An Honorable Deception (The Imposters #3)

Chapter 12

TWELVE

A re you going to tell me exactly what happened to Lavinia while I was gone?”

Ordinarily, Yates would have matched his stride to Marigold’s, in deference to his niece or nephew, who definitely slowed her from her usual pace. But she could keep up with him today. He wasn’t certain if the energy pulsing through his veins was worry or frustration or a bit of both, but he needed to get to the gymnasium to work it off. Marigold, if she cared to make excuses, could blame his speed on the lightly falling rain.

His sister sighed, but she kept up. “It’s my fault.”

He stopped, turned. Frowned.

She looked at the weeping sky rather than him, raindrops gathering. “We ... had a bit of an argument.”

The words were simple enough. The meaning wasn’t. He shook his head, but that did nothing to clear it. “You don’t argue with Lavinia. You have plenty of serious conversations. You even disagree, but you never argue.”

The way she winced and continued to look at everything but him made a sick knot of dread cinch tight in his gut. “No. You didn’t. You did not —”

“You’re my brother!” She spread her arms wide, the flush on her cheeks saying she knew very well that it would do nothing to appease him.

He muttered something in Romani that Hector had never given him the exact translation for, but whose gist he understood well enough. And it suited his mood right now. He spun back toward the path.

“Yates.” Marigold hurried to catch up, a plea in her tone. “I would say I’m sorry, that I shouldn’t have overstepped—but I’m not. It needed to be said. I’m not going to stand around and watch while you—”

“What? While I what? ” A lock of hair fell onto his forehead, and he shoved it away like he wished he could her words. “Leopard stripes, Marigold, I’m a grown man, not a lovesick adolescent. I can be her friend without it breaking my heart.” He yanked open the door to the gymnasium and stormed inside.

Was that what Lavinia’s reaction had really been about last night? Marigold? Had the bit about Alethia been an excuse?

His sister slipped in behind him before the door crashed shut. “Can you? Be her friend? Are you certain?”

He strode for the skipping ropes. “You need to take a step away from whatever you think your role is as my older sister and consider your best friend. Does she look normal to you? Was she acting normal yesterday? This morning?”

Marigold was silent behind him. When he turned, rope in hand, she was sitting on the weight bench but not reaching for any of the handheld dumbbells. “No,” she whispered, and her brows drew together in concern. “Have we been working her too hard? She’s seemed all right, aside from the expected muscle pain. But I don’t like the way she was rubbing at her chest this morning.”

Yates didn’t either. “We can call the doctor if you think we should. But I don’t think it’s only the physical training.”

“Grief is a hard thing. A long thing.” Her eyes went unfocused, and the rain picked up outside, hammering on the roof and making a din in the vaulted room. “Sometimes I forget how long it took me to stop being angry at Papa for leaving us with no reserves. To stop being angry at Mama for dying so young. I forget how fast I ran to try to outpace it.”

They’d directed their run toward the Imposters—something to keep them busy, to occupy their minds, give a bit of hope. They hadn’t known if it would work, monetarily. It had been a risk. They’d sunk the last few pounds they had into business cards and those club memberships. But praise God, it had paid off.

“She’s doing the same thing, I think. With the files.” Yates swung the rope into motion, his legs falling into their usual rhythm without the need for thought. “And I’m glad we can give her that outlet. But she needs more than work, Marigold. You know better than anyone that our work is only going to paint the world as a bleak place. It isn’t going to give her her joy back.” Was it so wrong that he wanted to do that where he could?

No. And yet, her point in the study had been valid too. Alethia was ... intriguing. It wasn’t her beauty. It wasn’t the fact that she needed their help. It was the way she smiled at Zelda. The delight in her eyes when Penelope had come out to greet them yesterday. When he had an arm around her to support her, it didn’t feel like it ever had with Lavinia—there was no familiarity, no tangled hopes and dreams and reality, no expectation.

There was simply the quickening of a pulse, the acknowledgment of attraction, the first hint of life peeking out of soil in the spring. There was the shimmering light of what could be, brightened every time she looked up at him with those too-wise eyes that seemed to see him in exactly the same way. A possibility. A future that could unfold, perhaps, if they wanted it to. If they pursued it. If it was what God wanted for them. It was discovery waiting to happen. Exploration inviting them onward.

He’d never experienced that before. Lavinia he had simply loved forever—there had been no start to it, no bolt of realization. He had no memory of his childhood in which he didn’t love her and know— know —that they were meant for each other.

No other woman had really caught his eye. He’d hoped one would, as he worked so hard to resign those old dreams of Lavinia to the box of memories in which they belonged. Even as he knew he was in no position to marry, he’d hoped he’d want to. He’d believed that falling in love with someone else would bring the healing he craved.

But maybe he’d had it wrong. Maybe he couldn’t give his heart to anyone else until he’d fully won it back from Lavinia. Maybe he had to see her as a true friend before he was ready for that—the missing piece in the years when he’d worked so hard to get over her but hadn’t been able to know if he’d managed it fully.

Marigold stood long enough to grab her usual hand weights and sat again. “I know you want to make her laugh. I appreciate that. But we can’t give her true joy, Yates. She can only find that in the Lord, and through Him, in herself.”

“We both know He works through His people, though.” Seeing her open her mouth for whatever her next argument would be, he shook his head and picked up his pace. “Stop. I hear your warning. I understand it. But you didn’t see how she looked at me last night when I tried to help her up from the floor.” A deliberate understatement of his help , yes. He wasn’t stupid. “She acted like I’d burned her. Like she couldn’t even talk to me anymore.”

His sister winced. “That’s not ... I didn’t mean...” She sighed. “Why is everything in life so complicated?”

He snorted a laugh and gave the rope a twist on every other jump. “She said it was because of Alethia. That she didn’t want to get in the way of anything that may ... develop. Between us.” It was the first time he’d given voice to the thought, and who could he test it on other than Marigold? Even if she frustrated the life out of him sometimes, she still occupied the largest portion of his world.

Marigold paused with the weight halfway up, her eyes going wide. “You and Alethia?” She set the weight down and jumped to her feet. Well, she didn’t jump. She stood. With a hand bracing her back. But any other time in life, she would have jumped. “I think this baby has blinded me. You like her? Like that?”

A strange little fizz filled him at the thought. Was that normal? Expected? He didn’t know. And didn’t know if it should make him smile or frown. “I like her.” He could have tacked on an of course , as if his liking was no different from Merritt’s or Marigold’s or Lavinia’s. He lifted his brows instead and went for honesty. “Do you like her? For me, I mean?”

His sister paused before him, a grin on her face. “I don’t know. I mean, I already claimed the falling-in-love-with-a-client script. It’s a bit redundant for you to play out the same idea.”

He snorted a laugh. “Not the same sort of client, I’d say. She’s...” He searched for the right word, but only one sprang to mind. “Haunted. I’m glad the Lord led her to us, but I don’t think our usual investigative skills are going to solve her real problems. I’m not saying a romance will either. I know it won’t. But I want to know her. To understand her. I want the chance to. Does that make sense?”

Marigold nodded and when she eased a bit closer, he took the hint and let the rope go still so he didn’t hit her with it. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his waist. “We’ll sort out where her ayah is. Bring justice to whoever tried to kill her. Then we’ll be normal people for her, friends she can rely on. You can court her. Fall in love. It’ll be brilliant.”

He wasn’t so sure it would be that simple, that her grace toward the Caesars and his home would extend to him when she realized he was Mr. A—and telling her would be necessary before any real commitments could happen. She needed to trust him with whatever haunted her. He needed to trust her with the secrets that kept food on the table.

Those were no small mountains to climb. He was game—but he couldn’t speak for her.

He dropped a kiss onto the top of Marigold’s head and nudged her away. “I forgive you for mortifying me with Lavinia. On the condition that you never, ever have such a conversation with Alethia.”

Marigold laughed and backed out of rope-swinging range again. “Forgiveness shouldn’t be conditional.”

He sent her a look and started skipping again. “I think I was a gem of a brother when it came to you and Merritt. I never once threatened to dismember him ... though there may have been mention of feeding him to Leonidas if he hurt you. I think I deserve the same measure of respect when it comes to my potential romance.”

She gave a too-serious nod. “Agreed. Only lions as threats. No mention of your delicate, fragile heart.”

They worked through the rest of their routines in peace, with the normal sounds of equipment and exertion and rain. She left the gymnasium before he did, but he didn’t mind that either. And when he walked outside after his usual hour, the rain felt like heaven’s kiss on his hot skin. He tilted his face up to it and let it wash the sweat away.

He glanced toward the house, knowing that the rain would have kept everyone off the balconies this morning. But he spotted a figure standing at one of the French doors. Given only size and shape, he couldn’t have said whether it was Lavinia or Alethia. But given the position in the house, he knew it was their newest friend.

Zelda had muttered something about nightmares she’d been having, though she’d say no more than that. He hoped they hadn’t plagued her last night. Prayed that she stood there now with the faith that God held her in His hand. That her very legitimate worries would be resolved.

He knew she wasn’t looking out waiting for him to emerge or tracking his walk to the stables. She’d be worrying over Samira. Wondering who had tried to kill her, who had succeeded in killing her friend. Praying they weren’t still hunting her, that they wouldn’t target her family when her body never turned up.

He wiped rain and sweat from his face and hurried on his way. He didn’t like cases with so much at stake—life or death ought to be the realm of the police, not a PI firm. He questioned, for the thousandth time, whether he’d made the right decision in asking his friend at Scotland Yard to keep quiet about it and not file an official report. To not draw any official links between the murder of Mrs. Rheams, which had officially been blamed on street thugs, and the attempted murder of Alethia.

His instincts still said that bringing the police into it would have been dangerous. It would have made the papers, the culprits would have gone underground, Samira would have likely vanished for good, and another gunman likely would have been sent to silence Alethia forever.

At least now, no one knew where she was, or whether she was even alive. No one knew to come after her. He’d bought her that much safety at least.

Hector and Franco already had the stalls mostly mucked by the time he joined them, but they didn’t object as he grabbed his usual pitchfork and moved toward the two remaining ones. They simply smiled, greeted him in Romani, and went back to their conversation as Penelope jumped to her usual place on his shoulder and settled in for the ride.

It was the same conversation they had every Wednesday, arguing over which brother would tend the cassowaries and which would take the vardo to Alnwick for supplies. They knew very well that Franco would tend the birds and Hector would run the errands, but the debate was part of the routine, and Yates knew better than to tell them it was pointless.

He’d finished clearing one stall, refilling it with fresh straw, and was moving to the last one when the brothers called out their farewells. That didn’t give him pause. What made him straighten was when they called out a good morning—in English.

Given that, he wasn’t surprised when Lavinia dashed into the stables. Except that he was entirely surprised to see Lavinia dash into the stables, waving a magazine in her hand despite the rain, victory bright and beguiling on her face.

She was still dressed for the gymnasium, and he hadn’t seen her hair in anything but its current braid for over a week—unprecedented since she’d first put it up at seventeen. She hadn’t thought to grab an umbrella, so she was wet and bedraggled and clearly didn’t care a bit. “Look what I’ve found!”

He hadn’t heard that note of excitement in her voice since they were fifteen and she’d been the first to discover the new leopard cub curled up beside its mother in their cage. He planted the pitchfork so he could lean on it and moved Penelope’s tail out of the way when she flicked it in front of his mouth. “What have you found? And why are you out here in the rain to show me instead of showing Marigold inside?”

“I heard the water running into her tub and didn’t imagine even a friend as good as I should interrupt.” Grinning, she all but danced over to him, wielding the magazine like a trophy. “Look. Just look. ”

It was, not surprisingly, a copy of the London Ladies Journal. They’d kept every single edition of the magazine since Gemma had first started writing for them six years ago. More surprising was that the date on the cover said it was more than three years old—and it was considerably dryer than Lavinia herself. She must have been protecting it as she ran from house to stables. He opened it to the page she had marked with a slip of paper, and he didn’t have to ask what had grabbed her attention.

A full-page advert greeted him, with the same image that the tie pin boasted topping the article. Or letter? It seemed to be one of those announcements magazines and newspapers sometimes ran, introducing a new venture or charity in search of donations and sponsors. It was written like a letter to the general populace.

Our Dearest Christian Friends,

It is with great joy that my fellow board members and I announce the foundation of a new venture that will improve our fair city and do our duty as Christians by those less fortunate than ourselves; specifically, the many poor women and children from about our proud empire who find themselves stranded in England with no means to return home to their distant colonies.

Far too often these destitute and desperate souls must resort to crime of the vilest sort, given their lack of mastery of the English tongue and unskilled qualifications for more gainful employment. No gentle soul can help but be both concerned and alarmed at the increasing number of such creatures crowding our streets. The current homes for their kind are overcrowded already; and my colleagues and I cannot help but think that our vision will provide a new model for them, allowing for more people to be given aid and, more importantly, be sent back to the homes they left.

With your generous benefaction, we will open the doors of the Empire House on the first of October in this year of our Lord 1907. A suitable location has already been procured in the Strand and is being transformed for its noble task even as I pen this letter. Already such admirable leaders as the respected Lord Vernon, the esteemed Mr. Rheams, and the well-traveled Lord Babcock have joined with us to ensure our aspirations succeed. Their combined expertise on matters of governance, business, and geography have guided us well toward this revolutionary new model of charity.

We trust that you, good friend, will be as eager to add your name to our list of sponsors. We pray you will make your initial donations to the direction above by 1 September in order for your name to be included in our first comprehensive list of donors, to be published upon the opening of the charity’s doors. Already a grand gala is being planned for our first anniversary in autumn of 1908, and it is with great confidence that we have settled upon the motto we know will guide our organization henceforth and forevermore:

The Empire House. Where We Welcome Britain’s Distant Children Home.

Yates’s gaze moved to the list of sponsor names in the left margin, and he felt his own grin rising to match Lavinia’s. “I daresay there has been some turnover, but it matches what you’ve found, doesn’t it?”

“Nearly exactly—and what you found. Those men you observed at Brooks’s.” She bounced on her toes, even clapped her hands together. “And there’s an address! Not that we couldn’t have found it otherwise, but it saves us that work. Everything we need to look into them more, right there in one article.”

He nodded, handing the magazine back to Lavinia when Penelope tried to grab it. He tapped the monkey’s hands to tell her to lower them—which she did, but with a hoot of displeasure.

Lavinia held the magazine to her middle. “We should go. Investigate. I need to be trained in surveillance, too, don’t I? I can make an appointment as a potential donor and tour the place. Perhaps we’ll learn something, why the men after Alethia have this charity in common.”

The Empire House could be a cover, however inadvertently, for something darker. And not that he wanted to drag Lavinia into anything questionable, but ... well, if she was going to be an Imposter for any length of time, she would have to be exposed to the often unsavory nature of their discoveries sooner or later.

“Agreed. I don’t really want to turn back around and return to London so soon, but observing it for ourselves will be quicker than trying to glean more from archived sources. And we can drop by the Barremore residence, too, to assure them Lady Alethia is well.”

Her eyes were so bright, one might think it was Christmas. And that she was six years old. “When? Today? Tomorrow? Should I go and pack?”

He chuckled and picked up his pitchfork again. “Might as well make it today, I suppose. See if Lady Alethia has a new letter written for her mother when you go back in, will you? And you ought to see if Marigold has any thoughts on costuming—just in case you need to pose as anyone but yourself.”

“Costuming.” She said it dreamily, and no doubt that would carry her right back to the house.

He dug his fork into the soiled straw of Pardulfo’s stall and swung to dump it to the wheelbarrow, pausing when he saw that she hadn’t retreated. She’d moved a step closer and was properly in the way. “Vin. Move.”

She did—away from the wheelbarrow, but even more into the stall, leaning against the side. “Do you think she’ll lend me one of those monstrous hats? I’ve been dying to wear one.”

He laughed again as he shook the straw free and swung around for his next scoop. “They’re magnificent, aren’t they?”

“The absolute best.” That she thought so was to be expected. That she still stood there while he shoveled manure inches from her face made him wonder if she was really present or mentally hunting through his sister’s extensive dressing room.

The latter. Definitely. He nearly clipped her with the next round of muck when she straightened without warning, an exclamation of “The purple one!” on her lips. Which turned to a squeal. And a laugh.

Yates planted the pitchfork into the straw, gripped her by the hips, and lifted her onto the divider between the stalls to get her out of the way.

Only after he’d already done it did he think that the move probably fell under the same heading of unwise interactions she’d pointed out last night. Yes, he’d have done the same to Marigold if she were so absent-mindedly in his way. But Lavinia wasn’t Marigold, as she so helpfully pointed out.

Lavinia was probably thinking the same thing. That was probably why the clouds of costume-induced bliss shifted in her eyes, and different clouds drifted in, taking their place. But what alarmed him was the look of pain that crossed her face. She sat upright, her gaze going distant—and then she tumbled backward, vanishing behind the half wall in a flurry of flailing limbs and one breathless gasp.