The Memory of Your Kiss

by Wilma Counts

  “Good idea. And thank you, Watkins.” She waved “bye-bye” to William, who waved back somewhat distractedly, the toy monkey still absorbing his attention.

  In the drawing room her aunt and cousin were waiting for her, Aunt Harriet in a violet silk gown and Celia in a pastel pink cotton with deeper pink rosebuds embroidered along the hem and scattered about the skirt. It was Wednesday. The mother and daughter were off to Almack’s, London’s most exclusive social club, for its weekly assembly.

  When Sydney complimented her dress, Celia affected a small moue. “I do wish the patronesses were less strict about dress. It just seems silly to insist that all young unmarried women appear as fresh-faced debutantes.”

  “Now you mind her p’s and q’s,” Aunt Harriet said to her daughter in a light tone. “When you are an old married lady, you may flout convention. Certainly if those dragons of decorum could refuse the Duke of Wellington admission because he was wearing trousers instead of knee breeches, they would think nothing of refusing you a voucher to attend.”

  The coach dropped Sydney at Rutherford House first where the Thorntons were still in residence, then went on to Almack’s. As Sydney entered the drawing room, her hostess rushed to her side.

  “Don’t you look lovely,” Allyson said. “That color is perfect with your eyes. I am so glad you are not in gray or something equally drab.”

  “I confess that I am tired of those colors, too,” Sydney said, “but I suppose the high sticklers will find fault.”

  Allyson hooked her arm into Sydney’s. “Well, let them do so. We who matter won’t. Besides, all England is celebrating, so the rules are relaxed.”

  Sydney laughed and felt fully at ease now. “If you say so.” She surveyed the room—discreetly, she thought—looking for Zachary.

  “He’s not here yet,” Allyson said softly.

  “Who?”

  Allyson gave her arm a shake and said in the same soft voice, “Don’t you dare play Miss Innocence with me. Zachary will be here—the Quintins are just a bit late.”

  “Oh.”

  Since it was their home, Allyson’s parents were officially hosting the party their daughter had planned, but Allyson was performing many of the hostess duties, in part because so many of the guests were her and her husband’s particular friends.

  “I think you know most of our guests. Mama and Papa came back to town for the celebrations.”

  Sydney chatted amiably with the Earl of Rutherford and his countess. She had always liked them and even envied them, for she thought theirs was the sort of marriage she had once envisioned for herself.

  She and Allyson moved on, for Allyson seemed intent on seeing that her friend was known to and accepted by everyone. Two younger couples stood together and Sydney thought she heard Allyson mutter something like “birds of a feather” just before making her known to the foursome.

  “Lady Paxton, allow me to introduce Nathan’s brother, the Marquess of Eastland, and his fiancée, Lady Dorothea Newsome.” They were a striking couple. The marquess was tall, blond, and some seven or eight years older than his brother. He was dressed impeccably in dark evening wear and a quizzing glass dangled from a silver chain about his neck. He used the quizzing glass to inspect this mere mortal being presented to him. Sydney wanted to giggle, but managed to keep a straight face as she curtsied to them. The fiancée, nearly as tall as Eastland, had thick, very black hair that was pulled back in an elaborate braid that showed off a widow’s peak on her high forehead. Her complexion was fashionably pale and her gown was gray silk trimmed with black lace.

  Sydney said, “May I offer felicitations on your forthcoming marriage?”

  “We have had to postpone our nuptials,” the woman said. “I am still in mourning for my stepmother.” She gave Sydney’s gown a pointed look.

  Sydney was sure the look was intended to intimidate, but again she controlled an urge to giggle.

  Allyson turned to the other couple, whom she introduced as Baron and Lady Edmund Lawton. “My sister Clara and her husband. Their name is the same as yours, Sydney, but spelled differently.”

  “How interesting,” Sydney said politely. “Perhaps at some ancient time the names were the same.”

  “Oh, I should not think so,” his lordship said.

  “Perhaps we should have it researched to be sure,” his wife said.

  “I doubt that would be necessary, my dear,” her husband said.

  “There is something to be said for ignorance regarding some matters,” Sydney observed. While Sydney had not previously met Allyson’s sister or the sister’s husband, she knew from little bits of information Allyson had let drop from time to time that they were rather “high in the instep.” This encounter confirmed that impression.

  Allyson urged her on and said quietly, “Don’t you think Lady Dorothea will make a perfect duchess one day?”

  “I think she thinks she will,” Sydney replied.

  Sydney was glad to see Adam Richardson and Cameron McIntyre among Allyson’s guests. She had enjoyed time spent with them at the Rodham party. Then the butler announced the arrival of Quintin family members. She was thrilled when Zachary, having done the polite greetings routine, sought her out to make her known to his sister, Lady Islington. Zachary’s sister was two years older than he and looked very like her brother, with the same dark good looks that Sydney admired in him. She was more outgoing than he, quick to try to ensure that those around her were at ease and amused. They talked of Lady Islington’s journey and the trials of traveling with young children.

  “Thank goodness Zachary was able to accompany us,” his sister said. “He was very helpful in entertaining my two. That seems to be a recently acquired skill.” She gave him an arch look. “I certainly do not recall it in the pre-Lucas days.”

  “I have learned a lot from my son,” Zachary said.

  A few minutes later Allyson was pairing up her guests and ushering them from the first floor drawing room to the dining room on the ground floor. Sydney saw that her friend again bent the “rules” somewhat, but she managed to satisfy the sensibilities of those who held their own consequence in high regard, and she had seen that others simply had pleasant dinner companions. Sydney found her partner very pleasant indeed: Zachary.

  “You can thank me later,” Allyson whispered.

  The dinner itself was lavish and tasty—Rutherford had an excellent cook—and the conversation lively, centering on recent and current celebrations of Bonaparte’s defeat. Sydney was enjoying herself thoroughly and joined the discussions readily despite being distracted by the sheer magnetism of her particular dinner partner. When the ladies withdrew to leave the men to their port and politics and sport, she felt keenly the loss of his closeness.

  Allyson, seated next to Sydney in the drawing room, leaned close to say, “They won’t be long. I gave Papa and Nathan strict orders: only one round of drinks.”

  Sydney blushed at being so obvious. “Thank you—I think.” She changed the subject to tell Allyson about the progress on the extension to Fairfax House, for Allyson, too, had been instrumental in seeing that project to fruition. She had just finished when the men returned and, for Sydney, the party resumed its earlier liveliness. Again Zachary sought Sydney’s company. She noted a raised eyebrow or two at this, but chose to ignore the reactions of others.

  Lady Rutherford had just called for the tea tray when the butler entered to speak quietly to Lord Rutherford. The earl immediately but calmly strolled over to where Sydney stood talking with Zachary, Richardson, and Lady Islington.

  Lord Rutherford touched Sydney’s elbow to draw her slightly aside. “Lady Paxton, there is a Paxton footman in the waiting room of the entrance below. He says it is urgent that he speak with you.”

  She gasped, unable to control her shocked surprise. No Paxton servant would have called here now except in the most dire emergency. “Jonathan!” she cried and hurried from the room, Zachary right behind her. A man in Paxton livery paced the floor in a
room scarcely larger than a dressing room, with stark whitewashed walls, a padded bench and two padded chairs.

  It was Cosby, one of the three footmen who had been added to her staff after Henry’s death.

  “I came as quick as I could, my lady. It’s Master William. Someone snatched him.”

  “Snatched—? William? But how—?”

  “Just tell us what happened,” Zachary said, his hand gripping Sydney’s elbow.

  Before he answered, the footman looked at Sydney, who nodded. “I went up to relieve Grady at the regular time to do so, and I found him lying on the floor in the hall, unconscious. Miss Watkins was in the nursery common room, gagged and tied to a chair. She’d been reading in there, you see, so as not to disturb the little earl with her reading light in her own room.”

  “But the boys?” Sydney’s initial panic was only slightly assuaged by the man’s calm demeanor.

  “The little earl is fine. Still asleep when I left. But they took Master William.”

  “Oh, my Lord!” Sydney felt herself swaying and was grateful for the steadying arm Zachary slipped about her waist.

  “They. How many?” Zachary asked.

  “Two, so far as we know. They could’ve had someone outside watching. But Miss Watkins saw only two.”

  “How did they get in?”

  “From the alley. Broke in through the kitchen side door. Cook had the night off an’ the kitchen maids was all playin’ loo in the servants’ hall. They come up the back stair an’ conked Grady afore he even knew they was there.” He paused. “I’m real sorry, my lady. I checked that side door myself earlier. Locked, it was.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” Zachary asked.

  “We’re thinkin’ maybe two hours ago.”

  Sydney was impressed with Zachary’s calm probing for information, but she also felt nearly hysterical at this devastating news. Was Jonathan really all right? And poor William. Where was he? Would they hurt him? Louisa. Louisa had to be told. How did you tell a mother you had allowed her son to be kidnapped?

  “I assume you came in a coach?” Zachary was asking the footman.

  “Yes, sir. The coachman come back after takin’ the ladies out.”

  “All right. Here’s what we do,” Zachary said. “You take Lady Paxton home. Then have the coachman take you to Almack’s to ask Mrs. Carstairs and her daughter to return home immediately. I suspect that Lieutenant Harrelson will be there. Bring him, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zachary opened the door. A Rutherford footman hovered in the entrance. “Bring Lady Paxton’s cloak, please.”

  Draping the cloak over her shoulders, Zachary gazed into her eyes and said, “I’ll make your excuses above stairs. Try to stay calm. Richardson is here. So is McIntyre. We’ll get him back. I promise.”

  He wanted to kiss her, but not with those servants looking on. As soon as she was out the door, he dashed upstairs to tell Allyson and Thornton and his parents what had happened. They, in turn, would convey the information to anyone who had a need to know. He pulled Richardson and McIntyre aside and elicited their help. Thornton took the three of them into the sitting room of the suite he shared with his wife in order to discuss a plan of action in relative privacy.

  “Percy Laughton must be behind this,” Zachary conjectured, “though we cannot ignore the possibility of that Barnet woman. However, she would be far more likely to snatch a poor person’s child off the street than one whose parents had the means to offer pursuit. On the other hand, revenge can be a powerful motive.”

  “Why would Laughton want William?” Richardson asked. “One would think if he were to snatch one of them, it would be the earl.”

  “Right,” McIntyre said. “But what if they just grabbed the first child they saw in the Paxton nursery? What if it’s neither Laughton nor Barnet—but some random kidnapping for ransom?”

  “That’s possible,” Thornton said.

  “Yes, it is,” Zachary agreed. “And if that is the case, it will make our catching up to them much more difficult, for we will have to wait for a ransom demand. If Laughton is behind this, I doubt very much that he did this deed himself. Not his style. He’d be off somewhere establishing an alibi for himself.”

  “So, where do we start?” McIntyre asked.

  “With Laughton. He’s the most likely suspect and,” Zachary added grimly, “the most likely to harm the child he sees as a threat to his ambitions.”

  “You will need a carriage,” Thornton said. “And you cannot go about the city in those army coats.” He immediately dispatched a footman to have a carriage readied and brought around. Then he disappeared into what must have been his and Allyson’s bedchamber for several minutes. He returned with a brown and a black jacket and a brown cotton shirt. After a bit of trading around for fit, Richardson and McIntyre donned the jackets and Zachary the shirt as Thornton disappeared again.

  He reappeared to say, “Here. We may need these too.” He handed over three pistols and shoved one into his own waistband.

  “You keep an arsenal in your bedchamber?” Zachary asked. “And what do you mean ‘we’?”

  Thornton seemed slightly embarrassed, like a child caught stealing a biscuit. “My wife enjoys shooting, too. And surely you did not think of leaving me behind. You’ll need a driver.”

  Within another ten minutes, Zachary had sent off a note to Bow Street, Thornton had informed his wife of what he was doing, and the four of them settled into a Rutherford landau to be on their way.

  When they arrived at Laughton’s lodging house, Zachary was not surprised to find Laughton gone. Nor to find his landlady less than eager to help them find him. They sat in the carriage trying to determine what their next move should be. It was very dark. Gas lighting had not yet reached this section of the city, so the only sources of light were a half moon high above murky clouds and an occasional splash of light from an undraped window.

  Ruskin and Lowell arrived in a hackney cab as they debated and informed them that earlier in the evening Laughton had been seen entering a gaming hell in the Seven Dials.

  “Entering, but not leaving?” Zachary asked.

  “He could have left by a back door,” Ruskin conceded, “but his usual behavior is to stay put in one of those places for several hours. We may have made a mistake, but since we were already in that part of town and Laughton seemed set for a while, Lowell and I decided to find out what we could about his new best friends, Olson and Scrubb. Of course, had we known of that missing child, we would have stuck closer to Laughton.”

  “That task required both of you?” Zachary asked.

  When the Runner hesitated, Adam Richardson answered. “In Seven Dials, a man asking questions had best have someone to watch his back.”

  “True,” Zachary agreed. “So, Ruskin, what did you find out about Olson and Scrubb?”

  “They move around a lot. Right now Scrubb lives with a whore who works the Charing Cross area and Olson has a room in the back of a fishmonger’s shop in the Dials.” He named the exact locations.

  “We’ll start with where those two live,” Zachary said. “They are just the types Laughton might use for such work as this. Ruskin, you and Lowell go back to that gaming hell. If Laughton is still there, one of you keep watch on him and the other report to us at one of these places. If he is gone, try to find out where and when.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Charing Cross location proved fruitless. No one had seen either Scrubb or his woman since noon that day. Zachary cursed the trip as a waste of time and worried anew about poor little William. Anger and frustration kept showing him images of Lucas scared and helpless. Once the carriage—an open landau with two shuttered lanterns—reached the Seven Dials area, they drove slowly past the fishmonger’s shop, pretending to be drunk and to have wandered here unwittingly.

  “Where’d you say this light skirt lives?” McIntyre asked in a loud “drunken” voice.

  “Uh—here, sh-somewhere.” Richardson
stood up and feigned looking around for the right building. It was far darker in this section of the city. “Veronica,” he called loudly and plaintively and fell rather than sat back down.

  They heard shutters fly open and bang against a wall on the second floor of the building next to the one that had the fishmonger’s shop. A man leaned out and shouted, “Shut up! They’s some as needs our sleep!”

  “Sleep when you’re dead,” Richardson shouted back, then said, “Well, we know for sure one of these flats is occupied.”

  The fishmonger’s shop was on a corner. As they passed over the cross street, they could barely make out a delivery alley behind the shop. The main street itself seemed empty, though two doors down was a pub of sorts. Its open door emitted a rectangle of subdued light and a cacophony of sounds: people talking in loud, drunken voices, arguing, singing, and the plinking tones of three or four stringed musical instruments.

  Zachary called a halt. “Adam, Cam, let’s check out the rear of the shop. Nathan, drive on. Give us plenty of time to scout out the situation. Can’t leave horses like these on a street in this part of town at any time.”

  “Take one of the lanterns,” Thornton said.

  The shop faced onto a main thoroughfare; it was shuttered and dark. The ground floor of the building was raised two feet above actual ground level and there was undoubtedly a cellar beneath. On the side street were two steps leading up to a door that probably led to a hall and stairs for access to other rooms. Zachary tried the door. It was not locked. The alley smelled of rotting fish. Light from an open window above revealed a jumble of debris and garbage. “Watch your step,” Zachary cautioned, as his boots slipped on something soft and spongy. There was also a door here in the alley and Zachary thought it must lead directly to the shop. It was locked.

  The sound of a small child crying hysterically assailed their ears as they stood beneath the window, listening.

  “Scrubb, can’t you do something to stop that caterwauling?” a male voice growled.