Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  The fourth, pistol in hand, walked up to Lucan. This man wore a snuff-colored coat, out of style but of a cut that bespoke a good London tailor. The product of one of the second hand clothes dealers in Petticoat Lane, most likely, and a cut above the rough homespun and corduroy of the other three men.

  The man in the snuff-colored coat stared at Lucan for a long moment, then struck him a blow across the face. “Mr. Eckert wants to see you.”

  Lucan returned the man’s stare. “Then he can bloody well come here himself.”

  “He knows you peached on him to Bridges.”

  “What?”

  “No sense denying it. Got a tip this morning.”

  “Who from?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” The man flicked a glance at his companion who was holding Mélanie. “Come with us quiet, Lucan, unless you want your mort’s throat cut.”

  Lucan’s gaze went to Nan and then to Mélanie, with the knife to her throat. “She’s not—“

  “Sam,” Mélanie yelled in perfect North London accents, “do what he says or I’m dead for certain.”

  Lucan stared at her. Nan was sensibly holding her tongue. Charles met Mélanie’s gaze across the room. Two possible exits: the windows that overlooked the court and a door behind the table. Four of them, four of the others. Two guns. Two knives visible, possibly more concealed. Her hand moved at her side, thumb and forefinger curved in. A count of three. Charles inclined his head a fraction of an inch.

  Three seconds later, Mélanie sank back, twisted her head, and bit her captor’s shoulder. His knife went flying. At the same moment, Charles jerked against his captor’s gun arm and rolled to the ground. A pistol ball whistled over his shoulder and lodged in the floorboards.

  Mélanie kneed her captor in the groin and lunged for the fallen knife. Nan yanked against her own captor’s hold. Lucan dived for Snuff Coat’s pistol hand. Charles pushed himself onto his hands and knees, spun round, and sprang forward as his former captor flung himself on him. The impact carried them both into the wall. Charles caught himself on one hand and slammed his fist into the other man’s jaw. The man slumped to the ground.

  Charles pulled off his greatcoat and threw it over his erstwhile opponent. He turned round to see Lucan and Snuff Coat in the center of the room grappling over the remaining pistol. Nan was still fighting with her captor near the table. Mélanie was on the far side of the table, her recovered knife in her hand. Across the room, her former captor struggled to his feet and pulled his own knife from his belt.

  Mélanie met Charles’s gaze for an instant, then seized the lamp from the table and hurled it into the center of the room.

  The chimney shattered. The smell of coal oil filled the air. The room was plunged into shadows, lit only by the fitful light from the windows. Nan tore away from her captor. Charles heard Mélanie jerk open the door behind the table and saw a blur as she and Nan ran through it.

  A second pistol shot cut the air, but it must have gone wide because Lucan and Snuff Coat were both still on their feet. Charles ran to Lucan and pulled him to the windows. They hurled themselves at the glass, broke the ancient wood casements, and sprang into the street below.

  Charles caught himself on his hands and knees on the cracked cobblestones. A seam gave way in his coat and pain shot through his joints. He scrambled to his feet, as did Lucan. A blow caught him on the jaw.

  He fell back against the wall of the public house. A dark form hurtled toward him. He ducked. The fist intended for his face smashed into the brick wall. He caught his would-be opponent a blow to the back of the head.

  Beside him, Lucan had knocked down a second man. There only seemed to be two of them, thank God. Of one accord, he and Lucan darted across the court. Footsteps pounded behind them. More than two sets of feet. The two men they had grappled in the court had been joined by their attackers from above.

  Lucan turned down a covered passage, cut through an alley, and jerked open a door. Charles followed him into a narrow hall and slammed the door to behind them.

  “How the devil many men do you have after you?” Charles asked between breaths.

  “Eckert owns the Dolphin. His people are all over this part of town. Once word gets out they’re after me, everyone’ll be on the look out.”

  “Nice to know what we’re up against.”

  Lucan jerked open a door onto a passage cut through to the next house. “Eckert’s people are all over the place, but this is my patch. I know the escape routes.”

  Nan pulled the door to behind her and Mélanie. They were in pitch darkness, though judging by the close air the space was small, probably a closet or passageway. Nan tugged open another door and stepped into a small room, lit only by the light from a single window. It was furnished with a cot, a table, and three chairs. The window was framed differently from those in the Dolphin and the ceiling was lower. They were in the next house over, Mélanie realized.

  “Escape route,” Nan said. “Always have one.” She wedged one of the chairs beneath the door handle. “Best to be safe, though they’ll go after the men.”

  A crash and the sound of breaking wood and cracking glass came through the walls. They ran to the window in time to see Charles and Sam in the street below, grappling with two men.

  Mélanie drew a breath but Nan didn’t seem surprised by the presence of more assailants. “Eckert’s people are all over this part of town,” she said. “We’ll have to go carefully. Sam will know where to find me.”

  Charles had dealt his opponent a very nice right hook. He and Sam darted across the court, just as their former captors ran round the side of the public house from the alley.

  “They’ll manage,” Nan said. “If not, it’s their look out. Up, I think.”

  For the first time Mélanie noticed a ladder leaning against the wall in the far corner of the room. Nan led the way up the ladder and pushed open a trap door. A cloud of dispersed dust greeted them. An attic, with a low, sloping ceiling and dormer windows black with mildew. Nan twisted her hair into a knot and tucked her skirt into her sash. “Can you go across the roofs in those clothes?”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve gone over the roofs,” Mélanie said, with a vivid memory of a certain night in Vienna. She reached inside her gown, pulled loose the ribbon the gathered her chemise at the neck, and used it to kirtle up her gown. Nan pushed open one of the windows and pulled herself up onto the slate roof. Mélanie followed.

  A blast of rain-laced wind nearly knocked them into the street. They half crawled, half slid over the rain slick slates, dropped four feet to the next roof over, and then pulled themselves up five feet onto the one beyond that. The court appeared to be empty now, but it was difficult to see as they were clinging close to the roof slates. Mélanie pulled off her gloves, which gave her a better purchase, but the cracked slates scratched her palms.

  Then, instead of following the line of the roofs, Nan moved to two wooden planks which created a makeshift bridge across an alley. “They’re safe,” she mouthed, above the whistle of the wind. “Leastways they were the last time I came this way.”

  Mélanie eyed the four-story drop into the alley and reminded herself that she had survived worse. She got a sliver in her palm and a gash in her silk stockings, but the planks held. They followed another line of roofs, turned a corner, and crossed another gap on more planks. At last, Nan stretched out flat and reached over the edge of the roof.

  “Hold my ankles,” she told Mélanie over her shoulder. She leaned half way off the roof. Wood scraped against stone. “Good. The sash wasn’t locked.”

  She crawled down through another attic window. Mélanie followed, more relieved than she cared to admit to have a roof over her head and a solid, dry floor beneath her feet.

  They were in a small bedchamber, empty, though it had an inhabitant judging by the frayed lace dressing gown tossed over the calico coverlet and the broken-toothed comb and chipped yewer and basin on the three-legged stool beside the bed. Mélanie also noted
a bottle of vinegar and a wash-leather bag which she suspected contained sponges.

  “Thank goodness,” Nan muttered. “Sal’s out on the street despite the weather. She’d ask a damn sight too many questions if she was here. Help me shift the chest of drawers, will you?”

  Behind the chest of drawers was another door, so low they had to bend double to go through it. It gave onto another dark passage, also cut between two houses. Nan opened a door at the far end onto a room that smelled of rice powder and cheap violet scent and was filled with moans and giggles and the rustle of bedclothes.

  A blonde girl and a dark-haired young man were engaged in congress in the bed. The girl, who was on top at the moment, sat up, straw-colored hair spilling over her naked breasts.

  “Bloody hell, Nannie, can’t you at least knock?”

  “Sorry, Bet, we’re a bit pressed for time.”

  “Is Sam with you? Sam, you rotter, what have got my sister into now? You— Who the devil are you?” Bet asked, seeing it was not Sam but Mélanie who stood behind her sister.

  Nan drew a breath. “That’s part of the—“

  She broke off, because the dark-haired young man, who had pushed himself up against the headboard was staring at Mélanie with round, bewildered eyes.

  Mélanie decided that this was one of those times when the truth was simpler than lies. “Mr. Trenor,” she said. “It some time since we’ve met. Lady Cowper’s rout, I believe.”

  The Hon. Alexander Trenor, whom Mélanie had last seen in Emily Cowper’s drawing room the previous November, turned paler than the linen of the sheet he was clutching to his chest. “Mrs.—Fraser?” he said, as though even now he could not quite believe it.

  “The same,” Mélanie said, “though distinctly the worse for wear.” She turned to Bet. “My name is Mélanie Fraser. Pray accept our apologies for bursting in so unceremoniously.”

  “Lord, it’s not your fault. Nan does it all time.” Bet grabbed a faded blue silk dressing gown from the foot of the bed and shrugged it on. “Here now, are you hurt?”

  “Scratches,” Nan said. “The roofs haven’t got any smoother.”

  “You’re both soaked.” Bet picked up a shirt and breeches from the floor and tossed them to Mr. Trenor. “Put those on, Sandy—yes, the ladies will turn their backs—then go in the next room and start brewing some tea, there’s a love.”

  Mr. Trenor gaped at her for a moment, but when the women turned their backs he scrambled into the clothes and beat a hasty retreat into the next room.

  “Nicest customer I have.” Bet twitched the rumpled bedclothes smooth, brushed two unused French letters from the night-table into a drawer, and crossed to a wardrobe of rough deal planks in the corner of the room. “Do you really know him, Mrs. Fraser?”

  “His elder brother is a colleague of my husband’s.”

  Bet turned from the wardrobe with raised brows. Then she stared at Mélanie. “I know who you are. I’ve seen your face in print shop windows. What’s a society beauty doing in Seven Dials with my sister? No, don’t try to answer that yet, it’s bound to take hours.” She held out two gowns. “Put these on. Then you can have some tea and explain things.”

  “Thanks, Betty.” Nan fingered the green poplin her sister had given her. “One more thing. Sam’s on his way here, along with Mrs. Fraser’s husband.”

  Bet rolled her eyes. “I might have known it. Do they have constables on their trail? Or someone worse?”

  “Not if they’ve managed to give them the slip.”

  Bet banged the wardrobe doors shut. “That story had better be very good. Where’s Sarah?"

  "Safe. Mary Cornwell has her."

  "Sarah?" Mélanie asked.

  "My little girl," Nan said. "I know better than to get her into trouble, truly, Bet. Not that I could have seen this trouble coming."

  "Trouble's part and parcel of your life," Bet said. "Here, let me do the hooks. Your fingers must be frozen.”

  She asked no further questions as she helped them out of their wet gowns and into the dry garments. “Best take off your boots too,” she added, rummaging in the chest of drawers. Mélanie removed her boots, tugged off her ruined silk stockings, and pulled on the black cotton stockings Bet gave her (“silk would only get snagged and anyway these are warmer”). She smoothed her hands over the skirt of her borrowed cherry-striped sarcenet gown, a couple of inches too short for her. It seemed to be in its third incarnation, with a blond lace flounce added to the skirt, the neckline cut down, and cerise ribbon trimming the sleeves to cover where the fabric had been turned. Bet or whoever had remade the gown was a skilled seamstress.

  Bet had discarded her dressing gown and was scrambling into a gown herself. Nan did up her sister’s strings but stared at Mélanie over Bet’s shoulder. “Why did you pretend you were Sam’s mort instead of saying it was really me they should have held the knife on?”

  Mélanie tucked a wet lock of hair back into its pins. “Because I knew I could get away from the knife.”

  Nan gave a slow nod. “For what’s worth you have my thanks.”

  “And you have mine for the escape route. And your sister’s hospitality.”

  Bet moved to the door. “If you helped Nan you have my thanks too, for all she’s often more trouble than she’s worth.”

  She opened the door onto a small room with peeling flowered wallpaper where Mr. Trenor had got a coal fire going in the smoke-blackened grate and was brewing a pot of tea over the spirit lamp. Bet set their wet boots before the fire and draped their gowns over the faded firescreen. Mr. Trenor, still not quite able to meet Mélanie’s gaze, was pouring tea from a chipped cream lustre pot when a door banged open in the bedroom. A moment later, Charles and Sam appeared in the doorway. Mélanie released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  Charles’s gaze took in the scratch on her cheek, the scrapes on her hands, the set of her arms that betrayed no broken bones. He had a red mark on his jaw that was going to turn in to a bruise, his hair was dripping rain onto his forehead, the shoulder seam of his coat was torn, his once biscuit-colored pantaloons were gray with rainwater and filth. On the whole he looked to his wife as though he’d been enjoying himself.

  Sam was in similar condition, save that he had a cut on his cheek, a split lip, and the beginnings of a black eye. His gaze swept the company. “Glad to see everyone’s still alive. Kind of you to have us all, Bet.”

  “Didn’t have much choice about it, did I?”

  Sam grinned and then frowned at Mr. Trenor, who was standing by in breeches and untucked shirt, teapot in hand. “Who the devil are you?”

  “The Hon. Alexander Trenor,” Charles said. “Sam Lucan. Bit of luck running in to you like this, Trenor.”

  Mr. Trenor, whose elder brother sat in the House of Commons with Charles, inclined his head. His pale face was now tinged slightly green, but he met Charles’s gaze. “Er—quite, sir. Tea?”

  “Tea?” Sam said. “Good God, woman, surely you’ve got some brandy hidden about here somewhere?”

  Bet regarded him, arms folded across her chest. “You haven’t brought the constables down on me, have you?”

  “The constables? No.”

  “Or anyone else?”

  “Shouldn’t think so. We managed to give them the slip. Fraser’s a dab hand at making an escape.”

  Charles grinned. “I’ve always found running more handy than fighting.”

  “You’re an unusual man then.” Bet went to a dresser in the corner, a water-stained but once-handsome piece, and took a bottle from inside. “Good stuff from France, fresh off a smuggler’s boat. You can thank Sandy for it. He brought it me on his last visit.”

  The oddly assorted company sat down on an odd assortment of furnishings—a frayed damask settee with stuffing poking through the arms, two straight-backed chairs with cracked slats, a settle draped with a flowered silk shawl. Mr. Trenor finished pouring out the tea into a mismatched set of cups, chipped but clean and carefully duste
d with his pocket handkerchief. Bet passed round the brandy bottle. She cast a glance at Charles, the only one still standing. “Oh, bloody hell, you are a gentleman.” She dropped down on the settle beside Mr. Trenor.

  Charles sat beside Mélanie and squeezed her hand.

  “You’re enjoying this,” she said.

  “Aren’t you?” he said.

  Bet looked from Nan to Sam. “Well?”

  Sam took a long swallow of brandy-laced tea. “Had a bit of a run-in with Eckert’s men.”

  “Eckert’s?” Bet shivered. “Why?”

  “Thinks I peached on him.”

  “Jesus bloody Christ. Did you?”

  “Do I look the suicidal type? Bloody well would have been the end of me, if it wasn’t for—” Sam looked at Charles. “You just may be enough of a madman for your wife, Fraser.”

  “One can only hope,” Charles said.

  “You saved Sam and Nan?” Bet looked from Charles to Mélanie. “Not that on the whole I’m not glad they’re still alive, but why? And what were you doing in Seven Dials in the first place?”

  Charles took a sip of tea, to which he’d added a modest splash of brandy. “Looking for Lucan.”

  “Why?”

  “We thought he might have useful information.”

  Mr. Trenor had returned the teapot to the spirit lamp and was staring at Charles. “Good God, it’s something to do with that dead chap, isn’t it? The one at the Lydgates’.”

  “I didn’t know you were there last night,” Charles said.