Chapter Sixteen #3
“Get out,” Reddy ordered, strangling the ribbons in his fists. “I’m working.”
“I thought you’d finished with this,” Hugh said.
“As you’ve finished with Glenmoor?” Reddy hissed back. “I’ve the right to use the hackney as I see fit, don’t I? I store it
at my mews.”
His tone dared Hugh to say something more of it. But there were certain lines they both knew not to cross; what barbs would scar, rather than merely cut. The ghost was with them, hovering like a shimmer of moonlight, waiting for an acknowledgment that would never come.
Reddy had sworn he was done with it, that he’d accepted the viscount’s story.
“God forbid a man indulge in a bit of espionage to break up his boredom,” Reddy muttered.
It was a terrible lie, but it wasn’t worth the damage of unraveling it simply to be proven right.
“Boredom?” Hugh echoed incredulously. “You’re bored of running a global shipping empire? You have people you can pay to collect
whispers for you now.”
Reddy scoffed, the unusual tautness of his expression easing. “They wouldn’t know what to listen for.”
The hackney coach had been one of his great-uncle’s prized tools for collecting information, whether it was business plans
or useful rumors. He’d sent both young men out time and time again, until they knew the lay of the city’s streets and they’d
learned the way to be so invisible Patricians would speak as though they weren’t there.
He and Reddy had made a competition out of who could collect the most useful morsels of intelligence—then again, they’d made
a competition out of most things.
“Who tattled on me?” Reddy twisted around to glare at him through the window. “It was the Roach, wasn’t it? I thought I saw
him skittering about.”
Hugh snorted. “We questioned the asset tonight.”
Quickly, concisely, he filled Reddy in on the relevant details.
Reddy’s eyes strayed to the blood-damp sleeve of Hugh’s coat, marking it with a purse of the lips. He also knew better than
to ask.
“A DeForest and the Gallian National Archives, eh?” Reddy shook his head. “What sort of records would they be looking for?”
“I don’t know yet, but I need to see what—or who—is on that ship,” Hugh said. “I still think there’s something to the silks.”
“You know I think Glenmoor’s a hell-born fiend,” Reddy began, “but is it truly so hard to believe that his factories would
be able to produce such high-quality silk? All the informants you’ve sent in have confirmed as much, haven’t they?”
It was a point of pride among the Patricians that they never be expected to sully their hands with any form of labor or trade.
Most stubbornly insisted on deriving their wealth from tenants and landholdings alone, refusing to confront an ever-changing world with even basic investments in industry for fear of being seen as uncouth and grasping by their peers.
And within a generation, they would find themselves in dire straits—many already were, Hugh knew. He’d used it to his advantage;
it was the most reliable form of leverage over a man’s soul.
Hugh’s father, however, had been forced to evolve. The Glenmoor estate was situated on a darkly picturesque but defiant stretch
of land that had refused all attempts to cultivate it into farm- and pastureland. Sensing the shifting winds of modernity,
Hugh’s parents had invested in several factories and mines.
To the surprise of all, the present—and notoriously rank-conscious—Glenmoor had recently developed a deeper interest in the
struggling silk mills in that portfolio.
“Mrs. Silver still hasn’t heard back from her sister, I take it?” Reddy said.
Mrs. Silver had written to her sister on the day of the King’s poisoning in that coded way they had of communicating with
each other. The vicomtesse was a dependable source of information within the Gallian King’s court and could be relied upon
to sniff out any connection Gallia had to Glenmoor or the poisoning.
“Nothing yet,” Hugh said. “It’s only been a week, but we can’t wait for her response before making a move.”
“Why yes, of course I’ll use my vast array of connections to ensure you can see what is on that ship,” Reddy deadpanned. “How
very brave of you to finally ask for help, Fox.”
“If you aren’t otherwise engaged this evening, I have some plans that may be of interest to you,” Hugh said, his mouth lifting
with a smirk.
“After the stunt you pulled with that adorably foulmouthed orphan, you are now officially out of favors,” Reddy said sourly.
“You know I’m not going to make that child do a lick of work. He’s been put up in a bed fit for a king and fed enough sweets
by Mrs. Porter to give him a stomachache.”
The point wasn’t for the child to do work. Reddy had the means to support the boy and provide an education for him—his friend
had the means to support an army of orphans and did, though he hid those donations unaccountably well, as if embarrassed by
his own generosity.
It was simply that in the last few years, Hugh felt Reddy had become .
. . unmoored. There was a sense of the man drifting through his days, without the person who had once anchored them.
He needed more people relying on him outside of his work.
He needed more people to care for him. It would keep him rooted when the next storm threatened to carry him off into darker horizons.
“Shame,” Hugh said, making as if to reach for the door. “I thought you would enjoy slipping into Briarwood Palace to filch
something Lockwood needs for this deuced perfume.”
Reddy’s jaw sawed back and forth. He sent an accusatory look through the window, along with a suffering sigh.
“Damn you,” he said. “You know I can’t resist a spot of midnight burglary.”
And with a crack of the ribbons, they were off.
“I suppose this is what I don’t understand,” Reddy whispered as he hauled himself through the window Hugh had unlatched with
his penknife. He dropped lightly into the waiting study. “Lockwood says that, per this mysterious book only she can read, Immortal Rose needs some imaginary fairy nectar, and you simply believed her? You?”
Hugh leaned back out to ensure the patrolling police were well away before he shut the window once more and closed the velvet
curtains.
“Yes,” Hugh said, having already had this argument with himself. “She has no reason to lie. Lockwood wants her inheritance
more than her next breath.”
He gestured toward the room and its refined, if not opulent, decor. Even Reddy, himself no stranger to gold, had gone a bit
saucer-eyed at the palace as they’d approached on foot.
“So then take the second option,” Reddy said. “Finish off some horrendous criminal who committed unspeakable acts and make
the bloody perfume.”
“I’m not certain killing off a criminal already destined to die would work,” Hugh said. “The book says it needs to be a life
of equal worth.”
Reddy arched an ironic brow.
“Don’t say it,” Hugh growled, lighting the same candle he’d left on a nearby shelf. “His Majesty acts in accordance with the
law always. He is the law, for all intents and purposes.”
“Funny how that works,” Reddy muttered. “And anyway, I was going to suggest Glenmoor.”
Hugh turned toward him, speechless.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of it,” Reddy said. “Two birds, one stone. If he’s been appointed regent, that is a life nearly
equal to that of a king, no?”
No . . .
No.
“Lockwood won’t kill anyone,” Hugh cut in as he stalked across the room to the desk. “I saw it in her face.”
“Not even for all this?” Reddy swept an appreciative gaze around, giving a low whistle of approval at the cabinet of expensive wines and liquors.
“I say, it could give a man ideas.”
Hugh’s hand stilled where he had been fiddling with the hidden compartment’s latch. “Don’t tell me you’re reconsidering your
sworn allegiance to bachelorhood.”
Reddy lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug, picking up a statuette of Venia to inspect it. “An alliance between my business
and hers would be something for the ages, wouldn’t it? And even you must admit she’d be a joy to wake to each morning and—”
The latch gave a hard click under the force of Hugh’s grip. The key clattered to the floor before he could catch it.
“Yes, if you don’t mind getting mauled by her claws over the breakfast table,” Hugh muttered, stooping to retrieve it.
From a purely objective viewpoint, Lockwood didn’t possess the great beauty that might inspire rapturous sonnets or drive
a lover to the heights of madness and obsession, both of which sounded rather tedious. But . . . even he couldn’t deny she
was lovely in the natural, effusive way of a wild rose at full bloom. She was thorned, to be certain, and that baited a man’s
prideful need to possess something dangerous. To tame it.
But Lockwood would never be tamed.
She had the look of an ancient pagan queen with that hair, he decided. Her great big hazel eyes were so deceivingly innocent
in appearance until she fixed you with a challenging gaze—and when had Hugh ever denied himself the pleasure of a challenge?
“She is rather a vixen, isn’t she?” Reddy mused affectionately. “I’d suffer a few gouges if it meant marrying someone who would keep
both life and my bed play interesting.”
“She—” Hugh bit back his sharp tone. “I’d prefer not to speak of any woman in such a disrespectful way, if it’s all the same
to you.”
Reddy laughed at that. “When did you become so missish?”
“At about the point you became a rake of the first order.”
Reddy sent him another amused look as he sat on the arm of the leather sofa, content to watch as Hugh felt around the shelves
for the keyhole.
“She has the right demeanor to make a success of all this,” Reddy pointed out. “If she can manage to overcome her illegitimacy
and ingratiate herself with the serpents of society.”
“She will,” Hugh said. “She has something they all want, and they’ve sideslips of their own. If she makes their perfumes,
they won’t care she was born outside of wedlock.”
Lockwood had fairyborn magic, but her true power in society would lie in the fact that she’d be a curiosity to the Patricians—an