner flaw in that way.”

“You don’t have an inner flaw, you’re just inexperienced,” said Dunrose. “Everyone is that way in the beginning. Lord, the first woman I ever took to bed, she was some servant girl, and I thought the sun rose and set in her, and I was this close to asking her to marry me—”

“What? Truly?”

“You just need to get between a different pair of thighs, that’s all. After five or six different women, it stops happening.”

“You obviously didn’t marry the servant girl.”

“No, it turned out that every time she was with me, gold would go missing. At first, I didn’t put it together, but then I did, and then I pretended to be asleep and watched her—through half-lidded eyes—go about my room and steal anything she could from me. And I might have even forgiven such a thing, for she was quite poor and I was quite well off. Except when I spoke to her about it, she taunted me. She said I was skinny, ugly, and a terrible kisser, and that she wouldn’t have ever touched me if she hadn’t seen some way to get coin from me. I was so hurt, I simply let her go. She fled, taking a lot of my gold.”

“I’m sorry,” said Arthford.

“Yes, I was heartbroken,” said Dunrose airily. “Probably after that was the first time I tried laudanum, actually. It made it all better, you know. Made everything sort of warm and fuzzy and nice.”

“Daniel, that’s awful.”

Dunrose actually looked pained for a moment. Then he took a breath. “Look, it is what it is. It’s what women do, use men for money. That’s what this Miss Adams did with you. It’s not really their fault. They can’t help it, of course. They can’t inherit things like estates on their own, not if there’s some other male heir in the family, so they’re simply naturally dependent on men in that way. They have no other recourse than to use what they have at their disposal for their own benefit. So, it’s just the way of things, that’s all.”

“Yes,” he said dryly. “Prostitution is the natural way of things, clearly.”

“You’re being sarcastic, but it happens to be true,” said Dunrose. “All life is a transaction, and the sooner you come to terms with that, the easier everything is. Most pain in life comes from thinking something isn’t a transaction and then discovering it, in fact, is.”

“That’s not true,” said Arthford.

Dunrose spread his hands. “Name one thing that isn’t.”

Arthford sputtered, because now that he was thinking things through, he was seeing how, from a certain perspective, one could really think that everything was a transaction. But then, it came to him. He gestured back and forth between himself and Dunrose. “You and me. If this is a transaction, what exactly do I get out of it?”

Dunrose sat back in his chair, looking pained again. He was quiet.

“No, what I’m saying, Daniel, is that we are friends —”

“I suppose what I do is amuse you lot,” said Dunrose. “I’m amusing . And I allow you all to belittle me and to make jests at my expense. I provide, I don’t know, a certain lightheartedness that all three of you cannot seem to summon. You’re disgustingly grim, all the time. But I can see it’s too little and that I take more than I give. You have made it plain how little you wish for me to be around you, after all, Simon. I shall take my leave of you. All that matters is for us to decide who is taking this money to Champeraigne, you or me.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you don’t have to be like that about it,” muttered Arthford.

“I can do it if you like. I won’t hear anything from you on how I won’t deliver the money to him or that I’ll spend it on the way or anything, because I am not nearly as idiotic as you all think I am.”

“Attend to me, I thought that you had sort of, I don’t know, had both of my women in some way, and I was only jealous. You’re…” He gestured, fumbling for words. What was Daniel Roberts, anyway? “You’re the Duke of Dunrose. You’re… to women… never mind.” He put both of his hands on top of his head. “If you wish to go back to my estate, I don’t mind. We might as well continue keeping you off the opium, I think. It would be a terrible waste to let you go back to utter debauchery at this juncture.”

“You do not need to do me any favors,” said Dunrose with a sigh. He considered. “All right, I suppose you do me rather a number of favors, but I mean anymore .”

“Go back to Bluebelle Grange, and I shall go to Champeraigne, and I shall be back with you before sunrise.”

“No, I shan’t. I can’t. I should feel far too guilty about taking advantage of you now. It makes me feel guilty, and I despise feeling guilty.”

Arthford chuckled. “Well, I feel guilty all the time. I think I’m simply used to it.”

“You know, it pains me to say this, but it’s not that there’s anything particularly special about me that means that I have a number of female conquests. It’s only that I have frightfully low standards.”

Arthford laughed, a real laugh, a deep belly laugh.

“It’s true. I’ll fuck anything,” said Dunrose. “If you aren’t choosy, you can wet your wick constantly.”

Arthford rubbed his chin. “It seems that I have frightfully low standards, too, though. I mean, look at her. Seraphine Mertuelle? I devoted myself to her for a decade. And she is… ghastly.”

“Oh, true,” said Dunrose, chuckling. “I mean, not to kick you while you’re down, but whatever did you see in that woman? I mean, I’m not saying the way she sucks cock isn’t inspired—”

“All right, I’m going to hit you now.”

Dunrose cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“She really resisted?”

“Oh, for some time,” said Dunrose. “And I think, in her strange and awful way, she cares about you. She wants good things for you, anyway, and I think she recognizes that she is not a good thing.” He leaned forward. “We could all end up that way, you know, like they are? Give us twenty years of this business, tricking people, robbing them, participating in sordid bets over cuckolding barons with their convent-raised child brides? We are already very jaded, and it will only get worse. Nothshire, he’s always been the best of us, and maybe he can get clear. He’s got his pretty little duchess and she’s going to birth him a passel of heirs and maybe he escapes, but the rest of us?”

“No,” said Arthford. “No, we’re going to get you free and clear and off the laudanum and we’re going to figure some way out of this wretched business with Champeraigne and we’ll all escape.”

“How?” said Dunrose.

Arthford did not know the answer to that question.

SERAPHINE WAS AT Champeraigne’s town house in London.

Well, Arthford had to admit that it was not strictly Champeraigne’s house. He was letting it, he thought, because none of the expatriot French nobility really owned any property in England. They were all forced to mostly beg for hospitality from others, sometimes to rent if they managed to gather enough in their coffers. This house, it was Champeraigne’s, but he and the Marquis de Fateux, Seraphine’s husband, often went in together when they rented houses.

For all Arthford knew, the marquis was here. He’d never really had a conversation with the man, but he had met him, and he knew that the marquis knew that he was fucking his wife, which was a very strange and awkward situation.

At any rate, Arthford was annoyed with her for coming here. Their last conversation had been about how he was going to be bringing money to Champeraigne. She had told Arthford that Champeraigne was in London. She knew he was coming here. Had she put herself here on purpose?

To add insult to injury, Champeraigne wasn’t there.

Oh, he was in town, but he was out, visiting some gentleman’s club, one of the gambling hells. When Arthford arrived, a servant told him that they expected that the comte would be back within half an hour, and Arthford declared his intention to wait.

When he was shown into a sitting room, Seraphine was there.

She wasn’t even dressed. She was wearing a nightgown with a dressing gown over it, her hair down. She was sitting near the fire in an easy chair with her feet tucked up under her legs, looking comfortable as you please. She had a glass of port and a book.

“I told the servants it was all right if they admitted you here,” she said, closing her book. “I told them we are all quite intimately acquainted.”

He glowered at her and sat down on the opposite side of the room.

“There was something I wished to speak to you about, Simon,” she said in a quiet voice. “And we got rather distracted before. It quite slipped my mind until I was already away. I thought of simply sending you a letter, but then I thought it might not be good to set such things down in writing. Sending it through the post would have been impossible and not safe, of course, but even through a trusted servant, I thought it might not be wise.”

“I don’t care what you wish to say to me,” he said.

“It’s about Penbrake,” she said. “I know that happened over a year ago now, and we never did speak of it, but…”

He flinched. Oh, yes, he’d killed that man because of her. So gallant for her, when she didn’t even care.

“It… wasn’t necessary, and you know that, and I have told you again and again not to involve yourself in such things,” she said.

And now she was going to scold him for it? God in heaven, he really did hate this woman.

“But it meant something to me, I have to say,” she said, turning to look into the fire. “Thank you.”

He hadn’t been expecting that.

“I feel better, truly, knowing he can’t do that again,” she said. “To me, or to any other woman, for I feel that a man who does such things gets a taste for it. I may never have indicated how much it… bothered me, truly. When I awoke that day, in my bed, my nightgown torn, the covers hastily thrown over me, and the telltale ache in my body that told me that I’d been violated while I slept, it… I can’t quite explain what it was like, the horror of it. It was as if he’d stolen something from me, as if my own body didn’t belong to me. I may do all manner of things with this body that other women wouldn’t do with theirs, you know, but they are all my choice. That was not. It was awful.”

Oh, how was he to react to that? He still hated her, but he didn’t think she’d deserved to be drugged and raped by the Earl of Penbrake. No one deserved that. He was gruff. “You’re welcome.”

She turned back to him, the fire lighting up the side of her face. “Simon?”

He heaved out a sigh. “Yes?”

“I knew it would anger you, being with Dunrose, of course, but I hadn’t expected you to turn against me so completely, I suppose. It is warranted. I don’t ask you not to. I wouldn’t. This is better, really, it’s only…”

The silence stretched on, so finally, he said, “It’s only what?”

“Well, when I told Champeraigne about Penbrake, he didn’t understand why I was so upset, and no one else treated it as if it really meant anything, but you used to see me as a person, as a valuable human being, not as just a… I don’t know, a collection of fuckable holes, I suppose. And I wish you—even if you must hate me and you can never care for me again—I wish you would continue to see me that way, as a person .”

“Oh, Christ, Seraphine, of course I do,” he said.

She held his gaze, searching it for some confirmation of his words. Seemingly satisfied, she turned away again. She opened up her book.

“It’s not only Dunrose,” he said.

“Of course, it’s everything,” she said. “As we said before, you did not see me clearly.”

“There’s someone else.”

She turned back to him, stunned. “You did go to bed with that Miss Adams person? Truly?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Oh, yes, of course. You could never do it, have more than one lover. It’s not in you. You’re loyal and devoted. It’s one of your best qualities. Never lose that.” She folded the book closed again, smiling a genuine smile at him. “Can you marry her?”

He let out a noise, startled at this change in conversation. She wasn’t even the least bit jealous, and that was… annoying . Not that he wanted her to be jealous, he supposed, but it was yet another sign that he had loved this woman in a way that she had never reciprocated, and it stung.

She tapped a long, elegant finger against her bottom lip. “I suppose she’s not really well connected enough to be the sort of woman to snag herself a duke. And then there is the fact that she’s essentially ruined, isn’t she? A woman who’s been leered at by any number of other men. That does seem to be your favorite kind of woman, though, doesn’t it?” She winked at him.

“She’s nothing like you,” he ground out.

“Oh, no, not at all,” said Seraphine with a little laugh.

“She is not,” he said. “She’s very innocent.” Was innocent, he supposed before he taught her to breathily comment on the size of his cock and to get far too excited by the idea of his girth being too much for her tiny maiden passage. Damnation, he was really a terrible person, wasn’t he?

“Oh, yes, innocent,” she said. “And nothing like me. Though you do share her with Champeraigne, too, don’t you? Dunrose was reminding me how it was that Champeraigne had paid money to make her father show off her cunt.”

“Shut up,” he said, because he was still reeling from that disgusting bit of information.

“I remember that, actually,” she said. “Champeraigne couldn’t have cared less about the girl herself, though, if that comforts you. It wasn’t about her, it was about her father, forcing her father past his breaking point. Champeraigne can find lots of uses for broken people.”

“Oh, Seraphine,” came a droll voice from the doorway. “You do say the most appalling things about me when my back is turned.”

Arthford shot to his feet to see Champeraigne entering the room. He had his cane, which was more of an affectation than anything he really needed to stand upright. He tried to appear older and more infirm than he was. He was really only in his forties or fifties, Arthford thought. His hair was thinning, a little gray, but he was sharp and spry.

Seraphine got her glass of port and toasted the air. “ Salut. ” She was droll as well.

Champeraigne gave her an exaggerated bow, rolling his arm in the air, tucking his cane under his shoulder. He strolled into the room. “Oh, do sit down, Arthford, really.”

Arthford sat.

“What are we talking about?” said Champeraigne, sitting down in the chair next to Seraphine. He held out his hand and she gave him her glass of port. He took a long drink and handed it back and then looked back and forth between them. “Just having a general session of complaint about me, the two of you?”

“Oh, it was a compliment, comte,” said Seraphine, smiling wickedly at him.

“I’m not going to stay here and watch you two flirt,” said Arthford darkly. “I have money for you, Champeraigne, from Hellingswith. I’m only here to deliver it.”

“Ah, yes,” said Champeraigne. “Now that Nothshire is preoccupied with his new duchess, I suppose I must become accustomed to a new primary emissary. Will I be dealing with you from now on, Arthford?”

“I never liked that you always and only wanted to deal with Nothshire,” said Arthford.

“It was simpler,” said Champeraigne.

“He is not our leader, you know,” said Arthford. “We don’t take orders from him.”

Champeraigne chuckled. “Oh, duly noted, Your Grace.”

“We were talking about Mr. Adams at Briar Abbey,” spoke up Seraphine.

“Oh, yes,” said Champeraigne, nodding. “That one was quite promising, and could have been used in all manner of lucrative schemes, but then…” He turned to glance at Arthford. “ Someone dispatched him. Which reminds me that I had uses for the Earl of Penbrake as well, and someone dispatched him as well.”

“It was Nothshire, as we told you,” said Arthford. “For his duchess. Well, she was only his paramour at that point, but she is his duchess now.”

“Yes, it was Nothshire,” said Champeraigne, very sarcastic. “Between the four of you, he’s the least likely to become murderous, truthfully. You’re nothing like Rutchester, of course, but you can’t resist protecting some woman of loose morals, it seems.”

“Oh, don’t chide him!” said Seraphine, sticking out her bottom lip. “You happen to like women with loose morals, my dear. They might like you more if you were more protective.”

Champeraigne looked her over affectionately, chuckling. “I like women who don’t need protection, in all truth.”

She preened.

He gazed at her, a smile playing on his lips.

“All right, really,” said Arthford. “I’m leaving. Shall I simply deposit your payment here, perhaps on an end table?” He pulled out Hellingswith’s coin purse and the bag of jewels and rings.

“We still haven’t established why we’re speaking of Mr. Adams,” said Champeraigne.

“Simon’s going to marry the daughter,” said Seraphine, beaming brightly. She took a drink of port. “He’s entirely transferred his affections from me to her. And I approve. She’s perfect for him, I think. You know, I never had any of my own children, but seeing Simon settled, I think it must be the feeling a mother has for her son.”

“The son that you fucked?” said Champeraigne dryly.

Seraphine threw back her head and laughed.

“I’m not marrying her,” said Arthford.

Seraphine stopped laughing. She fixed him with a look of extreme disappointment. “Why not?”

“I don’t have to talk about this with you,” he said. “I certainly don’t have to talk about it with him.” He nodded at Champeraigne.

“Oh, I don’t think you should take her as a mistress, really,” said Seraphine. “She should have a husband. A woman without a husband is vulnerable, deeply vulnerable. If I weren’t married, I shudder to think what would become of me. Don’t force her into that ignoble lifestyle, Simon. That really doesn’t seem like you.”

“She doesn’t want to get married,” said Arthford. “Not that this is any of your concern.”

“Perhaps not,” said Champeraigne with a little shrug. “But I had heard some interesting little whispers about Briar Abbey.”

Arthford felt a cold hand close around his spine. Servants, you were supposed to pay off the servants and you forgot.

“Oh, don’t worry, Arthford, the story is all quite vague. No one could remember your name. They had it that it was, erm…” Champeraigne snapped his fingers, searching his memory. “Oh, yes, the Earl of Abernachy, I think. Bought the place, kicked out the young Mr. Adams, spent the night with his maiden aunt in the wake of it. Abernachy is fiercely denying it, which is only making everyone more certain he did it.”

Arthford had not wished to visit more ignominy on her, and yet, he had. He sighed heavily. Well, he supposed it didn’t truly matter in the end. The woman’s reputation was in shreds. He’d only left them to wave raggedly in the wind, which was insult to injury, but there had been no hope of her ever being respectable.

“You should marry her,” said Seraphine in a soft voice. “She’d be better off your wife, and you know it. You owe her that, I think.”

“Owe her?” said Champeraigne. “He’s already killed her father and paid her nephew some ludicrous sum for that place. Which reminds me, also, that you’d been saying you were short of coin for me, that you needed more time to get together what I asked of you—”

“I have just brought you coin.” Arthford gestured.

“We have a standing arrangement,” said Champeraigne. “For my silence. This was in addition to what you regularly pay me.”

Arthford’s nostrils flared.

“Oh, it’s nothing personal, Arthford. It’s simply business.”

“Business?” said Arthford. “Do animals do business?”

Champeraigne laughed.

“What?” said Seraphine.

“Just a conversation he and I had once,” said Arthford. “Said he’d never be in our debt, because he was an animal, and animals didn’t have debts.”

“I said we were all animals,” said Champeraigne. “You wished me to be grateful for doing me a good turn—and I am not so foolish as to think you did. You did it for your own reasons, likely for survival. That is what we all do. We are motivated to survive.” He sighed. “But it is too late to talk philosophy, I think. I’d much rather retire to bed.” He glanced askance at Seraphine, who only sipped her port, neither acquiescing nor denying him. He turned back to Arthford. “Count it.”

“Count it?” said Arthford, sighing. “Here? Now? In front of you?”

“You can do it in back of me if you wish,” said Champeraigne. “I can haul Seraphine into my lap and you can watch me pleasure her while you do it—”

“Stop it,” said Seraphine wearily. “Don’t use me to goad him. I won’t have it. I am not your toy, you know.”

Champeraigne eyed her. “Are you not?”

“Count it,” muttered Arthford. He opened Hellingswith’s purse and dumped it out. He began to count.