A Talent for Trickery Read online

  “Yes, and now that is all he will ever be,” she snapped, rising from her seat. “He should not have gone into that building. It was stupid. It was stupid and reckless, and it was brave. For once in his selfish, sordid life, he did something good. He saved that woman. He died for her. But it was you and your men who received all the accolades and all the commendations. The heroic Lord Renderwell rescued Lady Strale, taking down the infamous Horatio Gage in the process. You went into that house a solid hour after my father dragged Lady Strale to freedom. But you became a hero and a viscount, your men were knighted, and my father went to the grave a pathetic, petty criminal and nothing more. He deserved better. He deserved—”

  “The hell he did,” Owen bit off, equal parts baffled and furious that this should be the source of contention between them. He’d understood an irrational anger born of grief. He’d hated it, but he’d understood. But this? It was ludicrous.

  Eight years. Eight years she had punished him for breaking a promise he’d never made. He had never intended to reveal his association with Will Walker, and Will had never expected it of him. They’d both understood the rules and rewards of the game. They had all understood. “Your father was a criminal, Charlotte, and well you know it. When I first met him, all he deserved was a cell in Newgate.”

  Possibly a trip to the three-legged mare. The man’s past had been more criminal than petty.

  “Yes, when you first met him,” Lottie argued. “He was a scoundrel, then. He wasn’t a scoundrel when he died. It wasn’t a scoundrel who saved Lady Strale.”

  Oh, yes. It had been. “Lady Strale would have been rescued that day regardless of your father’s actions.” There had been a plan in place. One that did not include Will charging in on his own.

  “Lady Strale was rescued regardless of yours,” she shot back.

  “Mine did not result in the creation of three orphans. His did. And for what? A chance to pocket the diamonds she’d been wearing. Or claim Lord Stale’s reward for himself.”

  She shook her head. “That’s a lie. He wouldn’t have—”

  “Of course he would have. God, Lottie, you knew him better than anyone. You know he was capable.”

  “Yes, he was capable. But he wouldn’t have done it,” she insisted. “Not after four years of working with you. It changed him. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a better man.”

  What a load of rubbish. “He was—”

  “He was your friend!”

  Owen opened his mouth, intent on calling her out on that absolute whale of a lie—the devil he’d been a friend—but he bit the words back before they could form.

  She believed it. He could see it in her eyes. There was hurt there. That was what he’d caught a glimpse of earlier but hadn’t been able to sort out from the anger and worry—pain.

  It astounded him, even more than the true cause of her animosity. Will Walker, a better man. It seemed an impossible bit of fantasy for a woman like Lottie to have about a man like her father, but there it was. She truly believed her father had changed, that he’d become a hero, a friend. And she honestly believed that his redemption had been stolen away, the friendship betrayed.

  Oh, hell.

  For the first time, Owen was forced to entertain the disturbing notion that Lottie had, in fact, been a mite fuzzy on the aforementioned rules. Clearly, he’d been mistaken in thinking she knew her father best. Because the truth was, given the chance, Will Walker would have offered Owen’s soul to the devil for halfpence. He had not become a better man.

  And they had never been friends.

  “Lottie…” He trailed off, at a loss for words.

  When he’d begun the conversation, he’d done so with the expectation of putting to rest any misunderstandings about her father’s death. He had not expected to encounter misconceptions about her father’s life nor any bizarre notions that the man had made a miraculous transformation from sinner to saint on his last day.

  The sudden change in perspective left him unsteady, as if the ground beneath him, relatively solid only minutes ago, had abruptly transformed into a high wire. And now he was afraid to move.

  He desperately wanted to spare Lottie the pain of the truth, almost as badly as he wanted to strip away the lie that hurt them both. For the life of him, he could not find a means that led to both ends. He couldn’t find his way off the wire.

  And so he just stood there like a fool without a word to say for himself. Until, finally, his silence spoke for him.

  “You’re not the least bit sorry for what you did, are you?” Lottie accused quietly. She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t be. I knew having this out would be a mistake. I knew…” She swallowed hard. “I’m going inside. I have work to do.”

  With a final shake of her head, she turned her back on him and walked away.

  Six

  It wasn’t difficult to hide a foul mood from Peter.

  People see what they expect to see, poppet.

  Lottie considered this perfectly trite piece of wisdom as she smiled her way through the preparations for the trip to the ruins. Even at the age of nine, she had known her father’s statement to be inaccurate.

  People might see what they expected to see, but they looked for what they wanted to see. If a gentleman expected that a lady might be put out with him, then he would notice her averted gaze, her stiff posture, and her pinched mouth. But if he wanted forgiveness, then he searched for a softening of the eyes or a curve of the lips.

  If one wished to dupe a person, one had to take into consideration that closer look. One had to remember both the expectation and the desire.

  Fortunately for her, Peter’s assumptions and wishes were in perfect accord. He expected her to be happy and he hoped she was happy. Therefore, when she smiled broadly and laughed freely as they packed a picnic lunch in the kitchen, he believed she was happy.

  It was a joyless role to perform.

  She disliked playing Peter for a fool. Keeping secrets from him was bad enough, but active manipulation carried with it a lack of respect that served only to deepen the guilt.

  And it was all his fault, she thought grimly as Owen’s dark form came into view through the windows.

  She stuffed a ham sandwich none too gently into a basket and indulged in a spot of covert glowering even as she mentally retracted the accusation. It had been, and continued to be, her decision to lie to Peter and no one else’s. There was plenty for which to blame Owen—no sense in diluting righteous anger with false recriminations.

  Trouble was, she was more hurt than angry.

  She watched Owen cross the back lawn in long strides, head bent in thought. She had expected him to defend himself differently. She had been prepared to listen to some long-winded, pompous justification for his actions. He was a gentleman, a nobleman, a man of honor and worth entitled to the adoration of the masses. He had only taken his due. She had thought his ambition and selfishness would be so evident that they would leave no room for anything but outrage and disgust.

  But he hadn’t defended himself at all. Instead of making a case for himself, he had made a case against her father. And by extension, against her.

  Once a thief, always a thief.

  Owen hadn’t said those exact words, but the sentiment was clear, and it had cut to the quick. He had given no thought to the possibility of redemption for her father, no credit to the notion a person might change for the better. Will Walker had been a black-hearted scoundrel and, really, what else was there to say?

  She shoved more sandwiches into the basket while Peter chattered on about the upcoming adventure.

  Owen was wrong. People changed. People changed all the time.

  She had changed.

  Maybe she deserved a cell in Newgate. Maybe she deserved an unmarked grave next to her father’s for the terrible things she had once done. But didn’t she also deserve reco
gnition for the good she had accomplished since those dark times? Didn’t she deserve a chance at redemption? She had to believe the answer to both questions was yes.

  Risking another glance at Owen, she saw him disappear around the corner of the house. No, he hadn’t done what she’d expected, but he’d made it perfectly clear he wasn’t going to offer what she had once hoped.

  Across the table, Peter grabbed an apple and bit in. “Aye hood heck—”

  “Swallow, then speak.”

  He chewed and swallowed dutifully. “I should check on the carriage and horses.”

  “I believe Sir Gabriel and Sir Samuel are seeing to them.”

  “They’re guests. They shouldn’t be.” He took another, smaller bite and spoke around the food. “Did you know they’re famous? Renderwell, particularly.”

  She froze with her hand in the basket. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s the Gentleman Thief Taker. Surely you’ve heard of him. Everyone has heard of him.”

  “How did you hear of him?” And when, and who had told? She was certain Peter hadn’t the faintest idea who Owen was yesterday.

  “I told you; he’s famous. He rescued a kidnapped duchess.” He lifted both brows and widened his eyes as if to say, Can you imagine? “A duchess. She went missing from her own ball whilst wearing the family jewels. Renderwell found those too, but they say she was so frightened by the experience, she never wore them again.”

  “You’re not old enough to have heard of any of this. How did you come to know who Renderwell is?”

  Peter wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve as he studied her with a bland expression. “I’m not sure how many different ways one can impart the notion of famous. Renowned? Celebrated? Legendary?” He bobbed his head thoughtfully. “Legendary. I like that.”

  Legendary seemed a bit much. “How famous could he be if I didn’t realize he was famous, and you didn’t know who he was yesterday?”

  “I knew who he was yesterday,” he replied, a little defensively. “Well, I figured it out. Mr. Derby mostly called him the Gentleman Thief Taker. That’s what the papers dubbed him. I had forgotten he was Renderwell.”

  “Mr. Derby told you?” The sliver of unease that had been working under her skin dissolved under the weight of a new, more prickly sensation. Surely Owen wasn’t so famous that his actions eight years ago could still be of interest to a country schoolmaster who took pride in never having stepped a single foot in the godless city of London.

  “That must have been where I heard it first,” Peter decided. “We were discussing… I don’t remember.” He waved his apple about. “The need for reform or some such. Mr. Derby is of the opinion that private investigators should be paid by the Crown, instead of taking on private commissions. He says some people suspect Renderwell left the Met so he could work as an agent for the Crown in secret, but those are only rumors. He says most of what was printed in the papers and broadsides were rumors.”

  “Broadsides?” She heard the stunned disbelief in her voice and prayed Peter would interpret it as eager fascination.

  Had there been broadsides? She couldn’t remember seeing any at the time. Then again, she was in the habit of ignoring the single sheets of paper sold on street corners, even crossing to the far side of the road to avoid the peddlers. Too often they heralded an upcoming execution. The condemned’s name was written boldly across the page, directly under a macabre sketch of a lifeless form dangling from a rope. Though it was unlikely her father’s crimes would have sent him to the gallows, it had nonetheless been much too easy to envision her father’s face, her father’s form hanging from the rope. Sometimes she even saw herself.

  She knew that Lady Strale’s rescue had received some attention. How could it not? There had been the bit in the Times detailing Renderwell’s heroic actions, and she had seen the announcement of his elevation to viscount and departure from the police along with the soon to be knighted Sergeants Brass and Arkwright.

  After that, she’d stopped reading the Times, stopped looking for any sign or news of Owen and his men. There had been so much to do. There had been a home to purchase, a family to move, staff to find, a father to grieve. For a time, she had stopped paying attention to the world outside her small family and their precarious future.

  Peter bobbed his head. “He showed us some. Bit faded. There haven’t been new ones made in years. A man can’t go rescuing duchesses every day, I suppose. But Mr. Derby says there used to be new ones every day, for weeks, even months.”

  She wanted to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. “Mr. Derby has a lot to say.”

  “About everything,” Peter confirmed, with feeling. “But not so much as Michael Ernswot. He says his sister knows Renderwell’s sister. One of the middle ones. Victoria, I think. Bragged on and on about it.”

  “His sisters?” Peter knew the name of Owen’s sister? She knew the names of only two (neither of them Victoria), and those had been dragged out of him years ago. He rarely spoke of his family. “Are they famous as well?”

  Peter shrugged and added utensils to the picnic basket one-handed. “There were sketches of them in some of the broadsides. Renderwell was a sensation. Ergo, the Renderwells were a sensation.”

  “I see.” The prickly feeling grew into a disorienting blend of shock, trepidation, and another feeling she was reluctant to study too closely, but a small, distant part of her admitted might be hope.

  Papers, broadsides, sketches. A sensation. Not just talk, as she had assumed, not merely the latest on dit, but a sensation. Owen hadn’t mentioned a sensation. Why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  “Wait until he finds out we know him,” Peter chimed.

  “What?” She struggled to focus on the boy before her.

  Peter rolled his eyes, laboriously chewing a piece of food he evidently assumed had muffled his words. “I said, wait until Michael finds out we know the man himself.” He made a thoughtful face at the apple. “How do we know him? What sort of business did father have with the police?”

  “Investments,” she said quickly. “Father advised Renderwell on investments.”

  “Oh, right. Riiiight.” He drew the word out, relishing how very amazing it all was. “Our father advised the Gentleman Thief Taker. That is bloody brilliant. Beg pardon.”

  “It was a long time ago, Peter,” she said and busied her hands in the picnic basket to hide the way they shook.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Peter tossed away the remainder of his apple, wiped his fingers down the front of his waistcoat, then grinned at her impishly as he headed out the kitchen door. “Still bloody brilliant.”

  “Language,” she called out after him, but only because he would find it odd if she didn’t. He could have left a mile-wide string of curses in his wake and right now she would not have cared.

  Grateful for the momentary solitude, Lottie sank onto a nearby stool and tried to wrestle her disordered thoughts into submission. Her carefully guarded world was shifting, pieces rearranging and falling into a pattern she didn’t recognize.

  Was Peter right? Had there really been a sensation?

  She searched her memory of the weeks leading up to Lady Strale’s rescue for signs of a public drama to come, for anything she might have missed. Nothing of significance came to mind.

  Owen and her father had spent a good portion of their time out on the streets, sometimes together, often separately.

  Her own involvement had been limited, as her skills did not run to pounding on doors and browbeating informants. As a result, she’d heard of Lady Strale’s predicament in bits and pieces, and she could not recall reading of it anywhere.

  It had been a subdued affair overall, likely at the family’s request. A missing wife was much too sordid a tale for a peer of the realm to want bandied about. Why then had her rescue turned into something more?

  Into something she ha
d more sense than to wish on the Walker family?

  She had wanted a bit of praise for her father, a forgiving word spoken here and there when he was remembered, but fame of the magnitude Peter described was something else altogether. It was dangerous.

  Owen would have known that.

  “I want a word with you.”

  Lottie’s heart lurched at the sound of Owen’s voice. He was standing in the open doorway, his hands caught behind his rigid back, and his face set in implacable lines. Somehow, he succeeded in looking both regal and mulish.

  Slowly and carefully, she slid off the stool. “I think—”

  “I know we had words. When the others are gone, we’ll have more. We are not finished.”

  An hour ago, she had been certain they were finished and equally sure it was for the best. A minute ago, she had been afraid of it.

  “No, we are not,” she agreed and watched as her quick agreement caused surprise and suspicion to flash across his face.

  “Right. In the parlor,” he ordered in a tone that brooked no argument. “As soon as they leave.”

  She was stricken with the sudden urge to salute or drop into a dramatic curtsy or say something utterly ridiculous like, Aye, Captain, and she wondered if she’d always been prone to random acts of absurdity when nervous or if Owen’s presence was a prerequisite for this new affliction.

  She shoved the impulse aside. “As soon as we are alone.”

  * * *

  In under an hour, the travelers set off with most of Willowbend’s staff in tow. If Peter thought it odd that one picnic should require two footmen and both maids, he didn’t mention it. Lottie assumed he was either too excited to think of it or had been too distracted by the discovery of a spot on his forehead. She caught him poking at it while squinting at his reflection in the brilliantly polished base of an antique candelabra.