The Emperor's Conspiracy (27 page)

“Betrayal? You want to talk to me of betrayal?” Luke reared back. “You want to talk about the thousands starving in the stews, while nobs like you ride past them in carriages that cost enough to keep them for life? You want to talk about the Hulks, and Old Bailey, where they lock up children as young as six years old, punishing them as if they were adults, all for taking a scrap or two to feed themselves or their families? You want to stand there and tell me I betrayed England? No, Lord Nob. England has betrayed
me
.”

There was silence for a moment. Edward looked at Kit and Gary, at Charlotte, and could see that in this they sided with Luke.

He thought of Harkness, lying in the gutter, and wondered if they didn’t have the right of it.

“So,” he said, slowly, “you can commit treason if you like? Because you aren’t considered a true citizen of the country?”

“Well put.” Luke smiled. “Until I am considered a true citizen, I’m at liberty to sell my country out, except, I never have. I only got involved with this to show as many as I could that even with their full citizenship, their full bellies, and their full bank accounts, the nobs are the ones selling England out, not us.”

Edward had no quick answer this time. “But it isn’t as simple as that, is it?”

“No.” Charlotte’s voice was hesitant, as if she were trying to think it through. “Edward, you ride that fancy carriage, and have more money than most will ever see, but I know you work for the good of England, you’re no layabout; and Luke, you can’t say you don’t profit as much from poverty as most of the nobs. And you give as little back to the community as the nobs do. I know—” She held out her hand when Luke tried to interrupt. “I know you’re giving the profits from this scheme back into Tothill Road, but that’s guilt money, because you know you’re doing them down, eroding the whole system while you prove your point, and things will be worse for them before they get better, if they ever do get better.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and looked down at the cobbles before raising her head again. “And then there’s me, caught in the middle.” She quirked her lips in a twisted smile.

Luke stared at her, as if seeing in her something he’d never seen before. Then he shook his head. “Charlie, stop queering my pitch for another week or so. I need more time, as I said. They keep it all so close to the chest. They’re so scared of being found out.”

“So I discovered.” Charlotte’s words were dry. “In a very personal sense.”

“What do you mean?” Luke focused on her like a hound on the scent. He rubbed his hands along his arms, as if he were cold.

“They approached me. They’re trying to blackmail me into reporting what Edward knows about them.”

“Blackmail you?” Luke’s voice was very soft.

“They threatened to out me to the ton. To tell everyone I’m the bastard daughter of a whore.”

Gary and Kit had spread out a little when they’d seen Luke, readying themselves, Edward thought, for a fight. But at Charlotte’s words they drew closer, horror on their faces.

As servants of the upper class, they would know only too well the impact carrying out that threat would have on Charlotte’s life in the ton.

It would end it.

“Who was it threatened you? Exactly what did they say?” Luke moved forward, and Edward thought better of blocking Charlotte from him again, but he held himself loose and ready.

Charlotte looked away from them, and for that alone, Edward wanted to kill Tavenam all over again. “They said I was to tell them everything, copy his notes, report what he said. But Lord Durnham hasn’t told me anything. Neither of you told me anything.” The last sentence was spoken quietly, and Edward flinched at the guilt it laid on him.

Luke drew in a breath through clenched teeth, the whistle of it sinister in the dark silence. “How were you to get it then?”

“I told them I couldn’t do it, that Lord Durnham didn’t confide in me, and they said I would have to become his lover, then. Some of them even made a bet on how long it would take me in the wager book in Lord Durnham’s club—”

Luke howled. An animal sound that grabbed Edward by the back of his neck. “I’ll kill him.”

“You know Lord Tavenam?” Charlotte asked him, and her voice shook.

“Tavenam? Never ’eard of him. But I know who sent him.” Luke turned his gaze, hard and cold as a dead fish, on Edward. “What did your nob here say to all this, Charlie? I presume you told him?”

“I told him about the blackmail. He’s the one who told me about the bet.” Charlotte still hugged herself at the hips, and at last she looked up again. “He came to warn Catherine and me about it, and arrange things so there could be no gossip about us.”

Luke carried on staring, and Edward felt his fists curl again. “You got something to say, Bracken?”

Luke looked away, dismissing Edward suddenly, and turned his attention to Charlotte. “Don’t trust him. He’s a nob and he’ll hush it up and hide the guilty away quicker’n you can blink. No nob will go down for this crime. If they can get me, or the owlers, so much the better. But when they find the nobs at the top, well, it’ll be a slap on the wrist, and ‘don’t be a naughty boy, and let’s not see you do this again.’”

“You’re wrong there.” Edward tried to relax, to speak to Luke civilly, even though, knowing what he was to Charlotte, what he had been, all Edward wanted to do was go for the throat.

“I won’t cover it up. If you’ve got information, give it to me, and I’ll make sure they take their rightful punishment.”

Luke threw him a look so laden with contempt, it hit Edward like a blow. “You? You’ll have no choice. You’ll cover it up. If you aren’t already doing just that, following all the
trails, hoodwinking Charlie into leading you to the witnesses so you can bump ’em off.”

“I don’t understand.” He didn’t dare take his eyes off Luke. “Why would I have no choice?”

“You must know.” Luke sneered, but there was something in the way he looked at him that made Edward think he wasn’t so certain of himself anymore.

“If you know something, then spit it out!” He lost all patience. “What do you think these men have on me? Why would you think I’d be in league with them?”

Luke took a step back and almost ran into the carriage behind him. “You really don’t know.” He spoke slowly, and with a twisted sense of satisfaction.

Edward said nothing. He stood waiting, and was surprised at the dread he felt. Whatever came next would not be pleasant.

“The man behind this is your stepfather, Lord Nob. Hawthorne is the kingpin of this little operation.”

Edward felt the earth shift a little beneath his feet, a shuddering resettling of the world into a slightly different configuration. He sucked in a deep breath, needing air. “And how do you know that?”

Luke’s eyes flashed in what little light came from the lamp on the corner. “He approached me, as I was the only criminal he knew, to set this little lark up for him. That’s how I got involved. He thinks I’m a moneygrubbing little bludger. But even so, he’s been right tight about what information he gives me. The going’s been slower than I thought to catch ’is little lot out.”

“How did he know to come to you to start? Why are you the only criminal he knows?” Edward bluffed it out with disbelief, but he knew Bracken must be right. It made a twisted sense.

“’Cause I found him, years ago it was now. Went lookin’ for Charlie’s father. Just to make sure ’e was totally out o’ the picture. Didn’t want some cove turnin’ up out of the blue to claim her.” He turned to Charlotte. “I’d asked around, back when you first came to work with us—with that bastard Ashcroft. I tried to find out ’bout your mum, and what happened to ’er. I wanted to be prepared, see. And I found out quite a bit—your ma told a neighbor everything, that your father was a nob an’ all. She asked the neighbor to go to him an’ ask for help for you if she didn’t make it. Course, the cow decided it would be more of a sure thing to sell you to the brothels than try to squeeze money from a lord. But she gave me ’is name, for a price.”

There was something in the way he said this that made Edward shiver. He wondered if the woman had lived very long after she told Luke that tale. He doubted it, and yet he could not find any sympathy for her, either.

“I didn’t tell you, Charlie. There was nothin’ to say. No way ’e would be a problem, given who ’e was. I let him know I knew all about it. Just in case. And I’ve kept in touch, you might say. Just to keep ’im off balance, keep him running a little scared. And don’t he deserve it? The way he forced you an’ your mum into the life you ’ad.”

It was the most Edward had ever heard Luke speak, and through it all, Luke kept his eyes on Charlotte, and stood,
open and arms a little out, as if he were some kind of angel, delivering a tiding.

Edward took a quick look at Charlotte’s face. It was white, and she looked smaller somehow, as if the shock of Luke’s revelation had diminished her. He took a step toward her, but she lifted her hands and shrunk back from all of them, as if they were all about to do her harm. Her eyes were shadowed and impossible to see.

“What has this to do with my stepfather?” Edward asked, his gaze still locked on Charlotte, the sense that he was losing her, that she was slipping through his fingers like fine gold dust, growing stronger by the moment. And he was sure what was coming next would not help him.

“Surely that’s obvious? He’s Charlie’s father,” Luke spoke quietly, and with a tremble to his voice, as if at last he regretted his impulse to speak but realized he’d gone too far, that he had to finish now. Perhaps he felt her pulling from him, just as surely as Edward did. “He raped his chambermaid, and when she fell pregnant, he kicked her out into the street.”

It was the final hammer’s blow. Edward watched Charlotte flinch, and it seemed to him the chains that bound her were at last severed.

32

C
harlotte was almost crouching back, waiting for the blow of Luke’s revelation, and when it came, it wasn’t so bad. She’d had worse. Much worse.

The thought steadied her. And made her realize what she was doing.

Hadn’t she promised herself never to cower again?

She straightened, suddenly lighter. She’d never thought much about her father. She’d relegated him to one of the men her mother prostituted herself to. To find out her father was the cause of her mother’s hardship skewed her view of her old life, twisting it like the toffee confections in the bakers’ windows.

She’d never had the sense of being a burden, in the few flashes of memory she had of her mother. And tears pricked and welled in her eyes at the thought of how much she’d been loved. Despite everything, her mother had sacrificed so much to keep her.

“Ah, Jesus, Charlie, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.” Luke looked in agony.

She didn’t know what to say to him, did not want to comfort him, even though she was not crying for the reasons he thought. She looked to the side, into the darkness, and jerked with surprise as she caught sight of Sammy. He was lurking just out of the light, watching Luke’s back, but there could be no doubt Luke’s revelation was as much news to him as it was to everyone else. He was gaping, dumbstruck.

And then Charlotte remembered Lord Hawthorne’s face that day in Edward’s breakfast room and jerked her gaze to Edward, wondering if he was thinking the same.

She hadn’t known she’d been so like her mother in looks. But that surely must be who Hawthorne thought she was for one moment, until common sense intervened. And then he’d immediately used what he knew about her and sent Tavenam after her that same night. Using his newfound daughter, and trying to prostitute her for information almost the moment he realized she was right in front of him.

Just like he had forced her mother to prostitute herself to keep her child alive.

A tiny, hard seed of hate sprang to life in her chest, but before she could focus on it, the thought occurred to her again that she must look very like her mother.

It comforted her, more than she could have believed.

She brushed the tears that slipped down her cheeks away with the backs of her hands and saw all five men staring at her.

“I met Hawthorne at Edward’s the other day. You might
have warned me before, Luke. You must have known there was a chance we would meet.”

“I didn’t want to tell you about Hawthorne, not if I didn’t have to.” Luke would not look her in the eyes. “He doesn’t attend balls. He’s got such bad gout he barely goes anywhere but his club. That’s how I know he can only draw his co-conspirators from high society. I never knew you’d be going to Lord Nob’s house and even if you did, I’ve never known Hawthorne to visit there. Or that he’d somehow recognize you if he did.”

She looked properly at Edward. He held himself more tightly bound than ever. As shocked as her.

She wanted to slip her hand into his again, and give him some comfort, but something in the way he held himself prevented her. “Edward …”

He turned to look at her, and his anger gave him a lean, hungry look. “I need to go.” He moved to the carriage door, and it was only then that Charlotte remembered the coachman. She looked up and caught him staring. He turned away hastily and she had to hope Edward had discreet, trustworthy staff.