She’d drifted off thinking how unlike him that was . . . and wondering what had transpired between him and Max after she left the carriage.
Verbena entered at her bidding.
“My lady,” she said, her lips pursed in a tight circle that barely moved when she spoke. “I’m sorry to wake ye, but that Ol’ver claims he needs to speak t’you right away.” She shook her head, tsking in disgust. “I told him you’d only been abed for a few hours, but he ’nsists.”
“Send him up to me,” Victoria said. An uncomfortable feeling opened in her stomach. Any news from Oliver would likely pertain to Mr. Bemis Goodwin.
“Up here?” Verbena fairly screeched, her eyes springing wide open. “Why, m’lady, it’s not proper. That man can wait while I dress ye, for sure, my lady. ’E has no call t’be—”
Victoria shook her head. “No, it cannot wait, I’m afraid. Call for him to be sent up, and if you’re quick, perhaps you can help me into a day frock before he gets here.
Verbena muttered something about Langford, who happened to be the personal maid to Duchess Farnham and who most likely would require smelling salts should her mistress have ordered her to bring a man to her bedchamber. Even, Victoria suspected, the late duke. But Verbena disappeared from the room for a brief moment, and her mistress heard the reverberation of her voice and its direction to Oliver. Then she returned and threw herself into Victoria’s wardrobe.
“I never heard o’such a thing,” she muttered as she bustled about, pulling forth a clean chemise and a new corset for her mistress. Victoria had bathed the night before, to cleanse herself from the smoke, blood, and soot, so the small ewer of water on her night table would suffice for her to freshen up.
“ ’Avin’ a man no better’n a footman into the lady’s chamber! Why, the on’y time I ever knew o’ such a happenin’ was when Lady Meryton was tuppin’ her groom on the sly o’ her husband, y’know. An’ it wasn’t long afore such was all the talk o’ the belowstairs!”
She pulled the cotton shift down over Victoria’s head, jerking it into place as she emphasized her words. “An’ the groom, well, ’e was no prize, if ye ask me. I seen’im once an’ he had big eyebrows that looked like spiders. I’d not be wantin’ that face too close t’me, ye know, wit’ them squiggly things. An’ on ’is ears, too! But”—she pulled on Victoria’s corset to hook it in place beneath her br**sts as there came a knock on the door. “Ye can jus’ wait a minnit,” she hollered.
“Come in, Oliver,” Victoria said.
Verbena straightened in shock, barely missing clipping Victoria’s chin. She fairly flew to the chair over which she’d hung the chosen frock. “Do not come in here, Oliver,” she ordered as the door cracked. “Only one more—” Her words became muffled as Victoria’s ears were filled with the swoosh of fabric and rustle of lace and other gewgaws. She wouldn’t have chosen such a decorated dress, but it was too late now.
At last Oliver came in, the large red-haired man half skulking as if in fear of Verbena’s wrath. And rightly so. Victoria wondered what would become of them if they ever admitted their attraction for each other and actually had a normal conversation. He hunched a bit, twisting his cap in his large hands, and gave three bows in a row. “My lady, I’ve come wi’ some news.”
“O’ course ye have,” Verbena railed, tugging roughly at the buttons lining the nape of her mistress’s neck. “Else why would we let ye in ’ere? Now, spit it out, my lady’s not got all the day to wait for ye to figger out what t’say.”
“Come in, Oliver,” Victoria said. “What have you to tell me about Mr. Goodwin?”
The process was excruciating, working around Verbena’s bossy interjections and Oliver’s hesitant narrative, but Victoria at last reeled the information from his depths.
It wasn’t the least bit comforting.
Last night’s events had fixated Goodwin’s suspicions more sharply on Victoria—as if they hadn’t already been sharp enough. The fact that she’d been at the affair had been only part of it. Vague stories of her acting in an unladylike manner had blossomed. As Oliver told it, when Goodwin learned that she had been found crouched next to a ravaged man alone in a sequestered part of the garden with blood everywhere, including dripping from her mouth and an odd expression on a scratched face . . .
Blood dripping from her mouth?
It took her a moment to remember pushing the hair away from her face. Maybe blood had been on her hands and smeared near her lips.
And apparently the scratches on her face had been, not the result of blasting through a hedge of boxwood, but in self-defense from her victim as she’d bent to drink his blood.
Victoria had a healthy enough imagination to know that was exactly what Goodwin would be thinking.
“ ’E’s goin’ to come here an’ take ye right to the magistrate. Today,” Oliver concluded, still worrying his hat. “An’ he’ll listen t’Goodwin, and put ye in Newgate. M’lady, ye can’t go in there. It’s no place—”
“I have no intention of being put into Newgate,” Victoria said. “And I’ve no fear of the place anyway.” Yet a shiver skittered over her shoulders. Even for Illa Gardella, it would be unpleasant.
But the worst of it was that she wouldn’t spend much time in Newgate at all, for murderers were tried quickly. She’d be on the scaffold with a noose around her neck within a week, if Goodwin had his way.
She turned to Verbena. “I’m indisposed for the day. I will see no one. No one, Verbena. Not Max, not Kritanu, nor Sebastian Vioget.” She looked at Verbena sharply. “And don’t drink anything with Sebastian—or Max, for that matter. And you’re to tell no one of this conversation—either of you.” She glared at both of them, fixing the strength of Illa Gardella in her gaze. “I cannot risk having any of you carted off to Newgate for trying to protect me.”
“But what will you do, my lady?”
Victoria stood. “First, I will borrow your cloak. And . . . could you perhaps cut off a bit of your hair for me?”
The short puff of orange hair peeking from the low-hanging hood of Verbena’s cloak easily disguised Victoria out of the back of the house, through the mews, and onto the street nearby. She met Barth in his hackney a few blocks away, feeling as though she was making the secret assignation that Sebastian had suspected of her.