by L. C. Sharp
Beside her, Ash stilled. Juliana did not look at him. She didn’t need to. He was letting her go with this idea, seeing where it took her.
“But you could do that far better than I. And you might even produce some useful information of your own, if it were known that you were associated with us.”
Journalists were everywhere in London, from Tyburn to the court. They saw everything. People came to Grub Street to report stories.
“You mean you’d come to me first?” Ransom asked cautiously. “Give me the accounts before anybody else sees them?”
“If you agreed to a few things, yes, assuredly we would.” She pressed forward. “For instance, before you published, you would send us a copy for approval.”
She knew she’d gone too far when Ransom scraped his chair back as if to leave. “No, oh no. I won’t be owned. I would sleep on the streets rather than being owned by someone, however much I admired them.”
Ah. So he admired Ash, did he? That was useful to know. “Very well,” she said. “Then if you could undertake to give us an advance copy before you take to the streets, so we’re not taken unaware.”
“And so you can correct any genuine mistakes, or give me the latest developments,” the man said. He stroked his chin as if he had a beard. “That sounds reasonable, since the stories would be about you. Or rather, the Falcon.”
Ash groaned. “I want that ridiculous name dropped.”
“Too late,” Ransom answered, a broad grin spreading over his face. “I took that story out. It’s all over London now. People love it. And think about this...” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on the linen tablecloth. “At the moment, the Raven has the press’s attention. Anything mentioning him sells like an unchecked fire spreads.”
“And his name keeps coming up,” Ash said with a sigh. “I grow tired of hearing it.”
“But with a similarly named person on the right side of the law, they might put their admiration where it is due.”
“Can’t do any ’arm,” Jack commented. He was still eating.
Ash pushed out a breath with a grunt. “And you propose that I become that character. Righting wrongs, spreading light and illuminating dark corners.”
“Illuminating dark corners,” Ransom repeated slowly. “I like that.”
“All I do is ensure justice is done.”
“That as well.”
Ash drummed his fingers on the table, the soft thuds of his fingers, the quiet tick of the clock and the click and scrape of silverware against china the only sounds in the room. The ever-present clopping of hooves, rolling of vehicles and the occasional shout reached them faintly, like a half-formed dream.
Eventually Ash spoke. “Very well. Here are my terms. We will furnish you with a factual account of events. You will publish them. You may make your language as fanciful as you wish, and you may even speculate if you make it clear you are doing so, but you will not lie, and you will not leave the important parts out. For that, I will sponsor the purchase of a second printing press, to make your work easier.” The corner of his mouth flicked in a near-smile. “The layout, the reporting, what else you discuss, I leave entirely to your discretion. I have no desire to become a journalist. Grub Street is far too narrow and odiferous for that to appeal to me.”
Ransom clapped his hands together, rubbed them as if he’d just spat on them. “Very well, I’ll strike that bargain with you. That would make you my patron, wouldn’t it?”
Ash sighed. “I suppose so. But state that your opinions are your own, not mine. Do it on the front page, under the title.”
“I already decided what I would say. I can’t better ‘Illuminating dark corners.’” He threw out his hand, striking a dramatic pose. “Illuminating the dark underworld of London. Going bravely into the rookeries to protect honest Londoners from the depredations of the criminal underclass.”
He dropped the pose and grinned. “I’ll make you famous, Sir Edmund Ashendon. Or should I say, the Falcon.”
* * *
Ash volunteered to search the coffeehouses and clubs in search of Lord Stanton, while Juliana and Amelia went to the mantua-maker, for some new gowns.
Three coffeehouses on, Ash never wanted to see another cup of coffee again or listen to any more speculative gossip. He’d put off going into the Cocoa-Tree because he disliked it, but now he had little choice. Two out of the three places he’d visited told him that Lord Stanton preferred that place to any other.
In he went. A coffeehouse no longer, but a club of two years’ standing, it was situated in St. James’s Street, moved across the street when it had converted to a club.
The woman at the door gave him a glare over her spectacles, but did not stop him or ask him if he was a member. A good coat would get a man in any number of establishments. He dropped his hat on one of the pegs set just inside the door and asked the woman, “Is Lord Stanton inside?”
“Who wants to know? Sir,” she added as an afterthought.
He was ready for that. Brandishing one of his calling cards, the redesigned embossed ones his wife had insisted on, he handed it over. “Sir Edmund Ashendon,” he said, as if she couldn’t read.
“Does he know you are calling on him, Sir Edmund?”
“No. I heard he was here and I thought I’d drop in. You don’t have to announce me, do you?” He slid a guinea over the polished counter.
She put her hand over it. “We are not so formal, sir. He is sitting at the third table on the left.”
At least she didn’t bite the coin to ensure it was real. Ash walked in as if he owned the place.
Abercorn wouldn’t come in here. A club for the Tory squire and Jacobites, it was used to discuss the revolution that would never happen.
The line of tables met his gaze, but now this place was a club, it had more comfortable chairs, and the tables were polished. Men moved about with the maids, who served customers without the bawdy comments and tart responses offered by the coffeehouse.
On the whole, Ash preferred the latter. More honest.
He paused at the table, where, thankfully, the man sat alone. His scarlet coat provided a pleasing contrast with the table’s gleam, as did the face above it. Stanton was what people referred to as a handsome devil. And he knew it. He looked positively smug.
Ash adjusted his attitude accordingly, added meek admiration, lowering his chin and smiling hesitantly. “Lord Stanton?”
Stanton gave Ash a visual up-and-down. “Who wants to know?”
Such an echo of the woman at the desk that Ash nearly laughed. He produced his card, but this time he dropped it on the table before the man. Stanton picked up the piece of pasteboard between his thumb and finger, and took his time reading it. “Sir Edmund Ashendon. Do I know you?”
“Not yet.” But he would. Without being invited, Ash dropped into the chair opposite. “I believe you are a neighbor of Lady Coddington?”
There. That moment he sought, when realization hit, told Ash more than most conversations ever could. Stanton’s brows went up, and his eyes widened. He knew her. Would he deny it? “Ah yes, that unfortunate incident the other night. Now I know you.”
If he asked Ash to leave now, it would be worth the intrusion. He knew much more than when he’d arrived. Yes, he had the right Stanton, and yes, the man certainly knew Lady Coddington.
“I know her, of course. Her ladyship is to be seen at the best gatherings. And as a neighbor, as you put it, I have called on them a time or two.”
Or three or four, Ash would guess. “Have you seen her since the incident?”
“I called to leave my condolences.”
“Did you see her ladyship?”
“Briefly, although I did not expect it. I did not know the Coddingtons very well, so I only called to do the polite thing.” He frowned. “What is this about? Am I to be interrogated in my own club?”
“Ah. Then it will be over.”
“Not for her ladyship, I fear.”
They shared a moment of sympathy, a grimace and a sigh. “Poor lady,” Stanton said. A spark of interest lit his eyes. “I know you now. Last year, it was. You married someone...”
“Higher in rank? Notorious for a short period? A widow? She is all those things, but none of them define her.” He would not hear his wife disparaged, even in the midst of an investigation.
“Yes. All of those things. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the lady.”
Unfortunately, he might meet her one day.
Ash’s instinct was to keep Juliana as far away from this man as possible. This man was handsome and self-confident, verging on the arrogant.
Ash forced his instinctive dislike down. He had a job to do here. “You read the journals, then.”
For answer, Stanton tapped a paper on the edge of the table. Ash might have known. The Daily Ransom. “And you’re the Falcon.”
He’d have to accustom himself to this response. He shrugged. “A journalist’s fantasy. I have no objection to him trying to sell his rag. Only in people who believe everything he says.”
“Amusing, though. I tried to imagine what I’d do if someone gave me a name. What would it be?” He smiled. “The Lion, perhaps? Or better still, The Tiger? The King might object to my adopting his favorite animal. Should I pay someone to do that for me?”
“Why pay?” Ash inquired. “I did not. Nor did I particularly welcome it. Does the account in the journal tally with what you know?”
“As I said, I did not know Coddington very well at all.”
But Ash would wager his best set of silver buttons that Stanton knew Lady Coddington better.
“How close do you live?”
“I have a house in the next street. That is all. Why are you so interested in me?”
Ash’s invisible antenna twitched. Stanton was hiding something. If the rumors he’d heard last night were true, he was lying, too.
How well Stanton knew Lady Coddington remained to be discovered. Many married women had admirers, but not all took them as lovers. That would explain why Stanton had denied knowing her, of course. To respect her and keep the affair quiet. However, now Ash had the measure of the man.
If their acquaintance had blossomed to an affair, this man might find concealing it difficult. He’d want to boast. Ash had to find out who he boasted to.
He hastened to reassure Stanton. “I’m still making general queries, trying to find people who knew them well.”
“Ah.”
“And someone told me they had seen you with Lady Coddington.”
“When? Where?”
Ah, he’d been far too quick to take that up. “Someone saw you leaving the house.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Ah. I told you I made a courtesy call. I may have made a courtesy call, neighbor to neighbor, when I first arrived in town. I cannot really remember.”
“Yes, that was probably the explanation.” He’d been right about Stanton. He was lying.
Just because he was having a secret affair with her ladyship did not necessarily mean that he was the murderer. Lady Coddington had chosen to display herself as the grieving widow, but that might be all she was hiding. Ash had seen many reactions to the news of a loved one’s death and Lady Coddington’s had not hit the right note. He knew her grief was not sincere, but until now had not found any proof of it.
“Do you game much?” he asked abruptly, recalling the token in his pocket.
“Doesn’t everybody?” Stanton answered irritably.
He drew out the token and put it on the table between them. “Do you recognize this?”
Stanton answered immediately. “No.”
“What do you think it is?”
Stanton picked it up and examined it. “It’s a gambling token. They use them as counters, sometimes as markers. It’s crude, not at all like the ones at the best gaming houses.”
“Thank you,” Ash said meekly. “I was wondering what it was. It was found near the body. It might be something that was dropped there by someone else. You don’t recognize the house?”
“No, why should I?”
“I merely needed to ask someone more conversant with gaming houses. Thank you for your help.”
If he did any more here, he’d rouse Stanton’s suspicions, and he didn’t want to do that. Not yet.
He got to his feet and bowed. “Thank you for your help. I’ll convey your sympathies to Lady Coddington when I see her next.”
“Poor lady.”
“Indeed.”
Collecting his hat at the door, Ash left the Cocoa-Tree.
He needed to interview Lady Coddington again. Perhaps mention Stanton. He would discuss it with Juliana when he got home.
As he left the place, Freeman, the footman he’d assigned to Juliana, raced up to him.
“It’s her ladyship, Sir Edmund! Somebody took her!”
“What are you talking about, man?” Ash demanded. But fear was rising in him, his stomach tightening. “Why aren’t you with her ladyship?”
“Somebody snatched her in the street! He dropped this.”
He handed Ash a scrap of paper wrapped around a hard object. Ash unwrapped it and discovered a note. And a token.
The twin of the one he had in his pocket.
Opening the note, he discovered a few words scrawled with a thick-nibbed pen. If you want her, come and get her.
Scrawled at the bottom was a rough drawing. A tilted oval, a couple of stick legs and a beak, so stylized it was almost like a signature. A raven.
Fury began deep and mingled with panic on the way up. His mind, usually so controlled, went blank.
In the void, the same words repeated over and over. If you want her, come and get her.
He’d do more than that. If anyone hurt his wife, Ash would see him dead at his feet.
Chapter Thirteen
Ash held a piece of paper. He turned it over and found something else on the crumpled sheet. An address. “Twenty-nine King Street,” he muttered, then crumpled the paper and stuffed it into his pocket with the token.
What did the Raven want now? And why do it this way? Did he mean to send Ash into this rage? Probably, he concluded, when a smidgeon of his usual analytical method returned to him. Yes, because that anger would put a man off guard, off his game. That would not happen. It. Would. Not. Happen.
Accelerating his pace, he headed up toward St. Giles. The bastard had her in a rookery, a damned thieves’ kitchen, a den of iniquity. Anything could happen to her there.
Freeman scurried after him until Ash paused abruptly, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled up a cab. “King Street,” he yelled.
The cabbie laughed derisively, showed him two fingers, and drove on. Damn, of course no cab would drive there, unless they were heavily bribed. The next carriage stopped, and he swung into it. This time he told the man to take him to a street just outside the rookery. Freeman only just managed to follow him, but as the cabbie whipped up his horse, the vehicle lurched to the side as somebody else climbed aboard.
“Get out,” Ash said. “I don’t need you or anybody else.”
“You need me, guv’nor.” Cutty Jack squatted on the floor of the carriage since the seat was occupied.
“Why aren’t you watching the Coddington house?”
Jack lifted a shoulder. “I got one of my boys watchin’ ’er. I went after your missus. ’Ad a feelin, like. When she was took, I followed your man ’ere. She’s been gorn about ’alf an hour. Mebbe three quarters.”
Ash had told Freeman where he planned to go. In case Juliana had
needed him.
“You can’t go into the rookery like that.” His wave indicated Ash’s appearance, from neatly tied neck cloth to polished shoes. “You’ll be dead ten feet inside. Or naked an’ in the gutter. An’ ’ow you going to help her then?”
Ash cursed long and fruitfully. “You’re right. I dressed for the coffeehouse.” He knocked on the roof of the cab. “Lincoln’s Inn Fields!” They weren’t far from the rookery. He could get there in five minutes from there.
An answering thump told him the man had heard.
“You ain’t got nothing for a rookery,” Jack said sagely.
“Don’t you be too sure.”
Slipping his hand into an inner pocket of his disreputable, but capacious coat, Jack came out with a weapon such as Ash had never seen before. He handed it over.
He drew the knife out of the sheath. It was a shade longer than the average dagger, and much more slender. The hilt was flat, made of some base metal but perfectly serviceable. “Where did you get this?”
Jack tapped the side of his nose. “Special. Take that, and wear it next to your skin. Take something else for them to find. Anything else they’ll ’ave off you in a trice.” His mouth flattened. “Then they’ll kill you wiv it.”
Ash swallowed. “I need her—need to get her home.”
The intensity of his reaction had shaken him to the core of his being. That moment of blankness when the import of the note reached his shaken mind terrified him. He had never, ever known that intense, white blankness.
Jack leaned forward, seemingly oblivious to the rocking and bouncing of the carriage. “I’m gonna tell ya because nobody else will. She could be dead already. You know that, right?”
That was what terrified and infuriated Ash the most. “I know it well enough. I’ll have the Raven’s blood for it.”
“I know. But if she ain’t dead, she’ll stay that way till you get there. ’E wants you.”
Ash nodded. “If he has me, he might let Juliana go.”
Jack shrugged. “Possible.”
Both of them knew the alternative. Once he had them, the Raven could kill them both. Had Ash touched something that affected the Raven? Had he found a sensitive spot?
