Page 35 of Hazard a Guest
“How did you know my husband?” she said instead, meeting Mr. Beck’s gaze and folding her hands into the soft velvet of her plum-colored skirt so that they would not act on her impulses.
She had expected him to bristle, to harshly remind her of information he’d already given her in ragged abundance ten years prior. Instead, he started to chuckle, turning his head away from hers, breaking their eye contact, and shaking it as though he was just reminded of something fond and nostalgic.
“He caught me breaking into his den, that’s how,” the man confessed, clearly truly charmed by the memory. “I had been using the tables to run street games for almost a month by that point, sending in my grubby patrons one by one through the broken hatch on the Sparrow’s cellar. He found me cleaning up one morning, bin in hand and rag tucked under my chin. We had a long, quiet standoff before I tried to bolt.”
“What?” she said, distracted from everything by this image. “When was this?”
“Oh, about two months before he died,” he said with another little dry chuckle. “He was fast for an old man, if you didn’t know. He cut me off without even trying.”
“Did he?”
Beck nodded and sighed. “He took the dusty rag out of my shirt, threw it in the bin I’d dropped, and offered to buy me breakfast. He never even mentioned punishment. Not once. He just wanted to know what I’d been doing and how it was going. I think he was impressed.”
Ember grimaced, remembering how her husband had delighted in her ability to cheat, in giving her puzzles and watchingher solve them. “He probably was,” she allowed, discomfort prickling at her bones.
“He asked me how much I was making, night to night, then laughed when I told him, this big, booming laugh. It scared the hell out of me. I offered him half of my takings and he just kept laughing.”
“Yes,” Ember said again, nausea rising in her throat. “That sounds right.”
Beck rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, as though he was brushing away the sight of his memory, like for a moment he had been back at that breakfast, sitting across from Mr. Withers.
“I think about that all the time,” he confessed to her with half a smile, like they were friends. Like they were friendly. “He changed how I thought about life that morning. I can’t imagine how many people he did that to.”
“Well,” said Ember, drawn to this, drawn to what it meant despite every instinct in her screaming that she ought to resist it and say nothing. “At least two.”
And bizarrely, they shared it for a moment, that thin little tether, delicate as a spider’s silk.
“At least two,” he agreed thoughtfully.
Joe arrived at that minute, hesitating in the doorway to the conservatory, his eyes falling on the odd, held moment of connection with what must have been deep confusion.
Beck noticed him, turning and raising his brows. “Ah, hello.” He rose to his feet and extended his large, scarred hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met yet. I’m Thaddeus Beck.”
“Joseph Cresson,” Joe said, stepping forward and accepting the handshake, a look of consideration glinting in his silver eyes. “I’m one of Miss Donnelly’s barristers.”
“Are you?” said Beck with what sounded like genuine surprise as he looked from Joe to Ember and back again.
Did he realize now? Did he know that she knew what he was planning? Was he realizing why she was here?
If so, he gave no indication of it.
“Well, pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cresson,” he said politely. “I’ll leave you two to converse. Perhaps we’ll meet again soon.”
“Perhaps,” said Joe as the other man ended the handshake and stepped away.
They watched him leave the conservatory, Ember stuck in her bench and Joe turning to observe the retreat, his posture upright and unreadable.
It only took a moment. Then, by the miracle of polite decorum, they were alone again.
Joe wasted no time crossing the room and coming to sit beside her again. He did not wait for her to ask, to know what she needed, and instead took her hands gently in his, letting her wrap her fingers around his thumbs and hold on to him. He let it happen in silence, as though he were not owed an explanation of what he’d just seen, what he’d just walked into.
And it made Ember want to weep. Or shout. Or demand he act the way she thought all men always did.
Why was he like this? Why?
Was it only to torment her? Was it a gift or a curse? Was it punishment for all she’d broken and all the things she’d gotten wrong?
It felt like a punishment sometimes, knowing that he was possible. That he was real.
