by Liz Carlyle
“Ned Quartermaine?” he said incredulously. “Surely you jest?”
“There is nothing to jest about,” said Anisha. “I called on him to ask him legitimate questions after having read your files. Sir Wilfred featured rather prominently in those, you’ll recall.”
“I recall it,” said Napier irritably. “Really, must we discuss Lazonby just now?”
Anisha looked at him in some surprise. “Heavens, I didn’t bring him up,” she said. “Indeed, I never mentioned his name, nor did I invite Sir Wilfred in.”
Napier’s posture relaxed, his mouth twitching again with some combination of irritation and humor. “So you didn’t,” he finally acknowledged. “I beg your pardon. That said, I should warn you—”
But his remarks were forestalled as the curtain rose with a dramatic flourish and Valentine reappeared on the stage.
In the King’s Arms, Lazonby slumped at a beaten trestle table, his booted feet set wide as he nursed the last of a porter gone far too warm. He sucked down the dregs of it anyway, the taste like metal on his tongue as dusk settled beyond the wide window.
All around him, Hackney had gone still. Shops had shuttered and the rattle and clatter of carts and horses had faded away. This was not, after all, London, but a village of working folk. Even the chipper Min and her pretty blue eyes had deserted him; gone home to her mother, clutching her newly minted florin on a red silk cord.
Mrs. Ashton’s laundress, as it happened, had not proven especially helpful; the servants in the white cottage were not a loquacious lot. Min had learned little, save for the facts that Mrs. Ashton spent much of her time volunteering at a charity school in Bethnal Green. As to Coldwater, he was rarely at home—and when he was, he never left his washing.
But she had managed to confirm that the pair hailed from Boston, where it was rumored the family had had some interest in a newspaper business. In Hackney, Mrs. Ashton was considered a handsome, well-bred woman who politely kept her distance and spurned all admirers—what few could be scared up in such a place, at any rate.
Down the lane in the deepening dusk Lazonby could still make out the arch of roses over the cottage’s garden gate, now bursting into a cascade of small, white blossoms. On the ground floor, a candle burned in a front window, but above all was darkness. If Coldwater had lit a lamp upon entering the house, it had since been put out.
Likely he hadn’t needed to. The sun had still been up when Lazonby had trailed him here—to what end, he could not now imagine. Perhaps because it was the only clue available to him, and he was growing increasingly desperate.
Or perhaps because if he had not come here, he would have remained at home, comforted only by Madame la Fée and his absinthe spoon, which, in the throws of the green hour, looked to be pierced with Satan’s visage. The three of them—he, the fairy, and Old Scratch—would likely have partaken of one another’s company until his eyes had rolled back in his head and the nightmares had come.
For to do nothing would have left him to think of Anisha.
On impulse, he jerked from his creaking chair, slapped a handful of coins on the bar, and strode toward the door, his riding boots ringing on the rough, planked floor as he went. Once he stood in the street, he looked it up and down, then set a course straight for the cottage, uncertain what he meant to do until he pushed open the front gate and knocked upon the door.
A quavering beam of candlelight cut across the flagstone. “Aye?” creaked a mobcapped servant.
“I wish to see Mr. Coldwater,” Lazonby said, not unkindly. “Is he in?”
She blinked once, slowly, her eyes pale and rheumy in the gloom, and he realized that she was blind, or something near it.
“Mr. Coldwater’s gone out,” she said in a rote, weary voice. “D’ye wish to see the mistress?”
Lazonby took the old woman’s measure, but she radiated neither suspicion nor ill will. “Thank you,” he said, presenting her one of his old cards, which he sometimes found it prudent to carry.
The old woman rubbed the vellum uncertainly between her fingers.
“Welham,” he said gently. “The name is Welham.”
The old woman bobbed her head, offered a chair, which he declined, then shuffled through the small hall and vanished into the darkness, leaving her candle behind. In the depths of the house, Lazonby could hear the tinkling notes of a pianoforte. Listening with one ear, he looked about, still holding his hat, which the servant had failed to take.
The house appeared tidy and tastefully furnished. A drop-leaf table stood to one wall, flanked by a fine pair of Chippendale chairs, with a towering vase of ruby-throated gladioli upon it. No poverty here, then. Such flowers came hothouse-dear so early in the season.
This assumption was further borne out by a fine landscape hanging above the table; a painting of a child rolling a hoop through an expanse of green which a tiny brass plaque identified as Boston Common.
Suddenly, the notes of the sonata fell away. A few moments later a woman entered, her wide, flounced skirt barely swishing through the narrow doorway. As it had been when he’d espied her through the window, the lady’s hair was a cascading mass of perfectly arranged chestnut curls. Her age was hard to judge; thirty, at most, and tonight her mouth was turned up in a quizzical half-smile.
“Mr. . . . Welham, is it?” Her voice was deep and oddly sultry. “How may I be of service?”
When she drew nearer, he realized how willowy she was. The resemblance between the lady and her brother was obvious, for she shared his keen, quick eyes.
“Actually, ma’am, I was looking for Mr. Coldwater.” He returned her gaze just as steadily, attempting to judge her intent, but to no avail. “One of the ostlers at the King’s Arms said he’d come this way an hour or two past.”
“So he did.” Her expression did not falter, and she exuded no emotion. “Then John took a bite of supper, collected a book he wanted, and went out again.”
Lazonby doubted it. He’d been watching the door for two hours. “Ah,” he said evenly. “I wonder how I missed him?”
“If you didn’t see him pass by the Arms,” she said coolly, “then he likely went out the back, toward Bethnal Green Road. He often does so, I believe, if he means to catch the omnibus.”
“The omnibus?”
“A large, unwieldy wagon stuffed to the brim with passengers.” One corner of her mouth lifted sardonically. “You do realize, Mr. Welham, that my brother does not live here?”
“I—no, I did not,” he lied. “Someone at the Chronicle directed me here.”
“I can’t think why.” She glanced again at his card. “Jack keeps rooms near Fleet Street.”
“I beg your pardon,” Lazonby interjected, thrusting out his hand. “We’ve not been properly introduced. I do not know your name.”
Again, doubt sketched almost imperceptibly over her face. “Do you not?” she said lightly, taking his hand. “Well. I am Mrs. Ashton.”
“A pleasure, I’m sure,” he said, clinging to her hand perhaps a moment longer than he ought. Yet even this close, the lady was like still, deep water to him. Perhaps, like her brother, she was what the Fraternitas called an Unknowable—one who, for reasons not well understood, was unintuitable.
Abruptly, she drew her hand from his grasp and swept past him, casting her gaze over her shoulder as she went, leaving Lazonby with the oddest sense that she was somehow taunting him.
“So, might I give my brother a message?” She began to make a pretense of rearranging the gladioli. “He generally comes round once or twice a week.”
“Thank you, no.” He followed her, picking up her clean, familiar scent; one that he couldn’t quite put a name to. “I shall find Mr. Coldwater in Town.”
Again, she cut an odd, almost heated glance at him over her shoulder, one hand holding a stem slightly aloft in the arrangement. “Yes,” she said softly. “I daresay you will.”
Her eyes were greenish-blue, and utterly remote now. And yet something seemed suddenly to t
hrum in the air around them—a sort of tension that was not quite sexual, but oddly evocative all the same. And beneath it all lay a sense of challenge, like a hand of cards played so close to the vest one wondered if the next card would ever fall.
Or if there was even a game at all.
But there was. He could sense it. Never was he wrong about such things.
He took another swift step and caught her hand, stilling it as she lifted an impossibly long stem from the vase.
She did not startle but instead merely stared at their joined hands.
“These flowers are remarkably beautiful,” he said quietly. “And costly.”
“Some things are worth the price,” she replied, looking up at him. “After all, they are so very lovely, with their pale, tender petals. And the throat, so deeply red. Like spilled blood, I often think. But tender things can be so fragile, can they not?”
He released her hand, something sick and uncertain running through him. “Have you a point, Mrs. Ashton?” he managed.
“Why, none whatever,” she lightly returned. But that lightness, he now realized, was some sort of deception. But what sort?
He must have remained silent too long.
“I think, Mr. Welham,” she quietly added, “that you had better go. My brother is not here, nor is he apt to return.”
Dropping his hand, Lazonby stepped back and felt his usual detachment settle over him again. “Then I thank you for your time, ma’am,” he said, turning toward the door to draw it open, “and bid you good evening.”
But at the last instant, just as he stepped out into the cool of the night, Mrs. Ashton spoke again. “The flowers, Mr. Welham,” she said abruptly. “The Gladiolus undulates. Do you know the common name?”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Just gladiolus, I think?”
“From the Latin gladius,” she said, twirling the stem between her fingers, “which means ‘sword.’ As in gladiator. And the flower—well, it is often called simply the sword lily.”
Somehow, he managed one of his flirtatious smiles. “Why, that sounds almost lethal, Mrs. Ashton.”
“Yes.” She did not return the smile. “It does, doesn’t it?”
With one last bow of his head, Lazonby slapped his hat back on his head and left her standing in the elegant, candlelit hall. He walked away, his boot heels heavy upon the meandering flagstone. He did not shut the door behind him but instead left it for her to catch in midswing.
Mrs. Ashton, however, did not deign to trouble herself but instead simply stared after him. And from the low stoop of her threshold, all the way to the gate that shrieked on old, iron hinges, Lazonby could feel those cold eyes like icy daggers in his back.
He felt frustration and rage begin to swell up as the gate clattered behind him, but he ruthlessly damped them down. By God, the woman played a damned game, and he knew it. He wanted to throttle her just as he’d wished to throttle her brother. But all his anger had ever earned him was trouble heaped upon more trouble.
It was time, perhaps, to go home to his absinthe after all. But there was one last thing he meant to do.
At the Arms, he reclaimed his horse and returned to London by cutting through the heart of the City, then went on foot along a dark street that angled off Shoe Lane into the rabbit warren of shops and houses behind the Chronicle’s office. The building was familiar to him now, and the little flat on the second floor corner dark, as it almost always was.
Lazonby had reached the conclusion that Coldwater kept some sort of a mistress—or was himself kept by someone. One or two wealthy, liberal-minded gentlemen of that persuasion came to mind. But wherever Coldwater hid out, Lazonby had seen him go in or out of the flat on just three occasions. Once he’d seen a woman depart with a wicker basket on her arm—the sword-wielding Mrs. Ashton, he now thought, though the night had been dark and her face obscured.
But no one was there tonight. That suited his purpose very well indeed.
Lazonby looked his chosen drainpipe up and down one last time, then gave it a solid jerk for good measure. Neither the metal nor its bracings gave.
Well. It was time, it seemed, to get intimately acquainted with his old friend Jack. Lazonby set his boot to the brickwork, seized the pipe well above his head, and hefted himself smoothly up.
Chapter 11
Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine.
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
Anisha rose the morning after her evening with Royden Napier, seized with a newfound sense of urgency, a feeling she could not ascribe to anything tangible. She responded with logic, spending an hour at her Jyotish—specifically Rance’s, methodically working through the charts.
The feeling did not abate but instead strengthened. Like all Guardians, Rance was Mesha Lagna, or Aries ascendant, and prone to haste and stubbornness, which could bring with it extreme ill luck. And now a great change was coming, and the potential for something dire.
Driven by unease and a restlessness she was increasingly unable to quell, Anisha dressed in her old mourning clothes and called for her brother’s unmarked coach. It was time, she was quite certain, to take matters in hand.
“I’ll not likely be back by dinner,” she told Janet as she pinned on her hat, “so tell Lord Lucan to dine at White’s. Oh, and I’ll want my black traveling cloak.”
“But my lady,” said Janet, who was already shaking it out, “the weather bodes ill.”
Anisha went to the window, rumbled up the sash, and craned her head out to better see the sky. “What nonsense,” she said tartly. “There are a few fluffy clouds above. Nothing more.”
“Aye, well, I feel a dampness in my bones,” the maid warned, vanishing into the dressing room.
“That feeling is called England,” Anisha called after her, gingerly lowering the sash, “and there is nothing to be done about it.”
“Hmph,” said Janet, but the sound was muffled. And by the time Anisha finished putting on her jet earbobs and dashing a little power over her nose, the maid was standing by the door with a satchel in hand.
“Fresh linen,” she said, thrusting it at Anisha. “Just in case.”
Anisha tried to scowl, and failed. “Heavens, Janet, it’s Buckhurst Hill, not the backside of Yorkshire,” she said. “It cannot be much more than two hours away.”
But at Janet’s pursed lips, Anisha took the bag all the same and threw open the door.
And just in time, too, for Chatterjee teetered on the threshold, one fist poised to knock, and looking as if he might explode. “My lady! Janet! Oh, my God!” He burst in like a cyclone, rambling in a mad tangle of English and Bangla, little of which Anisha could make out.
“Chatterjee, what’s happened?” Dropping her bag, Anisha tried to catch his elbow.
“Oh, my lady!” he shouted, rushing past her to the bed. “Janet! Look! The thing! The—the standing thing, ’tis done!”
“Lud, Chatt!” The maid snatched up the satchel. “Yer look fit ter have an apoplexy.”
“Yes, yes, marvelous, is it not?” Wild-eyed, Chatterjee unfurled a newspaper atop the counterpane. “I have it all! Just here!”
“Awright, awright,” said Janet. “Looks like the Times ter me.”
“Yes!” he said, waving his hand over it with a flourish. “Yes, yes, yes! And so, Janet—we are rich!”
“Coo!” said Janet speciously. “I’ll just be givin’ me notice then, won’t I?”
“Yes, yes, me, too, perhaps!” Chatterjee beamed around at the both of them. “And all because of your standing plate!”
“Wot?” Janet went perfectly still. “Chatt—the Grand Stand Plate? Is that what you mean—?”
His face lit up even further. “Yes, that! Lord Exeter! It was Swordplayer by a-a”—he consulted the paper—“by a length! He won, Janet! We won!”
Janet dropped the satchel. It fell on its side, dumping Anisha’s underclothes on the floor. But no one paid any heed, for Janet had seized the ordinarily dignified
Chatterjee by the hands and was dancing him around the room.
“We won, m’lady!” she cried. “We won! We won! We’re rich!”
“And now I must replace both my lady’s maid and my right hand?” Anisha teased, picking up the paper to read. “Heavens, Janet! How much did your brother place on this horse?”
Janet stopped dancing and swallowed guiltily. “Well . . . all we had, really—and most of Chatt’s.”
“Janet!” Crushing the newspaper at her side, Anisha’s eyes widened. “And you, Chatterjee! You know better! What were you thinking?”
Chatterjee bowed, some of his majesty returning. “I cannot perfectly put words to it, madam,” he replied. “I just felt . . . destined, I suppose. And Janet was wearing the ruby pendant. The stars, she said, were in perfect alignment.”
“Oh, dear God.” Anisha closed her eyes and quietly sent up a prayer.
The stars and prayers aside, they gradually returned to earth, the both of them. And after Anisha did a little arithmetic on the back of an old milliner’s bill, it was collectively decided that neither Chatterjee nor Janet was quite rich after all.
“But you shall both be left quite comfortable,” Anisha assured them.
“Ooh, right warm indeed,” said Janet.
“Even toasty?” Chatterjee ventured.
“Toasty ain’t a word, Chat,” said Janet. “Not a cant word, at least.”
And together they all had a laugh as Anisha at last let go of her fears. However much she might worry for them, and however foolish she felt for encouraging Janet in such a precarious venture, the truth was, all had turned out well. Better than well, actually.
She left them pondering the future of their employment and hoping they would not desert her, for she had come to depend upon them both quite desperately. Janet and Chatterjee had been with her forever. They had seen her safely into adulthood, stood by her in her marriage, and come along with her to this strange, new world. They had been more family than most of her blood kin.
But what was destined would come; this Anisha knew. And God knew the pair deserved a little good fortune. Shaking off her selfishness, Anisha pressed on with her plans.
