“We should wait to tell her,” Julian said. “Until things are completely final.”
I opened my mouth to argue. I’d wanted to tell her tonight. I’d wanted to whisper it into her ear as we made love with Hugh’s blasted contract burning merrily in a fireplace next to us. But I couldn’t dispute Julian’s suggestion, because of the damage that could be done to Molly’s fragile sense of hope if the deal fell through somehow.
Besides, it was only two days, right?
“Yes,” I agreed finally. “We will keep it a secret from her until we have confirmation.”
I didn’t mention that Molly’s engagement party was also in two days. It wasn’t her wedding, so in a practical sense, it was no impediment to my plan. But in an emotional sense, I couldn’t bear the idea of her in front of London, celebrating her upcoming nuptials to another man. Couldn’t bear the idea of Hugh clinging to her, of them dancing, of them standing at the door and accepting the effusive congratulations of fashionable acquaintances and near-strangers.
Molly belonged to me. The only thing remaining was to prove it.
The Hedgehog hadn’t changed in the sixteen years since I’d been here. There was the great room, fronted by tall windows and studded with one massive fireplace. There was the dining room with its leather chairs and small tables and globed lamps.
And then there were the rooms upstairs.
Large beds. Maroon curtains. Warm fires.
White sheets. Scarlet sins.
Mr. Cunningham did not always use his favorite club for his assignations, but he used it frequently enough that he had a room of his own set aside. I walked through it now, the manager of the club trailing quietly behind me. He was not happy about any of this—the knowledge of what Mr. Cunningham planned to do or my plan to stop it. But he owed something to the Baron somehow—a debt or a favor—and so he had not actively resisted my decisions about his club tonight.
“Does he bring girls back here often?” I asked, placing my hand on the silk coverlet of the bed. I’d meant to run my hands along the silk casually, possessively, as if to reassure myself that I wasn’t scared of this club and I wasn’t scared of the place Cunningham slept. But my hand froze the moment it touched the silk, a hundred terrible memories burning through my chest, memories of blood and pain and the feeling of Mr. Cunningham’s weight pressing me into the mattress…
The manager stood close to the door, and if my face betrayed any terror or hopelessness or anger, he politely ignored it. “He often…entertains here,” the manager said in response to my earlier question. “But nothing like you have described to me. They always appear to be at least one and twenty, or more.”
I believed it. This afternoon, I’d called on the Baron, laying the problem of Birgit before him to ask his advice. And then he’d confessed to me that he was no stranger to Cunningham’s proclivities, and how, as a result of the Baron’s intervention, C
unningham now had to frequent brothels across the Channel to indulge in the services he liked best. So it didn’t surprise me that he stayed discreet here in England.
But if he normally kept to less deviant expressions of his desires, then why this pursuit of Birgit? Why now?
Was it some sort of reverse trap? I’d considered that several times today, but I couldn’t see how he would risk revealing such a seamy part of his character and still hope to withdraw from the trap with his reputation unscathed. No, he was exposing himself with the belief that he was doing so safely, something that revealed how comfortable and complacent he’d grown.
How soft.
I thanked the manager for his time and paid him the promised amount for his silence and for his unusual accommodations tonight. I would undoubtedly be bringing his club undue attention and scandal, and for that I felt bad, but the Baron and I had agreed that this was the only way. This was the clearest path forward; it would be painful and perhaps shameful at points, but in the end, Birgit would be safe and Mr. van der Sant would be convinced both of her virtue and of Cunningham’s depravity.
In fact, the Baron would be here tonight to help me from backstage, as it were, to oversee that the club and all of the players moved according to our design. He told me that he’d long felt responsible for Cunningham and saw tonight as a chance to atone, and frankly I welcomed the help. It felt nice not to be alone.
And, since the Baron had also confessed that he’d known about the connection between Hugh and Cunningham for years, I had the feeling the Baron was eager to make things up to me, which was a kind intention, even if it was unnecessary. His silence on the knowledge wouldn’t have changed things one way or the other, but I understood and appreciated the impulse to atone.
I went downstairs to the dining room, looking for the Baron and ignoring the stares of the gentlemen lounging insouciantly around their tables. The blue-gray haze of cigar smoke couldn’t disguise how very female I was, and typically only one sort of female frequented the interior of such establishments. And even then, she was expected to stay within the private boundaries of the club—the upstairs with its bedrooms and implications of sin. She was not welcome in the dining room.
I wasn’t welcome in the dining room.
I honestly didn’t care where or where not these men believed I belonged, but I didn’t see the Baron’s massive shoulders or dark hair, and so I decided to go out to the foyer and out the front door, pushing past the irritated footman, who clearly also resented my presence (and my refusal to use the kitchen door in back.)
“This is no place for a lady,” said a soft voice behind me.
I spun around, anger hot in my mouth, and then stopped.
And stepped back.
Silas stood in front of me, his blue eyes twinkling, his roguish grin hooked up to one side. Despite the rainy afternoon, he’d stepped out without an overcoat and he was already in evening clothes, a perfectly fitting black coat and pants with white gloves and a tall black hat, which he doffed now as he bowed to me.
I just stared.
“What is it, Mary Margaret? Is it so strange to see a gentleman at a gentleman’s club?”
