A Beggar’s Kingdom. Paullina Simons

but quickly it all went wrong. And I didn’t even know how wrong until it was too late.”

      “How is that my fault?”

      “Because you ruined it with your love!” she cries. “At first, the lord thought you and I were just for show, another night of staged ribaldry at the Silver Cross. But soon he began to suspect that you weren’t putting on a show, you weren’t acting—like everyone else in this godforsaken place—but that you really loved me! He thought he was using you, and then it dawned on him that it was the other way around, that you were using him! And when he suspected that I might love you back, that’s when everything I’ve been working for since I was eighteen was destroyed.”

      “Might love me back?”

      “He and I had violent words about it,” says Mallory. “I told him it wasn’t true. I swore to him I didn’t even slightly love you.”

      “Ah.”

      “He didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe that when the time came, I would leave you and travel with him to Marseilles. I vowed to him I would. I begged him, I pleaded. I tried, Julian, oh how I tried to save his pitiable life! But he was so stubborn and jealous. He wouldn’t listen.” She wrings her hands. “The other night he came and said he was taking his coin and leaving for good because he was afraid you would kill him and lure me away.”

      “He was afraid I would kill him?”

      “Yes. So you could have me all to yourself. I tried to persuade him otherwise, but it was no use. He said when he saw us together, he saw the face of love. He said he knew what it looked like because it was how he himself gazed upon me. He didn’t trust me anymore and could never trust me again.”

      It’s Julian’s turn to put his head in his hands. Mallory is right. It is his fault. How badly Julian has misjudged another man. How badly he has misjudged his woman. Again. “Fabian was right not to trust you,” Julian says. “You killed him for fifty pieces of gold.”

      “Forty-nine,” she cries, “and do you have any idea how much they’re worth?”

      As it turns out, he does. “But you were with me all night. You couldn’t have killed him.” He whispers it. He still refuses to believe it’s true. You’re not going to marry another man, are you, when you promised yourself to me, Josephine.

      “I wasn’t with you all night.”

      “How did you do it?” Julian doesn’t want to know.

      “With your help.” Mallory wipes her face. “A thousand ways to kill a human being. That’s what you taught me. Oleander, wild cherry, rosary pea. You made it so easy. You’re a very good teacher, Julian. You explained it well. I learned so much about all the wonderful plants that grow in London’s parks. I pulled off the rosary pea from a bush while we were walking in the palace garden last week. Right in front of you, I dropped the pea in my apron. All it took was a little grinding and a drink of honeyed wine. He drank around eleven. I begged him not to leave until I came back to say goodbye. Then I was with you. At four in the morning when you were asleep, I checked on him.” She shakes her head. “Poor lord. He became so angry when he realized he had been poisoned. He worked himself up into quite a rage. I must say, I didn’t expect him to go into such violent convulsions. Flailing, foaming, hitting his head, falling down right over the spot in the floor where we kept his gold. I didn’t want him to die alone. I sat with him until the end. I held his hand. I figured as soon as his body was removed, I’d get my money. No one knew it was there but me—or so I thought. But then the Baroness shepherded me out for the day, Carling and Ivy mopped up, and when I came back, the gold was gone.”

      Rosary pea! When they strolled through the park on Sundays, arm in arm like lovers, she was scheming to betray a man who loved her, to kill him and rob him and run off—by herself—without the other man who loved her.

      She dry heaves.

      Wait, no, it’s Julian. He’s the one who’s dry heaving.

      She begins to crawl to him but sees his face and stops.

      “Julian,” Mallory says from her hiding place, “I’ve never been touched or held by anyone in my whole hard life the way you hold me when you love me, and when we sleep. You gave me something I didn’t know I wanted, that I didn’t know was real. For that, I thank you. But the most important thing to me is not love, not even yours. It’s to save my own life. It’s the only one I’ve got, and it’s what my mother kept saying she wanted for me. I do this partly to honor her.”

      “You poisoned a man to honor your mother,” Julian says.

      “It was never going to last between me and you,” Mallory says. “Don’t look so upset.”

      “I don’t look upset,” he says. “I am upset. Do you know the difference?”

      “I do. But don’t be. You are young, passionate, beautiful. The girls swoon over you. Pay me no mind. You’ll find someone else.”

      “You don’t love me?”

      “I love you,” Mallory says. “But I can’t trust you.”

      “You can’t trust me?”

      “That’s right. You sold me to the lord. What you wanted came first.”

      “I didn’t sell you!” Julian exclaims. “I gave you what you wanted. I would’ve never done it. You begged me to help you. You wanted to make money. I gave that to you.”

      “And you wanted to have me—at any cost. Well, this is the price.”

      “Mallory! You killed a man who took care of you so you could get to his gold, and you’re talking to me about trust?”

      “What did you do for his gold?”

      “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t betray my benefactor.” Julian shudders. Little did he know that his girl was in the fourth ring of the ninth circle of hell. And he was right by her side. “Oh, Mallory.” He shrinks and bends like a bow.

      “You traded your body and mine,” she says. “You don’t think that’s worse?”

      “No.”

      “You whored yourself out, and you whored me out.”

      “Stop being cruel. I did it for you.”

      “You say for me. I say for you. So you could have what you want. Well, I did the things I did to have what I want.” Mallory whispers this, but her words are so deadly she might as well be screaming.

      Julian doesn’t know what to do. To tell her or not to tell her? Who’s to say his own fate will be different from the Temporal Lord’s? She’s already disposed of one man. What’s one more?

      “I saved some money, Mallory,” Julian says. “You can have it. Let’s go. Let’s run together.”

      She shakes her head.

      “You said you want to save your life. That’s also what I want. I swear to you.” Julian clenches his fist over his heart. “To save you is all I want. You’re in terrible danger. You don’t even know. Parker suspects you of foul play. And you know the punishment that awaits you. Please, let me protect you. You can’t do it alone,” he adds when he gets no reply from her.

      “Is that a threat, Julian? Are you going to give me up to the constable?” There is something merciless and frightening in Mallory’s expression.

      Julian becomes certain if he tells her about the treasure, she will kill him. She will poison his wine, too, and form a Satan’s alliance with Ilbert, and like Fabian, Julian will be tossed face down into the shallow canal by Savoy Palace.

      “I’m not going to give you up,” he says, struggling to his feet and pulling her up with him. “You are my country. My allegiance is to you.” He fights to avoid placing a confrontational