Ruby smothered another laugh and relented. “I didn’t know that exactly, no. It’s only...” She hesitated, trying to put her feelings into words. “I knew that Lamentation and the others had been with Captain Archer for a very long time. And I knew that whatever deception the captain was about, it involved keeping his people safe.”
Tamsin gave her a long, considering look. “I see.”
Ruby felt herself blush, just a little, beneath the acuteness of Tamsin’s gaze.
Alice, meanwhile, had begun to fuss with the lace on her frock. “Do you...” She paused, her dark lashes veiling her eyes, and then looked up again. “Do you suppose we ought to tell someone what we’ve discovered? The Monfalcone royal family? Or perhaps your father?”
“Absolutely not,” Ruby said.
She paused. The words had launched themselves from her mouth before she’d even thought to formulate them. Her father...
Her father would want to hear what they had learned. She knew he would—even if it meant revealing her presence at Pomeroy House.
But if he knew the truth, her father would oust the false staff and thereby prove his usefulness to the Monfalcone royals. He was proud of his position of influence with the di Sangro family; if he had the opportunity to further cement his status, he would take it.
Her father would never let Captain Archer and his people stay.
She glanced at Tamsin, and her heart fluttered with relief. Tamsin too was shaking her head.
“No,” Tamsin said. “Not a chance.”
Alice sighed and sat down on the chintz chair that Ruby had personally carted up a flight of stairs. “Oh, I’msoglad. I would have gone along, had you two insisted upon it. But it would have been wrong, I think, to throw them out of their home.” She looked up, a little hesitantly. “Even if they aren’t properly supposed to be here.”
“Dear heart,” Tamsin said, “you do not always need to appease us, you know. You are allowed to have opinions of your own.”
“I do have my own opinions,” Alice protested. “In fact, I think smuggling is a perfectly reasonable career in the face of the same rapacious oligarchy that has put into place the Corn Laws.”
Ruby blinked. She had not known Alice felt so decidedly about free trade.
“But there’s nothing wrong with following your lead,” Alice went on. “With trusting my dearest and cleverest friends to make the right decisions.”
“Iamvery good at leading,” Tamsin said, and Alice laughed.
On the bed, her teacup balanced on her knees, Ruby didn’t quite laugh with her.
Alice favored harmony. She had always moved easily through the world; the fact that the world had turned its back on her seemed a great betrayal of fate. Alice was meant to be charming and lively and cosseted—she was not meant to be an outcast like Ruby.
But—it was true, now that Tamsin pointed it out. Alice was only too willing to sacrifice her own desires if by doing so she might keep the peace. If smothering her own wishes made other people happy.
And had Ruby not done the same?
Before she’d turned nineteen and made her debut, she had traveled all over the Continent with her father and her sister. She could recall so many days with sun-soaked clarity: Cass on the steps of the Tower of the Winds, her bonnet strings fluttering behind her head; their father, pleased and content in the morning, his tray full of black coffee and crisp pastry with rose-petal jam. The three of them together and happy, and she, Ruby, trying to keep them that way.
How much of her life had been devoted to just that delicate balance? How long had she spent trying to fulfill her father’s desires for her and for Cassandra?
If she told her father about Archer and his false staff, the earl would be pleased. Proud of her. Sheknewhe would. And if she did not tell him—if she let Archer and his crew remain—her father would see it as a betrayal.
The notion was horribly uncomfortable, digging at her ribs like stays knotted too tight. She wished she did not care about his approval. She would have liked for defiance to be easy—for her long-held need for her father’s approbation to vanish like smoke.
It hadn’t. She still hated to displease him.
But dash it, she could be uncomfortable if she had to be. She could weather her father’s scorn, if that was what it took to do the right thing.
Tamsin was chewing aimlessly at one of her thumbnails. “I don’t think we should reveal their secrets,” she said. “I like them. And their silly pack of dogs. But”—she dropped her thumb and looked at Ruby—“they don’t know you won’t reveal them.”
Ruby felt her brows draw together. “What do you mean?”
“Blackmail,” Tamsin said succinctly. “I think you should blackmail Captain Archer.”
