Secret Admirer by Michele Jaffe
He did not need to wait to see that, though. His fantasy of it was enough. He cleaned his knife on a passerby’s breeches, then slipped it back into his wrist holster. It was tempting to stay here all night and kill as many of them as possible, but he had to check on the rest of his operation. Plus he’d soon be wanting an audience.
By the time they had woven their way through the crush of guests, the ball was well under way. Everyone seemed to know Lawrence, and everyone—especially the women—wanted his undivided attention. The way hundreds of smiles died early deaths on the lips of society’s beauties when they saw Tuesday made her feel like she was a rare but foul fungus growing on his sleeve.
“Lady Arlington, I was hoping you would come,” a male voice said with genuine welcome from behind them, and Lawrence whirled them around. She felt his forearm clench under her hand.
“Tristan,” he said with a very polite smile, and Tuesday recognized the extremely handsome and charming Tristan del Moro, the former thief who had come to secure her house the day before.
Tristan ignored Lawrence and spoke only to her. “I know you have already met Miles, the honored bridegroom tonight. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of my cousins. Sebastian, Ian, Crispin, Sophie, and Bianca, this is Lady Tuesday Arlington.”
“The murderess!” the woman named Bianca proclaimed, smiling widely.
“Don’t worry, it’s a compliment,” Sebastian leaned in to explain when he saw the expression on Tuesday’s face. “We Arboretti men only marry murderesses.”
“You can’t propose,” Tristan objected strenuously. “I met Lady Arlington first.”
“That was sheer luck. Not sporting of you to take advantage of it.”
Tuesday surprised herself by starting to laugh.
But her laughter died when Sophie, pointing across the room announced, “I don’t believe it. He’s fled.” Tuesday followed her finger to the spot where Lawrence was standing, engulfed by a dozen women.
“I am afraid he does not like my company very much,” Tuesday confided in what she hoped was a breezy I-don’t-care-a-bit-if-women-swarm-around-him-like-flies tone.
“On the contrary,” Tristan put in. “You have a very powerful effect on him. Just watch how he keeps looking over here.”
“Glaring over here,” Tuesday corrected.
Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Even better.”
“Yes,” Tristan agreed, rubbing his chin. “But it does present complications. I for one do not wish to meet Lawrence in a duel.”
“Neither do I,” Sebastian averred. “Nor would I want to be the one to destroy his happiness again.”
“I don’t think there is any danger of that,” Tuesday assured them.
“Lady Arlington,” Tristan said with a half smile, “I am afraid you have quite a lot to learn about men.”
The Lion was lit by his success in front of Dearbourn Hall. He wanted to kill everyone he saw.
Patience.
Screw patience. The world was about to change. This was it, his moment to shine. He was surprised that he could just stroll among people without them seeing it on him. Seeing how great he was. That he was the Winner.
He was the best. Lawrence Pickering thought his men—his stupid men who were walking right by him—were searching for the Lion, but really the Lion was ruling over them. They took no step that the Lion did not somehow suggest to them first, did nothing without the Lion’s approval. The Lion was in control.
God it felt amazing.
He was trembling and his fingers were tingling. Just one more, he told himself. Let me have just one more. He grabbed one of the undercover men sent to look for him—not one of Lawrence’s personal stable but good enough—by the wrist and tugged him into the alley.
“I think I saw something,” he told the man breathlessly.
“Who are you? Hey, what—” the man began to ask, then stopped. His eyes got huge. He looked down at his stomach. He looked back at the Lion.
He died right there.
The Lion stripped off the man’s bloody clothes and stood looking at the naked body. It was so ugly, that stupid body. Not like his Lady’s. Her body was spectacular. His mouth got Wet just thinking about it.
He was great tonight. Tonight he was alive. Tonight, he was in charge.
Tonight London would be his.
Large insects, Lawrence decided. That was what the men swarming around Tuesday looked like in their black-and-green coats.
“I beg your pardon, my lord? Insects?”
He had not realized he’d spoken aloud. He dragged his eyes from Tuesday’s face to that of Olivia Waverly, who was standing at his side.
It was the place she seemed always to occupy at balls this season, other women moving aside as she approached like commoners before their monarch. Despite his best efforts not to hear the gossip about himself, even Lawrence knew of the widely circulated rumor that he and Olivia would soon announce their engagement.
He did nothing to feed the rumor, but nothing to quell it either. As far as he was concerned, at least until four days earlier, the beautiful Olivia Waverly would have made as good a wife as any of the available women that season. Better, in fact, than many because she was a widow and therefore would not require much coddling, and because she was smart. She was also ruthless, he knew, having an idea of just exactly what kinds of maneuvering had been required of her to overawe the entire field of young women vying for his title and install herself as the prime candidate, which did not entirely bother him. But she would no longer fit the bill. Not at all. Because it would hardly be fair to marry a woman and then drag her to the ends of the earth, which was exactly where Lawrence was determined to go.
He was calculating how long it would take him to get to—
(the other side of the ballroom where Sir Bottlebuck had his hand twined around Tuesday’s elbow like a grasping vine)
—Morocco, when he realized that Olivia was speaking to him.
“I knew her, as a girl,” she said, following Lawrence’s gaze across the crowded floor of the ballroom. When he turned a puzzled frown on her, she added, “Lady Tuesday Arlington. We were neighbors for one summer.”
“Oh,” Lawrence said. “That must have been unpleasant.”
Olivia looked at him quizzically for a moment, then laughed. “Not at all. She was—” Olivia broke off as if groping for the right word. Really, she was torn. She’d worked so hard to get this close to Lawrence, and she could tell by the intensity of his interest in Tuesday that she was a viable threat. Olivia had learned the hard way to take what she wanted, whatever the cost, whatever the means, because everyone else was doing the same. She had learned to be as unscrupulous as her first husband, and as cold. But seeing Tuesday again cut through her cynicism, shuttling her back to an earlier time. She said, “Tuesday was a marvelous girl.”
Still, marvelous hardly did her justice. Olivia had never again felt as thrillingly glamorous as she had at the age of twelve when Tuesday, two years younger than she but somehow ages more mature, had asked if she could draw her portrait. Or as bold and alive and joyful as she had when they had lay on their backs in the rickety hayloft over Tuesday’s brother Jack’s room in the stables and stared at the stars through the cracks and imagined what their futures would be like. Olivia shook her head ironically at her young self as she recalled her dreams of being married to a powerful, rich man with a fantastic title, a duke or an earl. Sometimes, when Tuesday’s influence was strongest, Olivia had even dared to dream of an exotic European count. But Tuesday’s plan, like everything about her, was different. She wanted to travel around the world with her brother Jack and ride on camels and climb mountains and taste every flavor and draw every face and have dozens and dozens of children. Neither of them knew for certain where children came from, but Tuesday felt fairly certain she would be able to find that place during her travels and get some.
Their friendship lasted only two months—Olivia had a va
“She was a really marvelous girl,” Olivia repeated. “I always knew she would be an extraordinary woman.”
“Oh,” Lawrence replied, wondering—
(why Tristan and Sebastian weren’t breaking Lord Alcott’s fingers for touching Tuesday’s shoulder)
—what she had said.
Not long after, Olivia drifted away from Lawrence and toward a circle of her admirers, all clamoring to know every word he’d spoken.
“Something about insects,” she answered, shaking her head in confusion. “And then something about catching the next boat to India.”
“Move it or prove it,” the freckle-faced boy behind the news-sheet stall said to him saucily. “Ye gots to pay if ye wants to read them.”
The Lion thought the boy’s belt, of strong leather and wrapped three times around his waist so he could grow into it, would make a perfect noose. The Lion thought the cash box would work ideally to batter the boy’s brains out. The Lion considered whether he could strangle the boy just by shoving his goddamned news sheets down his throat until he could not breathe, let him choke on those Words, on the black ink that said nothing, nothing important, nothing worth reading, nothing at all about him!
“Ye gonna pay, mister, or ye going to get along?”
I’m not going to pay, the Lion thought, feeling the guard’s bloody shirt drying under his own, next to his skin. But you are. Everyone will.
Tomorrow everyone would be talking about him. Tomorrow his name would be on the top of every news sheet. Tomorrow he would be as famous as Lawrence Pickering, Our Greatest Hero. Or more famous.
Because tomorrow Lawrence Pickering would be dead.
Crispin crossed the ballroom floor, moving purposefully toward Lawrence. He and Lawrence had been best friends since they were boys, long before Crispin became an earl or Lawrence became Lord Pickering. They had met by accident one day when, on a bet, Lawrence had dived into the Thames without giving a thought to the fact that he could not swim. Crispin had saved his life and from that moment on they had been nearly inseparable whenever Crispin was in England. Lawrence always claimed that he would still be an ill-mannered pauper if it wasn’t for Crispin and his cousins, but they knew better than anyone that he had been a gentleman even when he was wearing tattered breeches and finding his meals behind the kitchens of houses like the one he now lived in.
Lady Olivia and her entourage were just floating away as Crispin reached his friend. Lawrence, oblivious to their departure, stood alone, frowning. He was heedless of the fact that he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He had no idea that he had just unwittingly and mercilessly cut the most important widow in London. Indeed, he was so unaware of everything going on around him that when Crispin came up and put his arm on his friend’s shoulder, Lawrence almost socked him.
“I thought you had forgiven me for that scene with Constantia Grosgrain two years ago,” Crispin said, stepping hastily away.
“I’m sorry.” Lawrence dusted off the smile. “You startled me. It is good to see you. What are you doing here?”
“This is Miles’s betrothal ball,” Crispin explained as if speaking to a child. “He is my cousin. I—”
A normal Lawrence would have gotten annoyed by being addressed this way. Normal Lawrence might have made an acerbic comment. Normal Lawrence would absolutely not have said, “Oh.”
Crispin stood and blinked at him for a moment.
The stranger who had taken over Lawrence’s body was gazing at the dance floor. He said, “Miles and his betrothed certainly look good together.”
“That is not his betrothed,” Crispin informed him, not bothering to fill him in on the mad arrival of the woman with the monkey through a service corridor just before Lawrence’s own.
“Oh. Oh no.”
“Exactly.” A pause. “I am surprised you even noticed them, Lawrence.”
Lawrence kept his eyes on some point just beyond the dancers. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been so busy glaring at Lady Arlington I didn’t think you’d seen anything else. Why don’t you just go ask her to dance?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you can’t keep your eyes off of her—”
“I’m protecting her.”
“—And because you have already fallen half in love with her.”
“I have not,” Lawrence said, glaring balefully at Crispin.
Crispin was undaunted. “All right, all the way in love with her.”
“I am not falling in love with anyone. I am not going to fall in love with anyone.”
“Don’t let the memory of Constantia ruin this Lawrence.”
“Oh is that what is ruining it? I thought it was the fact that she might be a murderess. And I’ve already had the experience of falling in love with a murderess. Remember? Constantia? How she murdered her husband among others and tried to pin it on me? Once was enough for that kind of fun.”
Crispin waved the reminder away. “I am serious, Lawrence. You know Lady Arlington is no murderess. And I have not seen you this happy in a long time.”
“I am not happy.”
“Yes you are. You are having a wonderful time. You are just too pig headed to admit it.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Will it help?”
“Don’t you have someone else to torment?”
“Not right now. Besides, it’s the least I can do. You saved my life when we were boys and I was drowning.”
“I was the one who was drowning. You saved my life.”
“All the more reason for me to ensure you make the most of it.”
Lawrence glared into Crispin’s wide grin one final time, stalked across the dance floor and pulled Tuesday onto it.
The pungent smell of ale and bodies hit Tom as he pushed through the entrance of the Dancing Fawn. Several patrons were still scattered around but only one of them looked up from their tankards as he walked in. Behind the long plank bar, the young girl dozing against a cask of ale grunted and turned over.
Many of Lawrence’s men, discouraged by turning up continually empty-handed, had already slid off to bed, but Tom stuck with the search. As he reminded himself by periodically running his fingertips over the scab on his cheek from the attack on him in the alleyway two nights earlier, he had a better motivation. He was determined to be the one to bring Lord Pickering the killer’s address.
“Whatreyewantingson,” the one patron who had looked up when he entered, a slight man, called to him from across the room.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Placesclosed but ye can help yerself. If ye leave the money with Becky that is,” the man expanded, waving a limp wrist in the direction of the sleeping girl.
“I am not looking for a drink, thank you,” Tom said. He saw the man’s attention waver, so he moved to him quickly. “I am trying to find someone. This fellow.” He unrolled the now smudged copy of Tuesday’s drawing on the table, smoothing it with his hands. “Have you seen him?”
The man picked the picture up, held it close to his face and squinted at it.
He eyed Tom closely. “Whowouldyoubethen?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Im asking who you be. Who is it is wanting to know about this cove?” He tapped the paper with a dirty fingernail.
“I am working on a special operation against smuggling with—”
“So yer from the queen’s stable, eh? Official are ye?”
Tom nodded. “Do you know who that man is?”
The man picked his black teeth with his fingernail for a moment. “Can’t say for certain. Need to consult with my colleague. There’s a reward for knowing who he is, didyesay?”
“Not an official one,” Tom began, saw the man’s atte
“Lawrence Pickering ye say? Know his brother well. Not a bad cove. Ye just wait here a moment.”
The small man rose and Tom expected him to go somewhere and do something. Instead he cupped his hand around his mouth and bellowed “Kyle! Kyle get yer lazy self down here if ye want to be rich afore ye die!”
This was it! Finally this was it!
“If you don’t want to dance with me, you don’t have to,” Tuesday told Lawrence as he spun her around the floor.
“If I didn’t want to dance with you I would not have asked.”
“You look miserable.”
“I am trying to figure out why CeCe told me you were clumsy. You are a very good dancer.”
“That is kind of you, Lord Pickering but—”
“I would not say it if it weren’t true,” Lawrence told her abruptly.
“Oh.” There was silence until Tuesday said, “Are you having a good time?”
“You seem to be,” was Lawrence’s reply. “With all your admirers.”
Tuesday rolled her eyes. “They’re only interested in me because I came with you. But actually, I am enjoying myself.” She barely avoided adding “now,” and said instead, “This isn’t how I pictured a ball would be.”
“Really? What did you imagine? People being nice to one another? Delighting in each other’s company?”