The Proposition, page 11
“He blamed them all on Jack Connors, the man he was lodging with,” Clemency said. They began to walk again, this time at a more leisurely pace. She felt comfortable, unexpectedly so, as if she were strolling with a friend and not a lunatic who had dropped out of the sky and into her life like a cannon.
“Your man is never responsible for his own mistakes and faults.”
“He is not my man,” Clemency snorted.
“Very well.” Mr. Ferrand paused again, but this time he regarded her with a small, secret smile. “Our man, then, if you like. Our quarry.”
In the strained silence that fell between them, Clemency tried to understand the confessional urge that rose in her like a hiccup. It couldn’t be suppressed. Mr. Ferrand had been right about Turner Boyle, and she wanted to know more. She couldn’t help herself, she had to. She had to know the depths of the darkness that swirled around the man she had loved. A single drop of poison had fallen into the well of that love, but had swiftly spread. Mr. Ferrand did not press her, and for that she was thankful. For once, he afforded her the polite silence and the time to find her words.
“There is…I have a theory.”
Mr. Ferrand leaned back against the house, crossing his boots at the ankles, propping one elbow on the back of his left hand. “Indeed? I love theories.”
“What if I told you that the ebb and flow of ‘our man’s’ affections seem to follow the ebb and flow of my family’s fortunes,” Clemency began, knowing she ought not to share such private things with a half-stranger, but also knowing that nobody else would understand it like he could. “That he proposed when all seemed quite secure, then grew cold during our financial hardship, and now his heart changes once more, just as our hardship ends.”
“If you told me that,” Mr. Ferrand replied with equal care, “in the strictest confidence, of course, then I would answer that you are perceptive. And you are learning. And you are correct.”
Clemency had already supposed it to be true, but his response, and even just her saying it aloud, made it feel real, and terrible, and unbearably shabby. Honora would never accept such things unless she heard it from Turner Boyle’s mouth directly, but Clemency felt the truth of it in her soul. He wanted her money and nothing more, and if the Bagshots’ ships had fallen to piracy or storms, then their fragile understanding would probably be over within the month.
Marriage. A foolish, fantastical notion. Miss Taylor had guided her well from beyond the grave, or tried to, at least. Maybe being unlovable could be a freedom, that she could now, permanently, be unshackled from the dream of a lasting romance.
She spun around, scrunching her face into a ball until the desire to cry passed.
“Miss Fry…”
“I’m quite all right,” she murmured, forcing herself to face him again.
Mr. Ferrand pushed away from the wall, taking a single step toward her. When it was clear that she would not burst into tears, he asked gently, “Do you remember what I told you at the ball?”
“You told me many things, sir.”
“A proposition,” he said. “I had a proposition for you. We were interrupted before I could explain it fully.”
Clemency pulled back her shoulders, concentrating closely on his words because it was easier than thinking about the sick, venomous feeling in her stomach. “You wanted to dismantle his life,” Clemency recalled. “Ruin him.”
“And do the details interest you now?” he asked.
She gave a mad giggle, hardly believing the sound that came out of her mouth. “Does it involve a duel? A rapier through his guts? If so, you have my wholehearted consent, sir.”
“Not as clean as that,” he said with his own dry chuckle. Mr. Ferrand took out his handkerchief again and offered it to her, and Clemency realized only then that tears had started to creep down her cheeks.
Pressing her lips together, she accepted the cloth and touched it to her eyes. The silk square had his leather and juniper scent, and the faint perfume of his sweat. She felt suddenly light-headed, and she wondered if he would catch her if she fell.
“It begins with his bills coming due,” Mr. Ferrand continued, that predatory hunter’s gleam coming into his eyes again. This time, Clemency was not wary of it. No, indeed, it ignited her. “All of them at once. That I have seen to already. It continues with a journey to London; you will follow him there and you will pretend to know nothing, and you will let him crawl back into your good graces, sickening as that may sound.”
Clemency narrowed her eyes and began to speak, but Mr. Ferrand took another step toward her, and laid his forefinger over her lips, silencing her. His skin was cool and dry, calloused. She stared up into his eyes, not shy, but trembling and afraid. She did not know if she trusted him, but in that moment, foolishly or otherwise, she damn well wanted to. His hand slipped over her jaw, cupping her face, his thumb grazing her gently parted lips. What the devil was he doing? Was he going to kiss her? Did she want him to?
She feared very much that yes, she wanted him to.
“You will let him think he has won his prize, that his future is secure, that you will promise to pay all of his mounting debts, ignorant of the landslide of humiliation he would heap upon you.” Mr. Ferrand’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper, and Clemency could not tear her eyes away from his. “And then I will be in London, and I will court you, and he will be powerless to stop me ripping away everything he ever wanted or thought he had. I will break his bank, his heart, and his spirit.”
Through the finger touching her lips she could feel the pounding pace of his heartbeat. Hers raced just as fast. When he pulled back from her, Clemency felt the fear drop away, a veil torn from her gaze.
“We.”
Mr. Ferrand raised a single brow in inquiry. Honora’s warning from that morning floated back to her—that people would whisper and talk, that Clemency might suffer irreparable harm by playing such games, but only reckless action would soothe a scorned heart.
“We will do those things. He will be powerless to stop us from ripping away everything,” Clemency corrected. He did not argue. Instead, he kissed her.
His hand slid deeper across her face, holding Clemency to him. Her breath became his, a pact and a secret and a want shared between them. She had not intended it to happen, and she suspected Audric had not even meant to do it. But how, then, were their lips pressed together? He tasted faintly of tobacco, and his lips were shockingly soft. Inviting. All of this was an invitation, a proposition, a covenant sealed with dangerously rising heat.
Audric broke first, moving her suddenly away. He frowned and shook his head.
“Forgive me—” he began, but Clemency offered him her hand, swiftly and surely, as a man might. This was a deal after all, their arrangement.
“But there will be no secrets between us, and you will tell me everything I want to know,” she demanded, also as a man might. “Everything. If that is your proposition, Mr. Ferrand, then I accept.”
9
Ordinarily, the emptiness of the Wimpole Street townhouse in London would not bother Audric. That he even noticed the oppressive quiet was strange. Bewildering, really. He enjoyed solitude, sought it whenever he was not seeking some irredeemable roustabout on the streets of Paris or Calais, but a restless unease gripped him within an hour of waking. Over a bracing cup of coffee, he watched the neighborhood wake up while a heap of croissants went untouched on the desk behind him. Only the staff awaited him at Kilby House, though Delphine and Ralston would join him in London soon, after taking a much gentler journey by carriage.
Audric had nearly killed his horse racing to London. Working off Miss Fry’s information, he could not allow Turner Boyle to slip the net, and he worried that the man, now pinned under a mountain of called-up debt, might grow desperate enough to flee England altogether. His poor horse had suffered, and Audric would not allow himself to consider it had anything to do with that kiss.
That damnable kiss.
When his mind wandered for even an instant, he thought of her. Clemency. She stoked such fire in him, odd and absurdly bossy but desirable, nonetheless. It was some remnant of childhood, he assured himself, a trick of the brain. His father had been so domineering and unbending, expecting absolute obedience from their mother. It was not unthinkable that he should find himself attracted to a woman that would make his father’s hair fall out in shock.
He did not hate his father, but under no circumstances did he want to become him.
That was all it was, that kiss. And that fire. Just a desperate attempt to distance himself from a fate he refused to entertain.
Boyle was the true matter at hand. Whether he sought to leave the country or call upon more friends for cash, it did not matter—it could not be allowed, not when Audric’s plan was otherwise unfolding flawlessly.
Nothing, it seemed, had changed on Wimpole Street since his last visit—the same fashionable couples held the same fashionable addresses, the same fashionable carriages clip-clopped down the same cobbles, and the same fashionable stores carried the same fashionable wares. Most of the townhouses were near identical—white brick lower entrance levels with arched doorways, a darker brick façade rising above, flower boxes in the windows providing a striking touch of color and cheer. But the familiarity of it did not provide much comfort—he missed his sister, and her laugh filling the halls of his home. Stranger still, he found he constantly missed Miss Fry’s company too.
She made things considerably more interesting, even if she also made them considerably more precarious.
There it was again. That kiss. Those enchanting eyes…No.
He drained his coffee and turned to contemplate the rolls on his desk, his loneliness and his disquiet robbing him of all appetite. Mercifully, Lee Stanhope arrived, rescuing him from the somewhat pitiful fate of eating a hot croissant alone in an empty house.
“What have you found?” Audric asked, striding around to the front of his desk, dispensing with any formal or informal greetings. That was not the sort of relationship he had with Lee Stanhope. A former Bow Street Runner, Stanhope could find a white cat in a snowstorm or an honorable man on the floor of Parliament. Henry Fielding himself had been the man’s mentor, and Stanhope had been regarded as something of a prodigy. He had retired young, after a bullet wound shattered his knee and left him with a pronounced limp. Now he was in the business of secrets, the expensive kind, and Audric paid him handsomely for his services.
“He’s still knocking about Grosvenor Square, Lord knows how he’s affording it,” Stanhope said, nudging the door shut with his cane. He made his way across the plush red-and-gold carpet, a wrapped packet of papers tucked under his right arm.
“I pay you to know, not the Lord,” Audric muttered, leaning back against his desk and crossing his arms.
With a crooked smirk, Stanhope rubbed his chin. “He has nothing on my contacts.”
Short and wiry, Stanhope stood about a head shorter than Audric, but even maimed he was brutal in a fight. He kept company with boxers when he wasn’t cultivating secrets and digging for information. Small, quick eyes darted about the room under his shaggy brown hair, a dimpled chin lending him a roguish air. There was nothing stylish about Stanhope, yet he exuded easy sophistication, his credentials and his capability more impressive than any jeweled cuff links. He handed the package to Audric and then helped himself to a croissant, tearing into it like a man starved.
“Denning Ede,” Audric read, tearing open the packet and glancing over the top page. It was an old lease, presumably one for wherever Boyle was staying. “Denning Ede…Why do I know that name?”
“Because he never shuts his mouth. Loudest Tory in London,” Stanhope said around a mouthful of roll. “Rescued Lord Ardmore from a particularly nasty scandal with a duchess last year. That lad would’ve wound up disinherited or worse, but Ede makes a few visits behind a few closed doors and suddenly Ardmore has a career in Parliament again. Disgraceful horseshit, if you ask me, but not unimpressive. And anyway, he’s always kissing up to the Runners, so you didn’t hear any of that from me.”
Audric frowned, glaring down at the lease. “And do we think his lordship knows Boyle’s secrets or is he just another victim?”
“Remains to be seen,” Stanhope replied. He reached over and tapped the bundle of papers in Audric’s hands. “I have a friend at White’s that will bring it up discreetly. Ede won’t talk to me, but he might spill his guts to another lord.”
Audric flipped to the next page, where Stanhope had scribbled hasty shorthand notes. Legible, just barely. Stanhope started in on his second croissant while Audric digested accounts of Denning Ede and Boyle making public overtures toward a widow called Mrs. Chilvers. “This woman…How is she involved?”
“Could be Boyle’s next swindle. She does seem the type. Spinster, wealthy, pretty enough, not much family to speak of—were I a half-cocked crook looking for a credulous mark, she would be it.”
“My God but he works fast,” Audric said with a sigh. “Not four days in town and he is already scouting Miss Fry’s replacement. He must be looking for someone richer, or stupider.”
“And how is she, eh? Was my information accurate?” Stanhope had every reason to be smug. He had been the one to pick up Turner Boyle’s scent in Round Orchard, following the trail from assemblies in town where whispers of a potential engagement to Miss Fry had lingered. After that, he had compiled a thorough dossier on her and her family, describing a young woman of middling fortune but better-than-average appearance, whose public disdain for marriage made her a tempting challenge for Boyle’s act.
“She is everything you described,” Audric replied, clipped. And far more. “We should watch him carefully when it comes to this Mrs. Chilvers, I will not have him cheat and ruin another innocent while we stand idly by.”
“Assuming she is his target and not his ally….”
“Assuming that, yes. I suppose it would be far wiser to assume nothing in regards to Boyle; he will be a slippery foe now that he has been alerted to my presence.” Audric was about to turn his attention to the next page in the stack Stanhope had brought him when a sudden fear gripped him. He went still, his eyes looking ahead but not really seeing.
“Sir?” Stanhope prodded.
“This is my greatest hunt yet,” Audric murmured. “If we fail…but we cannot. There is too much at stake. We cannot miss a single detail. Boyle will be my final quarry, and either my greatest success or my utter ruination.”
* * *
—
Clemency muttered under her breath, pricking her finger for the third time in as many minutes. To her right, bent over the hem of their shared focus, Honora shot her a warning glance.
“Have a care, sister,” Honora said with a laugh, a dark curl hovering in front of her eyes. She brushed at it with annoyance. “I will not have you bleeding all over this silk, not after the hours I have poured into it this week.”
Four days had passed since her eventful visit to Beswick, and she had seen nothing of Audric, receiving only a brief, dashed-off message explaining that he was on his way to London, and that he would make contact with her once she arrived the following week. Perhaps foolishly, she had hoped Delphine might extend an invitation or call at Claridge, but the Ferrands remained silent. She had been distracted ever since, her thoughts coalescing around the singular feeling of Audric’s finger pressed to her lips. Clemency was not one to enjoy being silenced by anyone, yet she returned to that moment again and again, not with anger but with curiosity.
Her mother, also present to work feverishly on Clemency’s new London gown, had noticed the gift of fabric from Mr. Ferrand, and then the message of his that arrived a few days later. The quality of the paper and the practically Gothic black wax seal sent her into a conniption that showed no signs of stopping.
Ordinarily, Mrs. Fry would not sit and sew with her daughters, but lately she had been conspicuously present, joining them to cut flowers, trim hats, and now assist Honora with her needlework. She had developed a bothersome passion for the minutiae of Clemency’s days, the timing of which was not the least bit subtle.
“He is so distressingly rich,” their mother was saying, ignoring Honora’s warnings to Clemency. Just like Clemency, Mrs. Fry seemed to be in her own world, lost no doubt, in visions of “distressing” wealth. “But a better age for Honora, I think.”
At her side, Honora went pale, her needle flashing faster through the cloud-soft pink silk.
“You know I have no interest in marrying again so soon,” Honora demurred softly. “And besides, it is quite plain that Mr. Ferrand’s attentions are elsewhere.”
Clemency, with what she considered extreme benevolence, waited until her sister had withdrawn her needle to jab her with an elbow. “It is neighborly politeness and nothing more,” Clemency assured them both. Indeed. It was common, was it not, to share a coiled, smoldering kiss with neighbors? Just a friendly gesture. Clemency winced, for whenever she remembered the sensation of kissing Audric, her face flamed impossibly.
Irrespective of her confident tone, neither listened. They did not seem to notice her blushing either. In fact, Mrs. Fry, dressed for winter in a mountain of shawls despite the spring warmth (she always, always had a chill) adjusted the lace cap covering her strawberry-blond waves and clucked her tongue.
“A lady can change her mind, you know,” she was saying, directing her gaze to Clemency. “I recall a time not so long ago when Lord Boyle did not appear to treat you with appropriate affection, my dear.”
At that, Clemency almost stabbed herself again. So her mother had noticed Turner’s chilly demeanor. That she had never said a word about it until a richer prospect came along only made Clemency’s heart sink to her toes. Was money all anyone thought about? Her intended? Her mother?
