Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)

He smiled, deep lines incising themselves into his lean cheeks. “I have no idea.”

She blew out a breath, not a little frustrated. “How do you expect me to find this person for you, then?”

“I don’t,” he replied. “I merely expect you to help me search. I’d think that there would be several sources of gossip in St. Giles. Lead me to them and I will do the rest.”

“Very well.” She already had an idea of who might be a good source of “gossip.” Temperance stood and held out her hand. “I accept your bargain, Lord Caire.”

For an awful moment, he merely stared at her out-thrust hand. Perhaps he found the gesture too masculine or simply silly. But then he stood as well, and in the small space, she had to tilt her head to look him in the face. She was suddenly aware of how much bigger he was than she.

He took her hand, a strangely frozen expression on his face, shook it quickly, and let go as if her palm had burned him.

She was still puzzling over the odd little moment when he placed his hat on his head, swirled his cape about his shoulders, and nodded. “I shall come for you tomorrow evening in the alley outside your kitchen door at nine o’clock. Until then, I bid you good night, Mrs. Dews.”

And he was gone.

Temperance blinked and then hurried out to the kitchen to bar the back door. Soot got up from the hearth as she entered.

“That door was locked. I know it,” she muttered to the cat. “How did he get in?”

But the cat merely yawned and stretched lazily.

Temperance sighed and went back to her sitting room for her tea things. As she entered the room, she glanced at the chair in which Lord Caire had lounged. There, in the middle of the seat, was a small purse. Temperance snatched it up and opened it. Gold coins spilled into her palm, more than enough to pay Mr. Wedge his rent.

Lord Caire had paid in advance, it seemed.

BASHAM’S COFFEEHOUSE WAS boisterously loud by the time Lazarus entered the doors late the next afternoon. He wound his way past a table of elderly gentlemen in full-bottomed wigs arguing heatedly over a newspaper and made his way to a solitary gentleman in a gray wig in the corner. The man sat peering through half-moon spectacles at a pamphlet.

“You’ll ruin your eyes trying to read that dreck, St. John,” Lazarus said as he took a chair across from his old friend.

“Caire,” Godric St. John murmured. He tapped the pamphlet. “This writer’s thesis isn’t entirely unimaginable.”

“Only partially? I am relieved.” Lazarus snapped his fingers at one of the youths flying back and forth with loaded trays of coffee. “One here.”

He turned back to find St. John gazing at him over his spectacles. With his somber tie wig, spectacles, and plain dress, others sometimes mistook St. John for a grandfather. In fact, he and St. John were of the same age—four and thirty. On closer examination, one noticed St. John’s clear gray eyes, his strong jaw, and his dark brows. Only the truly perceptive saw the ever-present sorrow that wrapped St. John like a death shroud.

“I’ve got a translation for you to look at,” Lazarus said. He withdrew a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket and handed it to the other man.

St. John peered at the papers. “Catullus? This will set Burgess’s back up.”

Lazarus snorted. “Burgess thinks he’s the foremost authority on Catullus. The man has as much knowledge of Roman poetry as the average snot-nosed schoolboy.”

“Well, naturally.” St. John lifted an eyebrow behind his spectacles, looking faintly amused. “But you’ll start a nasty brawl with this.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Lazarus said. “Can you glance at it and give me your opinion?”

“Certainly.”

There was a shout at the next table, and a tankard of coffee was flung to the floor.

Lazarus looked up. “Are they discussing politics or religion?”

“Politics.” St. John glanced at the arguing gentlemen dispassionately. “The newspapers are saying that Wakefield is calling for yet another gin bill.”

“You’d think by now he would have learned that too many of his fellow peers’ fortunes depend upon the sale of gin.”

St. John shrugged. “Wakefield’s argument is sound. When so many of the poor become enfeebled by gin, it hurts London’s industry.”

“Yes, and no doubt the fat country baron faced with either selling his excess grain to a gin distiller or letting it rot will put London’s health before money in his pocket. Wakefield’s a fool.”

“He’s an idealist.”

“And, I repeat, a fool,” Lazarus drawled. “His ideals do nothing but make him enemies. He’d do better pounding his head against a stone wall than trying to get Parliament to pass an effective gin bill.”

“You would have us simply sit back and let London go to rot?” St. John inquired.

Lazarus waved a hand. “You ask as if there is another option. I submit there is not. Wakefield and his ilk would like to believe that they can change the course we sail, but they are deluded. Mark me well: pigs will sprout feathered wings and fly about Westminster before gin is taken away from the London rabble.”

“The depth of your cynicism is breathtaking as always.”

A boy slid a tankard of coffee in front of Lazarus.

“Thank you, you young imp.”

Lazarus tossed a penny, and the coffee boy handily caught it before scampering back to the stall where the coffee was brewed. Lazarus took a sip of the hot liquid, and when he lowered his tankard, caught St. John examining him like an insect under a magnifying glass.

“You stare at me as if I had pox sores on my face,” Lazarus said.

“Someday you no doubt will,” St. John replied. “You’ve bedded enough whores.”

“I have needs—”

“You have indulgences,” St. John interrupted quietly, “and you make no effort to rein them in.”

“And why should I?” Lazarus asked. “Does the wolf mourn his joy at running down his prey? The hawk the desire to soar and then dive to catch the hare in his talons? It is in their nature, just as my… needs… are in mine.”

“The wolf and the hawk have no conscience, no soul, as you very well know.”

“The women I use are paid quite well for their time. My needs hurt no one.”

“Don’t they?” St. John asked softly. “I wonder if they hurt you, Caire.”

Lazarus curled his upper lip. “This is an old argument and one that neither one of us has yet to win.”

“If I give up the argument, I give up you as well.”

Lazarus rapped his fingers against the worn tabletop, saying nothing. Damned if he’d submit to St. John’s worries. His needs were unusual—strange, even—but certainly not morbid.

Of course, St. John had no problem with probing where he wasn’t wanted.

The other man shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “You were out last night.”

“Gracious me! Have you become a fortune-teller? Or were you ’round my town house last night and found me absent?”

“Neither.” St. John calmly pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead. “You wear the same look as last time I saw you, a kind of—”

“Weariness?”

“I was about to say desperation.”

Lazarus took a sip of the hot coffee, damnably aware that he was buying time, but in the end, all he could reply was, “I didn’t know you had such a flair for the dramatic. Desperation seems to overstate the case by miles.”

“I don’t think so.” St. John peered absently into his own tankard of coffee. “You’ve worn that look since Marie’s death. Do you deny that you were searching for her killer last night yet again?”

“No.” Lazarus sat back in his chair, regarding his old friend from beneath half-lowered eyelids. “What of it?”

“You’re obsessed, man.” St. John said the words evenly, which somehow only gave them more impact. “She’s been dead nearly two months, and you’ve spent every night looking for her murderer. Tell me, Lazarus, when will you give up the hunt?”

“When would you give up if Clara were murdered?” Lazarus shot back.

The only sign of how deeply the arrow hit was a small tic on St. John’s jaw. “Never. But the cases are different.”

“How? Because you are married to your woman whilst Marie was merely my mistress?”

“No,” St. John said gently. “Because I love Clara.”

Lazarus looked away. However much a mean-spirited part of him wanted to deny that difference, he couldn’t in truth do it. For St. John was right: he did love his Clara.

Whereas Lazarus had never loved anyone at all.

“I DON’T LIKE this, ma’am. I don’t like it at all,” Nell said late that night in the foundling home kitchen.

“You’ve made your disapproval quite plain,” Temperance muttered as she tied her cloak under her chin.

Nell was undeterred by the reminder. “What if he has designs upon your virtue? What if he seduces and abandons you? Or worse—what if he sells you to a whoremonger? Oh, ma’am! Terrible things could happen to you!”

Temperance suppressed a shiver at the thought of Lord Caire doing “terrible things” to her. It should have been a shiver of revulsion. Instead, the thought of Lord Caire’s sexual proclivities made her unnaturally curious. That wicked wanton part of her sat up and twitched its nose, eager as ever to be let loose. That she couldn’t let happen. Once, long ago, she’d let her base nature take control and had committed an unforgivable sin. Ever since, she’d lived every day knowing she must atone and refrain from letting her demons loose again.

Temperance yanked her hood over her head. “I very much doubt Lord Caire is interested in doing anything at all to me—terrible or not—and besides, I’ve brought the pistol.”

Nell moaned. “He’s not like other gentlemen, ma’am.”

Temperance hefted the soft bag that concealed the pistol. “You’ve made these mysterious hints before. Tell me now—in what way is Lord Caire different from other men?”

Nell bit her lip, stood on one foot and then the other, and finally squeezed her eyes shut and said quickly, “His bedsport.”

Temperance waited, but no other explanation was forthcoming from the maidservant. Finally she sighed, keeping a firm rein on the part of her that had leapt at the word bedsport. “The home is in danger of closing. I can’t let what Lord Caire does in his bedchamber keep me from using his assistance.”

Nell’s eyes popped wide in alarm. “But, ma’am—”

Temperance opened the back door. “Remember: If Winter asks, I’ve gone to bed early. And if he presses, tell him it’s a female matter. That’ll stop any questions.”

“Be careful, ma’am!” Nell called as Temperance pulled the door closed behind her.

A blast of wind whistled around the corner. Temperance shivered and pulled her cloak tighter, turning to go down the alley. A broad male chest loomed suddenly in front of her.

“Oh!”

“Good evening, Mrs. Dews,” Lord Caire drawled in his dark, ominous manner. His cloak swirled about his legs in the wind.

“Please don’t do that,” Temperance said, rather too sharply.

But he only looked amused. “Do what?”

“Pop out at me like a footpad.” She glared up at him, watching as his wide mouth curled at the corner. She had a ridiculous urge to smile back at him, but she suppressed it ruthlessly. Tonight his silver hair was contained in a queue under a black cocked hat. Her belly trembled and she couldn’t help but wonder in exactly what way Lord Caire was different in the bedroom.