This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)

THE END OF THE DAY ARRIVED, but Lord Blakely and his grandson still had not returned. This meant that William had still not been sacked.

Winter struck directly through William’s coat as he left his place of employment. Yes, he’d had a reprieve—albeit a temporary one. He knew the marquess’s tactics. Once he got a man in his sights, he did not let up. Today William survived. Tomorrow… It was going to be another damned cold night, one in a string of damned cold nights stretching from this moment until death.

“Mr. White.”

William turned. There, in virulent yellow waistcoat, burgeoning over an ample belly, his locks pomaded to glossy slickness, stood Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. The corner of William’s lip turned up in an involuntary snarl.

“Do you have another taunt to deliver on your late employer’s behalf?” William pulled his coat around him and started walking away, brushing past the unctuous fellow. “As it is, I must be on my way.”

The solicitor’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Nonsense, Mr. White. I’ve come to a realization. A profitable realization. I wanted to…to share it with you.”

William stared at the chubby fingers on his cuff, and then carefully picked them off his sleeve, one by one. The digits felt greasy even through his gloves.

“Adam Sherrod,” the man said, “left the bulk of his fortune in his final testament to the serious little stick of a woman who served as his wife. Given the informal agreement he made with your father, you might contest the disposition of his estate. I had, in point of fact, hoped that you would. You accepted your fate with surprising grace the other day.”

“Is there any chance of overturning the testament? I assume the document was valid and witnessed. And it was only an informal agreement between the two men, after all. I’ve heard that excuse often enough.”

“Hmm.” The man looked away and rubbed his lips. “To speak with perfect plainness, you could claim he was not in his right mind. You see, before he married, he actually had intended to keep his word. He’d left you half his fortune, five thousand pounds. It would be easy to argue that he did not see sense. After all, he did marry her. Overturn his latest version of the will, and you stand to win a great deal.”

In William’s experience, any time someone claimed to speak perfectly plainly, his words were rarely plain and never perfect. First, Adam Sherrod had been merely despicable, and not mad. Even setting aside this tiny detail of reality, the solicitor’s suggestion felt as oily as his hair. It took William a moment to pinpoint why he was uneasy.

“You’re his solicitor,” he accused. “You’re the trustee of the estate, are you not? This advice of yours cannot be in the estate’s interest. Why are you giving it?”

The man licked his lips. “Mr. White. Must you ask? I don’t like to see an upstanding young man deprived of what ought rightfully to be his. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience.”

The solicitor bounced on his toes and lifted his chin, unburdened by anything so heavy as a sense of right and wrong. William kept silent, staring at the man. The man rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. He shifted from foot to foot.

That dance of guilt was all too familiar to William. He’d felt that itch. The knowledge that he’d made an irretrievable error had nestled deep in his stomach all day. He’d known what he’d done to Lavinia had been wrong as he was doing it. He’d done it anyway.

“At what point in your legal apprenticeship did you acquire a conscience, then? And when did you first betray it?”

“Well. It’s not so much a betrayal as…as a renegotiation, if you will. If you must know the truth, if you could tie up the estate in Chancery, the fees to the trustee from administration of her estate would be substantial. It’s a profitable plan for us both. I’ll protest, naturally, for form’s sake. And you—you’ll be able to strike an open blow at the man who had you put out on the streets when you were fourteen. You could have him declared mad, and destroy his reputation.”

Greasy though the man was, he knew how to tempt William. There would be a delightful symmetry in ruining Mr. Sherrod’s legacy just as William’s father’s had been ruined.

“And then what?” William demanded.

“Well, after a short, insignificant delay in the courts of Chancery—really nothing to speak of—you’ll get his five thousand pounds.”

“A short, insignificant delay,” William said drily. “Naturally. Chancery being known for its alacrity. And you must mean, five thousand pounds minus the tiny fees for estate administration that would accrue over that infinitesimal delay.”

The solicitor bowed. “Precisely so.”

It would hardly be so smooth. The process might take years. Still, the money called out to him. Five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds in the safe four-percent funds translated into a good two hundred a year.

As if sensing William’s temptation, the solicitor continued. “Think on the money. You could buy your own home. You would not need to labor like a common man. You could buy yourself a new coat.”

The solicitor reached out and flicked William’s sleeve, where the fabric had become shiny with age. William recoiled.

“Mr. White, you would need never feel cold again.”

The man misunderstood the nature of temptation. It wasn’t himself he clothed in new finery. Instead, his breath caught, thinking what he could give Lavinia. She could have any dress she wanted. Every last penny she deserved. He could fashion himself into a gentleman. He could become a man she would respect, instead of one she gifted with her virginity out of pity.

He need never feel cold again.

But then, there was a catch. There was always a catch, and this one stuck in his skin like some barbed thing. He’d have to enter into a collusion with this unnatural creature. He would have to lie to the court. He’d have to cheat Adam Sherrod’s widow—his innocent widow—and dispossess her of funds that she deserved.

What did a little thing like his honor signify? He’d toss his own grandmother to hellhounds if it meant he could have Lavinia.

He’d won a reprieve from the marquess. Now he’d gotten this offer. A little oil, a little grease. What was a little extra dishonor, atop the mountain he’d already constructed for himself?

The solicitor jogged William’s shoulder. “Don’t take too long. It took me weeks to track you down. The time for filing an appeal is disappearing. Stop by my office tomorrow morning to go over the details.”

William opened his mouth to say he’d do it. The words filled his mouth, bitter as rancid lard, but they would not come out. I’ll do it, he thought. I’ll do it.

He conjured up the thought of Lavinia—but he could not imagine how she would forgive him, promise of money or no. And with the money…if he agreed to this scheme, he’d not be able to wash the stench of this bug of a solicitor from his skin. How could he beg for her absolution if he could not even face himself?

How could he have her at all, if he did not accept this desperate possibility?

What he finally said was, “Tomorrow. I’ll decide tomorrow.”

THE LIBRARY BUSTLED WITH CUSTOMERS that Monday evening—six of them, to be precise—and they kept Lavinia very busy indeed, as none were willing to browse on his own. She was reaching up, up for the newest set of Byron’s poetry when she heard the shop door open behind her.

A blast of cold air greeted this newest arrival. Yet it was not the temperature that had Lavinia’s skin breaking out in gooseflesh. Without looking, she knew it was him. She froze, hand above her head. Her heart raced. But she could not react, not in this room, not with all these people here. And so she retrieved the leather-bound volume and handed it to Mr. Adrian Bellows before she allowed herself to turn.

Mr. William Q. White was as tall and taciturn as ever. This time, though, he caught her glance and ducked his head, coloring.

Oh, how the tables had turned. Two days ago she’d been the one to blush and turn away. Two days ago she had wondered, in her own giddy and foolish way, what

he thought of her.

But then yesterday they’d come together, skin against skin. He’d had her; she’d had him.

Today the question on her mind was: What did she think of him?

It was not a query with an easy answer. He dawdled until the others trickled out, one by one. Even then he did not approach her. Instead, he studied a shelf of Greco-Roman histories so intently, she wondered if their spines contained the secrets of the universe. When she walked toward him, he turned his back to her. He bent, ever so slightly, as if he carried a great weight in his jacket.

Lavinia supposed he did.

“I am sorry,” he said, still faced away from her. “I ought not to have come. If my presence distresses you, say so and I shall leave at once.”

“I am not easily distressed.” She kept her voice calm and even.

He turned toward her and looked in her face, as if to ascertain for himself whether she was telling the truth. “Are you well?” His voice was low, lilting in that accent that he had. “I could not sleep, thinking of what I had done to you.”

She had not slept, either, reliving what he had done, touching herself where he had touched. But the expression on his face suggested that his evening had not been spent nearly so pleasurably.

“I am very well,” she said. And then, because he looked away, his eyes tightening in obvious distress, she added, “Thank you for asking.”

Politeness didn’t seem enough after what had passed between them, but she was unsure of the etiquette for this occasion.

“Miss Spencer, I know I can never hope for forgiveness. I dishonored you—”

“Strange,” Lavinia interjected, “that I do not feel dishonored.”

He frowned as if puzzled, and then started again. “I ruined you—”

“Ruined me for what? I am still capable of working in this shop, as you see. I do not believe I shall turn toward prostitution as a result of one afternoon’s pleasure. And as for marriage—William, do you truly think that any man worth having would put me aside for one indiscretion?”