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She met his gaze. “You got involved in this gang’s business because of me.”
“You did make a pest of yourself,” he said. “And it became clear that if I didn’t take charge, you’d attempt it alone.”
This wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t, in fact, the true reason. The day they’d met in the Milliners’ Society garden, he’d been . . . What? Bewitched was the way another man would explain it to himself. But that was merely metaphor.
He’d watched her walk in the shriveled garden, in all her organdy and lace, with the flowers and sprigs shooting from her hat like rockets.
He’d watched her walk, everything about her fluttering, while he’d listened to her and marveled at her neat summary of his strategy—the strategy Grumley’s counsel had failed to understand until too late.
“Not alone,” she said. “I’m not that reckless. But I would have plagued somebody else.”
His other self decided that, whoever the somebody else was, he ought to be pitched out of a window.
The rational Radford said, “I looked on the bright side. Here was an opportunity to get rid of Freame. It wouldn’t change the world or even a neighborhood. Another gang leader would take his place in no time. No danger of that species becoming extinct. But he’s exceptionally keen on killing me, and that’s rather a nuisance. Instead of looking upon me as a worthy adversary, he holds grudges. But that’s the criminal mind, Lady Clara. A very small thing it is. They see the world through their own narrow lenses.”
She looked away from him. “As do I,” she said. “I had no inkling, until I saw the ragged school, how very small my world is. Today was even more educational.”
“You don’t need these lessons,” he said.
“Generally speaking, no. But among other things, they’ve taught me how little idea I have of how to begin looking for a place for Toby.”
It took a moment for this to sink in, because he’d been lulled into thinking they were having a rational conversation. For once he seemed to be speaking to a sort of . . . friend. It was like talking to Westcott, but Westcott with a much more attractive exterior. But she wasn’t a friend. She was an unusually intelligent and headstrong woman. A wrongheaded woman.
“Did I say temporary insanity?” he said. “My lord, honorable colleagues, gentlemen of the jury—kindly permit me to point out my own grievous error. The woman in question does not suffer from temporary insanity. It is a chronic condition.”
Her blue gaze, quizzical, came back to him. “Now what’s set you off?”
“You will not find a place for Toby Coppy,” he said. “You’ll have nothing more to do with him. You’re not to come with a mile of him.”
“I promised Bridget I’d find him an apprenticeship,” she said patiently. “Where on earth is the harm in that? I’ll talk to Matron, and see if we can find lodgings for him near the Milliners’ Society after he recovers. Matron will be able to advise me as well about finding work for him.”
He gazed at her, into those innocent blue eyes, and found himself wrestling the urge to shake her. He opened his mouth, ready to call her ten kinds of idiot.
Patience, he counseled himself. She was naïve, that was all.
Patience, however, wasn’t one of his virtues. He had to work hard to scrape up a few bits and make himself say, with what was for him superhuman forbearance, “No.”
She wrinkled her brows at him.
“That is not a good idea,” he said. “You cannot bring Matron into the Coppy family’s problems. You’ll complicate Bridget’s situation at the school. The other girls will think she’s being favored. They’ll make her life difficult. More difficult. You don’t understand these people and their world. You admitted as much yourself, and you don’t know the half of it. They don’t think the way you do or the way you did at their age. You must keep out of it. Permanently.”
“I promised,” she said.
“Then keep your promise in a sensible manner,” he said. “Westcott is fully capable of finding Toby employment.”
Her brow knit, and it was proof of the extraordinary power of her features that she only looked more impossibly beautiful.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I must be more tired than I realized. I didn’t get very much sleep.”
Images rose in his mind of her lying wakeful in her virginal bed. Being a man good at solving problems, he easily imagined ways to help her sleep. He crushed the images.
“Then think of this as well,” he said. “Try to apply reason to the situation you’ve placed yourself in. A reasoning being would grasp the importance of removing herself from the neighborhood until the excitement died down. A reasoning being would understand why she needed to keep out of sight until people forgot what she looked like.”
“Here’s a refreshing change,” she said. “You’re the first man who’s ever told me I’m easy to forget.”
His other self was acutely aware he wouldn’t forget her. Ever.
How much farther to the house in Kensington?
He said, “For boys like that, yes. They’ve plenty of exciting distractions, like trying not to starve to death or get beaten or jailed or hanged. They drink to excess, too. Go away for a month or so, and when you return, nobody will be able to pick you out from a clump of a dozen aristocratic blondes.”
“Only a month or so,” she said. “Fancy that.”
“Six months or forever would be wiser,” he said, “but I know better than to propose it.”
“You’re overreacting,” she said. “I’ve noticed this tendency in you. It comes of having to be dramatic in court, I know.”
“Dramatic!”
“Do try to think it through in a rational manner,” she said. “Firstly, it’s unlikely I’ll see any of those boys at Almack’s or the Queen’s Drawing Room. Secondly, most if not all of them will soon leave London for a lifelong residence in a penal colony on Norfolk Island. Thirdly, all they know of me is that I’m a lady who was looking for Bridget Coppy’s brother. What’s remarkable in that? Everybody knows ladies patronize the Milliners’ Society. Everybody knows ladies throw charity about, to make ourselves feel useful and virtuous. Everybody knows how bored we get, being rich and pampered and having scores of lovers languishing after us.”
She was right, absolutely right.
“You have a point,” he said.
“Do I?” She leaned forward to peer into his face, and he caught the faintest whiff of her scent. “Did you find it painful to say that? It looked painful. All the same, I’m all aflutter.” She sat back and pretended to fan herself with a gloved hand.
“But,” he said.
“There’s always a but,” she said.
“The trouble is, they know you can identify them,” he said.
She dismissed this with a queenly wave, not at all marred by th
e dirty glove. “Very silly of them,” she said. “Everybody knows we ladies can’t tell the difference between one pauper and the next. They all look the same under the dirt and rags. Not that anybody wants to look closely at them, since it means getting near enough to smell them. Everybody knows we’re perfectly happy to let cutthroats and thieves go about their business, as long as they stay out of our neighborhoods, and stick to robbing their neighbors and cutting their throats.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you quite finished?”
“Not nearly,” she said. “They know we’d never appear in a place as sordid as a courtroom. A lady would never be so vulgar as to stand in the witness box. She might as well stand in the dock, because her reputation would certainly be found guilty and hanged—possibly drawn and quartered, too—and minutely dissected thereafter.”
She lifted her perfect chin and gazed at him defiantly.
His other self was painfully tempted to do something the rational Radford was sure would only make matters worse.
“Very well,” he said. “Do as you like. I haven’t time to play nursemaid. I’ve a libel to prosecute, a dying father to look in on, a funeral to attend in Herefordshire, and a mad cousin’s ghastly affairs to sort out, practically simultaneously. I shall leave you to Lady Exton, with my greatest sympathy.”
She would go her way and he would go his.
In a very short time, in fact. At the end of this trip across London.
He looked out of the window, because looking at her was making him unhappy and restless and he was having the devil’s own time detaching himself. He was surprised to see how far they’d come already. “Ah, we’re nearly at Hyde Park Corner,” he said calmly.
Clara wanted to tear her tongue out. She wanted to slap herself. But she did neither of these things because the first was easier said than done and the second was vulgar, and possibly a symptom of insanity.
