This Wicked Gift (Carhart 0.5)(3)

So yes, Christmas was for the young. It was for blue-eyed angels like Miss Lavinia Spencer, who would never be confronted with the true ugliness of life. It was for women who wished customers a merry Christmas without imagining the holiday could be anything other than happy. Christmas was not for men who’d had one of two fantasies shattered in one evening.

It was the second fantasy that had drawn William here.

Miss Spencer was slim and vivacious. She couldn’t help but move her hands when she talked. She smiled far too much. She blushed far too easily. And her hair was forever falling out of its pins into unruly cinnamon waves that clung to her neck. She was one of those souls who remembered countless trivialities—names of customers, names of cats, the health of everyone’s spouse.

If he’d received even a fraction of those ten thousand pounds, as promised…Well, that was a subject for many a cold and lonely night indeed. Because he’d have found a way to get her into his bed, over and over.

William paused, his hand on the spine of a book, and attempted to banish the image that heated thought conjured. Miss Lavinia Spencer, undoing the ties that fastened her cloak. The wool would fall to the floor in a swirl, and those cinnamon waves of hair would slip from their pins. He couldn’t think of that. Not now. Not here. It was not, however, his strength of mind that sent the vision away. It was the sound of speech.

“Vinny, you have to understand.” The recalcitrant whine of her brother was barely audible from where William stood, obscured by the shelves.

Over the past year, the elder Mr. Spencer had come into the shop less frequently. William had noted with some disapproval that it was Miss Spencer who’d taken his place downstairs. She’d greeted customers and accepted deliveries. Her brother, James, had been conspicuously absent from useful employment.

“It was just a temporary loan. He needed the money to pay the guards so he could get at his goods without his creditors finding out.” James ended on a querulous note, as if his bald assertion yearned to become a question.

“Bribe the guards, you mean.” That was Miss Spencer—incorruptible, of course. She was speaking in an almost whisper, but the shop was quiet enough that William could hear every word, echoing amongst the books.

“But Mr. Cross promised me ten percent! And he even drew up a proper partnership agreement. Since you never let me help in here, I thought I could find a way to pay Papa’s bills on my own. I was going to buy you a Christmas present. When’s the last time you had a new dress, Vinny?”

“I’d rather have my two pounds. You are getting to the part where you took the money without asking me?”

“I thought I’d be able to slip it back in before you found out. After all, Mr. Cross’s warehouse was supposed to contain three hundred bricks of tea, and several casks of indigo. Ten percent would have been a fortune.”

There was a moment of disapproving silence. “I see. Since you do not seem to be weighed down by exorbitant shipping profits, I must conclude your foray into trade was unsuccessful.”

A sullen scuffle of shoes followed. “After I gave him the two pounds, Cross told me we needed fifty more to pay the excise men.”

“I see.”

William had heard of similar tricks before. It was the sort of fraudulent promise made by ruffians who preyed on the greedy and the indolent—a pledge of fabulous wealth, soon, if only the mark in question handed over a tiny amount. It started with a few shillings. Next, the trickster would require three pounds for a bribe, followed by fifty for customs. The fraud only ended when the target was bled dry.

“Well, of course I saw through him then,” the younger Spencer continued. “I called him a cheat. And then he told me he’d have me up in front of a magistrate for failing to deliver on my promissory note.”

“Your what?”

“Uh.” James drew the syllable out. His hesitance echoed among the books. “You recall that partnership agreement?”

“Yes…?” She did not sound the least bit encouraging.

“It turns out that paper I signed was actually a promissory note for ten pounds.”

The inarticulate cry of protest Miss Spencer made was not angelic at all. William peeked around the corner. She was seated on her stool, her head in her hands. She rocked back and forth, the seat tipping precariously. Finally she spoke through her fingers. “You didn’t read it when you signed it?”

“He looked honest.”

Wood scraped against the slate floor as Miss Spencer pushed her stool back and stood. William pulled his head behind the shelves before she could spot him.

“Oh, my Lord,” she swore, downright unrighteous in her wrath. “A man offered you a partnership predicated upon attempted bribery, and you didn’t question his integrity?”

“Um. No?”

William did not dare breathe into the silence that followed. Then James spoke again. “Vinny, if I must appear before a magistrate, could we claim—”

“Be quiet,” she snapped furiously. “I’m thinking.”

So was William. Frauds and cheats, if they were any good, made excessively good barristers for themselves in court. The common person could not risk a loss at law. William would not want to stand in young James’s shoes before a magistrate. He gave it even odds the boy would prevail.

“No,” Miss Spencer said, almost as if she’d heard William’s thoughts, and decided to correct him. “We’d win, but we’d have to pay a barrister. No magistrate.”