Chapter Seven #4
“Most days I mistake you for a doctor. Give over, Pettibone. How is she?”
“Composed. Cautious. Afraid. She would never admit to the last, of course, but neither can she fully conceal it. Nothing was to be gained by pressing that observation, so I did not. She is correct, though, Breckenridge. There is nothing I can do for her. Laudanum might help herself sleep restfully, but it will not change her circumstances. She wonders what your intentions are toward her brother.”
“Her brother? Did she never once wonder what my intentions are toward her?”
“She did not mention it, no. Have you intentions?”
“I would not speak of them to you, now would I?”
Pettibone shrugged, sipped his whiskey.
“What does she imagine I will do to Mr. Cole?”
“I don’t know. She did not elaborate.”
“That is too bad. I would welcome ideas. At the moment, I am all for thrashing him.”
“A pedestrian solution. I expected better.”
“It is all in the execution, Pettibone. I could make it last a very long time and hardly bloody my knuckles.”
Impressed, Pettibone raised his glass in salute. “There is no reason she should know.”
“No reason at all.”
“He really left her in your hands?”
“So it appears. As I told you earlier, he only returned because I insisted.”
“She seemed to think it was because you threatened him.”
“That would be another way to characterize it.”
“And at one point you physically restrained him.”
“She observed only one,” Griffin said, and let it end at that. “Did you leave her with another vial of laudanum?”
“She had enough left from my previous visit.”
Griffin nodded, not surprised. “I thought she might. There is nothing physically wrong with her, then.”
“Not a thing.”
“She was so cold.”
Pettibone nodded. “You were right to send for me.”
“You will always say that. You enjoy my whiskey.”
“Guilty.” He made the pronouncement in judge-like tones.
In a less stentorian fashion, he went on.
“The manner in which you described finding her after her brother left, well, it put me in mind of some of the soldiers I had occasion to observe in the aftermath of battle. What they had seen, or heard, or learned, created a disturbance so profound that they could no longer communicate. They lay like the dead, often staring out at nothing the rest of us could see. I do not know where Miss Cole’s imaginings took her, but it was not a journey, nor a destination, for the faint of heart. ”
“What is to be done?”
“You mentioned intentions toward her, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“May I assume they include caring for her?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is what is to be done.”
Griffin nodded, sighed. “It frequently troubles me that I pay you for such advice.”
Griffin quietly let himself into Olivia’s room.
His caution was unnecessary. She was sitting at the table, playing solitaire.
Wisps of steam rose faintly from the cup of tea near her elbow.
Three fingers of toast lay on a plate beside the cup, one with evidence that a bite had been taken from the crusty end.
Crumbs littered the plate, giving him hope that the toast had once numbered four fingers.
“Winning?” he asked. He noticed that his voice had not startled her, proof that she’d sensed his presence even though he knew his entry had been silent.
Olivia shrugged and did not look up. “When I cheat.”
“Doesn’t that belittle the achievement?”
“It is solitaire, my lord. Just now, I merely want to win.”
He understood the need. “You are feeling more the thing?”
“I was never unwell.”
Griffin did not argue the point. It was a matter of perspective, he supposed. “May I join you?”
“You already have.”
Because there was no other chair in the room similar to the one in which she sat, Griffin drew the wing chair closer to the table, turned it sideways, and perched on the arm. He stretched his legs diagonally under the table and folded his arms comfortably across his chest.
She glanced up as she gathered the cards. “You have nothing you wish to say?”
“Not just at the moment, no.”
Olivia considered and accepted it. She shuffled, laid the cards out, then began to play. She made her moves quickly, seeing the whole of the game at once and recalling what cards would be turned over as she went through the deck three cards at a time.
“Your hands are lovely,” he said.
Whatever she had expected he might say, it wasn’t that. “I chew my nails sometimes.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Of course he had. He noticed everything. She continued playing.
“I’ve noticed, too, that you cannot accept a compliment.”
“How kind you are to say so.”
Griffin chuckled. “My point exactly. You embrace what you perceive as criticism and throw off compliments as if they were hair shirts.”
“It is a peculiarity, I admit, and one that is unlikely to change.” She saw she had come to the last of her plays.
If she was to continue, she would have to cheat, and it was simply too lowering to do so in front of Griffin.
She found she did not want to win as badly as that.
Sighing, she drew in the cards and began again.
Griffin watched her in silence a while longer. When he judged her receptive to matters of import, he said, “You are welcome to remain here, Olivia. I do not have it in my mind to turn you out.”
Her eyes on the cards, she nodded.
Suspicious of her easy acceptance, he said, “You have heard the like before, I collect.”
“Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“I was turned out.” She shrugged. “Do not imagine that I think you are lying. I know you are sincere. It is my experience that everyone is sincere until they are…not. Whether it is changed by circumstance or condition, I have reason to know that what is in one’s mind on any given day may be quite different on another.
I fully appreciate that it is not a promise, and I thank you for not phrasing it as one. That I would not believe.”
He had meant it as a promise, though. Now, knowing how little faith she had in such things, he could not speak of it. “Do you wish to stay?” he said instead.
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in her answer; she paused only in the reflection of it. Her fingers lay still on top of the card she meant to turn over. “What will you require of me?”
“Does it matter?”
It was perfectly humiliating to admit that it did not. “No,” she said finally.
“Then let us not discuss it now.”
“All right.” She turned over a ten of diamonds and made her play on the jack of spades.
Her compliance, perversely, did not cheer him in the least. He was rather more alarmed by it. “Pettibone informed me that you wondered what is to become of your brother.”
She smiled, though there was no joy in it. “I don’t believe my question was as philosophical as you have made it out to be. I think I know what will become of Alastair. I only wondered what will become of him at your hands.”
“He’ll live.”
“I hope so. He can never repay his debt if you kill him.”
“His debt? Bloody hell, Olivia, I care no more than this”—he flicked a card from one of her stacks—“for his debt. Do you think I don’t know that I have the better of the bargain in you than his ￡1,000?”
“Then he’s settled with you.”
Griffin ground his teeth until a muscle jumped in his cheek. He forced himself to relax, work out his jaw. He blew out a breath. “Yes. Something like that, though I would not go so far as to say that all is settled.”
“He sold me, did he not?”
“Christ.” The muscle jumped again. It was uncomfortably close to the truth. He ran a hand through his hair. “It may be his view, but it is not mine. There is no bill of sale.”
“There is Alastair’s marker.”
“Already returned to him,” Griffin said. Thrust in his face, he could have said. He wished now that he would have forced her brother to chew and swallow the damnable thing.
“So I am yours.”
“If you like.”
Olivia did not reply. She fingered the card he’d flicked away earlier and returned it to the proper stack. “Did you know his ring was stolen before I asked him about it?”
“Yes. He mentioned it on the way here.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I suspect it was not an entire untruth.”
Her eyes darted to his face. “You are generally more forthright.”
“I think it is safe to assume he lost it in a card game, most likely a crooked one, if my sources are to be credited.” Before she asked about his sources, he told her. “Misters Fairley and Varah. You will remember them, I think.”
“Indeed. So they assist in matters other than the removal of women from their homes. How enterprising they are.”
“On occasion. They observed your brother on successive nights at Crocker’s club, deep in his cups and light in his pockets.
I did not know then that he was in London, so their intelligence was appreciated.
Do you recall that I told you about Crocker?
He operates one of the lowest circles of Dante’s hell.
It was most unwise of Alastair to set any money down there, particularly unwise that it should have been at faro. Crocker’s dealer uses a box.”
She had yet another reason to shake her head sadly at Alastair’s judgment. “A good player knows when a box has been rigged.”
“Perhaps. I am quite certain you would. I’ve watched you track every card played, so I know you are entirely capable of seeing the deception, but your brother was already in desperate straits and unlikely to have been watching much beyond his own dwindling reserves.”
Olivia slowly turned over three cards and made her play while her mind was otherwise engaged. “If Alastair was desperate, it wasn’t because he wanted to honor the debt he owed you. He already had determined that he would not return for me.”
Griffin could not fault her conclusion. “That seems to be the hard truth,” he said quietly.
She was oddly grateful that he did not pretend it was otherwise.
“Your eight of spades plays on the nine of hearts.”
“What?”
He pointed out the move she was going to miss if she turned the cards again.