by Jane Feather
Hector pushed back his chair, suddenly anxious to get out of this dark, dusty hole. The last thing he wanted was another dose of indifferent burgundy in a filthy glass, but just as he was about to make his farewells, the justice addressed a civil question to him on his experiences in Parliament, and he found himself drawn into conversation with a man whose stature and position in the world demanded the utmost respect.
Justice Greenaway was most flatteringly attentive as Hector waxed eloquent on the life and influence of a Whig member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Broughton. Dirk was drawn into conversation with the banker on the fascinating subject of horse racing and fox hunting and the rival merits of the Quorn and the Beaufort.
Thaddeus Nielson twirled the stem of his wineglass between finger and thumb and watched and listened, heavy lids drooping over penetrating gray eyes, as his quarry were soothed and smoothed with compliments, any possible qualms forgotten in the civilized company of eminent men.
Dirk glanced once toward his host and thought that his mouth had a rather sardonic quirk, but that, of course, was due to the scar. Poor man. It was such a ghastly disfigurement.
“Gentlemen, I must beg you to excuse me. But I have another urgent appointment,” Thaddeus said eventually, when there was a brief pause in the discussions.
He pushed back his chair. “Ned will show you out.” Going to the door, he opened it and bellowed for the old retainer.
“I’m acomin’. I’m acomin’. What’s yer ’urry?” Ned’s creaky grumbles could be heard along the corridor as he shuffled to answer the summons.
“That jarvey out there says ’e won’t wait more ’an three more minutes. An’ he’d like his fare fer gettin’ ye ’ere, if you gentlemen pleases.”
Hector and Dirk rose to their feet. “Insolent dog,” Hector stated.
“Aye, I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” the justice agreed, nodding his head, smoothing down his crimson waistcoat. “And when Gordon holds his public meeting at St. George’s Field, there’s no knowing what will transpire.”
“His acolytes are expecting a crowd of thousands, I hear,” the banker said, moving to the door. “Turn that rabble loose on London, after listening to Lord George for an hour, and none of us will be safe in our beds.”
“Paint a ’No Popery’ sign on your door and you’ll be safe enough,” Thaddeus said with a poor attempt to conceal a yawn. “Good afternoon, sirs.”
He bowed as his guests filed out in Ned’s wake. The door closed behind them.
Rupert straightened and strode to the shuttered windows. He flung open the shutters and drew a deep breath of the warm, river-rank air, deciding that rotting weed and refuse made a relatively pleasant change after the fetid hothouse inside.
“Have they gone, Ben?” He turned back to the room as Ben came in with a crisp and spritely step.
“Aye, Nick. I told Will ye’d settle up with ’em all in the Royal Oak come Saturday.”
Rupert grinned and removed his embonpoint. “Superb actors, they are. I wouldn’t have believed it. Particularly Will and Thomas. Will makes an excellent Lord Justice.”
He chuckled and dipped a cloth into the bowl of water Ben held for him. “And Fred and Terence make a perfect pair of sleepy old men, happy to let the world bob past them.”
“Ye got what ye wanted?”
“Oh, yes.” Rupert scrubbed at the scar. “I have exactly what I want. In a couple of weeks our friends will receive a demand for payment on their note of hand. They will look for Thaddeus Nielson. But Thaddeus Nielson will have disappeared off the face of the earth.” His mouth twisted in a most unpleasant smile, and his eyes were as bleak and cold as the tundra.
“Sometimes I think y’are the devil hisself, Nick,” Ben said equably. “What’ve them coves done to ye?”
“Not to me, Ben.” He plucked the wig from his head, the kerchief from his neck, and threw off the ratty velvet coat and the moleskin waistcoat.
Ben handed him his own coat and waistcoat of dark-blue silk. He swallowed his curiosity and made no attempt to pursue the subject. Lord Nick had a look to his eyes and a curl to his lips that Ben knew meant he’d welcome no further questions.
“Have you been watching Morris?” Rupert asked evenly, fastening the buttons of his waistcoat.
“Seems clean as a whistle,” Ben said. “Goes nowhere out of the ordinary, speaks to no one unusual. Leastways not that I can discover. Why? Are ye thinkin’ of takin’ to the road again?”
“Possibly,” Rupert said, shrugging into his coat. “A personal matter.”
“Ye’ll take to the road on private business?” Ben’s surprise and disapproval was manifest.
“Just this once,” Rupert said, tying his stock. “I’ll need the cottage afterward.”
“Let me know when, then.”
“Aye.” Rupert took the large brass key from his britches pocket and went to the desk. He unlocked it and took out the two security pledges. Tomorrow Lacross and Digby would receive a request from his bankers for the deeds to the house to be lodged with the bank. It was a reasonable demand, and they would accede because they were in too deep to pull back.
He tucked the documents into his waistcoat pocket, then held the fake drafts from his confederates to the candle flame. The play was almost completed. And when Octavia had lured Philip to the ambush awaiting him on Putney Heath, then it would all be over.
The paper ash fell in a gray curl to the table, and he brushed it away. When he looked up, a shiver prickled Ben’s spine. He’d seen Lord Nick at his most dangerous, but he’d never seen such bleakness on his friend’s countenance.
“I’ll leave you to lock up.” Rupert strode to the door, but the look was still on his face, something very like despair in those clear gray eyes, and it was still there when he pulled away from the steps to row across the river, raising a hand in farewell to Ned.
He left the scull with the waterman at the Waterside steps and retrieved his horse from the Angel Tavern. There seemed more refuse than usual in the streets, mute witness to the earlier passing of the crowd, and a sense of suppressed excitement in the lanes as he rode past the narrow row houses, their inhabitants clustered on doorsteps, hanging out of windows.
But Rupert paid little or no attention to his surroundings. He could derive no lightening of his spirits either from the success of the afternoon’s play, the crackle in his waistcoat of the papers that would return Oliver Morgan’s family home to its rightful owner. He could think only of Octavia in Dover Street, of how she would greet him when he saw her.
Always polite, her smile unwavering, her golden eyes as distant and withdrawn as the eclipsed sun. If he attempted to touch her, even a casual, friendly gesture, she would move away from him, seeming to shrink within herself as if his touch repulsed her. So he no longer tried.
He no longer came to her bed, no longer expected to see that warm glow, the swift surge of passion in her eyes. If he could prod her into a sustained conversation, he counted himself fortunate. But she never laughed anymore. And his ears still rang with the sound of her dreadful laughter on that ghastly afternoon—laughter that had been harder to endure than a cry of anguish.
She was wounded. The Octavia he knew and loved was dug deep inside her shell, curled over her wound like an injured animal trying to heal itself. He knew all this, but he didn’t know how to break through the carapace.
He’d thought he would be able to accept the situation. Accept that she would continue to play her part, fulfill her side of the bargain, and he would be glad simply of that. But it didn’t work like that. He ached for her, and his own sense of self-disgust deepened every time he read the hurt and derision in her eyes.
He left Peter in the mews and walked round to the front of the house. When his employers were out, Griffin generally stationed a footman on the lookout for their return, but, unusually, the front door didn’t open as Rupert mounted the steps. The answer to this neglect became clear as he entered the hall onto a
scene of complete uproar.
A parlor maid was screaming at the foot of the stairs; the housekeeper, her apron thrown over her head, was providing an alto counterpoint to the parlor maid. It seemed to Rupert’s incredulous eye that his entire household, from the lowliest bootboy to the austere Griffin, was making some kind of noise in his hall.
An enormous tabby cat raced between Rupert’s feet, leaped off all fours directly into the air, seemed to reverse its position in midair, and was off again, its tail bushed, its ears pricked.
“Lord of hell!” Rupert slammed the door behind him. “Griffin, what the devil’s going on here?”
“It’s that varmint, my lord,” the butler declared, his chest swelling with outrage. “Let loose a pack of snakes and mice all over the house.”
“There’s one … oh, over there, under the table!” A scullery maid pointed with a trembling finger, her voice rising to a pitch of hysteria. “It’s a snake … it’s a snake …”
“Silence!” thundered Lord Warwick. “Griffin, get these people back to work, unless they wish to have no work.”
He stalked over to the console table where the cat was standing at bay. A tiny and somewhat sleepy grass snake slithered backward into the shadows as his feet approached.
The cat flattened on its belly and reached into the shadow with one infinitely extending paw. The scullery maid screeched again, and a second round of pandemonium broke out.
Rupert lost interest in the cat and the snake and spun round in time to see a field mouse scamper across the parquet floor and disappear into the library just inches ahead of a second cat, this one a fearsome-looking black-and-white with only one eye.
“Where is Frank?” Rupert demanded in a tone no less ferocious for its low pitch.
“He’s here.” Octavia spoke from the landing. Her voice was trembling with what Rupert immediately recognized as laughter. His heart leaped in his chest at a sound he hadn’t heard for days.
“Just you give him to me, my lady,” Griffin declared. “I’ll take him to the mews and teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.”
“I doubt you’d succeed, Griffin,” Octavia said, coming down the stairs, Frank’s collar grasped firmly between finger and thumb as she hauled him along with her. “He’s had too many beatings in his short life for one more to make any difference.”
“I didn’t do nuffink, Miss Tavi!” Frank protested vociferously, struggling in Octavia’s hold.
“Oh, yes, you did,” she said, swinging him by his collar down the last step and into the hall. Her eyes were dancing, her mouth curved in amusement.
“He would have it, Rupert, that Papa told him to collect the snakes and mice for his lessons, and he was only doing what he was told.”
“And did he?” It seemed entirely likely that Oliver would have set his pupil such an eccentric task.
“Not exactly,” Octavia said carefully. “He was to draw a snake and a mouse from a picture book and give them their Latin names, but Frank thought it would be more realistic—or do I mean entertaining?—to draw them from life.”
Rupert’s lips twitched. Frank still jerked and wriggled in Octavia’s hold. “And just how did they get loose?”
“Jumped outta the box, guv. Weren’t my fault,” Frank declared righteously.
“You lying little guttersnipe,” Griffin exploded. “You deliberately put them on the kitchen floor where the cats could see them.”
“I believe, Griffin, that it would please me if you would send my household back to work,” Rupert said softly, one eyebrow lifting.
The butler’s already suffused countenance turned a darker crimson. He bowed and waved a hand at the gawping assembled staff. In a very few minutes the hall was empty of all but Octavia, Rupert, and the now silent and watchful Frank.
The boy’s gaze darted between them, the previous mischief in his eyes vanished to be replaced by the old man’s wariness that had haunted them when he’d first arrived in Dover Street.
“What are we going to do with him?” Octavia inquired, leaping aside as the black-and-white cat raced out of the library.
“How many are there?”
“Mice or snakes?”
“Both.”
“Well, according to Frank, there are three snakes and four mice. But how we are to find them, I can’t imagine.” Her voice cracked, and she doubled over on a surge of hilarity.
Rupert listened to the sound. It was a wonderful sound, banishing the memory of that other ghastly laughter that had been no laughter. A bubble of merriment grew in his chest and his shoulders began to shake.
Frank grinned as Rupert’s laughter joined Octavia’s. He couldn’t really imagine why they found it so funny. He thought it was funny, but in his experience adults didn’t share his sense of humor. These two, however, were not in the least like any adult he’d ever come across. Griffin and the housekeeper and Cook were all familiar types, but the guv and Miss Tavi were a different species altogether. And as for the old geezer upstairs … well, he was clearly off his rocker, but harmless enough.
“But what are we to do with him?” Octavia repeated as the spasms subsided.
“We’ll decide that when he’s retrieved the livestock,” Rupert said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. Without thinking he caught her chin and wiped her streaming eyes.
It was a gesture that came so naturally in the moment of warmth that neither of them reacted immediately, and then abruptly Octavia’s smile faded, her eyes lost their glow. She turned her head away and his hand fell to his side.
He turned abruptly to the small boy, and his voice was stern, his gaze harsh. “Frank, you are to recapture every one of those creatures. I wish to see them back in their box before you have any supper.” There was no more potent motivation for Frank than food.
Frank’s expression became wary again. He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders and, when Octavia released her hold on his collar, slunk off, seeming to cling to the shadows of the wall as if to avoid further notice.
“He’ll never find them in this house,” Octavia said, no sign of her previous laughter on her countenance or in her voice. “They could be anywhere … in a hole in the wainscot, or under a carpet.”
“Well, he’ll have to try,” Rupert said shortly, turning aside to the library.
“Knowing Frank, he’ll simply go outside, find some more, and claim them as the originals.”
Octavia followed Rupert, feeling dreary as the familiar chill set in between them. Even if she’d wished to offer a truce, she couldn’t do it.
Her mind simply refused to let go of the image of the man drugging her with cold calculation, compelling a false response from her that she had believed was essentially true to herself.
He’d tricked her. Deceived her. Betrayed her. And she couldn’t bear the shame and the disappointment.
“I don’t think I’ll question his solutions too closely,” Rupert said, trying to sound lightly amused again. “Sherry?”
“Thank you.” She took the glass he handed her, giving him one of her polite, distant smiles. “I daresay we’ll be overrun with mice if they start breeding in the woodwork.”
Her voice was so dull, her attempt to keep the conversation light so transparent, that Rupert abandoned the topic. Their shared business was really the one thing they had left now, and he took up the subject with a cool, businesslike detachment.
“How close are you to persuading Philip to accept an out-of-town assignation with you?”
“He’s been rather wary since the debacle with Frank,” she said in the same tone. “I think he wants to be sure I haven’t told the story and made a laughingstock of him. But I’ve continued to pay him the right attentions, and he’s definitely still interested. You tell me when you wish it to be, and I’ll bring him.” She turned aside, walking over to the window.
Rupert regarded her averted back in silence for a minute, sipping his sherry. She no longer told him anything of her dealings with his twin, and he no longer
asked for a progress report. He no longer had the right to direct this operation.
“Let us say next Wednesday, then?” he suggested as if they were planning a tea party. “I’ll alert Ben.”
“And what of the spy?” She didn’t turn from the window, but her fingers tightened involuntarily around the stem of her glass.
“I don’t believe there is one.”
“Morris?”
“Ben doesn’t believe so.”
“Then we’ll make it next Wednesday.”
“Very well.” Rupert placed his glass on the table and left.
The door closed softly behind him. The fragile stem of the glass snapped between Octavia’s fingers, and a bead of blood sprang up as a sliver of glass dug into her flesh.
Chapter 19
Philip Wyndham alighted from his phaeton outside Wyndham House and stood for a minute, frowning at the unfamiliar barouche drawn up before his front door. It was still relatively early in the morning and St. James’s Square was devoid of activity, except for a footman walking a fat Pug.
A lad was holding the horses of the barouche, but it didn’t suit the Earl of Wyndham to inquire of a strange servant who was visiting Wyndham House at such an early hour. He strode up the stairs to his house, flicking at his boots with his driving whip.
“Who’s here, Bennet?” he demanded as the butler bowed him into the hall.
“The physician, my lord. Lady Susannah has the croup,” the butler explained. “I understand from nurse that she’s been very sick throughout the night. Her ladyship is most anxious.”
Philip’s frown deepened; then he shrugged impatiently. “A fuss about nothing, as usual. Women always exaggerate these things. I won’t have my house in an uproar over a sickly brat. Send the doctor on his way with all dispatch.”
“Yes, my lord.” Bennet’s bow was wooden as his employer stalked toward the breakfast parlor at the rear of the house.
Philip, still with lowering brows, cast an eye over the Morning Post and attacked a veal chop and a plate of kidneys. The habitual serenity of his household was annoyingly fractured. He kept hearing footsteps hastening past his door, the sound of hurried voices, low-pitched but nevertheless urgent. Finally, he pushed back his chair and left the room just as the physician came ponderously down the stairs with his black bag, his hat beneath his arm. Behind him pattered Letitia, her eyes red, her face drawn with worry.
