Let Me Be The One (29 page)

Northam shook his head, though he suspected strongly that he was the fool in question. Elizabeth had been standing off to the side of the guests ever since Southerton had deserted her. Her complexion was pale and her eyes were rather too large for her face. Far from enjoying the amusement Lady Battenburn had arranged for them, she looked as if she were going to be ill.

And well she might, he thought uncharitably. Elizabeth Penrose carried more secrets than Wellington's couriers at the height of the war. Which one, he wondered, did she most fear would be exposed?

North shifted his weight from one foot to the other, quelling the urge to go to her side. In spite of the fact that his presence would not be welcomed, it was still difficult to stay away. If there was some way he could spare her the agony of sitting in front of Madame, he would do it. Nothing occurred to him. Lord and Lady Battenburn had seemed to intend that everyone should participate, and North considered, not for the first time, that they were perhaps more serious about catching the Gentleman Thief than Louise's lighthearted introduction indicated.

"Return to Lady Elizabeth," he said, "while I take my turn with Madame. Be prepared to hear that I copied from your paper on the geography exam in our second year at Hambrick."

"You did? But I was a very poor student of geography."

"I know. I was resisting Grandfather's efforts to make a scholar out of me."

Southerton's shout of laughter brought a dozen heads around. He disarmed their censure with an apologetic grin. "Very well." He touched North's elbow, his features set with concern again. "But have a care, will you? I can't help thinking Madame Fortuna knows more than we do."

North was certain of it, though how much of the fortuneteller's prescience was real and how much had some other source was still a question in his mind. "Go!" He gave Southerton a small push forward when he saw Elizabeth was moving determinedly through the guests. "Stop her at least until I have had my chance."

South navigated through the throng with the agility and grace of a skiff, tacking first one way, then the other, until he was at Elizabeth's side. Once arrived, he glanced over at North and received a grateful acknowledgment for his efforts. Accepting no protest from Elizabeth, he linked arms with her and drew her back from the front line of onlookers.

"I was prepared to go next," she told him, her jaw set.

"Were you? Then I am not sorry. It is rather less amusing to be in the fish bowl than watching the fish. Do you think Lady Battenburn intended it so?"

"I cannot possibly know Louise's intentions."

"Odd. I had come to think of you as her confidante."

Elizabeth's tone was deliberately cool. "Then you mistook the matter." She withdrew her arm from Southerton's and stood on tiptoe, craning her head above Lord Heathering's broad shoulder to see who had taken her place at the table. Her heart hammered in her chest. Northam. She gripped Southerton's arm, this time twisting as much of his sleeve as she could get between her fingers.

Southerton looked down at the fist clenched in the tight woolen fabric of his frock coat. "Lady Elizabeth?" He said her name quietly and made no mention of the fact that she was badly creasing the material. He almost recoiled from the accusation in her eyes when she raised her face to his.

"You planned this," she said tightly.

South did not pretend not to know what she meant. "It was inevitable that North should take a turn," he whispered. "What difference can it make if he goes before you?"

All the difference, she wanted to say. But she could not explain that to Southerton. With some effort she unclenched her fingers from South's sleeve and let her hand fall to her side. "I want to see," she said. "Take me to the front."

Southerton had no good reason for not complying except that it went against his instincts. Short of holding Elizabeth in place himself, which would surely cause a stir, he really had no choice but to assist her. He tapped Lord Heathering on the shoulder and bid him make a place for them. In short order he and Elizabeth were standing on the inner edge of the onlookers.

Now that he was sitting so close to Madame Fortuna, Northam saw that his first impression had not been entirely correct. The fortune-teller had aged. The creases at the corner of her mouth and eyes were deeper. There was a permanent furrow above her brows. Liver spots dotted the back of her hands. She seemed shorter, but he allowed that it might only be that he had grown taller and straighter, while her posture was inclined forward, her slight shoulders hunched.

He smiled faintly as she shuffled the cards. After so many years and all the differences time had brought to his own features, North did not think it possible that she could remember him. He was, after all, but one of thousands she had seen over the years. Still, he had to temper his own sense of perverse humor. He was very much of a mind to ask her if he might see her quim. The subsequent uproar would effectively put a period to this amusement and make him a pariah in all but the most libertine of circles. He chuckled to himself as he considered there might be no unwelcome consequences to posing the question after all.

"Something amuses you?" Madame Fortuna inquired sharply.

Northam cleared his throat. "No, Madame."

"Your throat is parched. May we have some libation here?" She waved imperiously to Lord Battenburn. "Peach brandy, perhaps."

North blinked at her. "
Peach
brandy?"

Madame Fortuna's features did not change in the least. "Why, yes. You like the taste of a peach, do you not, my lord?" She paused as a footman brought a tray with a decanter and two glasses to the table. Putting down her cards, she waved the servant away and elected to pour the drinks herself. "You will see," she said, handing one of the small snifters to Northam, "if it doesn't do the trick."

North felt his fingers tingle as she passed the glass to him. At first he thought her hand had brushed his, but then he realized they were holding the snifter in two different places, she by the bowl, he at the stem.

"Just so," she said quietly. "It is as it ever was." Her dark eyes bore into his, communicating quite clearly that he was not alone in the memory of their earlier encounter. Since that afternoon at the fair, more than a score of years in the past, Bess Bowles had been in anticipation of a second encounter. She knew neither where nor when, just that it would happen. "Only you," she told him. "It is only with you."

Northam frowned. "I don't understand."

Laughter cackled from her. She knocked back the peach brandy with the same careless appreciation she had for her gin. "Neither do I." For weeks after the fair she had lived in alarm of being visited again by the second sight. When it never came to her she was almost able to convince herself that she had imagined it. Almost. Sometimes there would be a tingling, a fine tremor that would move from her fingertips to her spine and trip lightly all the way down her back. When she put questions to the people who raised that sensation she inevitably discovered there was some connection to the man sitting across from her now. She could not explain it. She wasn't even certain that she believed it. Yet she could not deny the experience.

"Drink up," she said to him. She laid down the first card and nodded thoughtfully, not surprised to see that she had tapped into the powerful force of the Major Arcana. "A sacrifice..."

Northam stared at the picture of an empty gallows with the noose prepared. He had an urge to slip a finger under his collar and stock and loosen the fit against his neck. He was very much aware that all those looking on had ceased whispering. "It is not death?"

"Oh, heaven's no. You may ease your mind on that account. The Hanged Man can signify letting go or a reversal of current circumstances. Here I believe a sacrifice is to be made." She paused and added darkly, "Condemnation."

He finished raising the snifter to his lips and drank the brandy with as much disregard for the fine taste as Madame Fortuna had shown. He glanced over his shoulder at South. "I am only condemned," he said, grinning. "Not doomed." Southerton, he thought, could have made an effort to return more than a wan smile. Beside him, Elizabeth looked as if she might faint. North turned back to Madame Fortuna. "
My
mind is eased. Perhaps you could say something that would ease others. Who condemns me?"

Madame Fortuna took the top card from the deck and laid it over the Hanged Man.

North stared at the Empress, that card that related to motherhood, abundance, and nature. The voluptuous figure oddly reminded him of the baroness, and he looked to Madame Fortuna, a question in his eyes.

She said only, "A woman close to you."

Southerton felt Elizabeth's fingers claw his sleeve again. He placed his free hand over hers and willed her to remain silent and unmoving.

Though it pained him to do so, Northam asked with credible carelessness, "Are you being literal or figurative?" This had the desired effect of dispelling the pall that had settled over the drawing room.

In response, Madame Fortuna turned over a third card, this one a horned figure. She placed it on top of the lovers. "I believe it is the devil you know."

Northam had had enough. He started to rise.

"Sit down, my lord."

It was said so sharply and with such authority that Northam found himself firmly planted. This raised laughter from his audience, and he could not help but smile himself. "Very well. What else do you have for me, Madame?"

She held up the next card so that others might see it at the same time as he. It was the Seven of Pentacles. "This not only signifies reward," she explained to everyone, "but a change in direction. Wealth, I think. A treasure, perhaps, but one that is not your own."

Icy fingers began working their way up Northam's spine. He kept his voice even and schooled his features. "Explain yourself."

"You have something that does not belong to you."

A small vertical crease appeared between Northam's brows. "You will have to explain that as well."

Madame Fortuna put aside the cards in her hand and fanned out the ones she had already placed on the table. The Hanged Man. The Empress. The Devil. The Seven of Pentacles. There was no mistaking the signs, and she could not fault her own interpretation. She saw that when her hand passed over the cards it was trembling. The cause was not difficult to know. She wished above anything that she could do differently by this man.

She remembered how very young he had been, the sweet innocence in his face when he had asked her that outrageous question. He was older, certainly, and his dark cobalt eyes had long since lost their guileless appeal, but Bess Bowles did not doubt his fundamental decency. That basic character trait had not been altered. She had known of its existence two and twenty years ago and she knew it now. She would have protected him if the cards had fallen differently, but here, with this man above all others, she knew they did not lie.

Against everything she would have wagered, Brendan David Hampton, sixth Earl of Northam, was the one known to all of the
ton
as the Gentleman Thief.

"It is Lady Battenbum's necklace," she said. "It can be found in your trunk. There is a small pocket in the lining for valuables. That is where it has been secreted away."

Northam's head snapped up. There was a buzzing between his ears that could not be solely explained by the frantic whispering going on at his back. "You are mistaken," he said with soft menace. But even before she shook her head and denied his words, he sensed that he was the one mistaken.

"Oh, but you must be," Lady Battenburn said. She clapped her hands together just below her rounded chin and left them there in an attitude of prayer. "Why, you have not spoken to everyone. I was sure Lord Northam would not even be among the suspects. He's as rich as Croesus. Everyone knows that."

Everyone did. While not one of the guests liked to think they were one of Louise's prime suspects, they let this small outrage pass and found their relief could mingle quite comfortably with pity for Northam's dilemma.

Lord Battenburn approached the table. "I must agree with my wife, Madame. It is not possible."

She shrugged. "Anything is possible."

Northam regarded Battenburn without emotion. The baron did not seem to want to suggest the obvious solution to their problem. Asking to search the trunk would be a serious breach of trust in itself and posed potential embarrassment for all of them. Battenburn's silence forced Northam to make the offer himself. "I invite you to look for your lady's necklace among my things."

Battenburn shook his head. "No. I will not have it."

Northam did not think he imagined the noose was getting tighter. He glanced down at the cards fanned out before him to see if the rope's circumference had indeed shrunk.

"Oh, but think of your reputation, my lord." It was Lady Powell, her hands steepled beneath her chin in a manner similar to Louise's.

Northam had not seen so much piety outside the framed painting of a Renaissance Madonna. "I think it can only be enhanced by this, my lady." He came to his feet. "Tell me that you do not think it quite thrilling that I may be the Gentlemen Thief."

Lady Powell's scarlet cheeks gave her away. "That is very wrong of you, Northam," she scolded. She looked to Southerton for assistance. "Tell him. He could be transported for this."