The Pirate's Duty (Regent's Revenge #3)(55)

“It will take more men than those two to fight off your brother, and you know it, child.” Mrs. Pickering frowned, her previous excitement gone as the conversation grew more serious.

A chill settled over Oriana. “I know.”

“Any word from Charles?” Mrs. Pickering asked.

Oriana clung to the velvet purse as if her life depended on it. “No.”

Bile rose in her throat because she’d lied to a woman who’d given her nothing but love and acceptance. No one, not even the vicar and his wife, would be safe until Charles got what he wanted. Perhaps not even then.

“And you’ve no plan to include Mr. Hunt in your life?” Mrs. Pickering’s brow cocked mischievously as she studied John. “He seems . . . familiar to me somehow, though I can’t for the life of me understand why. I don’t know anyone from Fowey.”

Oriana tried her best to smile. “Mr. Hunt doesn’t know about Charles,” she said. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

Mrs. Pickering nodded. “Of course.”

Oriana pressed her hand against her reticule, feeling the note beneath her fingers. Watty’s betrayal stung as if the paper itself were burning her. She had no doubt Charles had chosen the messenger intentionally to hurt her.

She should have done the same to him, should have destroyed Eliza Price’s things or taken the evidence to the magistrate and turned her brother in. It made her skin crawl the way Charles treasured them. But she hadn’t, because as long as the items were in her possession, she had leverage against him. He wouldn’t dare order his men to burn down the Roost before he’d collected his cache.

Mrs. Pickering tilted Oriana’s face toward her. “Child, is there something you want to tell me?”

Oriana’s world spun, and a sense of exhaustion filled her. “There’s so much to tell that I hardly know where to begin.” Should she confide to Mrs. Pickering about John and the passion that flared between them? Or warn the vicar’s wife about Charles’s most recent letter? Oriana didn’t want to scare her, though, and knew she could do neither. “The droll teller Old Bailey and his companion, Samuel Toak, performed at the Roost last night,” she told Mrs. Pickering instead.

“I had heard he was in the area. Come inside.” She grasped Oriana by the arm, and they walked hand in hand into the vicarage. “Did he draw a big crowd?”

“Yes,” Oriana said, clutching the purse to her breast. They walked down the corridor, past rough, red walls, familiar and comforting as they passed the vicar’s closed study doors.

Within the room, a stream of voices announced that Mr. Pickering was at home and not alone.

“Don’t touch that volume!” the vicar yelled.

“Fordyce’s?” a deep voice registered. “Haven’t you memorized this by now?”

“After you and your brothers hid my last edition? No, sir, that is the only one I have left,” Mr. Pickering complained. “Keane, my boy, if you sit there, take care not to destroy my weeklies.”

“What has gotten into the vicar, Mrs. P.?”

Mrs. Pickering squeezed her arm affectionately. “Never mind that ruckus. The vicar’s constitution is always put to the test when all the Seatons arrive, dear girl. He has everything placed exactly where he wants it. Even I dare not go in there without fear that I’ll make some blunder and set him in a dither.” She smiled, revealing a dimple in her left cheek. “But he’ll survive this invasion of his domain just as he has the others.”

“I didn’t know the earl’s sons had business with the vicar. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.”

“Of course, you should have come. We are to have tea and read Evelina, and I have been looking forward to it all week!”

“But your guests—”

“Can be managed,” she hastened to finish. “The viscount is in residence with his wife, and Lady Adele is out to sea with her captain.” Something thumped against a wall as Mrs. Pickering led Oriana to the drawing room, the woman’s poise never faltering. “The study is not very large, you see. And the boys, well . . . their tall, broad bodies leave the vicar little room to maneuver in his study.” She paused to look at her bookcase. “Did I mention he is quite fond of his books and would not see them petted?”

The vicar was a pious man of stalwart morals. His love of history and theology, especially Fordyce’s Sermons, occupied his time when he wasn’t shepherding his flock.

Oriana followed Mrs. Pickering to one of the settees. The drawing room was a pleasant space overlooking a courtyard where a hedge of hydrangeas and rosebushes framed a table and set of chairs. This room, with tiny dust particles dancing in sunlight, had always been her favorite. Here, bookcases lined one wall, making it easy to find a tome to read on a lazy afternoon. A cozy hearth filled with furze and turf commanded another wall. Above the hearth, a portrait of the evangelist John Wesley smiled down upon the seating arrangements—a settee, an overstuffed chair, and a side table perched over an Axminster carpet.

“I’m curious, Mrs. P. Why would Mr. Pickering think the Seatons would destroy his books?” Oriana asked as she and Mrs. Pickering sat down on the settee.

“Humph. You could say he and the Seatons have a bizarre rapport. My husband’s duties have oft brought him into their fold under peculiar circumstances.”