The Sign of the Raven

by L. C. Sharp

  Juliana sucked in a breath. “Why?”

  “Because she is arrogant enough to assume this is some kind of elaborate joke. And because she believes her family will have her committed as a lunatic. To a private place of their choosing.”

  “Ah,” Parrish said, in a tone that said everything was explained.

  “But that is not going to happen,” Ash said, his voice pitched low to skate under the shouting that still went on. “Newcastle took against her, and the way she used him to establish her alibi. Privately, he is insisting that the penalty is carried out. Come, I think I can see a way out of this madhouse.”

  Taking Juliana’s hand, he helped her up and tugged her towards a gap in the crowds that only he could see. But miraculously, it was there.

  Ransom sat at the end of the row, but he was sketching and scribbling. He would stay to the end. No doubt his lurid report of the trial would be in the streets within the hour. He impressed Juliana by the speed of his response. As she glanced back, he handed the boy by his side a bundle of notes. The boy took off. Juliana caught a glimpse of the child as he wormed through the crowd and sped off. It was Col. Finally he’d found gainful employment, though for how long she had no idea.

  But he looked cleaner than usual, which she had to admit wasn’t difficult, and surely he’d put on a pound or two.

  Ash got them out of the court and into the world outside. A slight drizzle was beginning to fall. From the look of the sky, white with not a glimmer of blue anywhere, it was settling in for the day. He grasped her hand tightly, and carried on until they’d left the Old Bailey behind. The streets were crowded with people wanting to get in to see the trial, to get a glimpse of the exalted prisoner.

  At the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street, a cab waited. Miraculous in this crowd. But as they approached, Ash tossed the boy standing by the horses’ heads a coin that glimmered silver in the rain. The lad caught it deftly, but instead of running off, approached Ash.

  “’Ere. A cully wants ter see yer. ’E said for you to ’ave this.”

  The coin he handed Ash was gold. Ash raised a brow, turning the thing over in his hand, studying the embossed image of a raven’s head. “Where did you get this?”

  The boy sniffed and drew his grubby sleeve along his nose. “Can’t say.”

  “Why didn’t you make off with it?”

  The urchin scoffed. “An’ lose me ’ead? ’E said you was to come alone. Same place as last time. ’E don’t want anybody else. Says that token is for one. Anybody else...” He drew his finger across his throat.

  Before Ash could catch him, the lad ran off, haring up the street and into a narrow alley.

  Despite the unnecessary drama of the boy’s gestures, Ash believed him. Him and no other.

  “He’ll kill you,” Juliana said, white faced.

  He touched her chin, a fond gesture he rarely allowed himself in public. “He can do that anywhere, anytime. And he is more likely to do it if I don’t follow his bidding than if I do. I promise I’ll come home.”

  “I wish I could believe that. I should come with you.”

  “You heard what the boy said. He was telling the truth. If anyone comes with me, he’ll kill them. Without a qualm. But this is his safe conduct. As long as I have that, I’m safe.”

  “What if he takes it off you?”

  Ash shook his head. “He won’t.” Or rather, it would be from Ash’s dead body, but he wouldn’t tell her that part.

  Parrish, who had kept up with them, shook his head. “You should not go.”

  “I have to go. If I don’t, he’ll take me.” True enough. He had no choice. This time. But if the villain thought to make a habit of it, Ash would make it his business to hunt him down and end his games for good.

  “Would you do me a great favor and escort my wife home?” he asked. “Don’t fear for me, please. I have a few weapons I can deploy. He would not have sent me the token if he meant me harm.”

  “But what if he mislikes what you say?” Juliana asked anxiously.

  Ash took her hand, pressed it warmly between his. “He will have to accept it. He won’t hurt me this time. I swear it.”

  He had put some safeguards in place. And in any case, he had requested the meeting this time, sending a message with Jack, who knew people who knew people. Jack would also ensure that Ash came to no harm.

  There was always a chance, but Ash had a shrewd assessment of the Raven by now, from personal experience and from what he’d heard of the man. Calculated, cunning and cold. While he had no love for Ash, he would be aware that with the friends Ash had, his days as a criminal overlord would be numbered.

  He had not expected the summons so early. He handed Juliana into the carriage and smiled warmly at her. “I’ll see you in an hour, maybe two,” he said, although he planned to make this meeting brief. To lay down his terms, and to ensure the villain did not affright his wife or his family ever again. And this time he’d meet the man himself.

  He made his way to the rookery on foot, giving himself time to think and set his plan in place. The thin blade lay comfortably along the line of his upper leg, available through a hole he’d cut in his breeches’ pocket. He’d have to find a better way of wearing it, but the makeshift arrangement would work well for now.

  Apprehension made his senses keen, sharpened his thinking.

  He entered St. Giles through King Street and strode down to the house. Outside a man leaned against the filthy wall, picking his teeth with a knife. He looked up as Ash approached. Ash held out the token, but snatched it back when the man would have taken it. “You know what it is and what it means. I’ll keep hold of it for now.”

  The man shrugged and kicked away from the wall, revealing his height as well over six feet. He tucked his knife into a sheath by his side, and wrapped his worn coat over it. Most dyes settled into a dull gray or moldy brown in time. This was of the moldy variety.

  “Come on then.”

  They were the only words he spoke before he led Ash across the road and into a morass of alleys and courtyards. Houses clustered around the bare spaces, children playing in the dirt, women standing outside, staring. Neither Ash nor his guide took any notice of them. Ash put his sense of direction to work, and although the man took him by a circuitous route, he could gauge where they were. The stink of horseshit, piss and vinegar invaded his nostrils. Interesting that the man did not attempt to blindfold him. Ash had expected him to, but he did not even try.

  He opened a rickety door that had traces of flaky green paint and jerked his head, indicating that Ash should go first.

  Cautiously, he stepped inside. A flight of stairs in surprisingly good order led upwards. Ash had a fair idea what he would find at the top, and he wasn’t wrong. A hallway, carpeted in rough drugget, and after that another door, this one virtually jangling with hardware, two locks and a peephole. When his guide opened it for him, Ash wasn’t surprised to see a range of deadbolts on the other side.

  This, if he was not mistaken, was the Raven’s true lair.

  Ash was ready for battle.

  This room was scented with orange, cloves and dried roses. The half oranges, scooped out and studded with cloves, lined the narrow shelf going around the upper part of the room, below the plaster ceiling. Ash recalled the times he and his brothers and sisters had made orange and clove hedgehogs just like these. Their mother had been obsessive about odors and filled every house with heavily scented potpourri and orange hedgehogs. Violet-scented pastilles were lit, the burners sending their sickly aroma into the atmosphere. As if he wanted to get rid of the stench of his criminal activities.

  Ash hated the scent of violets.

  St. Giles had once contained substantial houses. This was one of them, restored to what it should be. Good furniture stood against the walls, a set of six chairs and a mahogany table. A bookshelf stood between th
e windows. Ash glanced at the titles. The books looked well worn.

  Before the unlit fireplace, a man stood with his back to Ash. His black hair was tied back in a neat queue with a length of black velvet ribbon. He wore a coat of dark red cloth, which looked new, and black breeches that had shiny silver buckles at the knee. Good clothes, but not spectacular. This man could pass for a respectable merchant, and probably did when he needed to.

  People often made the mistake of assuming that criminals had no taste or reveled in gaudy splendor. They were mostly wrong.

  “I will not answer your summons again,” Ash said. “So make the most of me while you can. If you do not turn and face me like a man, I will leave.”

  “You will leave when I say so.” The voice was rough, deep, like carriage wheels grating over gravel. Ash didn’t think he’d assumed that timbre. It sounded painful.

  Ash waited, gave the words room to breathe before he answered. “You are wrong. I will leave when I wish to leave. If you have nothing to say, then I go now.”

  “Where is my man?”

  Ash didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Rivers, your actor? He’s an actor no more. I sent him to a place where you can’t touch him. He’s been pressed.”

  Silence fell. Ash chose not to break it.

  “I see. He is a danger to me. He has seen me unmasked. So you know I will continue to hunt him down.”

  “If you do, I’ll be forced to protect him. He’s at sea. He will likely forget you. Leave him be.”

  “Or what?”

  Finally, the Raven turned around, his coattails swinging in the unnatural silence. The windows were shuttered, and the room lit by a dozen candles in sconces and candlesticks, sending flickering chiaroscuro over his rugged features.

  A raven mask covered the top half of his face. Black feathers spread out from either side, presumably to disguise the shape of his face and give a dramatic flourish. His nose formed the beak, but under it, the mouth was bare. A thin scar ran up the side of his face from the corner of the mouth. Ash had seen that kind of mark before. It was nothing like the scar on Rivers’s face. This scar had purpose. Villains would use scarring to mark their creatures, and this looked deliberate, rather than an injury sustained in a fight, or by accident.

  “They didn’t mark both sides?” Ash asked mildly. “What did you do to earn that?”

  “Nothing.” The man spat the word. “But then, I was condemned for nothing, worked for nothing, was punished for nothing. Why should this be any different? Or this?”

  He lowered the snowy neck cloth wrapped around his throat.

  The thick, ugly line encircling it told Ash why the Raven had such a raspy voice. He’d been strangled. Or hanged. “You were fortunate to escape with your life. Did the person who marked you also try to hang you?”

  “No.”

  He’d suffered. And Ash sensed the anger simmering beneath the surface. He felt it too, but for a different reason. Even though he knew this man was responsible for an untold number of crimes, he felt the rope around his own neck, the knife slicing through flesh. But because he understood, that did not make the wrongs into rights. “Why do you do this?”

  “What?”

  Ash swept his arm out. “All this.”

  “I live as well as any gentleman.”

  “And you had me brought here without a blindfold. Why?”

  The Raven’s gray eyes glittered beneath the mask. Ash had seen eyes that color before, but he couldn’t think where he’d seen them. Someone, somewhere. He sent his mind seeking for the answer. “Because you will not betray me.”

  “You’re a fool if you think that.” He paused, waiting for the moment, the reason he’d come here. “In fact, I already have.”

  His opposite stilled. “How?”

  “I have written accounts of you. I know far more of you than you think. I have set certain queries in motion to discover your whereabouts and your creatures. I will pull the string. If I do not walk out of here free and uninjured, they will be set into motion.”

  That was no idle threat. He’d written a detailed account of his previous visit, everything he’d noticed, and with Juliana’s acute powers of observation, everything she had seen, too. More specifically, Col and his colleagues had followed them here, and encircled the place. If Ash did not emerge, they would take their information to Bow Street. And to the Duke of Newcastle, who would count it as a feather in his cap to arrest the villain known as the Raven.

  The Raven chuckled, the laugh rattling in his throat. “I assumed you would do something. But I have the trump card. Up my sleeve, as always.” He laughed again, then coughed, and reached for a glass on a nearby table.

  He sipped, swallowed, his gaze always on Ash, avid, eager, as if he couldn’t get enough of him. Was that because Ash had deliberately set himself up against him? Even to the extent of accepting that ridiculous nickname Ransom had bestowed on him.

  “If that is all, I’ll be on my way,” Ash said mildly. “I believe our business here is done. But do not try to threaten me, or my family.”

  “That pretty wife of yours? She’s a peach of a woman. I could take her for myself.”

  Ash suppressed the surge of anger that flamed up inside him. “If you go near her again, I will kill you.”

  The Raven laughed again, short and hard. “Will you now? You already killed me once, so you are welcome to try to do it again. I was never interested in the death of a gambler. I didn’t care if they blamed me for it or not. What’s one more, after all? I wanted to see you, and what you had made of yourself. Now I know.”

  He crossed the room, stood in front of Ash. “Don’t you know me?”

  The Raven lifted his hands, untied the ribbon and let his mask fall.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Do you think he’s ever coming out?” Amelia asked Juliana.

  They stood outside Ash’s bedroom. With the muttered explanation that he needed some time alone after his return from the rookery, Ash had locked himself in his bedroom. He hadn’t come out since, and that had been four hours ago. Food had been left outside his door and been ignored.

  After trying both doors, the outer and the one connecting their rooms, Juliana discovered that he’d bolted them from the inside. Pressing her ear to the door revealed nothing. She couldn’t hear him, and when she pleaded with him to let her in, he hadn’t responded.

  The only thing he’d answered was when she asked him if the Raven had hurt him in any way, if she should send for Dr. Parrish. She’d received a curt “No” in response, but after that, whatever she’d said, however hard she pleaded, he had not let her in.

  She was seriously worried now.

  “I don’t know,” she answered Amelia. “But if he stays in there much longer I’ll have the door broken down.” She raised her voice. “Do you hear me, Ash? I’ll have the door broken in.”

  Finally, they heard a bolt being drawn back, then the other. The door opened so quietly it seemed like an anticlimax.

  Ash had removed his coat and donned a light robe in a dark color. He had removed his wig, but apart from that, he was the man who’d walked into the house and straight up to his room four hours ago. Behind him, the room seemed perfectly in order.

  Except for his face. The lines carved at the sides of his mouth had deepened, and his eyes held a bleakness Juliana had never seen there before, not even when he’d been fighting for her freedom from the gallows.

  He opened the door wider and let them in, stood facing them as they stood together, waiting for him to speak.

  “The Raven has another name,” he said. “Matthew, although that was not his original name. He was christened Sorry-For-Sin, and he used the surname Hoskins for most of his life.”

  Amelia clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Ash met his sister’s gaze. “The Raven is our brother Matthew. And he wa
nts his revenge.”

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Wedding Night Affair by L.C. Sharp.

  Author Note

  The rehearsal for the Fireworks did go ahead as I described, and it was a greater success than the real performance, which in real life happened a week later in a different place. On that second occasion, rain put out most of the fireworks, but we still have Handel’s glorious music to enjoy. We don’t have to sit in the rain to enjoy it!

  I based the character of the Raven on Jonathan Wild, the most notorious criminal mastermind of the 18th century, but not the only one!

  Acknowledgments

  Shout-out to my wonderful editor, Alissa Davis.

  Author Bio

  L.C. lives in the UK, and loves history and cats, not necessarily in that order. She writes a lot, but only a small amount gets this far. The muse will not be denied, so L.C. delves into the worlds in her head and shares them with other people.

  She has written stories since her early attempts to rewrite the Morte D’Arthur and the novels of Georgette Heyer.

  Now she gets to share that love with you.

  The Wedding Night Affair

  by L.C. Sharp

  Chapter One

  Spring, 1748

  Were all wedding nights this terrifying?

  Juliana, as of yesterday Lady Godfrey Uppingham, dared not move. If she did, Godfrey might wake up. Then it would all start again.

  Her terror threatened to rise into panic, her heart pounding, her stomach churning. For hours she’d visually traced the curving pattern on the dark green brocade-clad wall opposite the bed, trying to control her senses.

  Her mind churned with confusion and horror. Would she have to face this every night? Could she accustom herself to it?