Once again, his wants and wishes were blown about like leaves in autumn.
“Shall I call for your carriage, my lord?” Dodd asked, all respectful in hopes of keeping his position.
“No, the crested coach would be set upon instantly, if it could fit through the narrow streets, and a horse would be stolen as soon as I dismounted. I’ll take a hackney as far as the driver will carry me and walk the rest of the way.” He practiced sliding the case off the cane he carried, revealing the sword hidden within. His clothes were plain country wear, with no gleaming rings or fancy buckles to tempt the denizens of London’s underworld, but if anyone should challenge him, he’d be ready. He half wished some thug would try to pick his pocket or steal his purse. Heaven help the poor bastard.
Maybe the scum who hid in alleys had unspoken talents of their own, like reading danger in the set of a man’s jaw, or seeing murderous intents like sparks in his eyes. No one bothered Rex. For a coin, a street urchin led him straight to Dirty Sal’s, after asking twice to be sure the toff really wanted to go inside that sinkhole. For another coin, the boy offered to take a message to the gent’s family, for when he didn’t come out.
Rex tossed him a coin without answering, and stepped through a cloud of smoke and sour ale and sweat. He waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom and his nose to the stench, while he kept his back to the wall near the doorway. The gaming tables were full. So were the spaces at the long plank bar against the opposite wall. Rex could not make out every face, or see into every corner, but Daniel’s size usually made him more easily spotted than most. Rex noticed a man with an eye patch leading a woman in a loose blouse up rickety stairs to the floor above. Perhaps Daniel was taking his pleasure—and the pox—there instead of at the dice tables. The viscount ordered a mug of ale while he waited. The barmaid leaned forward so he could see where she tucked his coin, and offered him more than a drink. He smiled and shook his head.
From his position, Rex could overhear some of the conversation at a nearby card table. Without even trying to pick colors from their words, Rex knew at a glance which of the players were cheating. They were all cheating. Marked decks, hidden cards, signals passed across the table—just a friendly game among pals. An argument ensued over how many aces were in the pack. Heated words turned to a shove, which turned to a punch, which pushed a chap at the next table into dropping his dice, which came up sixes for the fifth time, which led to more shouts, more punches, and more of a melee, with his cousin Daniel in the middle. Of course.
Chairs were flying, tables were overturned, the barkeep was swinging a club, and Dirty Sal herself—or so Rex thought she must be—was waving a musket around.
Now this was the very entertainment Rex had been missing. Slashing out with his cane, he cleared a path to his cousin and got between him and the owner of the establishment, who appeared ready to shoot the next rotter who broke a chair. If there was one glass left unbroken at the end of the night, that would be a miracle.
“I’ve got your back,” Rex shouted over the din of the fight.
Daniel turned and grinned, using his thick upraised arm to fend off a tossed stool. “Just like old times, you little nit. You need me to save your skin.”
“Hah!” Rex punched a ferret-faced man in the midsection.
Daniel threw another combatant aside as easily as he’d thrown the stool. Rex used his cane to trip a charging drunk. Daniel banged together the heads of a pair of men who did not have seven teeth between them—and Rex lobbed a pitcher of ale at Dirty Sal and her musket, dampening the powder enough to render the fight less deadly.
Daniel laughed his loud, deep laugh, and Rex had to laugh, too. The Inquisitors were together again, in the middle of a fine rowdydow.
When it looked as though the establishment’s regulars were going to join forces against the newcomers, Rex shouted, “Had enough?”
“Unless you want to go one on one, little coz.”
“Not this minute, bullyboy. We need to talk.”
“Not here.”
A French cannon wouldn’t be heard in the place. The cousins waded toward the door, dodging fists and punching back when they couldn’t, sticking close together. “Just like old times, eh?”
Rex shook his hair out of his eyes. “Better. No one is shooting at us anymore.”
Daniel suddenly stopped just as they reached the street. Unmindful of the fighting spilling out of the doorway behind them, he took Rex’s chin in his broad hand and turned it to the lantern hanging by the entry, so he could see the scar. Then he looked at Rex’s leg and the cane now bearing his weight, while Rex stayed quiet, breathing hard. “I should have been there with you. This wouldn’t have happened.”
Rex pulled away and started to walk across the street from the gambling hell. He hid his limp as much as possible. “No, we both would have been shot. No one saw the Frenchies creeping around camp until too late.”
“I should have been there,” Daniel insisted in his mulish way. “Your father told me to look after you.”
“Dash it, I was not a child needing a nursemaid. And your mother and sister needed you at home.”
Rex was watching his cousin, not the fight at their backs, so he never saw the thug come at him with a raised bottle. Daniel did and bellowed. Rex turned in time to feel the brunt of the bottle on his nose. Daniel roared a curse, dove at the man, and started pounding at him on the ground.
“Let him go. I don’t think my nose is broken,” Rex said, trying to stop the bleeding with a thin monogrammed square.
Daniel lumbered to his feet and handed over a sturdy spotted handkerchief. “You shouldn’t have called me a useless dumb lummox.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I knew that. Didn’t like hearing it anyway.”
“You were too damn stubborn to go home any other way.”
“I am not stubborn, damn you!” Daniel drew his ham-hock fist back and made sure Rex’s nose was broken this time.
“Oh, hell,” Rex muttered through the kerchief, which was joined by Daniel’s neckcloth, then his own. “I thought my father told you to look after me.”
“I am,” Daniel said, hauling Rex to his feet and pulling him along before the Watch came. “You are too damned handsome for your own good.”
Rex stumbled at first at his cousin’s longer stride, but kept up. “What, with the scar? Women tremble at the sight.”
“They’ll tremble, all right, but with eagerness to sink their claws into you now that you are in London. What’s a little scar compared to your title and fortune?”
“That’s not why I came. I have another mission in town. My father sent me to rescue a damsel, and I need your help to fight off the dragon.”
“Damsels and dragons, eh? I suppose you get to play the white knight and you expect me to be your loyal squire as usual? I won’t do it. Ain’t in the petticoat line, and ain’t wearing armor. I like my freedom and my comfort too well.”
“This is different.”
“Not army work, then? I sold out ages ago, you know. Soon as I came home, and glad of it.” Daniel kept walking, leading Rex toward a better section of town, thank goodness. Too many eyes stared out of too many alleys for Rex’s comfort. No one had challenged them yet, but a limping, bloody nob was an easy target for a gang. Daniel was a large target for a thrown knife or a pistol.
“I am going to resign my commission as soon as this is over. I’ve had my fill of being treated like a barbarian.” Not that this evening was any indication of a more civilized existence, but it felt better, except for his nose.
“We saved a lot of English lives with the information we got for the generals,” Daniel said, “no matter how we got it.”
“But we lost the respect of those very lives we saved, and well you know it. This is a more personal battle.”
“Very well, who is the dragon, then?”
“Lady Royce.”
“Your mother? You’ve reconciled with Aunt Margaret? That’s gra
nd.”
“No, I have not reconciled with that woman. She is not even in Town yet. She’s flitting around Bath while there’s a cyclone brewing here. It’s her goddaughter, Miss Amanda Carville.”
Daniel stopped walking. “The female who shot that dirty dish Hawley, her own stepfather?”
“The one who was charged with the crime,” Rex amended. “And charged in a hurry, I might add, by Sir Nigel Turlowe.”
Daniel whistled, then regretted it, discovering a split lip. “So that is why your father sent you. Did she do it?” Daniel knew that Rex would have the truth, if anyone did.
“She was too ill to tell me. Then she was frightened by the dog, then Nanny Brown threw me out of the room.” Rex swung his cane at a street lamp in frustration. “We have to find out.”
Daniel leaned against the lamppost. “We?”
“I do not know my way around Town the way you do. And if Miss Carville did not commit the murder, then someone will not want us looking into it. Nor will Sir Nigel.”
“You need me.”
“That’s what I said, you big oaf.”
“Are you sure your nose is broken this time? I could . . .”
They went to the boardinghouse where Daniel rented a set of rooms, to pick up his things. At first Daniel was not happy at the idea of staying at Royce House.
“I’m not, either,” Rex said in an understatement. He’d rather have slept on the sagging sofa in Daniel’s sitting room, but neither one of them had a choice, not if they were going to settle the court case as soon as possible. “But I vouched for Miss Carville, so I have to stay close at least until the countess returns.”
“She’ll be mad.”
“Miss Carville? How can she complain of another champion? Besides, she is too ill to notice your presence.”
“No, Aunt Margaret.”
“What, that you’ve turned into a sot and a brawler?”
“No, that I broke your damned beak. I promised to look after you.”
“That was on the Peninsula, not in London.”
“I promised your father about the army. Your mother about everything else.”
“Well, I promised your mother and father, too. And I never broke your nose, so you deserve the guilt and the anger.”
“You couldn’t break my nose if you wanted to.”
Rex did not bother refuting the boyish taunt as he sipped at the wine Daniel brought. “I did not know you corresponded with the countess.”
“She’s my aunt, don’t you know. She always wanted to hear about you.”
“She could have asked me.”
“Would you have answered?”
“No.”
Rex sank into a chair and gratefully accepted the wet towel Daniel handed him to put over his aching nose, and another glass of wine.
While Daniel packed—if throwing clothing and papers and books into a trunk could be called packing—he wanted to know their plan. Rex always did have a plan, hey-go-mad or hell-born, and Daniel always went along with it.
“Well, until we know if the lady is innocent or not, we cannot mount a defense. We’ll need to talk to the servants at Hawley’s house, and pick up Miss Carville’s belongings while we are there. And I want to know why the stepsister and -brother never visited the jail, and what man Miss Carville was supposed to be meeting on the sly.”
“I never heard a name in the clubs and coffeehouses when everyone was talking about the killing. Mostly they were all glad Sir Frederick was gone.”
“That’s what I heard too, so far. But someone has to know more. Then there is the little problem I might have with the Lord High Magistrate or the sheriff’s office, for nearly kidnaping Miss Carville out of Newgate.”
“You didn’t go bail for her?”
“There is no bond set for a killer—an accused killer. I suppose they figure the accused would all scarper off to the colonies or something.”
“Right. I would be running too, if I had the gun in my hand at the scene of the crime.” Daniel grinned, then found another towel to hold against his split lip. “So you stole the woman like a ravaging Hun?”
“Not exactly. I paid the guard and claimed I was taking her for medical treatment. So I might have to call at the War Office.”
Daniel took a long swallow of his wine, deciding that would work better than a towel. “The Aide?”
Rex nodded. No one voluntarily called on the secretive figure behind the covert operations of the army’s Intelligence division. “I am on sick leave still, so he cannot order me back to the Peninsula. On the other hand, he will not want me arrested for obstructing justice.”
Daniel put on a clean jacket—cleaner, at any rate—and said, “With friends like that, who needs maggots?”
“Right.”
“Tell me about the woman.”
So Rex told what little he knew. Of course he did not describe the woman’s figure or soft skin, only her condition, the rescue, and the few words they’d exchanged.
“Have you a guess?”
Rex knew Daniel meant about the murder, not whether Miss Carville was a virgin or not, which kept rattling around Rex’s brain like a loose shutter on a windy night. “My gut says she’s no cold-blooded killer, and Nanny Brown swears the countess would not have sent for us if she were. Other than that, the lady might have had good reason.”
“Good enough for Sir Nigel and the courts?”
Rex did not know, which worried him. “Are you ready? I do not like leaving her alone in that household. Most of the servants are on holiday.” He stood, with effort. Damn, but his bad leg was not up to this much activity. He took a last swallow of his wine for the trip back to Mayfair.
Daniel watched, without offering a hand. “Well, if she is convicted, at least your mother won’t make you marry the chit.”
The wineglass slid out of Rex’s fingers. “What do you mean?”
“Stands to reason Aunt Margaret won’t want a killer in the family, even if the gal is her goddaughter. Might shoot her husband next. That’d be you,” he added, in case Rex missed the barb.
Rex was still on the dire word. “Marry?”
“Well, the wife of a peer gets special privileges in the courts, doesn’t she? And there’s no doubt that you compromised the female. Took her off on your horse, brought her to your mother’s house with no respectable female present. Undressed her, too. If that’s not compromising a lady, I don’t know what is, unless you raise her skirts on a park bench in Hyde Park.”
While Rex sputtered and tried to explain the situation, Daniel tied another spotted kerchief around his neck in lieu of a cravat and then hauled his trunk onto his shoulder. He looked more like a dockworker than a gentleman, but Rex was not in any position to cast aspersions, not with his shirt and coat stained with blood, his red-soaked neckcloth tossed in the trash altogether. Besides, who cared about neatness when Daniel spoke of nuptials?
“Deuce take it, I saved her from being beaten and raped! I took her to where she could be tended and healed.”
Daniel headed down the stairs with his burden, as if he carried a bandbox instead of a trunk. “You ought to know the ton don’t care a whit about the right or the reason. They only care about the looks of the thing. An earl’s son, a spinster lady alone in a house. Sounds like wedding bells to me. You better hope she’s guilty.”
“No, I shall not hope for that. And no one can force me to the altar.”
“I don’t know about that,” Daniel called back over his shoulder. “Your mother is a powerful woman. Made me take tea with her cronies and their daughters a few times. You know how I hate that kind of thing. Makes me break out in a rash.”
“That’s not pushing you to wed one of them.”
“I don’t know. Your mother had that look in her eye. I was glad she left for Bath when she did, except she did set a fine table. Oh, pull the door shut behind you, there’s a good fellow.”
There’s a wed man walking.
Chapter Seven
N
anny Brown clutched her heart when she opened Miss Carville’s door to see Rex looking as if he’d been run over by an oxcart.
Rex almost had palpitations too, when he saw the gun wavering in the old woman’s gnarled fingers.
“My stars!”
“My pistol.” Rex still had the mate tucked into his waistband. He gingerly reached out to take the weapon.
Nanny almost dropped it before he had his hands on the barrel. Daniel ducked, behind him.
“Oh, it is not loaded, but I thought it best to keep the thing nearby. My knitting needles are in my pocket and the warming pan is next to my chair.”
“You needed a weapon to defend yourself from Miss Carville?” Good grief, had he carelessly left his former nursemaid alone with a homicidal maniac? He’d supposed that the younger woman had a good excuse for shooting Hawley, if she actually did commit the murder. Not that she was liable to murder a frail old woman in her sleep along with the rest of Lady Royce’s household.
Rex shuddered to recall his last day in the army, when the same overconfidence in his intuition almost let a troop of French scouts fire on headquarters. He was the only casualty, thank goodness, or he never would have been able to forgive himself. Lud, if something happened to Nanny, he’d be in worse straits. She was not even a soldier.
He should have waited for morning to find his cousin, or left a message at Daniel’s rooms. He should have posted guards, or stood sentinel himself. He should have—
Nanny sniffed, then scowled at the odors of cheap ale and fine wine and clucked her tongue. “How much have you been drinking to come up with such a foolish notion? Of course I did not need to fend off Miss Carville. She is a lady, not a criminal. But someone loose in London killed that unfortunate man.” She stepped closer and peered up at Rex. “Did he attack you?”
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