Fortune Favors the Wicked Read Free Page B

been promised through their earlier correspondence. Was perfectly happy to publish the piece on commission.
    As a novel.
    There’s no way a blind man could have done these things, Pitman said. The chair behind his desk creaked as he leaned back; the scent of cheap tobacco arose from his clothing, assaulting Benedict’s nostrils. You’ve got a wonderful imagination, Frost, but this is a fiction, not a memoir. Anyone could see that. And then he laughed. A blind man could see that .
    The precious manuscript pages, marked out with the guiding lines of Benedict’s noctograph, had not been left with Pitman. Nor with any other printing house; they had laughed him out almost as soon as they met him.
    There would be no fortune of his own making. Not if it were up to the publishers of London.
    Had he thought he wanted stew? His throat closed, choking him.
    With a deep breath, Benedict summoned calm. Not-Mrs. Smith was speaking to him. “I have heard it said that one’s other senses become more acute when sight is lost. Have you found it so, or is that rubbish?”
    I’ve found that to be utter shite . But the question was posed with courtesy, and so he answered it in kind. “I have been told that, usually by sighted people intending to offer unwanted comfort. But the effort I’ve invested in making my way about a sighted world has convinced me otherwise. Rather, I have trained myself to notice things others need not.”
    â€œSuch as a veiled woman.”
    â€œI doubt I am the only one who noticed you, madam.” Surely anyone who caught sight of a veiled woman would be curious.
    Benedict had never dropped the habit of wondering what people looked like, even after four years of living by his ears and wits. Mrs. Smith possessed the voice of a beautiful woman. But beautiful in what way? Was she buxom and dark? Slim and golden? Buxom and golden? Slim and dark?
    There were so many ways a woman might be beautiful, and he missed seeing them all. If he had met her at another time, in another place—at an ambassador’s party, maybe, or even among the long shelves in the bookshop that had once been his parents’—he might have been flirt enough to read her features with his fingertips.
    â€œI hope you are,” she replied, and for a moment he thought she was granting him permission to do just that.
    â€œI . . . beg your pardon?”
    â€œI hope you are the only one who noticed me, I mean. I am here to listen, not to draw attention.”
    Ah. Yes. That made more sense than a mysterious, cultured woman craving the attentions of a rough stranger. “Would that I could achieve the same,” he said lightly. “But when one enters a room by smacking a cane on the floor, one must expect to be looked at.”
    â€œIt is certainly an effective way to announce one’s presence. There are—I imagine—men and women aplenty in the ton who would adopt the same method at a ball, if they only thought of it.”
    â€œMy sister is twenty and covets a Season of her own. Perhaps I will recommend the use of a cane to her as a method of becoming notable.”
    His metal-tipped cane, solid and dependable as a third hand, didn’t clear a path through the world so much as it revealed its shape. Different floors had their own unique feel; the movement of air about a room told Benedict something of its size. This common room, for example: its air was humid and close on his face and ungloved hands. A great crowd surely sat within, then, each pair of lungs a bellows and each heart a tiny hearth. People could be felt, just as floors could.
    Stillness could be felt too, when a crowd became silent bit by bit. How could he learn their secrets if his mere presence brought them to silence? How could he gain the royal reward amidst useless clamor and gossipy whispers?
    He ought to have begun by using his friend Hugo Starling’s letter of introduction to the local vicar,