The Perils of Pleasure (10 page)

“It doesn’t matter.” Some peculiar indefi nable pres
sure was building up in her chest.

“But you do
care
,” he persisted.

Madeleine sat back on her heels, hands up to ward off questions. “
Mr.
Eversea . . . ”

Of course she cared. She just didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want Colin Eversea to
matter
. And she didn’t want him to
think
she thought he mat
tered, because a man like Colin Eversea would make use of that. She wanted him to remain an assignment; she wanted him to be . . . finite. She was fi nished with memories of England.

But in front of her now was a man who desperately needed someone to hear him.

She would curse the moment of weakness later, but out the words came; she felt them almost physically, as though they were pulled from her like beads on a string:

“Tell me what happened.”

He paused. She knew it was an honorable pause. He was giving her a chance to retract her request.

She tied off the final bandage and sat back on her heels, closed the tin, and waited.

“All right,” he began quietly. “I’ll you where it really began, Mrs. Greenway. With Louisa. Louisa Porter . . . Louisa is the woman I intend to marry, as you’ll recall. I’ve known this ever since I can remember, and I knew when I was nine years old that Louisa and I were meant for each other. And a few weeks ago, Louisa told me her father was unlikely to approve of our match, as

I . . . as you so astutely noticed, Mrs. Greenway, am not the Eversea son with money. I do have rather a gift for spending it, however.”

“So I’ve heard,” Madeleine said.

The corner of Colin Eversea’s mouth twitched a little at that. “Well . . . Louisa and I . . . we quarreled. Odd, really, because we never quarrel. And it was silly, really. I suppose it was my fault. I was angry; my pride was hurt. I’ve never formally proposed to her, you see, but I suppose I never really thought she would consider marrying anyone besides me. But it was urgent that she should marry soon. It seemed very necessary to make my point at the time, however,” he said ironically, “and I departed Pennyroyal Green immediately for London, riding at breakneck speed.”

“I’ve read that’s your only speed.”

“Ah, so you have read a good deal about me, Mrs. Greenway?”

“It was diverting. Better than horrid novels.”

“Diverting!” he looked pleased with her description. “Ah,
very
good word for what I am. Anyhow, I was drinking—a good deal—right in this inn. I go here, you see. The lads see it as a lark. Horace Peele—” he glanced down at her for confi rmation.

“Horace Peele? The man with the three-legged dog?”

“Yes!” Colin pounced on this almost indignantly. This was proof that
everyone
knew Horace. “Horace was present. He’d lit a pipe, I recall. A foul thing, the tobacco in it really a horrific blend. I bought him a round. I like Horace. He laughs all the time. Makes one feel tremendously witty. We gave the dog—his name is Snap—a sip right off the top of the tankard, because that’s how deep in our cups we were by that time. And . . . Roland Tarbell was of course present.”

“Of course,” Madeleine echoed dryly. Roland Tar-bell would have had to be present to be murdered.

“Roland Tarbell is related to the Redmond family of Pennyroyal Green on Mrs. Redmond’s side of the family. And far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, but a thoroughly unpleasant individual, even for
that
esteemed family. My family has a certain amount of . . . shall we say, history . . . with the Redmond family. It all began with stealing a cow, or so they say.”

“I heard it was a pig.”

This startled a short laugh from him. “It was
some
thing
with hooves, no doubt. But it’s ancient, and oh . . . it runs deep, the enmity. And Roland . . . he said something . . . disparaging . . . about my sister Olivia.”

Colin said this with a certain cold detachment. Inter
esting, she thought. The slight to his sister still rankled, despite the man’s death.

“And I was drunk,” Colin admitted flatly. “I would have called him out, stupid as that would have been. But he . . . ” Colin lifted his head up, his eyes distant, and touched his hand absently to his jaw. “He hit me.” His voice was half wondering. “A hard one. And I had my fi st right up to hit him back, and I could have knocked him flat—but God help me, I saw that knife, just in time— firelight caught it. He was dead mad, was Roland.”

His voice was quiet now, reflective. “He came at me, Roland Tarbell did. I stepped aside, he slipped in a puddle of ale, and there’s really no more to the story than that. And as I said, far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Greenway, but the damned fool fell on his own knife trying to kill
me
.”

There was a silence. He looked down at Madeleine, but she was absorbing the story, seeing it in her mind. She could say nothing.

“I rolled him over, and sadly, he was quite dead. And he died mercifully quickly, I think. And anyone knows you’re not to take a knife out of a deep wound if you want that person to have a chance at living. So I was sober enough not to pull it out. But I did put my hand on it, and that’s of course what the Charlies saw when they saw me: my hand on the knife protruding from Roland Tarbell’s chest. But I swear to God, Mrs. Greenway. . . ” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was weary and grim, the words threadbare from repetition, were shot through with quiet vehe
mence. “I didn’t put the knife there.”

The heaviness of his words sank into Madeleine.

She’d known Colin Eversea as a person for a day; she’d heard his voice and his laughter, seen emotion of all sorts move across his face; she’d seen how he responded to his circumstances, how carefully he dealt with people . . . and God help her, she could feel that night as though it was happening now, feel the horror, the unreality of it. She drew in a shuddering breath.

His explanation was facile, but entirely plausible. And just as she’d feared, hearing the story in his voice was unutterably different from reading about it in the newspapers and broadsheets.

When she didn’t seem inclined to speak, Colin Ever-sea continued.

“Horace Peel and the dog saw the whole thing. Horace
tried
to tell the Charlies that very night—that I’d nothing to do with it, that it had been an accident, that I’d never do such a thing, that Roland Tarbell had done himself in. Horace had seen the whole thing. But Horace was gone by the time the trial began, and he hasn’t been seen since that night, unless you count the drunk who claims he saw Horace taken away the night after the murder in a fiery, winged chariot. Which I’m sure you’ve heard all about. And all the other witnesses could say was that they saw me next to the body with my hand on the knife, and that there had been a fi ght, and the rest you’re rather familiar with.”

Wryness had returned to his voice.

They both jumped when the door rattled again.

Realizing with some slight dismay that she’d been kneeling in front of Colin Eversea for several minutes, Madeleine stood so abruptly her head swam a little. She made for the door and slid the broom from its hooks. It opened slightly, with a creak.

A hissing whisper came through it. “Remember, I want ye out afore dawn.”

This reminder was followed by a bundle pushed through the space in the door. It dropped to the fl oor with a soft plop: the blankets. A few other smaller bun
dles were pushed in after it.

“Godspeed,” Croker whispered more cheerily, and the door clicked shut.

That was that.

Madeleine slid the broom back through the hooks to bar the door and then gathered up the bundles, ex
amining the horn of powder, the paper cone of paper-wrapped pistol balls—correct bore, too, as Croker owned a similar pocket pistol—the requested matches and fl int, paper-wrapped meat pies, and three-quarters of a wheel of cheese. He’d added a skin of water. This amounted to extravagant hospitality from Croker.

Silently, Madeleine immediately broke the meat pie roughly in half, making sure the larger half went to Colin, who didn’t protest, she noted with amusement. They both fell upon the food and ate in silence. She seemed to have less appetite than she might have before hearing his story.

She was brushing crumbs away from the table into her cupped hand when Colin Eversea abruptly stood. She jerked her head up to see him lifting down sacks of flour and arranging them over the floor, patting them into a shape to form a mattress of sorts. And perhaps because she was too weary to keep her thoughts from straying from their usual orderly channels, she found herself lulled—mesmerized, if she was being truthful— by the way his shoulders moved beneath his shirt, and by the eloquence of the broad spread of his back nar
rowing to his waist, and how very right those long legs seemed in relation to the rest of him.

And then she realized what he was doing: He was making a bed.

Colin Eversea’s long limbs would droop over the edges of the flour sack arrangement, but her entire body would fi t nicely on it. It sang a silent little siren song to her weary limbs.

Still, she wasn’t prepared to sleep unguarded and alone in a room with this man.

Which meant she was fully prepared not to sleep at all.

Colin turned to her in satisfaction. “And here we have a bed. You may avail yourself of it, and I’ll stay awake to keep watch.”

Another of those casually arrogant announcements that burrowed burrlike under her skin.

And then he began to casually reach for her pistol.

Madeleine moved it into the center of the table, out of his reach, and covered it with her hand.

“
I’ll
keep watch,” she countered evenly.

Colin Eversea went very still again. Then he drew himself up to his full height and fixed those fi erce, bril
liant eyes on her.

And thus another of their increasingly too-familiar stalemates ensued.

Clearly, neither of them trusted one another, despite revelations and Saint-John’s-wort. And after a moment the corner of Colin’s mouth dented wryly, acknowledg
ing this. But there was no humor in his eyes.

The bloody man didn’t blink. Madeleine had thought she could stare anyone down.
Three older brothers
, he’d said. He’d clearly had a little practice with this sort of thing, too.

So she studied Colin Eversea the way she would any assignment, looking for useful details. His posture was as fine and erect as any soldier’s, but she thought she saw—ah yes, she
did
see—the very slightest of sways to his stance. There were semicircles of bruised-looking skin beneath his eyes and parentheses of fatigue bracket
ing his mouth. His face had a stretched, blanched look; his eyes were all the more vivid for their pink rims. He probably hadn’t slept a night through since being locked in Newgate some weeks earlier, and he was contending with a certain amount of pain, to boot.

In short, this man was exhausted, and until now had likely been propelled by some sort of auxiliary strength born of fear or anger or anxiety.

Madeleine knew how to make use of this.

“Lie down.” She purposely made the two words husky and inviting.

Colin’s eyes widened speculatively; his pupils fl ared. She could see the swift and vivid passage of scenarios through his mind flickering over his face, and she dug her nails into her palms lest she flush from imagining what
he
might be imagining.

Alas, the expression that finally settled in to stay was amusement. He was too clever, and he was having none of it. “Why should you want me to lie down, Mrs. Greenway?”

And this was the
disadvantage
of being saddled with a clever accused murderer. For an instant she was almost insulted. There hadn’t been a whiff of fl irtation in the question. It was all suspicion.

“I should like to know whether the sacks are com
fortable enough to sleep upon for an entire night.” She’d tried for a note of innocence. It didn’t come naturally.

He pondered this very briefly. “Funny, but you don’t strike me as a princess.”

“You wound me, Mr. Eversea.” She struck a mock
ing hand right over her heart, right between her breasts. His eyes followed her hand and he seemed to have some difficulty removing his gaze once it got there. Ah, that was better—a trifle more flattering. “It’s simply that I wondered if perhaps you preferred to sleep in the chair because the sacks are vermin-ridden, and you wished them upon
me
, instead. As you do strike me as some
thing of a prince.”

This wasn’t true. And he narrowed his eyes suspi-ciously—he wasn’t convinced, and she couldn’t blame him, really—but he sighed gustily and indulged her by sitting down hard on the edge of the flour sack bed and flinging his hands out in illustration.
See?

All she had to do now was wait.