Page 78 of Immortal Rose

“Why yes, of course I’ll use my vast array of connections to ensure you can see what is on that ship,” Reddy deadpanned. “How very brave of you to finally ask for help, Fox.”

“If you aren’t otherwise engaged this evening, I have some plans that may be of interest to you,” Hugh said, his mouth lifting with a smirk.

“After the stunt you pulled with that adorably foulmouthed orphan, you are now officially out of favors,” Reddy said sourly. “You know I’m not going to make that child do a lick of work. He’s been put up in a bed fit for a king and fed enough sweets by Mrs. Porter to give him a stomachache.”

The point wasn’t for the child to do work. Reddy had the means to support the boy and provide an education for him—his friend had the means to support an army of orphans and did, though he hid those donations unaccountably well, as if embarrassed by his own generosity.

It was simply that in the last few years, Hugh felt Reddy had become . . . unmoored. There was a sense of the man drifting through his days, without the person who had once anchored them. He needed more people relying on him outside of his work. He needed more people to care for him. It would keep him rooted when the next storm threatened to carry him off into darker horizons.

“Shame,” Hugh said, making as if to reach for the door. “I thought you would enjoy slipping into Briarwood Palace to filch something Lockwood needs for this deuced perfume.”

Reddy’s jaw sawed back and forth. He sent an accusatory look through the window, along with a suffering sigh.

“Damn you,” he said. “You know I can’t resist a spot of midnight burglary.”

And with a crack of the ribbons, they were off.

“I suppose this is what I don’t understand,” Reddy whispered as he hauled himself through the window Hugh had unlatched with his penknife. He dropped lightly into the waiting study. “Lockwood says that, per this mysterious book only she can read, Immortal Rose needs some imaginary fairy nectar, and you simply believed her? You?”

Hugh leaned back out to ensure the patrolling police were well away before he shut the window once more and closed the velvet curtains.

“Yes,” Hugh said, having already had this argument with himself. “She has no reason to lie. Lockwood wants her inheritance more than her next breath.”

He gestured toward the room and its refined, if not opulent, decor. Even Reddy, himself no stranger to gold, had gone a bit saucer-eyed at the palace as they’d approached on foot.

“So then take the second option,” Reddy said. “Finish off some horrendous criminal who committed unspeakable acts and make the bloody perfume.”

“I’m not certain killing off a criminal already destined to die would work,” Hugh said. “The book says it needs to be a life of equal worth.”

Reddy arched an ironic brow.

“Don’t say it,” Hugh growled, lighting the same candle he’d left on a nearby shelf. “His Majesty acts in accordance with the law always. He is the law, for all intents and purposes.”

“Funny how that works,” Reddy muttered. “And anyway, I was going to suggest Glenmoor.”

Hugh turned toward him, speechless.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of it,” Reddy said. “Two birds, one stone. If he’s been appointed regent, that is a life nearly equal to that of a king, no?”

No . . .

No.

“Lockwood won’t kill anyone,” Hugh cut in as he stalked across the room to the desk. “I saw it in her face.”

“Not even for all this?” Reddy swept an appreciative gaze around, giving a low whistle of approval at the cabinet of expensive wines and liquors. “I say, it could give a man ideas.”

Hugh’s hand stilled where he had been fiddling with the hidden compartment’s latch. “Don’t tell me you’re reconsidering your sworn allegiance to bachelorhood.”

Reddy lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug, picking up a statuette of Venia to inspect it. “An alliance between my business and hers would be something for the ages, wouldn’t it? And even you must admit she’d be a joy to wake to each morning and—”

The latch gave a hard click under the force of Hugh’s grip. The key clattered to the floor before he could catch it.

“Yes, if you don’t mind getting mauled by her claws over the breakfast table,” Hugh muttered, stooping to retrieve it.

From a purely objective viewpoint, Lockwood didn’t possess the great beauty that might inspire rapturous sonnets or drive a lover to the heights of madness and obsession, both of which sounded rather tedious. But . . . even he couldn’t deny she was lovely in the natural, effusive way of a wild rose at full bloom. She was thorned, to be certain, and that baited a man’s prideful need to possess something dangerous. To tame it.

But Lockwood would never be tamed.