by Emily Larkin
Charlotte trotted fast. A prickling down her spine told her that her hackles were raised. A man spat at her as she passed and aimed a kick.
She was practically running now, following the window-breaker’s trail, her ears pricked for danger. I can change into a lion if I have to. No, something even bigger. A bear. With claws six inches long.
Three streets later, the trail she was following turned into a doorway. The door was unpainted and firmly shut.
Charlotte sniffed the doorstep. The window-breaker’s scent was strong, as if he’d entered this door hundreds of times. His home, she guessed—and then her attention was arrested by another familiar scent.
Her heart kicked in her chest and sped up. One of the men from Tewkes Hollow had been here recently.
The man’s scent led up the street and around the corner, headed west for two blocks, then swung north. Charlotte followed, excitement spurring her faster. How pleased Cosgrove would be if—
Charlotte came to a cringing halt.
A dog stood in her path, barrel-chested, with hackles bristling down its spine.
Charlotte wagged her tail tentatively.
The dog growled. Lips peeled back from sharp teeth.
Charlotte took a step backwards, her body low, cowering. A second step. A third. There’s no need to fight. See, I’m leaving—
The dog advanced, stiff-legged.
Charlotte tucked her tail between her legs and fled back the way she’d come. She raced down the street, hurtled around the corner, and bolted into the nearest alley.
The alley ended in a brick wall.
She spun to face her pursuer. Her heart was trying to batter its way out of her ribcage. A bear! a voice shrieked in her head. Change into a bear!
The change happened so fast it felt as if her bones were bursting from her skin. One instant she was a dog, cowering; the next she was a bear.
She heard a high-pitched yelp from her attacker’s throat, heard claws scrabble on dirty cobblestones, and then—silence.
Charlotte blinked and looked around. The alley was much smaller than it had been a moment earlier. No, I’m much bigger.
She changed back into a dog. A strange, rank odor filled the alley. That’s what I smelled like as a bear. She slunk to the mouth of the alley and peered out. Her attacker was nowhere in sight.
Charlotte trotted cautiously north again, following the man’s scent. At the end of the street, the trail turned west. The scent was stronger now; he’d passed along here many times. And alongside it was another scent she recognized: the second man from Tewkes Hollow.
The streets grew busier. Carriage wheels scythed past on the roadway. Pedestrians trampled the scent trail. Street vendors sold produce from baskets, from stalls, from carts, crying out their wares, swearing at her as she passed, shying stones at her.
The trail divided, splitting into several strands—one heading north, one west, one turning into the doorway of a tavern.
Charlotte sniffed the tavern’s doorstep. The scents of both men were strong. She sat down, panting. The trails continued past the tavern, invisible threads that might lead her to where the men lived, but she shrank from following them. These streets might be safe for a man to walk on, but not a dog.
Keep going or come back later?
It felt like an admission of defeat to stop now. The men’s lodgings could be less than half a block away.
Or three miles. And she still had half of London to fly back across.
Charlotte squinted up at the tavern’s sign. The Pig and Whistle.
The door opened. A woman wearing a dirty apron emerged and emptied a bucket into the gutter. “Get out of here, y’ mongrel!”
Charlotte backed away. Later. She’d come back later as a man and ask questions.
* * *
Back at Grosvenor Square, she climbed into bed, yawning so hard her jaw cracked, and fell immediately asleep. It was late afternoon when she woke. Half past four! Lord Cosgrove must think her the greatest slugabed in the Empire!
But when she went downstairs, dressed in Albin’s clothes and with a Barrel Knot tied around her throat, the earl wasn’t home.
She went into his study, to see if he’d left any work out for her, but her desk was bare.
He did give me the rest of the day off . . .
“A pot of tea, Mr. Albin?” a footman inquired behind her.
“Uh . . . yes, please. In the music room.”
She was deep in a new sonata, the tea cold in its pot, when someone entered the room. She glanced up. Cosgrove’s butler stood alongside the pianoforte. Something in his face halted her fingers on the keys. “Is something wrong, Fellowes?”
“Mr. Langford is here.” She heard a note of perturbation in Fellowes’ voice, the same perturbation she saw on his face. “He said he would wait for the earl in his study. I suggested the library, but he was most insistent that it be his lordship’s study.”
Charlotte pushed back the music stool. “I have work I can do in the study.”
The frown cleared from the butler’s forehead. “Thank you, Mr. Albin.”
Charlotte trod quietly down the corridor and opened the door to Cosgrove’s study. Phillip Langford was at the earl’s desk, opening drawers.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Langford jerked upright. “No.” He slammed a drawer shut. “Go away.”
“I regret that I’m unable to do that.” Charlotte crossed to the shelves of leather-bound ledgers, extracted one, and placed it on the earl’s desk with a loud thump. “Lord Cosgrove has requested that I check these accounts.” She drew out the chair, forcing Langford to step back.
“Do it later.”
“Lord Cosgrove was most insistent that I do it today.” She opened the ledger.
“Then use the other desk!” The smell of alcohol wafted from Langford. “That’s what it’s for, isn’t it? Your petty little counting of pennies.”
“Lord Cosgrove said that I might use his desk.”
“I was here first!”
He sounded so much like a petulant child that Charlotte couldn’t prevent her upper lip curling.
Langford saw it. “Don’t sneer at me! You’re nothing but a servant.”
Charlotte ignored the insult. She turned her attention to the open ledger, running a finger down a column as if checking the figures.
“Damn your impudence!” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Langford’s hands clench. “Which drawer does he keep his money in? I need five hundred guineas.”
Charlotte turned a page in the ledger. “I suggest you wait until Lord Cosgrove returns.” Her voice was bored, polite.
Langford reached down and opened a drawer.
Charlotte closed it with a snap. “I said, wait.”
“How dare you! I’m the earl’s heir. He’d give me that money in an instant!”
Charlotte kept her hand on the drawer. I doubt it.
“I order you to open that drawer!”
Charlotte gazed at him blankly, as if she were deaf.
Langford knocked her hand aside and wrenched the drawer open, jerking it out of the desk. It tumbled to the floor, its contents spilling over the carpet.
Charlotte pushed to her feet, her hands clenched as Cosgrove had taught her.
“Boys, boys . . . no fighting.” The voice was the earl’s. He stood in the doorway, still wearing his hat and gloves.
Charlotte flushed and lowered her hands.
Langford swung around, swaying slightly. “I want some money.”
“Do you?” The earl removed his hat and advanced into the room. “How much?” His tone was mild, but there was nothing soft in his face; it was all angles and planes. He was angry, holding his temper in check.
“Five hundred guineas. Chicken feed!”
Chicken feed? It was more than she’d earn in two years. Charlotte kept her face impassive with difficulty.
The earl placed his hat on the desk. “Do you recall what I said the last time you made such
a request, Phillip?”
Langford’s face reddened.
“I thought you might.” Cosgrove removed one glove, and then the other. “My answer remains the same.”
“Damn you! What does five hundred guineas mean to you? You’re as rich as Croesus!”
“Be that as it may, I will not finance your drinking and whoring.” Cosgrove’s voice was almost bored.
Langford’s face swelled in fury. He crossed to the nearest bookcase and swung his fist at the glazed doors. “Cuckold!”
Cosgrove made no reaction to the sound of breaking glass, no reaction to the insult thrown at him. He stood calm and aloof.
Langford strode to the door. “I hope you die!” he said savagely from the doorway.
There was a long moment of silence after he’d gone. Cosgrove met her eyes. He smiled, a humorless stretching of his lips. “I really must get myself a wife and start producing children.” His voice was light, but Charlotte could almost taste his anger on her tongue. “The alternative is too horrible to contemplate, is it not?”
Charlotte didn’t answer. It seemed to her that it was nothing to joke about.
Cosgrove seemed to shake himself, to slough off his anger. His face became less angular, his eyes less hard. He strolled around the desk and looked at the drawer on the floor. “And what’s your role in this, lad? Were you defending my property?”
“He was going through your desk, sir!” Charlotte knelt and began to gather the scattered contents.
“Then I must thank you for your intervention.” The earl picked up the drawer and fitted it back into its slot. “But I keep my money under lock and key; Lavinia taught me that. Which reminds me, I must give you a key.”
“Me, sir?”
“You may need to make payments from time to time. Fellowes and Mrs. Maby hold money, but some expenses are outside their purview.” Cosgrove picked up the open ledger on his desk. “What’s this? I thought I gave you the rest of the day off.”
“It was a prop, sir.” Charlotte refilled the drawer: sealing wax, wafers, two bottles of ink, a handful of unused quills. “It didn’t seem wise to leave Mr. Langford in here alone.”
“No, not wise.” The earl returned the ledger to its place on the shelf, then produced a small key from his pocket, held it out to her. “Here, you may have this.”
Charlotte took the key. It was warm from the heat of his body. “Won’t you need it, sir?”
“I have another one upstairs.” Cosgrove walked to a tall, solid mahogany cabinet, opened the door, tapped one of the drawers. “It fits this.”
“Are you certain—?”
“I don’t believe you’ll steal from me, will you, lad?”
His eyes met hers. Charlotte’s heart beat faster. She shook her head vehemently. “No, sir.”
Cosgrove picked up his hat and gloves. His gaze fell on the glazed bookcase. “It seems we need the glazier again.” He strode into the corridor. “Fellowes!”
Charlotte remained where she was, clutching the key, holding Cosgrove’s body heat in her hand. Her physical longing for him was so intense it was almost pain. She squeezed her eyes shut. I must conquer this, before it conquers me.
Chapter Twenty-One
October 22nd, 1805
London
Charlotte laid down the quill and flexed her fingers. The muscles in her chest and shoulders and arms ached from the flying she’d done yesterday. She glanced across at Lord Cosgrove. A week ago he’d interviewed her, had offered her this job, and she’d looked at the bruises on his face, the scabbed and healing cuts, and almost refused.
The marks of violence were gone from Cosgrove’s face. And she knew she’d made the right choice. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.
She watched him for a moment—the brisk strokes of the quill as he wrote his next speech, the frown of concentration between the strong, black eyebrows. Her fingers curled into her palms. She craved to touch him, a visceral yearning that clenched in her chest, in her throat.
Scratch the itch, the earl had advised. But how?
Charlotte tore her gaze away and looked at the ebony and gold mantel clock, following the second hand with her eyes as it worked its way around the dial. “Sir? It’s three o’clock.”
The earl wrote a few words, read them back under his breath, crossed them out.
“Sir?” Charlotte said, more loudly. “It’s three o’clock. You’ll be late for Gentleman Jack.”
“What?” Cosgrove glanced up, blinked, and then his gray eyes focused on her. “Three o’clock? So it is. Thank you, lad.”
Charlotte fiddled with her quill while the earl gathered his notes together. “Sir . . . I’ve finished the Dorset accounts. May I take my belongings around to Chandlers Street?”
“Hmm? Yes, of course. You can start on the Somerset ledger when you get back.”
Twenty minutes later, with her valise and portmanteau installed at Mrs. Stitchbury’s, Charlotte hailed a hackney. “The Pig and Whistle,” she said, with a sense of recklessness. “In Aldgate High Street.”
* * *
Nervousness grew inside her while the hackney traversed London. Charlotte rehearsed what to say, muttering the words under her breath, as the earl had muttered his speech. The carriage was rattling down Aldgate High Street when it occurred to her that the Smiths might recognize her as Cosgrove’s new secretary. Who was to say they hadn’t been watching the earl’s house, that they hadn’t seen her in his company? Panic spurted in her chest—the hackney was slowing to a halt—before she remembered her magic. I wish to have dark brown hair, straight, not curling, and a broad face.
Insect legs crawled over her scalp for a second, over her cheeks and jaw.
The hackney lurched to a halt. Charlotte opened the door and jumped down. Across the street was the Pig and Whistle.
She took a deep breath. I can do this.
“Please wait here.” Charlotte pulled her hat brim low, in case the jarvey noticed her change in appearance, but the man’s attention was on the coins she was fishing from her pocket. “I’ll be no more than ten minutes.”
* * *
It was dark inside the Pig and Whistle, and the air was stale.
Charlotte inhaled shallowly. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. She was in a taproom with a low, beamed ceiling and a floor of bare timber. A dozen or so men sat at tables, drinking. She scanned their faces. None of them looked like the men from Tewkes Hollow.
One of the drinkers saw her. He nudged his companion, who turned and stared at her.
Charlotte resisted the urge to touch her cheeks and jaw and check that she had an ordinary man’s face. It was her clothes they were staring at—the polished top boots and neatly tied neckcloth. I’m too well-dressed.
She inhaled another shallow breath and crossed to the tap.
“What d’ y’ want?” It was the same woman who’d shouted at her yesterday, wearing the same dirty apron. Her gown was faded and stained and straining at the seams.
Charlotte removed her hat and bowed. “Good afternoon, madam.”
The woman tittered. “Madam!” she said. “Did y’ hear that, boys? Them’s manners for you.”
One of the patrons replied. Charlotte didn’t catch the words, but she understood the tone: derogatory.
Behind her, a guffaw went up.
A dull flush rose in the woman’s plump cheeks. “Don’t you pay no attention to ’em, sir. Ill-mannered louts as they are. What can I do you for?”
Charlotte took a shilling from her pocket. She slid it across the counter, but kept her finger on it. “I’m hoping, madam, that you may be able to help me in a matter.”
The woman’s eyes fastened on the coin. “And what matter might that be, sir?”
“I’m looking for two men who I believe are regular patrons of yours. Tall, heavyset men, a few years older than me.”
The woman sniffed. “Ain’t much of a description. Could be anyone.”
“They may be going by the name of Smith.�
��
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Smith?”
Charlotte felt her pulse quicken. “Do you know them, ma’am?”
“Mebbe, mebbe not.” The woman took a filthy rag from her apron pocket and swiped it across the counter. “What’s your int’rest in ’em?”
“My employer would like to hire them. They have been particularly recommended to him.”
“Hire ’em?”
Charlotte nodded, holding her breath.
The woman pursed her lips. “It might be Abel and Jeremiah Smith. They does drink ’ere often enough.”
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the men sitting, drinking. “Are they here now, madam?”
Her stomach tied itself in a knot while she waited for the reply.
“No.”
The knot in her belly unraveled. “What do they look like, madam?”
“They’s big men.” The woman shrugged. “Ain’t much to tell about ’em other ’n that.”
“What is their trade?”
“Abel and Jeremiah?” She snorted a laugh. “They does whatever needs doin’. They ain’t fussy.”
“Do you know, madam, whether they ever undertake commissions out of town?”
“They was away from Lunnon the night before last, workin’.”
And I know where: Tewkes Hollow. Charlotte tried not to let her excitement show. “Then, may I leave a message with you, madam?” She lifted her finger from the shilling.
The woman snatched it up.
“If you have a quill and paper—”
The woman snorted. “Abel and Jeremiah can’t read. You tell me your message, an’ I’ll make sure they gets it.”
Charlotte lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Can you please inform them that someone is desirous of offering them employment? There is a . . . a task that my master would like carried out that he believes to be well within their ability.” She hoped her manner implied that the task was illegal. “They’ll be generously paid for their efforts.”
“I’ll tell ’em.” The woman wiped the counter again with her rag, then stuffed it back in her apron.
