“Probably,” Chris said, only half-listening to Brooks’ complaints as he collected the letters that had piled up upon his desk in his absence. It had been nearly three weeks since he’d last been to Cheapside, three weeks since he’d been able to carve out a bit of time whilst Phoebe was out of the house in order to see to his business interests. “Here,” he said to Brooks, handing over a stack of letters. “You take these and give me an accounting of them.” Somewhere within his desk there was an accounting book to go over as well, but he had no idea how long Phoebe’s tea with Em and their little group would last, and it would be prudent to divide the work.
Brooks cast himself into a chair, still sulking at having been dragged along on this errand, since he had not been able to convince Chris to put it out of his head entirely. Peeling off wax seals one at a time, he began to read.
“Investments?” he said, with no small amount of incredulity in his voice. “Have you gone legitimate?” A faint rustle of papers. “Spoke too soon,” he said on a sigh. “Here’s a death threat for you. And another.”
“Blackmail doesn’t pay as well as it used to,” Chris said absently. “Every man’s got his breaking point, and more and more peers are coming to theirs sooner than ever. You can’t get blood from a stone.” And you couldn’t bilk money from a peer who hadn’t got two farthings to rub together. “Of course I’ve got investments. Where do you think my money comes from?”
“Naturally, I had assumed smuggling,” Brooks said. “Or counterfeiting. Perhaps larceny or murder for hire.”
Chris snorted. “Extortion pays better, and with less risk,” he said. “At one time I had my thumb in a good number of pies. However, the days wherein the government was inclined to turn a blind eye to my misdeeds has passed. Now, I restrain myself to what cannot easily be proven.” Or what the government was unlikely to bother with the effort of prosecuting, besides. And he’d made enough money in the interim to make investments which would ensure his pockets—and bank accounts—would stay flush for the rest of his life and well beyond.
As he shifted in his chair, the throbbing ache in his side reminded him that the rest of his life might turn out to be significantly shorter than he might have preferred. “Any of those death threats seem credible to you?”
“How the devil would I know? Nobody’s ever wanted to kill me.”
“’Cept fer that bloke what wanted to break yer kneecaps and toss you in the Thames,” Chris said. “Reckon he was itching to do it. Hell,I’veconsidered strangling ye a time or two.”
“You didn’thaveto pay him off.” Brooks managed a passable sneer.
Chris shrugged. “Needed a butler.” Brooks had had a genteel accent, even whilst he’d been pleading for his damned life, and he’d proved himself a fine butler despite his general antipathy for his employer since—or at least he had in Phoebe’s estimation, which he was inclined to trust.
Phoebe. Hell, he could still feel the gentle scratch of her fingernails through his hair. He’d yet to demand the kiss he’d bargained for, but only because his side was still healing and he wasn’t keen to have it interrupted by another misplaced limb.
But in another week or so, perhaps two on the outside, he’d be good as new. And that meant—
Damn. He was going to have to manage a bit more business than he’d expected. He slapped the accounting book down onthe desk. “Total that for me,” he said. “Give me the figures when I return.”
“Return?” Brooks blustered. “Where the hell are going?”
“Just upstairs,” Chris said as he headed for the door. “Won’t be a minute.” That was probably a lie, but it would pacify Brooks long enough to get away. The door to his flat was tucked away right beside this one, and there was just a set of stairs that would take him up. Unfortunately, he’d not gotten this far in his planning when he’d rushed out of the house, and so he was obliged to do something he’d not had to do since he’d bought the place years and years ago.
He knocked.
And knocked. And then pounded his fist against the bloody door until Charity could not possibly have failed to hear it, and still it took her another two minutes to arrive at the bottom of the steps.
“Darling,” she said as she opened the door, the artfully arranged sable curls that dripped down her neck making it clear she’d taken the time to fuss with her appearance before she’d admitted him. “I wasn’t expecting you. Have you forgotten your key?”
“I wasn’t expecting to come,” he said. “I didn’t bring it with me. Let me in, will you?”
“Of course,” she said, as he slipped through the door at last. “Don’t tell me,” she said as he followed her up the stairs altogether too gingerly, owing to the pain in his side and the aggravation they caused to his knee. “You haven’t made time for my sapphires, either.”
Despite himself, he grinned. “I was shot not a month ago, and it’s your sapphires you’re worried for?”
With a playful pout of her rouge-reddened lips, she placed one palm upon his chest. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Of course I was worried for you. Just think of it—if you had died, Icertainly wouldn’t have gotten my sapphires at all.”
A laugh rattled somewhere in his chest. “Ah, Charity,” he said. “I am going to—”Hell.
“Miss me?” she concluded lightly as she settled upon the couch. The one with the damned spindly legs that looked as if they might collapse beneath her, with all the gilt and the crimson velvet better suited to a brothel.
“Damn,” he said, and took a seat in a chair that looked only marginally sturdier. “How did you know?”
“You hadn’t brought your key, and you’re not in the habit of paying social calls besides. It seemed a reasonable assumption,” she said. “Would you care for a drink?”
“Better not,” he said. “Brooks has been a pain in the arse about it. Says I’m meant to be healing, not getting foxed.”
“A wise fellow. You won’t mind if I have one, of course,” she said, as she plucked a stopper from a crystal decanter. “Partings always make me rather maudlin. I should like to drown my sorrows a bit.”
By the curl of her lips she hadn’t a damn sorrow to speak of, which made it a somewhat more palatable situation all around. But their relationship had never involved love, and so he consoled himself that he had not broken her heart. Perhaps at most he had pricked her pride a bit. She was a beautiful woman, accustomed to a great deal of attention. To be thrown over was one thing, but to be thrown over for awife—
