Chapter Eighteen
Telling Rafe and Leif her suspicion that Thaddeus Mayles was broke went precisely as well as Mavis expected.
Rafe collapsed on the couch, throwing his arm over his eyes and giving a groan so loud Mavis felt it rattle her bones. “Are you certain?”
“It’s impossible,” Leif insisted, raking a hand through his dark hair and pouring himself another glass of whiskey—his third since Mavis arrived back at the hotel an hour ago. “I checked his financials myself.”
“How recent were they?” Mavis asked him from her place in the armchair.
She hadn’t bothered to change out of the dress she’d worn to the pageant, and the way she was curled up in a most unladylike position meant it would be hopelessly wrinkled, but that didn’t seem particularly important at the moment.
Leif considered it. “Three years old?”
“There was nothing more recent?”
“No, but that didn’t strike me as unusual,” he said. “It isn’t as if I can simply stroll into a bank and get the information firsthand. Most records I can access are a few years out of date, but with Lusters and their ancient fortunes, not much changes from one year to the next, or even a decade.”
That was just it, though.
“His parents died three years ago. Arden said that he didn’t realize how bad his own family’s finances were until his father passed and he inherited his troubles.
It’s possible the same happened to Thaddeus.
It may not be commonplace, but more and more Luster families are facing financial troubles these days, spending too much and relying on money that has become stagnant instead of diversifying their investments. ”
Rafe snorted. “I can’t imagine how foolish someone must be to spend their way through a fortune like that in three years’ time.”
A few weeks ago, Mavis might have agreed, but hearing Arden talk about his situation had given her a new perspective.
“People like us think about money more in a day than people like them think about it in their entire lives. They trust that it will always be there, and there’s no reason for them to believe it will ever not be enough. ”
“You almost sound sympathetic,” Leif said, his voice dry.
Mavis shrugged. “I’m not, but as you and Rafe taught me all those years ago, in order to con someone, you first have to understand them.”
“That you do, Magpie.” Rafe dropped his arm from his eyes and turned to look at her, his dark-green eyes curious. “Which brings us to the question of what we do now that we understand Thaddeus Mayles.”
Mavis considered the question. She looked down at her open palm, the blot of blue at its center.
It didn’t look any larger than it had been a week before, but she knew it was.
They couldn’t run now, not without it turning her into a pariah at best or leading to her arrest at worst. But if she actually went through with this sham of a marriage, it would only be a matter of days before Thaddeus realized the truth—that she had no dowry and no magic—and when he did, the marriage would be annulled and she would be thrown in prison.
They should have run weeks ago, when Arden first arrived in Garlin, and Mavis was infinitely grateful to both Rafe and Leif for not saying they told her so.
Now, they were stuck—she was stuck. But there was still a way out of it.
“If Arden convinces Oriana to marry him, he owes us two million solas. I can use twenty thousand solas from that to break the betrothal contract with Thaddeus.”
Rafe snorted. “I’d rather not rely on Arden Ryskamp’s word.”
He was right—they had every reason in the world to doubt Arden. She had seduced him, left him, and stolen his money—she didn’t even think she could blame him if he did turn on her.
And yet . . . she remembered the way he’d looked at her after she told him the truth about Minstead. “Arden Ryskamp is a good number of things, but he isn’t foolish enough to renege on a bargain with us.”
“That may be true,” Leif pointed out. “But we’ve already underestimated one Luster prick—I’m not sure I’m keen on making the same mistake twice.”
Mavis scoffed. “If you have another idea, Leif, I am begging you to say it instead of continuing to tear my ideas to ribbons.” Leif fell silent and Mavis sighed. “Look, I signed that contract—if things truly begin looking hopeless, I’ll stay and take the fall. You two run.”
“No,” Rafe and Leif said in unison.
Rafe shook his head. “No matter what happens, Magpie, we’re in this together.”
They were pretty words, but Mavis knew as well as Rafe surely did that they were nothing more than that. But if Rafe wanted to make her false promises, the least Mavis could do was pretend to believe them.
Arden took his time meandering along the beach to the Abalone, unsure of what to say to Mavis, Rafe, and Leif—or what was more, what not to say.
He wasn’t a fool—he knew better than to trust them entirely.
Mavis might have told him about working off a debt to Minstead, but as sympathetic as he felt for her, it didn’t make him keen to turn his back to her and offer up a second chance to stab him.
If the story she told is even true.
Mavis was a con artist. He wouldn’t allow himself to forget that again.
As he approached the Abalone, he saw Mavis’s familiar figure, standing alone where the waves lapped at the sand, her wild red hair loose and billowing in the sea breeze.
She had changed since the pageant, now dressed in a simple blue gown that hung loose on her body, without the fitted structure of the bodice that fashions favored as of late, and as Arden drew closer, he noted with a bolt of lust so strong that he nearly stumbled in the sand that she didn’t appear to be wearing a corset underneath.
Gods of Old, the woman was maddening in how she affected him.
“Arden.”
He forced his gaze upward to meet her eyes. She looked as tired as she sounded, as if she had lived a decade in the time since the pageant, and despite the stern talk he’d just had with himself about not being a fool, he had to fight the urge not to draw her into his arms.
That, he reminded himself, was not why he was here.
“How did it go with Oriana? You two looked cozy at the pageant,” she said, but there was a strange coldness to her voice that grated on Arden.
He ignored it, instead telling her about his conversation with Oriana, how she was making plans for Strall, with him, but when he finished, Mavis tilted her head, her bright-green eyes shrewd.
“You sound like a man who’s just been given a death sentence instead of a lifeline,” she remarked.
Arden tore his gaze away from her, instead looking out at the waves lapping against the shore. He cleared his throat.
“I just don’t like it,” he admitted finally. “Tricking someone into believing in a future that doesn’t exist. It isn’t fair to her.”
“Fair,” Mavis echoed with a scoff. “What lies have you told Oriana? You intend to marry her, don’t you? You intend to take her to Strall and do all the things you told her about?”
Arden shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, yes.”
“You intend to be a good husband to her? Treat her well? Be faithful?”
“Of course.”
“Then it isn’t a lie.”
“But—”
“Arden,” Mavis interrupted, her voice sharper than he’d ever heard it.
She turned to face him, her jaw tight. “I’m sorry, but I can’t indulge your tender conscience at the moment.
I . . .” She trailed off, looking away again but not before Arden saw the flash of fear in her eyes.
He’d seen the woman before him play all manner of parts, but he’d never before seen her afraid.
He balled his hand into a fist at his side to keep from reaching for her out of some infallible habit. “What is it?”
She glanced around the beach, then shook her head. “Not here. Meet me upstairs.”
Mavis didn’t give him a chance to respond before she turned and walked back to the hotel, disappearing inside the front doors. He hesitated only for the span of a breath before following, donning his invisibility behind a sand bluff.
Unlike the last time he followed her up to her room, Mavis was expecting him. As soon as he knocked, she ushered him into the suite and closed the door, leaning back against it, fixing him with her emerald green eyes.
“Thaddeus Mayles is broke,” she said without any further preamble.
Arden could only laugh, but when Mavis cut him a glare, his laughter died. “The Mayles family is one of the most wealthy and prestigious in Garlin.”
“The same could have been said about your family not long ago,” she told him—a well-made point, but one that stung all the same.
“I heard a rumor at the pageant, but when I confronted him about it, his reaction all but confirmed it. Not to mention the fact that he’s trying to rush the wedding for the end of summer. ”
Arden took a moment to process this. It seemed unfathomable, but Mavis was right—stranger things had happened.
“So we’re fucked.” When Mavis looked at him with raised eyebrows, he shrugged. “Should I watch my language? It isn’t as if you’re a lady.”
“Oh, trust me, Arden, I’ve forgotten more curses than you could ever hope to hear over tea in Luster parlors. But we aren’t fucked. Not yet, at least.”
Arden couldn’t help but let his gaze linger on her full lips as they shaped the word, and the sound of it in her polished voice with those hints of her Low City accent bleeding through was far more beguiling than it had any right to be. He forced his gaze away and cleared his throat.
“I don’t see how we aren’t. Your con against Thaddeus Mayles is hopeless, and .
. .” He trailed off, his eyes dropping to her left hand, where he could just make out the stain of her betrothal mark on her palm.
A betrothal it would cost twenty thousand solas to dissolve.
If Thaddeus didn’t have twenty thousand solas to spare . . .
“Oriana’s dowry.” His voice came out hoarse. “Even with the progress today, it isn’t a sure thing.”