“Were you forced at gunpoint to send a telegram, then?”
Ballentine’s silence drew out.
“Hell,” Lucian said. “You were forced at gunpoint.”
The viscount shrugged. “There was a fair chance a dainty Double Derringer would have come into play,” he said, “but the more potent and immediate threat was Lady Lucinda withholding her favors for the duration of the holidays unless I sent something your way, so what was a man to do?”
What indeed. “Your purpose,” he repeated.
Ballentine swirled whisky in his glass. “Lady Lucinda has a habit of inspiring rebellion in her fellow women. And she is very protective of Mrs. Blackstone, so I reckon she may have done a good deal of inspiring this afternoon.”
Grand. The whole half-price debacle had fallen on fertile ground, then. A tension started up in his temples, the dull throb in rhythm with the pulsating pain in his jaw. “So you’ve come to warn me about mutiny.”
“Well—”
“You think I need help with handling my wife—again.”
Ballentine made a stupidly innocent face. “I’d never.”
Lucian leaned abruptly forward. “Marriage is a simple affair unless you overcomplicate it. She’s mine. What can she do, eh? Where will she go?”
His lordship was nodding along, his half-lidded gaze deceptively lazy. “Of course.”
Lucian drained his whisky to the dregs. “There’s nothing wrong with that approach.”
Ballentine shrugged. “Not at all. But …”
“But?”
“She could, in fact, go places.”
He stilled. “Tell me.”
“I know nothing concrete,” Ballentine said. “Just that Lady Lucinda can make women disappear when they don’t wish to be found. And Mrs. Blackstone is such a lovely, whimsical, overly trusting creature and it would be unforgivable if she endangered herself while, say, traversing the continent on her own.”
His hand tightened around the empty tumbler and fresh pain spiked hotly through his abused tendons. Ballentine was an arrogant git, and the familiarity with which the libertine spoke about Harriet annoyed him, but the accuracy of Ballentine’s intuitions was rather unrivaled—he wouldn’t have lent the man money otherwise. Well, he had ruffled his wife’s feathers all right, and he was traveling to Drummuir the morning after next and couldn’t keep an eye on her. What to do, lock her in her room for days? Send her back to her parents? He uttered a profanity that would have shocked a less depraved man. The nobleman just nodded sagely. For a long moment, they sat watching the leaping fire as the burn of the whisky spread through their veins.
“An odd concept, wives,” Ballentine finally said.
Lucian said nothing.
“Like no other, they inspire in a man the desire to please them,” Ballentine continued. “Pesky, this urge to see them happy, but there we have it—care nothing for their happiness, and you’re hurtling toward a cold, cold hell of your own making.”
Lucian pushed the Oban away instead of pouring some more. “If you had proper concerns for her welfare, you’d not be here warning me,” he said. “You’d be helping her run off.”
Ballentine chuckled. “Not as long as I owe you money.”
He’d be leading the heist, the liar. Though even he couldn’t tell with Ballentine; the man lied as smoothly as he spoke the truth. He had witnessed it firsthand when they both had tried to squeeze business from the demimonde as adolescents. They had joined forces for a while, extracting secrets from intoxicated noblemen during debauched nights in secret back rooms and gambling hells only to sell the information or use it for blackmail. Ballentine had been in charge of opening doors to inner circles with his pedigree, his angel face, and his silver tongue. Lucian had enforced ultimatums or dealt with this or that fellow’s henchmen. This had literally sullied his hands, but Lucian had always felt the viscount had done the dirty part, with him slithering among his own like a snake, and seducing and lying so beautifully. It was why he’d never fully trust the nobleman. He did, however, believe the part about the angry wives he’d just heard. He needed a plan. But what was forming at the back of his mind might well send him to cold hell without a detour.
Chapter 16
At eleven in the morning, Victoria Station was swarming like an anthill beneath the vaulted glass-dome ceiling. Trains arrived at platforms with an exhausted hiss; luggage carts squeaked past alongside rapidly clicking heels. A sea of hats heaved around Hattie, top hats, feathered ladies’ hats, countless dull brown workmen’s hats, the caps of station staff. She still felt as exposed as on an empty plain—since climbing from the cab at the east entrance, the back of her neck prickled as if someone was following her. It couldn’t be; Lucian had left the house at dawn. The horrid man. He had come to her bedchamber at midnight to inform her that she would accompany him on his travels to Scotland. She had begun packing the moment he had left—the mere thought of being stuck in the Scottish wilderness with the abominable male had greatly hastened her plans for France along. The stale station air coated her mouth with the sweetish taste of coal and steel. Poor Bailey. She hoped there would be no troubles for Bailey, whom she had tricked into distracting Carson so she could flee through the kitchen entrance. Through her netted black travel veil, her gaze clung to the number-seven platform sign in the near distance as if it were a beacon. Her brain played tricks on her; she kept seeing a familiar powerful male shape from the corner of her eye and her stomach plunged every time. She tried pushing faster through the crowd, but her hems were heavy with sewn-in jewelry, and her right arm was burning from the bulky weight of her carpetbag; she had fair overstuffed said bag with spare gloves and chemises, stockings, a nightgown, and a bodice matching her current skirt; hygiene articles; her watercolor case, sketchpad, and sewing kit; the current edition of Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide; her brush; suffrage journals; and some provisions including a large tin with toffees she had grabbed from the pantry. After closing the bag’s latches with great difficulty, she had tucked her parasol on top. She would have to visit Marseille posthaste to order new dresses, hats, and gloves … A man stepped into her path, and a scream stuck in her throat. Lucian. His face was as dark as the devil’s.