Her Scandalous Pursuit

by Candace Camp

  As she set to work cleaning and doctoring their wounds, Theo began a recital of their evening, punctuated by comments from his companions, ending with a description of the fight. “So then this other chap jumped me from behind before I could pick the villain up off the floor—”

  “Desmond cracked the man with a cudgel he took off the other ruffian,” Reed interrupted, a faint note of pride in his voice. “But then one of the guards tackled him, and I had to go after that fellow.”

  “I kicked ’im in the shins,” Tom inserted.

  “So you did.” Reed frowned faintly. “I suppose we should have taken you back to the orphanage.”

  “That’s all right,” the boy assured him. “I can get one of them breakfasts like I had ’ere last time.”

  “He’s right. A bit of food would do nicely now,” Theo commented. “Now, Thiz, don’t growl.”

  “I’m not.” Thisbe bit off her words. “Much as I am enjoying hearing all about you three brawling in a dockside tavern, it would be nice to learn the result of your adventures. Did you find out anything from this man you went to find?”

  “Oh. Well.” Theo glanced at his brother, then Desmond. “As to that...”

  “He slipped out in the middle of the fracas,” Desmond admitted.

  “Men!” Cornelia said with disgust, rapping her cane on the floor and standing up. “Absolutely useless, the lot of them. It’s clear, Thisbe, that you and I will have to take care of the matter.”

  * * *

  THISBE WAS AT breakfast the next morning when the dowager duchess walked into the dining room. “Grandmother. I’m surprised to see you up so early.” The dowager duchess usually had only tea and toast in her room before she began the long process of her toilette, coming down for a full breakfast much later.

  “We should make an early start of it,” Cornelia replied.

  “Start of what?”

  “Finding out what the boys did not.”

  “You really mean that?” Thisbe stared at her.

  “Of course I meant it. I said it, didn’t I? We’d have gone last night except that the boys would have made a fuss. No doubt they left the place in such a shambles we wouldn’t have been able to get any information, anyway. Better to start fresh this morning.”

  A smile spread across Thisbe’s face. “You’re right. We’ll show them what women can accomplish.”

  It took some time to start off, as her grandmother did not believe in “gulping her food—bad for the digestion,” and it took the duchess a lengthy time to don hat, gloves and fur muff, as well as change her cloak twice. There was a further delay when it was discovered that Alex and Con had climbed up to hide inside the baggage compartment of the carriage—their presence revealed by their giggles—and had to be returned to their nurse.

  The coachman looked startled when the dowager duchess directed him to drive to the Double Roses tavern, but he knew better than to question Cornelia, and the carriage rolled off.

  “It’s rather early for tavern customers,” Thisbe ventured mildly. “And surely he wouldn’t be so daring as to return to the same place, anyway, knowing that we are searching for him.”

  “One should never underestimate the stupidity of others,” the duchess told her. “However, I don’t expect to find him there. It’s the barkeep I plan to talk to.”

  The docks were bustling at this time of the day, but the nearby street where the Double Roses stood was almost deserted. The area, which by night was undoubtedly disreputable enough, looked even more wretched by the light of day. Refuse lined the edges of the street. Cobblestones had been worn away or pried up, leaving an obstacle course for the carriage. The buildings were dirty, their signs faded, shutters missing, and over it all was a stench that came partly from its nearness to the Thames and partly from causes Thisbe thought it best not to consider.

  When the carriage rattled to a stop and Thompkins scrambled down to open the door, he wore a worried frown. “Ma’am, this doesn’t look the sort of place for a lady.”

  “I’m sure it’s not.” Cornelia climbed out. Thisbe paused to grab the spare umbrella from beneath the seat and followed her grandmother.

  Thompkins trailed along unhappily. “I best go inside with you. I’ll get me whip.”

  “Nonsense. You must stay with the horses. They are far more likely to appeal to a thief than two mere women.”

  Thisbe refrained from pointing out that when one of those mere women wore diamonds on her fingers, throat and earlobes, thieves were apt to be interested. She followed her grandmother through the door of the tavern and stopped beside her, surveying the wreckage of the room. Tables and chairs lay overturned and broken among great puddles of ale that had not yet soaked into the floor, and the whole place reeked of cheap alcohol. Pieces of glass and pottery littered the room, along with the few mugs and glasses that were still intact. Even most of the metal tankards were dented.

  The place was empty save for a sullen-looking boy pushing a broom. At their entrance he stopped, his jaw dropping. “Cor...”

  The dowager duchess raised her eyebrows, and when he said nothing further, she said, “Mind your manners, boy. Where is the proud owner of this establishment?”

  At her words, a man stood up from behind the bar, his eyes as wide and round as the boy’s. “Blimey.”

  “How eloquent,” the dowager duchess said acidly.

  “Um.” The barkeep bobbed a little bow. “Ma’am. I—We’re no’ open yet.”

  “I am not here to partake of your wares. I am here for information. I’m looking for a man, a regular patron of yours. He is the one, I believe, who started the carnage here last night.”

  “Grieves?” He goggled.

  “I presume. Thisbe, describe the man.”

  “Big and blond. He was with some guards from the warehouse.”

  “That’d be him,” the boy interjected. “Thick as thieves, they are.”

  The other man, seemingly having gathered his wits about him, frowned at the lad. “’Oi! Shut your bone-box. We’re no’ blowers here.”

  “You told ’er ’is name!” the boy protested.

  “Aye, well, I was surprised, wan’t I?”

  “This man, Grieves, must have an address,” Thisbe said.

  “Not tellin’ you where ’e kips.” The man crossed his arms defiantly.

  “Then I suppose you aren’t interested in this.” The duchess extracted a gold coin from her reticule and held it up. “Pony, I believe is the vulgar term for it.” She turned toward the boy. “Perhaps you might be more willing.”

  Before the lad could say anything, the barkeep said, “’E stays at Dot’s crib, next to that crimping shop.”

  “I’d need something a bit more particular than that,” Cornelia said. “An address, for instance.”

  This idea seemed to flummox the man, so Thisbe added helpfully, “The name of the street? The number?”

  The other two looked at each other and finally the man said, “It don’t have a blinkin’ name. That little lane where the Blue Ox is.”

  “Off Water Street,” the boy added helpfully and pointed to his right. “Ain’t no number.”

  Thisbe suppressed a sigh. “I presume Dot is a woman, and her crib must be her house. Is that right?”

  “’Course.” The boy looked at her as if she were daft.

  “Describe it, then, so we can find it.”

  He did, at such length and in so much cant, that Thisbe had difficulty following it all, but when he had finished, she provided a summary. “It’s a narrow house beside one with a red door. It has a window on each floor, but only the top window still has shutters on it. Is that right?”

  “Bang up,” he agreed and came forward to take the coin the duchess held out, but the older man was surprisingly quick and beat him to it.

  “This better be correct,” the duchess
warned, favoring both with the iron-hard gaze that her servants and family justifiably feared. “If he doesn’t live there, I shall send the police to this establishment to investigate the brawl which took place here last night, in which my grandsons were most grievously injured.” Then, with a jingle of her reticule, she softened a trifle and said, “But if that is his home, there’s another one of these in it for you.”

  Both men nodded eagerly. “No gammon, honor bright.”

  “I thought those men were English,” the duchess said to Thisbe as they returned to the carriage.

  “They are.”

  “Then they ought to talk like Englishmen. What in heaven’s name is a crimping shop?”

  “That one I know—Theo once told me. It’s a cheap sort of boardinghouse where they frequently press sailors into the navy. And my guess is that ‘blowers’ means people who betray their colleagues.”

  “How odd. Well, tell the coachman where to go, and let’s be on our way.”

  It took only a few minutes, a dead end and two wrong turns to find the narrow house missing two shutters. Cornelia rapped on the door with her cane, and when a thin woman with a glare that outdid even the duchess’s answered the knock, she once again offered coins for information. They climbed the stairs to the next floor.

  The man who opened the door was large and blond, and sported a black eye and swollen nose. He, too, gaped at the sight of two ladies on his doorstep, and the duchess took advantage of his surprise to walk past him into the room.

  “Here, now,” he protested belatedly, turning around. “You got no right to waltz in here.”

  Cornelia didn’t deign to address his complaint. “Mr. Grieves, I presume? I am here for the name of your employer.”

  He rolled his eyes, less intimidated than the tavern owner. “Might as well leave, then.” His gaze slid over to Thisbe, and he grinned. “You can stay, though. I’ll show you a grand time.”

  “I believe not,” Thisbe replied. “The one thing I want from you is who hired you to steal the Eye.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her grandmother pulled out a coin purse and shook it. “Does this increase your understanding?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I lose customers if I shop them to the peelers.”

  “The police are not involved in this. Just me.” Cornelia added a few coins to her hand.

  “I could just take that from you, you know,” he told her.

  “Perhaps...if you’d like to spend the next few years in prison,” Cornelia responded. “You know who I am, and you know what the law would do to you. Far easier to sell your information.” Taking his shrug for assent, she said, “Who was it?”

  He rubbed his fingers together, and with a dramatic sigh, the duchess added another bill. “This will have to do. It’s all I have with me.”

  “It was that little chubby bloke. The one who’s trying to hunt ghosts.”

  “Professor Gordon?” Thisbe asked in surprise. “I thought you worked for Mr. Wallace.”

  “I do. I work for whoever pays me. This professor fellow’s the one wanted me to take that silly quizzing glass. Not, you understand, that I took it.”

  “Of course not. You hired someone else.”

  “No—that’d be thievery.” Clearly he enjoyed playing his game.

  Thisbe sighed. “Did you give it to Gordon?”

  “I would have if I’d taken it.” He grinned.

  “Where has Gordon gone?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Does Mr. Wallace have another house? Did he go there?”

  “I thought you wanted only one thing.”

  “It turns out I didn’t,” Thisbe replied. “Where does Mr. Wallace go when he leaves London?”

  “Don’t know. Never asked. He never took me with him.”

  “You have a singular lack of curiosity.”

  “Safest that way, I’ve found.”

  “I must say, you are providing very little return for our money,” Thisbe said sourly.

  “Told you I didn’t know about it.”

  It was clear they would get nothing else out of him, so Thisbe and the dowager duchess returned to their carriage.

  “There now,” Cornelia said as she settled into her seat. “We’ve found out who has it. Now we must get it back.” She leveled a stern gaze at her granddaughter. “We have a duty. We owe it to our ancestors.”

  The duchess’s echoing of the words from Thisbe’s dream the other night sent a tingle through her. “Grandmother...” She wasn’t sure why she felt the sudden need to confide in her grandmother; it was scarcely the sort of relationship they had. Perhaps it was their shared mission today. Or perhaps it was the fact that only her grandmother would find her words believable. “I have been having a dream lately. About a woman. There’s a fire and—”

  Her grandmother grabbed Thisbe’s arm. “You saw her? Anne came to you in a dream?”

  “She looked like the portrait of Anne Ballew in Uncle Bellard’s book,” Thisbe admitted. “But I don’t believe in such things.”

  “What you choose to believe doesn’t change what happened.”

  “Have you ever had a dream like that?”

  “No.” Cornelia sighed. “But she is known to come to our family at times. It’s rare, but my grandmother said that her mother dreamed of Anne. No doubt this theft of her Eye has raised Anne’s spirit. That is why she came to you—it is you who must find it.” She nodded, pleased with the explanation for her own lack of a vision of Anne. “Did she speak to you?”

  “That was what made me think of it. She said that I ‘owed’ her something. I’m not sure what.”

  “Naturally. It makes perfect sense. You are the one whom the Eye calls. I was so sure it was Olivia...but that doesn’t matter now.”

  “But it doesn’t call to me. When you showed it to me, I didn’t feel any tie to it. Not even a tingle.”

  “No doubt it was blocked by that boy’s presence.” Cornelia used her favorite term for Desmond. “He is somehow connected.” Thisbe thought it was better not to mention Desmond’s aunt’s belief that he was Anne’s descendant. The duchess went on, “I think you must have his help, however dangerous it is for you to be around him. You must be very careful.”

  “Grandmother, you don’t really believe that you can see into the future, do you?”

  “Of course not.” Cornelia raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t see the future. I saw the curse of death on him.”

  “Curses aren’t real. That’s absurd.”

  “It’s absurd to ignore the truth,” the dowager duchess retorted, and her eyes suddenly flamed with a fire that was, frankly, unsettling. “I saw it written on him as well as I can see your face. I see it still. One of his kind will kill one of ours. He is bound by it, just as you are bound. I don’t know how or when, but sooner or later you will die because of him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTER THAT DIRE PRONOUNCEMENT, Thisbe and her grandmother returned home in silence. Thisbe would have liked to be alone for a few minutes to think, but her brothers and Desmond were in the hall, tossing a ball about with the twins, talking and laughing as Con and Alex shrieked and ran after the balls. The three of them looked almost as disreputable as they had the evening before. Their clothes, at least, were clean now and their hair combed—though Desmond’s thick mane, of course, tended to flop every which way.

  However, their bruises had had time to develop and their cuts and scrapes to begin healing, so that now their faces bloomed with black and blue, accented here and there by scabs. She supposed it was a better look than blood. At least this time Desmond didn’t have a black eye.

  The twins spotted Thisbe and the duchess and ran toward them, jabbering, and the men all turned, as well.

  “Ladies,” Reed greete
d them.

  “We were wondering where you’d gone,” Theo added. “Desmond came, and we were laying plans to find Wallace’s thug.”

  “I can see,” Thisbe replied drily, rising from hugging the twins.

  “No need,” the duchess said airily, removing her gloves with an unconcerned air. “His name is Grieves, and we’ve spoken with him.”

  The men gaped at them, then began to talk in a torrent of words almost as jumbled as the twins’ babbling.

  “What—”

  “You never—”

  “How did—”

  Finally Theo overrode everyone else. “Don’t tell me you went to that tavern!”

  “Then we won’t,” Thisbe replied, occupying herself with handing over her outerwear to the waiting footman. It was satisfying to see all three men’s jaws drop.

  “You can’t be serious. With those ruffians about?” Reed protested. Desmond, Thisbe noted, was wise enough to say nothing, though he looked equally horrified.

  “Actually, the area is quite empty at this time of day,” Cornelia informed him. “Much easier to ask the landlord who the man is and where he lives.”

  “He told you?”

  “Yes, of course. As did Mr. Grieves.”

  “But how did you make him do that?” Theo exclaimed.

  “I have found, my dear,” his grandmother replied, “that money is generally more persuasive than fists.”

  “You paid him?”

  “Yes, of course. He was clearly a man for hire.”

  “He doesn’t have the Eye,” Thisbe added. “He gave it to—” she hesitated, her eyes going to Desmond “—Mr. Gordon.”

  “So the professor does have it,” Reed mused. “Interesting.”

  Desmond didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His expression spoke clearly enough. He reached over and picked up the ball, holding out his other hand to the twins. “Come on, lads, we’d best get you back upstairs.”

  Reed joined him, swooping up Alex while Desmond took Con.

  “Well, that’s that,” Cornelia announced. “I believe I shall take a rest. These little excursions take so much out of one.”