Chapter 9
Ambrose made it so far as fully putting his weight on one foot toward following Zeller into his carriage before changing his mind and tipping himself backward back out onto the cobbles.
“Don’t fret,” he told the German before he could make one of his variety of musical noises. “Go home. I’ll follow later.”
And he slammed the door before there could be an argument, turning toward Victoria Beck’s carriage before it could peel away and escape him.
He wanted answers, and he wanted them tonight.
Besides, he also wanted to keep looking at her in that slinky purple dress. It was a wonder her brother had let her leave their home in such a thing, giant prude that he was. And God bless him for the oversight.
He held up two fingers to the Beck coachman, pointing to his shiny new medal for good measure in case his authority was in doubt.
It seemed to do the trick. The man raised his shiny black horse-beating stick and inclined his head at Ambrose until he could swing around the side of the carriage and break into it.
He wrenched the door open and tossed himself into the velvet embrace of the interior in one smooth motion, enjoying the little gasp of outrage that immediately sounded as he landed in the seat opposite his future wife.
Unfortunately, he landed at a bit of an awkward angle and was forced to recline on his side for a moment as though it were intentional.
“Just what in the devil do you think you are doing?” she demanded.
“Just what in the devil do I think I am doing, Sir Ambrose,” he corrected, raising his eyebrows at her and noting that his odd posture had put him directly at eye level with her impressive bosom.
She leaned forward and smacked him on the wrist with her fan. “Get out.”
He giggled, rolling onto his back as the carriage started moving. “No.”
She watched him, clearly a little taken aback by her failure to eject him. “You are drunk,” she realized, making him laugh again.
“Just a wee bit,” he said, holding his fingers up to demonstrate. “You kept plying me with the champagne.”
“I did no such thing,” she said with a sniff. “I had the same amount and I’m not lolling around in inappropriate carriages.”
“You could be,” he told her, turning his head to observe her. “You could be lolling about in mine.”
Her mouth dropped open for a moment, color brushing her cheeks. She immediately turned to look out the window. “I will have the driver bring you home,” she said briskly.
“Oh, good,” he said with a lazy grin. “I was hoping you’d take me home with you. I have things to discuss with you, Victoria. Vix. Vicky mine.”
“Do not call me Vicky,” she said coldly. “I shall kill you.”
“Do you promise?” he answered softly. “How will you do it?”
She made a strangled little noise that sounded like it was trying to be disgust. “You are impossible,” she said. “What do you want to discuss with me?”
He grinned at her, enjoying the tipsy spin of the carriage that the champagne was providing him, and the way she glinted every time they passed by torchlight. “I want you to tell me about Caroline Sedgewick,” he said, “and in return, I will tell you why they knighted me. Is that fair?”
She hesitated, clearly surprised that his answer was coherent, those dark eyes narrowing at him. “A trade?”
“A trade,” he confirmed, letting himself examine the rest of her at his leisure as the swaying carriage took them past a row of well-lit public houses. The only thing better than that dress, he thought, would be the lack of it.
“If it is not a good story, Sir Ambrose,” she said with venom, “you will regret tricking me.”
“It is an awful, awful story,” he assured her. “You will love it. I will go first, if you do not trust me.”
“Oh, I think not,” she said, shaking her head. “You will bear the full brunt of the debt you wish to incur, and then you will pay it in full. That is what you get for storming into my carriage like some toothless highwayman.”
“Toothless!” he repeated, affronted. “Madam, I would be a dashing highwayman.”
She gave him a begrudging half smile, like she resented finding his petulance endearing, and turned her face toward the window as the carriage rounded the final block in St. James toward the Tod & Vixen.
“Oh,” he said, snapping up to sitting. “Tod & Vixen.”
She turned to look at him with a weariness in her face. “What?”
“Tod and Vix,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Like you and your brother.”
“Get out of the carriage, Ambrose,” she said with a sigh, gesturing as the door was pulled open by the driver like she had done the thing with the very power of her force of will. “Out.”
He tumbled out, giving a stern look of rebuke to the ground for tilting under him as he did so, and then steadied himself toward the Vixen as she thanked the driver.
“Come along,” she said impatiently. “Not the front door.”
“Oho,” he said, sinking his hands into his pockets and following her around the side. “Are you sneaking me in?”
“Of course I am,” she said flatly. “You think I want people to see this?”
He frowned.
“Don’t pout,” she said without turning around.
She opened a door that led directly to a staircase to the apartments above the club, circumventing any need to pass through the revelry going on below.
She did not wait for him or usher him in ahead of her, just knocked the door open with her hip and took the stairs with her skirt pinched in her fingers, her hips swinging as she climbed.
He watched with dedicated attention, deliberately staying no fewer than four steps behind her for the duration.
When she reached the top, she pulled a low-lit lantern from the bannister and turned the knob on the side, making the flame jump to life. Which was the point where he realized—
“Is no one here?” he said, his eyes widening. “Are we alone?”
She held the lantern out in front of her as she walked into the landing. “Hannah and Teddy are at the Fox tonight,” she said without turning, taking him through the dining room and into a little hallway. “I thought you would know that.”
He blinked, his eyes still following the swing of her hips. “Oh. Yes. I should have,” he said absently as she turned into the second room to the right and set about igniting the lamps as he stood in the doorway, considering all manner of ill-advised things.
She turned after lighting the final lamp, looking surprised to find him frozen in the doorway. “Come in,” she said, gesturing to the seating. “Sit down. I will be just a moment.”
“Oh, don’t leave,” he said weakly as she walked past him again, leaving behind a trailing scent of night jasmine.
He considered the room and chose one of the two velvet-lined chairs that were tilted toward one another at the rear, just by the windows.
She returned, holding a carafe of water and a pair of glasses, which she set on the small table next to the chair he’d chosen, thereby falling directly into his trap to sit in the one that would bring her knee in line with his own.
Yes, everything was going to plan.
He watched her smooth the satin skirt of her dress over her backside before she sat on it, and felt all moisture leave his mouth.
That must be why she had provided the water.
He gathered the carafe up and filled both glasses, eager to return function to his voice before he was required to use it.
“Thank you,” she said, watching the process.
“I shall begin. I suppose first you ought to know that Teddy was not always a man of business and our family was not always one of means. We grew up quite poor, in fact. I would not call us destitute, but once we were orphaned, that word actually probably did apply.”
He paused, blinking twice, and set the carafe down with a thunk, looking back up at her. “You are orphans?”
She nodded. “It is all right. It happened a very long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it all right,” he answered, frowning at the way she rolled her eyes and flipped her fingers at him.
“Not the point,” she said. “It is just context for my story. When Teddy became my primary guardian, he secured a scholarship for me to attend a girls’ school in Bath-Spa so that I could be educated and have some manner of future.
I do not know if there were scholarship boys at Eton or Harrow or whatever manner of posh palace education you received, but the girls who relied on charity funding to be schooled and boarded were sequestered from those whose families could pay tuition in full once we arrived at school, so it was not a secret that I was there as a good deed and not because I had wealthy people who loved me paying my way. ”
He winced. “King’s scholars,” he said. “We had them too. They had to wear a different uniform.”
She paused, raising her brows at his honesty with what looked like appreciation.
“Charming. Anyhow, I met Caroline in my first year, and she was the kindest to me of the traditional students. We were fast friends, and I think she saw me as something of a pet project. I was too young at the time to be anything but grateful, and as we were of an age, she was likely too young to know she was supposed to treat me like a leper.”
“Children can be horrible from a surprisingly young age,” he countered, tilting his head. “A governess should know that.”
She paused, giving him a ghost of a smile.
“Touché. In any event, I thought we were like sisters, for a time. When I was thirteen, she invited me to spend Christmas with her family in Canterbury, spinning tales for me of her esteemed papa and his role in the duke’s household.
It all seemed to me at the time like a fairy story, and I was beside myself with excitement to go with her and experience it firsthand. ”
“And you went?” he pressed, leaning toward her.
“And I went,” she confirmed, watching him. “At first, it was exactly as grand as I imagined, and she was in her element introducing me to every new wonder as the holiday unfolded. The problem happened when we met the chaplain and his little protégé.”