The Black Hawk sl-4

by Joanna Bourne

  “I’ll keep an eye on you instead.” Doyle slipped a thumb into his fob pocket and turned to be at his side.

  Reams blocked the way. “I was told to bring Hawkhurst, not you.”

  Doyle didn’t twitch a muscle. He just transformed from a large, indolent gentleman enjoying himself at a party into Lord William Doyle Markham, Viscount Markham, heir to the Earl of Dunmott, cousin, in one degree or other, to everybody important in the room, and married into one of the great aristocratic houses of Europe.

  And him . . . he let himself be Sir Adrian Hawkhurst, who was God knew what, from God knew where, but rich, powerful, and at home in this ballroom.

  Possibly Reams recalled the reputation for deadliness hovering over the men he confronted.

  It was time to behave like an aristocrat. Time to be damn-your-eyes arrogant. He said, “Get the hell out of my way.” He and Doyle walked past Reams like a jackass in uniform didn’t even exist.

  They didn’t hurry. Reams got left in their wake anyhow.

  Liverpool beckoned when they got close, inviting them in. “Hawkhurst. Markham. Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

  “Sir.” The Head of the British Intelligence Service met fairly often with the Prime Minister. So far, they’d dealt well. Liverpool liked to get reports face-to-face. Liked to ask questions. He understood there was just a startling flock of secrets that never got set down on paper.

  Nods exchanged all around the circle. He knew these men, some better than others. On every face, he saw the kind of avid curiosity given to carriage wrecks.

  The Prime Minister was an amiable man in private, pig-stubborn politically, and nobody’s fool. He was not pleased at the moment, which was likely to be bad news for somebody. His big twitchy eyebrows drew together. “Tell me about these two dead Frenchmen.”

  Cummings made placating gestures. “I’m not accusing Hawkhurst. I am entirely convinced of his integrity. I merely raise the question of whether he should temporarily step down from his position until—”

  Liverpool interrupted, “I want to hear what he has to say. Well, Hawkhurst?”

  Cummings planted his cane on the marble floor, set both hands to the head of it, and gloated in a genteel manner.

  Well, well, well. This was the duel. This was facing an enemy, weapons drawn. Him against Cummings. High stakes. He couldn’t grin and rub his hands. Instead, he drew himself up, stiff and offended. “What do you mean, ‘step down?’ ”

  Cummings gave an elegant tilt to the cane. “In light of certain allegations that have been brought against you, it would be wisest if the government replaced you with someone outside your—” Cummings didn’t get to finish.

  “Tell me about the dead men,” Liverpool said.

  The Head of the British Service played political games as well the Great Game of spying. This was the cross-and-jostle work of British politics. He let himself look exasperated, with a dash of mysterious spicing it up. “There have been two deaths, both French émigrés. They’re being investigated by Bow Street. The first murder—”

  “The stabbings are the work of the same man,” Cummings said quickly. “He—”

  Liverpool snapped, “Let him talk.”

  Good. Liverpool wasn’t on Cummings’s side. Not necessarily on his side, either, but not on Cummings’s.

  “Stabbed. Yes. We know a good bit about the circumstances.” He paused. The circle of men leaned forward, listening. Nothing like murder to entertain the nobility. “There’s more to it than brutal murder.”

  “What do you mean?” That was Castlereagh. You could be foreign secretary and still hungry for the details of violent death.

  Time to lift the corner of the curtain and reveal some shadow. Damn, he should have been a street performer. “The same method was used in both cases. One stroke to the heart.” He jerked his fist upward, suddenly. “It takes timing and skill and—I hate to say it—practice. We’re dealing with an expert.”

  Castlereagh muttered, “Cowardly. Cowardly work.”

  “In London, you say?” That was an MP from Suffolk.

  “What’s the world coming to when there’s bloody murder in London?”

  Men die worse than that in London every day, in Whitechapel and St. Giles. “Bow Street called us in because of the connection with France. We’ve learned that both the dead men were former French Secret Police. They left France during the Revolution, changed their names, and set up in London as shopkeepers.”

  Reams, who’d been hanging around the outskirts, shouldered forward. “Should have been hanged the day they arrived.” One man raised an eyebrow. Liverpool looked annoyed. Reams plowed on, oblivious. “Too many damn French in England anyway. The war’s over, but they’re still stirring up trouble.”

  Ass. Didn’t he know these men had ties and ties again to France? Blood, marriage, friendship. He paused to let the idiocy of Reams sink in, then went on. “We think the murderer is French, too, from the method. The knives used—”

  “They’re your bloody knives.” Reams didn’t have the sense to keep his mouth closed. “Your name’s on them, for God’s sake. The initials A and H. Do you think you can stand here and pretend not to know?”

  Noblemen are born knowing how to freeze impertinence. He’d had to learn. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Your knives. I’ve seen them, you murdering little—”

  “Enough.” He rapped it out. He lifted ice from inside his belly and put it in his voice. “I’ve had enough of this. Silence!”

  Reams didn’t dare—didn’t quite dare—to answer back.

  “There’s a superficial resemblance to knives used in overseas operations a decade ago. If you had military experience in the field,” he looked deliberately up and down the uniform, “or if you’d taken two minutes to examine the knives, the differences would be obvious.”

  “I’ll be damned if—”

  He cut it off. “That’s enough, Colonel. If one of my men went off half-cocked like that, I’d break him to sergeant. Be glad you don’t answer to me.”

  He turned his back on Reams. “The knives are the crux of the matter.” He gathered the group with his eyes. They were all listening. “The blades are marked L’Atelier de Paris. That makes them very possibly French Military issue. French steel.” He glanced scathingly at Reams. “Not British.”

  Reams wasn’t in a position to contradict, not knowing French steel from Italian sausage.

  “A quarrel between Frenchmen?” Liverpool offered.

  “Not as simple as that, unfortunately. The knives are engraved on the hilt, yes. But not AH. The letters are N and B—”

  Castlereagh understood instantly. “The devil you say.”

  “NB for Napoleon Bonaparte. The knives were left at the scene as a warning. These are undoubtedly political murders. We’re looking at French revolutionary groups operating in London. There are still fanatics out there.”

  There were murmurs of agreement. Significant glances back and forth. Napoleon might be an old man, embittered and sick, exiled to a remote outpost in the North Atlantic, but his name was still imperial. Every one of these powerful lords had been afraid of Napoleon’s Grande Armée.

  Cummings knew he’d been outmaneuvered. What he’d seen in the evidence boxes at Bow Street was gone now. The face under the graying hair was pale as a fish belly. His mouth stretched in a tight smile, holding back rage.

  Let’s finish this before he gets his balance back.

  Time to frown and look serious. “I’ve sent word to our branch in Paris. We hope . . .” He was judicious for a second or two. “We hope this is some old revenge against two particular men, but we have to take into account the possibility of a larger plot.” His gesture spoke of a hundred secrets not told. “We’re investigating.”

  One man nodded to the next. Before dawn, half the ton would know there was a plot to free Napoleon from St. Helena. Prime Minister to ten-year-old schoolboy, everyone loved plots.

  Reams said, “Damn it! I know what
I saw.”

  Cummings knew when to retreat. “That’s enough, Colonel.” Whatever wormwood was, Cummings had bitten off a wad of it. “You were mistaken, obviously.”

  Liverpool said, “It would be best to avoid such mistakes in the future.” From him, in this company, that was enough.

  Castlereagh wanted to know if there was blood on the knives still. Fortunately, he was able to say, “There is. Yes.” Nothing like attention to detail.

  It could have gone the other way. He could have been the one humiliated. He could even have been removed from the British Service. That quick. That easy. Whoever wanted to ruin Adrian Hawkhurst had found a fine instrument in Lord Cummings.

  “Give me a few minutes with Sir Adrian.” Liverpool glanced around.

  Men separated off in groups. Doyle chatted with Melbourne, who was with him at Cambridge. Reams stalked off muttering about “that upstart foreign bastard,” Hawkhurst, who was “half a Hindu, probably,” till Cummings put a lid on him.

  Liverpool’s grandmother was Indian. Melbourne was, famously, Egremont’s bastard. Somebody should have shared this with the colonel.

  When they were alone, Liverpool said, “I dislike settling quarrels between my intelligence departments.” That was both support and a warning. Liverpool was the consummate politician and, above all, a practical man. They understood each other reasonably well. “I don’t want to know what you did with those knives. Will the government be embarrassed in the newspapers?”

  “It will not.”

  “Cummings says there’s a Frenchwoman living at your headquarters. The implication is she’s a spy and involved in those murders.”

  “A spy?” He allowed himself a wry smile. “Hardly. Markham’s foster daughter, Séverine, is staying with us while he’s in London. Also her sister, Mademoiselle Justine DeCabrillac. She goes by the name DuMotier in England.”

  “DeCabrillac . . . ?”

  “Daughters of the last Comte DeCabrillac.”

  “Ah. Killed in the Revolution, wasn’t he? Terrible business for the daughters. I know the current comte. They’d be DuMotiers on the mother’s side. Some kind of cousin to Lafayette.”

  That was the nobs for you. Always knowing who was related which way. “As to being spies . . . I’ll ask you to keep this sub rosa, but those two gathered intelligence in France during the war.” Which was true enough. No need to say who Justine had been working for.

  “Admirable.” Liverpool ran eyes over the reception room, knowing everyone, noticing who was talking to who. “Someone asked me, the other day, if you were one of the Kent Hawkhursts. Nobody knew. You’re quite the mysterious figure.”

  “I have never attempted to be. Merely . . . private.”

  “Quite so. In your position, it’s natural.” Liverpool pursed his lips. “Markham took in a three or four French orphans, didn’t he, back during the Terror? Séverine DeCabrillac and one of the Villards—the old duc’s heir. There were some others. You’re a protégé of Markham, yourself, I understand.” He added delicately, “Another of those French orphans?”

  “I’ve known Lord Markham a good long while. The DeCabrillac daughters are here tonight. Over there by the—”

  “One of the difficulties with the French war was the pack of hungry émigrés that washed up in England. French second cousins we’d never heard of, mostly. A few turned out to be worth their salt. Some of them made fine army officers. I suppose Markham steered you in the direction of his own service.”

  “You might say that.” Doyle had been persuasive about joining the British Service back when he was a kid. There’d been some mention that the other choice was hanging.

  Liverpool nodded. “You know there are rumors about your background? Someone mentioned the translation of Hapsburg into English is Hawkhurst.”

  I didn’t know that when I made the name up. “A coincidence. Speaking of émigrés who settled in England, both the DeCabrillacs are interesting women. Very independent. The older one keeps a shop in Exeter Street.”

  Forty-seven

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FOYER, CUMMINGS COLLECTED his overcoat. A footman helped him into it, handed him hat and cane, and went to attend three men who’d walked in the front door and were shedding belongings.

  Hawker didn’t glance in that direction. He’d humiliated the man in public. Dealing with him was now dangerous as hand-feeding a rabid dog. Next week or next month he’d need to work with Military Intelligence again.

  Or maybe not. Cummings and his happy lads had been brought back to England to enforce order upon an unruly populace. The papers were already calling it “England’s secret police.” Letters to the editor talked about dissolving Military Intelligence for good.

  Cummings definitely had the wind up. Whoever wrote the letter that sent Cummings off to Bow Street understood his lordship right down to the ground.

  His Lordship twitched his cuffs smooth under the coat sleeves with brisk little motions. Upright, distinguished, disdainful, he was all an important gentleman should be. You’d never guess he’d lost the skirmish in front of Liverpool. Reams was significantly absent.

  Cummings was headed this way. Looked like he wanted to exchange a few words. But then, Cummings was an old campaigner. Maybe he took the setback philosophically.

  “I must congratulate you.” Cummings said it the same way he’d say, “I must flay the flesh off your still-twitching bones.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You switched the knives at Bow Street.”

  “That would be clever of me.”

  Cummings developed a tight, white line around his mouth. He gripped his cane like they’d had an argument and it wanted to leave. “We both know what happened.”

  “Truth is so elastic. Within an hour, the polite world will talk of nothing but the Bonapartist plot.” He allowed himself to become very French, and shrug. It maddened Cummings when he acted French. “Who can contradict what the world knows so thoroughly?”

  “Don’t challenge me, Hawkhurst. You don’t want me for an enemy.” He turned and swept away, his cane swinging angrily, his heels clicking the marble floor toward Castlereagh who stopped and exchange a few words.

  “There is a long tradition,” a voice said from behind his shoulder, “that senior intelligence agents should hate one another.”

  Owl draped her lace shawl at her back, arm to arm. She looked like one of the great ladies of the ton. Dignified and aristocratic. Prettier than any of the others, though.

  He said, “I’ve heard that.”

  “It is a matter of testing their competence. If they cannot emerge victorious among their colleagues, how can they outfox their enemies? I believe a similar method is used in training gamecocks.”

  “We had an encounter just a few minutes ago and I am now the chief gamecock on this particular hill. Are you tired? Doyle can take you home if you’re getting tired.”

  “I am weary, of course. It is embarrassing to walk about, rudely staring at women, comparing their faces with my memory of a young girl. I have only one glimpse of an assassin in the rain and a tiny figure seen through glasses many years ago. I do not know if I would recognize her again. And she will have changed. It is sad, sometimes, to see what life makes of pretty young girls.”

  “I liked you as a pretty young girl.” He let men and women brush past on either side of him and only looked at her. “I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face.”

  “I will not say you speak flattery. I will only point out that you say most exactly what I want to hear.”

  “Truth, then. You want to hear truth.” He couldn’t touch Owl, except with his eyes, so he let his imagination slide across her, planning where he’d kiss her later on tonight. He liked kissing beauty and he’d done a certain amount of that over the years. With Owl, he’d start with beauty and go on to kissing ruthlessness and ideals in the lines at the corners of her eyes. Passion and practicality sitting around her mou
th. Not a comfortable woman, his Owl. Not ordinary.

  She wrapped her hand on that bandage she was wearing under the sleeve of that silk dress. “The next party is bigger than this and noisier. More people.”

  “I am not fragile.”

  “I have never been an admirer of fragile. I think we have to do this tonight, before she hears we’re looking for her.”

  “I think so too.” Owl was faced the right way. She spotted Fletcher and gave a little tilt of her head toward him.

  Fletcher came, ducking through a line of young girls, so carefully groomed they were almost indistinguishable one from the other. He brought a bright-eyed maid with him.

  “This is Mary, maid to Lady McLean.” Fletcher handed her the Caché drawing he’d been showing around the kitchen and stables. “Tell them.”

  “I have seen this woman.” She unrolled it to look at one last time. To hold out and show. Her English was careful, with Scots underneath. “Twice. Once outside a shop on Oxford Street. Once in Portman Square, watching a street player.”

  The West End. Still a big place to search. “Do you remember anything else? Was she with somebody? How she was dressed?”

  “On her own, both times. Not a maid in sight. It was by that I noticed her, because a woman dressed as she was should have her maid about her.” She tapped the paper with the back of her hand. “She was wearing Madame Elise.”

  Owl slipped in, “The dressmaker.”

  “It was a walking dress in Pomona poplin, the first time. Satin trim and a perline cape, long, with scallops.” She made shapes in the air. “The second time, she was in Portman Square. That was a carriage dress in spotted silk. And a very pretty color it was. Amber. Lined with sarcenet.”

  Owl leaned close to his ear. “This may be the one. I have thought it would be a woman who recognized her.”

  “We’ll try the dressmaker. You and Doyle come with me. I’ll send the rest off to the next party.”

  “The dressmaker will live near her shop. With luck, there may even be someone working this late. Give me three minutes more and I will come.” Owl touched the maid’s arm and drew her a little aside, into a quiet space beside the stairs. “Tell me more about the dresses. Satin and braid on the Pomona one? What color was the braid?”