Courting Danger with Mr. Dyer

by Georgie Lee

  She walked to the window to take in the street outside, struggling against her rising frustration. With Freddy making it clear she was not as valuable to him as she’d believed, it was nice to think someone still needed her, even if it was only for a short time. Except she wasn’t sure Bart did need her. After all, he’d done nothing to make her believe he would require further assistance from her.

  Then why didn’t I simply agree to Freddy’s request? Because, until she heard otherwise from Bart, there was still hope. She’d come to London to gain a new life for herself, and if she allowed others to dictate who she should and should not see then she’d never claim the independence she craved.

  * * *

  ‘I’m here to see the man they brought in last night. I need to talk to him.’ Bart stood before the desk of the rotund gaol warden.

  He didn’t look up from the large mug of cheap ale he poured himself, but continued to fill the pewter until he was satisfied, then set the jug down with a thud. ‘That might be hard. He died last night. Gaol fever.’

  ‘Then I want to see the body.’ He never trusted anything until he confirmed it, not the information his men brought him, or even Moira’s rejection of him five years ago as the aunt had related it until he’d spoken to Moira in private in the square near her house. It’d been a painful conversation.

  The warden smacked his thick lips together as he eyed Bart. Then, with an as-you-wish shrug, he left the room, motioning for Bart to follow. They passed numerous stinking and dark cells crammed with people. Bart didn’t flinch. He’d been here too many times before to speak with possible witnesses and informants to be horrified by the dirty hands reaching out to beg a penny off him. The warden led him to the end of the block of cells and down a flight of rickety stairs to the cold stone cellar. Two bodies were laid out on tables beneath stained sheets. The smell in here wasn’t much worse than the one engulfing the cells upstairs.

  ‘Here he is.’ The warden flicked back an old sheet to reveal the ashen face of Mr Marks. ‘He’ll be chucked in the pauper’s pit this afternoon unless you want him. No one else does.’

  ‘I don’t want a dead man.’ Bart yanked the sheet off, revealing the stab wound in the man’s stomach. ‘Gaol fever?’

  The warden shrugged. ‘Easier than bringing in the constable, especially for scum like this.’

  ‘Any idea which other prisoner did this?’

  ‘Yeah, him.’ He pointed to the man on the table beside him.

  Bart flicked back the sheet. The second man had a similar wound. ‘A right epidemic.’

  The warden threw out his hands. ‘You know how it is in here at night.’

  He did. Leaving a man here to face it often opened his mouth or jogged his memory when Bart returned the next day. ‘Any idea who did the second man in?’

  ‘Can’t say. Lot of people coming and going yesterday on account of it being wages day. You can look at the register if you’d like.’

  ‘Yes.’ They returned to the warden’s office at the front of the gaol and a half-hour later one name stood out among the many. ‘What did this Mr Roth look like?’

  He’d heard the man’s name in connection with Mr Dubois before.

  The warden shrugged, his dirty coat rising and falling with his thick shoulders. ‘Like all the rest.’

  Bart slammed the register shut, making the fat man flinch. ‘I pay you for better information than this. Either provide it or I’ll haul you before the magistrate for miscarriage of justice.’

  The fat man blanched, scratched his head, then his stomach and spoke. ‘I remember him, he was thin, with a long scar on his left cheek.’

  Bart stood and tossed a coin at the warden. ‘Send word if he returns or if you hear anything of interest.’

  He strode outside into the street, past women bringing their incarcerated husbands food, and inhaled the slightly cleaner air. Bart would bet his carriage Mr Roth had been sent by Mr Dubois to make sure Mr Marks didn’t say anything to anyone about Mr Dubois’s business. Bart would instruct his men to talk to their informers about finding Mr Roth and for news on Mr Dubois’s activities. They might learn more about Mr Roth, but Mr Dubois kept everything close to his chest. However, if one of Mr Dubois’s men had been foolish enough to get arrested, and another dumb enough to sign his real name and be noticed, there might be others careless enough to talk while drunk or when bribed.

  In the meantime, he needed to discover if there was a connection between Lord Camberline, the Comte de Troyen and the Rouge Noir. The two men were definitely up to something, but he had no idea what and he needed to find out. There was only one person who could help him. Moira.

  Bart hailed a hack and gave the driver directions to Lord Fallworth’s residence. Once inside the mouldy vehicle, with the streets of London passing outside the window, he wondered what kind of welcome he’d receive from her today. She wasn’t likely to point a gun at him or banish him from the house, but it didn’t mean the aunt or Freddy wouldn’t do it for her. Visiting her was the only way to find out.

  * * *

  ‘Lady Rexford, a note arrived for you,’ the butler announced.

  Moira looked up from her book. After her discussion with Freddy, she’d retreated to her room to try to gather her thoughts, but they’d been as scattered as the light through the crystals hanging from the nearby candleholder. Freddy’s request has rankled with her through each chapter of her book, even though there’d been little reason to silently debate the matter of whether or not to continue an acquaintance with Bart. She still hadn’t heard from him, indicating her interest in maintaining a friendship with him was greater than his interest in her and all her fretting was for nothing. ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘I don’t know. A boy delivered it and is waiting downstairs for an answer.’

  She snapped the book closed, took the mysterious note and read it.

  Meet me in the square.

  BD

  She folded the paper and slipped it between the pages of her book, trying to control her excitement. It seemed she wasn’t as forgettable as she’d believed and it made the unsettled debate between obeying Freddy and making her own decision more acute. Freddy was right, there was a great deal at stake if she meddled in the Rouge Noir affair, but so far Bart had asked very little of her in that regard, and what Freddy and Aunt Agatha didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. Besides, she was a widow with the freedom to do as she saw fit, and at the moment, she saw fit to meet Bart.

  She went to her desk and jotted a quick note to Bart saying she would meet him, then handed it to the butler. ‘Give this to the boy.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Moira summoned the lady’s maid, the one she shared with Aunt Agatha to avoid the expense of two, and changed out of her morning dress and into a walking dress of dark purple embroidered with yellow flowers. The maid set a matching purple bonnet over her curls and Moira frowned at herself in the mirror. She was tired of dressing like an old matron and living a half-life. She only hoped the risk she was taking in meeting Bart was worth it. Thankfully, no one noticed her leaving, preventing her from having to lie to either Aunt Agatha or Freddy about where she was going.

  Outside, the air was crisp and the bright sun glistened off the leaves of the trees planted along the pavement, but the beauty of the day didn’t ease the knots in her stomach. The last time she and Bart had met like this, she’d been twenty and she’d stolen out of the house near dusk to meet Bart in the same square. In the encroaching darkness, she’d tried to make him understand why Aunt Agatha had said what she had to him and why she must obey her father. He hadn’t understood and she hadn’t blamed him, but that was years ago when she and Bart were different people. Aunt Agatha might have railed at him last night as if nothing had changed, but it had.

  She glanced behind her towards their town house. She couldn’t see it
from here because of the curve of the street. She hoped Freddy didn’t end his time with Miss Kent and then decide to take a ride. If he did, and he saw her with Bart, she would become very familiar with consequences. She twisted her reticule string around her finger as she approached the square, wondering if she should return home and forget Bart, but she couldn’t, she never had. Many times, after her marriage, when she’d sat alone at Allwick Hall surrounded by nothing but old portraits while her husband had secluded himself in his library with his tonics and fossils, she’d thought of Bart and cursed her weakness. She never wanted to be the Moira who sat alone with regrets again, but this time it seemed they might haunt her no matter what she decided to do.

  She stopped at the iron gate set in the fence surrounding the square. Bart stood a short distance away with his back to her, his light coat smooth across his wide shoulders, his feet in their dark boots planted firmly on the cobblestone path beneath the trees. She wrapped one gloved hand around a cold finial, hesitant to approach him. Five years ago, they hadn’t known one another long enough for her to risk her relationship with her father to be with him. The truth was, they still didn’t, but seeing the man he’d become told her so much about who he was. In court, he argued on behalf of innocent people against those who sought to deceive them. In Austria, he’d defended England and then returned home to do more of the same. He wasn’t a frail old man, but a robust one who fought for what he believed in, except he hadn’t believed in her enough to fight for her.

  She let go of the gate, the old heartbreak washing over her. He’d let her go so quickly, making her question the depth of his regard back then and ever since. If he’d truly cared for her, surely he would have struggled to find a way for them to be together? Except she hadn’t been willing to fight to stay with him either and it’d given him no reason to fight to hold on to her.

  She pushed open the gate and strode forward, refusing to be guided by their past. This was about claiming a future for herself and she must remember it. ‘Hello, Bart.’

  He turned, the severe set of his lips softening into an appreciative smile as he took her in. It was a far cry from the glare he’d pinned on her five years ago and she adjusted the buttons of her spencer, her heart racing beneath the fine wool.

  ‘Good afternoon, Moira. Thank you for meeting me. I wasn’t sure you would.’

  ‘I almost didn’t,’ she admitted. ‘Aunt Agatha is no longer the only one insisting we have nothing more to do with one another.’

  ‘Freddy?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Bart laced his fingers behind his back. ‘What I asked of you yesterday isn’t suitable work for a lady.’

  ‘What? Making a few introductions?’ she scoffed, afraid of where his comments might be leading. ‘It’s hardly daring.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I have no desire to come between you and your brother.’

  Moira struggled to hold her smile, afraid Bart, in his attempt to do the right thing, would pull away from her and she didn’t want him to go. Given Freddy and Aunt Agatha’s objections, there could be nothing serious between them, but without him, who knew what gaping loneliness might consume her life.

  ‘You won’t. Aunt Agatha is too busy with her London friends and Freddy with Nicholas and his club to notice what I’m up to,’ she lied, the guilt pricking her as much as her worry over being seen with him. ‘I’d be happy to make more introductions if you need them.’

  * * *

  Bart admired her conviction and her new willingness to decide her own fate. How different she was from the woman he’d met in this square five years ago. He’d blamed her back then for being weak when he should have been sympathetic. He’d spent years standing firm against his father’s attempts to dictate his life or tear him down. She’d fought the same war. He thought she’d lost it, but she hadn’t. Her strength had been dampened by needy relatives, but it had burned beneath the surface, giving her what she needed to be strong while those around her fell apart.

  Bart moved back the sides of his coat as he pressed his knuckles into his hips, fighting against his lingering reservations to bring her deeper into this game. With an attack imminent, he needed to employ every resource he could muster to uncover it. If she was willing to sneak out to meet him in defiance of her family, she might continue helping him in his quest to unmask the Rouge Noir. ‘What I need from you is more than a few introductions.’

  ‘More?’ Excitement and nervousness mixed in her voice as it had when he’d suggested she join him on Lady Greenwood’s very dark portico the night they’d met. It was as enticing as the sweet parting of her lips and almost distracted him from what he’d come here to do.

  ‘Yes. I must discover if Lord Camberline is involved with the Rouge Noir. You’re in a position to become better acquainted with him through his mother. Your involvement will be strictly limited to social engagements and nothing else.’

  The part of him still mourning his role in Lady Fallworth’s death silently urged her to refuse, but the man who enjoyed staring at her as the shadows from the overhead leaves caressed her cheeks and the dappled light glinted in her green eyes willed her not to. If she declined to assist him, he would walk away from her for good. He wouldn’t come between her and her family because, despite her flimsy protests to the contrary, he recognised it was possible. He hoped she didn’t force him to give her up. He and England both needed her.

  Then, her astonishment turned to a sideways teasing smile which lightened the heaviness in his chest. ‘You mean I won’t be able to point a pistol at other people or you?’

  ‘You can point a pistol at me anytime you like.’ He enjoyed this saucy Moira and was elated by her tacit agreement. It meant they didn’t have to part just yet. It shouldn’t matter to him if they did or didn’t, but it very much did.

  ‘Then I should have brought one and aimed it at you for abandoning me like you did last night.’

  ‘I apologise for leaving so abruptly, but I needed to find out where the Comte de Troyen was going.’ He told her about the Comte and Lord Camberline’s conversation but didn’t mention the gunpowder. The less she knew, the better. He would not have another lady’s death on his hands.

  ‘Lord Camberline seems too young to be involved in something so nefarious.’

  ‘His age means nothing. The young can be ideological and as brainless as a sack of rocks. I watched enough of them hang for spying or treason when I was in Austria to realise what troubles the strength of their ideals and the weakness of their life experiences can lead them into.’

  ‘But I can’t imagine him having any love for France. Lady Camberline’s parents were guillotined there. If she hadn’t been spirited out to England, she would have died, too. Surely she must have spoken against the evils of zealous idealists many times, the way my grandmother used to do with me.’

  ‘Then perhaps her son is acting out of rebellion. He may have reached his majority, but I understand his mother continues to control him and his money with an iron fist. You will have to find out which it is.’

  ‘How? I can’t simply call on a marchioness and discuss her private relationship with her son.’

  ‘You can if you become better friends with her. There’s a painting exhibition tonight at the Royal Academy and my sources tell me Lord Camberline and his mother will be there. It’s an excellent opportunity for you to further your acquaintance with them. Can you attend?’

  Moira touched one gloved finger to her lips while she considered his proposal, the gesture as innocent as it was enticing. He could almost recall the sweet taste of her and the pressure of her body against his when he’d held her in his arms long ago. It was a memory as tempting as it was dangerously distracting and a warning rose up in his mind as powerful as those he used to get before a French attack. There might be more risk in his working with Moira than gunshots or traitors.

/>   ‘Neither Aunt Agatha or Freddy enjoy art, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for me to attend without them.’

  ‘Good, then I’ll meet you at the gallery at nine p.m., but we must be discreet.’ He explained how they’d meet at the exhibition without being obvious. ‘People won’t be suspicious of us talking given my past friendship with your brother, but if we’re seen too often together and someone begins to suspect I’m investigating the Rouge Noir, it could place you in danger.’

  ‘And if they do suspect anything, what shall I say?’

  It was clear subterfuge was not at all a part of her character. Sadly, it’d become second nature to his. ‘You’ll have to come up with something.’

  ‘Oh, well, if it’s as easy as that, I should have no trouble.’ She laughed.

  He winked at her, bringing an amused frown to her full lips. ‘Welcome to the world of intrigue.’

  Chapter Five

  Bart watched Moira enter the Royal Academy. She paused on the threshold to admire the tall room with the paintings hung three and four high on the walls. Her grey dress lined with lace and covered by a sheer net of white muslin enhanced the whiteness of her smooth skin. The colour of her dress was matched by the silver comb placed in her light hair, the one she touched as she searched for a familiar face, uncertainty marring her confidence. Unlike the numerous other ladies filling the gallery, she didn’t enter on a man’s arm or surrounded by a clutch of family or friends. No one broke from their circle of acquaintances to rush up to her and draw her over to look at the marvellous painting of the countryside or to share gossip. It was as if her presence meant nothing to anyone, except Bart. He couldn’t understand how, with her delicate manners and the grace of her movement, people could fail to miss her. He never had, not tonight or the first time he’d noticed the petite young woman standing alone by a pillar in Lady Greenwood’s ballroom. He’d talked Richard into bringing him to the ball in the hopes he could use his brother’s connections to gain clients. Moira was the only person he’d wooed that night, his efforts rewarded by her light laugh and charming smile.