Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

“What amount is it that you see?”

“A little over one pound,” the man said. “There was a withdrawal a few days ago. Would you like to see the entry?”

Jenny’s mind filled with white-hot brilliant light. It washed out all thought, all emotion. She heard the sound of rushing water, as if she were the center of a deluge. She swayed dizzily and grabbed the counter in front of her to keep her balance. Her mind was empty. Completely empty.

Not so coincidentally, so was her bank account.

She’d been staving off panic by telling herself that her money was inaccessible. Unavailable, but there. An ineradicable bulwark against starvation. Twelve years of savings, insulating her from the depredation of time. She’d felt so brave sloughing off the trappings of Madame Esmerelda without the prospect of future income. She’d forgotten the panic penury could induce.

“There is something rather strange about this final entry,” the cashier was saying.

One possible oddity: All her money was missing.

“Usually, the person that records the totals breaks the numbers down by coins. You know—£1-3-4 in pounds, shillings, pence. But whoever made this last entry recorded it as thirty shillings straight. I wonder why.”

That Judas. Mr. Sevin had emptied her account and left her a message in the total. Less than subtle—but then, he didn’t need to be particularly sophisticated about his communication when he was stealing four hundred pounds. Although who Mr. Sevin believed to be the betrayed and who the betrayer, Jenny couldn’t say.

The bank clerk eyed her with a quizzical expression.

“Would it be easier,” Jenny said, “if I just closed the account now?”

He nodded and began counting coins. Jenny shut her eyes and did the same. Her total funds available hadn’t increased much. She now had three pounds and change. Not enough to pay her quarterly rent. Not nearly enough to do something about this robbery. If she had more, she could raise a protest. Maybe bring the matter before a magistrate. But she’d be on the defensive if she did so. Her story would convince no rational man to award her the money. After all, the only proof she had of his perfidy was in the account sheets in front of her—made out to Madame Esmerelda, with the fraud signed in Jenny’s own hand.

There was no need to panic. She had possessions she could sell. She’d have enough for months. And after that—well, surely she’d think of something. She always did. Her future was not imperiled. It was just…restricted.

“Sign here,” the cashier said, pushing over a sheet of paper. Jenny signed in a daze.

The coins he handed her weighed nothing in her hand. They were no shield against the future, which had just become significantly more frightening.

SOMEHOW, NED HAD MANAGED not to slump as his servants washed and dressed him. He’d sat still as his valet applied soapy suds to his face and neck. And he’d looked straight ahead as the man plied the straight razor, shearing Ned of stubble, and rendering him fit company for a duke and his daughter.

It should have been a simple matter to wait in the parlor with his mother and all the stone statues. Her advice had as much effect on him as coins bouncing off a wall. She had talked to him in heartfelt terms about his duty, his future. He wanted to listen to her; she meant well. But none of her words made the least impression on the impenetrable numbness of his mind.

All Ned had to do was sit and wait, and Blakely would arrive and escort him to the imposing stone edifice where Ware lived. Blakely would arrange everything. Ned’s life. If Ware pleased, Ned’s death.

And yet Ned had not waited. Instead, he’d stood up, interrupting his mother midstream. She’d reached for him, but he’d walked right out the front door and down the steps, before she’d had time to understand what was happening. He’d not been able to bear the weight of her careful solicitousness.

He’d crossed the street in one straight line, not bothering to step out of the way of the pungent horse dung in the gutters. That smell—redolent of hay and stables—clung to him now.

It was seven o’clock, and he hadn’t told anyone where he was going. Not Blakely, who would be apologizing to Lady Kathleen at this moment. Not the butler, who had opened the door for Ned in silence. Not even his mother, who had stared after him in pained confusion as he’d taken his leave.

The only person who knew where Ned was at this moment was Ned, and even he didn’t know why he’d returned to this particular street corner after all these years.

From the outside, the dim lights of the gaming hell did not distinguish it from its neighbors. Both the brothel to its right and the opium den on the corner were composed of the same coal-streaked stone, their windows equally dingy. It had been two years since Ned had come to this neighborhood.

It felt like forever. That time two years ago—when he’d been in grave danger of being sent down from Cambridge, and in graver danger of failing his life altogether—seemed as misty and insubstantial as his consciousness felt now.

A different man had slunk to this quarter those twenty-five months before. And yet what separated the Ned of today from that boisterous lad?

Responsibility? Not a bit of it. Ned had entrusted two years of his life to a charlatan, a lying cheat of a woman his cousin had seen through in the blink of an eye. And yet what Ned had done to Lady Kathleen had exceeded even Madame Esmerelda’s flexible sense of honor.

Experience? The experience of an idiot.

“Carhart?”

A hand clapped on Ned’s back and he spun around, as much from surprise as a desire to distance himself from whoever touched him so familiarly.

The features he made out were only vaguely familiar in the gloom. Ned had to add twenty pounds to the image in his memory. The ruddy glow of ale lighting those fat cheeks, however, was nothing new.

“Ellison,” Ned said dully.

Ned’s erstwhile friend, already slightly bosky, grinned. The sour smell of gin rose from him. Ellison had always been a man best known for using strong spirits to subjugate his weak will.

“It’s been years,” said the man. He landed another smack on Ned’s shoulder.

Ned winced and twitched his shoulders out of slapping distance.

Ellison settled for a chest jab instead. “Thought you’d turned respectable.”

“No chance of that.” Ned’s voice sounded as sour to his ears as the smell of wine and the underlying stink of vomit in these unwashed gutters. “I spent some time pretending, but I’m not cut out for respectability.”

Any chance he had, he’d pissed away with this latest disappearance. Ned had a sudden image of Lady Kathleen and her bald-headed father. He wondered if she would be secretly pleased when Ned failed to appear. After all, her options were ruination or marriage to the likes of him. She seemed intelligent. After what she’d learned of him, she had to be hoping for ruination.

Ellison interrupted this grim little reverie by laughing. The sound was far louder than the occasion warranted. Ellison was the last man whose company Ned would have sought out at a time like this.

Perhaps that’s why, when the man clouted him on the back once again, Ned forced himself to smile.

“What say you and I go inside?” Ellison gestured at the hell. “You’re buying, eh? There’s good brandy.”

Ned had learned long ago that brandy was no salve for this condition that overtook him. Drunkenness acted only as a magnifier, and if he started drinking while in this listless state, his ennui grew to dangerous proportions.

But he could not bring himself to care.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IT TOOK GARETH AN HOUR to postpone—not avert—the Duke of Ware’s wrath at being summarily dismissed without so much as a scrap of foolscap in explanation from Ned. He spent another hour guiltily rousting White from his family dinner, and directing a stream of minions into London’s underbelly. All told, it was eleven in the evening before Gareth received word of his cousin.

Midnight had chimed when Gareth entered a heated room where cl

oying cigar smoke wafted, and the rattle of ivory markers rose. He had hoped the message was in error, but there, in the corner, sat Ned. Drunk and gambling in this godforsaken gaming hell, when he should have been negotiating with Ware over his future.

Gareth was too baffled to be angry.

He walked up to the table. Gareth had never needed an excuse to feel uncomfortably stiff around others. But now he felt ramrod straight. Ned’s companions lounged, their limbs contorted at odd, unnatural angles. Cravats were, at best, untied; one dark-haired, red-faced fellow had looped his in a disreputable bow around the neck of the large-bosomed woman who sat next to him. Sticky, cracked cups were stacked along the edge of the table.

“What’s the pool again?” The ruddy-faced fellow finished the deal, six piles of three cards each.

Ned stared at the spray of cards dealt on the table without interest. “Damned if I know. Does it matter?”

“Two thousand,” chimed in someone else, and Gareth winced.