My Rogue to Ruin, page 11
There you are!” Lord Adrian all but pounced when Marjorie walked through the door. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
She glanced at the clock. “I’m five minutes early.”
“I’ve been waiting since the moment you walked out the door last night.”
Marjorie’s heart fluttered. What was she supposed to do with an admission like that? Certainly not admit that she, too, had been counting down the hours until she would see him again.
“How adorable that you missed me.” She shut the door and sashayed past him. “You didn’t cross my mind once.”
He watched as she pulled new and old molds from her basket and placed them on the worktable. They were almost identical to the molds she’d taken home.
Almost, but not quite.
Lord Adrian scooped them up and inspected them closely. “These appear to have an added—”
“I brought your newspaper.”
“You did?” He set the chalk molds back onto the worktable and gave them a light pat. “Definitely the same molds. Nothing suspicious here. I could kiss you.”
“To distract me from whatever you don’t want me to notice?” she asked dryly.
“No,” he said softly. “I just want to kiss you.”
She turned away so he would not see the heat rising to her cheeks. Even though her back was to him, she suspected she wasn’t hiding anything at all.
“I won’t destroy other people’s belongings to enrich Snowley’s pockets,” Marjorie said. “I’m no longer altering the ratio, like I told him we’d do. I’m substituting different material altogether. The new molds should also lower the risk.”
She carried the burlap bag over to the crucible and upended its contents into the reservoir. A river of odds, ends, and shavings tumbled into the bubbling metal.
Marjorie gave the pot a stir, then passed the long handle to Lord Adrian, so she could tuck the jewelry they were supposed to be melting down into the safety of hidden crevices sewn into her skirts.
“Enriching your pockets instead of Snowley’s?” Lord Adrian asked sarcastically.
“Mind the pot and your own business,” Marjorie snapped. But the truth was, she’d have to tell him something. “I intend to return these objects to their rightful owners.”
He snorted. “Sure you do. And just how will you determine who those rightful owners are?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, then seemed to take her at her word. “I told you that you weren’t cut out for a life of crime. But this is no place for honor, Mary. If Snowley finds out that you—”
“He won’t. Nobody searched me yesterday. They all think I’m harmless.”
“Do they?”
“Perhaps they cannot imagine that anyone with half a brain or an ounce of self-preservation would be foolhardy enough to cross Snowley.” Or they did not believe such treachery would occur to Marjorie in particular, due to her sex or her appearance or her perceived defects.
He seemed to consider this. “We also produce a prodigious amount of coins, compared with my output before you arrived on the scene. If anything, they all believe you to be an unlikely but competent taskmaster, and an important part of the team.”
That was true. Lately, the guards spoke to her as if it were a foregone conclusion that she would serve Snowley for life, just as Joey and Grinders intended to do themselves.
Marjorie shushed Adrian all the same. “Stop talking about my duplicity before someone overhears you.”
“The guards can’t hear a thing whilst the door is shut. Not from all the way down the corridor. And they won’t open the door until eight o’clock this evening.” He sent her a lecherous look. “Which means we have plenty of time to make good use of your blanket.”
“First let me see if Tickletums chewed a hole through it to get to the blackberries.” She carefully retrieved the softly snoring animal from inside.
“What the devil,” Lord Adrian asked, “are you doing with that?”
“This is Tickletums,” Marjorie answered brightly. “He’s a homing hedgehog. In training. Which makes him sleepy. Shh. You’ll wake him.”
Marjorie tickled beneath Tickletums’s chin. He yawned and batted her finger away with one soft little paw.
“How exactly does a homing hedgehog work?” Lord Adrian asked.
“I’m not certain it does,” she admitted. “This is an experiment for my brother.”
“Has anyone told you that you have a strange brother?”
She lifted her head—and one eyebrow. “Pot, kettle.”
“Oh, very well, I suppose I’m the strange brother to my own siblings. But I’ve never trained a homing hedgehog.”
“Today is your lucky day.” Marjorie crossed over to the open window, then hesitated.
Lord Adrian was at her side in seconds, his expression on guard and his stance protective. “What is it?”
“I’ve just recalled the guard on the roof. He might shoot you or me, but surely no one with a heart would kill an innocent hedgehog.”
“There’s one way to find out.” Lord Adrian reached for Tickletums.
Marjorie cradled the tiny creature to her bosom. “No hedgehogs will be harmed on my watch. My brother wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he’ll murder me if anything happens to Tickletums.”
“Does your brother know there’s an armed guard on the roof?”
“He’s been informed, yes.”
“Then perhaps this is… a rare, homing, bullet-evading, defensive hedgehog.”
Marjorie looked at Tickletums. He licked the pad of her thumb.
“And maybe it’s just a hedgehog,” Lord Adrian added. “Have you considered the possibility that you’ll set him outside and he won’t go anywhere?”
“I think Tickletums is considering that possibility at this exact moment.”
They both looked at the drowsy hedgehog.
“Kittens manage the homing without issues,” Marjorie muttered.
Lord Adrian’s eyes lit up. “They do?”
“But hedgehogs… Oh, I suppose we must try it. My brother is around the corner, waiting for Tickletums’s safe return.” She edged closer to the window.
At the first hint of the sooty Seven Dials breeze, the hedgehog perked up and rolled to his feet. His little black nose sniffed the air.
“He smells adventure,” Marjorie said.
“Or old rubbish,” Lord Adrian added.
“Mr. Tickletums, you are to go straight back to Jacob,” she told the hedgehog firmly. “No pausing to eat berries or be riddled by bullets. Fast as a hummingbird, straight as an arrow. Do you understand?”
Tickletums made a snuffling sound.
“Was that a yes?” Lord Adrian whispered.
“I hope so,” Marjorie said grimly. She took a deep breath and lowered the hedgehog over the sill onto the soil below.
Tickletums sneezed, then sniffed the air again.
Marjorie tensed as she waited. No gunshots rang out. Hedgehogs were apparently exempt from offensive fire.
Suddenly, Tickletums stiffened, then took off as quickly as his short little legs and tiny little paws could carry him.
It was not, admittedly, fast—but his movements were speedier than Marjorie would have anticipated. With a subtle sway to his fluffy backside, Tickletums waddled away from Snowley’s fortress and down the street toward the exact corner Jacob was waiting in a Wynchester hackney with a bowl of fresh berries.
“I’ll be damned,” said Lord Adrian.
He was right by her side. Her skirts fluttered against his leg. The sides of their arms were pressed together.
Lord Adrian was warm. Hot, even. Marjorie could feel the heat of his skin through the layers of his shirtsleeve and coat. He was like a forge himself, melting anything that dared come into contact with him.
Heaven knew Marjorie was close to melting.
His fingers brushed hers. “Shall we counterfeit some substandard coins?”
“Yes,” she gasped. Said. Gasped. Said-gasped. Dear God, why was she talking in this raspy, breathless voice? “Let’s… let’s work.”
He lifted her hand in his.
She let him.
In this position, they looked more likely to break into a waltz than to mold false coins. All he had to do was place his other hand on her back… but no. Waltzing was not his intent. Please, God, don’t let him touch me anywhere else or I will melt into a puddle, she prayed.
He lifted her hand to his mouth instead. His lips grazed the knuckles of her fingers.
“I smell like hedgehog.”
“You smell like… fresh honey.”
Breakfast. Blast.
He lifted her hand to the side of his face. It was smooth-shaven. It had been yesterday, as well as at the museum… but not her first day at Snowley’s, when Lord Adrian hadn’t known to expect her. He was shaving his face for her. The painstaking cravat she’d noted yesterday. The impossibly shiny boots. The glitter of gold and turquoise shimmering from him every time he looked her way.
It was all for her.
He lowered her hand back to her side carefully, then gave her fingers a gentle squeeze before letting go.
His eyes met hers. “Your move.”
She fled to the fireplace.
Marjorie’s hand stirred the melted metal as if her life depended upon it, but her head was spinning with memories of every second of the moment they’d just shared. His warm kiss against her fingers. The texture of his face. The soft squeeze of her hand.
Your move, he’d said.
There was no need to ask him what his choice would be. He’d already told her. I just want to kiss you. He could have stolen a kiss, right then and there. Marjorie shamelessly would have let him.
And then she would have promptly stuck her head out of the open window in the hope that the guard on the roof would put her out of her misery.
She didn’t gad about kissing libertines, for heaven’s sake. And if Lord Adrian proved less of a degenerate than advertised, well, a Wynchester didn’t go about kissing clients, either.
Not that Lord Adrian was a proper client, if one wished to get technical about it. He hadn’t engaged her services. He didn’t even know she was a Wynchester. He thought she was Mary, Random Girl From Seven Dials.
And he wanted to kiss her.
She drew in a shaky breath at the implication. He wanted to kiss her. Who she really was, despite the pseudonym. He didn’t look at her and see infamous Wynchester sibling, just like he didn’t look at her and see weakness. He looked at her and saw a woman he wanted in his arms.
That was all. That was everything. That was more than Marjorie had dreamed.
She frowned as she stirred the pot. Damnable man. What kind of rake said “your move”?
The flirting was different this time. It had been a jest before, but it seemed real now. The kiss hung there between them, untaken but still present, filling the room with possibility like the morning fog over a peaty moor.
Maybe she could dive into the crucible. The bubbling liquid certainly couldn’t be any hotter than the blush searing her face. Flushed not because he had embarrassed her with his unspoken question.
But because she was seriously considering the possibility.
She turned away from the pot, away from him, and scurried over to the worktable, where she busied herself with her basket for far longer than was truly necessary. When she had herself under control, she turned to face him.
“I have another project.” Her voice trembled only slightly. “I… I need to create copies of these keys.” She lifted the key ring. “These.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Who do they belong to?”
She shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“And when do you need copies?”
“Tonight.”
“Did you bring your tools?”
Blast.
Marjorie glared at Lord Adrian in consternation. She’d been so busy thinking about him, she hadn’t given her siblings’ mission her full attention.
“We can use mine,” he offered. “If you don’t mind sharing.”
“I don’t mind,” she said quickly.
“Should we break in the new molds first? I think the metal is ready.”
“Oh. Yes.”
She took the chalk molds to the bubbling pot and filled each one. Then she set them aside to harden and turned back to Lord Adrian.
He held up the keys. “You’re thinking molds for these, too?”
She nodded. “That’s the usual method.”
“Can you describe your usual method?”
She did, keeping a sharp eye on his expression. “All right, I’ll bite. I presume you have a better idea?”
“Your way will work,” he said quickly.
“I know it will. I do this all the time.” She realized she sounded defensive, but couldn’t help herself.
He regarded her with uncharacteristic hesitation.
She sighed. “Oh, go ahead and tell me.”
“I copy things all the time, too. There are functional substitutes, and then there are facsimiles so identical, even the original owner would not be able to tell the difference, side-by-side.”
Was that what Tommy needed? Probably not. Then again, why take the risk of creating anything less than the best? Marjorie was a competent forger, though primarily with paint and ink. What if Adrian’s method was somehow better than her own? “You consider yourself an expert?”
“It’s what I’ve spent the past seven years doing. Usually not keys. Artifacts. Greek, Roman, anything.” He gave a sardonic chuckle. “It’s how I got into this scrape.”
Realization dawned. “Snowley sold your… duplicates?”
“Unbeknownst to him, yes. He thought they were originals.”
“For seven years?”
“For seven years.”
“And the buyers believed it?”
“Happy customers, every last one.”
“Until?”
He made an aggrieved expression. “Until the war ended, and travel could resume. Some lord sent his lordling on Grand Tour, only for the lad to stumble across the very treasure allegedly on display in his father’s parlor.”
“That’s the hold Snowley has over you?”
“It’s the debt,” he hedged. “The way he sees it, every transaction we ever had was fraudulent.”
“Every transaction you undertook was fraudulent.”
“Well, yes, there’s that.” He gave a roguish grin. “But he needn’t be so medieval about it. All but one of the clients are delighted with their purchases. So really, is there a debt to be repaid?”
“I’m guessing this logic held no sway with Snowley.”
“It did not.” Lord Adrian sighed. “He has no imagination. Or heart. Or sense of irony. So here I am, counterfeiting coins to make up for my counterfeit antiquities. Or I would be, if I wasn’t busy making keys instead.”
“We can take shifts. I’ll create the base copies whilst you continue on with the coins.”
“When those are ready, I’ll age the material and copy every nick and scratch until there’s no material difference between the two sets.”
“It’s a deal.”
Marjorie set to work at once. She had made hundreds of copies of keys for her siblings. Perhaps a thousand. But they’d always been just that—rough copies capable of opening the same doors and drawers.
Objects and sculpture weren’t her medium. Marjorie was most at home in front of paper or a canvas. Her best tools were brushes, pencils, pen and ink. She could forge a copy of the Regent’s signature with enough precision to fool Prinny himself. And paint a preemptive portrait of the moment, besides.
But this… Lord Adrian was talented in a different way. A complementary way. By working together as a team, Marjorie would be able to provide her siblings with a tool perhaps even better than they needed.
And what else? a tiny voice whispered. As soon as the mission is over, will you kiss him then?
She might have no choice in the matter. As soon as she sprang Webb from his prison, why should he wait around where Snowley could find him again? Why not be on the next boat to Paris, or Rome, or Greece?
If you were a handsome rakehell who had the whole world to choose from, why wander around Islington looking for Marjorie?
“You’re making a terrifying expression,” Lord Adrian informed her. “What are you thinking about so vehemently?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth. Not that truth. So she gave him a different one instead.
“I’m thinking about those keys,” she said. “My family assigned the project to me, and here you are, helping with it.”
“Does your family not help each other?”
“They do. Always. But we each have our talents. Forging is supposed to be mine.”
“You’re afraid they’ll think less of you if you accept the freely given labor of an experienced counterfeiter on a project that requires counterfeiting?”
“I’m afraid they’ll…”
Love me less. Believe in me less.
Ridiculous, all of it. She knew her family loved her unconditionally. She knew it from her heart to her toes. But if the one thing they came to her for was a thing they could find elsewhere…
No, not just that. If it was a thing someone else could do even better…
“I want to be worthy of them,” she said, the words raw. “I want them to admire me, to be proud of me, to think I’m…”
“You are.” He turned and grabbed her shoulders, his green eyes molten. “Whatever it is you worry you aren’t, you are.”
She stared up at him. “I’m just a—”
“You’re not ‘just’ anything,” he said roughly. “You assume other people believe you limited, and yes, that’s what many will do. But I saw you handle Snowley. I saw you handle his guards. Hell, I see you handle me. Let the doubters think what they want. Theirs isn’t the opinion that matters.” He cupped her face and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Don’t you ever be the person who limits you.”
She drew in a shuddering breath, unable to speak.
It was as though he had stripped her bare. As though he had seen beyond the protective varnish and the careful layer upon layer of paint, to the jagged, uneven sketch beneath… and did not find it wanting.
